Seems about right to me -- at least in terms of essence.
Curious to discover if there were any images of Sorath to be found online, I searched the term and came up with this illustration, which is posted on a site called Deviant Art.
Seems about right to me -- at least in terms of essence.
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One of the easiest ways to persuade people to surrender their freedom is to convince them that today is tomorrow. Do that, and you’ve not only captured freedom in the present – you also succeed in extending the captivity into the future.
This tactic was on full display during 2020/2021. If you paid close enough attention and paused to take notes, you could even say you were treated to a veritable masterclass in how the rudimentary machinations of today is tomorrow work. Today is tomorrow works most effectively when constructed upon a foundation of fear or doubt. If you can scare or confuse people into believing that today’s rumor, hype, anxiety, or event will inevitably extend into tomorrow and the next day, and the day after that, then you can persuade, cajole, trick, or threaten them to take action in the present for something that does not exist and may never exist in the future. However, today is tomorrow is not solely a fear and doubt problem. At its core, it is a freedom problem – the frank admission that it is best to surrender the day’s freedom for the promise of a burden-free, secure tomorrow. At a deeper level, it is the relinquishment of present and future spiritual freedom. And let’s not kid ourselves – spiritual freedom represents a big part of what the tactic seeks to capture because without that freedom, we cannot create in the present or the future. And if we cannot create, we become passive and powerless. Today is tomorrow only works if we accept the dictated terms of engagement. The tactic frays the moment we refuse these terms and stand fast in the reality that the dictated today is not and certainly does not need to be our own personal today. And that goes double for the dictated tomorrow. Today is not tomorrow. Not only that, but their today is not our today. Moreover, tomorrow only becomes theirs when we fail to show up for ours today. New World Island has recently posted its latest audio installment of posts from Romantic Christian blogs. Why not give it a listen? A commenter recently accused me of having many “hang-ups” about sex.
As far as the commenter was concerned, sex opened up possibilities for elevated expressions of love between people. He then added that the “gender” of the individuals participating in such elevated-love sex sessions was entirely irrelevant. In his mind, the biggest problem with sex in the modern world is its vulgarization via pornography. He then noted that very few young people were having sex today before asking me what I thought that indicated. If the comment revealed anything, it is this – modern people think about sex in extremely confused and corrupted ways. I am not exempt. Nor are most of the people I know. Sex is a strong motivator. I believe it has overtaken religion as the strongest motivator in people. The only open question now is – What is the motivation aiming for? The above-mentioned commenter claims that sex motivation is actually “higher love motivation.” I suppose that is partially true. All the same, I am convinced that the commenter would struggle to distinguish sex from love or love from sex. For him, the two are synonymous, at least until someone films the act and posts it on the Internet. Put another way, the commenter appears to have difficulty differentiating love from lust. As far as he is concerned, love is whenever two people get it on. Whether the two (or more?) participants getting it on are males or females or whatevers matters not. What matters is the getting it on, and the potential higher forms of love such activity can engender. Perhaps the easiest and most effective way to think about sex, lust, and love is to think about them through the perspective of alignment with God and Creation. The problem with sex is desire. Desire can come from two very different sources: love and lust. Love not only aligns with God’s creative purposes; it is God’s ultimate creative purpose. Love that aligns with God and Creation should appeal to and motivate the deepest and highest self. It should also appeal to and motivate the beloved. It is love that appreciates beauty. Admires it. Nurtures it. It is love that seeks to expand Creation via relationships, which, when all is said and done, is the only way Creation can be expanded. Lust appeals to the lower elements within us. Thus the only love lust can inspire is self-love. Moreover, lust is often grotesque and coarse. Lust degrades beauty. Scorns it. Deprives it. And, inevitably, destroys it. The relationship factor is utterly corrupted. In the end, lust always diminishes Creation. Simply put – Love sanctifies sex; lust profanes sex. We really must begin sorting all of this out for ourselves with the guidance of the Holy Spirit . . . The 2016 film Risen follows the Crucifixion and Resurrection as seen and experienced through the perspective of a fictional Roman Tribune named Clavius who first oversees Christ’s execution and is subsequently assigned the task of finding Jesus’s body to extinguish all rumors concerning the Resurrection. I will avoid wading further into the plot save for mentioning that during the investigation and search for the body, Clavius eventually encounters the risen Christ. I would rate the film overall as decent, but a few of its scenes are truly superb and manage to transcend the work, cinematically, dramatically, and thematically. The “day without death” scene near the end of the film is an excellent example of such a scene. Some of the themes and concepts in the scene that resonated with me:
Direct, personal contact and communication I thought the scene presents a powerful and memorable reminder of Jesus’s nature, and that contact and communication with Christ (or the Holy Ghost) happens on a personal, subjective level. It is contact and communication between Beings, not objects, things, or abstractions. Speaking the heart Upon hearing Clavius’s confession that he doesn’t even know what to ask, Jesus suggests the Roman Tribune “speak from his heart.” Jesus is uninterested in mining Clavius’s intellect and gently urges the Roman to tap a deeper, more authentic, direct form of knowing that extends beyond and challenges Clavius’s assumptions. At some level, I can’t help but feel that the scene somewhat unconsciously touches upon the necessity of what Bruce Charlton frequently refers to as “heart-thinking”. Reconciling Christ with the known external world, death, and entropy In response to Jesus’s request, Clavius admits that he “cannot reconcile all of this with the world he knows”, touching upon the spiritual problem of accommodating the gift Jesus offers with a natural, external world of death and entropy. Clavius’s “privilege” of having witnessed Jesus die on the cross and return to life is not enough to convince the Tribune of the truth he has experienced. Jesus addresses Clavius’s doubt as an eyewitness by asking him to imagine the doubt of those “who will never see”, revealing that what Jesus offers cannot be and is not contingent upon external factors. The commitment to believe on Jesus cannot and does not depend on empiricism, system, or theory. Fear Clavius divulges that what frightens him most is being wrong and betting all eternity on it, which reveals the essence of a deep and ingrained existential fear. Clavius is not a cowardly and fearful man. His position as a Roman Tribune requires that he constantly risk his life for the benefit of the empire. Yet his courage and stoicism veil a fatigued man burdened by the existential problem of death. Jesus’s only response to Clavius is “know Him”, which entails Clavius accepting the gift Jesus offers. Sin and death Clavius discloses that he was present at Jesus’s death. Not only that but he was directly involved in the execution. His pagan mind acknowledges and repents the nature of the transgression he has committed. Jesus responds by simply saying that He “knows.” He then proceeds to lay His hand on Clavius’s shoulder before asking the Roman Tribune what he seeks. When Clavius remains silent, Jesus quickly lists off two possibilities – certainty and peace – but the third, a day without death, penetrates. Clavius nods silently in agreement, reclines a little, and raises his eyes toward the night sky. In my opinion, this part of the scene aligns well with the Fourth Gospel’s message of the deepest meaning of sin as death, not transgression, a meaning Bruce Charlton frequently addresses on his Notions blog: And sin itself is - in its deepest meaning - death (including that which conduces Men to choose death). That is, death as understood as the severance of the (eternal) soul from the (dead) body; with consequent loss of our agency, our consciousness of our-selves - so that we would become witless, demented, discarnate 'ghosts'. When Jesus offered the possibility of saving Men from 'sin' - it was this condition from which he was saving Men. Jesus offers Clavius –a Roman Tribune whose vocation and experience of life is mired in death – the possibility of being saved from death, despite the Tribune’s life of violence and many “transgression” sins, confirming the reality that Jesus’s offer of salvation is open to anyone and accessible to anyone in any era provided they want it. I could go on, but I have addressed what I found to be the most significant “themes” the scene addresses. On a side note, what made the scene powerful in my mind was its depiction of the meeting between Clavius and Jesus mirrors how I often conceptualize meeting Jesus after death. From that perspective, the scene offers a potential exercise in creative spiritual thinking: Sit down and allow Christ to go over the following:
I began my chicken adventure last year, and the experience has been such a positive one that I decided to expand my flock by adding 15 more hens -- bringing the total to 24.
The new girls are only six-weeks-old, and I am keeping them separated from the nine older hens until at least the end of the summer. I achieved this by fencing off part of the run with chicken wire and housing the youngsters in their own coop. The fence allows the two groups to see each other but restricts their physical interaction. The older ladies still have access to over 400 square meters of grass in the backyard, so they have not reacted negatively to having their territory in the run encroached upon. The new girls should be producing eggs by the end of the August. I plan to merge the two flocks after that by moving the younger hens into the main coop. If all goes well, the older girls will accept the new boarders with limited fuss and aggression. If things don't go well, I'll probably have to contend with a gallinaceous battle royale. We'll see . . . I don’t subscribe to the title of this post. It merely echoes a postulation I keep encountering.
The position is easy to grasp. If Christianity cannot – does not – reassert itself as a worldly power and re-establish some semblance of social/cultural dominance, then Christianity is effectively over, and nothing of Christianity will remain save for a few wild-eyed desert fathers, incurable holy fools, and scattered pockets of quietism. Whenever I contemplate this “Christianity must assert itself in the world again, or else” position, I am reminded of a passage from Berdyaev’s Freedom and Spirit concerning the Crucified and worldly power (bold added): The natural man, obsessed by the forces of the external world, sees nothing in the Crucified but a man suffering torture and humiliation, and the consequent defeat and annihilation of truth so far as this world is concerned. Divine truth seems to be powerless. Is it possible that God can appear here below not as power forcibly transfiguring and overcoming life, but as crucified and to all appearance impotent when confronted with the forces of this world? It was here that the Jewish people were led astray by refusing to recognize in the figure of the Crucified the expected Messiah and Son of God. The true Messiah, according to them, must appear in power and glory, and by founding a powerful Kingdom of Israel end the existence of suffering and evil. The Cross of Calvary was a stumbling block for the Jews and remains so to this day for most of the Aryan race as well, for they expect the manifestation of truth in power and the victory of truth in the visible world. This temptation means nothing more nor less than a denial of all freedom of spirit, an inability and even a refusal to see, beyond material humiliation and defeat, the invisible spiritual triumph of divine truth. The coming of the Son of God and the Messiah in His power and glory as the King of the world and conqueror would have been the end of the freedom of the human spirit and the realization of the Kingdom of God by means of necessity and compulsion. If I had to define heaven, I would describe it as being free with Christ. I would define heaven that way because it is the only "place" where I can imagine ever being as free as Christ was on Earth.
And why was Christ as free as He was? Because He was perfectly aligned with God and Creation. Unlike me, He freed Himself from everything opposed to or unaligned with God and freed Himself for full cooperation and alignment with God. I can think of no higher expression of love than that. Jesus's freedom went beyond "from" and "for" and became freedom "with". He is the first to be completely free with God. I imagine freedom with God as the revelation of the great "mystery" of freedom -- not as deciding upon choices but as seeing and engaging with what knows to be the only choice. It is a mystery God mastered, a mastery with which Jesus aligned, and an alignment that I seek, above all else. And Jesus makes this alignment possible in Heaven if we truly want it -- even when we inevitably fail to master the "mystery" of freedom in our mortal lives. Christians who fail one or more of The Litmus Tests of Serious Christianity need to take a step back and re-evaluate what it means to be a Christian.
Non-Christians who pass all the Litmus Tests should seriously consider becoming Christians. If they choose not to, they remain non-Christians, and the passed Litmus Tests carry little, if any, meaningful spiritual benefit. Virtually all leftists inevitably fail one or more of the Litmus Tests, which is expected and, unsurprisingly, largely irrelevant. But what about leftists who claim that Jesus personally informed them He actually endorses one (or more) of the Litmus Test issues as a force for Good? I don't think this qualifies as a Litmus Test in its own right, but it certainly qualifies as the mother-of-all-pseudo-spiritual fails. How is one to respond to such tripe? I mean, that truly is epic, Mount Everest-level nonsense, that is. The absurdity. It burns. |
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April 2024
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