Lord, Most High,
Most Good,
Most Holy,
As an eagle, soar our nation’s skies,
Look down and take pity on a people losing their way.
See us as we struggle.
See our deceivers.
See our cherished deceptions.
See our broken law.
The weight of haughty deception,
Oppresses a people,
Fearing the gift of Life.
It is hard to juggle our many gods.
To our folly,
Mammon has supplanted our love for You.
Resisting Your Love.
We choose Death
As an answer to Life.
We think the blessing, a curse,
And the curse, a blessing, nay, a right,
Negation the same as something, someone.
Give Your People Your eagle’s wings,
To scale the heights
With You.
Carry us on Your strong pinions
To safety in the clefts of the Rock.
Hide us in Your Sacred Wounds.
With an Eagle’s talons,
Swoop upon the Enemy
Who carries off our young.
Lord, Most High,
Most Good,
Most Holy,
Carry us on eagle ‘s wings
To the safety of Your bosom,
Your Truth.
©2016 Joann Nelander
<blockquote>Last week, TV actress Amy Brenneman told the women’s magazine Cosmopolitan that she has never regretted her abortion.Brenneman said she felt prompted to tell her story after asking Nancy Keenan, the former president of the radical pro-abortion group NARAL, why the pro-abortion movement is losing support while the pro-life movement is gaining it.“She answered with one simple word: ‘stories,’” Brenneman said. “This makes sense to me. I am a storyteller by trade, after all. I believe that we connect and learn by the specifics of stories, our own and others’.”“I have never, not for one moment, regretted my abortion. My husband of 20 years and I became parents when we had built a home to nurture our children. Indeed, being a parent has only strengthened my commitment to reproductive justice as access to legal abortion allows children a fighting chance to be born into families that desire them and can support them,” she said.Now, Rep. Diane Black, a Tennessee congresswoman, has written an open letter to Brenneman.Black was a registered nurse for 40 years. Her letter follows:I read with interest your February 29th column in Cosmopolitan magazine about your personal experience with abortion. While we approach this sensitive issue from different viewpoints, I thank you for sharing your story. I agree that women, regardless of their opinion, should talk honestly about this matter. I also know that some who, like me, identify as pro-life and oppose abortion have not always conveyed that opinion with the compassion and empathy that should be afforded to this topic on both sides of the debate, and for that I am sorry.CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE! Like you, I know what it is like to be single, pregnant, and uncertain of what the future holds. I was carrying my youngest child to term when my first husband left me amid the demons of alcoholism. Later, in my career as an emergency room nurse, I met other young women in this same precarious position. I believe that the pro-life community has a responsibility to those women. It is why I have long supported the work of my local crisis local pregnancy center and other nonprofits that offer real, tangible help to women in this very situation – everything from diapers and formula to counseling and prayer.I want you to know that I agree with you on the need to defend every woman’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” As you and I know, this has not historically been the case and I am keenly aware of those whose shoulders I now stand on as a woman who cannot only vote but can also serve in Congress.I want every young girl, including my two granddaughters, to be able to – as you say – “choose their destiny.” I believe that protecting those rights, however, starts with protecting the most foundational right of all: the right of a preborn, human being with a beating heart to see the light of day. A young woman cannot choose her destiny if her life is cut short in the womb.When we frame abortion as a means of female empowerment, we don’t tell the full story. Indeed, studies show that abortions worldwide disproportionately impacts baby girls. Consider a 2012 report in Britain’s Daily Telegraph on abortion practices in India, where there are believed to be as many as eight million cases of female sex-selective abortion over the last decade, a phenomenon that is now affecting the country’s overall gender ratio.
I say this not to shame any woman who has made the difficult decision to have an abortion but rather in hopes of raising the consciousness of this nation so we can enact needed protections for these members of the human family.
Specific to your concerns on the Texas abortion law now in question before the United States Supreme Court in the case of Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt, I readily admit my own bias. That said, I believe the standards you call “onerous” and “unnecessary” to be quite modest.
As you know, the disputed Texas law has two key provisions. First, it requires abortionists to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles so that a patient receiving an abortion can be quickly transferred in the event of complications and, secondly, it requires abortion clinics to abide by the same safety standards and licensing requirements as other outpatient surgery centers in the state. To be clear, the law does not attempt to illegalize abortion at any stage of pregnancy.
I passionately believe in protecting the unborn, but I also believe equal attention must be devoted to protecting their mothers. While I disagree with the choice of abortion, I do not believe any woman should lose her life at the hands of an unregulated, unsafe abortion clinic or a fly-by-night abortion doctor. That is what this law aims to prevent.
It is my hope that women’s advocates – and you are certainly a needed and influential one – will take a deeper look at this law and applaud these commonsense standards rather than attempt to turn back the clock and strip them away.
Sincerely,
Diane Black
<p>Source: <a href=”http://www.lifenews.com/2016/03/08/congresswoman-writes-amazing-letter-to-amy-brenneman-who-doesnt-regret-aborting-her-baby/”>Congresswoman Writes Amazing Letter to Amy Brenneman, Who Doesn’t Regret Aborting Her Baby | LifeNews.com</a></p></blockquote>
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
"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)
"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)
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
.
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 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.
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.
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.
“Rich Weinstein is not a reporter. He does not have a blog. Until this week, the fortysomething’s five-year old Twitter account had a follower count in the low double digits.
“I’m an investment adviser,” Weinstein tells me from his home near Philadelphia. “I’m a nobody. I’m the guy who lives in his mom’s basement wearing a tinfoil hat.” (He’s joking about the mom and the tinfoil.)
He’s also behind a series of scoops that could convince the Supreme Court to dismantle part of the Affordable Care Act. Weinstein has absorbed hours upon hours of interviews with Jonathan Gruber, an MIT professor who advised the Massachusetts legislature when it created “Romneycare” and the Congress when it created “Obamacare.” Conservatives had been looking for ways to demonstrate that the wording of the ACA denied insurance subsidies to consumers in states that did not create their own health exchanges. Weinstein found a clip of Gruber suggesting that states that did not create health insurance exchanges risked giving up the ACA’s subsidies; it went straight into the King v. Burwell brief, and into a case that’s currently headed to the Supreme Court.”
Bret Baier onJohathan Gruber’shoodwinking of the American people through Congressional shinanigans
Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects behind the Affordable Care Act, is under fire for his comments about the… http://t.co/FCkDeqFuhQ
— Special Report Team (@SpecialReport) November 12, 2014
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
.
As the Church is in the news and Cardinals and bishops clash, (if reports are to be believed) here’s a bit from the thought of Pope Paul Vl reflecting on Vatican II
Here’s the paragraph in which the quotation occurs, as well as the following one:
Referring to the situation of the Church today, the Holy Father
affirms that he has a sense that “from some fissure the smoke of Satan
has entered the temple of God.” There is doubt, incertitude,
problematic, disquiet, dissatisfaction, confrontation. There is no
longer trust of the Church; they trust the first profane prophet who
speaks in some journal or some social movement, and they run after him
and ask him if he has the formula of true life. And we are not alert
to the fact that we are already the owners and masters of the formula
of true life. Doubt has entered our consciences, and it entered by
windows that should have been open to the light. Science exists to
give us truths that do not separate from God, but make us seek him all
the more and celebrate him with greater intensity; instead, science
gives us criticism and doubt. Scientists are those who more
thoughtfully and more painfully exert their minds. But they end up
teaching us: “I don’t know, we don’t know, we cannot know.” The
school becomes the gymnasium of confusion and sometimes of absurd
contradictions. Progress is celebrated, only so that it can then be
demolished with revolutions that are more radical and more strange, so
as to negate everything that has been achieved, and to come away as
primitives after having so exalted the advances of the modern world.
This state of uncertainty even holds sway in the Church. There was
the belief that after the Council there would be a day of sunshine for
the history of the Church. Instead, it is the arrival of a day of
clouds, of tempest, of darkness, of research, of uncertainty. We
preach ecumenism but we constantly separate ourselves from others. We
seek to dig abysses instead of filling them in.
In the next section the subject of the devil is further expounded upon:
How has this come about? The Pope entrusts one of his thoughts to
those who are present: that there has been an intervention of an
adverse power. Its name is the devil, this mysterious being that the
Letter of St. Peter also alludes to. So many times, furthermore, in
the Gospel, on the lips of Christ himself, the mention of this enemy of
men returns. The Holy Father observes, “We believe in something that
is preternatural that has come into the world precisely to disturb, to
suffocate the fruits of the Ecumenical Council, and to impede the
Church from breaking into the hymn of joy at having renewed in fullness
its awareness of itself. Precisely for this reason, we should wish to
be able, in this moment more than ever, to exercise the function God
assigned to Peter, to strengthen the Faith of the brothers. We should
wish to communicate to you this charism of certitude that the Lord
gives to him who represents him though unworthily on this earth.”
Faith gives us certitude, security, when it is based upon the Word of
God accepted and consented to with our very own reason and with our
very own human spirit. Whoever believes with simplicity, with
humility, sense that he is on the good road, that he has an interior
testimony that strengthens him in the difficult conquest of the truth.
Read Jimmy Akins analysis here: via The Smoke Of Satan Homily.
Gary Krupp- Pope Pius XII – Documentation – interview
Here is an amazing interview setting the record straight about Pope Pius XII and WW II. Gary Krupp, a Jew who grew up hating Pius XII providentially discovers documents that turned him about and set him on a crusade to proclaim the Pope’s heroism and love for the Jewish people:
podcast part 1
podcast via Landmines at Foundationstone.org
Pope Benedict XVI:
“Llife is not governed by chance; it is not random. Your very existence has been willed by God, blessed and given a purpose!” he proclaimed.”
“Life is not just a succession of events or experiences, helpful though many of them are. It is a search for the true, the good and the beautiful. It is to this end that we make our choices; it is for this that we exercise our freedom; it is in this – in truth, in goodness, and in beauty – that we find happiness and joy.”
“There is also something sinister which stems from the fact that freedom and tolerance are so often separated from truth. This is fuelled by the notion, widely held today, that there are no absolute truths to guide our lives.”
(Address to Youth – Sydney, Australia, July-2008)
Too many words. What is missing is love, foremost love of God. Jesus assures, "My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.
Yesterday I read a message purported to be given by Jesus to a visionary and passed on to the public. Was it actually Jesus speaking? I don’t know. I read them and can only judge if they are in accordance with the Church, that is Holy Scripture, and Big T "Tradition." I also apply a more homey test; do they melt into my soul like butter on pancakes? I pray all else fall out of my head, leaving me to be at peace.
The message of October 26, 2013 did strike a chord in me with a resonance of Truth. Whether they came from Jesus may remain a mystery, but you can judge whether they are in accordance with God’s Word and something Jesus might be want to say to the people of our age:
"These days, mankind has come to regard himself as the source of all good. Consequently, he trusts only in himself and his own efforts. He does not look for the grace of My Provision, which is often overlooked or hidden in the problems of the present moment." "My Provision is always present, complete and perfect towards the soul’s salvation. The soul can follow his human inclinations, evil suggestions or Divine Inspiration. The free will choice is his to make. But I always provide the grace to choose according to My Father’s Divine Will. If you learn to trust in My Provision, you will also learn to look for it." ————————- "
Into Stillness 