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Truth

3/28/2021

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I cannot now the knowns unknow,
Or make myself from truth estranged
As if it matters not. I know
The truth has left me not unchanged;
The change has made me stranger so.
I know it makes me look deranged.
But if de-ranged, then boundlessly
The Truth is bound to set me free.
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Light II

3/22/2021

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Light is the eternality of God
Accommodating and approximating
The limits of our finitude;
It is the originator of time
Apart from which there would not be
Any shadow due to change
And in which there is no change 
Or shadow thereof;
It is the truest dimension
As the primordial producer of
The danced duet of space and time;
Light is and God is Light,
In whom no darkness dwells,
Nor can dwell, lest there be no stable nexus
Of the God of Light with man,
And thus no worthy image to be borne or seen;
Light is that which drives away the dark
And draws us from the dark in us,
Intent not merely on our transformation
But on transfiguration as its glory lifts us up
From one degree unto another,
Making us as resolute and pure
As the first Photon of God,
Perfected by holy luminosity so that
WE ARE as I AM,
Eternalized by the Eternal,
Glorified by the King of Glory,
Infinitized by the Infinite:
     Awake, O Sleeper, rise and
     Let Christ shine on you.

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Jordan Peterson on Personal responsibility

3/19/2021

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Peterson says:

How could the world be freed from the terrible dilemma of conflict, on the one hand, and psychological and social dissolution, on the other? The answer was this: through the elevation and development of the individual, and through the willingness of everyone to shoulder the burden of Being and to take the heroic path. We must each adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society, and the world. We must each tell the truth and repair what is in disrepair and break down and recreate what is old and outdated. It is in this manner that we can and must reduce the suffering that poisons the world. It's asking a lot. It's asking everything. But the alternative--the horror of authoritarian belief, the chaos of the collapsed state, the tragic catastrophe of the unbridled natural world, the existential angst and weakness of the purposeless individual--is clearly worse.

On the next page, he writes:

Perhaps, if we lived properly, we wouldn't have to turn to totalitarian certainty to shield ourselves from the knowledge of our own insufficiency and ignorance. Perhaps we would come to avoid those pathways to Hell--and we have seen in the terrible twentieth century just how real Hell can be.

12 Rules for Life. Toronto: Random House Canada. 2018, p. xxxiii-xxxiv.
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Wendell Berry on work/home balance

3/15/2021

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Berry painfully acknowledges:

One would like, one longs in fact, to be perfect family  man and a perfect workman. And one suffers from the inevitable conflicts. But whatever one does, one is not going to be perfect at either, and it is better to suffer the imperfection of both than to gamble the total failure of one against an illusory hope of perfection in the other.

"The Specialization of Poetry" in Standing by Words: Essays. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint. 1983, p. 22.
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Francis Schaeffer on Moral Relativism

3/13/2021

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Schaeffer says:

We in the West must understand that it is not only Iron Curtain countries who operate on the basis of relative morality. Now the West does, too. The materialist world-view has dominated the thinking of the West just as much. Therefore we can expect to see the same inhumanity here, just as Solzhenitsyn has warned. We must not sit back and think, It could never happen here. Worse still, we must not be confused into thinking the issue is principally or only military or economic power. The issue is more subtle, more immediate, a cancer like growth which is in our midst right now – the materialist philosophy which underlies the Western humanistic world-view. Marx may have proposed an economic system different from our own, but we have shared his basic world-view.

Whatever Happened to the Human Race? in vol. 5 of The Complete Works of Francis A Schaeffer: A Christian View of the West. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books. 1982, p. 368.
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Francis Schaeffer on Downhill Cultural Momentum

3/12/2021

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Schaeffer writes:

We view what we are experiencing now as a critical situation which can accelerate month by month until the downhill momentum cannot be arrested. Times of monstrous inhumanity do not come about all at once; they are slipped into gradually. Often those who use certain emotional phrases or high-sounding moral tones about "freedom of the individual" and appeal to "rights" do not even know what they are starting. They see only some isolated condition they want to accomplish, but have not considered soberly the overall direction in which things are moving. At some later point they want to go backwards. But then it is too late. Mankind's selfishness and greed can be counted on to widen every breach, exploiting each to the fullest for selfish purposes.

Whatever Happened to the Human Race? in vol. 5 of The Complete Works of Francis A Schaeffer: A Christian View of the West. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books. 1982, p. 345.
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Seed

3/12/2021

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A seed has fallen, dead, in earth entombed
Until by resurrection light exhumed.
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New Life

3/11/2021

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Up from the land, new life again
Unfolds from vernal meristem;
Yet I, still grieving all I've lost,
Have soul like tundra permafrost:
In need of light and heat to melt
Away the ice that winter dealt
My soul, a greater light from source
That circuits past our heavens' course;
In need of light and heat to thaw
My heart of grief and winter's law
Of cold, a greater heat from high
Above the Sun to warm my eye.
I land my eye on budding tree
To ask the Light to land on me,
To ask its Heat to soften me,
That I might grow from dark and cold
To let new life in me unfold.
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Psalm 54:1-5 (CSB)

3/8/2021

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God, save me by your name,
and vindicate me by your might!
God, hear my prayer;
listen to the words from my mouth.
For strangers rise up against me,
and violent men intend to kill me.
They do not let God guide them.

God is my helper;
the Lord is the sustainer of my life.
He will repay my adversaries
     for their evil.
Because of your faithfulness,
     annihilate them.
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J. I. Packer on evangelism

3/8/2021

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Packer says:

Unconcern and inaction with regard to evangelism are always...inexcusable. And the doctrine of divine sovereignty would be grossly misapplied if we should invoke it in such a way as to lessen the urgency, and immediacy, and priority, and binding constraint, of the evangelistic imperative. No revealed truth may be invoked to extenuate sin. God did not teach us the reality of his rule in order to give us an excuse for neglecting his orders.

Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books. 2008, p. 41.
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    writer

    Michael Price - I am a husband, father, poet, and science teacher at a classical Christian school in Memphis, TN. I have three volumes of poetry.

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    Dissent with Modification: Poems Against COVIDism, Darwinism, and Wokeism


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