The Demi-God and Dido

It came to me as I sat in that theater that the culture of the West was most definitively returning to the model of the Greco-Roman. The movie had several themes running through it, echoing the same themes seen in seventy-five percent of the films pervading cinemas across the US.

There are two that encapsulate all others. The first is that of the demi-god. Whether it is Tony Stark or Peter Parker, these heros seemingly reflect the old legends of Hercules, Aeneas, Achilles, Hector, and other like demigods. In short, the heros of these films are people who come to find their inner god. They burgeon this inner god through technology (or magic) and intellect, and reach completion by acquiring such power as only God is supposed to have. This is then amalgamated with the same sinful nature that led to the ultimate death of the Greco-Roman hero, and likewise to the destruction of the Hollywood hero, though the film rarely ever confesses such a fate. They have not yet discovered that power without holiness kills.

The second theme is that of the family. These same Hollywood demigods are loners. They, like the old Greek gods, have given up the holy model of sacrifice: the father sacrificing himself for the mother and child, the mother sacrificing herself for the father and child, and the child rising up to call them both blessed. The Hollywood heros, however, still luxuriate in something that seems to be a sterile sexuality. They each have their Dido, and if they are lucky, their Helen, but their union never portrays the commitment of selfless love, and thus never brings forth the contentment that is birthed from giving, not receiving. Their supposed love does not bring forth the fruit of love, the child, and therefore it is not lovely.

These are the evidence of secular individualism. They are what characterized the culture of the Greeks and Romans once they deserted the hearth and the home for domination. Education became idolized above relationship. In this educational system men like Socrates taught a breaking up of the family in favor of the government. Thus the fertility of the home was replaced for the impersonal institution, the fruit of true loveliness superseded for the sterility of selfish passion, the holiness bound up in divinity exchanged for the Greek role models of vain conceit and corrupt power.

This culture self-destructed. So shall ours.

The Logic of Love

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. (John 1:1)

It is the same Word, or Logic, that spoke the world into being in Genesis 1.

The same Logic, or Testimony, is one that he ordained in Jacob as a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children (Psalm 78:5), and again, (Psalm 119:88), Quicken me after thy lovingkindness; so shall I keep the testimony of thy mouth.

It is the same Testimony, or Witness, spoken of in John 3:33, He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true.

The Witness, or Truth, of which Jesus said: Ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning. (John 15:27)

That Truth, or Faith, that is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). And in John 17, when that Logos, that Word, speaks: Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. And again: For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.

That Faith, or Knowledge, for which the Apostle Paul said: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:13)

That Knowledge, or Love, which is God: for he that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love (1 John 4:8).

And that Love, for which the Apostle Paul said: We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak. (2 Corinthians 4:13)

And that love, that knowledge, that faith, that truth, that witness, that testimony, that logic, that word…they are actions. Our obedience declares these truths. We love Jesus because He first loved us. We seek to know Him so that we might understand the power of His grace. We faithe in Jesus because He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We bear testimony of that which we have witnessed: the Truth of what He has done in our lives, the lives of those around us, and the lives of those past, revealed to us by that Spirit of Truth, the Paraclete. We do not believe blindly. We do not take 'leaps of faith'. We believe because of the Logic of His ways and of His words, for His ways and His words are the life and light of men (John 1:4).

The Child in Dickens

'No, I hold myself in quiet and silence, like a baby in its mother's arms, like a baby, so I keep myself.' - Psalms 131:2

St. Aurelius Augustine once said that when he himself, as a baby, beat his mother's breast while nursing, it was really the showing of the secret desire rankling in his heart to murder his mother. He believed that a child's sin was determined before he ever acted sinfully, and would go to everlasting damnation if he died before his infant baptism.

The idea, termed original or ancestral sin, was not taken seriously until the Enlightenment, when Martin Luther and John Calvin took the words of St. Augustine to be theological truths. "Original sin," Calvin said, "therefore appears to be a hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused through all the parts of the soul, rendering us obnoxious to the divine wrath and producing in us those works which the scripture calls works of sin.' God, therefore, was deemed a terrible deity who would damn innocent children for sins which they had not committed.

This belief developed. Sinfulness was said to be present even after baptism. We were deemed to be sinning all the time, even when we were not conscious of it, and therefore had an excuse to never combat our sin. As Martin Luther said, "Be a sinner and sin on bravely, but have stronger faith and rejoice in Christ, who is the victor of sin, death, and the world. Do not for a moment imagine that this life is the abiding place of justice: sin must be committed. To you it ought to be sufficient that you acknowledge the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world, the sin cannot tear you away from him, even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders.'

Never mind the words of Jesus: 'Go and sin no more.' 'Be ye perfect, even as thy heavenly father is perfect.' 'Whoever holds to my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home in him.' Of Paul: 'Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.' Of John: 'We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commandments.' Or the fact that, if sin-guilt was inherent in all Life and not just in action, that Jesus Himself could not have been sinless, as He chose to enter the world through a woman's womb.

To the detriment of all this, the beliefs of Calvin and Luther and Augustine were widely accepted in the Protestant and Catholic church, and continue to be today. This belief in the evil propensities of a child was accentuated by the Enlightenment's divorcing of the spiritual and material aspects of life, of Darwin's treatise on the animalism of man, and the amalgamation of both of these in the Industrial Era, which treated the child as sinful animals without character, emotion, or goodness.

In fact, in the world of the early 1800s, children were not even viewed as human beings until the age of seven. Sanitation was so primitive that it was extremely rare for a child to live to seven-years-old, and therefore they would not be intellectually counted as mind-full until they were proved to live through their infancy. They were deemed as being the essence of sinfulness, thus disregarding Jesus' declaration to 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.' In the original Greek, the last part of the sentence literally reads 'the kingdom of God is this [the little child].'

However, there were some people who struck out against the Enlightenment's painting of children. They were a part of the Christian Romantics, who adhered to the belief that the spiritual was inherent in matter, and that whoever welcomed a Child welcomed Jesus and therefore welcomed Elohim. Thus William Wordsworth declared, "Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height." And William Blake expostulated, "When the voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast And everything else is still.'

The aggression against the Calvin-Luther-Augustine theology was continued with great force by the Victorian author, Charles Dickens. It was he that paved the way for the Victorian's return to the love of the child, the sacredness of the mother, the unit of the father-mother-child, when 'the Child is Father of the Man', as Wordsworth termed it. In his books he wrote about little children who possessed thoughts, feelings, goodness, and the longing for love and acceptance. Pip, Biddy, David Copperfield, Amy Dorrit, Little Nell, Sissy Jupe, Esther Woodhouse…the list goes on. He shows how the innocence of these children may be tainted by the sinfulness of their parents (Hard Times), through the cruelty of schoolmasters (David Copperfield), by the brutality of women (Great Expectations, Bleak House), or the negligence of fathers (Little Dorrit, Old Curiosity Shop). But he did not just make an example through negatives. He showed the true joy that might come when the family is as it should be. When the family models the Holy Family: the father as protector and provider, the mother as comforter and caretaker, the child as the holy fruit of their love.

This is seen in no greater book than in A Christmas Carol, where Scrooge––the epitome of the anti-emotion movement started in the Enlightenment and followed through in Industrialization––comes to realize the sacredness of Love and therefore the fruit of Love, the Child, through the example of the beautiful, lovely family of Tiny Tim. As Dickens said, 'It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.'

And thus Dickens ushered in the true enlightenment of the Victorian era.

Fairest Lord Jesus

Fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nature,

O thou of God and man the Son,

Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor

Thou, my soul's glory, joy, and crown.

Dusk spread its silky fingers over the horizon as we drove through Clover Meade. It had been a long day: sitting in a car, reading Jane Austen, and listening to Bach fugues over the speakers as we drove up the continent to our homeland. The day was glorious. A blue sky and a golden sun graced our eyes with their beauty as a cheerful, fresh wind breathed Spring into our lungs.

It seems fitting that the Savior, who is Life, should have been resurrected in a time that such Resurrection takes place. The new birth of all around us thrilled through our veins, though we were only passive observers of the growth. Perhaps the best way to come into fellowship with that same renewal is through the spiritual camaraderie of our own Soul's newness in Jeshua.

The beauty of the season and the soul pervading the season filled my heart, and, when the car finally came to a stop in front of my home, I lost little time in running up to my bedroom, replacing my travel-weary clothes for a fresh eyelet skirt and sky-blue shirt, and, my feet bare-shod, I tripped down the back staircase and out into the loveliness of the evening.

Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodlands,

Robed in the blooming garb of spring:

Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer

Who makes the woeful heart to sing.

The Chinook had been busy while I was absent. It had sprinkled away the plum blossoms on the Tree of Life and the pear blossoms on Lady Cordelia––as I had christened them in a blissfully Emily of New Moon phase––and onto the lush green clover, intertwining pure white petals with the lavender violets and yellow sunflowers that carpeted the damp, warm earth. Old William and Lady Dawn, the apple trees, seemed a bit belated in the growth of their canopy of green leaves, but close inspection boasted little buds just breaking forth from their wooden cocoon. Squirrels scurried through the tree branches, watching with eager eyes for the fruit that was soon to appear to make their supper. Red-breasted robins chirped their cheerful chorus from their newly built nests, while brilliant bluejays hopped along the grass, looking for the earthworms that were just burrowing up to the warm sunlight from their winter haven in the depths of the ground.

I walked down the hill, inhaling the sweetly-scented breeze as it blew all worldly cares from my eyes and mind, and sang Fairest Lord Jesus as I surveyed the beauty of His creation. I marveled at the knowledge that Jesus is, truly, fairer and purer than the wonder-full fairness of purity I saw all around me.

Fair is the sunshine, fairer still the moonlight,

And all the twinkling starry host:

Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer

Than all the angels heaven can boast.

I directed my steps to the peach tree sapling, which, just planted last year, and rather neglected by its stewards, is struggling to obey God's commandment to bear fruit. It looked beautiful in the setting sun, just sprouting its first emerald leaves and pink flowers, from her slender ivory branches. I prayed that God might make her bear good fruit, and, after a little thought over what name would encapsulate her beauty, called the tree Cherith, in the old tradition of Adam.

The sun dipped below the hills as the moon grew clearer in the periwinkle heavens. I lay on the grass for a few minutes, letting the warmth of Spring seep into my bones. After praying to the Lord of the dance of creation, I made my way back up the sloping lawn and into the house, praising the Rose of Sharon for the Beauty birthed of His Holiness (Psalm 29:2 KJV)

Beautiful Savior! Lord of all the nations!

Son of God and Son of Man!

Glory and honor, praise, adoration,

Now and forevermore be thine.

Hymn by Munster Gesangbuch

O Sacred Head Now Wounded

O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown;
How art thou pale with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn!
How doth Thy visage languish that once was bright as morn!

What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.*

In the days of the Middle Ages, the word 'pity' did not mean the milky, soft emotion that it does now. It came from the word 'piety', and meant a divine compassion shot through with strength and truth, inspired by the Father of all Piety. May we pray that on this day, a day of such gravity for the future of our nation, the Almighty may look on our prayers with his 'pity without end', and renew our nation.

*From 'O Sacred Head Now Wounded' by Bernard of Clairvaux

The Pursuit of Happiness

Last night, hundreds of thousands of people, in surfing their television, found themselves watching one of the most beautiful events that has aired in the last four years: the figure skating championship for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Of all the young ladies competing, though all displayed extraordinary beauty, elegance, and talent in the soaring twirls and spinning twists, two women stood out from among the rest. They were small, slender, beautiful girls, wearing sparkling leotards, with glitter framing their dark eyes and concentration molded upon their olive brows. They came from two different Asian countries, where the skill of their dancing has earned them the name of national celebrities. One, a small, Japanese girl named Mao Asada, dances to a simple, classical piece, and, though her dancing is flawless, the choreography has only a fraction of the fire and energy that sizzles over a foundation of breath-taking elegance when Kim Yu-Na from South Korea takes the ice, dancing to the theme song from James Bond. She wins the competition after the stunning, passionate piece, placing five points above her Japanese rival, and exceeding her own record by two points.

The disinterested onlooker enjoys watching these prodigies as they perform; they rejoice with Yu-Na in her success, and, though they pity Asada for her own great talent being superseded, the performance of Yu-Na has left them so breathless that they know the score is fairly won. No one realizes the enormity of the expectation and the extreme responsibility that has been placed on these young, small shoulders by the people of their country. The competition between them does not begin and end with the Olympics: it buries deep, plunging down the course of a hundred years, through the histories of their people. The two countries, and the two girls who stand as the sacred representations of their cultures, are enemies of old.

In the early twentieth century Japan experienced great economic upheaval when the new emperor, Meiji, rose to power. The Koreans insulted and rejected Emperor Meiji in their trading with Japan, and the emperor, seeing that the samurai army was jobless and posing a threat to his regime, sent them off to conquer and colonize Korea. The Koreans experienced great hardship through their slavery to the Japanese over the course of thirty-five years, until America, after the bombing of Hiroshima at the end of World War II, came into Korea to free the Koreans. The people, government, and economy of Korea were utterly devastated after Japan's autocracy in their country, and, though the Americans helped them back to their feet, Franklin D. Roosevelt didn't finish the course of regeneration. He, on the advice of the general in charge of the mission, deserted the northern precinct of Korea to a socialist Russia, a communist Mao Zedong, and the new Marxist upstart Kim Il Sung to take over the government in that section of the country. Thus ensued the divide of North and South Korea. This history, branded in the minds of the Koreans and the Japanese, lies in the worldview with which Yu-Na and Asada compete. The angst of their countries' expectations is overwhelming in the very force of this age-old feud.

I once observed a young Korean conversing with one of my brothers about how he saw common ground between America and Korea, in that they both had a mutual enemy in Japan because of Pearl Harbor. I was shocked by this idea. In my thoughts, the tragedy of Pearl Harbor was such an incident of the past that the guilt correlating to it has been forgotten, and that this feeling predominates in America. Japan has been wholly forgiven, just as the memory of the enmity of the Revolutionary War between the English and the Americans is rendered obsolete in our present function as allies. In the same way, the Pearl Harbor incident has been wiped away from our consciences, so that now Japan is one of America's greatest allies. But to the young Korean gentleman, Japan––disregarding the fact that the grave offense paid them is one dating to almost a century ago, and that the Japanese have seen great retribution for their tyranny and are a wholly different people––is still a very grim enemy.

Thus I see how the worldviews of the Western and Eastern worlds utterly clash. Christianity, though started in the East, has spread like wildfire, until, coming to the West, it has conquered and revolutionized the European world. Because of Christianity, we are endowed with certain unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that happiness is made by the practice of Christian virtues. The Ten Commandments are instilled in our minds, and this moral creed has given us the ability to rise above all other countries in the corporate wisdom that has led to freedom of religion, liberty of speech, and the high-minded principle of love that has led us to be renowned for our 'short memory': for our forgiveness and for our willingness to give succor to those countries who have not had the influence of the Zoë to give them Life and Light.

In the Eastern world, however, the cultures are steeped in the religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Atheism, all creeds wholly selfish, either in the self-centered pursuit of forgetting self, the megalomaniacal pursuit of a god that sanctions genocide and hate, or the egocentric mind that believes there is no god and therefore that man is the master of his own destiny. Their worlds are old: newness is not welcomed, freedom of thought and independence of belief is denied, and the sins of the fathers are punished in the children. They nurse their hate, for they have never learned the joy that comes from obeying the words:

"Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you."

Photo of Kim Yu-Na

The Man Moses, Part 2

Moses, the conqueror of Ethiopia, the prince of Egypt, the shepherd of Midian, led his father-in-law Jethro's flock into the wilderness, until he came to the mountain of Elohim. There, in the midst of a bush, he saw the God who is a consuming fire. But this consuming fire did not devour the bush. Elohim spoke from the miracle. He declared that the ground on which Moses stood was holy, thus foreshadowing the almighty wonders that were to happen there in the future. He declared Himself an everlasting God, living through the generations. He declared Himself the great I AM: YHWH. He declared that Moses would be the savior of the Israelites, and, when Moses protests that he is not worthy of the task, Yahweh declares that it is through the miraculous power of the presence of Yahweh in the staff in his hand that he will be believed by the Israelites and will escape Pharaoh.

Thus begins the Exodus. Moses journeys to Egypt, where Pharaoh meets him with breath-taking arrogance and we first see the fickle foolishness of the Israelite people. But the staff of God, in the hand of Aaron, Moses' mouthpiece, proclaims the wonder of the Wonder-Worker. Every time but one that a miracle is performed, Yahweh commands that the staff be used to execute it, culminating in the parting of the Sea of Reeds, where Yahweh is present in a pillar of cloud and fire. Thus is born the model from which the traditional portrayal of every wizard from Merlin to Gandalf has been taken.

The Israelites walked dry through the Reed Sea, while the entire army of Pharaoh was drowned in pursuit. They walked through the wilderness, making their way by the guidance of their God back to the holy mountain that began the Exodus, Mount Sinai. It was here, as Yahweh prophesied at the burning bush, that Elohim showed Himself to His people. Yahweh told Moses that He would descend on the third day of the Israelites' stay at the Mountain of God, and, in preparation, the whole people were consecrated and purified. On the morning of the third day, thunder and lightning rent the heavens, a thick cloud enveloped the mountain, and a stentorian trumpet blast shook the air. The Israelites trembled. Moses led the people out of the camp to stand at the foot of the mountain where they would meet Yahweh. Smoke, like the smoke that billows from a furnace, swarmed over the mountain, which shook violently as the trumpet call grew louder and louder. Moses spoke and the Voice answered him, calling him to the top of the mountain. He stayed there, fasting and worshipping before Yahweh for forty days, the same number of days that the Savior of the world would fast and worship before Elohim in the desert. He prostrated himself before the throne of Yahweh, and Yahweh imparted to Moses the Holy Covenant.

This was the first face-to-face encounter between Moses and Jehovah, and was to be the beginning of a relationship that would be the closest and most present of any human's interaction with the Creator until Elohim's Son entered the world. As the Israelites journeyed to the promised land, Yahweh would lead them in the pillar of cloud-fire, only appearing in his earthly form to Moses, whose face was so resplendent with the glory of God when he left his presence that he was forced to wear a veil when he was not in the Tabernacle of Meeting, so that the Israelites would not see the glory fade away from his face. Moses would even be allowed to see Yahweh in undisguised form, though the actual Face of Elohim was barred to him for his own safety's sake.

After forty years of wandering in the desert, barred from the promised land for a life-span by the stupidity of the Israelite people, having been offered the patriarch-ship of the future races of the world and having refused the offer, having tasted the living bread of Yahweh, having brought water from the rock, having seen Jehovah in the full glory of His image, this man, Moses, came to his last days. The most humble man on the face of the earth, right before he was destined to die, was brought to Mount Nebo where Yahweh showed him all the land that the chosen people were to acquire, the promised land, flowing with milk and honey. The Bible says that Moses was one-hundred-and-twenty-years-old, and yet his eyes were not dimmed and his vigor was un-impaired. Yahweh's strength had been given him. He died there in Moab, as Yahweh had chosen, and Jehovah, the God of the Heavens, buried him in a secret place.

'And there hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the HaShem knew face to face.' Deuteronomy 34:10

The Man Moses: Part 1

Israel dwelt in Egypt. God blessed His people, making them fruitful in number. Their God was El Shaddai, the God whose Kingdom is the little child.

They were a prized nation, for Joseph, one of the greatest commanders in Egypt, was at their head. But a Pharaoh rose up who knew not Joseph, who knew not the covenant, who knew not that El Shaddai who blesses, and he grew afraid of the strong, numerous nation. He ordered genocide. All male Hebrew children up to two years of age, must be drowned in the Nile. This genocide would be repeated hundreds of years later, when Herod ordered merciless child-slaughter in order to kill the Christ.

But Israel's savior would survive genocide, just as the Savior of all humanity would. In the depths of Goshen, the Israelites' primary region of habitation, lived a man named Amram. His wife, Jochebed, had three children, Miriam, Aaron, and Jekuthiel, a new-born baby. She was a courageous woman. She was a mother. She hid her precious baby boy for three months, and, when she knew she could no longer succeed in hiding him, put him in a basket and trusted to that El Shaddai who gave her this precious child to save him from destruction.

Her little girl Miriam watched the chosen child as it wound its way through the busy, infested Nile, closer and closer to the royal palace. She heard Pharaoh's daughter and her handmaidens washing in the Nile, heard their gasps of surprise as the basket floats into view, saw the princess of Egypt take pity on the child. The Princess Thermuthis knew it was a Hebrew child, a child of not only slaves, but shepherds, an occupation scorned by her people––a nation so degraded in Egypt that the mass slaughter of the Hebrews' children could be executed without a qualm. Yet she loves the child as her own. According to the Midrash, when Moses returns to Egypt as the wielder of the miracles of YHWH, she will be exiled and scorned for being his surrogate mother, and will leave Egypt with him in the great Exodus. Her name will be changed to Bithiah, meaning 'Daughter of Yah', and she will take the Judahite Mered as her husband. Click here to read the Biblical mention of Bithiah.

Miriam seized the opportunity, when this princess was observing the baby with tender interest, to suggest a Hebrew nurse for the child. The princess probably guessed what has taken place, and acquiesced willingly. She took pity on the Hebrew mother. Thus Moses is nursed by his own mother, and, through the strong bonding that takes place, becomes sealed in the Hebrew culture.

Once he was weaned, however, the princess adopted him as her own son, calling him Moshe, which is similar to the Hebrew word 'mashah', meaning 'to draw out' and the Egyptian word for 'child'. Moses, attached through his most formative years of childhood to his Hebraism, will now be raised as a royal Egyptian, with all the privileges and education of a prince of Egypt.

According to Josephus, Moses grew to become the foremost commander of the armies of Egypt. He had great military acumen, though he was slow of speech. One of the most famous stories about his life as a general is in the histories of Josephus, when he led the Egyptians against the Ethiopians who were invading the country. According to the histories, while he was besieging Tharbis, one of the cities of Ethiopia, an Ethiopian princess fell in love with him and wanted to marry him. He agreed to do so if she would deliver the city into his power. She did so, and Moses married her. Click here to read the Bible's account of Moses' Ethiopian wife.

His warrior career came to an end when, one day on visiting his mother-people, he saw a Hebrew slave being maltreated and was so incensed that he murdered the Egyptian overseer and buried the corpse in the sand. The affair was talked about among the Hebrew slaves, and Moses, on hearing from a higher source that it was known in the royal household, and that Pharaoh would most likely execute him for it, escaped across the Sinai Peninsula, a gigantic stretch of barren, desert country that only the strongest could survive in.

Coming to Midian, he stopped to drink at the Midianite well, and, while he was there, saw a group of seven shepherdess sisters being driven away from the water by some rowdy shepherds. Moses, seeing the violence taking place, had enough fighting strategy inherent in his bones to save the shepherdesses from the whole group of shepherds and their flocks, and then enough strength remaining to draw the water needed for the sheep of the seven sisters. The girls' father, a priest of Midian, was so grateful for the service and so awed at what Moses had done that he adopted him as his son, made him superintendent of his flocks, and gave him his daughter Zipporah in marriage.

It was forty years later, while shepherding his father's flocks, that Moses saw the first glimpse of the fire of the God whom he would see face to face in the coming years.

The Tabernacle of the Godhead

O worship Yahweh in the beauty of holiness: tremble before him, all the earth.

- Psalms 96:9

Incense lies heavy in the atmosphere. It swirls through your senses, tickling the nose, tasting the mouth, touching the eyes. It smells sweet, dark, rich.

You open your eyes. The gold glints in the shadows, making your irises sparkle with the glory of its wealth. The mercy seat stands in the womb of the temple, before your eyes, borne by majestic creatures whose colossal wings span out and above in dazzling grandeur, arching over the throne of God. The faces of the creatures are turned to one another. Fire burns in their eyes. They perch upon the Ark. Majesty reigns. Intense spiritual presence wrestles around the gleaming gold overlay. The sweet smell of acacia wood hangs faintly in the atmosphere. To touch is death, for the Cloud Fire prevails sovereign on the throne, above the stone tablets of His Law, the Law that brings life and light. The Law that frees.

You tear yourself away from the throne where visits the God who is Love. You fold back the thick curtain of finely woven linen, richly colored violet-purple, red-purple, embroidered with the great winged creatures who guard the Ark of the Testimony. You leave the Holy of Holies, the Qodesh-Qodesh, and enter the Holy Place.

A gleam in the dusk catches your eye. The glimmer of gold, the scent of acacia wood. You come round the curtain and see, sparkling against the rich tone of the maroon drapery, the table of offering. Beautifully moulded, crowned with bowls and goblets and jars and platters of pure, fair ore. The loaves, baked of fine wheaten flour, crushed-olive oil, and ground incense grace the gold plate.

Opposite the table a shimmering lamp-stand sheds forth light upon the magical surroundings. You marvel in the beauty of the golden form, beaten forth in the loveliness of calyxes and petals, branches crowned in almond blossoms, red-flamed lamps standing in the cups. Light shining in the Temple of the Light of the world.

You become aware of the sun filtering through the opening of the Holy Place, filtering through the screen of fine, twisted linen, tinted blue and purple and scarlet, wrought with skilled needlework. The heavy, soft cloth hangs upon five strong pillars of acacia wood, overlain with gold, socketed with brass. You walk through the doorway, and out into the court.

Splendid color surrounds you. Violet, crimson, and azure draping create the boundaries of the court. The finely twined linen garlands columns of gold, poles of silver, hooks of bronze. A golden lamp, burning continually with pure pounded olive oil, flickers purple shadows on the richly stained curtains. The red light is attended from dusk to dawn by the sons of Abarone, before Yahweh, as an endless edict for all ages of Israel.

Your attention is brought to the middle of the court where stands the altar, by the bleat of animals being lead toward the mizbeach. Built of hollow acacia wood, crowned with four bronze horns at each corner, complemented by bronze pans for carrying away the fatty ashes, bronze shovels, bronze sprinkling basins, bronze hooks, bronze fire pans. The flame from the lamp mirrors in the metal.

You see Abarone and his four sons surrounding the altar. Awe strikes you at the splendor of their raiment in the light of the sun, the fire of the lamp. Robes and embroidered tunics adorn them, giving dignity and magnificence to their strong, tall frames, the color glistening in their brown eyes. A turban crowns each regal head, covering their brown locks. A flower of pure gold, engraved with the words Qodesh Yahweh is attached to a violet-purple cord, which hangs from the winding cloths of the turban. The clothes are made of dyed linen to match the curtains surrounding them, hemmed with pomegranates and golden bells which tinkle at all times, so the sweet sound foreruns their entrance into the Holy of Holies. Below their thick, long beards rest the ephod and the breastplate, spun of violet linen, swung with gold chains of rosettes and purple cords. Two cornelians, engraved with the twelve names of the Princes of Israel, hang in gold settings upon the straps of the ephod. The crimson-violet linen is set with twelve rare stones to represent the names of the Tribes, glinting with all the colors of the rainbow that surrounds the heavenly throne of God.

The Urim and the Thummim adorn the breastplate over his heart, thus giving Abarone the judgment of Israel to bear, in the presence of Yahweh, forever. In the holy flower upon his brow he carries the shortcomings of the things consecrated by the people of Israel, to make them satisfactory to Elohim. Avarone bears the remembrance of the names of Israel's sons upon his shoulders before Adonai. Avarone supports the chosen people of El Shaddai upon his heart, always. Avarone is the Priest of Jehovah.

You hear the bleats of lambs and goats, the coo of doves and pigeons, echo through the court. You see the white wool and grey skin, the white feathers and the grey, burn upon the altar, sending up a pleasing aroma to the Godhead. Their blood is poured around the altar, their life spilled out for the souls of humanity, so that they might possess Life Eternal. The garments of Abarone and his sons are sprinkled with the blood, anointing oil, incense. They are purified. Israel is purified.

You step outside the court, through the lovely linen drapery, and see God's creation all around you. Green grass. Blue sky. Golden sun. A sweet wind blowing through the trees. You worship Elohim, the God Who Is.

Thine, O Adonai, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine, thine is the kingdom, O Jehovah, and thou art exalted as King above all.

- 1 Chronicles 29:11

The Medieval and The Post-Modern

'Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.'

~C.S. Lewis

'Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.'

~C.S. Lewis

Medieval World-View

The medieval man believed that the world was set up in a way that inverted our natural experience. He believed that the universe was a chain or set of graded planes, the top of which was the highest Heaven, in which God dwelt in timeless, undeviating unity.

The second link of the chain was the high angels, gradually grading down in an intricate theology of numbers to the lower angels, who dwelt in the realm of Aether. The Aether was described as the means through which God communicated with the Earth. It consisted of all living intelligence beyond the moon. Rather than being Space, as we term it today, the Aether was a dazzling world of light, filled to overflowing with miraculous planets, stars, and spiritual beings. The medieval man believed the darkness with which we see it was only a shadow cast by the earth in the light of the moon, and that, in reality, outside the shadow, it was a sphere of glorious light. Aether and the high Heaven were at the top of the chain, and the medieval man praised them for their very unchangeable quality, their fixedness.

Below the moon there came Air, through which the Aether communicated with the Earth. The Air, in the medieval mind, was directly influenced by the warfare that went on in the Aether and the highest Heaven. Thus, birth, death, sickness, health, were all contributed to events taking place in the spiritual realm. Therefore doctors would blame sicknesses on what they named 'Influence', which, in the Italian, is 'Influenza.' Thus the beginning of the term.

Below the Air there came the Earth, on which Man, with his supposedly disgusting inconstancy and fickle purpose, dwelt. Man and Earth were distorted mirrors of the Heavenly realm. Thus the medieval man's fetish with creating as much beauty on Earth as possible, in order that he might come closest to the vast glory above the moon; thus the medieval man's staunch belief in the spiritual properties of the stuff of Earth, and his loyalty to magic-lore. For where the Astrology of the planets and the Aether forced upon man a changeless Fate, Magic was developed as a means to cast off the icy clutches of serendipity.

Beneath Man came the Animal world, which the medieval man viewed as a grotesque shadow of himself, through which he could learn spiritual lessons. For example, the ant was a lesson for the sluggard, the rule of the queen bee a lesson for the monarch.

Lower than the Animal was the Plant, filled with life and yet inanimate.

And below the Plant, at the very outskirts of the medieval world-view, lay Hell and the daemonic world, as far away from God as was possible in the intricate planing of the spheres.

Post-Modern Worldview

Interestingly, the post-modern man has a fully different view of the world. In fact, it is inverted. Where the medieval man believed in a world of utter order, absolute truth, the post-modern man believes there is no truth, and that each person's absolute is made up only of his mysterious experiences. Rather than God being at the center of the universe, with the sinful Earth being at the very outskirts of the Heavenly Realm, the post-modern man believes that the sinful world is the center of the universe.

As time goes by, the post-modern worldview becomes more and more obsessed with what to the medieval man was the low rung on the ladder: the Plant. Thus, the Green movement. The post-modern man has intellectually negated the possibility of either a Hell or a Heaven, and, instead, has endowed the realms of Plant, Animal, and Air with a strange, god-like authority which must control the actions of Man.

On the next link of the post-modern chain is Man, which, with the Animal as his god, is seeking to become more and more like an Animal himself. Just as the medieval man sought to become like his Creator, so the post-modern man seeks to become like his supposed predecessor, the Animal. Thus, the post-modern man has negated meaning in the universe. There is no spiritual realm, there is no truth, there is no creativity, there is no intelligence except to prove intelligence non-existent, for the Animal is not in the image of the Divine, the Animal has no reason or emotion, the Animal has no creativity, the Animal has no intelligence. With all divine impartation, with all sub-creational responsibility, with all wisdom gutted, the only thing left for the post-modern man is his gut appetite. His chosen life is one of wandering purposefulness, constant changeableness, the very thing the medieval man detested as a part of the Fallen realm.

Below Man is what the post-modern man terms Space. It is a domain of nothingness. Even the stars, the planets, and the miraculous lights that inhabit the world take a background view to the blackness that was only a shadow hiding glory in the medieval man's mind. The post-modern man believes in no beauty, no glory, no virtue. He believes only in a sadist mentality… the savage instinct for survival.

Summary

So, we see that the medieval man, embracing his God-given desire for the Kingdom of the Spirit, did everything he could to minimize his Fallenness by enveloping himself in the realm of Glory. The post-modern man of today, by completing the negation of the Dark Ages begun in the Renaissance, has minimized the spiritual to the utmost degree, in order to more wholly embrace the Animal in the Flesh.

A New Year's Benediction

‘When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” – G.K. Chesterton

As this lovely New Years’ Eve draws to a close and the golden flame of the sun dips below the horizon…

as the shimmering silver of the moon rises into the velvet night sky and the winds of change sweep over the frosted plains…

we wish you all a very beautiful life of gratitude in this new year.

May God bless you in this Advent season.

Jupiter: A Haiku

Three moons 'round red eye

Zeus in a Grecian temple
King of the planets.

By Camille Wolaver

She Walks in Beauty Like the Night

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies,

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meets in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellow'd to that tender light

Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impair'd the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress

Or softly lightens o'er her face,

Where thoughts serenely sweet express

How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek and o'er that brow

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,––

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent.

Poetry by Lord Byron

Art by William Bouguereau

Titanic Article

Being at a dinner a couple weeks ago, a framed edition of the Times edition of Tuesday, April 16th, 1912, caught my eye.  As I read through it, I was so shocked by the contents of that tragic day, that I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and quickly dashed down as much as I could before we had to leave.  What follows are my notes:

Direct copy from the beginning of the article:

Tuesday, 16th April 1912

WORLD'S GREATEST LINER STRIKES ICEBERG:

RMS Titanic, the world's greatest liner and the pride of the White Star fleet, hit an iceberg and sank yesterday morning in the greatest disaster at sea.  Over 1600 passengers and crew perished with the ship.

Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable but she disappeared into the black depths of the Atlantic Ocean within hours of being struck.  Lifeboats were launched but only around 800 men, women, and children are believed to have survived.

Those who were able to obtain seats in the lifeboats watched helplessly as the great ship broke in half and plunged to the bottom of the ocean with all its lights blazing and with the band still playing on deck.

Notes from rest of article:

So great was the faith in Titanic's 'unsinkable' qualities that some passengers even had a snowball fight with pieces of ice which the strike had thrown on deck.

The 'Women and Children Only' rule was soon ignored and skirmishes began as some male passengers tried to fight their way onto the boats.  One lady had her ribs dislocated when three men jumped into her lifeboat as it was being lowered.  One man swam in the icy water after a lifeboat only to have an officer threaten to shoot him if he boarded.

Babies and children were wrapped in towels and sheets and thrown to safety to the women already in the boats.  One older boy who tried to get onto one of the boats concealed in his mother's skirts was sent back with the order to 'Be a man'.  He is believed to have died.  

The lifeboats were not filled efficiently in the chaos.  Third class passengers were locked below in order that the first class women could board first, but they rioted and broke through and chaos broke out.

1500 people died.  As she went down with a tremendous roar, the decks were thronged with praying and sobbing passengers and the band was still playing the Episcopal hymn Autumn, or Nearer my God to Thee, as Titanic sank below the waves.  All ships' senior officers died.

The Blessings of Yahweh Sabaoth

It is El Shaddai who blesses you…

blessings of heaven above…

blessings of the deep lying below…

blessings of the breasts and womb…

blessings of the grain…

and flowers…

blessings of the eternal mountains…

bounty of the everlasting hills…

may they descend on Joseph's head, on the crown of the one dedicated from among his brothers.

Genesis 49:25-29

Thoughts on the Euangelios

The incarnation shocked humanity. Never before in the history of religion had divinity shrunk to infancy. The magic of the event terrified the world. The God of the universe who created woman, impregnated a common peasant girl and grew from embryo to infant in the womb that He had molded with His own hands. The girl who carried Yahweh in her belly, who was scoffed and mocked by the world of the time and treated as a sinner and outcast, journeyed to Jerusalem with her faithful husband, and, being refused even by the country inn, was forced to birth the Son of God underground. 'In the riddle of Bethlehem it was heaven that was under the earth,' Chesterton states. The Voice of Elohim became the most vulnerable creature in our world––a new-born baby, crying in the arms of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl, whose tiny arms couldn't reach up to touch the noses of the cattle that He had spoken into existence. Yahweh came to earth, and suddenly the family that God had instituted in the beginning was turned upside down, for the mother and father became the children of their Son, and their son was their Father and Creator. And they called His name Jesus.

Jesus' life was hounded from the beginning. After being anointed by the Magi, confirmed by Anna and Simeon, praised by the angels, and worshipped by the shepherds, Joseph, following the command of God, the father of his adopted child, escaped to Egypt with the precious mother and baby to escape Herod's wrath. The age-old war of the demons against children asserted itself once more in a mad effort to kill the Child, but was thwarted by a simple carpenter's faithfulness to God.

Jesus grew up, and threw off the stagnant and sinful customs of the time. Though He was the most intelligent and promising students in the educational system, and wanted as a disciple by the leading rabbis of the day, He rejected the complacency and legalism of the priests and stayed at home to learn the trade of a simple carpenter until His time came. And then the Son of God asserted Himself.

He gathered the outcasts to Himself. He insulted the leading figures of the day. He ransacked the false religion pervading the Temple. He forgave the sins of people who faithed in His Father. He called Himself the ancestor of Abraham. He healed the sick. He outsmarted the scribes. He was faithful to His Father. He loved purely. He gave freely. He professed to be the Son of God. He spoke words of truth that were shocking to the darkness of that time, and yet conquered the barbarian sinfulness of the time, and have forever resurrected throughout history, and are still living and speaking today. For they are words of universal and timeless truth. The world will try to take some of Him and leave the rest, but He was the Man who encompassed all Truth, all Holiness, all Power, all Righteousness, all Faithfulness, all Love.

There have been many philosophers in the history of this world, but the smarter they were the more they knew that they were not a god. Yet Jesus spoke words of intelligence and verity, and He proclaimed Himself to be God. He was a Man directly distinct from the sophists and philosophers of His time, a Man who had nothing to do with the wild and distorted mythologies and hero-worship of the time. And yet He complemented both sides. He was a philosopher, He was a hero, His life was a Story, but a true one. He vanquished the lies of the World, and rose up as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

His creed spread like wildfire throughout the world, and the only people groups that would have none of Him were the Middle-Eastern Muslims and the Hindus and Buddhists of Asia. And these are the two countries that are living examples of stagnancy. The West has blossomed, grown, died, and resurrected as the Flower of Christendom, but Asia and the Middle-East are too old to die.

In fact, the modern example of the ancient war between mythology and philosophy are the creeds of Asia. Their worship is why Asia is infirm, stale, and oppressed, whereas the West is equally as historical, but has experienced the resurrection of life that is following Christ. For Christianity is the only religion that is the key which fits the questions of this world. It is Life, and it is like life. It embraces life when Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Fatalism, Optimism, Mythology, and Atheism all refuse to be intellectually honest and choose to strive to negate certain aspects of life in order to hold on to their mistaken ideals. Christianity bridges all these religions because it is a story and it is a true story. It is the freedom that comes from the free-will which is the essence of a story, the truth which is the longing of our intellects, and the divine supremacy of God which satisfies the yearning in our soul to know our Creator.

Islam, too, is a stagnant religion. Islam and Christianity are similar in the fact that they are the only monotheistic religions stemming from Abraham, but in very little else. For where Islam worships a solitary and therefore self-centered and uncharitable god, without even the ability to love because he is lonely, Christianity worships the Triune God. He is the God that is the embodiment of the Family. He is the essence of power, and yet is wholly selfless because the Son, the Father, and the Holy Ghost are forever loving each other and the world in Sacred Communion.

For just as the mythology and philosophy in Asia is too tolerant to die, and the selfishness and hate of Islam is too bitter to die, Christianity is continually experiencing rebirth. Over and over again, the Faith has been so diluted as to die, but it has always risen again in new power at the pivotal moment. We worship the God who rose from the grave, and who has given us the power which raised Jesus Christ from the dead.