Western Civ fill-in-blank

 From floor

to Ceiling

Western Civilization rose up from the exploits of ancient Greece, 

the institutions of ancient Rome,

the rituals of Roman religion.

Then Western Civilization sank down into the muddy trenches of  worldwar destruction, when the assassination of one man set off a chain reaction of State-sponsored death and destruction on a level never before seen in history.

Then, having crawled out from the rubble of World War I, Europe rebuilt itself from the ash-heaps of Western Civilization, only to return, two decades later, to yet another abomination of desolation . . . all because of the depraved manipulations of one power-worshipping beast-man, whose demonic presence in history is represented by a disgusting arrogance, a tiny  friggin' moustache and a crooked cross upon which he hung his millions of innocent victims.

But that was eighty or ninety years ago.

Now, Western Civilization:

to be continued . . .

Glass half-Full

Performance of Messiah

 About 2700 years ago, a fellow stood up and  delivered a message to his people. The message has been repeated thousands of time through our ages of time:

 

Comfort, O comfort ye, 

my people, saith your God.

Speak kindly to Jerusalem;

and call out to her, that 

her warfare has ended,

that her iniquity has been removed,

that she has received of the Lord’s hand

double for all her sins.

A voice is calling,

Clear the way for the Lord

in the wilderness;

make smooth in the desert

a highway for our God.

Let every valley be lifted up,

and every mountain and hill made low;

and let the rough ground become a plain

and the rugged terrain a broad valley . . .

One notable repeat of Isaiah’s ancient deliverance message was accomplished when, in 1741, George Frederic Handel transformed Isaiah’s ancient message into a magnificent musical oratorio, entitled Messiah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_(Handel)

Over my 70 years of life in this world, I have seen Handel’s Messiah performed four times. This musical/scriptural  compilation is truly a magnificent  expression of our Creator’s intents and  purposes for us, his people who choose to have ourselves identified by the legacy of his gospel message, the salvatory news-story to a desperate world.

My favorite online performance of this musical masterpiece (although many consider it quite dated in its baroque style) was presented  by Vaclav Luks and the Collegium 1704 in Prague, Czech Republic, in 2011: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtrIpTUbtc8

Glass half-Full

New Planet Discovered

It has been 529 years since a new continent was discovered, but now the unexpected has happened.

While exploring the outer regions of our galaxy, the space probe Skip2mLoo has beamed images back to Earth, indicating the presence of a heretofore unknown planet, which has been named Arubor.

The Skip2mLoo space craft has transmitted the first images of Arubor, indicating an attractive arrangement of what appear to be mineral-like structures, possibly inhabited, by the looks of it.

The Skip2mLoo probe, financed and developed by the infamous Testapplum  Consortium, was launched on April 1st, 2022. Since that groundbreaking launch, Skip2mLoo has traversed the entire Universe and having reached the limits of all things great and small has now transmitted these images, Note the mysterious abode, or whatever it is, atop this skyscraping Aruborean structure:

The great hope is that the inhabitants thereof will be respected and treated better than the indigenous inhabitants of the last continent that was discovered.

AI engineers have determined that in this politically correct woken 21st-century exploratory encounter, the indigenous inhabitants will not be scammed with a $24 incentive of beads and trinkets, as happened last time,  but will be generously compensated for their inconvenience and benevolent cooperation with a 24-million cryptoid endowment as compensation for their cooperation  in exploring and exploiting the resource-laden outbacks of Arubor.

The Skip2maLoo has identified an unidentified object which may be an inhabited structure, perhaps an indicator of life as we know it, or life as we do not know it or somewhere in between.

For updates on the groundbreaking exploration of the Skip2mLoo on Arubor, tune into News at 11, or visit www.AruborPlunder.bs.

Glass Chimera 

Somewhere Over

 For Wizard of Oz in ’39,

Yip/Harold wrote their Rainbow tune;

Now their melody comes to mind 

as seagulls prance on sandy dune. 

 

,

Somewhere

here o’er the sand dunes

sea birds fly;

here’s a

beach that I dream on

hearing their screechy cry.

 

Out here

here on the sea strand

sea birds play

here now

here on an ocean

I hear in my true dream way. 

 

Someday I’ll soar above the sky

ascend up through those clouds so high  

below me

where troubles drop in skyward hops

away above all earthen stops;

that’s where you’ll find me.

 

Somewhere

way past the real world

I shall fly;

Christ rose up past the rainbow

So then… yeah, so shall I.

You believe that?

I could think of worse things to happen.

Selah.

Glass half-Full

New Relevance Old Words

A worthless man digs up evil, while his words are like scorching fire.

A perverse man spreads strife, and a slanderer separates intimate friends.

A man of violence entices his neighbor, and leads him in a way that is not good.

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

A wise person is cautious and turns away from evil; but a fool is arrogant and careless.

Abundant food is in the fallow ground of the poor; but it is swept away by injustice.

Wise people store up knowledge; but with the mouth of foolish persons ruin is immanent.

There are six things which the Creator hates; yes, even seven that are an abomination to the Creator: 

~haughty eyes

~a lying tongue

~hands that shed innocent blood

~a heart that devises wicked plans

~feet that run rapidly to evil

~a false witness who utter lies

~a person who incites strife among citizens.

Put away your deceitful mouth; put devious speech far from you.

Do not envy a man of violence; do not choose any of his ways.

For I know that the Creator will maintain the cause of oppressed people and justice for the poor.

Bad people have slung their weapons to cast down the poor and the needy citizens, to kill those who are moral.

The person who oppresses the poor taunts the Creator, but whoever is gracious to the needy honors the Creator.

Let the Creator uphold oppressed people and protect their children. 

For the Creator will deliver needy persons when they cry for help; the Creator will have compassion on poor and needy people.

The Creator will rescue them from oppression and violence.

Who emulates the Creator?

Whoever is humble, whoever raises the poor from the dust and 

lifts needy people from the dregs, to make them sit with those 

who are running the show.

Selah.

Smoke 

Fatal Mistake

As a 70-year-old author of four historical fiction novels, and writer of a thousand blogs, I probably read a little more contemporary news and commentary than most folks, just to stay in touch with what’s going on out there in evereverland.

While most citizens satisfy their connectiveness cravings with twit, fb, instahoot, point n shoot, netfluck, etceteretcetera, I hideaway, as the Beach Boys sang long ago, in my room, tapping out a sand-grain-on-the-beaches-of-time scoop full of old-fashioned text blather in an attempt to overcome my existential crisis and solve the problems of the world.

In partial agreement with the cassandra cryers on Medium, where I like to hang out, I often find myself strangely comforted by the frantic alarms of all those writers who are slowly coming to agree that the world as we know it is falling apart.

I suppose that strange comfort seeps up from my existential crisis because I have convinced myself to believe that, while I cannot change the world or save it, I can at least take comfort in the discovery that I am attentive enough to accurately discern just how it will happen that our world will fall apart.

Many years ago, 1970, while pledging a fraternity at LSU, I was shocked when I heard the older brothers swearing, “Jeez” this and “jeez!” that.

Later on in life, I got a little insight on these matters when I turned to the Bible for a little wisdom and historical backstory.

Nowadays, I prefer the full exclamation, ”Jesus”, and I choose to hope that in that faithful, rather than cursory, upward invocation there is ultimately some deliverance from the dystopian world into which we presently are hurtling with the speed of a discharged hollow point ballistic lethal weapon AR nightmare on a dark Wisconsin or Georgia night, or any other day or night for that matter.

Over there in Britain they have a sacred saying: God save the Queen.

Here, Stateside, I would adapt that slogan for yank usage in our present potentially lethal clusterf*k: God save the Constitution.

But I digress. As I was saying up above, at the beginning of this ramble, I do read a lot, which is why it surprised when I just read, an hour ago, in Unherd, a Brit-based writers’ hangout, this statement by Jacob Siegel.

“Rittenhouse could be seen on video, shortly before the shooting, offering medical aid to Black Lives Matter protesters.”

In all the reading I have done to try and understand this Rittenhouse controversy, why did it take me so long to lay eyes on the above sentence, which I consider is a game-changer in our national pursuit to understand this kid Kyle and what he was up to.

That statement sheds new light on who the young man was and what he was up to and where this present maelstrom of reporting on his fatal mistake will take him. . . and where it will take us as a nation that is trying to do the right thing.

Let’s not get too excited about this. 

Let’s remember what the original gun-wielding Sheriff of the wild west sometimes had to shoutout to his deputized helpers as they were chomping at the bit to arrest outlaws:

“Hold your horses, boys!”

Those horses could be the four harbingers of the apocalypse. Stop and think, boys, what you're getting us into when you set out to become a self-deputized gunslinger. You may find yourself in deep courtroom sh*t for about two years of your life.

Smoke