By Sabrina Morse
Lord, I need Your love today,
Thank You for never taking it away.
You are so much more than I have ever known,
I know You love me because it is clearly shown.
Through Your Son,
Through Your Word,
Through Your many children,
Thank You for loving without ceasing;
Thank You for loving unconditionally.
There is nothing I can do to earn it,
You give me love freely, even if I burn it.
It is something I cannot understand,
Nothing that can be given by man.
I accept this precious gift You give.
Day to day, you show me how to live.
By the love that You do present,
May I love others and give them this love Heaven sent.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
To Stay Here is Death
By Conor Anderson
“But the man who will neither obey wisdom in other nor adventure for her/himself is fatal. A society where the simple many obey the few seers can live: a society where all were seers could live even more fully. But a society where the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to can achieve only superficiality, baseness, ugliness, and in the end extinction. On or back we must go; to stay here is death.” - C.S. Lewis, Miracles
In essence: Either think for yourself and do it well, or follow somebody who does—if not, all is lost.
Modern American society (the only society for which I can speak) has utterly failed to heed this vital wisdom. I make the broad accusation against you, the people of my generation, that you have chosen the first, to think for yourself, without first learning how to think. Our society has heralded the greatness of individuality and ‘thinking for oneself.’ And that is well and good: individuality breeds innovation, progress, understanding, and in general, much of value. Thinking for oneself stifles oppression and unoriginality; it fosters human growth and responsibility. But we must learn to walk before we run. Poor thinking does not produce innovation, only stagnancy; it does not produce understanding, but stupidity; not growth and responsibility, but dangerous, false self-confidence. You think that you think for yourself but you fail to understand what it means to think.
I implore you to examine yourself and ask if you, my friends and fellow believers, deserve the privilege of thinking for yourself? What was the last book you read? Did it sharpen your mind? How many movies have you watched in the past year, and how does that compare with the amount of books you have read? Are you even aware that film (as in movies) cannot communicate a linear argument? You cannot learn to reason by watching movies, only by reading. And have you read Charles Dickens? Or Tolstoy, or Lewis, or Dostoevsky? Or just People Magazine?
As G.K. Chesterton says, “The peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself.” And you must know that there is a vast expanse of nourishing intellectual experience beyond books. There is the novel idea of writing a book yourself. But of course to write a book means reading them first so that you may have some ammunition. Let us not shoot any more blanks: no more meaningless noise that is but a loud bang that fizzles away leaving nothing of consequence but a memory. I dare you to read a good book. I dare you to write a good book.
And I dare you, above all, to think; and if you cannot, to follow somebody who can. I dare you to think originally, to create. Create music, create art, create thought, and know why you do it. Create it with a passion and a purpose. But if you cannot and will not do these things, then I ask that you renounce your right to try and follow somebody who can. Or else the vast majority of society may do horrid things, such as believe that the natural sciences can explain all and that the other disciplines are no longer needed. And those who know this is a lie may be incapable to reason against it. Consequentially, rationally, humans will no longer be human—only biological machine, the product of matter, time, and chance. And those humans may be dull enough to believe that personal peace and affluence (money and ‘time to chill’) are the ultimate, foundational values of existence. They may spend their whole lives working to get rich so that they can someday stop working. And then, but only then, can they sit on the beach and enjoy the ocean. Then, maybe then, will they be able to spend time with family and friends. Just then, for the first time, might they read a good book or write their own.
This danger is clear and it is present, and I hope that you will not only recognize it, but that you will conquer it. So I say we all must go on and learn to think, to be seers. Because: “On or back we must go; to stay is death.”
“But the man who will neither obey wisdom in other nor adventure for her/himself is fatal. A society where the simple many obey the few seers can live: a society where all were seers could live even more fully. But a society where the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to can achieve only superficiality, baseness, ugliness, and in the end extinction. On or back we must go; to stay here is death.” - C.S. Lewis, Miracles
In essence: Either think for yourself and do it well, or follow somebody who does—if not, all is lost.
Modern American society (the only society for which I can speak) has utterly failed to heed this vital wisdom. I make the broad accusation against you, the people of my generation, that you have chosen the first, to think for yourself, without first learning how to think. Our society has heralded the greatness of individuality and ‘thinking for oneself.’ And that is well and good: individuality breeds innovation, progress, understanding, and in general, much of value. Thinking for oneself stifles oppression and unoriginality; it fosters human growth and responsibility. But we must learn to walk before we run. Poor thinking does not produce innovation, only stagnancy; it does not produce understanding, but stupidity; not growth and responsibility, but dangerous, false self-confidence. You think that you think for yourself but you fail to understand what it means to think.
I implore you to examine yourself and ask if you, my friends and fellow believers, deserve the privilege of thinking for yourself? What was the last book you read? Did it sharpen your mind? How many movies have you watched in the past year, and how does that compare with the amount of books you have read? Are you even aware that film (as in movies) cannot communicate a linear argument? You cannot learn to reason by watching movies, only by reading. And have you read Charles Dickens? Or Tolstoy, or Lewis, or Dostoevsky? Or just People Magazine?
As G.K. Chesterton says, “The peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself.” And you must know that there is a vast expanse of nourishing intellectual experience beyond books. There is the novel idea of writing a book yourself. But of course to write a book means reading them first so that you may have some ammunition. Let us not shoot any more blanks: no more meaningless noise that is but a loud bang that fizzles away leaving nothing of consequence but a memory. I dare you to read a good book. I dare you to write a good book.
And I dare you, above all, to think; and if you cannot, to follow somebody who can. I dare you to think originally, to create. Create music, create art, create thought, and know why you do it. Create it with a passion and a purpose. But if you cannot and will not do these things, then I ask that you renounce your right to try and follow somebody who can. Or else the vast majority of society may do horrid things, such as believe that the natural sciences can explain all and that the other disciplines are no longer needed. And those who know this is a lie may be incapable to reason against it. Consequentially, rationally, humans will no longer be human—only biological machine, the product of matter, time, and chance. And those humans may be dull enough to believe that personal peace and affluence (money and ‘time to chill’) are the ultimate, foundational values of existence. They may spend their whole lives working to get rich so that they can someday stop working. And then, but only then, can they sit on the beach and enjoy the ocean. Then, maybe then, will they be able to spend time with family and friends. Just then, for the first time, might they read a good book or write their own.
This danger is clear and it is present, and I hope that you will not only recognize it, but that you will conquer it. So I say we all must go on and learn to think, to be seers. Because: “On or back we must go; to stay is death.”
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