On Reflection

Reflection is not—
As some suppose—
The refuge of the weak.
It is neither the retreat
Of the cowardly,
Nor the pastime
Of the boring.

Reflection is the observatory for the heavens—
The mirror to self—
The armory for the battle of convictions—
The anvil of courage—
The sounding board of conscience—
The headquarters of personal campaigns—
The dispensary of self-correction—
The drafting table of excellence.

It is the echo chamber of speeches—
The depository of lessons—
The storehouse of dreams—
The playroom of the imagination—
The hideaway from fools—
The treasury of wisdom—
The compass of morality—
The parlor of friendship—
The den of family—
The incubator of determination—
The inspiration of art.

Reflection is the forge of character.
It is the podium for addressing self
And the auditorium for listening.
It is the proving grounds for principle—
The chalkboard of planning—
The archive of success and failure—
The clean room of reason.

It is the infirmary for injured feelings—
The time-out chair for the self-disciplined—
The situation room for the crisis—
The courtroom for our anger—
The balance for our judgments—
The camp of the trail-weary.
It is the schoolroom of habits.

Reflection is the grotto of the Image of God—
The foundry of intention—
The planning table of life—
The staging area for engagement in the world.

It is the deep soil in which the virtues grow best.

Reflection is the very wellspring of why—
The well-appointed home of the authentic,
And a mystery to the homeless of mind.






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The Klaxon Culture

Mocking, scoffing–
This klaxon culture–
Ripping at the world–
Rebels with scarcely a cause but outrage itself–
Hating their shortlist of wrongs
And a thousand rights–

The songleader points a finger and screams.
And the chorus joins in.
And it echoes across the land,
Amplified a million-fold by the powers
Who take cover behind the strife.

The klaxon daily tells the fools what to hate.
And hate they do,
With insane passion–
Finding such dear promise in the notion
That they are owed revenge upon those
Who have not really wronged them–
Getting drunk on the idea that
Whatever ails them simply must be,
Without exception,
Someone else’s fault.

They tear down.
And do they ever build up?
Do they even know how?
Is not destruction all that hatred knows how to do?

They play the menace to our society–
Disturbing the peace,
Stirring the pot,
Lying the lies and even
Inventing ways to lie the truth.
Defying the Golden Rule.
Darkening the days.
Calling good evil, and evil good.
Never having their fill.

Exploding at the slightest excuse,
True or false,
Leveraging their tantrum on the world–
Running the ploy of the two-year-old
On childish parents who can be counted on
To give in most every time.

“Give me what I want or I will not shut up!”

And what champion can be found to tell them “no”?

Indeed, when what they really need is a spanking,
They are given a pulpit instead.

They are a parasite upon our own weakness–
An exploitation of our shameful lack of conviction–
A relentless enemy of truth and prosperity and justice alike.

If they find a just cause today,
They parade it like nobody’s business.
But when tomorrow, their cause du jour is unjust,
They parade it just the same.
And so we see through their game,
That they don’t care about truth at all,
But only about advantage.

But the blame does not belong to them alone,
For they see through our game, too–
That we don’t really care as much
About principle as about avoiding a fight.
So they push it to the brink
Knowing that we will not.

It is we who have dared to feed the stray,
Even though the wisdom of the ages
Has warned us against it
A million times.
And it is now we who are trained
To keep it fed
Day and night
At our own weary and begrudging expense.

And the dogs who used to bark all night on Main Street
Are now broadcast from sea to shining sea,
Magnified beyond the petty powers of their forebears,
And useful beyond the wildest dreams of those who
Loot the treasury under the noses of the distracted masses.

Perhaps our society–
Who could never bring itself
Fully to outlaw the lie–
Could use its sleepless nights
To give careful thought to its ways
As the klaxon sounds on.









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Of Course He Knew

Of course He knew
They would eat the fruit.
Just as He knew ha nachash
Would want them to do.

And of course He knew
Wickedness would abound
Until He should regret having
Made them at all–
When He would at last summon the very
Waters of Darkness He had ordered
To keep back beyond his circle.

And of course He knew that
Someone like Noah would care.

And he did.

As had Enoch before him.

And of course He knew that Noah’s progeny would not
Fill the Earth as He commanded them.
And of course He knew that
Handing them over to the Watchers
Would not fix them, either.

And of course He knew that even
His own chosen people
Would scarcely follow his Law
Even under his own mighty Arm.

And of course He knew that the likes of
Moses and Joshua and Caleb would.
And He knew there would be others.

And there were.

And of course He knew that whether he sowed
Or let the fields lie fallow,
He would gather his crop in time.

And it was for their sake that He made
The two worlds, and not just the one.

And, of course, it was never any secret that
He counted the gold and silver as
Worthy of the second world,
And not the clay or the lead or the dust.

And of course He knew that
Some would pretend anyway
That in being that clay or lead or dust,
They had not forsaken a sacred trust
And squandered a sacred life
And disobeyed a sacred edict.

And because He still cared so much–
Even after all that–
He sent his Son–
His glorious Son–
That no one could miss the Gold.

And of course He knew that even so,
There would still be pretenders.
And he warned them of course
For that whole generation—

But so few ever really learn to listen.

Of course it was never about
Making this first world perfect.
It was about finding a family here
Who would belong in the second.

And now of course we are here,
Having been born in our proper time.
And of course it remains to be seen
How all we shall have lived
In the time we have left.




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When Greed

When Greed
First took his stand
To take what was not rightly his,
He unleashed upon this world
A wayward bent
That has wooed the foolish
Ever since.

They think they have found
in his example the proper way of life.
And being busy with acquisition,
They shut their eyes to all else–
Except, perhaps, when Greed bites them anew
Through the teeth of another infected soul.

And then it’s not so good for them as before.

But even so,
The allure of gain still promises to fill
What it hasn’t filled yet,
And their many wounds do not break them
Of wounding others.

And thus the dastard’s empty ways live on,
Menace that they are upon this world–
Even as Greed himself stands imprisoned in the eternal flames.

And still, they go his way who had chosen his way.

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If Suddenly

If suddenly we should be overcome some day
By a mysterious wave of relief–
If there should fall upon us all an eerie calming–
An instant settling in our souls–
A sudden tranquility–
A disarming quietude of the spirit,
So quiet that even the weary whispers of hope
Could be heard again–

I wonder if that might not be the day
That the lie has finally left the Earth.




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What If My Dad

What if my Dad
Had quit pushing before
I had quit pushing back?

What if he had tired of me
Refusing to swing the bat
Because I was afraid of striking out?

What if he had given up the cause
Even one “Just try it!”
Before I finally did?

Then I’d have never tipped that ball in practice that day,
Nor hit that first hit in the game a few minutes later.
Nor the stand-up triple with the RBI.

Dad knew it was worth it.
He knew that the value of success
Exceeds the risk of embarrassment.

So he kept pushing.
Daring that fine line between
Pushing me and breaking me.

At first, I was senseless to everything but the fear of striking out.
Then he countered the fear with his equally troubling coaxing.
And that’s all there was.

So I swang.

Dad couldn’t have known it,
but what was for him just another afternoon of being a dad
Would turn into a major life theme for me.

And all these years hence,
Here I sit, daring the line
Between pushing and breaking
Some charges of my own.

Well, Dad’s gone now, of course.

But not in this way.




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The River Doesn’t Care

The river doesn’t care
What you make of it, O man.
It has its life,
And you have yours.
Curse it all you like,
And still it will outlive you.

Or if by chance you should
Take a different mind about it,
You can learn its way
And its bounty
And its strength
And let it bear you on its back–

Though only to the places it goes.

And once you are yielded that
It only goes where it goes,
The river will still outlive you,
For it is what it is
And you are what you are.

But you shall have had In your days
Your river.
And you shall have learned in your heart
Its lesson.
And only then shall you
Discover that the river had prepared you
For what comes next.


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There Come Our Summers

There come our summers and winters.
And no matter how we spend them,
In time will appear the sum of them all,
Looming nearer until its only landing,
When the number of our days is settled once and for all,
When the others will say,
“So that’s how long he lived.”

And whether any shall marvel at the sum or not,
The questions haunt the mind:
Has the sum of his days meant anything?
And has their worth matched their number?

And in answering, we shall reveal ourselves,
Each in his own way, seeing things as he does.

But the question also comes to the one Mind
Whose proper business it is to decide.
And He shall make of us what He does.
And His answer will be the right one.

He will know.

He will know what was given,
And endured,
And overcome,
And hidden,
And what had been expected.

He will know what to do.

And He will do it.

And as for the rest of us,
We can leave it calmly in His hands,
If we dare.
Or we can pretend to know
What is yet unknowable to us.

And either way,
He goes on as before,
Judging his creatures justly,
Knowing just what to think about them,
And being Himself that very great reward for those
Whose time on earth shall have pleased Him in the balance.

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The Reality of Work-for-Food

So far in the history of Planet Earth, what animal species has ever survived without working for its own food?

If this is how nature handles it—if the species work to support themselves—then how is it that certain humans pretend today to have found a better way to thrive than by working for what they need?

The only way to do this, of course, is to steal from others—either taking what they have earned with their own work, and making it your own, or taking the workers themselves as your own property, and making them work for you rather than for themselves.

The latter (chattel slavery) has been flatly condemned in latter centuries in our society. But as to the former, the American people are still somewhat fuzzy on what to think about it. They already live in a system where the main earners are heavily taxed, with over 50% of the net income being taxed away in various ways. Yet surprisingly, there is practically no push-back in regard to this. Rather, it seems that most just throw up their arms and sigh, and then continue to live under a tax burden that is many times greater than the one that sparked the American Revolutionary War in 1775. (They were quite a different people from what we are today.)

We have switched slavery types in this country since 1775. Chattel slavery is now anathema to our culture, but the slavery of over-taxation and over-regulation is well tolerated by the American people. (Again, were are a different sort of people than were the American founders.)

One of the ways that the overlords are manipulating the nation today is by promising non-workers that they have a right to be equal in this world with those who do work for their own livings–to have “equal outcomes” in life, even if there’s a huge inequality of input from one individual to the next. It’s a promise that even though the non-workers don’t survive in nature, they’ll thrive in our society, because we will give them “equality” just for being alive. But they won’t say it this way. No, the way they put it is a lie. They want to frame it as a matter of “race”, such that anything labeled “white” is bad, and anything labeled “minority” is good.

So basically, all those whites who spent all those centuries working for a living—like the rest of the animal species do—had got it all wrong. (Never mind the white bums among them who tried to pretend against reality that there’s a good way to succeed in this world without working to support yourself–and who had miserable lives as do the bums of every other skin color.) And now, we are supposed to believe that the answer for all the minorities finally to have a good life in this world is to redistribute what the white workers are earning—giving it away to people who did not work for it.

Uh-huh. And how long is that going to last? If I give up my house for the bums down the street, how long is it until they are going to ruin the house? Remember, they’re not the sort to maintain the thing, or to make it BETTER. Nope, they are simple users, and when it’s used up, they have no means to build another house. Their only recourse will be to take yet another house from somebody else—another house they did not work for themselves.

A society like that cannot live long unless it is maintained artificially—such as by an unruly government who sees value in throwing unconstitutional money its way in return for votes. Without any such host for its parasitic lifestyle, such a society would be the economic equivalent of a group that does not believe in having children; it will die out quickly. It is not self-sustainable. And that means once the government support dies out, this is a flash-in-the-pan movement. But it has been kept alive for many decades now by the US Government and the cartel that runs the government behind the scenes.

But this is no movement of philosophers and statesmen and problem solvers; it is a movement of irrationals and irresponsibles—and I shall not be in the least surprised to find out that it is funded by the Fascists/Communists who are continuing the process of overthrowing the United States (while we sit idly by and watch).

It’s likely, I suppose, that when the time is right, their handlers will try to stir up the minority mobs to violence against the committed workers—likely as a first round of warfare against those with the real power in this country (the power to get things done–and I’m referring to people who work for their own living). The non-workers will be of no long-term use to the Fascists, but they’ll make useful pawns in the opening rounds of the mounting conflict. But then, once they become a liability to the Fascists, and are no longer an asset, only a fool would think that the Fascists are going to go out of their way to keep feeding a nonworking class. Ironically, they’ll be much more likely to enslave them as chattel slaves, and then, simply to work them to death—even underfeeding them along the way. (And before they die, they’ll long for the good old days when they could suckle freely at the teats of the great American sow, having only to complain for their supper.)

It’s amazing where all one will run in the flight from reality. People end up in some very untenable places. You don’t want to work for a living, so you pin all your hopes on those “Critical Race Theorists” who tell you that you shouldn’t have to work, and that the world simply owes it to you to provide for you, and that anyone who says differently is merely spouting “white” propaganda—and that they can’t possibly know what they’re talking about, because they’re all hopelessly biased, and have no real idea how the world works.

Well, funny, but before “white people” were a thing, there were Semites in the Ancient Near East who were teaching hard work as a paradigm. (Check your Bible for this.) And there are other non-Caucasian cultures who have recognized that the need for hard work is a reality in this real world. Is it not a fair stereotype to mention Japan, for example? Do they not have an obvious national paradigm of diligence and hard work? And are they not prospering? But now, suddenly, we’re supposed to believe it’s a “white thing”, and that that’s all there is to it.

Well, that’s just stupid.

The klaxon culture has been a parasite alongside the classical American body politic for my whole life, at least—people assuming the right to what is not rightfully theirs, and being angry that it’s not being handed to them as they demand. And that culture has thrived as the US Government (and other entities) have learned how to manipulate them by way of their corruption of greed. But that klaxon class will definitely be thinned out in the coming struggle, because they’ll be left eventually to fend for themselves—and fending for themselves is the very thing they refuse to do. They’ll end up shooting each other, and being shot by workers defending their own possessions and safety, and eventually, by the very government that now promises them such uber-rights over everybody else.

You could clear off a continent and populate it nicely with people of any skin color, and the workers among them would thrive while the non-workers would not. The word for this is not “racism”, but “nature”. That’s how it works in the real world, friends. It’s not a “white thing”.

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Liars Are Twisted People

We all live in a real world. It was here before we got here, and it will be here when we’re gone. And it has rules that do not depend the least bit on our own opinions, wishes, beliefs, traditions, habits, perceptions, concerns, or abilities. For example, gravity is always on whether we like it or not—whether we understand it or not—even whether it hurts us or not—-. The law of cause and effect is always on—even when the effects hurt us. The sustaining of life takes work—even when we “don’t feel like” working. Truth exists, even when it hurts our feelings or causes us inconvenience.

There is a certain fabric to reality—metaphorically speaking. It has certain qualities and properties. It works in certain ways. It is what it is. And most people spend a lifetime learning about it to some extent or another—learning how to navigate this real world. We make our mistakes, and we make improvements, and we learn our lessons—some more easily than others. That is, after living here a while, we “learn the ropes”, so to speak—we learn how things work. We figure it out. And to some extent, we adjust our own thinking and beliefs to better map onto the reality that surrounds us.

But some people refuse to let the rules be the rules—at least on some topics. They are unwilling to adjust their own thinking and beliefs to fit the real world, and prefer instead to act as if reality is different from what it is. They take a twisted view of things, believing against reality—against the evidence and against sound reasoning. And to do this, they have to lie.

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