Bethlehem - (Charles Williams)

Bethlehem
A Poem

A star of travel shines above,
The small town sleeps below,
How shall I find the Mother of Love,
As through the world I go?
The emperors sit at their table bright,
To bring great things to pass,
But the Mother of Love is hid in the night,
With the ox and the ass.

How shall I find the Mother of Love
Amid all heads defiled
And her holy hands of succour that move,
About her holy Child?
Her eyes are lit and her footfall sings
As Eve's through Eden grass,
But she dwells to-night with all toil-worn things
And the ox and the ass.

What are the days that walk with her,
That shall be friends to me?
Days of incense and gold and myrrh,
Days of epiphany,
Days that follow a noble vow,
And the heavy days that pass
In labour of hammer and pen and plough,
And the ox and the ass.

If Love at last by cruel men
And the spear of Fate be slain,
Who shall bear witness to him then
Till he shall come again?
The Mother of Love, and the marching guilds,
And the priest that sings the Mass,
And the man that ploughs and the man that builds,
And the ox and the ass.

A Christmas Carol poem by G.K.Chesterton

The Christ-child lay on Mary's lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
But here is all aright.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's breast
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world's desire.)

The Christ-child stood on Mary's knee,
His hair was like a crown,
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C.S. Lewis summed up Christmas in one sentence:
'The Son of God became a man to enable men to become the sons of God."

We can all stand around the pole.

For us Christians a unity tree?
Next will be the family candelabra for the Jews.
But, thankfully, they have left Festivus alone. This will become the new national early winter celebration.

The Copenhagen Synod Part 2

Well the synod has concluded and to continue their religion mapping they even created a secret society that may or may not have the power to put countries, which do not go along with them, on double secret probation but we shall see.
"The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalized this week.”

"The circle of commitment" has a nice ring to it don't cha think? Dan Brown could not have done better.

Also one of the goals of this group was to help (give money to) poorer members to deal with the effects of global warming. No one has yet to explain what it means to deal with these effects and they remind us it is not for us to understand - for their ways are far above our ways.
Archbishop Al Gore tells us in 5 years the polar ice caps will melt so maybe the money will be used to help Santa move his world headquarters.

And at the Church of the Presumptuous Assumption of the Blinding Light. Sent up a hymn:
Oh blinding light,
Oh light that blinds,
I cannot see,
Look out for me!!

As Michael Jones tells us "You cannot be a skeptic on “Climate Change,” but only an ignorant “Denier,” You’re either quivering with salvation from seeing the light of wisdom, or you’re an ignorant knave in need of re-education."


At the synod the U.S. Secretary of the Environment singlehandedly spoke from on high by labeling CO2 emissions as health hazards . "This changes the conversation to health concerns and away from the endless squabbling over science between global warmers versus deniers."

That darn pesky science thingy. "Let it be done unto us according to your word."

But the synod could not, in good faith, outlaw exhaling.

However, since this pantheon takes their godhood quite seriously they did the next best thing by adding a population control measure to the overall agreement which would limit the number of people exhaling. After all gods have the power to decide who lives and who dies and they intend to exercise that power.
"Dealing with climate change is not simply an issue of CO2 emission reduction but a comprehensive challenge involving political, economic, social, cultural and ecological issues, and the population concern fits right into the picture," said Zhao, who is a member of the Chinese government delegation. Zhao said that China's population program has made a great historic contribution to the well-being of society. As a result of the family planning policy, China has seen 400 million fewer births, which has resulted in 18 million fewer tons of CO2 emissions a year, Zhao said. "

Maybe they do have a creed after all: Save the trees. Kill the babies.

The Copenhagen Synod

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless, minority; keen to set brush fires in people's minds..." -Samuel Adams

"Comparative religion is very comparative indeed. That is, it is so much a matter of degree and distance and difference that it is only comparatively successful when it tries to compare. When we come to look at it closely we find it comparing things that are really quite incomparable. We are accustomed to see a table or catalogue of the world's great religions in parallel columns, until we fancy they are really parallel. We are accustomed to see the names of the great religious founders all in a row: Christ; Mahomet; Buddha; Confucius. But in truth this is only a trick; another of these optical illusions by which any objects may be put into a particular relation by shifting to a particular point of sight."
-GKC Everlasting Man


There is a small group of very tireless vocal people who want to radically to change our society (you know, them or they) to what they want to change it to has been hard to pin down. Oh yea, and they are pissed off because we can’t accept and embrace this change just cause we don’t want to bow down to an ambiguity.

Most of those in the vanguard of this group have taken a comparative religion class in college and saw that religion/s changed the society in which they flourished. So they began to remold their message in the shape of a religion. They learned that to be a religion all you needed were certain elements to parallel the other established religions. Most of these items were already floating around in their message they just needed to be codified into a cannon if not a creed.

President Barack Obama said in Turkey : "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation...... "

They are still having a problem with the name of this religion it’s either secular humanism or moral relativism but they have established the basic elements (which they will defend to the somewhat uncomfortable) which are as follows:

Creation story - random chance evolution

A God – The Individual (“… your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who will know what is good and what is bad”.) Although some individuals are more god than others

Priests – Scientists (we know the truth) and Politicians (“vote for me and I’ll set you free”.)

Sacraments – sterile sex (the source and summit of life) and abortion

Original sin – Racism

Mortal sin – Rudeness, Being alone and Disagreeing with priests

Venial sin – individual wealth (you can have lots of money but you have to feel bad about it)

It would be easy to expand this list both horizontally and vertically but you get the idea. However, until recently they were missing a key element, one that would tie it all together and bend people to their will: AN APOCOLYPS. Ta-Da Global warming. No. Wait. Climate Change. Thus they are complete.

And it absolutely does not matter if the science is wrong because it fits the theology: since man is god, god can destroy man and since man is god, he can save himself from himself. Pretty neat huh?

The world must take action on climate change at Copenhagen even if the science is not correct, Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister has suggested.

Also note this quote from Mormon Roots Joseph Smith by Byron Marchant:
"When my then teen daughters asked if they could be baptized into the Mormon church I asked if they knew it was a hoax and they said it didn't matter."

Hugo, Tony, Barrack, Hillary have also taken a page out of Joseph Smith's book as they are all talking through their hats.

How long will it be, I wonder, before the Leftist Church of Perpetual Angst declares Al Gore the Galileo of the 21st century.

Uncle Gilbert again:

"Take away the supernatural, and what remains is the unnatural."

"Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves."

"But the great towns have grown intolerable solely because of such suffocating vulgarities and tyrannies. It is not humanity that disgusts us in the huge cities; it is inhumanity. It is not that there are human beings; but that they are not treated as such. We do not, I hope, dislike men and women; we only dislike their being made into a sort of jam: crushed together so that they are not merely powerless but shapeless."

"The wise men know what wicked things
Are written on the sky,
They trim sad Lamps, they touch sad strings,
Hearing the heavy purple wings,
Where the forgotten seraph kings
Still plot how God shall die."

"The rich do mainly believe in divorce. The poor do mainly believe in fidelity. But the modern rich are powerful and the modern poor are powerless. Therefore for years and decades past the rich have been preaching their own virtues. Now that they have begun to preach their vices too, I think it is time to kick."

And some are now starting to kick.

An Advent Story

As my daughter and I were making paper cutout snow flakes she said to me, "Ya know Christmas is Jesus' birthday". She said this as if she was the only one to figure that out.
"Yes it is. Should we send him a card?"
"Oh yes that would be great!" (she loves making cards) at this she stopped with the snow flakes and got out her crayons and markers.
About half way through with this masterpiece she asked, "How old is Jesus"?
"He is going to be 2009 years old give or take a little."
She gave me that concentrated look to see if I was kidding or not.
"Fur real?" she asked.
"Fur real." I told her.
"Mom! Is papa right?"
"Yes, dear."

Later that night as I was tucking her in to bed she said, "You know he doesn't look that old."
"Who doesn't?" I asked
"Jesus."
Trying not to laugh I said, "Yes. He has held pretty well."

When You Sing You Pray Twice

"The modern evil, we have said, greatly turns on this: that people do not see that the exception proves the rule." GKC Eugenics and Other Evils

It is like this: the wall is the rule and the gate is the exception that proves it. The gate proves there is a wall the wall does not prove there is a gate. So the evil Chesterton is talking about is now we have a great expanse of gates and very little wall left.

There are many "social issues" today that bare this out including but not limited to the acceptance of the new Eugenics of assisted suicide.

But this is Advent so let us just look at one expanse of gates; Christmas Songs.
You can do any search for the top 10-20 or 25 Christmas songs and only one (some lists have 2) song talks about Jesus. The winner on most lists was The Little Drummer Boy followed by Silent Night. But then again how can they compete with Santa Baby and I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.

The weeks before Advent the Church had been telling the story of the Macabee's. I know the protestants don't "do" those books because Luther cut them due to the fact that they contradicted his personal theology and Henry-duh-8 kept them cut cause the story was a dangerous one for him. The story however is important for us today as it has ever been. It is a story where the people of God finally say "Enough! The government is not our religion and the king is not our God."

Of course I'm not suggesting we do what they did and go into prairie dog town and shoot some holes. But I am saying that we need to speak up and stop the madness.

Changing this simple song list is not as hard as trying to stay safe behind a barrier of gates. And songs have a powerful effect on how we view the world. Call your local radio station and request a true Christmas song. Do it once a day, have your friends do it and then their friends so without a single letter to the editor we can rebuild the wall.