In Thy light do we see light. (Psalm 36:10)

 And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. Matthew 2:13 "…The purely human figure of the Carpenter, carved by carpenters or craftsmen as simple as carpenters, was already rising on shrines and pedestals far away, in the crypts of Rome or the niches of Rouen. There was something symbolic, like a mysterious repetition of the Flight into Egypt, in the way in which the Mother, carrying the Divine Humanity in her arms, took refuge in the Roman world of the West; and seemed still to be fulfilling some destiny even in moving continually westward." G.K. Chesterton (“The Mission of Ireland, Christendom in Dublin’) Rembrandt, The Flight into Egypt Giotto, The Flight into Egypt “...it raises the real questions of our times, which are these: can we reject the idea of a b...

  A BRIEF SAMPLER OF GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON:(1874-1936) “IF Americans can be divorced for 'incompatibility of temper,' I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible." G.K. Chesterton, in photo with Frances Chesterton. "Love is not blind – that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound. And the more it is bound the less it is blind." G.K.Chesterton “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind." William Shakespeare  Scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, an Edwin Landseer painting, 1851. The beginning of Chesterton's essay on the play: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream...The sentiment of such a play, so far as it can be summed up at all, can be summed up in one sentence. It is the mysti...

 “If we are to be mothered, mother must know best. . . . In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They ‘cash in.’ It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. . . . Let us not be deceived by phrases about ‘Man taking charge of his own destiny.’ All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of others. . . . The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be...  Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be mo...

 Frederick Douglass and Calvin Coolidge each gave very important speeches on the significance of our Declaration of Independence. Both celebrate the truth and profound soundness of the Declaration’s propositions; “the sublime faith in the great principles of freedom and justice” it contains, and foundationally established for our country. Coolidge and Douglass spoke from very different perspectives and generations, and yet shared a common appreciation and admiration for the assertion of the fundamental belief in Liberty. Douglass. is speaking in 1852 about celebrating the 4th of July from a slave’s perspective, and how the ideals of the Declaration were so grotesquely betrayed by the reality of slavery. Yet, he also emphasizes that by so asserting the principle in 1776 of placing man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, the founders “statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment...and seized upon eternal principles...in their admiration of liberty they lost sight of all ...

 ONE MORE GLANCE AT ABE, by Steven Hayward ... From time to time people ask me what I regard as the best Lincoln biography, and without hesitation I still always pick Lord Charnwood’s 1917 biography (though Allan Guelzo’s various books on Lincoln are equivalent in their quality). In fact I have assigned Charnwood in a course I taught at Berkeley—likely the only time the book has ever appeared on a course reading list there…The main reason for this preference is that Lord Charnwood understood Lincoln as a statesman, showing prudence in the highest Aristotelian sense of the term, to an extent that amazingly eludes most other modern biographers, and rendered in that late Victorian/Edwardian prose style that is simply a delight to read. Here’s just one worthy sample from the middle of the book as Charnwood is about to take up Lincoln’s presidency: “We are to study how he acted when in power.  In almost every department of policy we shall see him watching and waiting while blood fl...

  PHOTOGRAPH BY JOEL SARTORE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC  A LonG-haired RouseTte Bats - A bat is born Naked and blind and pale.  His mother makes a pocket of her tail  And catches him. He clings to her long fur  By his thumbs and toes and teeth.  And then the mother dances through the night  Doubling and looping, soaring, somersaulting—  Her baby hangs on underneath.  AShe lives by hearing.  The mother eats the moths   and gnats she catches  In full flight; in full flight  The mother drinks the water   of the pond  She skims across. Her baby   hangs on tight.  Her baby drinks the milk   she makes him  In moonlight or starlight, in   mid-air.  Their single shadow, printed   on the moon  Or fluttering across the stars,  Whirls on all night; at   daybreak  The tired mother flaps home   to her rafter.  The others all are...

 2021 - The Triumph of the Will of the Oligarchy? President Xi declares 2021 to be The Year of the Swamprat (rattus kleptocratus globalus) as a gesture of friendship and solidarity with the new emerging American Gleichshaltung. (A German word meaning "coordination", "making the same", "bringing into line") that was the name of the policy of the National Socialists in the 1930’s for enforcing political conformity in all sectors of society, from the economy and trade associations to the media, culture and education.) Or... from Leviticus 25:10 - the Jubilee passages: PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND UNTO ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF (Just don't expect Big Tech and mainstream corporate media - our de facto Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’ - to be on the side of Liberty - to cover the proclamation story honestly, or allow the free flow of real information about any aspect of the story that challenges the Official Narrative.) “Liberty is meaningless whe...