"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Sunday, July 19, 2020

The Life & Biography of Leo Tolstoy


Leo Tolstoy


Leo Tolstoy with wife Sophia Tolstaya

Sophia Tolstaya
m. 1862–1910

Countess Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya, was a Russian diarist,
and the wife of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy.

Born: August 22, 1844, North-Western Administrative Okrug, Russia
Died: November 4, 1919, Yasnaya Polyana, Yasnaya Polyana, Russia

Spouse: Leo Tolstoy (m. 1862–1910)

Children: Alexandra Tolstaya, Andrei Lvovich Tolstoy
Grandchildren: Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya, S. S. Tolstoĭ


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Leo Tolstoy - Rare Footage & Voice




Leo Tolstoy Quotes About Love | A-Z Quotes


Leo Tolstoy - Rare Footage & Voice




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Tolstoy on 23 May 1908 at Yasnaya Polyana,
photo by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky

Leo Tolstoy

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Native name
Лев Николаевич Толстой
BornLev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
9 September 1828
Yasnaya PolyanaTula GovernorateRussian Empire
Died20 November 1910 (aged 82)
AstapovoRyazan Governorate, Russian Empire
Resting placeYasnaya Polyana
OccupationNovelistshort story writer, playwrightessayist
LanguageRussian
NationalityRussian
Period1847–1910
Literary movementRealism
Notable worksWar and Peace
Anna Karenina
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
The Kingdom of God Is Within You
Resurrection
Spouse
Sophia Behrs (m. 1862)
Children13

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
[note 1] (/ˈtoʊlstɔɪ, ˈtɒl-/;[2] Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой,[note 2] tr. Lev Nikoláyevich Tolstóy; [lʲef nʲɪkɐˈlaɪvʲɪtɕ tɐlˈstoj]; 9 September [O.S. 28 August] 1828 – 20 November [O.S. 7 November] 1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time.[3] He received multiple nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and nominations for Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902 and 1910 and the fact that he never won is a major Nobel prize controversy.[4][5][6][7]

Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828,[3] he is best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877),[8] often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction.[3] He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, ChildhoodBoyhood, and Youth (1852–1856), and Sevastopol Sketches (1855), based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. Tolstoy's fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), Family Happiness (1859), and Hadji Murad (1912). He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays.

In the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession (1882). His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist.[3] Tolstoy's ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), had a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi[9] and Martin Luther King Jr.[10] Tolstoy also became a dedicated advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George, which he incorporated into his writing, particularly Resurrection (1899).

Origins
The Tolstoys were a well-known family of old Russian nobility who traced their ancestry to a mythical nobleman named Indris described by Pyotr Tolstoy as arriving "from Nemec, from the lands of Caesar" to Chernigov in 1353 along with his two sons Litvinos (or Litvonis) and Zimonten (or Zigmont) and a druzhina of 3000 people.[11][12] While the word "Nemec" has been long used to describe Germans only, at that time it was applied to any foreigner who didn't speak Russian (from the word nemoy meaning mute).[13] Indris was then converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, under the name of Leonty, and his sons as Konstantin and Feodor. Konstantin's grandson Andrei Kharitonovich was nicknamed Tolstiy (translated as fat) by Vasily II of Moscow after he moved from Chernigov to Moscow.[11][12]

Because of the pagan names and the fact that Chernigov at the time was ruled by Demetrius I Starshy some researchers concluded that they were Lithuanians who arrived from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.[11][14][15] At the same time, no mention of Indris was ever found in the 14th – 16th-century documents, while the Chernigov Chronicles used by Pyotr Tolstoy as a reference were lost.[11] The first documented members of the Tolstoy family also lived during the 17th century, thus Pyotr Tolstoy himself is generally considered the founder of the noble house, being granted the title of count by Peter the Great.[16][17]

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Where Love Is There God Is Also by [Leo Tolstoy, Nathan Haskell Dole]

Includes three tales: Where Love Is, There God Is Also;
The Hermits; and What Men Live By



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Leo Tolstoy Books

Youth Time Magazine has prepared for you this time the list of Leo Tolstoy books that you need to read. Usually, Tolstoy is famous for Anna Karenina, but you will be surprised by how many genius books Leo Tolstoy wrote. Let’s start.

War and Peace

"We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom."

Tolstoy weaves together the lives of his characters against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars and the French invasion of Russia. The fortunes of the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys, of Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei, are personally associated with the national history that is played out in parallel with their lives.

Tolstoy’s unforgettable characters appear to act and move as though brought together by strings of fate as the novel tenaciously explores choice, destiny, and fortune. However, Tolstoy’s depiction of conjugal relations and his scenes of family life are as honest and powerful as the extraordinary people who bring them to life.

"The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness…"

There is no difference in separating Tolstoy’s artwork from his philosophy, just as there’s no way to separate fiction from discussions about history in this novel. With no unifying theme, with no plot or clean ending, War and Peace is an encounter with the style of the radical and with the narrative in history.

Tolstoy groped in the direction of a one-of-a-kind fact – one that would capture the totality of history, and teach human beings how to live with their burdens.

Who am I? What do I live for? What changed when I was born? These existential questions are about the meaning of life, and of free will as opposed to the effect of the outside world. Fictional and historical characters blend naturally inside the narrative, which occasionally turns into a reasoned philosophical digression, exploring the way individual lives affect human progress.

"It’s not given to people to judge what’s right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong."

The Death of Ivan Ilych

Hailed as a splendid masterpiece about demise and deathThe Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a cosmopolitan careerist who has by no means given the inevitability of his mortality even a passing nod. But sooner or later, his demise declares itself to him, and to his wonder, he has to stand face-to-face before his own mortality.

"The example of a syllogism that he had studied in Kiesewetter’s logic: Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal, had throughout his whole life seemed to him right only in relation to Caius, but not to him at all."

How, Tolstoy asks, does this unreflective man confront his most consequential moment of reality? This short novel grew out of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy’s existence, the nine-year-long period following Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction.

"Morning or night, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, everything was the same: the gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain; that awareness of life irrevocably passing but not yet gone; that dreadful, loathsome death, the only reality, relentlessly closing in on him; and that same endless lie. What did days, weeks, or hours matter?"

Either in randomness or nemesis, certain or chanced, nature is unveiled as capricious, ungoverned, and cryptic, and man’s clashes with the boundedness of his banal existence. Ivan faces his impending death in disbelief, then denial swamped with a disconsolation at his disintegration while the world continues to turn.

"Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same. When alone, he had a dreadful and distressing desire to call someone, but he knew beforehand that with others present it would be still worse."

Resurrection

Resurrection is the last of Tolstoy’s great novels. It tells the story of a nobleman’s attempt to redeem the suffering his philandering has inflicted on a woman who ends up a prisoner in Siberia. Tolstoy’s imaginative prescience of redemption, completed with loving forgiveness and condemnation of violence, is the theme that dominates the novel. An intimate tale of guilt, anger, and forgiveness, Resurrection describes the social life of Russia at the end of the nineteenth century, reflecting its writer’s outrage at the social injustices that he observed where he lived.

The whole trouble lies in that people think that there are conditions excluding the necessity of love in their intercourse with man, but such conditions do not exist. Things may be treated without love; one may chop wood, make bricks, forge iron without love, but one can no more deal with people without love than one can handle bees without care.”

At half the length of War and Peace, Tolstoy’s Resurrection is every bit as epic, and through most of its length comes across as his most controversial novel, which seems to have robust political and religious implications alongside the narrative in the story.

One of Tolstoy’s later novels, written during the rule of Tsar Nicholas II and an empire which repressed all political opposition, Resurrection starts out as a court drama but quickly draws us into a hugely profound narrative of an unjust cauldron of crooked legislation, poverty, and wealth at each and every end of the spectrum, and one man’s crusade of redemption for a lifestyle lived where he makes use of his exaggerated importance in society to take advantage of others.

It was clear that everything considered important and good was insignificant and repulsive, and that all this glamour and luxury hid the old well-known crimes, which not only remained unpunished but were adorned with all the splendor men can devise.


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Leo Tolstoy - Famous Authors - Wiki Videos by Kinedio

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time.
Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852–1856), and Sevastopol Sketches (1855), based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. 
Tolstoy's fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness, and Hadji Murad. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays.
In the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A ConfessionHis literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist.
Tolstoy's ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi,[2] Martin Luther King, Jr.,[3] and James Bevel. Tolstoy also became a dedicated advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George, which he incorporated into his writing, particularly Resurrection.

Tolstoy Biography (1970)

This film biography about Leo Tolstoy is a remembrance by his daughter, using literature and drama. - ARC 654022 / LI 263.244 National Archives - Tolstoy Biography - National Security Council. Central Intelligence Agency.  (09/18/1947 - 12/04/1981).
LITERATURE: Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy was a remarkable novelist in part because he believed in the novel as a tool for social reform, something that would enable us to become kinder, more thoughtful and more generous towards others.

Leo Tolstoy - on film


The working man's hero...


Life and Work of Leo Tolstoy

Presentation given by Albany-Tula Alliance board member Nina Reich and slideshow created by board member Paul Marr. Presentation given at the Guilderland Public Library on January 29, 2012.

Leo Tolstoy - From Riches to Rags

Song - A Night On The Bare Mountain
Artist - L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Ernest Ansermet
Licensed to YouTube by UMG (on behalf of Decca Music Group Ltd.);
EMI Music Publishing, and 1 Music Rights Societies




The Wisest Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

Russian writer, essayist, philosopher, and political thinker Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, known as Leo Tolstoy was born September 9, 1828, into a family of Russian nobility. Although it's been more than a hundred years after his death, he still ranks among the world's best writers. Many consider him the greatest writer of all time.
Mostly he wrote novels and short stories, but later in life also wrote essays and plays. Two best Tolstoy's novels are War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). They can be found in almost every list of the most popular novels of all time. Besides them, the more important works include: Family Happiness (1859), A Confession (1882), The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), Resurrection (1899), and Hadji Murat (1912).


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Quotes by Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Believed Killing and Eating Animals is Against the ...

Leo Tolstoy quote: Love is life. All, everything that I understand ...














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WAR AND PEACE Prokofiev
Moscow State Stanislavsky Music Theatre

As the fates of a spirited young woman, her fiancé and their idealistic friend intertwine during the Napoleonian invasion, their lives - like every Russian’s - are about to change forever.
Based on Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel, Prokofiev’s opera portrays the tribulations of Russian society as Napoleon’s armies edge closer to the country’s borders. Monumental in scale, his production has a cast of over 400 with 70 principal singers and a massive chorus on stage.
Streamed on OperaVision on 26 May 2020 at 19:00 CET and available for 6 months: https://operavision.eu/en/library/per...


Wednesday, July 1, 2020

The Hypocrite


Michel Lara on Twitter: "The English word hypocrite derives from ...


The Hypocrite

by Stephan Caraway


Oh what a hypocrite that I be,

To live in the sin that pleasures me.

It’s not on the outside that you see,

It’s the hypocrite inside of me.

I go to church and sing the songs,

Knowing that I don’t belong.

You might catch a tear in my eye,

But it’s sin where I choose to lie.

Oh what a hypocrite that I be,

To live in the sin that pleasures me.

Maybe I should, maybe I would,

To live a life that might look good.

Narrow and hard is the way;

But pleasure is the road I stray.

One night I had a frightening dream,

That I stood before our God Supreme.

Oh the hypocrite that I be, in my heart God could see.

The lies that I lived so burdened me.

The God I mocked began to scold,

To hell I would go, for the sins I sow.

Just as the flames began to heat;

Awaken I did, my death to beat.

Oh the hypocrite that I be,

No longer a desire found in me.

I fell to the ground on bended knee

That Jesus would set me free.

My heart He did change inside of me,

No longer the hypocrite for God to see.

Oh the hypocrite I used to be,

Washed in the blood that set me free!


Stephen Caraway

© 2018 Stephan Caraway
All Rights Reserved




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John Flaxman RA, 'Hypocrites' (from The Divine Comedy)
'Hypocrites' (from The Divine Comedy), 1 May 1807



HYPOCRISY:
Holding Up A Mirror To Society


Hold up a mirror means to put a mirror in front of yourself so you can see your reflection.
Metaphorically, it usually means reveal to someone what they look like to the rest of the world.

----

The Origin of hypocrite comes from the Greek word hypokrites' which means an actor.

----

I'll watch your feet but not your lips. - Larry Cohen

----

 I’d never seen a sky
so full of stars, as if the dirt of our lives

still were sprinkled with glistening
white shells from the ancient seabed

beneath us that receded long ago.
Parallel. We lay in parallel furrows.

-- That suffocated, fearful
look on your face.

- Frank Bidart

----

The axes of your work, work that

throughout the illusory chaos of your life

absorbed your essential

mind, were there always—What was

there to be done.

- Frank Bidart


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The Origin of 'Hypocrite' | Merriam-Webster


Hypocrite / Hypocrisy


Greek Word Pronunciation: hoo-POK-ree-sis
Strong’s Number: 5272
Goodrich/Kohlenberger Number: 5694


Key Verse: “… you too outwardly appear righteous to men,
but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy.” -- Matthew 23:28


The two nouns, hypocrisy and hypocrite, are compound words, comprised of hupo (“under”) and krino (“to judge”). It means literally “to judge under,” as a person giving off his judgment from behind a screen or mask. The true identity of the person is covered up.

It refers to acts of impersonation or deception and was used of an actor on the Greek stage. In Greek drama, actors held over their faces oversized masks painted to represent the character they were portraying. In life, the hypocrite is a person who masks his real self while playing a part for the audience. Taken over into the New Testament, it referred to one who assumes the mannerisms, speech, and character of someone else, thus hiding his true identity; the person is judging another from back of the mask of his self-righteousness. Christianity requires that believers should be open and above-board. Their lives should be like an open book, easily read.

The verb form, hupokrinomai, is used only once in Luke 20:20: “They watched him and sent spies who pretended to be righteous …” (in KJV, “who should feign themselves just men”).

The nouns are used in the epistles once each in Galatians 2:13; 1 Timothy 4:2; and 1 Peter 2:1. In the Synoptics, they are always used of Christ’s judgments on scribes and Pharisees (15 times in Matthew; Mark 7:6; Luke 6:42, 12:56, and 13:15).

In MATTHEW 23, the hypocrisy is in jarring contradiction between what they say and do, between outward appearance and inward lack of righteousness. Hypocrisy is therefore sin: failure to do God’s will is concealed behind the pious appearance of outward conduct. Jesus sought to destroy the false, religious mask. Hypocrisy is: a hard taskmaster (verse 4), lives only for the praise of men (5-7); is mischievous (13-22); concerns itself with the small things of religion (23-24); deals chiefly with externals (25-28); reveres only what is dead (29-32), finds a fearful judgment (32-36); and receives an unexpected lament (37-39). It was Christ, the sole perfect reader of inward realities, who dared pass this judgment.


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Perseus and Medusa.


To Obey is Better than Sacrifice

1 Samuel 15:22
"And Samuel said, 'Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.'"

Isaiah 1. 11 
"'What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?' Says the LORD. 'I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle; And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats.'"

Hosea 6:6
"For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings."

Psalm 51:16-17
"For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise."

Proverbs 21:3
"To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice."

Amos 5:21-24
"I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."

Mark 12:33
"...And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."

Matthew 9:13
"Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”"

Micah 6:6-8
"With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Jeremiah 7:22-23
"For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them: 'Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.'"

Psalm 40:6-8
"In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.'"

Ecclesiastes 5:1
"Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil."

Matthew 12:7
"And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless."

Isaiah 1:11-17
"What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. “When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood."

Hebrews 10:4-10
"For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, 'Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.' Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’ When he said above, 'You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law)...'"

Matthew 23:23
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others."

Psalm 50:8-9
"Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me. I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds."

Matthew 5:24
"Leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift."

Jeremiah 26:13
"Now therefore mend your ways and your deeds, and obey the voice of the Lord your God, and the Lord will relent of the disaster that he has pronounced against you."

Jeremiah 11:7
"For I solemnly warned your fathers when I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, warning them persistently, even to this day, saying, 'Obey my voice.'"

Exodus 19:5
"Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine."

Jeremiah 11:4
"...that I commanded your fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, 'Listen to my voice, and do all that I command you. So shall you be my people, and I will be your God.'"


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Amazon Link


And oft I thought, as there in humbled pride I sat alone, 
that I must needs that guide; When came the Reverend Sir,
and as he said. - BT Wilson



The Importance of Worshipping
God  with a Humble and Contrite Heart

by R.E. Slater
June 14, 2020

My question for this morning...
"Did you know that obedience to God is more ancient than sacrifices?"
As a disciple of the Lord I would expect this. It seems the more natural. The more spiritual. The offerings of religious worship can never be substituted for the offerings of a humble and contrite heart.

The prophet Jeremiah understood this when he said that sacrificing was not part of the original dialogue between God and man:

Jeremiah 7:21-23 GNB - 
“My people, some sacrifices you burn completely on the altar, and some you are permitted to eat. But what I, the LORD, say is that you might as well eat them all. I gave your ancestors no commands about burnt offerings or any other kinds of sacrifices, when I brought them out of Egypt. But I did command them to obey me, so that I would be their God and they would be my people. And I told them to live as I had commanded them, so that things would go well for them."
The priest/prophet Samuel said the same thing (1 Samuel 15:22) - 
"And Samuel said, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams."
Also the prophet Isaiah (1.11) -
"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats."
What about the "Hard luck with faithless women" prophet, Hosea? Yep, him too (Hosea 6:6) -
"For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings."
Jesus? He saved His ire for the religious crowd; the pretenders to the faith (Matthew 23:23) -
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others."
What are the lessons here?
Obedience to God is very important. Much more important than religious rites put on by faithless hearts.
Is there anything else?
Yep, God hates those who pretend one thing but do the other.
Have we missed anything?
Perhaps that the obedience thing is part of the relationship thing? That obedience is just another way of saying, "Let's go at this together God. You and me against the injustice of the wicked and your faithless people."
What might be our response to hypocrisy?
"Forgive us Lord for our lack of compassion upon the hurting, the suffering, the ones we dislike because we're taught and told to dislike them. Woe be to us for offering bitter tithes of worship to you when all you wanted from your people was to love one another."
Need a prayer? Here's one - 
"Remove the scales from our eyes O' Lord. Let our hearts see past our blind hatreds and legal posturings. Help us to pray for our brothers and sisters; to stand with them in their hour of need; to walk the path of the downtrodden. Help me to show compassion and mercy that I too stand with the sinners and not with scoffers who mock your name. Nor with religious Hypocrites whose worship you hate. Amen."




More Poetic References







Tuesday, June 9, 2020

R.E. Slater - 7x7 Anger


Students portray Black Lives Matter movement in US and Brazil ...


7x7 Anger
by R.E. Slater

Dealing with Coronavirus.
Staying-at-home. Locked-in.
Scared. Mad. No money.
Kids. Anxieties. Fears.
No diversions. No Outlets.
No sports, bars, groups, work.
Just panicked helplessness.

No leadership.
Lying. Slandering. Blaming.
More lies. More anger. More madness.
What's hidden comes into 20/20.
Climate change not addressed.
Trump making war with the world.
Dividing everybody sane.

Pulling America apart.
Some demented dream of greatness.
A perfect storm forms.
And where's the church?
The real church is out marching.
Not the institutional church.
It's created all the disasters.

Where is America today?
And its white church gospel?
A gospel which victimizes.
Which plays the victim.
Which has harmed so many.
At the Southern border lands.
On the street lands of America?

Unobtainable health care.
Empty pockets. No wages.
I'm told Jesus followers heal.
They bless. They serve. They Aide.
That they bleed for the oppress.
Times of disruption give clarity.
They also give anger at Injustices.

Anger to assess.
Anger to make things right.
Anger of not having.
Anger of living in ruins.
Anger of being left behind.
Untended. Uncared.
Unwanted. Unloved.

I'm told America's Heartlands,
Greenlands, Urban Spaces,
Coastlands, Mountainlands,
Plains States, Hinterlands,
Beats with one heart,
Beats for all together,
When does it start for me?

R.E. Slater
June 9, 2020

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