May 23, 1994
Dear Mr. Buckley,
Just as you, in your letter of May 16, linked one's faith to one's
works, to wit:
The sheep will be separated from the goats according to their faith, of which their works are evidence.
– neither could Saints James or Peter and the eleven apostles in Jerusalem separate the two; and to this extent we can agree and show that faith [in God] which is not carried forth in good works is no faith [in God] at all. We all know that those who profess a faith in God are hypocrites without works evidencing their Faith. We also know there is, as it were, an unwritten, universal Law which all men can understand and bear in their hearts which sets the ground-rules of His Faith. In our heart, midst the fragments of our hopes and dreams come parables, the exegeses of the rabbis, the Apocryphal and Pseudepigrapha works associated with the Bible, as well as other precepts reflecting the stream of truth which feeds life. Rabbi Hillel and Jesus both agreed that all of that message reduces to loving God with all your heart and soul and the Golden Rule . This, of course, abhors conduct reported in Haldeman's Tapes, such as that of Dr. Billy Graham, who, Haldeman claims, advised Nixon that the Bible says [certain of] the Jews are hated of God, etc., thus justifying acts against Jews. If you should discuss the matter with Dr. Graham, he, therefore, should be able to show you how Christian pastors still press the Jews despite the Golden Rule . Now Aristotle [Ethics, V.5] took issue with the Golden Rule (which he traced from Pythagoras) because it was too equivocal, defining justice simply as having done to one what one has done to another. But simple reciprocity does not square with either distributive or rectifactory justice , says he, plus:
[Hesiod, Works and Days ] If a man suffer even as he wrought,
Then justice will be rendered as it ought.
– suggesting that right conduct cannot be judged through a mathematical formula of tit-for-tat. Nevertheless, the Golden Rule applied in the negative (as it was normally used): do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself, applies the principle correctly. Here, we have argued, one's Faith in God leads to the inevitable conclusion that sometimes one is required to follow the guidance of God and do something one might not otherwise choose to do: be truthful, be not lured into maliciousness or injustices [sic. wickedness] to one's brethren.
I sense you are angry with me, because I have been pummeling your helm rather hard; and I have not done it for any personal reason but for the sake of Truth which I hope we can agree is God. Any belief in which you have a stake, or likewise any belief which I may have, must respect its place of being in the Service of God – of truth alone – and not impose itself upon our persons or any other persons. As the prophet said and Jesus elucidated, God's Truth is not like men who waver like reeds before the current. In this parable John the Baptist was not like a reed in the wind, but solid and unwavering in what he knew to be true in the scriptures. After all, John the Baptist's father, Zechariah, was a high priest of the temple, a post which was inherited from father to son, and John the Baptist ought to have had a strong foundation in scripture. Because the pharisees, in particular, were not conducting themselves according to the scripture (sinners were abundant) – a cause against which Jesus later drove into the ground, tossing over the tables of the money changers and the like – John the Baptist founded a profound ministry of repentance, hailing the fact that the judgment was near to come. This put him into suspicion, of being that Elijah of whom Malachi speaks who reappears before God's wrath of hail and fire. At first this is how Jesus saw John the Baptist, as the messenger of the Last Days. In another perspective Jesus compared the Baptist's mission as the Angel of whom
Moses spoke to His Mission of that Prophet of whom Moses
spoke. In all respects Jesus stood on the firm foundation of the
Torah and its prophets, and, as by example of the reeds moving
this way and that by the wind, we can see that Jesus saw both
himself and John the Baptist on solid ground which is eternal
and cannot be moved from its place. By this introduction, then
let us not be moved by those shifting winds and tides in men,
which boil out of pride and vanity, and [let us] search for Truth,
being upright and honorable. This is difficult because men press
against us in vain attempts to sway us away from the foundation
which the oracle of Mt. Sinai said is Truth.
It is not who I am or who you are which is important in our conversation,
but what is important is what we leave behind our conversation.
If we converse for idle curiosity or pleasure and, discovering
a fountain in the process which can nourish others, but bury it
behind us, then our conversation is but Epicurean
and self-justifying: doing no one any good whatsoever. And with
regard to this it is apparent that neither you nor I have lived
lives which have any hold in idle chatter. If this were not the
case both of us would be profiting in scandal sheets. What little
I know of you and what you know of me is that we each in our own
way have felt a need to rub our lives against unjust causes.
Like a current of a river, says St. Anthony the Great
[251-356 A.D], the body drags us down into shameful pleasures
; or, to put it another way, people with filthy clothes
soil the coats of those who rub against them [St. Anthony:
On the Character of men and the Virtuous Life , 142, 143].
Following this we can see that the corruption which erupts within
a soul committed to the exercise of wealth and, through wealth,
power, rubs off on those around them. For instance there was and
continues to be an obvious attempt among Pauline Christians to
hide Paul's Corruption. Whilst before me we might admit, because
of ignorance there was no intention to cover Paul's sin, as specifically
listed in our work,
Updating this observation we can see that those who rubbed against Reagan and Bush were corrupted with their grime; and we can see the results of their faithless works--millions of homeless-- now wandering aimlessly our streets (100,000 in New York!).
One of the castigations I learned in my world travels, but
particularly in Spain and its "colonies" is the phrase,
you have no shame, often followed by the word cabrone!, meaning goat. These two curses were mostly thrown
against an unworthy bull which would have preferred a rose in
his mouth over the inevitable, choking fountain of blood. Through
my marriage to one of Spanish heritage and my travels I became
sensitive to this shaming,which was particularly impressed upon
me in the bull ring of Toledo, Spain.
Be this as it may, seeing something in one's eyes which is shameful,
one of my background has trouble expressing his revulsion: that
one is without shame, without being somewhat biting in the presentation.
No matter how it is expressed, we all know it is just another
way-- in my estimation more effective--of saying, repent!
I castigated Reagan and Bush, following this example, and traced
to their works the tragedy of our homeless and fatherless nation,
for it began in their reign. By the same token I argue that those
who rubbed against Reagan and Bush [and now Clinton; ed. note]
have had no sense of shame for having become implicated in the
crime of destroying the lives of some seven million men, women,
and children (a number which was recently confessed by our HUD
director, though the true number of afflicted souls under the
Reagan-Bush Estate are orders of magnitude greater, as history
will prove).
We call this a crime, because the magnitude of the dispossessed
in our society is comparable to the horror of the first stage
of the holocaust and certainly on a par with the numbers in China
who have been dispossessed of their rights and property. The magnitude
of the crime, following other comparisons, relates to the freeing
of the slaves in Rome who rioted because of lack of work, or,
on another scale, the roots of the French Revolution, as described
in The Second Coming of the American Revolution. To those
who castigate China we should be pointing out how US tyrants have
been mistreating Americans, which, if the UN were to meddle into
a nation's internal affairs (beyond Iraq) we might find both the
US and China in need of UN Resolutions castigating their inhumane
treatment of their peoples. But following the idea through to
the end we find that the world itself is caught up in a severe
over-abundance of people compared to the availability of jobs;
so many are left homeless and, therefore, abused; and the crimes
of one government, in this regard, flow from nation to nation,
filtering the flow of wealth into fewer and fewer hands, leaving
not well pastured sheep in the bargain but a ravaged swath where
the ever more populous wretched of the earth are left to eke out
their portion from the fruit killing scars of civilization. This
will continue because these are the mindless masses who do not
know any better and will remain as such until such time as a shepherd--which
we have already established is a wise man--dedicates his time
to show them a way out of their desolate places back to the place
of human dignity.
Intelligent men, says St. Anthony, are those who are not erudite in the sayings and books of the wise men of old, but those who have an intelligent soul and can discriminate between good and evil [ibid 1]. Applying St. Anthony's criteria to the Current Estate, which we compared to the tyranny of the Third Estate of the French Revolution in The Second Coming of the American Revolution, we can see a great void of intelligence. We can call this a great gulf or abyss which is most difficult to cross for those of us who try to keep the virtues. For the temptations of this Estate have led away from the virtues and into a place which is more akin to the quarters where pimps, thieves and whores pander to and pick the pockets of the public. These quarters are easy to spot by the poverty which surrounds them, and we remember the worst of those eruptions of inhumanity by the disease which breeds and records their mindless passage. In our tally the diseases passing through this Current Estate are, as with the Pharaoh, a consequence and reflective of the Reagan-Bush sin; and, knowing that the greater the transgressor there is the greater the sin, we can expect the diseases flowing over us to be much greater than that which passed over Egypt. Disease, like Justice, as we well know, has no favor as to person, and seeks out equally kings and paupers alike.
It is human nature, I suppose, to measure goodness by the wretchedness
or dissipation nearby. Those who are dissipated in their life
and habits [if challenged] are anxious to prove that everyone
else is worse than themselves, seeking to present themselves as
innocent in comparison with all sinners around them [ibid. 8]. Whether it be the revulsion in the Church or the nausea of the Reagan-Bush Estate (still continuing), because of this nature we cannot easily call a people away from evil, once they, like the Pharaoh, set their hearts to evil; and laying evil upon evil they build towers and engage hirelings to defend them – always pointing out the defects in other towers nearby.
Vanity and Human Dignity
The cause of all evil is vanity (as with Satan), and from it
comes delusion, self deception and ignorance of God. The way to
know God, and thus counter Vanity, is by means of goodness
[re: ibid 26, 29.] To reach this point, it follows that one must
always be humble in his relationships with God first, and since
God is Truth, with those truths which affect human dignity. Here
we can refer back to our comment of April 26 on Nixon and sketch
how his life traversed, first this way then that, the area of
Vanity and Human Dignity. You should be able to relate to Nixon's
trial, because you were raptured into Nixon's Cause, with others,
of anti-Communism. When we compare the zealots of Communism with
the zealots of anti-Communism one thing is clear, that malice
was common to both groups; and malice, of course, has no purpose
but to undermine Human Dignity, wherever it resides. Now here
is a fascinating tale to tell, how a great man, Nixon, was formed
out of the very heap of malice he helped to create. This parable
I received with a miscellanea of the Hyperboreans, whom
I shall discuss momentarily.
Anti-Communism, like anti-Semitism, is a vain [sic. I am better than thou ] doctrine of men which lives only to produce envy and fear, and, with them, hatred and all of its evils. These have been compared to dogs of the chase called the Furies . Orestes, nephew of the cruel Menelaus, was chased by them, for instance, as he pirated away his sister, Iphigenia, from her disdainful priesthood of sacrificing strangers in the Temple of Artemis. In any event it was the Virgin Iphigenia who said that the sea washes away all the sins of men [Euripedes, Iphigenia among the Taurians ]. I saw this for myself on the coast of Turkey, where there are the ruins of many underwater cities just east of Ephes (which city was raised).
With the fear drummed up by Nixon and others – fearing that America would be swallowed by the depths of Communism – fighting off the monster, one curse led to another, accompanied by lies and self-justification, and this led to a self-effacing game called dominos, in the foreground of which was Vietnam. Anti-Communism had its opposition, which was no less virtuous than the other, for all doctrines based on hatred are evil. One evil does not justify another, no more than one whim justifies another or one passion, as for sex, can satisfy another, as for dignity.
Because Justice is longer lasting than the whims and passions of men, keeping with the particulars and exploring the underlying causes of the Vietnamese War, one will find that under President Johnson our own Congress, on a whim, passed an illegal act of war. How this specifically relates to our discussion is that we have been talking about man's faith and works. Our Congress [in whom God they Trusted] broke faith with its founders, our laws and people, when they passed the Tonkin Resolution, authorizing the President to conduct what was obviously an engagement of the United States in War. The Congress of the United States has no authorization to condone any military action of the United States against another people by any other instrument than an Act of War. Our Law of the Land is very specific about the difference between an Act of Congress and a Resolution (or opinion ) of Congress. War, by virtue of its destructive nature, demands a consensus of the people to engage in it, and the Constitution requires that such a consensus be expressed through an Act of Congress ; an Act , by its nature, requires a larger consensus of Congress, than a Resolution. Seeing Congress by-pass this process, because they could not muster the consensus to authorize an act of war, they slipped through the works, violating their duty and the people's rights, a Resolution. By our Law all of those who voted on the Tonkin Resolution are criminals. Morally they are criminals, because they violated--raped would be a better word--our Law. If we had space here it would be appropriate to list all of the names of that infamous Congress (many of them are recorded in Philistia Triumph Thou because of me, however). So big deal, they worked around the Law, but the end justifies the means, one might say. But let's face it, this is the procedure of Tyrannies who set themselves above the laws upon whom they drew support. Such things are Matricidal, who throw off and murder the mothers which bared their breasts to them. The point we make here is that since the Tonkin Resolution our nation has taken it for granted that it is acceptable for our leaders to be above and manipulate and violate the Law.
Now the Tonkin Resolution came out of Nixon's and others' zealousness to snare and stamp out Communism, and Nixon, getting caught up in the effects of the zealots of Vietnam, inherited the trap of the Tonkin Resolution, firstly in terms of the mindless killing which led to no good, creating many monsters, such as Pol Pot ; secondly in the fraying of our national fabric torn over "an unjust war" ; and thirdly, because of the disillusion over his period in office, spiked by the war, he was dogged from all sides, from those, as the saying goes, who like to stir up storms with a tooth pick in a glass of water (a proverb used against the Greeks by the Turks). Now the dogs, or Furies, will sniff and dig up anything they can find, for the sake of the chase, and, being that liars leave the easiest trails to follow (the Tonkin Resolution having inspired all of our leaders to heap one deceit upon another), it was inevitable that the Furies would sniff out Watergate. Ironically, of all of these connections Watergate was a relatively minor note in the illicit affairs which stirred up the Cold War and its Vietnam era tirades.
What comes around goes around: the parable is completed by
the phenomena that Nixon, having been forced out of office because
of Watergate, opted to spend the rest of his life building
bridges between Americans and Communists. Under the bridges he
laid is still the terrifying abyss and its heaps of bones, of
which he was an overseer and helped to dig. We mention this because
sometimes getting caught in one's own trap can lead to redemption
for oneself and others. Unfortunately we can see in time but a
few who set such traps, whether for good or evil, who have the
courage of Nixon.
Our general argument, of course, leads to this very work, of building bridges across the chasms of hatred, some of which have existed for two thousand years. To build bridges one needs to get others to cooperate in the work, however. Keeping with the parable of Nixon, we hope for righteous men who have the courage – regardless of the particulars of their own history – to do what is good; in Nixon's case we can see that he realized that his exit from this world must be as a Peacemaker. Thus the bridges. So we end this parable with a blessing: Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they
are the children of God.
When we look upon the chasms of hatred we see man reduced to the level of the beasts. Today, we can see what St. Anthony described: ..like animals, with material things and enslaved by sensual pleasures, they separate themselves from God; and through their desires they drag down their soul from heaven [sic. Christians are one with Christ in Heaven; ed. note] to the abyss [ibid. 42.].
We speak of anti-Semitism, anti-Communism, the continuing Reagan-Bush
[Clinton] Estate: we measure symbols which describe a mood of
man whose works are evil, using the criteria mentioned by St.
Neilos in our April 26 letter: measuring their beginning with their end. Such works speak for themselves, and, as so often
repeated in our work, the wicked are often caught in the very
snares they set for others.
It is in our power to live in accordance with God's will. Moreover,
no one can ever force us to do what is evil against our will.
It is through this struggle against evil that we shall become
worthy to serve God and live like angels in heaven [ibid.
66]. Thus, using this criteria we can say in the parable of Nixon
that this man ended his life as an Angel , of good actions.
We can compare this parable of Nixon to the work I called for
in Part II Of the Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church,
which is a bridge across the abyss of anti-Semitism. Here, we
asked the Pope to be an Angel and not leave this life without
having laid the foundation for that bridge. What would you say,
knowing the abyss below and the bones which cry out from it? Is
it good for your bishop to not heed our plea? All who come
into this life, both those who live modestly, and those who enjoy
wealth and ostentation, leave this life like an inn: each takes
with him none of its pleasures and riches, but only his own past
actions whether good or bad [ibid 80]. Now Nixon took
the remedy to cure his past, and I wonder whether the Church,
with its lesions now exposed, will drink its portion.
We measure good by the virtues: one's ability to discern and
live whether it is good or evil. The surest way of good, of course,
is to build one good upon another [re: Tapestry of One – Lao Tzu]. And when we leave this life let us hope that those before us will say that we built upon good: we were gentle and merciful, always giving thanks to God. This is particularly demanded of leaders, for he who has no compassion has no virtue [re:
St. Anthony, ibid. 81]. Ultimately, with respect to our Current Estate, we can see by measure of the multitudes of homeless
alone--we need not list our violent, guilt ridden nature-- that
we live without compassion. Again, those who led us into this
state devoid of compassion are Reagan and Bush. It was their greedy
nature and watch which kicked our people out onto the streets
of despair. Just as the homeless cling to their corners, so too
does the evil which dispossessed them of basic human dignity cling
to the houses of Reagan and Bush; as evil clings closely to
one's nature, just as verdigris to copper and dirt to the body
[re: St. Anthony, ibid. 91.]. Now Nixon had the intellect
, which is a gift of God, says St. Anthony, that
saves the soul [ibid. 94]. I do not see this kind of intellect
in the continuing Reagan-Bush Estate or, to date, in Church bishops
who ought to know that many of Paul's teachings are anti-Semitic.
Their intelligence seems to have been carried away by their passion
for the person of Paul, like a charioteer who loses control
over his horses [ibid 96.].
Sometimes, when measuring the good works of others which inspire our actions, we are called to put something [evil] to rest. Again, we refer to the problem of anti-Semitism, which can be put to rest by a small action of your bishop. By his action others will follow, building a bridge across the abyss few dare to cross. Here, we use the precept of a bridge as a means of rest ; and this has been called by the rabbis as a cessation of againstness , a place where you and I, I hope, are headed. Now we can describe this image as an absence of wickedness, and following this we have again the lead of St. Anthony: it is the absence of wickedness in man which conforms him to God [ibid 99]. From this you and your bishops should be able to see that we rest our case on Psalm 12, which defines wickedness as the absence of charity and mercy and Revelation 11.18, which defines wickedness as those who desolate the earth. For my part, first among those condemned against these make-weights of Truth is the United States, because it led the world in desolation. First it is among the not-compassionate, first among the not-charitable and first among the not-merciful; and among the chief heads of this hundred headed Typhöeus are Reagan and Bush and the Estate which worships them. We say this for good reason, following the maxim of Christ used earlier: to whomsoever much is given much is required. The US, at the moment, is first among the nations, so much more is required of her.
When we discuss Reagan and Bush, and their Estate, in the same breath with Paul and his Estate, we link together similar wicked professions. For the results of their professions have been desolating on a scale, with respect to American history, which has not been surpassed in greed on the one hand; and, in terms of the Pauline factor, an over-abundance of desolation. The body count of those slain and desolated to protect Paul's doctrine and his towers still remains to be completed.
This brings us to your comment: that you never said Paul
was evil . At the time of Watergate I wrote of Nixon
as an evil man. Nixon, in my opinion, repented; so for my part,
just as Nineveh repented and was blessed, so too have I been inspired
to apply the same criteria to Nixon. As for Paul, we have almost
two thousand years of water which has poured under the bridge,
as it were, and, from the grave, he cannot undue all of the malice
we have cited which was done under his Epistles and teachings.
My personal belief is that Paul was not completely evil--only
that portion of his doctrine which showed malice towards the Jews
and their Law was evil; but that malice, I concluded, by numbering
the slaughtered corpses alone, far outweighed the good works which
he accomplished. Also, as stated previously, I believe that had
Paul been bright enough to figure out the consequences of his
doctrine, how men could justify themselves under his criteria
to persecute others, Paul should have changed his pitch. The question
now is whether the Church can face up to the consequences of the
doctrine and turn away from it so that others would follow.
It does no good to say that anti-Semitism is evil without at once
flagging those doctrines which overtly and covertly perpetrate
it. For instance, in the overt case, the cartoons of Jews eating
Christian babies at Passover, which the Nazis circulated (and
still do), were not invented over-night. Their origins we summarily
traced in On The Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church,
and these origins are the covert feature of anti-Semitism. Listen
to Paul, for God's Sake. Is there much difference in his statement
that the Jews (who Circumcise themselves) are murderers and adulterers;
hypocrites who justify their heinous works under the Law, condemned
by God, whose Law is now obsolete, old and therefore passed away--does
this not bear a resemblance to Luther's tract which begins,
What should we do with this damnable race of the Jews?
and does it not bear a resemblance to Hitler's announcement, of
the Final Solution?
Besides the flood of the sea, there are other ways to rid a
world of such malice, as subliminal as it may be. For one cannot
sprinkle water upon another's head and pronounce him clean of
sin, whilst at the same time pouring into his ears a hatred of
the Jews, why the Jews are abandoned of God (until they repent
and accept Paul's Gospel). Now under the original concept initiated
out of the Jewish bath and the Baptist's technique of immersion,
there was the idea that one comes to the baptism already cleansed,
answering the Baptist's and Jesus's call to repent. Your willingness
to be baptized signified that you had committed yourself (turned
back) to God and His Way. Immersion in the Jordan, flowing out
of the Sea of Galilee, brought one under the Covenant of God, and following this, through the mystery of raising out of
the water one joins Jesus, raised in the resurrection of eternal
life.
Somehow this Gospel of Jesus got reduced, as all messages and
histories tend to show, and Paul and his disciples found themselves
baptizing a bunch of hypocrites, who, once washed of their sins
through Baptism in Jesus went back out and heaped up more sins.
So Paul called back some of the Old Testament Rules to combat
the hypocrisy. And the Gospel of Jesus which became diluted into
Paul's Gospel of Faith finally became so garroted with contradictions
over faith versus works that Christians still today are having
a great deal of trouble sorting out the idea that faith without
works evidencing the faith can result in Simony and other kinds
of wickedness, ultimately defined as heresy. To fight off heresy
the Church decided that it is better for the heretic's flesh to
burn here than his soul in Hell. Always first among the heretics,
of course, were the Jews, now followed by the Moslems. Had I been
born a [few] hundred years earlier, I too would have ended up
at the stake. Now, because of Paul's long standing instructions,
which we compared to Peter's in On the Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church, I am somewhat free of such persecution and
can openly speak my mind. As I mentioned in my letters and that
book, I have said what Christ Himself must say (following this
the Body of Christ should say it also!), but being a bit stricter
than your pastors I went so far as to point out the commandments
of Christ which conflict with Paul's and your Bishop's teachings.
If you were to examine what we have discussed and presume that
Christ can read as well as I, that he can examine things as well
as I, only a fool would think that the sins we have outlined cannot
be seen (or remedied) by God.
My mother has questioned why I would dedicate myself to writing
in obscurity. I should make a living from my writings,
she said (particularly since at my age it is getting harder and
harder for me to find a decent job), and she said I should write
Children's Books. After that conversation, I decided that the
next time I speak with her I must mention that what I have been
writing is children's books. The stuff is exceedingly basic. For
those who read the Bible each day my work should be a breeze to
get through.
How much simpler can an idea be? that says: if you see a doctrine
which produces malice, or contradicts Christ, question it, whether
it could have come from Christ, and from Christ, God! How much
simpler can the observation be?: that God is Truth and Christ
is the Son of Truth and, therefore, his best manifestation is
the pursuit of Truth! And who can say there could be a simpler
conclusion to this than to look at things through Christ's Spirit?
And here's the crux of our message, having taken this course I
have found no shepherds in the entire Body of Christ who,
seeing some anomalies I might put to them, would discuss them
with me. Except for your ministry to me I should be dead.
I am comforted, however, in the fact that I am hidden in obscurity, as it has given me an advantage – having to pay obeisance to no other patron but God – of being able to express my mind wholly from Christ's point of view. How you must envy me – my not having to deal with the Furies!
If we can continue to converse, well and good. But knowing
my restrictions as you now should be able to perceive them, it
should be no surprise to you that I should ask you to judge what
I have pulled out of the mouths and works of Paul, whether the
particulars cited be good or evil. Now to avoid this judgment
is not good, as the judgment calls forth a Salvation of a multitude
of souls being even yet again prepared for the pit. So many lives
can be blessed with this work. But I assure you that silence,
where a warning is needed, cannot achieve any good whatsoever.
This comes from the precept of the Watchman. Knowing how
cities are most vulnerable at night, where all kinds of vile things
creep through the walls, the scriptures placed Watchmen upon their
walls.
Following the criteria established, my work, therefore, is at
the City Gate. Following this, it should be noticeable
that I realize that my failure to raise a Watchman leaves
all of the death caused by Paul's legacy heaped upon my soul.
What is upon my soul I have sent on up to Heaven (assuming
prayer works). Your Bishop must know that though God allows the
wicked to tyrannize others, afterwards He delivers the wicked
also to judgment, because they have made people suffer in order
to serve not God, but their own wickedness [St. Anthony, bid.
121.]. This is demonstrated in On the Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church.
My argument, in the troops I gather to me, must rely upon the
Word , which is the Image, Intellect, Wisdom, and Providence
of God, says St. Anthony [ibid. 156.]. It is this thing, of course, which is designed to convict those to choose the way of God, which is good, as opposed to the meandering, and by appearance more appealing, courses of evil. Behold me, for instance, I have, in spite of my own weaknesses, tried to keep the straight path, to pass through the most restrictive gate, so to show that there is an inheritance for the desolate – a faith not of my own creation but of God's – which is so simple in its criteria, on the need to expose Truth, it cannot be comprehended by this devious generation.
Though many speak of Truth their hearts are far from it, doing the exact opposite of that which is called for by God and ignoring in particular the providence of God. They cannot see that the providence of God is not in the treasures men accumulate unto themselves but the ability to discern and reflect good. And wherever that good is discerned in man – for man is the abode of the Spirit of God – there is God. Now there is no greater joy than the opportunity, once discerning the chance to do good, of doing it. Sometimes the challenge to do good, as that which pertains to the confession of Paul's Sin, is inconceivable, ripping apart one's soul.
We stand aghast, looking upon Antiochus Epiphanes and the suffering
of the man and his seven children, how well they stayed the course;
how similarly St. Polycarp and many other Christians suffered;
and then behind them the Jews; and now the seething pots of all
kinds, of Moslems, Jews, and Christians, of millions in recent
times sent to their tombs by Stalin, and now of the sufferings
over Israel, in Bosnia, and of late the massive butchery in Africa's
heartland, and, of course, the terrible abuses in our streets.
Now these and all of the butchery, for whatever reason, are evil and offer an opportunity for devotees of good works to contrive a plan to overcome them and do good. But to the contrary, not being blessed with leaders of vision who jump at the opportunity to do good, today our leaders quibble and equivocate on the matter of who deserves to be saved and who does not. Not mindful of responsibility to God, they mind Kuwait, because of its oil, so it deserved salvation; and the Kurds also, because we were there because of the oil, so to speak, deserve salvation; but, unless a people have an anointing of oil, it follows, we have learned by our leader's example that they deserve not salvation. Fortunately God does not think like our patronizing, hedonistic leaders and says he will save whosoever trusts in Him. This, of course, means whosoever trusts that He can arise:
Psalm 12.5 For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy..I will set him in safety from him that puffeth [persecuteth] at him.
12.8 The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted.
Thus we see that God is just and compassionate [re: St. Anthony ibid 163.]; and knowing that God raises them who are meek and brings down them who are exalted, we can see how our argument necessarily leads to the Reagan-Bush Estate and Paul, and, by implication, your Bishop, who will not look upon the evil that is in Paul's Epistles and preached from the high pulpits of the Church.
Surely you can see that bringing down the high and the mighty is the simplest way to raise up the poor and the persecuted. Since we are speaking of shepherds in high places, we know that if we expose a false shepherd – which Jesus described as a wolf in sheep's clothing – the flock will flee from them. This argument is plain: Reagan and Bush were wolves which devoured this nation's substance, as a fire racing through a forest; Paul's doctrine devoured much of mankind by butchery. Count the bodies and whose sword it was that led them, whose judgment [final solution] it was to tear them, scorch them, shoot them, gas them, and to burn them. We have asked your Bishop to do some soul-searching here, and whilst he might be tempted to stop with Hitler, and wipe his hands clean, he cannot do so, and must search out Luther; and searching him find all the others we listed who are chained to Paul. Despise it as a Christian may will, someone must answer to these links. For again I say they are registered in Heaven. They are easy to spot! As you may see, once one becomes caught up in that chain it is difficult to separate oneself from it, for being not opposed to those condemning links we traced from Paul one is himself trapped in them for future shame and condemnation.
We speak of a trap in which your bishop is caught, and he cannot separate himself from the trap without standing with us on this: that if God is Paul's creator, Paul put to condemnation his own God and raised himself above God. He did this by declaring the Testament of God obsolete, putting God to discredit, and replaced the Testament of old, with his own Gospel, condemning all of those who did not follow his gospel. This not only included the Jews and their Law but also the Circumcised Church, their eleven apostles, and that leader whom they revered as Christ Jesus. Castigating them he, therefore, cursed God. Since one thing leads to another in our progression (if you see where it is faulty please say so) we conclude that Paul surmised that God had no power to follow through to curse them who curse his people. Sir, though your Bishop may close his eyes and cover his ears regarding this, Heaven cannot shut out the sound of this testimony, until the matter is resolved. Because of the testimony, we deal with an issue as to who is greater: your king Paul, whom we have shown rested upon one lie built upon another, or our King, YHVH, who rests his throne solely upon Truth.
Truth is unimaginable to some; so too is it that the Truth,
being fearsome to look at, can be ignored: out of sight, out of mind, as it were. But you have heard, O Man, to fear God.
As you have born with me all this way, I trust you will stay with
me, to look upon that cause why you were told to fear God. For
God is Judgment and Judgment always comes with its purse overflowing
with Truth. Where there is Truth there are Witnesses, among which
are the prophets and their oracles, and with them, apart from
all those we have embraced in our troop, we shall yet show you,
for your enjoyment, the Muses.
Now I carry a great joy with me, because of the troop which is
gathered into me and swelling. I am not the first to gather such
a troop, I admit, but for my part I must say that no man can count
a greater assembly of goodness than those I have invited here.
Someone compared God to the Sea and men, blessed in his Holy Spirit, like waters flowing into the sea, which tells us that one cannot separate the one from the other once joined. Others compared God to a comb of honey fashioned by the bees, who each contributed a tiny bit from a small flower in the field, and just as one cannot separate a flower's contribution to a comb of honey, neither can one be separated from God once joined to Him.
After a fashion, I have been like a bee gathering honey and hopefully, rubbing against other bees and flowers, the pollen I have collected by the beautiful fields through which I have run; should rub off somewhere against some person in some time. Now whether I call this field Aravot, Arcadia, or even the Elysian Fields, there is a nectar and a joy in that field which words alone cannot describe. Yet, by mixing metaphors and precepts (as no particular batch of flowers produces all the honey) I think I can take another way of showing how joyful the pressing of truth can be. We begin our field of Truth, of course, at the base of Mt. Sinai, to remind you how Paul scoffed at our oracle upon which all Truth eventually resides.
We have to retrace some steps here, so to coax you a bit higher, for it is important that you see how Paul's Epistles relate to the thing which he says created him. Among those things which were stipulated through the oracle of Sinai is the clause that carried from Abraham on to us, as listed in Philistia Triumph Thou because of me , to wit:
Genesis. 12.3 I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curseth thee.
Deut. 11.26 Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse;
11.27 A blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you this day;
11.28 And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the LORD your God..[see also Deut. 28.58,59]
Deut. 30.7 And the LORD thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, which persecuted thee
Now these curses applied because:
Gen. 26.5..that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.
We cited those scriptures which complain, I called and no one answered and there was no man, all of which follow the original covenant given to Abraham, noted above, upon which Paul claims he engrafted you.
We showed in considerable detail that Paul is the source of not only the persecution of the Jews but also the source of persecution of the Law--we mean to say that Testament he engrafted you into whilst calling it Old and Passed away and abolished . Engrafting you into something which is abolished just doesn't make much sense.
One of the first precepts in the Law is that God confirms His prophets [Isaiah 44.7-8, et al.]. This is how you recognize a prophet of God. Because Paul scorned the conditions of the Law set forth above, justice must be served, whether God can fulfill the judgments of the original oracle. Ultimately that judgment falls on you to choose which is the true oracle, whether if the dream you understand is correct – based upon the vision Peter is reported to have had in a trance, where he is told:
What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common [Acts 11.19]
– and whether this alone is the basis of judging Circumcision (the Law) is void. We explore this, referring to the disposition of the Gentile Church:
Acts 15.5 But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses...
15.13 And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying Men and brethren, hearken unto me:
15.19 Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God:
15.20 But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.
15.21 For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day.
There is a lapse, a disconnect, between Acts 15.20 and 15.21. We offer evidence to follow that there is a great difference between what Paul wanted to hear – to justify his own works – and what was actually said.
The passages which you called forth impute a change in attitude from the actual experiences cited in Paul's Epistles, where Paul complained on his arrest that there was no man who would defend him, and the remaining epistles of Saints Peter and James, for in these latter documents Peter and James went to great lengths to defend the Circumcised Church against the castigations of Paul (re: pages 58-63, On the Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church). Furthermore, had Saints Peter and James agreed with Paul's conclusion that the law is abolished altogether, they would not likely have continued worshipping in the temple, as recorded at the end of the Gospel of Luke which dates at least as late as 69 A.D. Luke's credibility is enforced when you examine the Synoptic Matrix I gave you and witness how Luke retraced Matthew's and Mark's Gospels and made corrections where he saw it fitting to do so. One such correction is in the incident of the man with a withered arm. It was a man whose right arm was withered, says Luke. Here is a person who is paying attention to detail and attempting to correct the record as best he can. Comparing his gospel to John's we can see between the two persons that John was one who was rather close to Jesus's family, whereas Luke was so distant from the family that he had no idea that the woman who was a sinner, or Lazarus, were Jesus's aunt and uncle. I think if you examine the matrix you will get to like Luke, who attempted to straighten out details which he knew with good diligence, and which profoundly show that the apostles continued teaching Judaism; and it is quite clear that the Jews in the synagogues could not be drawn away from their Ebionite (poor) or Nazarene faith. That the apostles continued after this manner, reflected in Peter's comment to Paul that they should remember the poor of Jerusalem, is corroborated sufficiently to demonstrate Paul's misunderstanding of their requirements. The uprisings in the synagogues of Asia are further evidence that the people in the synagogues – led by the apostles (Peter was the bishop of Antioch, for instance) – understood the Gospel of Christ differently than Paul. Furthermore, by Paul's own Epistles we know that he first began teaching in the synagogues to Jews, attempting to bring them to Christ. And here is where the conflict in his mission arose, because he represented to the apostles that he should minister to the Gentile, but he didn't do exactly as he represented and began preaching the Gospel of Uncircumcision to both Jew and Gentile alike. I think if you will examine the complaints of the Jews against Paul, you will find that they complained that he was teaching that the Jews should abandon the Law of Moses. And this, if you can share some compassion for these people who are cursed if they abandon the Law, allows that Paul was asking them to commit the worst of sins. Had Paul taught his Gospel of uncircumcision only to the Gentle,
and stayed away from the synagogues, leaving Peter and James
to deal with the Jews as he agreed, then the Gospel of anti-Semitism
would have no need to be created. But he violated his commission
from the Saints in Jerusalem and taught in the synagogues. Here
is where he got caught in the trap of his own making, for he conceived
a Gospel whose entire focus was to create his own Chosen People
based upon the proposition that God had abandoned the Jews and
their Law. But he had competition from the Greek and Roman religious
base, from Apollo, Dionysos, Adonis, etc. and failing to attract
the Gentile he found easier pickings in the synagogues. This is
no surprise because the Jews already knew the lingo as it were
and would not be confused on the moral play of Judaism and its
Messiah. All Paul need do is explain how Jesus is the
Messiah (where he failed in the calling).
As was true with the Essenes and evidenced in Josephus'
works, there was a strong expectation that Paul's day was in the
Last Day, the Day of Judgment. Because of this the procedure to
convert the Jews to Messiah Jesus required one to recite those
scriptures which showed that these were the Last Days; and in
this Paul would spew words of fire and brimstone upon them, causing
them to realize the urgency of consigning their souls right now
over to Jesus their only savior. Obviously Paul's oratory was
quite convincing and must have created enough of an alarm that
Peter had to write the Gentile church to remind them that a day
to the Lord is as a thousand years, and, of course, bring up the
fact that faith without works is death, etc.
In Acts we have considerable evidence of Paul's misunderstanding
of the apostles' consensus from Jerusalem just in the phenomena
of his arrest for having taken an uncircumcised man (probably
his son Titus) into the Circumcised Court of the Temple. Here
we witness not only his arrest but the correction of Paul:
Acts 21.18 And the day following Paul went in with us unto James; and all the elders were present.
21.19 And when he had saluted them, he declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry.
21.20 And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law:
21.21 And they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs.21.24..purify thyself ..[that] all may know that those things, whereof they were informed concerning thee, are nothing; but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest the law.
21.25 As touching the Gentiles which believe, we have written and concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication (see Acts 15.19-21).
– the Apostles said to Paul. At this time no doubt many came forth with charges against him, carrying perhaps even his epistles which would have infuriated Peter and James no less than they infuriated me when I read them. My guess is that Peter and James had not seen Paul's writings, but what they had heard orally was enough to convict him, that he was teaching against the Law and the Jews. As noted in On the Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church, particularly in Part II, our argument with Paul is his condemnation of the Law and those who honor the Law, and this charge must be satisfied. We offered a simple way, through confession, to do it. As noted, and quite in accordance with the prophets cited previously, the Gentile fall under a separate contract which will be established for them at the time Israel is restored from their diaspora, when the time of the Gentile is fulfilled, or, as noted in Daniel:
Daniel 12.7 When He shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be accomplished [see also Deut. 32.36].
Now Paul was severely confused over these issues, the timing of the Judgment, the fact that Israel must first be scattered; and in his zealousness, with Barnabas, to create that New Covenant for the Gentile, he stepped out of bounds, setting himself above God and acquiring unto himself the epithet of the Messiah , Light of the Gentiles , to wit:
Acts 13.47 For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth.
As noted earlier, the Light of the Gentile was a specific character charged with a specific mission of judgment, which we discussed in more detail earlier (re: the episode involving Jesus). We showed that according to the prophesy of the Light of the Gentile, in Isaiah 42.1-42.8, He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. This thing Paul was not.
Further, Paul's manipulations and castigations were, though under the auspices of good faith, in the end evil. Now the idea of ministering to the Gentile was good, and the idea that the Gentile would fulfill the Law by following [the commandments of] Christ was also good. But tossing first the Law and then portions of Jesus's Commandments behind their backs, as particularly evidenced among modern pastors, following Paul's lead, is not good. The doctrine and works which justified this end resulted in six million holocaust victims – among a multitude of others caught up in the fire – and this was evil.
Paul did force the doctrine, and we should be happy to retrace
those steps in more detail for your Bishop, should it be necessary;
but I should think that among the papers we heaped upon you there
is adequate evidence for any court to convict him, that Paul is
the source of anti-Semiticism and his teachings continue to influence
people to despise the Law and the Jews.
We have a good illustration of this hateful doctrine almost every
evening among the princes of the air. Dr. Gene Scott, for instance,
because James argued the case that faith without works is death,
repeatedly calls Saint James, the Lord's brother, a jerk. If you
were Christ how would you feel about this? The reason he and even
the priests in your church call James and others of the Circumcised
church names is because the name calling is in Paul's Epistles,
and it is difficult to read Paul's Epistles without deriding at
the same time the Jews and their Law. Now all this comes from
the discussion between us: that faith without works is death.
And we showed that Paul's works (though he may not have intended
it) led to death for a multitude, through the offices of many
inquisitions, from the Ghettos of Venice to the offices of Hitler.
Now this is horrifying, once you see it (with wisdom comes sorrow)
for the habit of reading Paul's castigations has become so ingrained
in the Christian Church, pastors at this moment, from the Vatican
to the Holy Rollers here and beyond are now writing sermons which
call into question the blessedness of the Law, the Jews, and Christ's
Commandments. Others, fattened and bejeweled with slobbering lips,
wet their appetites with a holier than thou--we are the Chosen
People-- anticipation of the Apocalyptic day of the Lord, when
all the world will be covered with dead and dying flesh, from
one corner to the other, as in Rwanda, for instance.
Running with somewhat of an indifference to this world, with
a faith which is more in line with Simonides', and certainly not
Christ's, still others, with eyelids drooping ad nauseam, jaws
struggling to stay awake, prepare their nightly sermons as a guiding
light for the next day. Newscasters follow this example. May 17,
1994 MacNeil/Lehrer had the director of HUD on the show to discuss
a new program for the Homeless in America. In the presentation
of the program it was established that over 7 million Americans
have been Homeless over the last few years; and the director suggested
that perhaps a half a million are on our streets on any given
night, leaving us to suspect the other 6.5 million have raptured
somewhere.
These Princes of the Air often ask mindless questions, some having
to do with why interest rates are being raised, fearing their
stocks and bonds might fall, and [MacNeil/Lehrer] why the HUD
director thinks there is a need for providing for the Homeless.
A righteous man, sensitive to suffering and the preservation of
Human Dignity , would have asked a different question of
the HUD director: "Why has the government waited so long
to take action?".
We stand on Psalm 12, among many scriptures, and men who have
trouble relating to human suffering worry us. We say this because
of many standards beyond those already mentioned. Aristotle says:
Ethics V.8 ..when a man does a wrong on purpose that he is unjust and wicked.
Now Paul knowingly castigated the Jews, the Circumcised Church, and their Law. Our News Media knowingly play down the causes and inhuman effects of our economic crisis.Are they that dense that they cannot see some sort of injustice in the massive homelessness in our streets and its connection to our debt?
Lack of respect for law (except that law which the wicked need) washes into our airways and streets: from men who have no fundamental knowledge of, or respect for, any kind of law to those who blubber out the news in sulphurous belched, inane questions about the virtue of helping the poor. Paul started this self-justification, Laodicean, process, and certain of those who are glorified in their own prosperity, without concern for others, have yet to learn, whether through Muse or Prophet , that regardless of what one believes one's works can dog him – like the Furies – until the end of time. This minute bleat, of course, is lost and unheard because of all the belching in our land; I leave it to God should He see a merit in giving solace to us. I am blessed, however, as I have stated before, that I'm not altogether abandoned-- among the many to whom I cried at least you answered. Answered? You ministered to me! Thank God there is someone out there actually responsible enough to defend the faith! I commend you Sir, before the Eternal Witness, your patience and understanding and, more so, your heart which calls for justice and remission of shame. We made a slight twist in the word, here, but we needed it as an Elijah's Mantle to illustrate the unwritten accord of what we all know to be true: that to assure justice there are certain orders and principles which lead each of us from temptation, so to avoid malice and evil, so to express goodwill to all men through a charitable and merciful nature.
Now this is our vision – I hope it is yours – that we each to the extent of our own ability contribute to goodwill among men. But this is hard to achieve when the community becomes mindless, as ours is, because of its mindless leaders. But regardless of the state of mind, or lack of it, in our society, what is there but to do but to set an example, especially to:
Hesiod, Theognis, Elegies 68..Their faith, like that of souls already doomed.
Has not Hesiod already given us the example?
ibid, 83 Ransack mankind, my friend, and find all those with honor – the sense of shame--still in their eyes, and on their tongues, who never could be bought for any price: one boat would hold the lot.
The example I thought to carry we have already discussed, which limits me somewhat, but nevertheless has great prospects--not so much in the work that I do but in the troop I carry in me and in whom I trust. Among them there is Justice, by whose hope I am comforted, for:
ibid 147. All excellence amounts to being just,
and all real gentlemen obey the rules.
ibid. 289 Now ways thought bad by good men have become excellent ways to these bad men who rule with novel laws which wander from the road; The sense of shame has died, and violence and wrong have conquered right, and rule the world.
ibid. 305 The bad did not spring evil from the womb: Rather, in company with evil men they learned low ways, vile words, and violence, and swallowed everything their low friends said.
ibid. 317 Our virtue always is secure while money goest to this one, then to that.
ibid. 409 You cannot leave a treasure to your sons more precious, Kurnos, than the sense of shame which comes as the companion of good men.
Somewhere we have to get into the issue of Shame if
we are to bring forth Justice. My thinking is straightforward:
the Christian Church ought to be ashamed of the teachings which
we have highlighted as anti-Semitic. Evidence of that would be
in stopping the teachings and a public confession, that they should
be taught no more.
As for the secular part of our society there is little hope that
they will discover the meaning of shame until the Church itself
shows that it understands it.
In trying to figure out how to get you into the heart of our gristmill, I got carried away the other evening to a place of the Hyperboreans, and, though it is thought to be terribly cold there (someone cautioned me beforehand to be careful not to spit), I was given a carmena while I was there, and they wrapped it in wheat straw and insisted that I bring it back to you. They said that you could send it on to Delos, if you like. This will help explain some of the things which are hard to transcribe in integers and those somewhat overworked things in my roost in the sea which we call words of scripture.
Since I was raised on farms from my youth, in addition to dressing and keeping a herd of cows, I operated wheat harvesters. I would be raised early in the morning before dawn turned the blackened summer-fallen to hues of violet to brown and on to those golden colors of maidenhair; and then I would set off to the fields in my peeling blue 1936 Ford pickup truck with the bug eyes. Often it would greet me with tears dripping over its lenses, I would wipe them, and then, usually because of a low battery, give it a push start down the hill, jump in and in the full glory of youth bounce up and down the washboard roads to a new day. Upon reaching the field, during harvest, I would board an aged, green John-Deere pull-type combine, start the engine, and await my cat-skinner to arrive at the field. He in turn would start up the recalcitrant yellow D-4 (upon whose brassy seat I once sprung), and then we'd belching dust and smoke caress the wheat from its straw.
I stood upon a platform which overlooked my green reaper whose
revolving header extended about twenty feet into the grass and
which I controlled, lifting it up and down, with a Jacob's
Wheel , as that on yachts, whose varnish, as with many yachts,
had long ago faded to the grey and bruises of old age. Beside
me was a large bin into which a river of seed poured with each
turn of the header and the throaty, often protesting, grind of
the combine's innards. Sometimes dust- devils would join the ones
we created, and the entire field would disappear into their choking,
swirling cloud. At these times my driver and I would lose contact
with each other, as the deaf and the blind so often do, and usually,
to cause him to slow down, I would throw a handful of wheat at
him. This is how I harvested, though I have also harvested by
shocking the hay by hand.
I mention this to explain why I have forwarded on the message
without the customary wrapping of wheat with straw, for the Hyperboreans
know that I am by nature a reaper, and I know how to sort the
chaff from the wheat. They knew, of course, that I would send
it on through a righteous, discerning man who doesn't enjoy a
lot of chaff.
Bam, bam, rap, rap
--Who's at the door? one answered.
It's I who knock; a happy crier opened
The huge bi-fold crystal door;
Heaven's egg opened wide,
With complete painter's hues, to life;
It was a large palace,
With many odd towers growing into heaven, this way and that;
And I was scurried hither and thither,
Because the house of living crystal
Grew up and down--
Knowing neither East or West--
Because all is but above,
Or where Nero churns: way down below.
How strange, I thought, these crystals
Growing hither and thither,
Alive and yet not alive;
See the way? a blind escort asked;
It is we who grace this place in life!
Bam, bam, rap, rap,
Lowering gates yawned wide;
To the Chamber of the Virgins
I was led by blind Teiresias,
Joined with a deaf musician,
To this view and that view,
And this sensation and that feeling,
Till we traced splendor in their jutting,
Many windowed Rock of Sorrow,
Where I saw full many playing our mournful dirge:
He Hath shewed thee, O man, what is good;
And what doth the LORD require of thee,
But to do justly, and to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with thy God?1
From this blew many melodies,
As a strong west wind stirs the deep wheat,
Rustling the ears and bending them low,
And full many began stirring around us.
Then I could see:
Dwarflike Sisyphus, King of Corinth,
Far below, the miserable lout laboring against an impudent pitted stone of its own mind;
Pindar joined us, calling up Cato Porcius, Carrying discipline in his purse .
He argued with Thetis (wife of Peleus, Mother of Achilles) to return a bag of salt,
To The Old Man of the Sea,
Insensible as it was--but no less absurd Than angry Achilles: still cursing Agamemnon's royal robe,
shredded by Clytaemnestra's adulterous hand,
Where ever growing pyres of the dead lit the lower gloom;
A ravenous sheen of timbered bent bronze,
Dazzled our sills and high windows,
As priest Chrysês still tossed to the pit
Golden Ransoms for his daughter;
Then came the repulsive, bandy-legged, Balding hump-back Thersites--
Inexhaustible in tongue pricking Works-- telling me to mind my sails!
Chirping about careless watchmen, Ucalegon and Antenor, of Priam's Gate;
Dirty-witty Horace on Epeius's mule, With the lovely, but doomed Cassandra, Still twining fate's delicate whorls;
Penelope too near her loom;
And we hailed Priam's son, Polites,
The Trojan watchman:
He'd watch from old Aisyetes' barrow, And urged no more than this:
Just spin in a slender twine
The threads of many tales,
Words luring out Skulker Pride.
Loose not your hold on beauty, said he,
And guide your host with a true rudder,
The Rudder of Justice;
And speak with an iron tongue,
Forged on the anvil of Truth.2
We took our seats in the Hall of Sorrow to examine his threads of truth,
A hearing thus called of visions of truth.
Bam, Bam, rap, rap,
--Who's at the door? they answered.
It's I, the virgin of Thebes, Antigone!
I heard a call for Virgin Testimony;
For heaven's sake! I was plundered. My own uncle, king Creon, ruined me!
I pleaded for the sake of justice--
Refused to honor Creon's unjust law--
He wouldn't hear my heartfelt plea:
O ye kings we ask but charity and Mercy,
For there is no pain, no sorrow,
No Suffering or dishonor,
We have not shared together,
Creon's spiteful orders I but hold alone:
There is nothing one can do or undo.
Pity me not, nor fear for me;
Fear for yourself.
Publish my testimony to all the world,
That ye may know the folly of lords,
Who gather armies and swoop upon the innocent;
Like ravening birds of prey,
With proud tongue's boasting,
Abhorred of Heaven, they are, yet like
A touchstone for man's heart,
Till trying men with authority and rule;
For a leader like Creon, living in fear,
A traitor to advice and good will--
He is damned--no less damned,
The Traitor I mean, than
Who puts a friend above his country;
Or seeing a danger to the people
Fails to declare it! Never should a leader Let triumph evil over good.
For God shall prove him.
There is no man: come to burn temples,
Ransacking Holy Shrines and lands,
Who puts the sword to the Law,
Who panders behind Pluto's Purse,
Who brings more loss in wickedness than profit,
Wrecking cities and banishing men from their homes--
Can you imagine God loves such men?
CHORUS: Ill gotten gain brings no one any good!
O wondrous subtlety, ye that reside in man, who draws men to good or evil ways!
Know ye not that great honor is given,
Have ye not seen that power,
Have ye seen her who upholdeth Justice,
Who stands upon the Law of Heaven?
Have ye not seen the girl?
Screaming like an angry bird,
When it finds its nest left empty and little ones gone?
Did you hear her cry, man?
Your whims and edicts are not strong:
To overrule the unwritten, inviolable Laws of Heaven is mockery!
ANTIGONE: My way is to share my love, not share my hate,
Though for mortals greatly to live is to greatly suffer;
It was Haemon who spoke of man's wisdom:
The gift of Heaven, nectar not from hellebore,
Or tapestryed fields finely filtered by bees,
By God it is formed and screened through the Muses,
Ears held to earth's Pythian navel
or Heaven's Gate at Zion
Hear our prayers,
The voice of God loom's everywhere,
Engraved in every rock here to afar
As sands of Heaven to the furthest sea.
CHORUS: Antigone here, girl proved,
That there is no equal of love,
And those who are like Creon--(I listed a mean estate, Reagan and Bush too)--
Make excellent kings for desert islands;
Where there hell-born law rules:
'Tis every man for himself;
Heard below hammered Vulcan's mallet For crowns and shackles graven for them:
A Lord of the flies,
To rule with a loathsome beast--
That slick natured guardian of death--
Beelzebub, King of the flies,
Who tramples creatures without shame; His yawn greets all without respect;
Neither person nor the holy is safe;
This is where, Shifty Creon lies,
Though he said he had faith:
In the laws of heaven man must live,
Yet, he lived by his own laws.
He scorned the model of piety,
(Even Croesus, great king of Lydia,
Most worshipful of truth, amply blessed),
And then the messenger, who urged:
Truth is always best
– to Eurydice, wife of Creon; she begged For the truth; she, acquainted with grief, Then bore her burden, before the Pieta.
She pleaded for the life of her son, Haemon,
Creon's only pride, betrothed
To fair skinned, golden haired Antigone.
But three here caught up Oedipus' glory:
Pitiful Eurydice hugging groom and bride after the two died together
embraced in one breathless form.
ANTIGONE: How Haemon loved me,
when he discovered me hanging;
And he lowered me in a fountain of blood which stained my palid cheeks,
Washing my tears, my rosy color renewed,
Upwelling from his circumcised breast,
The white noose I wove now red in blood.
Oh, woe is me! Oh, who is me!
Such dear lives lost but for lack of truth!3
Bam, bam, rap, rap,
– Who's there we answered.
OEDIPUS: It is I, the limpid one,
King, father of this dear golden fawn,
Who hung herself for my honor.
Hear me now, you who feed the flies,
It is a truth: help your fellow-men,
With all your power,
This is man's most noble work,
As proved in the wisdom of the ages;
When wisdom brings no profit.
Witness in me, blinded by truth:
To be wise is to suffer.
God's prophets warned you drunks, who chide:
Who is more blind or deaf than they?
The heavy secrets of the soul will be revealed in time;
Better sooner than later if lives depend on it;
For failing the truth a city perishes,
For Truth has power to save,
Enlightening the ignorant from lives of their own undoing,
Oh how men live in envy and pride:
For riches and nobility,
And wit matched against wit;
Racing against truth, kings and thieves, all running in a court envy!
The racer in these courts never wins:
Blinded to our own damnation
Fearing the loss of pride,
We shun the Muses and truth:
Few can resist avoiding it;
And those seers, never proved wrong,
Men call blind as Cassandra.
But know that all secrets of the earth and Heaven are known by God,
But of mortal prophets, one knows no more than another,
For wisdom is given to all in their several degrees;
And to those who fear the truth,
Never is blame imputed by justice
Till blame is proved.
Time alone will prove the honest man;
One day proclaims the sinner;
Though he argues that nobles must rule,
They shall be brought down if they rule unjustly.
CHORUS: Be merciful and learn to yield. Live with pure faith,
Keeping in word and deed,
That Law which leaps the sky,
Made of no mortal mould, undimmed, unsleeping,
Whose living godhead does not age or die.
Hear us, ye wise of the earth! the man,
Who walks his own high-handed way, Disdaining true righteousness,
Who holds contempt for the Holy,
And falsely wins, all sacred things profaning,
Shall not escape his doomed pride's punishment.
For ye who live in concealment,
When ye see the light, change
Whilst ye can:
Yesterday's morning of light
Will yield up the wicked to Charybdis, Torrent of endless darkness!
All of the generations of men add up to nought,
Be wary, happiness is often illusion:
For as in the pride of lions,
One day blest is shadowed by disillusion.
Life's failures are always felt twice:
Once in the gut and once in the soul--
Faithless Clytaemnestra knows--
Know that the Lord of life,
Like the Sun, sees all,
Clean and unclean;
Ye, who are unclean, holed in the rocks,
Though ye hold no shame,
Your scandalous works will be aired to the light of day!
Though ye escape,
Thinking ye can shun death,
Ye are but saved for some more awful destiny!
Never to receive peace.
Your happiness is but an illusion,
For none can be called happy,
Till he carries happiness down to the grave in Peace.4
Did ye not hear Polynices?:
Mercy sits beside the throne of God.
Or Theseus?:
Not words, but deeds...
An evil man is booked by the law he brings unto himself.
OEDIPUS: While faith withers
falsehood blooms.
Time, time, my friend,
Allows havoc everywhere.
Time has many a night and day to run on his ineffable course;
In one of these some small rift will come,
A sword's point will cleave day's harmony.
Where crowds bustle and hustle,
There at once can be found no man,
For it is a truth, for want of a little word,
I went an outcast,
to end my days in misery!
But my grave needed me not, in the end,
My secret but only few know,
Raptured to Heaven to bring you news,
How God takes notice,
in his own good time, without fail,
when Godliness is flouted,
and men go mad.5
You and the flutist, come!
We'll laugh and drink near the weeper,
and enjoy his agonies.6
Bam, bam, rap, rap.
– Who's there? we answered.
THEOGNIS: (entering)--What's up?
Let Him in, for we are being stumped by a hard man, said I.
THEOGNIS:While its easy for men to do wrong,
Planning a good deed is difficult!
For my part in this act I must say whoever is at our door, has got to be a friend.
A man who's friend in word but not in deed is not my friend:
He must give help to me with hands and money both,
Not warm my heart with words beside the mixing-bowl;
He must prove, if he can, by action, that he's good.8
Neither flattering the mob, nor listening to the criminals.9
[looking down, out the window of the chamber] If God took mortal actions seriously, since he knows the inward thoughts of every man,
And all the deeds of just and unjust men,
It would be devastating for mankind.10
Stamp on the empty-headed people!
Jab with your pointed goad,
Lay the heavy yoke around their necks!
You won't find, under the sun, a people who love slavery so much.11
The sense of shame has fled the earth,
And shamelessness roams over all the earth. 12
As for me, my friends betrayed me.
So I was forced to be with my enemies and saw how they behaved!13
But now an ox stamps hard with his foot upon my tongue!14
No one in the chamber could answer.
We saw everything he pointed to, even my burro, with its burden of goads
dunning Buckley.
The burden seemed heavy for him, I said.
THEOGNIS: Well, what do you expect? If you add one word to the oracle you're lost;
And if you take away, you'll find there's No escaping guilt in God's eyes.
A good man answers well and his acts are good;
The bad man's worthless words fly on the wind. 14 Look at them!
They all think to escape their anxiety by bribery,
When God sends pain to them. 15
No one is on his guard against the crooked words of criminals,
Who don't revere God,
But set their hearts always upon the goods of other men,
Conspiring shamefully for evil ends. 16
See, the nation is pregnant and ready to bear a violent leader of civil war;
The people should be in sense, there,
But those in charge are turning ever stumbling into evil ways. 17
CHORUS: A people tend to resemble their leaders.
THEOGNIS: (turning from the window)
Alas, what's past is finished,
and can't be undone.
Care for the future is our concern.18
CHORUS: We should announce an end to those unhappy people's oppressions.
THEOGNIS: Trial is best.
Many have good repute that are untried. Let's see if they can do good.
If we do good they'll do good.
Do good and you'll receive it, I say.
Why send out announcements?
News of good work travels fast.19
CHORUS: We must expose the lies.
At first a lie may bring a little gain;
Then that gain turns to evil and to shame;
Once past the lips, the lie brings nothing good,
But dogs the liar everywhere he goes.20
The sense of shame is always a companion of good men.21
THEOGNIS; But poverty leads many a man to crime;
Necessity corrupts his thinking;
and he learns to bear unwillingly much shame.
Still, it is the Muse who said,
In poverty, when want is pressing hard,
The base man and his better are known:
The just man still is just, his upright mind unchanged;
The other's lost the power of choosing either good or evil! 22
HESIOD: He is truly blest and rich,
Who knows these things and does his work,
Guiltless before God, and scrupulous,
Observing omens and avoiding wrong.23
(stepping towards the window, he sighs)
Alas! The idle man who lives on empty hope; so many I see below:
He has no way to earn his living,
Turns his mind to crime:
Hope is not good for him who sits and gossips when he has no job. 24
Many are there who till the fields of pride, working at evil deeds; God marks them, and often,
All the city suffers for wicked schemes,
On these men,
From heaven God sends great punishments. 25
CHORUS: Lords take notice of this punishment:
God marks fearless, crooked judges,
who grind down their fellow men.
Clothed in a mist, as Three times ten thousand Angels, He visits them;
Clothed in a mist, He visits every land, Watching the law-suits and crimes,
against Virgin Justice, revered most by God.
Whenever she is hurt by perjurers,
Straightway she sits beside God
And tells him of the unjust hearts of men.
Where the land suffers for its lords
Who recklessly, with mischief in their minds,
Pervert their judgments crookedly.
Beware you lords who swallow bribes, and try to judge uprightly.
Clear your minds of crookedness.
He hurts himself who hurts another man,
And evil planning harms the planner most.26
Behold, when God visits He runs faster than any crooked verdict;
When Justice is dragged out of the way by men
Who judge dishonestly and swallow bribes.
Even from here the struggle we hear!
We see the voice of her weeping.27 Alas!
Hades, whose heart is pitiless, is loosed upon the earth. 28 Oh, for a prophet!
HESIOD: (prophesying) God has given:
Harsh burdens, but mingled in some good;
God will destroy this race of mortal men;
When babes are born with graying hair;
Father will have no common bond with son,
Neither will guest with host, nor friend with friend;
The brother-love of past days will be gone.
Men will dishonor parents, who grow old
too quickly,
And will blame and criticize with cruel words.
Wretched and godless, they, refusing to repay their upbringing,
Will cheat their aged parents of their due.
Men will destroy the towns of other men.
The Just, the good, the man who keeps his word,
Will be despised, but men will praise the bad and insolent.
Might will be right, and shame will cease to be.
Men will do injury to better men by speaking crooked words,
Envy will walk along with wretched men.
When the Spirit of Righteousness and Shame abandons mankind
Only grievous troubles will be left,
And they will have no defence against the evil to come. 29
CHORUS: (gasping, with their hands to their mouths)
My lord, that day is come!
It is time for you to work,
For they have made void thy Holy Law!30
PINDAR: (stepping out of the Chorus, towards the window)
I see stormy wars and assemblies at council
The hopes of men are now thrown up,
Now down again, as they cleave their wind-tossed sea of lies.31
Then it is done. Shouldn't you warn them? I asked.
PERSIUS: Doubtfully will do no good.
I've already seen enough:
I see those Who sing as they exhibit on their backs a painting of themselves;
Many in the flotsam, thinking only of a decent burial, crying for God!
Anyone who would bowl me over will need more than that;
Let's see some genuine tears,
Not rehearsed the night before.32
Enough of barons practicing before their mirrors with their rolling r's!
Bam, bam, rap rap (ignored)
HIPPOLYTUS: (joining him at the window) Are not all haughty people hateful?
Keep a respectful distance from them,
For men act on the same principles as the gods;
But I prefer chastity, a virgin meadow,
Where no shepherd presumes to pasture Nor has iron ever come there.
Virgin she is, and in summer the bees Frequent her,
While Purity waters her like a garden.
He whose fortune it is to be in all things wholly virtuous,
Not by teaching of men but by nature, May cull flowers in that meadow;
For others it is not lawful. For my part, May I round the goal of life,
Even as I have begun, by the streams of purity.33
HORACE: (holding a bar of soap)
For me any time at all is tedious
And unrewarding if it hinders my hopes and plans for following the holy:
Pursuits which bring equal advantage to rich and poor alike,
Whereas its neglect will harm young and old alike.34
ARISTOTLE: True! Whereas the ruler is the upholder of justice,
if of justice, of equality;
Despots, or course, rule to their own advantage.35
Bam, bam, rap, rap!!
--Yes, who's there! I answered.
MUSE:'Tis I, of Pleiades ( she enters)
I heard a delirious man or is it someone composing poetry?36
By the way, who were those two sulfurous men
That had been waiting at our door but left?
HORACE: (taking her to the window)
They wouldn't be interested in our works.
Come and see. We're eyeing drudges.
Look. There is no man down there not overloaded!
They couldn't hear us if they were elephants.
I think they were messengers of Porphyrion,
Probably upset over the suicide of Aias, said I.
HORACE: (blowing his nose)
How insensible!
The sensible man is second only to God.
He's free, well thought of, handsome, the very king of kings;
Above all, he's sound--when he hasn't a blasted cold.37
PINDAR: I think he was referring to Aias, Telamon's son,
He was not awarded the armor of the dead Achilles,
And shame called him to throw himself on his own sword.
CHORUS: So! Aias wasn't a son of God!
--handsome he was, but certainly not the king of kings.
As I see it, said I, neither did Helen go to Troy but to Egypt.
SAPPHO: That's what I said.
SOPHOCLES: That's how I understood it too.
--Then if Helen wasn't abducted to Troy by Paris, then Aias died in vain!
HORACE: That's what I meant. He was insensible!
Like Bellerophon Who also wanted too much but was thrown off his horse, Pegasus.
– How the high and mighty are fallen: small Paul squirmed.
A most bitter end awaits what is sweet in despite of right.38
CHORUS: In the quiver under His elbow are many swift darts
that speak to the wise;
But for the crowd they need interpreters.39
Many are the streams flowing to men,
Now with the heart's delight, and now with sorrow.40
Such was the burden laid on Hercules
In chase of the Pleiad Taÿgeta,
The doe with the golden horns.41
PINDAR: Witness the doom of Tantalos,
Who tried to make his friends immortals,
So he suffered the four punishments.
HORACE: He did worse than this.
Served his son Pelops as a supple, fair dish to the gods.
PINDAR: Not so. Pelops was favored by the gods but not that way.
--Thyestes, son of Pelops and Hippodamia, was forced to eat his own son,
Were it not for our disfavor:
Seducing, his own brother's wife,
He could share Atreus's Golden Lamb. .
CHORUS: Such terrible judgment;
Is this not so Menelaus, son of Atreus?
THEOGNIS: Then, Justice is Summed in the whole of virtue. 42
And this equates to Charity and Mercy.
Odysseus was magnificent in this way.43
All of the Aikidai carried the four cardinal Virtues:
Courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom.
So to avoid adverse consequences,
From lack of restraint,
One must always be charitable and Merciful, said I
-- as Saint Peter said, Charity covers a lot of sins.
PINDAR: Beauty, who creates all sweet delights for men,
Brings honor at will and makes the false seem true time and again;
But the wisest witnessess of all are the days to come.44
By Jove, I fear you are right, said I.
We speak of heavenly pearls,
For some a far too bright light seems to be in sight--as yet another sun.
For the dove of the mountains is here,
though still pursued by Orion.
CHORUS: Let's call the sons of Homer,
singers of interwoven lines,
Who often begin with a prelude to God!45
HORACE: Better not, otherwise Simonides and his cell-mate will return.
Examine the view of a slave, whose apophthegms are of plain fare:
Simonides was a fool hanging around
rich men's doors, to get wisdom.
MUSE: (touching her lip) No wonder he and the other left unhappy;
Wondered why I couldn't inflame them...
They're not to be relied upon in the foremost press of the fight.
So be it. We must select another.
Whom should we send?
I know of a man, said I, who is righteous..
CHORUS: Not him! He looks like another Simonides.
He'll never get it!
ARISTOTLE: Not so sure. If he is a man of virtue--
Whose action remains to be seen:
Not prodigal, but a liberal man,
A man who gives with a fine end in view,
and in the right way;
Because he will give to the right people,
And the right amounts, at the right time,
And will observe all the other conditions
That accompany right giving, then I say he is our man.
But if he is the man who gives to the wrong people,
Or not for a fine end, but for some other reason,
He must be called not liberal but some other name;
And so must the man whom it hurts to give,
Because he'd rather keep his money than do a fine deed;
That is not the way of a liberal man.46
NURSE (advancing, with Phaedra in tow) Better the deed if it can save you
Than an empty name in the pride of which you perish.
If you have more good than evil in your character,
Being only human, you will be doing well enough.
Now don't be wrongheaded, don't be presumptuous.
Yes, that is just what it is:
Pure presumption, wanting to be better than God.
As trusting maidens, we fall Hopelessly in love with the charming things which woo,
In a world of brightness,
Where we Have no experience of any other mode of living,
And no proof of the other world;
Myths often lead us astray,
As wanderlust sailors carried away,
On the eddies of the briny surge go we.
CHORUS: It is a great thing to believe,
In a God who cares, who soothes the grief of the believer.
Though our secret heart hopes on an intelligent Providence,
Yet when we look at the fortunes of Men and their actions, hope fails us;
For one thing comes, another goes,
And life for man is ever shifting,
ever wandering.47
PHAEDRA: Oh, dear people,
You put such a fair face on the shameful;
Any reserves of resistance are now bound to be exhausted.
We speak not in idle chatter.
One ought't to speak to tickle the ear;
Eloquence should promote virtue.
See here! One thing can withstand the Stress of life:
A good and just spirit in a man,
Always mindful of time's fair hand:
Like a young girl, Time has his mirror;
And in his own good time he lifts it,
Showing the base their baseness.
CHORUS: When shameful things are,
As approved by the fashionable,
Who are stubborner than the sea,
Common people surely think them correct.
How in heaven can women look into their husband's face,
without quaking in fear,
Lest the darkness, the partners of their crimes, some day take voice;
Or the walls of their chamber?48
– Verily, even these walls themselves yet cry out,
And the fame of the great endures, commanding sorrow.
But God has little joy in the death of the pious;
But the wicked we destroy with their children and their houses.49
Just as the walls may cry out, said I,
So too is Wisdom justified by her children;
For lack of Knowledge people perish! *
HIPPOLYTUS: Ah! Ah! Oh!
An unfortunate man am I.
By the unjust Imprecations of an unjust father I was mangled, ah, miserably.
Woe is me, woe!
Pains shoot through my head;
A spasm darts through my brain!
Hold me, I'll rest my failing body, ill starred, accursed by my father's errors.
Oh hateful chariot team, fed by my own hand,
You have utterly destroyed me,
Utterly slain me. I lost my life utterly!
Woe is me! Have I in vain toiled over labors of piety towards men?
May God forgive the impious; my father I absolve from blame.50
CHORUS; Many are the forms of divine intervention;
Many things beyond expectation does God fulfill.
That which was expected has not been accomplished;
For that which was unexpected has God found the way.51
PELEUS: Vile is man! I thought to
Serve my own child in the banquet of the gods.
Woe is me! Shall I not rend my hair?
Shall my hands not beat my head?
I have lost my city, and fate has robbed me of my two children.
My youth, Neoptolemus, is gone,
And Achilles' ancient quarrel has been remembered.
How unfair God is! How can he be wise?
My fortunes took a lofty flight,
But now they lie in the dust,
Far from their former boasts.52
CHORUS: From small beginnings the tongue produces mighty feuds.
Tis better not to win a victory of dishonor
Than to overthrow justice by violence and be hated!
Such a triumph is dealt to men's hearts at first,
But time withers it away.53
MOLOSSUS: (a small child stepping out of the chorus) Hear my grief:
Remember me and my mother, wife of noble Hector
(he was struck down by Achilles' brazen sword;
Dragged around our high walls behind a chariot of Greek fire)!
As booty My mother was carried away by king Menelaus,
To be a slave to his son Neoptolemus.
Pity my mother, Andromache--forced To lay with her own husband's murderers!
Hermione the barren, the daughter of Wicked Helen and Menelaus,
Was the wife of Neoptolemus;
She envied my mother, Andromache.
In innocence, a slave to Neoptolemus's passion,
My mother conceived me, but because Jealous Hermione hated me--
Before I was born, she feared I'd inherit her barren throne--
I, a son of Priam and Menelaus,
And my mother, Andromache, were fated to die.
Who could have expected otherwise in Houses where jealousy reigns?54
ANDROMACHE: I shall fill the wide Sky with lamentations and wailings
And Weepings that are now my constant companions.
I do not lack for topics of lament:
The city of my fathers in ruins, my Hector Dead,
Myself saddled with a cruel destiny,
And slavery, foul slavery my portion.
Caused by the adulterous Helen--eloping from her husband Menelaus--
With my brother-in-law, Paris, a scoundrel;
Himself beguiled by Helen's lust for Trojan gold!
Oh, call no man happy till he is dead,
Till you have seen how he has passed the last hour of his life on earth.
My tears, for my city and my son, gush
Forth like a fountain welling from a rock.
Believe me, shameful is shameful, both in Greece and abroad.
Men ignore the cause and attack the Subsequent effect. What a sorry situation.
Don't you believe in the day of retribution?
What crimes are not found among you?
Where does murder thrive more?
Or sordid greed?
Are you not always found saying one thing and thinking another? 56
PELEUS: Don't let haste outrun justice.
Like a following wind that fills a ship's sails,
Let me breathe courage to you. It is better
To choose your friends and relations from the humble and honest than from the wealthy and wicked!
In this way you may do good and avoid evil.57
Few prodigal sons turn from their ways,
And a house's fortunes are often wasted,
As wheat in a broken dish, returned to the dust.
Because of an ill conceived rumor my
Entire loving family--the House of Peleus-- is taken away,
And now but meat for the Muse.57
Seeing me as yet another virgin, with Empty purse,
The chorus came forward
And put this book in my hand for a righteous man.
Having assured them I knew of such,
A man comforting and liberal,
I took this message and came home,
From that high place of bliss,
To my place in the sea,
And bottled it for Buckley.
Knowing that in the currents of the sea,
(He often looks upon the sea)
I was assured he 'd open up,
For our desperate prayer of faith:..when we cry unto thee, O Lord,
Then shall our enemies turn back.
Thou tellest my wanderings:
Put thou my tears into thy bottle.
Are they not in thy book?
I know I cut out the milk and the honey,
And the sparkles and the flares;
I chucked out the metal flake aphorisms soaked in dew, but
My troop agreed that time is money,
The longer one waits the more expensive redemption is,
Often at the hands of Crotonians raging,
Tried by time we still await the careful lips of truth,
Who confess our long-suffering truths.
For my part I hope that to rid us of the Evils which have plagued us,
It need not be in the Massilian way,
which Petronius mentioned:
Whenever the Massilians were visited with a plague,
Some one of the poorest of the people,
For the sake of being well fed a whole year at the public charge,
Would offer himself a sacrifice,
To appease the gods: he after his year was up,
Dressed in holy wreath and sacred garment,
Was led about the city with invocations on the gods--
So all the sins of the nation might be punished in him;
And so was thrown from a precipice.
If you linked to this site fromThis portion from the Muse , meaning no harm, the Lord knows has but a simple strategy, which my troops will testify is not my own. How or where the scope between us leads, I, being an anchorite to Truth, cannot be harmful; but the avoidance of truth, like being torn off your anchor in an angry sea, is! It is what one does or does not do with truth which does all harm. The worst thing to Truth, of course, are leaders who, in faith, seek knowledge but do nothing with it and spend their time on earth as if in shackles and their mouths taped.
Oedipus is, perhaps, my closest model of the seeker of Truth, who, even suspecting the worst – that he was married to his own mother and had killed his father by mistake – insisted in pursuing the truth. This is the message of Sophocles' Old Man of the Sea, I think, that in spite of every temptation not to expose the truth there is a greater dignity in pulling it up. Oh, how our hearts were ripped open over Oedipus's daughter, Antigone, who, for our sake, stayed by her father to the end. We could repeat the stories of many other virgins devoted to such honorable men, and to the virtues of God, but rest here.
Beyond the whims of mortals, in safekeeping from the heels of
the mindless masses, are treasured rocks of righteousness,where
this miscellany was found. I'm confident you, like Jeremiah's
hammer upon the rock, should make some sense out of it should
you choose to do so.
Teiresias himself may have to lighten things a bit to make the
pieces palatable.
I was glad to see your move, in any event, so to better ferret
out the truth for King Oedipus, whom we leave before you:
Who walks his own high-handed way,
Disdaining True righteousness and Holy ornament;
Who falsely wins, all sacred things profaning;
Shall he escape his doomed pride's punishment?
[Sophocles, King Oedipus]
We still have your king Paul in check, who, not heeding the
Clanging Rocks, rashly ignored his commission.
A man's good intentions sometimes cannot outrun his evil urge,
and eventually the biases hiding deep in his soul are revealed.
We look to our children, knowing that what we do today cannot
be undone and they are left with the struggle we avoided.
Here we can see that the ancients knew the Desire of God, expressing
it through their moral plays and scriptures in a direct and relatively
straightforward manner.
But this generation is baffling, and where shamefulness is found
out and laid before their eyes there is self-denial.
It may be that our Heirs will decide the issue, over the
revulsion of their inheritance, but this would be a far worse
judgment than if it were decided today. It's your move: how should
Paul escape Virgin Justice? I remain as always,
Sincerely yours,
M
1 Micah 6.8
2 Pindar, Pythian I.5
3 Sophocles, Antigone
4 Sophocles, King Oedipus
5 Sophocles, Oedipus at Colunus
6-22 Theognis, Elegies
23-27 Hesiod, Works and Days
28,29 Hesiod, Theogony
30 Psalm 119.126
31 Pindar, Olympian XII.5
32 Persus 90
33 Hippolytus
34 Horace, Book 1 Epistle I.25
38 Pindar, Isthmian VII.3
39 Pindar, Olympian II.1
40 Pindar, Olympian III.2
41 Pindar, Olympian III.2
42 Aristotle, Ethics, V
43 Homer, Odessey 17
44 Pindar, Olympian I.2
45 Pindar, Nemean II.1
46 Aristotle, Ethics IV.1
47-50 Hippolytus
51-56 Euripedes, Andromache
Mr. Buckley's response:
April 7, 1994
It seems more probable that Luther was so bent out of shape about
priests withholding deathbed absolutions and other (apparently)
arbitrary (apparent) abuses of the power of the keys, that he
saw scotching Last Rites as a plain reform. He was foursquare
for St. James's proposition that faith without works was dead:
he said our faith should drive us across the continent in performance
of works. His denunciation of works as causing redemption wasn't
very different from St. Paul's (" Put away dead works,")
or Trent's
Yours Cordially,
Wm. F. Buckley Jr.
Our response:
Letter April 12, 1994, 4 pp., abstract: asserting misquote of
St. James:
Faith without works was dead
The context St. James used is Faith without works is death [James
2.17, 2.20, 2.24 and 2.26: that for as the body without the
spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also; ed. note].
Repeats Luther's evil, anti-Semitic tract of 1543 A.D – concerned about Buckley's passion to defend Luther, links back to Paul's anti-Semitism – ; gives further references that the early Greek Orthodox fathers and the true roots of the church agree more with Saints James and Peter than today's Pauline church.
April 25, 1994
I'm not Cardinal Bernardin, either, with the "passion for defending Luther" that turns out to be a symptom of Catholic self-hatred. It's only that Luther wasn't wrong about everything, and St. Paul is perfectly good Christian doctrine. Of course the Lord judges people according to their works, dividing the sheep from the goats; but it wasn't the works that saved the former.
Yours cordially,
Wm. F. Buckley Jr.
Our response:
Letter April 26, 1994, 4 pp., abstract (see Searching out His Faith..for the full text):
that the sheep were not saved because of their works
– is not correct because they are separated by their nature [sic. who desolate the earth , as goats] and argues that Judgment is according to the true nature of your life, using quotes from Eusebius, Josephus, Philo, St. Anselm, and St. Neilos (who said, at the time of judgment those who have lived rightly will be rewarded..in accordance with the true nature of their life and how to avoid evil by: be discriminating, by comparing [the wickedness of our thoughts by] their first beginnings with the final results ). Quotes Scriptures which show the intent of God through prophets, that ye may know his desire, that in the Judgment all will see that what he prophesied had come true, forcing admission that man should have heeded his word: and then men will understand Him perfectly . Compares Mr. Buckley's comment, that Luther was not wrong about everything , to Clinton's Funeral Oration on Nixon, to wit: that when we judge Nixon we must keep in mind all of his works . We say this is the way God judges, in the case at hand: Luther and Paul, who were the first and last cause of anti-Semitism; that cause, being evil, outweighed all of their other works. Wondered if Mr. Buckley's Bishop, ignoring this, is afflicted by who makes the soul obtuse [Evagrios, On Discrimination 10; re: letter April 12, 1994]:
..You recite from the Scriptures, yet it is wholly indifferent and will not hear. You point out its shame and disgrace among men, and it ignores you, like a pig that closes its eyes and charges through a fence. This demon gets into the soul by way of long-continuing thoughts of self-esteem; and unless those days are shortened no flesh will be saved [re: Matt. 24.22].
May 16, 1994
I never agreed that St. Paul taught any evil. After the dream of the unclean animals, the apostles agreed that circumcision was irrelevant. St. Paul didn't force the doctrine.
The sheep will be separated from the goats according to their faith, of which their works are evidence.
Yours Cordially,
Wm. F. Buckley, Jr.
Our response:
May 23, 1994
Dear Mr. Buckley,
Your letter of April 16, 1994 has a substantial error in it regarding the commission the apostles granted to Paul. He requested, and they granted, an apostleship to the Gentile. They condemned him, in fact, for violating this pact, as seen in particular on page 17 enclosed. The other miscellany in the enclosed has to do with examples of those who made great sacrifices on behalf of truth, which is what your bishop should consider more closely.
Sincerely yours,
M
Encl.: Works and Days among the Hyperboreans, 36 pp.
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