Lewis’ Apologetic : Imagination and Reason

"Tolkien and Dyson showed Lewis what Christian doctrines are not actually the main thing about Christianity. Doctrines are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in a language more adequate, and this language more adequate is the lived language,  the actual historical lived language of the incarnation, the crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ . That’s  the primary language of Christianity. It’s real; it’s historical, it’s visible; it’s tangible. It relates to an actual person, actually being born, actually dying, actually living again in some new ineffably transformed way." (Michael Ward Lewis’ Apologetics: Imagination and Reason)

Robert Spencer – Hillary Clinton’s Record

WRATH OF GOD, A LIVING HELL

The Wrath of God blazes forth
As left to myself,
I behold myself.
Where is His image in me?
What have I done ?

Where God is not,
Only Hell resides.
Life has become my agony,
With self-inflicted wounds.

Unchanging Purity of Being,
Fire of Love,
I, now, the antithesis,
Banishing God to the periphery
Holding Him at bay.
My kingdom, my way!

Sin rages in His absence,
A counterfeit of life,
For where the Creator is not,
There is only dissipation.
Creating nothing;
Loving no one,

I built a world apart,
Overruled His Plan,
Overturned His "Shalt Nots"
With tolerance and choice.
There is no compromise for Truth.
Sin is always a choice,
Or it is not sin.

The Wrath of God blazes forth.
Consumes the idol, self.
Now, to turn, to choose anew,
To turn again before the final hour,
While it is still Day,
No more to turn away!

So splendid a freedom is love
That it can not come to be
Without an altar,
And in the Fire of Love,
To sacrifice my "Me".
©2014 Joann Nelander

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Dawn Comes

O see,
Dawn comes
The first rays of Light
Upon the mountain.
How I have waited.
How I have longed.
Having embraced Faith
I possessed Truth,
But it was like the dawn,
Outside myself.
Written, as on tablets,
But, not yet,
Written on my heart.
It’s glory was God"s,
And not my own,
Not of my forging,
Not for me to fashion,
As a graven image,
Or molten calf,,
Arising from the fires
Of my concupiscence,
A counterfeit for Love,
Revealing only the blindness
Fallen on hearts,
Minds, and wills
Apart from Light
Of Dayspring
On Holy Night.

Now come
The long awaited symbolon
To make whole
To heal my soul.

O Holy Night
Putting an end
To lonely darkness
O Holy sight,
I wait
To see aright.

By Joann Nelander

Truth’s Army, Truth’s Bride

Truth was never far away.
It stood erect,
And with resolve,
Waited for the moment
Of my will’s consent.

It was relentless,
Devoid of error,
Stalwart and persistent.

Truth was the beacon
On the high mountain.
It appealed to me
On the level of the good.

It drew me
As home beckons the lost.
I journeyed closer,
But as the light
Revealed my tatters
I drew back,
Trapped by my choices.

Truth is a wedding garment,
That clothes inwardly,
As well as out.
My espousals never produced
A marriage of Truth and the holy.
In its stead, I’d wed
What I wanted.
Now, I feared our distance,
And what I had become.

Desiring the right,
Even if I was wrong,
I gathered courage to my breast
And risked all in the quest.

I shed my rags
And found a covering of prayer,
A robe of humility,
And came to Love
In holy fear.

Now, I am
Full of resolve,
A stalwart knight
On Truth’s high mountain,
Carrying lighted torch
To the Dark Valley,
Into caverns of deception.

Standing tall before the Foe,
Truth girds my waist,
And undertakes to speak
Light in the darkness.

I am become an army
On the plain,
As Truth marches not alone.
It goes forth,
Drawing with it men of valor,
Choosing the death of Pride,
And living as Truth’s Bride.

©2012 Joann Nelander
All rights reserved

History News Network | How Islamists Use the Crusades –

History News Network | How Islamists Use the Crusades.

Western men and women have wiped the reality of the crusades from their minds. They ignore the important part crusading played in Christian history and they have forgotten how recently it was respectable. Unable to face up to the past, they have reinvented it to suit their notions of what it ought to have been. The irony is that in Islamist jihadi propaganda they are all crusaders themselves. There is hardly a statement of Osama bin Laden which does not include a reference to present-day crusades, which, he is convinced, have been launched by the West in a global war. Jihadis like him identify as one of their most potent enemies a force they call Crusaderism, which they believe to be much more ancient than Marxism, Zionism and Colonialism. It lurks behind and manipulates these surrogates, with the sole purpose of destroying Islam. –

See more at:History News Network | How Islamists Use the Crusades.

The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam

Review of Jonathan Riley-Smith’s The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam (Bampton Lectures in America) – BrothersJudd.com.

Over the last five decades, Jonathan Riley-Smith has revolutionized–or, more appropriately, counter-revolutionized–the historical study of The Crusades by demonstrating that they were not driven by avarice, greed, and imperialism but instead by piety, religious enthusiasm, a sense of duty, and a genuinely fervent desire to liberate the Holy Lands and return them to Christian hands. Moreover, he showed that, far from enriching themselves, the Crusaders suffered real personal expense and hardship in order to pursue what they saw as the will of God in what he refers to as "penitential warfare." From what I’ve been able to find on-line, it appears that even most who are most reluctant to let the Crusaders and Christianity off the hook have come to accept the validity of his view.
In these lectures, Mr. Riley-Smith provides a nice short rehearsal of his basic arguments in this regard. He then moves on to a discussion of how Enlightenment opponents of Christianity, Romantic authors klike Sir Walter Scott, and anti-Imperialists of the late 19th century produced the historically warped version of the Crusades that came to be all too widely accepted in the West and that, tragically, was then adopted by Islamic jihadis to fuel hatred of Chistendom. In effect, many of the resentments of al Qaeda owe nothing to the actual history of the interaction of Christianity and Islam in the Holy Lands and everything to the misrepresentations of, if not outright lies about, that history that have been propounded in the West.
This slender book is a splendid corrective to the malignant view of the Crusades that remains a part of popular culture–like Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven–and a compelling rebuttal to those who claim that "they hate us" because of our own past actions. It’s a must read.

Bill Warner, PhD: Jihad vs Crusades

Let us receive the light whose brilliance is eternal

via Divine Office.org

From a sermon by Saint Sophronius, bishop
Let us receive the light whose brilliance is eternal

In honor of the divine mystery that we celebrate today, let us all hasten to meet Christ. Everyone should be eager to join the procession and to carry a light.

Our lighted candles are a sign of the divine splendor of the one who comes to expel the dark shadows of evil and to make the whole universe radiant with the brilliance of his eternal light. Our candles also show how bright our souls should be when we go to meet Christ.

The Mother of God, the most pure Virgin, carried the true light in her arms and brought him to those who lay in darkness. We too should carry a light for all to see and reflect the radiance of the true light as we hasten to meet him.

The light has come and has shone upon a world enveloped in shadows; the Dayspring from on high has visited us and given light to those who lived in darkness. This, then, is our feast, and we join in procession with lighted candles to reveal the light that has shone upon us and the glory that is yet to come to us through him. So let us hasten all together to meet our God.

The true light has come, the light that enlightens every man who is born into this world. Let all of us, my brethren, be enlightened and made radiant by this light. Let all of us share in its splendor, and be so filled with it that no one remains in the darkness. Let us be shining ourselves as we go together to meet and to receive with the aged Simeon the light whose brilliance is eternal. Rejoicing with Simeon, let us sing a hymn of thanksgiving to God, the Father of the light, who sent the true light to dispel the darkness and to give us all a share in his splendor.

Through Simeon’s eyes we too have seen the salvation of God which he prepared for all the nations and revealed as the glory of the new Israel, which is ourselves. As Simeon was released from the bonds of this life when he had seen Christ, so we too were at once freed from our old state of sinfulness.

By faith we too embraced Christ, the salvation of God the Father, as he came to us from Bethlehem. Gentiles before, we have now become the people of God. Our eyes have seen God incarnate, and because we have seen him present among us and have mentally received him into our arms, we are called the new Israel. Never shall we forget this presence; every year we keep a feast in his honor.

Joann Nelander
lionessblog.com

Another Day- Another Scandal–Thanks to Obama and His “Care”

In Third Video, Obamacare Architect Talks About ‘Basic Exploitation’ Of American Voters http://t.co/qwySwyWZpQ

— Raffi Williams (@Raffiwilliams) November 12, 2014