Gladness and Silence amid Chaos and Violence

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

 

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

 

Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits by many waters.  With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.

 … The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. The name written on her forehead was a mystery: Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes, and of the abominations of the earth.

 – Revelation 17:1-5

 

I had been emotionally involved a few times with women with enough of a record of promiscuity to make me vaguely uneasy. It is difficult to put much value on something the lady has distributed all too generously. I have the feeling there is some mysterious quota, which varies with each woman.  And whether she gives herself or sells herself, once she reaches her own number, once X pairs of hungry hands have been clamped rightly upon her rounded undersides, she suffers a sea change wherein her juices alter from honey to acid, her eyes change to glass, her heart becomes a stone, and her mouth a windy cave from whence, with each moisturous gasping, comes a tiny stink of death.

― MacDonald, John D. (1966). “Darker Than Amber”, Travis McGee series, Random House LLC, 2013, pgs 56-57

 

We live in an age of wizards and whores where souls are sold in the pursuit of material pleasures. Time-honored principles have been traded for profit and power as lawlessness intensifies.

The word “mystery” is defined as “something not understood or beyond understanding” or, in a religious sense:  “truth that one can know only by revelation and cannot fully understand”.   This would imply more than simply not knowing. A mystery can be that which exceeds human understanding.

There is a saying I’ve heard over and over in my life that has… for the most part… been stated by older men with whom I’ve been related and/or acquainted:  “The older I get, the less I know”.

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The Online Meanderings of an American Nobody & the Genuine Wisdom of an Imaginary Character

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

 

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

– C. S. Lewis (1942), “The Screwtape Letters: Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil”, p.8, HarperCollins UK, 2009

 

While having breakfast with a friend the other day, they commented on an article they had recently read online.  The article was about the discouragement of free speech at Ivy League colleges, and Harvard in particular.  I told them I saw the headline but never read the actual findings.   In any event, I said I wasn’t surprised… but what did surprise me was that the article showed up on their particular newsfeed; and, for them, I would have expected the online algorithmic process to have distilled the findings into another headline such as:  “Harvard Leads Ivy League in Prohibiting Hate Speech”.

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