For they shall see God

“A well ordered heart loves the right thing to the right degree in the right way with the right kind of love.”
~Augustine

The Honor Men

The Honor Men

By James Hay, Jr. (1903)

The University of Virginia writes her highest degree on the souls of her sons. The parchment page of scholarship--the colored ribbon of a society--the jeweled emblem of a fraternity--the orange symbol of athletic prowess--all these, a year hence, will be at the best mementos of happy hours--like the withered flower a woman presses between the pages of a book for sentiment's sake.

But . . .

If you live a long, long time, and hold honesty of conscience above honesty of purse:

And turn aside without ostentation to aid the weak;

And treasure ideals more than raw ambition;

And track no man to his undeserved hurt;

And pursue no woman to her tears;

And love the beauty of noble music and mist-veiled mountains and blossoming valleys and great monuments--

If you live a long time and, keeping the faith in all these things hour by hour, still see that the sun gilds your path with real gold and that the moon floats in dream silver;

Then . . .

Remembering the purple shadows of the lawn, the majesty of the colonnades, and the dream of your youth, you may say in reverence and thankfulness:

"I have worn the honors of Honor, I graduated from Virginia."

Honor

Rise in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the LORD.
Leviticus 19:32

Ebb and Flow

I found this quote by Anne Morrow Lindbergh in "A Gift from the Sea." It is both a profound observation and a sad commentary on the nature of human relationships:

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time. in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet, this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of time and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible in life, as in love, is in growth, in fluidity in freedom. The only real security is not owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now. For relationships, too must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits islands surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continuously visited and abandoned by the tides. Once must accept the serenity of the winged life, of ebb and flow, of intermittency.

Two initial thoughts:

1) Understanding the natural ebb and flow of human relationships can help us liberate our friends and family from our unrealistic expectations that so often lead to complete relationship burn-out. Even if we wanted to love with absolute permanency, we could not. Work, moves, marriage, time, death--all these factors and more cause irrevocable changes.

2) Thanks to God that He does not love us like we love each other Instead of ebb and flow from God, we get immeasurably wide, long, high, and deep love that surpasses all knowledge.

Solzhenitsyn Speech Review

A World Split Apart: Address at Harvard Class Day, Afternoon Exercises, Thursday, June 8, 1978
By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth must be of a more spiritual nature.

This speech is Solzhenitsyn’s famous Harvard address that was met with hostility and heckling boos from his audience. They didn’t appreciate Americanism being so vehemently condemned, especially by a foreigner. I think Solzhenitsyn brings a wise perspective, though, and we should at least listen to his thoughts with open minds and hearts.

Saying, “Truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter,” Solzhenitsyn makes the American ego the target of scathing rebuke in this speech. His basic premise is that, although Socialism is evil (“Socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.”), the West does not offer an attractive alternative. The West’s identifying qualities are cowardice and individual self-sufficiency. We defend human rights, but not human obligations; we champion freedom of the press, but fail to appreciate the responsibility that journalists carry for the world and for history. We patronize a suffering world, but offer only “mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor and by intolerable music.” We claim freedom of religion, but practice freedom from religion. These atrocious qualities have produced an America that is wrapped up in humanism and materialism and avoids any inclination of responsibility toward God and society. The decline of courage, the decadence of art, and the lack of statesmen are three symptoms Solzhenitsyn identifies as fatal to America.

Ouch! Not much has changed since 1978. People, we have work to do.

Thoughts Before Law School . . . .

The Old Court said: The Law exists, the Constitution exists. They exist by the sanction of Nature and Society. They are not Justice, for Justice is a spirit never seen, but only through them can Justice speak. Untune them and all is jangle. The New Court said: The Law exists. The Constitution exists. But they exist only by the decision of man and what man can make he can unmake. As for Justice, that is the name for the needs of man. Justice is man’s Goddess but is also his slave.
~Robert Penn Warren

8/23/08

. . . for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
G.K. Chesterton

[Four Years]

08/07/08

May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands.
Psalm 90:17

Family

"...the joy of the children was in his voice..."

Catherine Marshall, Christy

One thing God has spoken, two things I have heard: that you, O God, are strong and that you, O LORD, are loving.

Psalm 62:11

2/14/07

"Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the ‘Beloved.’ Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence."
~Henri Nouwen

Happy Valentine's Day!

2/7/07

Semester is in full swing, so posts are few....but here is a classic thought:

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

1/16/07

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask--half our great theological and metaphysical problems--are like that . . . . Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there was never any problem.

And, more than once, that impression which I can't describe except by saying that it's like the sound of a chuckle in the darkness. The sense that some shattering and disarming simplicity is the real answer.

~C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

1/8/07

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

James 1:27

Leave your orphans; I will protect their lives. Your widows too can trust in me.

Jeremiah 49:11

Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.

Psalm 82:3

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.

Psalm 68:5

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:8

1/5/06

"Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for it's the only thing in this world that lasts. It's the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for..."

Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind

Here's to the west, friend! Keep dreaming . . .

1/2/07

The LORD will write in the register of the peoples: "This one was born in Zion." As they make music they will sing, "All my fountains are in you."

~Psalm 87: 6-7

12/29/06

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams.

~W.B.Yeats

12/28/06

A Year of Weddings

"You are God's smile upon my life, my soul's bright star, my joy . . . my wife!"

~B.J. Hoff

Heather and Sam, January 14, 2006

"For a moment like this, some people wait a lifetime."

Helena and Ben, August 5, 2006

"God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you."


Hannah and Brian, September 30, 2006

The Spirit and the bride say, "Come!"
Revelation 22:17

12/22/06

"Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world."
John 17:24

God is too good to be unkind, too wise to be mistaken and, when you cannot trace His hand, you can always trust His heart.

- Charles Spurgeon

Happy Birthday, Mom!

12/20/06

But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man's testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.
John 2:24-25

For He is our childhood's pattern;
Day by day, like us He grew;
He was little, weak and helpless,
Tears and smiles like us He knew;
And He feeleth for our sadness,
And He shareth in our gladness.

Once in Royal David's City