A man cannot catch faith like a cold or a thief. We cannot produce faith. We cannot give faith away. Only God understands man. “Do you believe this?” Man alone trusts God. “Do you believe this?” No matter how accurate factually, any claim to know risk-free truth is subjectively false. The soul possessed of certainty of its own making by having met its own required specifications self-mandated as grounds for being persuaded is in greater danger than the soul suffering the agonies of doubt. Nevertheless, whatever is not of faith is sin.

Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth (Psalm 46:10). “Do you believe this?”

Jesus said unto the twelve, “Will ye also go away?” Then Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God (John 6:67-69).”

Jesus said unto her, “I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” She saith unto him, “Yea, Lord; I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, who should come into the world (John 11:25-27).”

Since anything settled must be paid in full, from whence our assurance of those things for which we hope? What convincing argument? What demonstration of sufficient evidence for proof? What source for the proving, what benchmark put to the test? The promises and instructions of God, the Scriptures, given by inspiration of God, spoken in the analytical inflections of life: fact, wish and command.

Those who have an ear, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Matthew 13:44.

—————————————————————-

[1] Johann Georg Hamann, “An Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, 4/27/1787,” in Johann Georg Hamann, Eine Auswahl aus seinen Schriften, Entkleidung und Verklärung, ed. by Martin Seils (Wuppertal: R. Brockhaus Verlag, 1987), p. 492. Translated by the montage listener.

having seen our Lord transfigured,

and watching the resurrected Lord

ascend to heaven

until a cloud took Him out of his sight,

and then later,

falling as though dead at the feet of our Lord

glorified –

whose eyes burn like a flame of fire,

and whose voice speaks like the roar of many waters,

and from whose mouth is drawn a sharp two-edged sword,

and whose face glows incandescent like the sun shining,

its

full strength expending –

if after seeing all these things,

the beloved Apostle, nonetheless,

lacks powers of discernment sufficient for distinguishing

creation from Creator,

so worshiping an angel as if serving

the creature rather than the Creator,

twice (Revelation 19:10, 22:8);

if he who heard,

beheld with his own eyes and

handled with his own hands the Word of Life,

if he behaved like a man disqualified, then,

what hope is there for me?

Who shields me from being deceived, or behaving as one self-deceived? Who delivers me from the worst kind of lie? Who frees me from my own futility? Who snatches me out of the fire? Who keeps me from becoming a fool, exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and summer tanagers, opossums and northern black racers, the shifting pastiches of my likings and wishes, exchanging the truth about God for a lie and worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever and ever? Who forgives me for my bending the knee to the idol greed? Who breaks me from my consuming, dishonorable passions contrary to nature and the work of the law written in me?  Who leads me away from all that comes easy to me that is earthly, unspiritual, and demonic? Who transforms this debased mind, this hidden, unbidden me, who drives me to do the very thing I do not wish? Who will empty me of all manner of unrighteousness, envy, murder, strife, and maliciousness? Who will prevent me, the evildoer, from doing evil? Who cleanses me of being filthy, a gossip, slanderer, hater of God and lover of self, ungrateful, unholy, and boastful, an inventor of evil, repeatedly disobeying my parents although they are dead? Who gives me rest, the coveter, who wants all things or nothing at all as rivals of God or just in jest? Who saves me; the foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless approver of whoever practices these things…as long as they do not cross me?

Oh Father in heaven, who has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, be merciful to us.  We are weak of flesh and conscience.  We easily slip away from your liberty to be entangled again to a yoke of burden and bondage.  Our one hope is looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.  Our hope is fixed on Him, your Son, to be like Him when He appears, because we shall see Him as He is, the whole fullness of Deity in bodily form, born of a virgin, full of grace and truth, the descendent of David who was pierced for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures to be received up in glory, and will judge the living and the dead at His appearing.

We believe this hope in Him purifies us just as He is pure and cannot disappoint, because your love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us. Your Holy Spirit speaks to the inner most depth of our hearts, He comforts us, assuring us we are your children with whom you share beatific treasures — for everything you give your Son is ours too. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs — heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Christ in order that we may also be glorified with Him.  Oh Father of spirits of all flesh of men, who yearns jealously over the spirit you have made to dwell in us, your eternal word is spirit and life.  Grant we might be led by the Spirit of your Son, whom you sent into our hearts crying, “Abba!  Father!”  Hear the voice of your Son whenever you hear us so cry, for we believe the Spirit that testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.  We believe your testimony that you have borne concerning your Son.  We believe you gave us eternal life, and this life is in your Son.  We want to know Him who is true with the understanding He has given us, for we are in Him who is true, in your Son Jesus Christ.  He is the true God and eternal life.  Father, deliver us from evil that we might keep ourselves from idols.      

Let me so live Lord,

the sinner justified by faith in Christ,

a saint standing in your grace,

dying for the unfading wreath of glory and

the suffering and

the patient endurance you choose to share

by uniting all things in Christ,

things in heaven and things on earth,

that the Head of Christ may be all in all.

If we fail to see ourselves before God in Christ, then we cannot see one another as God sees us.  If we fail to believe the Spirit of Christ cries, “Abba, Father” with us, then we cannot hear one another as God hears us.  Oh Lord, please open our eyes that we may so see!  Those whom you have given ears to hear fill with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit we may abound in hope for the redemption of our bodies.  In this hope we were saved.  We do not see this hope, nevertheless, we eagerly wait for it with patience even while groaning inwardly, confident the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  We do not know what to pray for as we ought, nevertheless, in prayer we trust in and rely upon what we cannot hear — the Spirit Himself interceding for us with groanings too deep for words.

This question requires answering with every new beginning in our lives, in the life of a nation and in the life of all humankind in those moments when at wits’ end we step out from the mental death of shame and defeat back into the life God has given us so we may feel our way toward Him, seek after Him and find Him, again. 

Who believes we can do this?  Who makes us believable again? Upon whose resources do we rely to live beyond ourselves to be ourselves again? Who do we want to be? Who among us tires of being the freedom fighter fighting for a noble cause, or being the systematic inquisitor and finder of all causes? Who wants to see and act like the compassionate Samaritan, even if it means being branded a traitor or being dismissed a silly dreamer? Who speaks out of the hour’s opportunity and need, even if it means being made a martyr? Who will be the weak man or unnoticed woman who can be the strength of God when the need of another is great?[i]

The One among us who believes in us, who believes, “Every soul is the next sentence of God”[ii] — He is for us. He speaks for us. He is holy and blameless, and unstained by sin. He lives forever to plead with God on our behalf. He is Lord over all. He alone was born that night in Bethlehem, to be found by shepherds, a baby lying in a manger, wrapped snugly in strips of common cloth. He alone glorifies God in the highest heaven. He alone will bring peace on earth and goodwill among the Jews and the nations. 

Who is this Savior? Even apart from the Spirit that reveals everything, the living Jesus, the Jesus of the four Gospels and Giver of history remains most plausibly, the most single-mindedly sincere and spontaneously, the most authentic man ever to have embraced life through death. In Him alone is the Father well pleased. We should listen to Him. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame.”

Make it a resolution this year to pray that your shame be made full without fear or hardness of heart. Pray for your unconditional defeat, that the deceit of self-sufficiency be exposed and its desire for you be completely undone. Pray the miracle of His sorrow living and working within you changes your mind about Him.  Pray He removes the one thing in your life that keeps you from turning to Him. Pray you never turn away from daily reliance on Him.  Then, like Job did for his friends, pray for us, that He lets us come to our senses; who still feed at the trough of petty victories. Pray He frees us of our vanity, breaks us of our idolatry, and runs with arms open to receive us as His own, as we approach Him broken, heads bowed, ashamed and coming home to Him in utter defeat, having heard Him cry out to us by name, with a loud voice saying, “Come out!”

Lord, grant we might in behalf of one another offer up prayers of GOLD:

Glory, Obedience, Loyalty, Deliverance!

May our lives radiate Your glory in the power of the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Grant us obedience from the heart to that standard of teaching to which You have commended us, so that as Your messengers we may be competent, equipped with sound doctrine for every good work and for the healthy growth and godly governance of the church.
Grant us loyalty to our first love, Jesus Christ, and to the name He has given us.
And finally Father, allow deliverance from whatever keeps us from living the gift of eternal life, which You have given us through faith in our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

———————————————
notes
[1] Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Ja und Nein, Auto-Biographische Fragmente, ed. by Georg Müller (Heidelberg: Verlag Lambert Schneider, 1968), p.81, paraphrases emmeshed in first two paragraphs, pp. 82-83.
[ii] Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, “Der Endgültige Mensch,” in Die Sprache des Menschengeschlechts, vol. 1 (Heidelberg: Verlag Lambert Schneider, 1963), p. 144.
Every academic or public library should have the collected works of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy now available on DVD. Go to http://www.argobooks.org/collected/index.html for aquisition information. The collection is reasonably priced, thus easily obtainable for individual purchase.

Hold your love ones close. If for whatever reason — without or within — you find yourself alone, know you are dearly loved. Hold to the good given you. Be thankful for the good you’ve given. Rejoice over being a blessing to others! No matter what the scars try to show you or what the shadows try to hide from you, please believe there’s more good coming. Take away the fears and the uncertainty. Take away the greed and lust. Take away the anger and shame. Take away what’s passing away anyways and there remains the saying first spoken that night by an angel to shepherds in their fields.

Moreover, when the shepherds saw the baby lying in a manger, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.

“How shall we know this?

Such a thing does not fit in with all that ever happens around here.

The sign to which they bear witness is foolish.

Everyone knows the Christ, our Messiah, God’s anointed one greater than even Caesar, would never be born in a manger.”

Nevertheless, Mary treasured the saying. She gathered all that she already had heard to set these things around this one saying. She remembered Zacharias being struck dumb, and then the prophecy he proclaimed. She remembered Elisabeth’s greeting. She remembered the angel Gabriel telling her she would bear a son called the Son of the Most High. She remembered Joseph telling her of his dream. She remembered the seven-hundred year promise. She remembered there was no room for them in the inn, nor could they find a mid-wife to help her in her appointed time. And now there he lies, asleep in the manger. What was it the shepherds told her? What was it the angel said?

“Fear not; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy that will be for all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

She looked upon her son. The word of old spoke to her. “And He shall stand and shepherd His flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord His God. And they shall dwell secure, for now He shall be great to the ends of the earth. And He shall be their peace.” The Spirit awakened her innermost being to the truth of the angel’s saying. Something stirred in her soul deeper than a mother’s love. She was the first from among the fallen to know! She rose up from resting while He was sleeping. She knelt before the manger. She bowed her head. She whispered, “Jesus is Lord.” She worshipped her first born. She worshipped her Lord, the Word, God almighty, who became flesh to dwell among us. She worshipped her Savior. It was all beyond her. Filled with the peace of God surpassing all understanding, she believed, rejoicing and abounding in hope. I trust you too worship Him this Christmas night. May God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. May His grace be with all who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Theophanes the Cretan, Stavronikita Monastery, Athos, Greece (1546)

Heroic-Warrior,

Èlite-Nobilis,

Fanciful, ‘Harmless’ and

Profitable View: 

Tolkien-Boyens-Jackson-Hill-Theoden:  “Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like wind in the meadow. The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow. How did it come to this?”  Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000155/quotes

How the Titular Individual

Came to Remain in the West,

Cued through a Biblical Testimony 

As Ridiculous Then as it is Now still New:

A certain man upon entering as a vision the sleep of the apostle Paul cried, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately Silas and the others sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called them to preach the Gospel to them. Who would have us think like this to believe something like that? Acts 16:6, 7.

“Sing Silas, sing!”

A certain woman named Lydia sells purple fabrics. A lying spirit speaks through a slave girl to usurp truth’s rightful authority. Owners, Romans, the crowd and magistrates are stirred into unlawful action. And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.

“Sing Silas, sing!”

And the prisoners were listening to them.

“Sing Silas, sing!

Don’t look at the wind! The Lord is not in the wind, or the earthquake or the fire. For I have seen him, this man of Macedonia, in a vision. He who fastened our feet in these stocks is the man who cried out, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’”

Do we understand? Will we listen? The man didn’t say, “me.”   The Sower prepared the good soil of his heart for receiving the word of God.  He said, “us”! Nonetheless, for yielding a crop a hundredfold he asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

So in the telling of the whole tale only one man from Macedonia, the jailer, is referred to in the singular.

Lord,

grant that

the anointing that

teaches us about everything

keeps us

willing to be rightly taught. 

Whatever might be

the injustice,

the storm,

the earthquake or

the fire

that seeks to

harm us,

catch us,

crush us or

consume us,

may our fellow prisoners hear us 

praying and singing hymns to God.

But what about the individual de jure? 

How did the statutory individual come to be? 

Please accept my sincerest apologies,

The closing of the loop took me elleswher.

Pick up the Bible to find this hinge

story in determining global history, and,

read it for yourself? 

Acts 16:6-40.

(Paul Klee’s, Angulus Novus, 1920)

“There is a picture by Klee called, Angelus Novus. It portrays an angel that appears as if it were about to distance itself from something upon which it gazes. It stares wide-eyed, its mouth gapes open and its wings are outstretched. So must the angel of history appear. It faces the past. Where to us seems a chain of events, it sees a single catastrophe, which heaps up rubble upon rubble and hurls it before its feet. The angel would like to linger, awaken the dead, and piece the broken back together. But a storm from paradise blows this way, it has gotten entangled in the angel’s wings and is so strong the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly drives the angel into the future, to which it turns its back, while the pile of rubble before it heaps up to the high heavens. That which we name progress, is this storm.”

(Walter Benjamin, Über den Begriff der Geschichte, Thesis #9, 1940, mcduffee trans.)

In fact,

Unlike the military command,

“Eyes, RIGHT,”

The figure eyes left.

“Ready, FRONT!”

Never passing

Never becoming

A concept

An ornament

Or a crime

Loathe to ravage

Unfit to restore

Helpless before the horror

Created to adore

“What watch?”
Late watch!
“Such much?”
Nonstop!
Set the stage!
Time for Outrage!
Empört Euch!
Break cool!
Break fast!
Break rule!

Indignez-vous!

Is this the love the floods cannot Drown,                                                                                                                                                            Free of consequence or flaw,
Hatred without violence?
Justice without law?
Ask the angel of history bug-eyed
Before the rubble and the storm
The color of its skin is money
Small and ugly is its form

Get auratic perception,

Get halcyon vision,

Forget oblivion.

Get religion.

Without the “Biblical” twist –

Hessel the son of Sartre says get this

TO CREATE IS TO RESIST.
TO RESIST IS TO CREATE.

Dowse the spirit

Suppress complaint

In haste out flank history

Or get erased

Occupy what can be taken

Organize what will be shaken

Rage! Curse! Strike! Unite!

Struggle! Plot! Protest! Fight!

Learn from Him who warns from heaven

This storm is the warning!

Enter Turrell’s twilight arch
Get mythed
Get a fresh start
Make life performance art

“Right oblique, MARCH!”

White Album number nine
Watch Psalm Two in live time
Never before this way seen
Full-HD Plasma-TV

Widescreen

selāh

According to the eternal purpose that God has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, the church now makes known His manifold wisdom to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.  Although no one is adequate for this undertaking, all of us are eligible for just such an impossible task through the Son who came to both do and establish the Father’s will.  Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, to destroy the works of the devil, to abolish death and bring life and immortality to light through the Gospel.  He ransomed us from the power of hell.  By His precious blood He released us from the vain emptiness of life in this world, which we would have bequeathed to those who came after us as surely as we received it from those who brought us into it.   As a sign that this Jesus, descendent of David, is our Savior the angel said shepherds would find him as a newborn baby lying in a manger. This same Jesus was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by His resurrection from the dead.  

The Bible teaches we receive the eternal Spirit through whom Christ offered Himself by hearing with faith the word of Christ from which faith comes.  There is nothing hypothetical about God’s love for us.  He shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Therefore, given that in the Gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, beginning and ending in faith, the one who by faith is righteous shall live.  As it is written, “The proud one congratulates his soul, his soul is puffed up, it is not right within him; but the righteous shall live by faith.”  What we could not do ourselves God has done for us.  By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a sin offering, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that whatever He righteously requires might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.  Since the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to our mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in us. 

Rather than rest our souls upon this “kind of nonexperimentally grounded authority (Richard Eldridge, The Persistence of Romanticism, p. 128)we prefer the contract historically developed in the West, written on paper made from “Rightful Reason” with ink of “kindred wit.”   We pretend the wealth of this world belongs to us, to which we “so watchfully cling (William Langland).”  We presume to guarantee in lawful society conviction attends convenience by preventing personal contrition from disrupting the general welfare of pleasure owed others.  The reductionist mood disorder of the day we call science takes us up into a swelling cloud of information, an expanding mass of our own making, afloat in an atmosphere of assumptions, a fog filled with particles of correlation, the density of which persuades us “that understanding a system’s constituent parts means we also understand the causes within the system (Wired, Jan 2012, p. 105)”; as if producing data was our end in life and making open-ended statements about creation at second-hand was our best bet for outliving those who already died before us.  This “useless information” that is “supposed to fire my imagination (Rolling Stones, ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,’ 1965)” applied to history as social commentary by a contemporary educator evaluating the voice of a dead literary critic sounds like this: 

“In his essay ‘On the Critique of Violence’ (1921), Benjamin presents the positive utopian framework of his thought. Principally, he did not reject political violence, but analyzed its status and its foundations within the pessimistic context. Accordingly, the struggle between the divine and the mythical serves as the cornerstone for the political struggle and necessarily collides with the law. The law, instead of implementing justice, represents the violence which instituted the law in the first place. However, Benjamin implicitly abandoned the naive revolutionary demand for justice, which is satisfied simply by replacing the present laws with others conceived as being more just. Such a demand appears as a mythical, violent contention, opposing the divine one.

“The pessimistic dimension in Benjamin’s thought is revealed in his claim that the divine alone enables us to speak of ‘justice’. Since there is no place in (secular) history for this dimension – sometimes referred to as ‘messianic’ – his utopianism strongly suggests a transformation of the utopian project. Real change is now conceived as possible only by the overthrow of history. From this perspective, each revolutionary effort to realize utopia – with which he explicitly identifies – is revealed as a vanity of the mythic force that confronts the messianic.” (Ilan Gur-Ze’ev, “Walter Benjamin and Max Horkheimer: From utopia to redemption,” read from http://construct.haifa.ac.il/~ilangz/Utopia4.html.)

Reading the Bible cuts through the fog of law, science and economics.  Listeners see how the Spirit breathes a living pulse into the dead corpse of real history by giving the spirit of the antichrist room to breathe.  Ilan Gur-Ze’ev, in another article titled, “The New Anti-Semitism – Educational Challenges,” (2009, available at http://haifa.academia.edu/IlanGurZeev/Papers/117662/The_New_Anti-Semitism_-_Educational_Challenges) reads history displaying a Biblical cast of mind, however, his rendering lacks the vitality of opposition created by the desires of the flesh pitted against the Spirit in tandem with the desires of the Spirit against the flesh.  Nonetheless, as this passage shows, he offers a valuable assessment of where we are today (confirmed every semester by every objective listed in every syllabus describing every course in the humanities and the social sciences taught by any college or university professor as a member the westernized global society of higher education):

“Under the flag of ‘the new anti-Semitism’ an attempt is made to unveil the roots of an alleged unfair critique, even hatred, of Israel, which, according to this line of argument, contains so much unconscious and intellectual vitality within the framework of the anti-Israeli rhetoric, which flourishes today in Western academic and intellectual centers, from where it propagates to the public discussion, goodsearching NGO’s, progressive Websites, public opinion polls, and spontaneous reactions in streets from Amsterdam, Dublin, Berkeley, Sydney, Tokyo or Caracas, to the Muslim quarter of Paris, Marseilles, Cairo or Teheran.

“Without underestimating the importance of this question it is my view that what we are actually facing here is a challenge of much higher magnitude, immensely richer, rooted profoundly deeper; a grave threat to mankind as a whole in the present historical moment. Three seemingly disconnected dynamics are incubated in the present moment, and the explosion of their togetherness offers hospitality to the weaker ones among us: globalization of capitalist logic, exile of the humanist killer of God, and the near-possibility of humankind bringing an End to all Life on earth by its own Will to Power; an End for ensuring [making sure, certain, safe] whose realization the human race assembles all its resourcefulness as its most grandiose and everlasting spectacle.

“The ongoing discourse which concerns the new anti-Semitism normally relates merely to the tip of this gigantic-ecstatic educational iceberg. In fact, as the strongest and richest myth of the present historical moment, the new anti-Semitism offers to all an outstandingly fruitful critique, a unique powerful resistance and the last still possible quasi-religious-ecstatic creativity. The new anti-Semitism is a total, and ironically also universal, substitute for the Enlightenment’s telos; an unrestrained ecstatic striving to oppose and destroy the essence, the history, and the aim of the West and its Judeo-Christian foundations.“

Gur-Ze’ev concludes this profound piece by celebrating a never ending end as a true flesh and blood temporal wish that will never come to pass. Although lacking heuristic value, his trans-sensating of ressentiment as an effort at transvaluing the transvaluation of values is indicative of the western academy’s frantic, nearly fully exhausted state of mind brought about by its futile efforts at trying to escape the “flypaper”[1] of a postsecular civil world:

“Holiness and transcendence are possible today through the presence of the infinite in our lives: the near probability of The End, as the final, most glorious manifestation of human progress; as a response-ability to the return from exile of the Gnostic god. A return with its awful truth: no “home-returning” exists. It unites us, all humans, conceptually and existentially, and makes life as an eternal erotic improvisation each-moment-a-new more relevant than ever before.”

How did it come to this? A certain man upon entering as a vision the sleep of the apostle Paul cried, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately Silas and the others sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called them to preach the Gospel to them. But who would have us think like this to believe something like that? Acts 16:6, 7. “Sing Silas, sing!” A certain woman named Lydia sells purple fabrics. A lying spirit speaks through a slave girl to usurp the truth. Owners, authorities, the crowd and magistrates are stirred into unlawful action. And when they had inflicted many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them safely. Having received this order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. “Sing Silas, sing!” And the prisoners were listening to them. “Sing Silas, sing! Don’t look at the wind! The Lord is not in the wind, or the earthquake or the fire. For I have seen him, this man of Macedonia, in a vision. He who fastened our feet in these stocks is the man who cried out, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ ” Do we understand? Will we listen? The man didn’t say, “me.” The soil of his heart had been prepared for receiving the good seed. He said, “us”! Nonetheless, for receiving this word he asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” So in the telling of the whole tale only one man in Macedonia, the jailer, is referred to in the singular. Lord, grant that the Author’s anointing that teaches us about everything allows too that we remain willing to be rightly taught.

[1] Robert Musel writes a lovely short description of the death of a House Fly, Musca domestica, brought about by its alighting from its free flight to touch down upon a piece of flypaper. He follows the slow, metaphorically noble death, every moment filled with the sequence of actions instinct dictates the insect must undertake in its futile effort to escape. See Robert Musil, “Flypaper,” trans. by Peter Wortsman in Posthumous Papers of a Living Author (London, England: Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 5-7. For me this describes the truly secular death: a b. f. skinner kind of death, the kind of death suffered by those who stubbornly — consciously and vigilantly — insist with Darwin that nothing lives beyond nature, as if there will be no life on the earth when the sea was no more, when science fell silent because the dwelling place of God is with man. Oh, brother Athanasius, He did not ascend to heaven to prepare the angels for our arrival there, rather, He ascended to heaven to prepare men for God living here!

—————————————————————————-

And He who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

Also He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.”

And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be His God and he will be My son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” (Revelations 21:5-8)

*******************************************************

Postscript,

In his work, Indignez-vous! (Empört Euch! Time for Outrage, I have only read the German translation by Michael Kogon, Ullstein, 2011), Stéphane Hessel condemns Israel for committing war crimes and excuses Hamas of any wrongdoing. “Of course,” — that is, following the ordinary way of seeing things — he finds terrorism as “unacceptable.” However, because he judges this inordinately tragic, ultimately apocalyptic conflict following the ordinary way of seeing things, he excuses/explains Palestinian use of it as a reaction by which despair manifests itself in an “intolerable situation.”

Intolérable? Insupportable?

Ah, for one side a burden to be born

as heroic cognoscenti in the arts of survival

(Oh Irony, 

your name is Legion!) 

for the other,

a stigma as war criminals that is most unbearable,

however,

(see how Israelis are both blamed and banished)

for whom (p. 17)?

I hope Hessel’s children follow up on their obligatory reading to include Richard Goldstone’s article, “Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and War Crimes,” published in the Washington Post (1/4/2011). I register two further grievances before the bench of sanity, rigged I know but nonetheless, the source of justice of last resort on “our” planet. It grieves me that as one of the handful of drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Hessel is dispiritedly silent over the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s systemic efforts at undermining its Article #18:

“Toute personne a droit à la liberté de pensée, de conscience et de religion; ce droit implique la liberté de changer de religion ou de conviction ainsi que la liberté de manifester sa religion ou sa conviction, seule ou en commun, tant en public qu’en privé, par l’enseignement, les pratiques, le culte et l’accomplissement des rites.”

Such beautiful words! Only higher still can the soul climb when it seeks to hear the Gospel. Not only does Hessel pass over in silence this crucial contribution to human understanding, he distorts the very means by which it was given life. Hessel idolizes the French resistance movement, shaping it into a utopian talisman for warding off evil, as the ritual spell we now need to cast for overcoming our present dialectical throes of revolutionary and capitalist wickedness. He ignores the Battle of Stalingrad, 1942, and the Invasion of Normandy, 1944, as essential campaigns of sacrifice for defeating Hitler’s national-socialist universal death march in the name of saving, advancing and fulfilling humanity’s “highest level” of civilization.

In terms of cultural life, of old, for all to see, that is, to better see ourselves and I myself, Jews suffered the consequences of being the children of those who killed the prophets. We in the West are the children of those who called them “Christ-killers” and charged them with the crime of deicide. Our children are the children of those who upon having killed God paid no mind to the madman when he smashed his lantern in the marketplace at what he mistook to be high noon.  Whose children will our children’s children be? There is no purity among us. We are born in blood and rubbed in salt before we learn what name others have given us. Did not even Judas Iscariot although used of Satan still do good? Hessel’s mentor too was a man with permanent qualities, displaying our inheritance derived from the choices made in the Garden of Eden. That the man makes the child the existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre, lived himself. In doing so he made of himself a dramatic parable, showing us what bad faith is by insisting the child makes the man, declaring, “Existence precedes essence”:

“With his increasing erudition, the young Sartre grew in cynicism about all religion, but he clung to one of his grandfather’s Lutheran concepts, the Holy Spirit. This was a divine muse that inspired a literary ‘elect’, of whom he once thought himself one.” New York Times Obituary for Jean-Paul Sartre, April 16^th, 1980

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in The Republic of Silence in 1944: “’Never have we been more free than under the German occupation.’ This is perhaps the kind of ‘memory’ that we stir up at some risk.”

“Existentialism is not despair. It declares rather that even if God did exist, it would make no difference.” “Existentialism and Humanism,” (1945).

Of course, — following the ordinary, ect. — these are but a few words taken from a life of writing. Intolérable! In my defense I must admit I am responding to the manifesto calling for a world movement of resistance against evil, which in its entirety of fourteen pages identifies the conditions found in Palestine to be grounds for being outraged most of all. In all the world? Then indeed, this is both prophetic and most pathetic. Let us all be so marked by such sorrow.

a tip to anyone who has read this far. Beginning from “In fact” through to ending with “selāh,” the text is to be read in the voice we become when reading a children’s storybook to a child. that is the way i wish i had first heard before the rubble and the storm. Regardless of how pale the image or faint the echo, the experience of mocking the man of sorrows while propping him up for our own pleasure remains as indicting as it is exhilarating (Matthew 27:27-31, and the polite among us recoil to demur, “We would never do that.” Yet should the gay waiter working in the restaurant sit down with us to take up our table conversation, what would we think? Or if what he served us as we ordered stood up, would we tolerate “the roast-beef and the fish to talk”? — Rosenstock-Huessy, The Fruit of Lips, p. 67). What would change should we transpose voices, speaking to one another as children and to children as if to one another? It would not matter. There is no new Angelus. There is but one Victim who speaks in the voice of our victims and in our voice as theirs. We devote ourselves to the Word who became flesh, the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! However we might worship Him the spirit of the antichrist would have that too manufactured for advancing human interests among good company. But no matter, what have we to do with judging outsiders?

Why, O Lord, do you stand afar off?

Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

How long will we cry for help,

and You will not hear?

Why do you make us see iniquity,

and why do You idly look at wrong?

Destruction and violence are before us;

strife and contention arise.

The law is paralyzed,

and justice never goes forth.

The wicked surround the righteous;

so justice goes forth perverted.

In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor.

They follow the course of this world.

They follow him who works in them,

the Prince of the Power of the Air,

for whom we all once

lived in the passions of our flesh,

carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind,

by nature children of wrath.

All of us together turned aside,

except for Him

with Whom the Father is well pleased;

together,

except for Him,

Who is in the bosom of the Father,  

we have become worthless,

refusing to love the truth,

taking pleasure in unrighteousness. 

Without Him

in Whom alone we see the Father,

severed from Him,

Who has always declared the Father,

none of us can do good,

not even one,

for apart from Him,

Who reveals the Father, the Lord of glory,

we can do nothing.

Nothing good dwells in us, in our flesh.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God

no matter how enlightened,

no matter what has been tasted or shared,

or prophesy spoken,

no matter the number of demons cast

out in His name,

or works of power performed, saying to Him,

“Lord, Lord.”

The god of this world blinds the perishing,

there is no fear of God before their eyes,

for apart from Him,

Who is Himself our peace,

the way of peace they have not known. 

On the appointed day of their visitation

He will declare to them,

“I never knew you, depart from Me,

you who practice lawlessness and do iniquity,

into the eternal fire

prepared for the devil and his angels,

for I have heard My children weeping,

I have heard their supplications, for although

the whole world lies in the power of the evil one,

I receive the prayers of My saints.”

In the pride of burning anger the wicked say,

“God will not call to account.”

They boast of their souls’ desires,

All their thoughts are,

“There is no God,” or

“Everyone who does evil

is good in the sight of the Lord,” or

“Where is the God of justice?” or

“Where is the promise of His coming?”

They deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the Word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.  But by the same Word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.   2 Peter 3:5-7

How truly strange we are (Philippians 3:20, Colossians 3:1-4)!  Though we have not seen the Word of God, we love Him.  We press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, denying ourselves, taking up our cross daily to follow Him, serving one another in our right minds, unrestrained and free before God, joyful yet ever sorrowful.

(Paul Klee, The Lamb, 1920)

Lässt UNS über die Zukunft Jetzt reden!

Pop!  Beat!  Drop!

49 divided by 51 = .96078431…
A quisling we go a quizzing
A practical joke
An eccentric decision
“Let’s surrender to the rage,
I don’t want to think again.”
Oral or written,
A mental pimp-baiting
Hater of reason
Ready in season and out of season
For teaching those who sniff and snub
sound teaching.
You’ve taken prisoners,
You’ve taken names,
From drifters that staked as their claim
There’s nothing gained in saying they ever knew you.
You took us where we wouldn’t go,
You took us there just to show
You’ll let us sing the holy “Hallelujah.”
Refrain
Until he who restrains is out of the way.
Without surprise or a hero’s song,
Your flag-draped casket arrives at dawn.
The child you missed stands waiting to salute you.
His mother calls, his mother cries, she tries to find
The peace inside that lets her sing the holy “Hallelujah.”
Refrain
Until he who restrains is out of the way.

#2 pencils only
Select the one best answer from choices allotted:

Empowered by the spirit of the antichrist for setting our mind on the things of man, the global system of constitutions, capital, credit, careers, comfort and consumer lifestyle contingent upon revolutions and the market that originated in the West primarily through Europe’s partnership with the United States, and which we call “modernity,” – whether “Christian,” “Secular,” or “Postsecular” — is the most – fill in the blank – system of state governance and personal liberation ever permitted by divine Providence to arise in the history of humankind.
1. Decent
2. Disastrous
3. Flourishing
4. Prodigal
5. All of the above

{Drafted listening to OMD production of History of Modern (Part I), 2011, hoping those who hear the melody of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah never flee the hour of danger, yield the floor or leave the public square until given sleep or changed}

Matthew 6:24

And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying,

Amen!
Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor and
power and might be to our God
forever and ever!
Amen!

Havana Eight, Marburg, 6.10.11.

Living between the Black and the Red                                                                                                                                                                Where Kohle is made by what’s played, sung and said
Theater unique
Acoustic guitar performed
Accompanied alone on flute, harmonica, base
beyond engaging
Eigenartiger Kunstler
Echter Handarbeiter
Vollkommen Verueckter:
Avant-garde danach
What’s left?
Living pieces of life seen from inside
Yet somehow beside life
Zappa kidnaps Cat Stevens
John McLaughlin sings Deutsch
Kein Mensch kann mach mit aber
Jede soll zuhoeren
Bewerkstelligende Stuecke gegeben als keine Übung (zwei mal)
Mit einer Leidenschaftlichkeit fuer Lebens
Und mehr.

Composer-musician Jan Frisch solo records, sings and plays acoustic/electric guitars for the alin coen band