tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86506950026118138442024-03-13T19:38:03.046-04:00StrictlyVAUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger362125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-63262044343024261492022-02-01T09:35:00.001-05:002022-02-01T09:35:14.762-05:00WRITER'S JOURNEY: SAMPLER OF MY WORK<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-most-sublime-of-natures-works_3869224.html" target="_blank" title="Church"><img alt="Church" height="475" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51792356564_a1e5156f16.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>In 1852, </i><b>Frederic Edwin Church</b><i> painted Virginia's Natural Bridge</i>
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<br /><span style="color: #990000; font-size: large;">My Writing on Historical Architecture
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<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-most-sublime-of-natures-works_3869224.html" target="_blank" title="IMG-2249"><img alt="IMG-2249" height="244" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51792356479_b787620821.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<br /><a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-most-sublime-of-natures-works_3869224.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">
The ‘Most Sublime of Nature’s Works’
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O</span>ne of Virginia’s most amazing architectural treasures wasn't formed by the hand of man at all. <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-most-sublime-of-natures-works_3869224.html" target="_blank">(read more)</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/american-classicism-and-the-gentleman-architect-thomas-jefferson_3788798.html" target="_blank" title="Virginia State Capitol, Richmond. 1830 watercolor by William Goodacre"><img alt="Virginia State Capitol, Richmond. 1830 watercolor by William Goodacre" height="242" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51791980781_0173bc84f3.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<br /><a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/american-classicism-and-the-gentleman-architect-thomas-jefferson_3788798.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #990000;">
American Classicism and the ‘Gentleman Architect’ Thomas Jefferson
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[click to read]<br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">
I</span>n 1784 <b>Thomas Jefferson</b> found himself in France as our first ambassador. <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/american-classicism-and-the-gentleman-architect-thomas-jefferson_3788798.html" target="_blank">(read more)</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/an-academical-village-as-a-model-for-a-new-republic_3788803.html" target="_blank" title="IMG-2251"><img alt="IMG-2251" height="193" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51792356459_117401d4d4.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<br /><a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/an-academical-village-as-a-model-for-a-new-republic_3788803.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #990000;">
An ‘Academical Village’ as a Model for a New Republic
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I</span>f you had traveled with the <b>Marquis de Lafayette</b> to the Piedmont region of Virginia in 1824... <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/an-academical-village-as-a-model-for-a-new-republic_3788803.html" target="_blank">(read more)</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/romantic-aspirations-vision-and-viaducts_3788813.html" target="_blank" title="IMG-2252"><img alt="IMG-2252" height="252" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51792356449_91802869da.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<br /><a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/romantic-aspirations-vision-and-viaducts_3788813.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #990000; font-size: large;">
Romantic Aspirations, Vision, and Viaducts
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<br /><span style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">
C</span><b>harles Carroll</b> of Carrollton might well have been the <b>Elon Musk</b> of his day. <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/romantic-aspirations-vision-and-viaducts_3788813.html" target="_blank">(read more)</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-conversation-with-charles-marohn-honor-the-struggle_3841302.html" target="_blank" title="IMG-2253"><img alt="IMG-2253" height="250" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51792356444_9aab727a71.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<br /><a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-conversation-with-charles-marohn-honor-the-struggle_3841302.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #990000;">
A Conversation With Charles Marohn: ‘Honor the Struggle!’
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W</span>alking six blocks to work each morning gives <b>Charles Marohn</b> a unique insight into the vitality of his town. <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-conversation-with-charles-marohn-honor-the-struggle_3841302.html" target="_blank">(read more)</a><br />
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<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/norman-rockwells-america_4155504.html" target="_blank" title="IMG-2255"><img alt="IMG-2255" height="293" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51792356434_54553d3d2e.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<br /><a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/norman-rockwells-america_4155504.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">
Norman Rockwell’s America
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I</span> <i>was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed.”</i> —<b>Norman Rockwell</b> <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/norman-rockwells-america_4155504.html" target="_blank">(read more)</a>
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<br /><span style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">
A</span>s seen in <i><b>American Essence Magazine</b></i><br />
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<a href="https://subscribe.theepochtimes.com/p/?page=amtemp-general1a&utm_source=americanessence.net" target="_blank" title="PontifusBANNER"><img alt="PontifusBANNER" height="68" src="http://www.bobkirchman.com/Essence.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/Z1tUV8" title="Jefferson's Capitol"><img alt="Jefferson's Capitol" height="250" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51827111895_063f842712.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<a href="https://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/p/a-new-day-dawns-in-virginia.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">
A New Day Dawns in Virginia
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<span style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">
B</span><span style="color: #b45f06; font-size: large;"><i>y nature, parents love their children and feel responsibility for them. Citizens, especially one hopes American citizens, feel entitled to state their grievances. The Declaration of Independence itself contains a list of grievances against the King. The Biden administration reacted to these protests just as King George III reacted against the American colonists in the years leading up to the American Revolution: he called in law enforcement. And the people of Virginia reacted in a way reminiscent of the American colonists: they defeated the candidate for governor who took the position that parents should have nothing to do with their children’s education.”</i></span><div> – <b>Larry Arn</b> in<i> Imprimis </i><a href="https://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/p/a-new-day-dawns-in-virginia.html" target="_blank">(read more)</a><br />
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<a href="https://subscribe.theepochtimes.com/p/?page=amtemp-general1a&utm_source=americanessence.net" target="_blank" title="PontifusBANNER"><img alt="PontifusBANNER" height="68" src="http://www.bobkirchman.com/Essence.jpg" width="375" /></a></div> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-30978771204761464592021-03-18T16:10:00.000-04:002021-03-18T16:10:02.580-04:00Leonardo da Vinci’s Pandemic Inspired Planning<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/jw7Q95" title="NewPlan"><img alt="NewPlan" height="475" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51015315118_e13d05ed20.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Volume XX, Issue XI: </i><b>Leonardo da Vinci</b><i> City Planning</i>
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<br /><a href="https://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/2021/03/leonardo-da-vincis-pandemic-inspired.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #990000; font-size: large;">
Leonardo da Vinci’s Pandemic Inspired Planning
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And How it Might Help Us Today
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By</i> <b>Bob Kirchman
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I</span>n the years 1484 and 1485 the bubonic plague ravaged Milan. Though this was during the Renaissance, the city itself was Medieval in its plan with narrow streets crowded with a hodgepodge of shops, houses and other essential buildings. Sanitation was terrible and sunlight often never penetrated the narrow streets. The great Renaissance polymath saw this as a breeding ground for pestilence, and so he set to work to create a better city. In his notebooks he drew an open plan with wide spaces and canals – open to sunlight and with separation between passageways for freight and refuse and those for pedestrians. It was a first step towards modern city planning. <a href="https://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/2021/03/leonardo-da-vincis-pandemic-inspired.html" target="_blank">(read more)</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-15939077127081907742020-09-07T20:09:00.000-04:002020-09-07T20:09:04.698-04:00The Flight of the Phoenix Election<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/9TLmU3" title="Phoenix"><img alt="Phoenix" height="475" src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50307383453_678fe77509.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Volume XIX, Issue Vb:The “Flight of the Phoenix Election,”</i>
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<br /><a href="https://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-flight-of-phoenix-election.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">
The Flight of the Phoenix Election</span></a>
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[click to read]
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<i>By</i> <b>Bob Kirchman</b><div><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-size: x-large;">
I</span>n the last election, an article appeared comparing the urgency of the election to the situation facing the passengers on flight 93 on September 11, 2001. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<b><a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-election/#.V86ciHMV_Uo.mailto" target="_blank">1</a></b>.]</span> It’s then anonymous author, <i>‘Publicus,’</i> made a great point. Too often Conservatives approached the dangers facing the republic with not enough of a sense of urgency. The 2016 election was indeed of grave importance. But now it is 2020 and the urgency of the situation has only become more pronounced. After the country seemed to be taking a better course the pandemic and civil unrest threw sand in the engine of recovery. Here we are, much like the cast of <i>Flight of the Phoenix</i>, stuck in a bad place.<a href="https://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-flight-of-phoenix-election.html" target="_blank">(read more)</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-86961590145540376262019-04-02T07:22:00.002-04:002021-03-18T16:17:47.527-04:00Virginia's Eugenics Legacy, Unplanned Movie<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/iu6gkG" title="Apollonius013"><img alt="Apollonius013" height="475" src="https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4316/35968412936_88e3cdaf31.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Volume XIV, Issue XIII</i><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Apollonius</span></span><br />
<i>By</i> <b>Bob Kirchman</b><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Copyright © 2019, The Kirchman Studio, all rights reserved</i></span>
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<b>Chapter 13: The Long Road Home</b>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span> new crater now scarred the Martian surface. The colony was gone! In the shadow of some rock formations there remained some greenhouses and solar panels but it was clear that the missile intended for <i>Great Northern</i> had fallen and detonated so as to kill the colonists instead. Sarah wiped her eyes frequently as she manned scanning equipment. <i>“Had ANYONE survived?”</i> she wondered. But if they did, what would become of them. All of the landing craft appeared to have been destroyed along with the colony and as this was a contingency unforeseen, there was no landing craft left with the Great Northern capable of going to the planet’s surface and returning. If indeed anyone had survived the blast they would be marooned. It would be two years before Great Northern could return and if a smaller craft were readied it would probably take six months to do so. Sarah anxiously scanned the surface each time the ship orbited above. Nothing! No sign of life appeared. No radio call for help ever came. The radiation readings from the planet suggested there would be little chance of survival anyway. Finally, with great regret, Ben-Gurion gave orders to burn the main engine and insert Great Northern into Earth Return Trajectory. It was a lonely feeling as the craft slowly gained escape momentum. Sarah was reminded of a similar moment portrayed in the movie version of an old James Michener novel where an apocryphal Apollo 18’s lunar lander crashed into the lunar surface and the command module pilot returned to Earth alone as James Taylor’s <i>“Sweet Baby James”</i> played as background music. In reality the lunar program had ended with Apollo 17 and LEM pilot <b>Gene Cernan</b>, aware of the risky nature of this craft, uttered the last words spoken from the surface of the moon:<i> “Let’s get this mother out of here.”
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span>f the truth be known, Abiyah Ben-Gurian must have said something similar as he eased the starship out of orbit. Only his wife knows what he said though. In communication with Earth he was cool and emotionless… but his eyes flowed with the emotion his voice covered. Sarah and Abiyah could read each other’s subtle voice inflections and facial expressions. They mourned together unashamedly.
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span>lthough their communications with Earth were crisp and professional, life aboard Great Northern eased into a relaxed sort of waiting. Sarah’s female colleagues surprised her with a baby shower and their inventiveness in creating infant clothing and toys from space supplies knew no boundaries. The good doctor moved out of the crew quarters so a nursery would be created. All would be found out upon return docking anyway so the sparse cabin became a study in pink and blue. Major Johnson even painted a little mural of children running and doing cartwheels under an apple tree as birds flew overhead. The good doctor started experimenting with a concoction of a sort of formula made from space foods should it become necessary. The due date approached as the ship traveled along the free return trajectory. Abiyah and Sarah actually enjoyed the suspense of not knowing the gender of their baby. Then one day Sarah, after a long and difficult labor, laid eyes on her son! The boy was a good nurser and the formula concoction was not needed. The two decisive pilots had discussed names, but now they gave themselves the luxury of time in deciding what to call him. Abiyah even jokingly assigned him a number but his wife ended that with one look. Now the crew flowed in the sequence of tasks necessary to begin braking into the same orbit they had left from. <i>‘Katherine,”</i> their faithful trajectory computer whirred and spit out instructions to the retro engines. Soon the great mission to Mars would be over. Debriefing was planned to take place at Cape Lisbon and extended debriefing would occur at the town of Shalom inside the biosphere complex at Big Diomede. This would provide the astronauts with some privacy as they tried to make the transition back to Earth life. No doubt, there would be ticker tape parades and tours to be done but that could wait. A fairly curt press release would suffice for now.
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span>fter Apollo 11 returned from the moon, the press became bored with space exploration and did not even bother to cover the shuttle missions. They remained in this frame of mind until two shuttles were destroyed in terrible accidents and then they pretty much lobbied the shuttle program out of existence. Cape Lisbon’s linear induction launcher marked the true beginning of regular and safe transfer to orbit even though its Northern location meant that the heavy unmanned payloads and parts of space stations were still delivered by large boosters from launch sites closer to the Equator. Being sequestered on Big Diomede would give the astronauts time to think. Book contacts were already put forth and the crew would be hard at work for the next year to meet them. Sarah wondered to herself about the change. Abiyah would not take well to retirement. She was now taking on motherhood with the same energy she had poured into her work as a pilot and astronaut. What bothered her was the probability that once they stepped out of the biosphere they would be living in a fishbowl.
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span><i>he Lindberghs could travel in the end and get away from it all for at least a while. Anne was able to raise five children. I just don’t see how though.”</i> Sarah opined.
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">B</span></span>en Gurion thought for a minute:<i> “The only thing left for us really is to somehow find a way to quietly pass along the things we’ve learned. Please note my emphasis on QUIETLY, if you will dearest.”
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span><i> sure don’t want to end up in some walled compound full of diplomats!”</i> Sarah answered.<i> “I do think there is a place where we might be useful, but not on public display.”
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span></span>arah was ambivalent, however, about the possibility of assignment to Cape Lisbon, though that was certainly isolated. She had a child now and that changed her desires as to where she would live. Childless, she would probably not have thought twice about herself and her husband joining the <i>‘Baltimore Gun Club,’</i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/v/verne/jules/v52fe/chapter1.html" target="_blank"><b>1</b></a>.]</span> as the linear induction launch team called themselves. This was not a reference to their love of outdoor sports. The name came from Jules Verne’s novel <i>‘From the Earth to the Moon’</i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/v/verne/jules/v52fe/" target="_blank"><b>2</b></a>.]</span> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<a href="https://archive.org/details/baltimoregunclub00vern" target="_blank"><b>3</b></a>.]</span> and it referred to the munitions experts who built the large cannon from which Verne’s fictional spacecraft was launched. The Cape Lisbon team lived in a fairly austere environment. <i>“No place to raise a child,”</i> she mused to herself.
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">B</span></span>etween the little college with the community church and parsonage and the Zimmerman family compound there were some as yet unoccupied faculty houses for the college. Here the astronauts were to finalize their debriefing and writing. Ben-Gurion and his wife were given the one closest to the college where they would have access to people and resources as they finished their work. Sarah carried her infant son into the garden to calm his crying one afternoon. She was at first startled when a lady filling her hummingbird feeder with clear nectar looked up and saw her from the adjoining yard. <i>“May I try holding the little fellow?”</i> the neighbor asked… <i>“Oh, please excuse the paint on my hands… I assure you it is dry and nursery-safe non-toxic. Mural painting today, if you must know”
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span>nd so, the copilot of the Great Northern happily surveyed a little place with very down to earth beauty and simplicity and thought:<i> “I think I might just like it here.”</i>
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<a href="http://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_9.html" target="_blank"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(to be continued)</span></i></a>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/m343wC" title="GreatNorthern_web"><img alt="GreatNorthern_web" height="316" src="https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4011/34871097314_20df89c3b2.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Spirit of Saint Louis</span></span>
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<b>Lindbergh's Transatlantic Flight
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/Vg32Cc" title="Lindbergh"><img alt="Lindbergh" height="211" src="https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4560/37501834054_8ce9a89477.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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Watch: <b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvUAY7MOe-c" target="_blank">The Spirit of Saint Louis</a> [click to watch] </b><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span></span>hen I was a boy, I remember reading Charles Lindbergh’s <i>The Spirit of Saint Louis</i>. It is a hopeful book and sets a young person to thinking about his or her own goals and aspirations. We watched men go to the moon. Amazing achievements, rooted in <i>IMAGO DEI</i> – our creation in the Divine Image, served to inspire us. Sadly, we’ve lost that part of the great story. At the end of today’s issue <b>John Stonestreet</b> will talk about the message young people often hear today. Nihilism has replaced the optimism that characterized the fiction of our day.
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">F</span></span>or our part, I believe people of Faith have been all too quick to accept the pessimism of our day. We look forward to future bliss, but forget that the Divine promises to restore all things and that our labor in the Lord is not in vain. We forget that our inventiveness is part of the Salvation message. We are made in the Divine Image. That includes the creative spark that drives us to invent new technologies and solve problems. It makes us work to fight starvation and dig wells. It leads us to do great things.
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span>o be sure, it can be overworked into pride and arrogance, but in that regard it is like any good thing pushed to excess. I once read a Christian book where the author said that primitive societies were ‘better’ because people were not pushed as they are in Western society. They had more time for family and contemplation the author continued. The more I pondered the author’s point, the more I wondered: <i>“has he actually LIVED in such a culture?”</i> As a Western missionary, he had indeed inserted himself into such a place but it was clear that he was a visitor and his Western support gave him the leisure to enjoy it.
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">H</span></span>ad he truly lived as one of such a culture, he would have seen the reality of a failed hunt and hungry children. He would have known the pain of infant mortality, often caused by contaminated water that a modern well would have eliminated. He might have experienced the terror of tribal war. In the end I determined that I was happier with the ‘problems’ of my own culture. I bring this story up merely to point out that we may not truly appreciate much of what inspiration has done to enrich our own lives. If we do not appreciate it, we probably do not pass the baton to our children.
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<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span></span>e as a people need a good shot of hope. An honest study of our history might just give us more of that than we might imagine. In light of the latest acts of evil in our world, the need to teach hope and goodness is imperative! To that end I present the stories that I do.
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/JsFwRk" title="Cowling"><img alt="Cowling" height="211" src="https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4574/37504624134_fcc8b7ac4c.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>In the 1957 film, The Spirit of Saint Louis, Ryan Aircraft employees are depicted signing the cowling.
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/21260371@N02/8084700632/in/album-72157631763252647/" title="IMG_9933"><img alt="IMG_9933" height="500" src="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8330/8084700632_46c1a33e1e.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Leaves in a stream, Shenandoah National Park. </i><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Photo by Bob Kirchman.</i></span>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">Seven Days</span><br />
<i>Photos by</i> <b>Bob Kirchman</b>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/21260371@N02/38079799112/in/album-72157686874642262/" title="001"><img alt="001" height="500" src="https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4480/38079799112_d22b79ea3d.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Summer.</i><br />
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<i>Autumn.</i><br />
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<i>Winter.</i><br />
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<i>Spring.</i><br />
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<i>Summer.</i><br />
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<i>Autumn.</i><br />
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<br />
<i>Winter.</i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span> <i>think the thrill of the Pagan stories and of romance may be due to the fact that they are mere beginnings—the first, faint whisper of the wind from beyond the world—while Christianity is the thing itself: and no thing, when you have really started on it, can have for you then and there just the same thrill as the first hint. For example, the experience of being married and bringing up a family cannot have the old bittersweet of first falling in love. But it is futile (and, I think, wicked) to go on trying to get the old thrill again: you must go forward and not backward. Any real advance will in its turn be ushered in by a new thrill, different from the old: doomed in its turn to disappear and to become in its turn a temptation to retrogression. Delight is a bell that rings as you set your foot on the first step of a new flight of stairs leading upwards. Once you have started climbing you will notice only the hard work: it is when you have reached the landing and catch sight of the new stair that you may expect the bell again. This is only an idea, and may be all rot: but it seems to fit in pretty well with the general law (thrills also must die to live) of autumn and spring, sleep and waking, death and resurrection, and <span style="color: #7f6000;">‘Whosoever loseth his life, shall save it.‘</span>”</i> – C. S. Lewis, Collected Letters
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<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span></span><i>e are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the “intolerable compliment.” Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.”</i>
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span><i>he problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. "Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest "well pleased".”</i>
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.breakpoint.org/2017/11/breakpoint-a-suicidal-trend-in-ya-fiction/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">From Dystopia to Nihilism</span></span></a><br />
<b>Literature Aimed at Young Adults Promotes Despair</b><br />
[click to read]<br />
<br />
<i>by:</i><b> John Stonestreet</b> <i>and</i> <b>Roberto Rivera</b>
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span></span>hat are your teens reading these days? You really should find out. Especially if they’re into the newest trend in young adult fiction.
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">F</span></span>or the first decade or so of the 21st century, the hottest trend in young adult fiction was dystopian novels. Book series like <i>“The Hunger Games,” “The Maze Runner,”</i> and <i>“Divergent”</i> sold tens of millions of copies, were turned into successful film franchises, and spawned so many imitators that the genre became, as Vox.com put it, a <i>“cliché.”</i>
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span></span>hile there are still plenty of young adult dystopias being written, a new genre seems to be emerging—one that will make us look back on the young adult dystopia boom as the <i>“good old days.”</i>
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span>hat genre is teen suicide.
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span>n a recent article in Vox, Constance Grady pointed out that young adult dystopias have been <i>“a license to print money”</i> for publishers. Though there are many theories about why the genre exploded, virtually everyone agrees that the popularity of the books, like pop culture in general, reflects the readers’ concerns and moods. <a href="http://www.breakpoint.org/2017/11/breakpoint-a-suicidal-trend-in-ya-fiction/" target="_blank">[read more]</a>
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<br />
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/11/06/why-church-shootings-dont-intimidate-the-church/?utm_term=.b9dd8378e871" target="_blank"><span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Church Resilient</span></span></a><br />
<b>Why Church Shootings Don't Intimidate</b><br />
[click to read]<br />
<br />
<i>By</i> <b>Russell Moore</b><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">E</span></span><i>ternal life cannot be overcome by death. And over that church will be a cross."</i> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/11/06/why-church-shootings-dont-intimidate-the-church/?utm_term=.b9dd8378e871" target="_blank">[read more]</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> ht/M. K. Hand</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span><i>n ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God—that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying—the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on—the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bed- room where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into the higher kinds of life—what I called Zoe or spiritual life: he is being pulled into God, by God, while still remaining himself.”</i> – C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
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<br />
<b>Citizen Journalism with a Better Flavor</b><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.bobkirchman.com/" title="Phantasies22"><img alt="Phantasies22" height="475" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4272/34076607523_7cccfd106d.jpg" width="375" /></a>
<br />
<i>Volume XVI, Issue XIIIa</i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Phantasies</span></span>
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<i>By</i> <b>George Macdonald</b>, <i>Chapter 22</i>
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<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">N</span></span><span style="color: #783f04;"><i>o one has my form but the I."</i></span><br />
~ Schoppe, in Jean Pau's "Titan".<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">J</span></span><span style="color: #783f04;"><i>oy's a subtil elf.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>I think man's happiest when he forgets himself."</i></span><br />
~ Cyril Tourneur, "The Revenger's Tragedy".<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">O</span></span>n the third day of my journey, I was riding gently along a road, apparently little frequented, to judge from the grass that grew upon it. I was approaching a forest. Everywhere in Fairy Land forests are the places where one may most certainly expect adventures. As I drew near, a youth, unarmed, gentle, and beautiful, who had just cut a branch from a yew growing on the skirts of the wood, evidently to make himself a bow, met me, and thus accosted me:
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<br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span></span><i>ir knight, be careful as thou ridest through this forest; for it is said to be strangely enchanted, in a sort which even those who have been witnesses of its enchantment can hardly describe."</i>
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<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span> thanked him for his advice, which I promised to follow, and rode on. But the moment I entered the wood, it seemed to me that, if enchantment there was, it must be of a good kind; for the Shadow, which had been more than usually dark and distressing, since I had set out on this journey, suddenly disappeared. I felt a wonderful elevation of spirits, and began to reflect on my past life, and especially on my combat with the giants, with such satisfaction, that I had actually to remind myself, that I had only killed one of them; and that, but for the brothers, I should never have had the idea of attacking them, not to mention the smallest power of standing to it. Still I rejoiced, and counted myself amongst the glorious knights of old; having even the unspeakable presumption--my shame and self- condemnation at the memory of it are such, that I write it as the only and sorest penance I can perform--to think of myself (will the world believe it?) as side by side with Sir Galahad! Scarcely had the thought been born in my mind, when, approaching me from the left, through the trees, I espied a resplendent knight, of mighty size, whose armour seemed to shine of itself, without the sun. When he drew near, I was astonished to see that this armour was like my own; nay, I could trace, line for line, the correspondence of the inlaid silver to the device on my own. His horse, too, was like mine in colour, form, and motion; save that, like his rider, he was greater and fiercer than his counterpart. The knight rode with beaver up. As he halted right opposite to me in the narrow path, barring my way, I saw the reflection of my countenance in the centre plate of shining steel on his breastplate. Above it rose the same face--his face--only, as I have said, larger and fiercer. I was bewildered. I could not help feeling some admiration of him, but it was mingled with a dim conviction that he was evil, and that I ought to fight with him.
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<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">L</span></span><i>et me pass,"</i> I said.
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<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span></span><i>hen I will,"</i> he replied.
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<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span></span>omething within me said: <i>"Spear in rest, and ride at him! else thou art for ever a slave."
</i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span> tried, but my arm trembled so much, that I could not couch my lance. To tell the truth, I, who had overcome the giant, shook like a coward before this knight. He gave a scornful laugh, that echoed through the wood, turned his horse, and said, without looking round, <i>"Follow me."
</i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I </span></span>obeyed, abashed and stupefied. How long he led, and how long I followed, I cannot tell. <i>"I never knew misery before,"</i> I said to myself. <i>"Would that I had at least struck him, and had had my death-blow in return! Why, then, do I not call to him to wheel and defend himself? Alas! I know not why, but I cannot. One look from him would cow me like a beaten hound."</i> I followed, and was silent.
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<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span>t length we came to a dreary square tower, in the middle of a dense forest. It looked as if scarce a tree had been cut down to make room for it. Across the very door, diagonally, grew the stem of a tree, so large that there was just room to squeeze past it in order to enter. One miserable square hole in the roof was the only visible suggestion of a window. Turret or battlement, or projecting masonry of any kind, it had none. Clear and smooth and massy, it rose from its base, and ended with a line straight and unbroken. The roof, carried to a centre from each of the four walls, rose slightly to the point where the rafters met. Round the base lay several little heaps of either bits of broken branches, withered and peeled, or half-whitened bones; I could not distinguish which. As I approached, the ground sounded hollow beneath my horse's hoofs. The knight took a great key from his pocket, and reaching past the stem of the tree, with some difficulty opened the door. "Dismount," he commanded. I obeyed. He turned my horse's head away from the tower, gave him a terrible blow with the flat side of his sword, and sent him madly tearing through the forest.
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<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">N</span></span><i>ow,"</i> said he, <i>"enter, and take your companion with you."
</i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span> looked round: knight and horse had vanished, and behind me lay the horrible shadow. I entered, for I could not help myself; and the shadow followed me. I had a terrible conviction that the knight and he were one. The door closed behind me.
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<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">N</span></span>ow I was indeed in pitiful plight. There was literally nothing in the tower but my shadow and me. The walls rose right up to the roof; in which, as I had seen from without, there was one little square opening. This I now knew to be the only window the tower possessed. I sat down on the floor, in listless wretchedness. I think I must have fallen asleep, and have slept for hours; for I suddenly became aware of existence, in observing that the moon was shining through the hole in the roof. As she rose higher and higher, her light crept down the wall over me, till at last it shone right upon my head. Instantaneously the walls of the tower seemed to vanish away like a mist. I sat beneath a beech, on the edge of a forest, and the open country lay, in the moonlight, for miles and miles around me, spotted with glimmering houses and spires and towers. I thought with myself, "Oh, joy! it was only a dream; the horrible narrow waste is gone, and I wake beneath a beech-tree, perhaps one that loves me, and I can go where I will." I rose, as I thought, and walked about, and did what I would, but ever kept near the tree; for always, and, of course, since my meeting with the woman of the beech-tree far more than ever, I loved that tree. So the night wore on. I waited for the sun to rise, before I could venture to renew my journey. But as soon as the first faint light of the dawn appeared, instead of shining upon me from the eye of the morning, it stole like a fainting ghost through the little square hole above my head; and the walls came out as the light grew, and the glorious night was swallowed up of the hateful day. The long dreary day passed. My shadow lay black on the floor. I felt no hunger, no need of food. The night came. The moon shone. I watched her light slowly descending the wall, as I might have watched, adown the sky, the long, swift approach of a helping angel. Her rays touched me, and I was free. Thus night after night passed away. I should have died but for this. Every night the conviction returned, that I was free. Every morning I sat wretchedly disconsolate. At length, when the course of the moon no longer permitted her beams to touch me, the night was dreary as the day.
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<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span></span>hen I slept, I was somewhat consoled by my dreams; but all the time I dreamed, I knew that I was only dreaming. But one night, at length, the moon, a mere shred of pallor, scattered a few thin ghostly rays upon me; and I think I fell asleep and dreamed. I sat in an autumn night before the vintage, on a hill overlooking my own castle. My heart sprang with joy. Oh, to be a child again, innocent, fearless, without shame or desire! I walked down to the castle. All were in consternation at my absence. My sisters were weeping for my loss. They sprang up and clung to me, with incoherent cries, as I entered. My old friends came flocking round me. A gray light shone on the roof of the hall. It was the light of the dawn shining through the square window of my tower. More earnestly than ever, I longed for freedom after this dream; more drearily than ever, crept on the next wretched day. I measured by the sunbeams, caught through the little window in the trap of my tower, how it went by, waiting only for the dreams of the night.
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<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span>bout noon, I started as if something foreign to all my senses and all my experience, had suddenly invaded me; yet it was only the voice of a woman singing. My whole frame quivered with joy, surprise, and the sensation of the unforeseen. Like a living soul, like an incarnation of Nature, the song entered my prison-house. Each tone folded its wings, and laid itself, like a caressing bird, upon my heart. It bathed me like a sea; inwrapt me like an odorous vapour; entered my soul like a long draught of clear spring-water; shone upon me like essential sunlight; soothed me like a mother's voice and hand. Yet, as the clearest forest-well tastes sometimes of the bitterness of decayed leaves, so to my weary, prisoned heart, its cheerfulness had a sting of cold, and its tenderness unmanned me with the faintness of long-departed joys. I wept half-bitterly, half-luxuriously; but not long. I dashed away the tears, ashamed of a weakness which I thought I had abandoned. Ere I knew, I had walked to the door, and seated myself with my ears against it, in order to catch every syllable of the revelation from the unseen outer world. And now I heard each word distinctly. The singer seemed to be standing or sitting near the tower, for the sounds indicated no change of place. The song was something like this:
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<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span><span style="color: #783f04;"><i>he sun, like a golden knot on high,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Gathers the glories of the sky,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>And binds them into a shining tent,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Roofing the world with the firmament.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>And through the pavilion the rich winds blow,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>And through the pavilion the waters go.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>And the birds for joy, and the trees for prayer,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Bowing their heads in the sunny air,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>And for thoughts, the gently talking springs,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>That come from the centre with secret things--</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>All make a music, gentle and strong,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Bound by the heart into one sweet song.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>And amidst them all, the mother Earth</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Sits with the children of her birth;</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>She tendeth them all, as a mother hen</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Her little ones round her, twelve or ten:</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Oft she sitteth, with hands on knee,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Idle with love for her family.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Go forth to her from the dark and the dust,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>And weep beside her, if weep thou must;</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>If she may not hold thee to her breast,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Like a weary infant, that cries for rest</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>At least she will press thee to her knee,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>And tell a low, sweet tale to thee,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Till the hue to thy cheeky and the light to thine eye,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Strength to thy limbs, and courage high</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>To thy fainting heart, return amain,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>And away to work thou goest again.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>From the narrow desert, O man of pride,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Come into the house, so high and wide.</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">H</span></span>ardly knowing what I did, I opened the door. Why had I not done so before? I do not know.
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span>t first I could see no one; but when I had forced myself past the tree which grew across the entrance, I saw, seated on the ground, and leaning against the tree, with her back to my prison, a beautiful woman. Her countenance seemed known to me, and yet unknown. She looked at me and smiled, when I made my appearance.
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span><i>h! were you the prisoner there? I am very glad I have wiled you out."
</i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">D</span></span><i>o you know me then?"</i>
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">D</span></span><i>o you not know me? But you hurt me, and that, I suppose, makes it easy for a man to forget. You broke my globe. Yet I thank you. Perhaps I owe you many thanks for breaking it. I took the pieces, all black, and wet with crying over them, to the Fairy Queen. There was no music and no light in them now. But she took them from me, and laid them aside; and made me go to sleep in a great hall of white, with black pillars, and many red curtains. When I woke in the morning, I went to her, hoping to have my globe again, whole and sound; but she sent me away without it, and I have not seen it since. Nor do I care for it now. I have something so much better. I do not need the globe to play to me; for I can sing. I could not sing at all before. Now I go about everywhere through Fairy Land, singing till my heart is like to break, just like my globe, for very joy at my own songs. And wherever I go, my songs do good, and deliver people. And now I have delivered you, and I am so happy."
</i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span></span>he ceased, and the tears came into her eyes.
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span>ll this time, I had been gazing at her; and now fully recognised the face of the child, glorified in the countenance of the woman.
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<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span> was ashamed and humbled before her; but a great weight was lifted from my thoughts. I knelt before her, and thanked her, and begged her to forgive me.
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">R</span></span><i>ise, rise,"</i> she said;<i> "I have nothing to forgive; I thank you. But now I must be gone, for I do not know how many may be waiting for me, here and there, through the dark forests; and they cannot come out till I come."
</i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span></span>he rose, and with a smile and a farewell, turned and left me. I dared not ask her to stay; in fact, I could hardly speak to her. Between her and me, there was a great gulf. She was uplifted, by sorrow and well-doing, into a region I could hardly hope ever to enter. I watched her departure, as one watches a sunset. She went like a radiance through the dark wood, which was henceforth bright to me, from simply knowing that such a creature was in it.
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<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span></span>he was bearing the sun to the unsunned spots. The light and the music of her broken globe were now in her heart and her brain. As she went, she sang; and I caught these few words of her song; and the tones seemed to linger and wind about the trees after she had disappeared:
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span><span style="color: #783f04;"><i>hou goest thine, and I go mine--</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Many ways we wend;</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Many days, and many ways,</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Ending in one end. </i></span>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">M</span></span><span style="color: #783f04;"><i>any a wrong, and its curing song;</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Many a road, and many an inn;</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>Room to roam, but only one home</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #783f04;"><i>For all the world to win.
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span>nd so she vanished. With a sad heart, soothed by humility, and the knowledge of her peace and gladness, I bethought me what now I should do. First, I must leave the tower far behind me, lest, in some evil moment, I might be once more caged within its horrible walls. But it was ill walking in my heavy armour; and besides I had now no right to the golden spurs and the resplendent mail, fitly dulled with long neglect. I might do for a squire; but I honoured knighthood too highly, to call myself any longer one of the noble brotherhood. I stripped off all my armour, piled it under the tree, just where the lady had been seated, and took my unknown way, eastward through the woods. Of all my weapons, I carried only a short axe in my hand.
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span>hen first I knew the delight of being lowly; of saying to myself, <i>"I am what I am, nothing more." "I have failed,"</i> I said,<i> "I have lost myself--would it had been my shadow."</i> I looked round: the shadow was nowhere to be seen. Ere long, I learned that it was not myself, but only my shadow, that I had lost. I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal. Now, however, I took, at first, what perhaps was a mistaken pleasure, in despising and degrading myself. Another self seemed to arise, like a white spirit from a dead man, from the dumb and trampled self of the past. Doubtless, this self must again die and be buried, and again, from its tomb, spring a winged child; but of this my history as yet bears not the record.
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span></span>elf will come to life even in the slaying of self; but there is ever something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at last from the unknown abysses of the soul: will it be as a solemn gloom, burning with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a smiling child, that finds itself nowhere, and everywhere?<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>(to be continued) </i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Stones of Remembrance </span></span>
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<i>Short Story by</i> <b>Bob Kirchman</b>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">D</span></span><i>id I ever tell you the story about my Great Grandfather?”</i> Rupert Zimmerman said casually to Pastor Jon Greene as they sat in Green’s office in the little chapel on Big Diomede.
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span>he two often talked regularly now after the events on the great Bering Strait Bridge that had taken a driver’s life and had cemented Zimmerman’s decision to put his faith in one far greater than himself. The way the story was often retold by Zimmerman’s descendants, the transformation had been a complete and sudden one. Again, the real story moves a lot slower. Zimmerman himself had moved on from frequent dinner guest to disciple. In Jon Greene’s wildest dreams he never thought that the business of multiplying faithful followers of Jesus Christ would include the ruthless builder of bridges, but that it did. Healing Zimmerman’s war wounds took a long time. The battle of Anchorage and a kidnapping on the Taiga had left raw open wounds in the man that Zimmerman himself thought impossible to heal.
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">B</span></span>ut at Greene’s insistence, Rupert opened doors he feared to open. It was there that he met his own Great Grandfather who would become a part of his own journey.
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">M</span></span><i>y Great Grandfather Tolbert Saunders Dalton was born in Robertson County, Tennessee, close to Nashville. He was seventeen When the War between the States started. He joined the 49th Regiment of Tennessee Volunteers and had a long and distinguished career as a soldier. He saw many battles, some of them quite fierce, and the sight and sound of men dying around him led him to preach the Gospel. By the light of many a campfire, my Great Grandfather shared the simple message of redemption in Christ.
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">H</span></span><i>e served under General Nathan B. Forrest and saw action in some of the battles for control of the Mississippi. When Union troops advanced on Memphis, preparing to attack at dawn the next day, General Forrest was outnumbered ten to one. He did not have the artillery to protect the city, but he did have at his disposal a fair number of farm wagons and many willing workers like young Dalton, who had lied about his age to join the army. All night long, the boys hollowed out the ends of tree trunks and blacked them to look like cannon. Then each ‘cannon’ was positioned on a set of wagon wheels. The faux cannon were positioned for maximum effect along the banks of the river and then General Forrest demanded surrender! In a dangerous bluff Forrest’s 300 men captured 3,000 would-be attackers.</i>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span><i>olbert Dalton was later assigned to spy duty. He once carried a message to General Forrest through enemy lines by pretending to be a deaf and dumb farm boy. Seeing an unexpected checkpoint, he quickly stuffed the message in his mouth and made signs to the soldiers. He was quick-minded enough to sign for clarification when one of the soldiers said “go ahead.”</i>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span></span><i>ounded in action, Dalton spent several months out of action and then joined the Seventh Kentucky Volunteers. In one battle the flag was shot down and young Tolbert rose to replant it in the breastworks. When it was shot down again, Dalton rallied the troops by standing to hold the flag in place. Enemy fire ripped his shirt but miraculously he was unscathed. His courage under fire earned him the rank of Major. The experience affirmed G-d’s calling in the young soldier’s heart. When the war was over, Dalton went to Medical School and became a doctor but the needs of men’s souls called him to the work that had begun around the campfires of his regiment. Preaching became Dalton’s sole vocation and he eventually settled in the town of Stanley in Page County, Virginia. One of my most treasured possessions is a copy of Wilmore’s New Analytical Reference Bible that my Grandfather once used. </i>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span> <i>kept it solely as a connection point to my past, but after my discipleship began, it became so much more. After the war, Dalton sought to bind the nation’s wounds, but his journey took him beyond physical healing to the spiritual. Reading his war experiences and his subsequent “Life and Labors of a Poor Sinner,” I saw how his Citizenship had been transferred again. He was now not longer a Tennessean or a Virginian, or a Confederate, but a man of the Kingdom of Heaven. That is what propelled the best season of the man’s life.
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">B</span></span><i>ut there was more to Dalton’s life than one might imagine. He became a minister of G-d and raised eight children! Probably the most interesting of these was his son, Tolbert Percy Dalton, known as ‘Jack’ who played professional baseball in Detroit from 1910 to 1916. He mysteriously vanished on July 4, 1948, from Catonsville, Maryland, while walking to a church service. Speculation abounded as to what happened to him. We all suspected that he had gone to Alaska to seek his fortune or something like that. “G-d has no Grandchildren,” and I suspect it was too much to follow in the old man’s footsteps. Years later we learned that he had died of a heart attack in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania two years after he disappeared.”</i> Rupert went on to examine how a life that G-d used was not always something that read as a beautiful novel. Life did not always make sense… but the comfort was always that there was more to life… always, than what you could see.
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span>t was growing late. The work of two great bridge builders pressed upon them. The man who brought together continents embraced the man who brought together men and the Kingdom. The conversation would be continued.
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Transformation
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="211" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ubTJI_UphPk?rel=0" width="375"></iframe>
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<i>A powerful scene alludes to an even more powerful reality.
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span><b>he Doctor:</b> <i>Between you and me, in a hundred words, where do you think Van Gogh rates in the history of art?</i>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">C</span></span><b>urator:</b> <i>Well... um... big question, but, to me Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all. Certainly the most popular, great painter of all time. The most beloved, his command of colour most magnificent. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world, no one had ever done it before. Perhaps no one ever will again. To my mind, that strange, wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world's greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived.</i>
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<span style="color: #7f6000;">*****</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span><span style="color: #7f6000;"><i>nd I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.</i></span>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span><span style="color: #7f6000;"><i>nd God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.</i></span>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span><span style="color: #7f6000;"><i>nd he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.”</i></span>
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-- Revelation 21:3-5<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span></span>orldview is everything. In Christ we have the one who actually transforms the pain and torment of this life into something beautiful. Here is a great truth that is beyond our understanding, yet the Divine Himself is the Master who completes the tapestries of our lives… inverting them to reveal His beautiful hand. This is a beautiful story, but may I suggest that it is beautiful because we yearn for what the Doctor and Amy were able to show Vincent and it is beautiful because Christ promises to show us the same. From <b>C. S. Lewis</b> and <b>George MacDonald</b> we learn that great story conveys great truth. Lewis shows us that those longings in us that this world cannot fulfill point to the fact that we were created for a better world.
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">H</span></span>istory is not quite kind to Van Gogh, in fact the brief version often leaves you the memory of his madness. Yet here are some thoughts from the man himself. I think he is worthy of some study:
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span> <i>feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”</i>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span><i>f you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”</i>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">L</span></span><i>ove many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.”
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span> wanted to know more, and in researching this I discovered <b>William Havlicek</b>, Ph. D , who wrote <i>“Van Gogh’s Untold Journey” (Creative Storytellers)</i>. I knew that Van Gogh had some Faith because I had used a quote of his about church steeples a while ago. What I didn’t realize was the depth of his Faith.
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">H</span></span>avlicek points out that the current drive by the academy toward secularization makes Van Gogh’s Faith practically unknown. Yet the man himself sought to serve God with his art: <i>“…to try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God. One man wrote or told it in a book, another in a picture.” </i><br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span>nd about his relationship with prostitute, <b>Sien Hoornik</b>, consider the man’s own writing:<i> “I met a pregnant woman, deserted by the man whose child she carried. A pregnant woman who had to walk the streets in winter, had to earn her bread, you understand how, I took this woman for a model and have worked with her all winter. I could not pay her the full wages of a model, but that did not prevent my paying her rent, and, thank God, so far I have been able to protect her and her child from hunger and cold by sharing my own bread with her.”
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">V</span></span>an Gogh struggled to support himself, but he was generous to a fault.
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span>nd about that suicide, Havlicek says that there is strong evidence that some boys were target shooting nearby and accidentally hit him. That he would not accuse them was entirely in line with his character. <i>“He had a very sacrificial aspect to his personality. There were several times in his life when he took the blame for someone else.”
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">H</span></span><i>e loved Christ enormously at the end of his life,”</i> Havlicek says.<i> “He said Christ alone among all the magi and wise men offered men eternal life. In spite of a broken life, something glorious emerged.”
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<a href="http://blog.godreports.com/2012/11/vincent-van-goghs-unappreciated-journey-with-christ/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: large;">Vincent van Gogh’s Unappreciated</span></span></a><br />
<a href="http://blog.godreports.com/2012/11/vincent-van-goghs-unappreciated-journey-with-christ/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: large;">Journey with Christ</span></span></a>
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<i>By</i> <b>Mark Ellis
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[click to read]
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<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span> record 1.2 million visitors came to the giant retrospective of Van Gogh’s work in Amsterdam in 1990, which coincided with the 100th anniversary of the Dutch post-Impressionist’s death. What visitors did not see at that major exhibition were van Gogh’s Christian-themed paintings, which were left in the basement of the museum. <a href="http://blog.godreports.com/2012/11/vincent-van-goghs-unappreciated-journey-with-christ/" target="_blank">(read more)</a>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/y0wpE5" title="Red_vineyards_web"><img alt="Red_vineyards_web" height="293" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4206/35461248356_6cc4139a7f.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>The Red Vineyards near Arles is an oil painting by the Dutch painter </i><b>Vincent van Gogh</b><i>, executed on a privately primed Toile de 30 piece of burlap in early November 1888. It is reported to be the only piece sold by the artist while he was alive. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">Savhanna Herndon</span></i>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/6h9B81" title="Sower_web"><img alt="Sower_web" height="285" src="https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4263/34734489903_8acfc59cc4.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>“I don’t hide from you that I don’t detest the countryside — having been brought up there, snatches of memories from past times, yearnings for that infinite of which the Sower, the sheaf, are the symbols, still enchant me as before.” (Letter 628 to his friend and painter Émile Bernard, on or about June 19, 1888). </i>
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<b>Vincent Van Gogh</b>,<i> Le semeur (The Sower), Mid-June 1888. Oil on canvas, 64 x 80,5 cm. Kröller-Müller Museum,The Netherlands
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/21260371@N02/12479763024/" title="THYME0712 by Elliotts Knob, on Flickr"><img alt="THYME0712" height="475" src="https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3738/12479763024_ba1b0db32c.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Blue Spruce in Snow. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photo by Bob Kirchman</span></i>
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A Case for Vision</span></span><br />
<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">© 2019 The Kirchman Studio.
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span></span>o why do nations fail? While a case can be made for institutional integrity, it is also clear that simply transplanting working institutions <i>(such as the U. S. Constitution)</i> into other societies does not necessarily guarantee success. Post-Colonial Africa testifies starkly to this, as do the wreckages of a succession of Socialist Utopia/Dystopias. If better institutions can be constructed, what are they to be made of? Acemoglu and Robinson argue for good institutions, but cannot tell us what the foundations should be. Even those who would argue that the <i>"American"</i> solution is the right one need to confont the reality of America today. America is in Decline. As her leaders saddle her with $17 Trillion in debt, she becomes increasingly weaker as an agent for providing for the basic security of the society. Her leaders are content to entrust our energy production to unfriendly regimes in the Middle-East, our financial and manufacturing security to unfriendly regimes in Asia and our physical security to a despot-heavy United Nations. How did we get to this point? In this conclusion to the series: A Case for Vision, we will look at some possible reasons.
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span>s America grew increasingly secure in its prosperity, it turned its energies increasingly towards a <i>'consumer mentality.'</i> Note that this is in stark contrast to the earlier mindset that America was to be a blessing to the rest of the world. The drive to send missionaries, provide clean water and cure disease took a back seat to building bigger houses and bigger televisions. Now we could outsource our manufacturing, enjoying more and cheaper goods. No longer would we have to live next to <i>'dirty'</i> old factories. They could be converted into trendy botiques, lofts and coffee shops. Sadly, those jobs they created went away too! No worry!, everyone can go to college now. The problem is that the Professional sector grows only insofar as it is the supportive branch of the creation of real productivity. No problem. After college you can work/hang out in the trendy coffee shop. Gratification became a larger motivating force than the securing of Faith and Freedom. The Mall and the Multiplex Theater replaced the church and the armory at the center of the commons. Manufacturing centers could be re-purposed as shopping areas too. Religion diminished as a force for living everyday life, becoming an inspirational hour for refreshment rather than a challenge to be lived throughout the week. <b>Hillary Clinton</b> carefully crafted her own description of Religious Freedom to narrowly define it as the <i>'private practice of Faith.'</i> Her description actually perscribes its exclusion from the public square! <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godandthemachine/2012/07/transcripts-remarks-by-hillary-clinton-on-the-2011-international-religious-freedom-report/" target="_blank"><b>1</b></a>.]</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">N</span></span>ext came a sense of <i>'entitlement.'</i> How else do you explain unmarried Georgetown University student <b>Sandra Fluke</b> <i>DEMANDING</i> that her school, a Faith institution run by the Jesuits, provide <i>HER</i> with recreational contraceptives? <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<a href="http://tampa.cbslocal.com/2012/03/02/why-rush-limbaugh-was-right-about-sandra-fluke-birth-control-contraception-nancy-pelosi-house-bill/" target="_blank"><b>2</b></a>.]</span> That she was invited to speak at the Democrat Convention and now is exploring a run for Congress speaks volumes to this new sense of <i>'entitlement!'</i> There is something fundamentally wrong here... far more than the economic reality that she, as a law student, can anticipate far more income than I will ever see. She does not <i>NEED</i> Georgetown University to provide her with recreational contraceptives. The real travesty is that while the church is being told that it has no place in the commons, those in the commons are all to eager to place such limitations and demands on the house of Faith! A major retailer, a major furniture manufacturer and a chicken sandwich restaurant who seek to live their faith in the marketplace are all under attack. This is not an accident. The inclination of mankind towards morality has been repackaged in electric cars, cloth grocery bags and tilting at the windmill of <i>'Global Warming.'</i> Stewardship of the earth, a noble thing in and of itself, can attain the status of civil Religion. Traditional Religion can get out of the way of our pursuit of Hedonism. Why should we cry out to G-d if we can make government our provider?
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">F</span></span>inally, there is a wrongly placed national pride. This is the arrogant assertion that we somehow no longer need to rely on Divine Providence, humbly petitioning Heaven for our daily bread. We can do it all ourselves if we somehow correctly organize the commons. Thus we eschew the functions of Faith and Defense rightly performed in the commons as the commons takes upon itself to do the work of G-d! But what is the result? May I suggest it is nothing but a high-tech serfdom. Because <i>'we'</i> can change the climate, we will do so by strangling the very engines of industry and ingenuity that have actually improved man's stewardship of the world <i>(actually we've simply placed our manufacturing offshore. Our 'clean' Priuses receiving toxic batteries from a Chinese factory that would not meet the standards of our own EPA).</i> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.autoblog.com%2F2010%2F10%2F19%2Fstudy-the-toyota-prius-has-a-dirty-side-after-all-manufacturi%2F&ei=4Yv7UtzHI-vC0AH6ywE&usg=AFQjCNFAKOtTrSmO9fT34zAOm6OiNpBh9w&sig2=fTEBMmEFoNkJyZhEzNqUNw&bvm=bv.61190604,d.dmQ" target="_blank"><b>3</b></a>.]</span> We come to the conclusion that<i> 'we' </i>must alone end <i>Acquired Immune Deficiency </i>and balance the temperature of the planet. We will pay carbon taxes to despot regimes while stifling the energy production that will free us to advance to the next generation of propulsion! We forget the wisdom of <b>Samuel Morse</b>, who telegraphed: <i>"What hath G-d Wrought?"</i> upon the successful operation of the telegraph. We forget humility.
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span>nd yet, if you are reading this, you might realize that we might indeed pursue a better course. We might look to Bless future generations rather than feather our own nests. We might pursue our science with humble faith as opposed to arrogance, looking to a G-d who I believe is all too eager to reveal new secrets to trustworthy men and women. We might, as we realize the roots of our prosperity, seek to share those roots with our fellow man. We will not kick against Constitutions that limit institutions, seeing that the limitless resource of Divine Revelation can indeed fuel our aspirations. What drew me to Asmus and Gruden's work was their optimism in presenting a universally implementable strategy for improving the human condition. What compelled me to write this series was the burning sense that I was holding in my hands a map, if you will, showing the location of treasure far greater than the Count of Monte Cristo's map to the lost treasure of Sparta. Like the old priest, I want to press it into the hands of someone who will use it for good.
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">Unplanned Movie Opens
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">B</span>ased on the true story of <b>Abby Johnson</b>, this film tells the story of how she rose to become the youngest director of a Planned Parenthood clinic and then she actually saw what goes on in the <i>‘procedure rooms.’</i> Asked to assist in the actual procedure, Johnson saw the tiny baby struggle to get away from the abortionist’s tool on the ultrasound screen. The film tells of this life-changing moment. Thinking she was pursuing a career to <i>‘help women,’</i> Johnson was not only disturbed by the disregard for the unborn but also by the abortion industry’s full-out <i>‘marketing’</i> of abortion while claiming they wanted to make it rare. In fact, her supervisor explains that abortion services are the profit center for the clinics. They pay for the red Miata and the Lamborghini<i> (along with the generous 401K).
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">J</span><b>ack Dorsey</b> of Twitter suspended the @UnplannedMovie promotion run by <b>Lila Rose</b> of 4o Days for Life. Other media outlets refused advertising for the film outright. The MPA slapped an ‘R’ rating on the film, which though it shows some blood, is far more restrained than some PG-13 offerings. The media cabal wanted it to go away. It opened to people who went to see it in droves anyway.
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">T</span>here is an important lesson here. Media outlets can become non-benevolent “gate keepers” and thus render the internet <i>(and any other source, for that matter) a “less than complete”</i> source for people wanting to know the truth. The problem is not a new one, but for younger people who <i>“do everything on their phone”</i> it begs the argument for deeper sources, more thoughtful dialogue and the sharing of ideas in other places. We can talk about the hard issues in church and in person to person interaction. We can learn to go to the source and think for ourselves. That is how you conquer the problems that vex society.<span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<b><a href="https://www.unplannedfilm.com/" target="_blank">1</a></b>.]</span><br />
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<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/i-thought-i-was-just-starring-in-a-movie-then-my-mom-shocked-me-by-telling-me-this-secret" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">Ashley Bratcher's Story
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[click to read]<br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">I</span><i>'ve always considered myself pro-life but certainly not an activist. I had no idea who </i><b>Abby Johnson</b><i> was when I first auditioned to play her in the biopic “Unplanned.” I was given just six pages. Six pages that ignited my curiosity. There was something about Abby that stuck with me. How could this incredibly passionate woman one day change her mind about everything she believed in? There had to be more to the story.</i> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/i-thought-i-was-just-starring-in-a-movie-then-my-mom-shocked-me-by-telling-me-this-secret" target="_blank">(read more)</a><br />
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<a href="https://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/p/once-in-history-of-our-commonwealth-our.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">Eugenics Then and Now
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[click to read]
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-size: x-large;">O</span>nce in the history of our Commonwealth our health system promoted a public policy that promised to deliver advancements in the betterment of the human race. In Staunton, Virginia it was promoted by the director of Western State Hospital, <b>Joseph Spencer DeJarnette</b> (September 29, 1866 – September 3, 1957). As the director of the mental hospital located in Staunton, Virginia from 1905 to November 15, 1943 he was a vocal proponent of racial segregation and eugenics, specifically, the compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill. He was considered a pillar of the community and <b>Adolph Hitler</b> greatly admired his work. Today we shudder at the thought of the forced sterilizations that took place under Dr. DeJarnett’s directorship. The practice only ended in the 1970s. <a href="https://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/p/once-in-history-of-our-commonwealth-our.html" target="_blank">(read more)</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/21260371@N02/2312862355/" title="Crocus 1 by Elliotts Knob, on Flickr"><img alt="Crocus 1" height="500" src="https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2166/2312862355_4deb06dfcf.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Spring Crocus. Photo by <span style="font-size: xx-small;">Bob Kirchman.</span></i>
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<a href="http://info.hillsdale.edu/cs_lewis?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=cslewis" target="blank" title="CS_Lewis_Banner"><img alt="CS_Lewis_Banner" height="68" src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5627/23349476375_50de5a4340.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">Spring 2019 Areopagus Lecture
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">T</span><i>hey taught me longing - Sehnsucht; made me for good or ill, and before I was six years old, a votary of the Blue Flower.”</i><br />
— C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">W</span>e are pleased to announce that theologian <b>Alison Milbank</b> will be presenting the next Areopagus Lecture. Dr. Milbank’s talk will address the formation of the imagination as part of the vocation of the Church. Alison Milbank was a guest on the <i>MARS HILL AUDIO</i> Journal on Volume 99 when she talked about her book Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians. She is a professor in the department of theology and religious studies at the University of Nottingham.
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">C</span>hristian apologetics is often understood as a rational defense of belief presented to unbelievers on grounds other than faith. As John Milbank has put it in his forward to Imaginative Apologetics, these grounds reside <i>“on one’s opponent’s territory, where one risks remaining in a weak or even a false position.”</i> In other words, reasons and rationality are understood in terms already inclined to make belief in transcendence less plausible. What if, however, the <i>“apology”</i> offered remained intact and faithful to its original setting? What if the defense of truth relied on the conditions of goodness and beauty?
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">T</span>he famous apologist and fantasy writer, <b>C. S. Lewis</b> wrote that<i> “reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.”</i> In other statements and in his poem <i>“Reason,”</i> Lewis suggests that not only are reason and imagination distinct from each other, but that they are opposed and that we experience this opposition internally as in irreconcilable tension. How is it that such a superb writer of imaginative fiction seems to maintain a contradictory view of imagination in his non-fiction? Are we to take Lewis’s more direct statements about the imagination literally? Or can the imagination — and Lewis’s admitted love for beauty and longing — be incorporated into our understanding of reason and rationality?
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">I</span>n her talk, Alison Milbank will investigate these questions in light of the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty. With the help of some other thoughtful observers on the role of the imagination, Milbank will examine whether the Church can adopt an imaginative apologetic that does not deny the claims of reason.
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">W</span><b>hen:</b> April 4 at 7:30 PM
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">W</span><b>here:</b> The Haven - 112 West Market Street, Charlottesville, VA 29902
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">W</span><b>hat:</b> <i><b>“Imaginative Apologetics beyond C. S. Lewis”</b></i><br />
— Lecture: free and open to the public
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<span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">R</span><b>SVP:</b> Please register <b><a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/alison-milbank-on-imaginative-apologetics-beyond-c-s-lewis-tickets-56190618653" target="_blank">here</a> [click to register]</b> for the lecture
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<br />
<a href="https://www.unplannedfilm.com/" target="_blank" title="UNPLANNED"><img alt="UNPLANNED" height="68" src="https://www.bobkirchman.com/Unplanned.jpg" width="375" /></a> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-24994330803752956022019-03-20T06:57:00.001-04:002019-03-20T06:57:29.848-04:00Dietrich von Hildebrand, Hitler's Worst Enemy<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/q134yU" title="Hildebrand"><img alt="Hildebrand" height="475" src="https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1882/44485347542_20e4c12703.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Volume XV, Issue XI</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Adolph Hitler's Worst Enemy</span>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">D</span><b>ietrich von Hildebrand</b> <i>(1889-1977), born in Florence, was the son of renowned German sculptor </i><b>Adolf von Hildebrand</b><i>. A leading student of the philosophers </i><b>Edmund Husserl</b><i> and </i><b>Max Scheler</b><i>, he took up the “great questions” – about truth, freedom, conscience, community, love, beauty – with a freshness that allowed him to break new ground, especially in ethics, but also in epistemology, social philosophy, and aesthetics.
His conversion to Catholicism in 1914 was the decisive turning point of his life and the impetus for important religious works. His opposition to Hitler and Nazism was so outspoken that he was forced to flee Germany in 1933, and later across Europe, finally settling in New York City in 1940, where he taught at Fordham University until 1960. He was the author of dozens of books, both in German and English. He was a major forerunner of Vatican II through his seminal writings on marriage, on Christian philosophy, and on the evil of anti-Semitism.”</i> – The Hildebrand Project <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<b><a href="http://www.hildebrandproject.org/" target="_blank">1</a></b>.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>o have the wickedest man of the Twentieth Century label you his worst enemy has to be a signature honor. As the publisher of an anti-NAZI publication in Austria Dietrich von Hildebrand indeed found himself under Hitler’s scrutiny. Hildebrand was a great defender of the reality of objective truth. He also reminded us of the place of the objectively beautiful in describing Faith.
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<a href="https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/philosophy/the-forgotten-voice-of-dietrich-von-hildebrand.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Dietrich von Hildebrand
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[click to read]
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<b>The Forgotten Voice
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">H</span>e was a rare kind of philosopher: he was not just a thinker who aimed at formulating truth — he was also a witness who testified to the truth. Let me explain what I mean by giving you some background to his Vienna years.
Von Hildebrand was aware of National Socialism from the time of its first appearance on the German scene. He must have been a well-known opponent of it already in 1923, for in that year, when Hitler tried to seize power in Bavaria, von Hildebrand's name was on a short list of enemies of National Socialism who were marked for execution. He left Germany for good in March of 1933, just days after Hitler had taken office. He moved to Vienna and founded an anti-Nazi journal. He must have made his voice heard, for in 1937 the German ambassador to Austria, van Papen, denounced von Hildebrand to Hitler as the intellectual leader in Austria of the opponents of German National Socialism, and in fact suggested eliminating von Hildebrand and his collaborators. Von Hildebrand stood his ground until Hitler entered Vienna in 1938. For over four years he lived in constant danger of assassination as he bore witness in the pages of his journal. <a href="https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/philosophy/the-forgotten-voice-of-dietrich-von-hildebrand.html" target="_blank">(read more)</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.catholicauthors.com/vonhildebrand.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Dietrich von Hildebrand
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[click to read]
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<b>In His Own Words
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I was born in Florence on October 12, 1889, the son of the famous German sculptor <b>Adolf von Hildebrand</b>, and his wife, <b>Irene Schaueffelen</b>. My parents lived in a beautiful house, a former convent of the <i>Fratres Minimi</i>, situated on the outskirts of the marvelous town of Florence. I grew up in these glorious surroundings, sheltered in the superabundant love of my mother, and of my five sisters, all rarely gifted personalities. Everything was pervaded by the genius of my father who was, not only great as an artist, but also as a personality. My youth was one of the happiest one can imagine. <a href="http://www.catholicauthors.com/vonhildebrand.html" target="_blank">(read more)</a><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span><i>o whom will the sublime beauty of a sunset or a Ninth Symphony of Beethoven reveal itself, but to him who approaches it reverently and unlocks his heart to it? To whom will the mystery that lies in life and manifests itself in every plant reveal itself in its full splendor, but to him who contemplates it reverently? But he who sees in it only a means of subsistence or of earning money, that is, something that can be used or employed, will not discover the meaning, structure, and significance of the world in its beauty and hidden dignity.”</i>
― Dietrich von Hildebrand, <i>The Art of Living
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span><i>he great mystery of our metaphysical situation, that God is nearer to us than we are ourselves, is manifest in the fact that we cannot even be wholly ourselves—in the sense of individuality as a unique divine thought—until we are reborn in Christ.”</i>
― Dietrich von Hildebrand, Transformation in Christ
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">L</span><i>ove is not concerned with a person’s accomplishments, it is a response to a person’s being: This is why a typical word of love is to say: I love you, because you are as you are.”</i>
― Dietrich von Hildebrand, <i>The Art of Living
</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">F</span><i>or, just as love embodies the life of all virtues and expresses the inmost substance of all holiness, humility is the precondition and basic presupposition for the genuineness, the beauty, and the truth of all virtue.”</i>
― Dietrich von Hildebrand, <i>Humility: Wellspring of Virtue
</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">H</span><i>umility involves the full knowledge of our status as creatures, a clear consciousness of having received everything we have from God.”</i>
― Dietrich von Hildebrand, <i>Humility: Wellspring of Virtue
</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">H</span><i>appiness is love’s outcome, never its motive. Where someone is loved he is an end in himself and certainly not a means toward something else. It is therefore of love’s essence, wherever it is found, that the loved one seem precious, beautiful, and worthy of love.”</i>
― Dietrich von Hildebrand, <i>Man, Woman, and the Meaning of Love: God's Plan for Love, Marriage, Intimacy, and the Family
</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">L</span><i>ove alone brings a human being to full awareness of personal existence. For it is in love alone that man finds room enough to be what he is.”</i>
― Dietrich von Hildebrand, <i>Man, Woman, and the Meaning of Love: God's Plan for Love, Marriage, Intimacy, and the Family
</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">B</span><i>etter to be a beggar in freedom than to be forced into compromises against my conscience. —”</i>
― Dietrich von Hildebrand, <i>My Battle Against Hitler: Faith, Truth, and Defiance in the Shadow of the Third Reich
</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span><i>he soldier of Christ is obligated to fight against sin and error. His battle against the Antichrist is prompted by his loved for Christ, and for the salvation of souls. He fights this battle for the salvation of those who have gone astray. His attitude is one of true love. But those who flee from the inevitable battle, and treat irenically those who have gone astray, obfuscating their error and playing down their revolt against God, are, fundamentally, victims of egoism and complacency.”</i>
― Dietrich von Hildebrand
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span><i>nti-Semitism was clearly not just anti-Christian and immoral but also quite foolish.”</i>
― Dietrich von Hildebrand, <i>My Battle Against Hitler: Faith, Truth, and Defiance in the Shadow of the Third Reich
</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span><i>here were a host of people who viewed my rejection of National Socialism as exaggerated and who perceived my sharp tone as un-Austrian. Even many Austrians whose political views were relatively good found my stance too abrupt and not in keeping with Austrian sensibilities.”</i>
― Dietrich von Hildebrand, <i>My Battle Against Hitler: Faith, Truth, and Defiance in the Shadow of the Third Reich
</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span><i>he more our life is permeated by God, the simpler it becomes. This simplicity is defined by the inward unity which our life assumes because we no longer seek for any but one end: God.”</i>
― Dietrich von Hildebrand, <i>Transformation In Christ
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<a href="https://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/p/the-problem-with-original-zinn.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">The Problem of Original Zinn
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[click to read]
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<b>Howard Zinn’s One Sided View of History
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<span style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-large;">W</span><i>ho is the most influential historian in America? Could it be Pulitzer Prize winners </i><b>Arthur Schlesinger, Jr</b><i>. or </i><b>Joseph Ellis</b><i> or </i><b>David McCullough</b><i>, whose scholarly works have reached a broad literary public? The answer is none of the above. The accolade belongs instead to the unreconstructed, anti-American Marxist </i><b>Howard Zinn</b><i>, whose cartoon anti-history of the United States is still selling 128,000 copies a year twenty years after its original publication. Many of those copies are assigned readings for courses in colleges and high schools taught by leftist disciples of their radical mentor.”</i> – Daniel J. Flynn. Howard Zinn, widely hailed as a <i>‘historian’</i> once stated <i>“Objectivity is impossible, and it is also undesirable. That is, if it were possible it would be undesirable, because if you have any kind of a social aim, if you think history should serve society in some way; should serve the progress of the human race; should serve justice in some way, then it requires that you make your selection on the basis of what you think will advance causes of humanity.”</i> And so it goes that millions of young minds are being selectively fed Zinn’s view of history which highlights the sins of our great nation while largely ignoring her noble beginnings and aspirations. History according to Zinn must serve a <i>“a social aim”</i> other than the preservation or interpretation of a historical record. <i>A People’s History of the United States</i>, Howard Zinn’s 776 page book attempts to do just that. <a href="https://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/p/the-problem-with-original-zinn.html" target="_blank">(read more)</a>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/21260371@N02/17515444260" title="restoringallthings by Elliotts Knob, on Flickr"><img alt="restoringallthings" height="475" src="https://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7666/17515444260_6f164a6d4e_o.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Restoring all Things.</i><br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">G-d's Audacious Plan</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">to Change the World</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Through Ordinary People</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span><i>he only two things that can satisfy the soul are a person and a story; and even a story must be about a person. Men... are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings." -- G. K. Chesterton</i>
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">M</span></span><i>odern Evangelical Christians often miss the power of the story" -- Warren Cole Smith and John Stonestreet
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span>fter I had completed the manuscript for <i>'Pontifus, the Bridge Builder's Tale in Three Parts,'</i> I discovered <i>Restoring All Things</i> by <b>Warren Cole Smith</b> and <b>John Stonestreet</b>. It was as if these two scholars had seen my feeble attempt to bring redemption into a contemporary <i>(albeit slightly futuristic)</i> narrative. They see the dark and hopeless narrative of the culture and counter it with stories of hope and heroism by quite ordinary people.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span>he language of the Church often seems like a foreign tongue to those in contemporary culture. Indeed, in the afterglow of great revivals, Christian thought was present in the culture. One would know some Biblical wisdom as part of the narrative. Today the Church is speaking into a culture that has relegated Christian ideas and ideals to a place outside the discussion. The authors note how <b>C. S. Lewis</b>: <i>"...had the challenge of building the bridge between the culture of Oxford and Cambridge and the culture of the Church. These cultures were worlds apart by his time." </i><br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">L</span></span>ewis was <i>'bilingual,'</i> so to speak, understanding the language of the Church as well as the language of the academy. He was able to present a world unseen to those in the secular academy. He and his fellow <i>'Inkling,'</i> <b>J. R. R. Tolkien</b> opened new vistas to mankind in the Twentieth Century. I am eternally grateful to them.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">B</span></span>ut the real beauty of this little book is that it is NOT merely a catalyst for intellectual discussion, but a call to action. Smith and Stonestreet show how Christians, ORDINARY Christians, ministered to those in their own communities. It was Christians who cared for their neighbors during plagues. History is full of the stories of the Church meeting human needs. The Saints of the past lay out a pattern for compassion today!<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span>t is the Church that will continue to make the case for the value of all lives... making the case that if we want to protect children from abuse, we will protect them in the womb as well. The authors quote the oft repeated statistic that divorce rates are about the same for Christians as for Non-Christians and dig deeper, finding a significant difference for those who actually adhere to Scriptural authority. The oft quoted statistic includes <i>ANYONE</i> who merely identifies as a Christian. The reality is where Scriptural principles are the benchmark, there is significantly <i>LESS</i> divorce.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span>n fact, the Church can do the world a great service by <i>'Giving Marriage to the World Once Again.'</i> Indeed, a world that has cheapened and discarded the institution simply needs to see more of the lovely thing it was created to be. <br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">M</span></span>y favorite chapter is: <i>'Coloring Outside the Lines,'</i> and it describes how Christians have cherished learning and innovation through history. The Church can provide meaning, purpose and foundations for the acquiring of knowledge. Though we often associate Christian curriculum today with notions such as: <i>"color the grass green, the tree trunk brown..."</i> the truth is that the Church historically has led in education, even establishing the great universities.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span>oday the Church must reengage in G-d's work to Remake the world. Smith and Stonestreet provide the workbook; and illustrate it profusely with stories of ordinary people doing just that.
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/21260371@N02/16488890348" title="THYME09092 by Elliotts Knob, on Flickr"><img alt="THYME09092" height="475" src="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8564/16488890348_2ef81309fa.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Morality without G-d?</i><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">'Moral Atheism', A Conundrum</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span></span><i>uppose I should stumble upon a beautiful house in the woods. Is the architect merely a device I conjure to explain how post and beam arranged themselves over billions of years?"</i> Such an argument would seem foolish to most, yet that is essentially the argument that occurred as NPR interviewed <b>Phil Zuckerman</b>, professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College. The titles of his books tell you where he is coming from; <i>“Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions,”</i> <i>“Faith No More”</i> and <i>“Society Without God.” </i>The argument is essentially this: As more and more Americans seem to be turning away from G-d, the fact that most of us still believe in the <i>Golden Rule</i>... is some morality simply built into us as a species? <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<a href="https://onpoint.wbur.org/2015/02/26/atheist-secular-life-god-morality" target="_blank"><b>2</b></a>.]</span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">B</span></span>arbara J. King writes: <i>"In a book called The Bonobo and the Atheist, primatologist </i><b>Frans de Waal</b><i> argues that morality is built into our species. Rather than coming to us top-down from God, or any other external source, morality for de Waal springs bottom-up from our emotions and our day-to-day social interactions, which themselves evolved from foundations in animal societies.
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">F</span></span><i>or 30 years, de Waal has authored books about apes and monkey that open our eyes to the bottom-up origins of our human behaviors, ranging from politics to empathy. In this, his 10th volume, he extends that perspective by writing, "It wasn't G-d who introduced us to morality; rather, it was the other way around. G-d was put into place to help us live the way we felt we ought to."</i> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/03/21/174830095/frans-de-waals-bottom-up-morality-were-not-good-because-of-god" target="_blank"><b>3</b></a>.]</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="color: #274e13;">A</span></span>nd so, is this some great new revelation. Is Faith now rendered obsolete because morality is indeed visible outside of its boundaries? If<i> 'evolution'</i> gave us our morality programmed in, who's the <i>PROGRAMMER?</i> Much like the idea life on earth seeded by space aliens, one must simply ask: "How did THAT life come to be?<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="color: #274e13;">B</span></span>ut is the house of Faith caught speechless? Centuries ago the Apostle Paul wrote these lines, which squarely address the matter: <br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">F</span></span><span style="color: #7f6000;"><i>or I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of G-d unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. For the wrath of G-d is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of G-d is manifest in them; for G-d hath shewed it unto them.</i></span> <span style="color: #274e13;"><i><u><b>For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made</b></u></i></span>, <span style="color: #7f6000;"><i>even his eternal power and G-dhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew G-d, they glorified him not as G-d, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible G-d into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span></span><span style="color: #7f6000;"><i>herefore G-d also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of G-d into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause G-d gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. </i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span><span style="color: #7f6000;"><i>nd even as they did not like to retain G-d in their knowledge, G-d gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of G-d, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of G-d, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them."</i></span> -- <i>Romans 1:16-32 KJV</i><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">E</span></span>vident in the<i> "new"</i> morality apart from G-d there is indeed at least a surface compassion, yet the push to marginalize Divine texts as a source for moral instruction has led to a <i>'civil morality'</i> that must redefine marriage and personhood to incorporate non-traditional marriage and consequence-free sexual expression <i>(through the employment of abortion)</i>. Those who would ask that we consider the rights of the unborn or the rights of conscience of those who adhere to traditional definitions are indeed excoriated as the <i>'heretics'</i> of the new moral state.
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">N</span></span>owhere is this more evident than the academy. Lutheran college student <b>Bethany Woelmer</b> writes: <i>"As college students, we swim in a sea of worldly lies and deceptions, whose roaring waves bring fear and doubt upon our consciences and whose subtle currents attempt to carry us farther from the truth. We swim in a culture that redefines marriage, misinterprets G-d’s Word and promotes intolerance against the fundamental reality of family and its blessing to society and the Church. Yet there is a wave of truth, that is, G-d’s Word, that transcends the wisdom of man, and it brought hundreds of college students to the Taboo conference in St. Louis, Jan. 5-7, to answer questions that many of us encounter today."</i> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<a href="http://blogs.lcms.org/2015/taboo-gods-gift-of-family" target="_blank"><b>4</b></a>.]</span> The campus ministry conference addressed, as its name suggests, many topics the new atheists wish Christians would not. <b><a href="http://blogs.lcms.org/2015/taboo-gods-gift-of-family" target="_blank">Woelmer's Report</a> [click to read]</b> on the conference is worth reading.<br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></span>ronically, Woelmer points out a great problem. While atheists may insist that <i>'family values'</i> are <i>'programmed in,'</i> so to speak; their philosophies actually are at odds with the preservation of family. Intellectuals like <b>Sam Harris</b> say things like: <i>"If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion."</i> Thinkers like Harris and <b>Richard Dawkins</b> see religion as a greater evil than truly defined evils. Citing the <i>'reasonableness'</i> of science <i>(it always invites free inquiry, right)?</i>, they engage in an all-out attack on Faith as they seek to create a <i>'reasonable'</i> society.<br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">B</span></span>ut is science really dogma-free? Consider the matter of <i>"Global Warming."</i> Even as the East Anglia emails <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html" target="_blank"><b>4</b></a>.]</span> showed climate scientists were forming the data to fit their desired narrative, the <i>'scientific community'</i> continued to brand skeptics of the theory as <i>'heretics.'</i> Popular culture fanned the flames through spokespersons such as <b>Leo DiCaprio</b>, who's passion for the narrative verges on fanaticism. Removing <i>Divine Revelation</i> from the discussion of morality has not resulted in a world without dogma. In fact, it has resulted in a new dogma, based on the sketchy evidence of computer models. Humans are <i>"destroying the planet."</i> <i>"Zero Population Growth"</i> and carbon credits are the new law to be delivered from the mount, not of Sinai, but of <i>'science.'</i><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">C</span></span>asting aside the wonder of <i>Imago Dei,</i> the wonderful concept found in Genesis that man is created in the image of G-d, we are now seen by <i>'reasonable'</i> men as nothing special. The theological implications are staggering. Man is just another species with no special place and if his presence unsettles the planet, reduce the population. In a profound irony, <i>Self Actualization</i>, as described by <b>Abraham Maslow</b>, becomes all-important in this new G-dless world. <br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span>herefore, in the muddy new world of G-dless <i>'morality,'</i> if I love the unborn I may be branded as a hater for denying someone the <i>'right'</i> to kill her unborn child. Yet it is the Inspired Writings that tell us to love our enemies and bless those who persecute us. It is the Christians who rescued unwanted babies who were cast into the Tiber River. There is a level of sacrifice that is unnatural, that goes far beyond sacrificial protection of our young. Consider the actions of the<i> 'Righteous Gentiles'</i> during the Holocaust. Consider the great stories, the stories of heroism and sacrifice. I do not feel you can dismiss them as simply <i>'programmed in.' </i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<a href="https://archive.org/details/TheCaseForACreatorTheCaseForChristTheCaseForFaith" target="_blank"><b>6</b></a>.]</span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">L</span></span><b>ee Strobel</b> offers <b><a href="https://archive.org/details/TheCaseForACreatorTheCaseForChristTheCaseForFaith" target="_blank">More Evidence</a> [click to read]</b><i> </i>of<i> </i>the work of the Divine. <i></i><br />
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<a href="https://www.houzz.com/pro/studio9663/the-kirchman-studio" target="_blank" title="PontifusBANNER"><img alt="PontifusBANNER" height="68" src="https://www.bobkirchman.com/DesignBANNER.jpg" width="375" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-28975810961651939342019-03-20T06:51:00.001-04:002019-03-20T06:54:28.660-04:00PONTIFUS, The Bridge Builder's Tale <b>Citizen Journalism with a Better Flavor</b>
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<a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/2015/04/thyme-magazine-bridge-builders-tale.html" target="blank" title="PONTIFUSBIOSPHERE"><img alt="PONTIFUSBIOSPHERE" height="475" src="https://www.bobkirchman.com/PONTIFUSMAXIMUS003.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Volume XII, Issue XIIIc</i></span>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #0c343d;"><span style="font-size: large;">PONTIFUS, The Bridge Builder's Tale</span></span>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Copyright © 2017, The Kirchman Studio, all rights reserved</i></span>
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Table of Contents, Click to Enter: <br />
Prequil: <a href="http://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/p/the-reckless-engineer.html" target="_blank">The Reckless Engineer</a><br />
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<a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/2015/04/thyme-magazine-bridge-builders-tale.html" target="_blank">PONTIFUS</a>, <span style="font-size: xx-small;">The Bridge Builder's Tale in Three Parts</span><br />
Book 1: <a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/2015/04/thyme-magazine-bridge-builders-tale.html" target="_blank">Dinner Stop at the End of the World</a><br />
Book 2: <a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/2015/07/thyme-magazine-bridge-builders-tale-xiii.html" target="_blank">Zimmerman's Folly</a><br />
Book 3: <a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/2015/10/thyme-magazine-bridge-builders-tale-xxv.html" target="_blank">Little House at the End of the World</a><br />
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<a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/2016/03/novus-via-i.html" target="_blank">NOVUS VIA</a>, <span style="font-size: xx-small;">A Story of the More Perfect Way</span><br />
Book 1: <a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/2016/03/novus-via-i.html" target="_blank">A Guide to the 2059/2060 World's Fair</a><br />
Book 2: <a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/2016/04/novus-via-ix.html" target="_blank">The Long Road Home</a><br />
Book 3: <a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/2016/05/novus-via-xii.html" target="_blank">The Road to Damascus</a><br />
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<a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/2016/05/corvinus-i.html" target="_blank">CORVINUS</a>, <span style="font-size: xx-small;">A Story of Three Brothers and Their Rise to Power</span><br />
Book 1: <a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/2016/05/corvinus-i.html" target="_blank">The Brothers CORVINUS</a><br />
Book 2: <a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/2016/06/corvinus-iv.html" target="_blank">Ascent to Power</a><br />
Book 3: <a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/2016/07/corvinus-vii.html" target="_blank">Behold the Man</a><br />
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<a href="http://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/p/apollonius-by-bob-kirchman-introduction.html" target="_blank">APOLLONIUS</a>, <span style="font-size: xx-small;">A Journey to a World Unseen</span><br />
<a href="http://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/p/josiah-by-bob-kirchman-copyright-2017.html" target="_blank">JOSIAH</a>, <span style="font-size: xx-small;">A Time for Healing</span> <br />
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<a href="http://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/2016/07/thyme-magazine-gift-horse.html" target="_blank">The Gift Horse</a>, A Short Story<br />
<a href="http://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/p/stones-of-remembrance.html" target="_blank">Stones of Remembrance</a>, A Short Story<br />
<a href="http://thekirchmanstudio.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html" target="_blank">ZIMMERLOOP</a><span style="font-size: xx-small;">TM</span>, Travel in the Year 2059 <br />
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<a href="http://thymemagazine.blogspot.com/p/the-pontifus-project.html" target="_blank" title="PontifusBANNER"><img alt="PontifusBANNER" height="68" src="https://www.bobkirchman.com/PONTIFUSMAXIMUS001.jpg" width="375" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-64047573859482222692019-03-20T06:47:00.000-04:002019-03-20T06:47:33.985-04:00Eugenics Then and Now, Northam/DeJarnette<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/4856Q3" title="Baby"><img alt="Baby" height="475" src="https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4812/46027742815_21c0bb5875.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">Eugenics Then and Now
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">O</span>nce in the history of our Commonwealth our health system promoted a public policy that promised to deliver advancements in the betterment of the human race. In Staunton, Virginia it was promoted by the director of Western State Hospital,<b> Joseph Spencer DeJarnette</b> (September 29, 1866 – September 3, 1957). As the director of the mental hospital located in Staunton, Virginia from 1905 to November 15, 1943 he was a vocal proponent of racial segregation and eugenics, specifically, the compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill. He was considered a pillar of the community and Adolph Hitler greatly admired his work. Today we shudder at the thought of the forced sterilizations that took place under Dr. DeJarnett’s directorship. The practice only ended in the 1970s.
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">T</span>oday that aspect of eugenics is unthinkable to us, but consider for a moment the recent push in the state legislature to remove restrictions on late-term abortions. <b>Kathy Tran</b> introduced a bill clearly allowing for abortion right up to the point the mother was dilating. The frightening aspect of this bill was that it appeared to push the decision point over the line – allowing for the ‘abortion’ of an already born child. Appearing on WTOP’s Ask The Governor, Virginia Governor <b>Ralph Northam</b>, a former pediatric neurologist, was asked whether he supported a Virginia legislator’s statement that Virginia Democrats’ proposed legislation would permit abortion for a woman in labor.
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<span style="color: #20124d; font-size: x-large;">H</span>e stated: <i>“This is why decisions such as this should be made by providers, physicians, and the mothers and fathers that are involved. When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of the mother, with the consent of physicians, more than one physician by the way, and it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus which is non-viable. So in this particular example, if the mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen, the infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if this is what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother.”
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">B</span>eyond the obvious possibility being allowed for infanticide is the argument for eugenic murder <i>(see his comments about deformities)</i>. <b>Ben Shapiro</b> says: <i>“Northam is specifically talking about delivering an infant alive and then asking the mother whether the infant should live or not. This is not an argument about the morning-after pill. It’s not an argument over whether a fetus feels pain. This is a statement that a fully-formed infant, born alive, ought to be murdered if the mother says the infant ought to be murdered.”</i> A call to Northam’s office had a staffer saying that<i> “The Governor is clearly not for infanticide,” and that “he is very protective of children, being a pediatrician.”</i> Still, the news conference remarks do not rule out the possibility of eugenic killing – and eugenics was brought to us by Doctor DeJarnett not so long ago.
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="211" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SkTopSKo1xs?rel=0" width="375"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-74434451055248143432019-03-14T21:00:00.000-04:002019-03-14T21:00:10.019-04:00Northam, Fairfax and HerringWho will be three stars of Republican electoral advertising in the fall?<br />
The longer they stay, the better it will be for Republican candidates.Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-26893873342029899902019-02-06T20:49:00.001-05:002019-02-06T20:49:25.130-05:00What's nextGame planning <a href="https://bearingdrift.com/2019/02/06/gaming-out-line-of-succession-scenarios/">the scenarios</a> atop Virginia leadership.<br />
Here's my favorite part of the column.<br />
<i>say, Northam and Fairfax decided to get away from it all and boarded a fishing boat to tour Tangier Island, and the boat got swept out to the open sea, and we as a populace declined to go rescue them. </i>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-27124102626035935212019-02-02T08:51:00.004-05:002019-02-02T08:51:44.867-05:00Imagine you're the other guy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_pkjREgRv_vdOxzRsiMoflO6xJrmEKNnjLMBADRMMZ04XlI7MOIJlFOwdlbAwV1uggSR_857jaAL2yzv5OpnQUAhtsZ9tasyUuVpBHgtnVd0Neupz5gyfl8xLfJfU5pVJgntd_m9axw/s1600/northam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="407" data-original-width="600" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_pkjREgRv_vdOxzRsiMoflO6xJrmEKNnjLMBADRMMZ04XlI7MOIJlFOwdlbAwV1uggSR_857jaAL2yzv5OpnQUAhtsZ9tasyUuVpBHgtnVd0Neupz5gyfl8xLfJfU5pVJgntd_m9axw/s320/northam.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Ralph Northam admitted he's in this picture.<br />
Imagine if you're the other guy.<br />
Thanks to Northam, your life is going to be destroyed.<br />
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<br />Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-62391140231556808392018-09-06T21:58:00.000-04:002018-09-06T21:58:04.070-04:00Who likes this poll?I saw a<a href="https://mailchi.mp/d742aca54d43/poolhouse-and-cygnal-release-virginia-statewide-poll?e=06a69c7d62"> poll </a>I didn't believe today.<br />
Corey Stewart at 45% against Senator Tim Kaine.<br />
It came across in an email for Kaine - to help him raise money.<br />
Having only a five-point lead might loosen the purse strings more than double-digit leads.Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-59032736193618477682017-10-30T10:24:00.000-04:002017-10-30T10:24:06.559-04:00Making America Great Again <b>Citizen Journalism with a Better Flavor</b>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/1iW0Wr" title="Revival"><img alt="Revival" height="475" src="https://c7.staticflickr.com/9/8800/29727898950_aefe13bb36.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Volume XII, Issue X</i><br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/56641334@N02/6477669535/" title="Factory_Allentown by b.kirchman, on Flickr"><img alt="Factory_Allentown" height="232" src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7160/6477669535_2707236fbd.jpg" width="375" /></a><br />
<i></i><i>Post card of a wire mill in Allentown Pennsylvania.</i><br />
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<span style="color: #990000; font-size: 130%;">Revival and Renaissance in America</span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span>he 'other' weekly news magazine once featured the cover: <i>"How America Learned to Sell Cars Again."</i> We at <i>THYME</i> are a bit reluctant to see car sales as a barometer of a society's greatness. Economic indicators are important in measuring a society's health, to be sure, but they are not the truest measure. Politicians are quick to offer their prescription for a return to a robust economy. But many around us are looking for deeper answers to deeper problems. Of times like this it might well be said: <i>"Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest."</i> -- Luke 10:2. Now more than ever, those who would stir men's hearts to higher, nobler aspirations are needed... men and women who understand where a society's true greatness really lies.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">C</span></span>oncerned about the materialistic, acquisitive, corrupt world of an affluent society, they sought to confront her sins and establish her again as a light to the world. The year was 1769 and under the preaching of <b>George Whitefield</b> the English beginnings of the <i>Great Awakening</i> had their start. Soon it would change the fabric of American life as well. Following <b>John</b> and <b>Charles Wesley</b> to America, Whitfield joined his old Oxford classmates in changing the fabric of America.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">M</span></span>en like <b>Jonathan Edwards</b> took the message of redemption and made it personal. His sermon:<i> "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God"</i> moved many to see the Gospel message in a personal way, not simply as academic material. The personalization of faith led men and women to change their ways and live in light of a redemptive message. Scholars may debate the amount of influence this movement had in the creation of the United States of America, but the fact that it had an influence is clear!<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span>he late Eighteenth Century saw waves of revival. Camp meetings organized by preachers like <b>James McGready</b> brought the far scattered settlers together to confirm their commitment to personal and life-changing faith. Itinerant preachers spread the movement through the South among both those of both European and African ancestry. A massive interdenominational meeting at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1801, marked the high point of the movement.<br />
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but by 1830 the movement had waned.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span></span>merica's failings are well documented. Dark times such as the Cherokee Removal and a host of local rebellions show us that America was often prey to the baser nature of man. Modern historians tend to forget the perilous course of America's journey.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">O</span></span>ur nation might have ended early in its founding when Continental Army soldiers, who had not been paid, were set to march on Philadelphia. They might have killed the representatives but for the intervention of their beloved leader, <b>George Washington</b>, who rode out to meet them.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span></span>he shots fired on Fort Sumpter might have been the end of our United States as well. Indeed the 1860's saw a divided landscape and untold carnage at places like Antietem. Great cities such as Richmond and Atlanta were destroyed, their citizens displaced, their economies ruined.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">M</span></span>en like <b>Dwight L. Moody</b> spoke into the darkness. Moody's revivals are legend.<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/56641334@N02/6477669453/" title="mill by b.kirchman, on Flickr"><img alt="mill" height="236" src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7021/6477669453_cf17c6d3bc.jpg" width="375" /></a><br />
<i></i><i>Mill building in Allentown as shown on an old post card.</i><br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">M</span></span>odern times saw two great wars in Europe that threatened to engulf all of human civilization. Untold horrors were seen by the liberators of the death camps. Men like <b>Billy Graham</b> and his son <b>Frankin</b> rose to speak into our times. Local Pastor <b>Chuck Balsamo</b> just published his book: <b><a href="http://chuckbalsamo.com/order-make-me-a-legend/" target="blank">Make Me a Legend</a> [click to read]</b>. Troubled times are nothing new. Pastor Balsamo seeks to inspire today's generation to step up and pray and participate in <i>the dream of a better tomorrow</i>. Indeed, a historical thread exists that suggests that the great American nation was built largely by a lot of people who, in the words of Hebrews 11 <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<b><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+11&version=NIV">1</a></b>.]</span>, were <i>"seeking a better Kingdom."</i><br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/56641334@N02/6477669495/" title="allentown by b.kirchman, on Flickr"><img alt="allentown" height="281" src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7003/6477669495_1cb8420367.jpg" width="375" /></a><i></i><br />
<i>A factory in today's Allentown as American industry awaits renewal.</i>
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The America I Love</span></span>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/21260371@N02/29727926500/in/photostream/" title="Crozet, Virginia"><img alt="Crozet, Virginia" height="500" src="https://c5.staticflickr.com/6/5249/29727926500_0bd97208d6.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Historical Mural, Crozet, Virginia: The Monacans were the first inhabitants of the region...</i>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/21260371@N02/29395438953/in/photostream/" title="Crozet, Virginia"><img alt="Crozet, Virginia" height="500" src="https://c2.staticflickr.com/9/8425/29395438953_537ef5d847.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>...followed by the settlers of the Big Survey. The railroad, engineered by </i><b>Claudius Crozet</b><i>, for whom the town is named, linked the region to the West.</i>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/21260371@N02/29395434493/in/photostream/" title="Crozet, Virginia"><img alt="Crozet, Virginia" height="500" src="https://c6.staticflickr.com/8/7467/29395434493_d32e24170e.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Today Crozet is a growing community in Central Virginia. Venerable institutions such as Crozet Hardware continue to serve the people of an ever changing town.</i>
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<a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html" target="blank" title="Banner"><img alt="Banner" height="68" src="https://c7.staticflickr.com/9/8582/28071097790_793a17c534.jpg" width="375" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-84273017178689967252017-10-30T10:10:00.001-04:002017-10-30T10:10:44.394-04:00Thoughts on Civility and Citizenship<b>Citizen Journalism with a Better Flavor
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/t145s1" title="CivilityCitizenship2"><img alt="CivilityCitizenship2" height="475" src="https://c3.staticflickr.com/6/5560/30171821482_d41d68e46a.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Volume XII, Issue XI</i>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Thoughts on Civility</span>
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<i>Approaching our Gubernatorial Election, these Thoughts Still Apply:</i><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span><i>merica is at a crossroads, and I believe we should take every opportunity to stand up for the things of God and His Word.”</i> –Franklin Graham
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">F</span><b>ranklin Graham</b> has just traveled to all 50 states in 2016 to hold prayer rallies, to preach the Gospel, and to challenge believers to take a stand and take action. He’s be urged Christians to vote, to live out their faith in every part of their lives, and to pray for our nation just as <b>Nehemiah</b> cried out to God to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and restore hope to His people.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span>adly, we live in an age of ugliness. We have much rebuilding to do. The recent news that a Presidential candidate has been caught on videotape making very inappropriate remarks <i>(albeit eleven years ago)</i> causes us rightly to recoil in disgust. We have daughters and granddaughters, wives and nieces... you get the picture. We do not want this ugliness in our places of leadership. We cannot tolerate it. We want better from those we choose to represent us.Some of us really want to leave a better world to our children and grandchildren.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">B</span>ut it must also be said that the latest revelation is hardly the only instance of tawdry revelations from high places. Even the glory of Kennedy's Camelot was tarnished by the hard reality of the President's unfaithfulness. Fast-forward to the 1990's and the uncomfortable need to explain to our children certain things previously not necessary to talk about that are mentioned on the nightly news. This did not happen overnight. We cannot fix it overnight.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">E</span>xcuses do not make it right. It does not matter if it is <i>"your guy"</i> or <i>"my guy,"</i> we cannot excuse it. We can forgive it but it calls for repentance on the part of the one who brings it. Our young people cannot remember an age of civility, at least a form of polite assent to it. That is a poverty of culture that we must address. All of us have become desensitized to a coarseness our elders would not have tolerated. Our society is very much the poorer for it. Not surprisingly, history tells us that men and women of Faith have lifted decadent cultures before. It happened in ancient Rome where Christians fished the discarded babies from the Tiber River and nurtured them. <br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span>t happened during the plague, when Christians cared for the sick when others would not go near... a phenomenon seen again in Philadelphia during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic where two free black men; <b>Absalom Jones</b> and <b>Richard Allen</b> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">[<a href="http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion/yellowfever.html" target="_blank"><b>1</b></a>.]</span> volunteered to nurse the victims of the fever. In 1794 Allen would become one of the founders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. It is easy to see that our present culture needs to be lifted. It is quite a challenge to step forward in the calling to lift it.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Y</span>et history teaches us that it can be done, and the effort and risk are well worth it for the sake of our sons and daughters. Here are some thoughts on how our culture has declined, what we have lost, and how we might indeed begin to restore true dignity to the America we love.
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/HjxVV3" title="Richmond_web"><img alt="Richmond_web" height="197" src="https://c4.staticflickr.com/9/8272/30297870275_e0eef4e9ce.jpg" width="375" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i>Billy Graham Evangelistic Association Photo.</i></span>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/E00K92" title="FranklinGraham-Nehemiah"><img alt="FranklinGraham-Nehemiah" height="326" src="https://c5.staticflickr.com/6/5823/30174494972_a73892851d.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>“Let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee now, day and night, for the children of Israel thy servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee: both I and my father's house have sinned.” -- Nehemiah 1:6</i>
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<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Billy Graham Evangelistic Association Photo.</span></i>
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<b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/FranklinGraham/videos/1276324445757067/" target="_blank">Franklin Graham</a> [click to view]</b><i> at the final stop of his Decision America Tour, Raleigh, North Carolina.</i><br />
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<a href="http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams081016.php3" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The Decline of Civility</span></span></a><br />
[click to read]
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<i>By</i> <b>Walter Williams</b>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">O</span>ne of the unavoidable consequences of youth is the tendency to think behavior we see today has always been. I'd like to dispute that vision, <a href="http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams081016.php3" target="_blank">(read more)</a>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/152Z40" title="Civility_web"><img alt="Civility_web" height="375" src="https://c7.staticflickr.com/6/5555/29675079974_cb2aebf483.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<a href="http://jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin042209.php3" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">'Civility and Tolerance'</span></span></a><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">[click to read]</span></span><br />
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<i>By </i><b>Michelle Malkin</b>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>hey told us if <b>Barack Obama</b> were elected, the nation would come together. Souls would be fixed. Spirits would be healed. Public discourse would be elevated. Welcome to civility and tolerance in the Age of Obama: <a href="http://jewishworldreview.com/michelle/malkin042209.php3" target="_blank">(read more)</a>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/eDfG55" title="eye_to_world_cover"><img alt="eye_to_world_cover" height="208" src="https://c4.staticflickr.com/6/5641/30215156291_58faa65d5e.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<a href="http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/greenberg101316.php3" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Visions</span></span></a><br />
[click to read]<br />
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<i>by</i> <b>Paul Greenberg</b><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span><b>lbert Speer</b>, the technocratic master of Adolf Hitler's war machine, busied himself churning out custom-made excuses for his war crimes as that conflict ground on to its bloody end. But what if, in his rush to misjudgment about himself and his motives, he had accidentally stumbled on a truth?
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span>f only he had had a good classical education, Herr Speer sighed, and had paid more attention to each citizen's responsibility for what was being done in the name of We the People, the Reich!, he might have avoided his sad fate. Yes, he might have found himself a martyr to conviction in any case, but that conviction would have been based on something more worthwhile than his own self-promotion.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span>s it possible, in today's shrunken little world of American politics, even to imagine such ideals? In the tiny universe bordered on the right by Donald Trump's egotism and on the left by Hillary Clinton's career-long history of dissembling, is there room at all for seriously weighing the merits and demerits of any course of action?
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>oo many of us are reduced to being watchers, not actors. The worst of it is that, in the end, there is no end in sight. Of course there would be a modern word for this endless emotional boredom: anomie, or the absence of any emotion at all. Depression, the shrinks call it, but it is something much more: a soul-sickness that doesn't even recognize the existence of the soul. <a href="http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/greenberg101316.php3" target="_blank">(read more)</a>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/Z0z625" title="IMG_6629a"><img alt="IMG_6629a" height="281" src="https://c3.staticflickr.com/9/8553/30252538386_ec94b54365.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>8200 people gathered in Richmond, Virginia's Capitol Square to pray for our nation. </i><b>Franklin Graham</b><i> led them.</i>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Thoughts on Citizenship</span><br />
REMARKS TO THE LIBERTY UNIVERSITY CONVOCATION
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RALPH REED, CHAIRMAN, FAITH AND FREEDOM COALITION
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OCTOBER 10, 2016
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<i>(remarks as prepared for delivery)</i>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>hank you, Jerry, for that very generous introduction. I am privileged and honored to be associated with Liberty University, if only for this occasion and on this day. <b>Jerry Falwell</b>, <b>Sr</b>., the founder of this university, was a dear friend who encouraged and supported me in my early forays into the political arena. He inspired me, in the words of the Apostle <b>Paul</b>, to <i>“follow me as I follow Christ.”</i> To see Liberty University grow from its humble beginnings as a Baptist Bible college nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains in rural western Virginia to become the largest Christian university in America is a testament to the promises of God, the faithfulness of its founder, and the leadership and managerial gifts of Jerry, Jr.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span>n 29 days the American people will go to the polls in one of the most consequential elections of our lifetimes.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">N</span>ot only is the presidency on the ballot, but today as we gather there are probably eight Senate races within the margin of error, and control of the U.S. Senate hangs in the balance. And because of the vacancy created by the untimely death of <b>Antonin Scalia</b>, a vacant seat on an evenly divided Supreme Court will be filled by the next president. So all three branches of our national government are on the ballot.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>oday I wish to discuss our call as Christians to be effective citizens both of the United States and of a heavenly kingdom that is both here now and is yet to come, offer a Biblical model for that citizenship, and more specifically how that call requires us to think and act as believers with particular reference to the 2016 election.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span>s Christians, we are dual citizens---first of the nation in which we reside, and secondly of a heavenly Kingdom. In effect, we carry two passports: one for the America, and the other for the Kingdom of God. We are in a spiritual sense not unlike those Jews who hold dual citizenship of their country of origin and of the state of Israel. Each of these citizenships carries with it certain obligations, duties, and responsibilities that we should take very seriously.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span>s heavenly citizens, we should pray, read the Bible, attend worship services, tithe, give to the poor, and serve others. As earthly citizens, we should pay taxes---but only what we owe---there is nothing wrong with taking legal deductions. <i> (Laughter)</i> We should be informed, be registered to vote and vote, and contact our elected officials to make our views known on timely issues and legislation.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">J</span><b>erry Falwell</b> used to say his mission was to get people born again, baptized, and registered to vote. There was some humor in that statement, but as you will see when I walk through what the Bible teaches us about citizenship, there is some sound theology as well.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span> believe there are four main elements of effective Christian citizenship.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">F</span><i><b>irst, we should participate.</b></i> Based on census tract data and exit polls, my organization, Faith & Freedom Coalition, estimates that 17 million evangelical Christians did not go to the polls in 2012 either because they not registered to vote or because they were registered but did not bother to show up and cast a ballot.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">N</span>or is this phenomenon limited to Christians. In 2012 only 57 percent of adult eligible voters cast ballots and, according to the Pew Research Center, there are approximately 61 million adult eligible citizens who are not even registered to vote. Christians should act differently.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span>s believers, we should treat our citizenship as a gift from God and exercise it in a muscular and robust manner, both as a witness to power of our faith in Christ, and to advance righteousness and oppose evil.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span>e see a dramatic example of this in the Book of Acts, when the apostle <b>Paul</b> is detained in Jerusalem after creating a public disturbance while preaching. When Roman soldiers take him into custody, they tie him up and are about to flog him, when he turns to the officer in charge and asks one simple yet profound question: “Is it lawful for you to do this to a Roman citizen?” Filled with fear, the soldiers immediately untie him, apologize profusely, and escort him to their commander. Later, when his enemies attempt to have him convicted in a show trial and executed, Paul asserts one of the most cherished rights of a Roman citizen: he appeals his case to <b>Caesar</b>. We can’t appeal our legal cases all the way to the president, but a Roman citizen who believed their rights were being violated and justice was being denied could request that their case be heard by Caesar. By this political and legal act, the Gospel message reached the courts of the emperor of Rome.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">P</span>aul was willing to die for the Gospel, and ultimately he did. But he was not willing to surrender the rights that were his as an earthly citizen. Neither should we.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>his is not about the moral character of a given government or leader. The Romans were infamous for their wanton cruelty, brutality, and barbarism. That was beside the point. Paul was a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ---and he used his citizenship as a tool to share his faith in Christ and build God’s Kingdom.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">L</span>ike modern-day Pauls, we are followers of Christ and citizens of the most powerful nation on earth in our time. Now more than ever, people of faith must use their moral imagination when it comes to both the possibilities and limits of politics. Politics cannot save the lost or force moral sentiments upon the unregenerate heart. But politics can defend the innocent and vulnerable , advance righteousness, establish the common good, it can protect the rights of the poor, the alien and the sojourner, restrain evil, resist tyranny, and expand the boundaries of liberty and freedom. It also sets the tone for a culture. As former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett has rightly noted, the law is a teacher, acting like white chalk marks on the field of a culture, establishing boundaries of right and wrong, morality and justice. Martin Luther King said, “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">W</span>hich brings us to the 2016 elections. Some claim that the choice in this election is between two deeply flawed individuals who represent merely the lesser of two evils, and that as men and women of faith and conscience we have no real stake in the decision.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span>ome, including brothers and sisters in the faith, point to the recently unearthed comments by <b>Donald Trump</b> in a 2005 interview in which he made demeaning comments about women as evidence confirming this argument. <u>Those eleven-year-old comments were offensive and inappropriate. As a father of two daughters, including one who is with me here today, I did not appreciate them. I am glad that Mr. Trump has apologized for them.</u> As a Christian, I believe, as the apostle <b>Paul</b> wrote to <b>Timothy</b>, that we should treat older women as our mothers and younger women as our sisters, in all purity.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span> also believe that someone who is faithful in small things will be faithful in large things, and one who is unfaithful in small things will be unfaithful in larger things. As Secretary of State, Trump’s opponent set up a home-brewed email server and, according to the FBI, was careless and negligent in handling classified material. After a year-long investigation, the FBI assessed that Mrs. Clinton’s email server was hacked by foreign intelligence services, exposing our nation’s most vital secrets to our worst enemies. <b>Hillary Clinton</b> also deleted over 33,000 emails, including thousands of emails involving official State Department business, in clear violation of federal law. She then lied to the American people and Congress about doing so. At the time, she was the third highest ranking official in the Cabinet, behind only the president and vice-president. If someone violates the public trust and mishandles classified material as a member of the Cabinet, there is no reason to believe they will be more faithful in the weightier, solemn and higher responsibilities of the presidency.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">G</span>iven this choice, it may be tempting to sit on the sidelines. One friend of mine says he will write in Peyton Manning for president. <i>(Laughter)</i> But I’m not in favor of wasting our votes by casting them for Santa Claus or retired football players, or others who have no chance of becoming president. We must confront the choice before us and vote for someone who actually has a chance to become president. We dare not and we cannot surrender our vote during such an important election. Retreating to the stained-glass ghetto from whence we came, refusing to muddy our boots with the mire and muck of politics is not an option for followers of Christ. We are called to put away our “my way or the highway” pride, forsake cynicism and negativity, and participate fully as citizens, always cheerful, always winsome, always ready to defend our faith. We should focus not on the negative, but on what is true, honorable, right, pure, and lovely, anything of excellence and anything worthy of praise, fully prepared to confront the hard choices that Providence presents us in our mission to advance the good and resist evil.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span>n one of the most famous speeches he ever delivered as a candidate or as president, often called the “Evil Empire” speech, <b>Ronald Reagan</b> urged when he addressed the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983 to “beware the temptation of pride---the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault,” to declare a pox on both houses “and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">R</span>eagan spoke of Christians at the time who pretended that because capitalism and communism were both flawed systems that both were equally to blame. The same basic principle could be applied to the two options in this election. As I will get to in a minute, on issue after issue on matters involving grave and intrinsic moral evil, there are stark differences between the two major-party nominees for president.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span><u>o we must participate. If we do, we can make a difference.</u> According to exit polls, self-identified evangelical Christians comprise roughly 27 percent of the electorate; faithful, frequently Mass-attending Roman Catholics made up another 10 percent of the electorate. Together they are the largest, most vibrant, and most dynamic single constituency in the electorate today; a larger force than the Latino, the African-American, and the union vote combined.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span><i><b>econd, we must persuade.</b></i> We cannot enter the civic arena armed only with a King James Bible and an appeal to Biblical morality. <b>Teddy Roosevelt</b> said a thorough knowledge of the Bible was more important than a college education. Perhaps he said that because he attended Harvard. <i>(laughter)</i> But that is certainly not the case in today’s culture. For much of our history, the raw material that formed our common language could be found in the Bible, Shakespeare, and the classics of Greek and Latin literature. Today the common reference points are films, popular music, social media, and television, including the Kardashians. So we must learn as believers to speak in the language and dialect of our audience. In that same episode in the Book of Acts I alluded to earlier, the crowd in Jerusalem threatened a riot. But when Paul began to speak to them in their own Hebrew dialect, they fell silent and listened. If we will speak to our listeners in a voice and language they can comprehend, we will gain their hearing, if not always their assent.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>o persuade, we must know and understand public policy, appeal to the social sciences for evidence of which policies work and why, we should develop a broad policy agenda that deals with jobs, growing the economy, income inequality, education, immigration, human trafficking, criminal justice reform, and ameliorating poverty. And we must do so while reaching out to those who have not always have felt welcome in our ranks: women, African-Americans, Latinos, and young people.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">H</span>oney attracts more than vinegar, and a winsome attitude wins our fellow citizens more than harsh language or angry words. The book of Proverbs says, “The tongue of the wise makes knowledge acceptable,” and “sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness.” Bill Rusher said that Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan believed in the same things, but Barry said them with a frown and Reagan said them with a smile, and that made all the difference.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span><b><i>hird, we must persevere.</i></b> Bringing our faith to bear to bring social change through political action is a marathon, not a sprint. No matter what happens on November 8, we will not restore America to repentance or moral renewal in a single election or a single generation. It will take my entire lifetime and perhaps yours as well.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">C</span>onsider the cause for civil rights. The first slaves arrived on this continent in 1619. They did not gain their freedom until 1865, and even then their rights were violated by segregation, the doctrine of separate but equal, and what historian C. Vann Woodward called “the strange career of Jim Crow.” The NAACP was founded in 1909. But it was not until 1964 and 1965 that equal accommodations and voting rights became federal law. That struggle spanned over three centuries, and it is still not over today.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>he same was true of social reform movements from suffrage to temperance to progressivism.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>he pro-family, religious conservative movement is only about 40 years old. We are not even in adolescence in terms of the maturation of our movement. We have much to learn, much to do, and much more to share about who we are, what we believe, and our aspirations for American society.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">F</span><b><i>ourth, we must pray.</i></b> The Bible commands us to pray for those who are in authority, not just for those who share our political views. Paul exhorted that “prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks” be made for “kings and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” (1 Timothy 2:2) He wrote this at a time when the bloody and venal Nero was Caesar. “All those in authority” literally means “all”---liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat. Contrast the relative quietude, peace, and prosperity that America has enjoyed with the civil unrest, bloodshed, ethnic strife, and general unrest of the rest of the world and ask yourself if our obedience to pray and intercede for all our leaders has not played some role in the success of the American experiment in self-government.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span><b>braham Lincoln</b> said, <i>“I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”</i> That is true of not only our current president, but his successor, whoever that may be. Let us pledge to always pray for their protection, their wisdom, and the counsel of their advisors.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">N</span>ow, a final word about 2016. On the issues that matter most to the Christian community, the differences are quite clear, they are dramatic, and they are undeniable.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">O</span>n the issue of the sanctity of innocent human life, Donald Trump has pledged to protect life from conception to natural death, and he is running on the most pro-life platform in the modern history of the Republican party. Hillary Clinton has vowed to do all she can to insure that Roe v. Wade, which imposed the most liberal abortion regime in the Western world on all 50 states, remains the law of the land.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span>he is the first presidential candidate ever be endorsed in a primary by Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the country, and she is the first candidate in 40 years to shatter the bipartisan consensus that taxpayer funds should not be used to take unborn life by calling for repeal of the Hyde Amendment. Doing so would allow federal taxpayer funds to be used for the first time to pay for elective abortions under the Medicaid program. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, this would result in hundreds of thousands of additional abortions over the next decade. These are unborn children who will never know what it means to be held by a loving parent, to be cherished and valued, and to be welcomed into the world.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span>n a speech last year, Hillary Clinton even said that in order to guarantee access to abortion on demand, <i>“Deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”</i> Imagine an individual aspiring to our nation’s highest office arguing that religious beliefs must be adapted to allow for the taking of life made in God’s image. This is open hostility to faith in advance of a political agenda, pure and simple.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">O</span>n the issue of religious freedom, Donald Trump supports the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case giving closely-held businesses and corporations the right to reflect the deeply held religious beliefs of their founders. Hillary Clinton criticized the decision. <u>Trump also is the first candidate of either party to call for the repeal of the Johnson Amendment, an amendment to the tax code inserted by then-Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson that prohibited all political speech by churches. This provision has been used by the IRS to intimidate, harass, silence, and persecute churches and ministries for six decades, violating the First Amendment right to political speech of millions of Americans.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">O</span>n the issue of judges, Donald Trump has released a list of 20 outstanding conservative jurists who would likely form the top candidates to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, as well as fill future vacancies. No nominee of either party has ever released such a list prior to the election. Hillary Clinton has said that the only people she would even consider for the Supreme Court are those who agree that Roe v. Wade is settled law. She reiterated that position last night in the televised debate.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span>nd finally, Donald Trump opposes the Iran nuclear deal, which would allow the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world to keep its uranium enrichment program and eventually obtain weapons of mass destruction. This is the bloodiest and most dangerous regime in the bloodiest and most dangerous region of the world, a regime that funds and trains the command structure of Hamas, bankrolls Hezbollah, props up <b>Bashar el Assad</b>’s bloody regime in Syria, which has killed over 400,000 innocents, and funded militias that killed U.S. soldiers in Iraq. I believe this agreement poses an existential threat to the survival of Israel. Hillary Clinton not only supported it, she helped to negotiate it. Donald Trump promises to revisit the agreement as president. As a supporter of Israel’s right to exist, I want a president who will revise, amend, or strictly enforce this agreement in a way that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">O</span>n these issues, as well as taxes, the repeal of Obamacare, education reform and school choice, the redefinition of marriage, and rebuilding our hollowed-out military, the contrast is stark and undeniable. The choice is clear. In my view a third party or write-in candidate is simply not a viable option. And I thought that before Gary Johnson said he had no idea what Aleppo was.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">L</span>et me close by quoting the prophet <b>Isaiah</b>, who faced even darker and direr times in ancient Israel. Surrounded by political leaders who were corrupt and unfaithful, he still offered a vision for Israel filled with hope:
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<br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">M</span><span style="color: #7f6000;"><i>ake ready the way of the Lord
</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #7f6000;"><i>Make His paths straight
</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #7f6000;"><i>Every valley will be filled
</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #7f6000;"><i>Every mountain and hill brought low
</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #7f6000;"><i>The crooked will become straight
</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #7f6000;"><i>And the rough roads smooth
</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #7f6000;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="color: #7f6000;"><i>And all flesh will see the salvation of God
</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span>f we will see our citizenship as means to witness for our faith, to stand for the right and oppose evil in its many ugly forms, and not just a way to advance our own partisan or personal preferences, then Isaiah’s words can become our prayer, it can lead us to the noble deeds of moral actions, and then with God's help we can heal our land and restore America to greatness. Thank you, and God bless you.
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/Q37UTP" title="Graham_web"><img alt="Graham_web" height="250" src="https://c7.staticflickr.com/9/8409/29671685294_807242cbb9.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Billy Graham Evangelistic Association Photo.</span></i>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/Z4p738" title="IMG_6636"><img alt="IMG_6636" height="500" src="https://c3.staticflickr.com/6/5802/30001395210_19e7c8435c.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/o7E139" title="IMG_6633"><img alt="IMG_6633" height="500" src="https://c6.staticflickr.com/9/8131/30212341541_636edea9ae.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/21260371@N02/zQ1tb0" title="IMG_6627"><img alt="IMG_6627" height="500" src="https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5736/30212343081_7495d20644.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Praying for our nation in Richmond, Virginia.
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">The America I Love</span>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/21260371@N02/30214781291/in/photostream/" title="Richmond, Light and Glass"><img alt="Richmond, Light and Glass" height="500" src="https://c4.staticflickr.com/9/8132/30214781291_c9e7753019.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/21260371@N02/30300567295/in/photostream/" title="Richmond, Light and Glass"><img alt="Richmond, Light and Glass" height="500" src="https://c8.staticflickr.com/9/8547/30300567295_22a3e58dab.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/21260371@N02/30214779321/in/photostream/" title="Richmond, Light and Glass"><img alt="Richmond, Light and Glass" height="500" src="https://c2.staticflickr.com/9/8548/30214779321_43b2ea6c65.jpg" width="375" /></a>
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<i>Light and Glass, Richmond,Virginia</i>.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://kirchmanassociates.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html" target="blank" title="Banner"><img alt="Banner" height="68" src="https://c7.staticflickr.com/9/8582/28071097790_793a17c534.jpg" width="375" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-12359044099799255452017-10-25T21:30:00.001-04:002017-10-25T21:30:35.589-04:00Hated itThe Republican Standard<a href="https://therepublicanstandard.com/northam-politicizes-charlottesville-desperate-last-minute-gamble/"> saw</a> the new Democratic campaign mailer.<br />
Not impressed at all.<br />
And finds <a href="http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/government-politics/virginia-democrats-link-gillespie-and-trump-to-white-nationalist-hate/article_9af2dd4f-a5a1-5949-bf9e-9305dbf4bcbb.html">friends</a> to agree.<br />
<div class="subscriber-preview">
<em>After crying foul for weeks over the severity of Republican gubernatorial nominee Ed Gillespie’s attack ads, Virginia Democrats have responded with a harsh mailer of their own that connects Gillespie and President Donald Trump to the string of white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville.</em></div>
<div class="subscriber-preview">
<em>In the mail ad that surfaced Tuesday, images of Trump and Gillespie are superimposed above a photo of torch-wielding white nationalists and a message saying Virginians have an opportunity to “stand up to hate” in the election that’s now less than two weeks away.</em></div>
Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-80110653441472200612017-07-25T20:16:00.000-04:002017-07-25T20:16:38.689-04:00Let the polls beginMonmouth has a poll showing a 44-44 tie in the race for governor.<br />
Blue Virginia tries to <a href="http://bluevirginia.us/2017/07/well-summer-polls-predicted-final-virginia-governors-race-results">analyze</a>, and inadvertently boosts the Republican side.<br />
In 2009 and 2013, polls in the summer gave Democrats more support than they received election day.<br />
Democrats can hope President Trump will drag Republicans down.<br />
What's their plan if the economy boosts Republicans up?Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-51409754116023230042017-01-11T06:06:00.000-05:002017-01-11T06:06:06.630-05:00Peake angstDemocrats held out hope of pulling an upset in the <a href="http://results.elections.virginia.gov/vaelections/2017%20January%20GA%20Specials/Site/Member%20Senate%20of%20Virginia%20(022).html">special election</a> in Senate District 22.<br />
Maybe Republicans would split between the two candidates.<br />
Maybe Democrat Ryant Washington would fit the district and give his party a 20th seat - deadlocking the Senate and giving Democrats a tiebreaker this session.<br />
A Democratic win Tuesday would slow Republican momentum prior to Donald Trump's inauguration.<br />
Didn't happen.<br />
Washington formerly was Fluvanna County Sheriff.<br />
But he only won the county by 77 votes.<br />
Not enough to help elsewhere in the district.<br />
Republicans roll on.Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-67693409139986249912017-01-07T19:40:00.001-05:002017-01-07T19:40:27.138-05:00The race is onThe 2017 gubernatorial election just got more <a href="https://bearingdrift.com/2017/01/05/official-tom-perriello-running-governor/">exciting</a> with Tom Perriello's announcement of his bid for the Democratic nomination.<br />
And much better for Republicans.<br />
<em>First, it creates instant disunity in the Democratic Party, and sets up a difficult fight – something Democrats really haven’t had for a while when it comes to statewide offices. McAuliffe ran unopposed in 2013, and Creigh Deeds easily defeated both other candidates in 2009 by close to 25%. Democrats have not had a truly contested Democratic primary for governor in decades. There’s clearly a lot of bad blood in the party after the national loss in 2016, even if Virginia Democrats can crow that they won the state for Hillary Clinton. Second, it’s important to remember that Republicans have beaten Perriello before in a straight up fight, which isn’t true about Ralph Northam – who has defeated one Republican incumbent and has never lost a race. Democrats can’t claim Perriello lost in 2010 because of redistricting, because the district was the same one that he won in 2008 on President Obama’s coattails. He was an energetic supporter of Obamacare, cap and trade and other liberal policies, and it was that support that cost him his job in 2010. Those stances haven’t aged well. Finally, and most important in my opinion, having a legitimately contested Democratic primary on the same day as the Republican primary will reduce the risk of crossover voting by Democrats, so the expected charges that could fly in GOP nominating fights about Democratic interference will be nullified. The GOP races will be straight up, decided by Republicans alone.</em>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-26989644898452334592016-07-22T19:34:00.001-04:002016-07-22T19:34:07.631-04:00Whitest white boy who can be foundDaTech Guy <a href="http://datechguyblog.com/2016/07/22/why-hillary-clintons-will-be-a-white-male/">agrees</a> with those thinking Tim Kaine will be the vice presidential pick for Hillary Clinton.<br />
<em>Bottom line, the voters that Clinton are most worried about are White working class and the states she are most worried about are ones where those folks will decide.</em><br />
<em>That’s why no matter what anyone else tell you, the Hillary Clinton VP pick will the whitest white boy who can be found and that’s why the smart money is on Kaine.</em>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-67762908919649012342016-05-28T08:27:00.001-04:002016-05-28T08:27:42.759-04:00CaughtPowerline features a nice cartoon about our governor.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEholj2FwF5ejjWq1hRcTUPRO8eplakuq2fz9TGS-0NChjRM8zc33r4MNNGkRe16SKQZZfjV_1Z4_-Y2B_pxpqhAuVWvLqZXtV16pBA7TeObC3Vo8Z0mKB0wXvCVkpvTSwKHxB5JCnY6Lw/s1600/McAuloiffe-Cookies-copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEholj2FwF5ejjWq1hRcTUPRO8eplakuq2fz9TGS-0NChjRM8zc33r4MNNGkRe16SKQZZfjV_1Z4_-Y2B_pxpqhAuVWvLqZXtV16pBA7TeObC3Vo8Z0mKB0wXvCVkpvTSwKHxB5JCnY6Lw/s320/McAuloiffe-Cookies-copy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-45887928950426364592015-05-23T11:49:00.003-04:002015-05-23T11:49:57.002-04:00On the campaign trailIt's a few days until the primary, but <a href="http://www.timmartinforca.com/">Tim Martin</a> is thinking about November. <br />
He was campaigning in Teaverton Saturday in his run for Augusta County Commonwealth's Attorney.<br />
Lots of door to knock on and people to meet until Election Day.Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-87014436660136724052014-10-10T05:47:00.000-04:002014-10-10T05:47:04.343-04:00Out of the moneyThe electoral wave can build when one side recedes from the field.<br />
Like the Democrats in Northern Virginia's <a href="http://atr.rollcall.com/democrats-cut-bait-in-virginia-to-save-california-hosue-seat/">10th district</a>.<br />
<em>The sum of the DCCC’s cancellation in Virginia’s 10th District was $2.8 million, according to the source. Democrats were on the offensive in the open-seat race to replace retiring Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va.</em>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-79760174927974894772014-06-10T20:37:00.001-04:002014-06-10T20:38:30.154-04:00Cantor deportedIt will take days to digest this <a href="http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/190047/">result</a> - Rep. Eric Cantor <a href="http://atr.rollcall.com/eric-cantor-loses-primary-in-massive-upset/?dcz=">lost</a> his primary battle.<br />
Money can't buy happiness - or a primary victory.Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-66580051805969577632014-02-13T20:20:00.003-05:002014-02-13T20:20:47.995-05:00The tweet wasn't sweetTwitchy highlights a <a href="http://twitchy.com/2014/02/13/busted-sen-mark-warner-deletes-callous-gop-bashing-winter-storm-tweet-blames-staff-fail/">tweet</a> send out on Senator Mark Warner's feed - which was deleted after 26 seconds.<br />
But that wasn't fast enough.<br />
Maybe if the Senator and his staff spent more time shoveling the walk and less with bad tweets.Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-27050282803280844042014-02-11T22:50:00.003-05:002014-02-11T22:50:38.361-05:00State of emergencyGov. McAuliffe has declared a state of emergency in advance of Wednesday night's snowstorm.<br />
I declared a state of emergency when he won the election in November.Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650695002611813844.post-61916521814177500362014-01-09T17:52:00.000-05:002014-01-09T17:52:01.549-05:00End of the McDonnell disasterNRO's Jim Geraghty <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367995/failure-gops-class-2009-jim-geraghty">bids farewell</a> to Bob McDonnell's troubled tenure.<br />
<em>We’ve become blasé about governors and presidents inviting donors to stay in their mansions or the Lincoln Bedroom. But the Commonwealth of Virginia does not provide its governor a mansion so that he can help donors sell their products.</em>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13519999710881274211noreply@blogger.com0