From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 106

The parable of the Prodigal Son continued: The son's new position and the elder brothers resentment, a second version of the story of a father's unfathomable forgiveness.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 105

Parable of the Prodigal Son continued: "He came to himself..." The son's return and the surprise in the actions of the paterfamilias.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 104

Part 1 of the Prodigal Son: 'Give me what is mine' - individualism

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 103

Overture to the Prodigal Son continued: the parable of the woman and the lost coin. Spending more to find the lost item than the item is 'worth'.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 102

Overture to the Prodigal Son story: the parable of the lost sheep...are you lost enough to find yourself?

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 101

'you will not see me again until you say ‘blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 100

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem…you who have killed the prophets…..How often I have desired to gather you as a hen gathers her brood"

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 99

Jesus on a schedule…checking his clock and calendar for a rendezvous in Jerusalem

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 98

An example from the New York Times - Pop Music review of Philter..."bottled rage"

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 97

The Parable of the leaven. The modern sense of ‘progress’ is the secular version of the Biblical notion of ‘promise’

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 96

The Pharisee's Sabbath setup continued... What knots may be untied on the Sabbath?
The parable of the mustard seed.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 95

Jesus: a teacher or a revealer? Does metanoia proceed from the head or the heart? The Pharisees set up Jesus - will he 'unbind' a woman on the Sabbath?

Sex-Selective Abortions and the Twisting of Souls

Not only is Hadley Arkes a preeminent Constitutional scholar; on the most important issue of our age he is one of our greatest moral philosophers.

"... they kept evading the main moral questions over the years, they would fall into the forms of argument that must have, as their purpose and effect, to undo the very act of moral reasoning.

"We would indeed move step by step, and with each move we would ask the liberal side to honor the principles that they themselves had enacted into law. If it were wrong to discriminate against the handicapped, how could it be justified to kill a child in the womb with Down syndrome?"

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 94

The parable of the fig tree. The fig tree as an image of the old Hebrew covenant of law become unfruitful. A prophecy of Jesus' passion.

The Queen

"The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne
Burnt on the water ..." - Shakespeare

"Once again, the monarchy allowed people to connect through powerful symbolism to their collective history and their identity as a nation. And what a stroke of genius it was to use the river to make that visceral connection."

So wrote British journalist Melanie Phillips in yesterday's London Daily Mail. 

"What a fantastic, glorious, emotional, quite overwhelming spectacle. It wasn’t just that it was flawlessly executed. It wasn’t just that, as billed in advance, it would provide a sight that people would never have seen before. 

"It was also a triumphant restatement and reaffirmation of a Britain that people love so deeply but which so many fear may have been lost for ever."

This is of more than passing interest to me, inasmuch as I am currently trying to assess whether modern or postmodern cultures still have the ability to foster and sustain a center of gravity with sufficient assimilating power to inspire the trans-generational loyalties and sense of purpose on which a healthy culture depends. The jury is still out as far as I can tell, and there are plenty of failed or short-lived attempts. However evanescent the current revival of British esprit de corps might prove to be, it is worth noting that is indebted to a remnant of a pre-modern institution: the monarchy.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 93

Jesus strips the sacrificial trappings from the stories of state brutality and natural disater leaving his listeners with a choice: death as an accident – without meaning or death as ‘self-sacrifice’ – the giving of one’s entire self, spending one’s life in service to others

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 92

Unless you repent, you will perish ‘just as they did’

Metanoia - repentance