Informal Worship Quotes

Yeah, about the test... The test will measure whether you are an informed, engaged, and productive citizen of the world, and it will take place in schools and bars and hospitals and dorm rooms and in places of worship. You will be tested on first dates, in job interviews, while watching football, and while scrolling through your Twitter feed. The test will judge your ability to think about things other than celebrity marriages, whether you’ll be easily persuaded by empty political rhetoric, and whether you’ll be able to place your life and your community in a broader context. The test will last your entire life, and it will be comprised of the millions of decisions that, when taken together, will make your life yours. And everything, everything, will be on it. ...I know, right?

I would suggest that science is, at least in my part, informed worship.

The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes connot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee; more gladly still would I perceive the olfactory world charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog. Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality... in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad of eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

Nothing worse... nothing worse that to be stuck somewhere with some married a-hole and have to listen to him tell you about his f***in' kids... Let me tell ya something, folks... nobody cares about your children, okay?" Nobody cares about your children. I speak for everyone. I've been appointed by the rest of the group to inform you we don't care about your children – that's why they're your children, so you can care about them and we don't have to bother.

The worship to which we are called in our renewed state is far too important to be left to personal preferences, to whims, or to marketing strategies. It is the pleasing of God that is at the heart of worship. Therefore, our worship must be informed at every point by the Word of God as we seek God’s own instructions for worship that is pleasing to Him.

TO BE asked to minister without an informing vision of God (which is what theology is really all about), however, is like being told to make bricks without straw. What keeps people going in ministry, and what, in my experience, congregations are longing for, is an exciting and empowering vision of God, articulated in a theology that is integrated with worship, prayer, and social action.

Many questions come to mind. How influenced by contemporary religions were many of the scholars who wrote the texts available today? How many scholars have simply assumed that males have always played the dominant role in leadership and creative invention and projected this assumption into their analysis of ancient cultures? Why do so many people educated in this century think of classical Greece as the first major culture when written language was in use and great cities built at least twenty-five centuries before that time? And perhaps most important, why is it continually inferred that the age of the "pagan" religions, the time of the worship of female deities (if mentioned at all), was dark and chaotic, mysterious and evil, without the light of order and reason that supposedly accompanied the later male religions, when it has been archaeologically confirmed that the earliest law, government, medicine, agriculture, architecture, metallurgy, wheeled vehicles, ceramics, textiles and written language were initially developed in societies that worshiped the Goddess? We may find ourselves wondering about the reasons for the lack of easily available information on societies who, for thousands of years, worshiped the ancient Creatress of the Universe.

As we gaze on Christ, the mind is informed, and the heart is inflamed, and the body begins to line up.

But if we are going to inform your dad that we’re dating, I’d rather it be over a nice, wholesome dinner, not when I’m leaving your place first thing in the morning because I’ve spent the night worshipping at the altar of your glorious, beautiful, intoxicating pussy.

Faith is either something that informs one at all times or it isn’t anything at all, really. When the Chinese government tells its citizens that they can worship in a certain building on a certain day, but once they leave that building they must bow to the secular orthodoxy of the state, you have a cynical lie at work. They’ve substituted a toothless “freedom of worship” for “freedom of religion”.

When Pope Pius XII died, LIFE magazine carried a picture of him in his private study kneeling before a black Christ. What was the source of their information? All white people who have studied history and geography know that Christ was a black man. Only the poor, brainwashed American Negro has been made to believe that Christ was white, to maneuver him into worshiping the white man. After becoming a Muslim in prison, I read almost everything I could put my hands on in the prison library. I began to think back on everything I had read and especially with the histories, I realized that nearly all of them read by the general public have been made into white histories. I found out that the history-whitening process either had left out great things that black men had done, or some of the great black men had gotten whitened.

Go on, my dear," urges the snake. "Take one. Hear it? 'Pluck me,' it's saying. That big, shiny red one. 'Pluck me, pluck me now and pluck me hard.' You know you want to." "But God," quotes Eve, putting out feelers for an agent provacateur, clever girl, "expressly forbids us to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge." "Ah yessssss, God ... But God gave us life, did He not? And God gave us desire, did He not? And God gave us taste, did He not? And who else but God made the damned apples in the first place? So what else is life for but to tassste the fruit we desire?" Eve folds her arms schoolgirlishly. "God expressly forbade it. Adam said." The snake grins through his fangs, admiring Eve's playacting. "God is a nice enough chap in His way. I daresay He means well. But between you and The Tree of Knowledge, He is terribly insecure." "Insecure? He made the entire bloody universe! He's omnipotent." "Exactly! Almost neurotic, isn't it? All this worshiping, morning, noon, and night. It's 'Oh Praise Him, Oh Praise Him, Oh Praise the Everlassssting Lord.' I don't call that omnipotent. I call it pathetic. Most independent authorities agree that God has never sufficiently credited the work of virtual particles in the creation of the universssse. He raises you and Adam on this diet of myths while all the really interesting information is locked up in these juicy apples. Seven days? Give me a break.

Any pub will do?” “McPherson’s, I think. One with music that will alter my life forever, give me eternal happiness, and make me see God. You know. One like that.” “So you need the magical sound of Ireland and some information about an Abbeyglen native. Francine”—Beckett’s eyes danced in the streaming sunlight—“I’m about to solve your every problem.” Beckett stood up and gave my hair a light tug. “Prepare to worship and adore me.

introverts often feel more freedom in worship services that feature traditional liturgy than they do in ones that feature more open, informal, unstructured styles of worship. Introverts often appreciate the depth of liturgical prayers and hymns, as well as the rich symbolism that fill traditional churches.

Does trying to understand the universe at all betray a lack of humility? I believe it is true that humility is the only just response in a confrontation with the universe, but not a humility that prevents us from seeking the nature of the universe we are admiring. If we seek that nature, then love can be informed by truth instead of being based on ignorance or self-deception. If a Creator God exists, would He or She or It or whatever the appropriate pronoun is, prefer a kind of sodden blockhead who worships while understanding nothing? Or would He prefer His votaries to admire the real universe in all its intricacy? I would suggest that science is, at least in part, informed worship.

In our practice we have no particular purpose or goal, nor any special object of worship.

Does trying to understand the universe at all betray a lack of humility ? I believe it is true that humility is the only just response in a confrontation with the universe, but not a humility that prevents us from seeking the nature of the universe we are admiring. If we seek that nature, then love can be informed by truth instead of being based on ignorance and self-deception. If a Creator God exists, would He or She or It or whatever the appropriate pronoun is, prefer a kind of sodden blockhead who worships while understanding nothing ? Or would He prefer His votaries to admire the real universe in all its intricacy ? I would suggest that science is, at least in part, informed worship. My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, then our curiosity and intelligence are provided by such a god. We would be unappreciative of those gifts if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves. On the other hand, if such a traditional god does not exist, then our curiosity and our intelligence are the essential tools for managing our survival in an extremely dangerous time. In either case the enterprise of knowledge is consistent surely with science; it should be with religion, and it is essential for the welfare of the human species.

-Prayer In My Life- Every person has his own ideas of the act of praying for God's guidance, tolerance and mercy to fulfill his duties and responsibilities. My own concept of prayer is not a plea for special favors, nor as a quick palliation for wrongs knowingly committed. A prayer, it seems to me, implies a promise as well as a request; at the highest level, prayer not only is supplication for strength and guidance, but also becomes an affirmation of life and thus a reverent praise of God. Deeds rather than words express my concept of the part religion should play in everyday life. I have watched constantly that in our movie work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether it deals with fable or with stories of living action. This religious concern for the form and content of our films goes back 40 years to the rugged financial period in Kansas City when I was struggling to establish a film company and produce animated fairy tales. Thus, whatever success I have had in bringing clean, informative entertainment to people of all ages, I attribute in great part to my Congregational upbringing and lifelong habit of prayer. To me, today at age 61, all prayer by the humble or highly placed has one thing in common: supplication for strength and inspiration to carry on the best impulses which should bind us together for a better world. Without such inspiration we would rapidly deteriorate and finally perish. But in our troubled times, the right of men to think and worship as their conscience dictates is being sorely pressed. We can retain these privileges only by being constantly on guard in fighting off any encroachment on these precepts. To retreat from any of the principles handed down by our forefathers, who shed their blood for the ideals we all embrace, would be a complete victory for those who would destroy liberty and justice for the individual.

An education, then, is a constellation of practices, rituals, and routines that inculcates a particular vision of the good life by inscribing or infusing that vision into the heart (the gut) by means of material, embodied practices. And this will be true even of the most instrumentalist, pragmatic programs of education (such as those that now tend to dominate public schools and universities bent on churning out “skilled workers”) that see their task primarily as providing information, because behind this is a vision of the good life that understands human flourishing primarily in terms of production and consumption. Behind the veneer of a “value-free” education concerned with providing skills, knowledge, and information is an educational vision that remains formative.

What I am sure of is that we have lost the old apprehension of Nature as a being accessible to imagination, linking Heaven and Earth, making and informing the incarnate creation, and requiring of humanity an obedience at once worshipful, ethical, and economic.

For the information of these “friends” who consider themselves called to defend against us the role of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution, we give warning that our book teaches not how to love a victorious revolution after the event, in the person of the bureaucracy it has brought forward, but only how a revolution is prepared, how it develops, and how it conquers. A party is not for us a machine whose sinlessness is to be defended by state measures of repression, but a complicated organism that like all living things develops in contradictions.

It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing. I tried morphine; but the drug has given only transient surcease, and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm—a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind—of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.

There is a vast difference between being a Christian and being a disciple. The difference is commitment. Motivation and discipline will not ultimately occur through listening to sermons, sitting in a class, participating in a fellowship group, attending a study group in the workplace or being a member of a small group, but rather in the context of highly accountable, relationally transparent, truth-centered, small discipleship units. There are twin prerequisites for following Christ - cost and commitment, neither of which can occur in the anonymity of the masses. Disciples cannot be mass produced. We cannot drop people into a program and see disciples emerge at the end of the production line. It takes time to make disciples. It takes individual personal attention. Discipleship training is not about information transfer, from head to head, but imitation, life to life. You can ultimately learn and develop only by doing. The effectiveness of one's ministry is to be measured by how well it flourishes after one's departure. Discipling is an intentional relationship in which we walk alongside other disciples in order to encourage, equip, and challenge one another in love to grow toward maturity in Christ. This includes equipping the disciple to teach others as well. If there are no explicit, mutually agreed upon commitments, then the group leader is left without any basis to hold people accountable. Without a covenant, all leaders possess is their subjective understanding of what is entailed in the relationship. Every believer or inquirer must be given the opportunity to be invited into a relationship of intimate trust that provides the opportunity to explore and apply God's Word within a setting of relational motivation, and finally, make a sober commitment to a covenant of accountability. Reviewing the covenant is part of the initial invitation to the journey together. It is a sobering moment to examine whether one has the time, the energy and the commitment to do what is necessary to engage in a discipleship relationship. Invest in a relationship with two others for give or take a year. Then multiply. Each person invites two others for the next leg of the journey and does it all again. Same content, different relationships. The invitation to discipleship should be preceded by a period of prayerful discernment. It is vital to have a settled conviction that the Lord is drawing us to those to whom we are issuing this invitation. . If you are going to invest a year or more of your time with two others with the intent of multiplying, whom you invite is of paramount importance. You want to raise the question implicitly: Are you ready to consider serious change in any area of your life? From the outset you are raising the bar and calling a person to step up to it. Do not seek or allow an immediate response to the invitation to join a triad. You want the person to consider the time commitment in light of the larger configuration of life's responsibilities and to make the adjustments in schedule, if necessary, to make this relationship work. Intentionally growing people takes time. Do you want to measure your ministry by the number of sermons preached, worship services designed, homes visited, hospital calls made, counseling sessions held, or the number of self-initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Jesus? When we get to the shore's edge and know that there is a boat there waiting to take us to the other side to be with Jesus, all that will truly matter is the names of family, friends and others who are self initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Jesus because we made it the priority of our lives to walk with them toward maturity in Christ. There is no better eternal investment or legacy to leave behind.

Pottery finds suggest a Libyan immigration into Crete as early as 4000 B.C.; and a large number of goddess-worshipping Libyan refugees from the Western Delta seem to have arrived there when Upper and Lower Egypt were forcibly united under the First Dynasty about the year 3000 B.C. The First Minoan Age began soon afterwards, and Cretan culture spread to Thrace and Early Hellenic Greece.

I noticed the cops too, standing there, unfazed, in the pulsing midst of the energy and excitement. It was one thing to be informed, but quite another to see with my own eyes, hear with my own ears, and feel in my soul the reaction from real people to me and my music. What I felt that night in Schenectady was not idol worship, it was love. It was the kind of love that comes from honest connection and recognition.

In our desire to have a political tribe to belong to, we create an idol. When we cast aside our intellectual curiosity, refuse to adapt our opinions on policy when presented with new information, and lose our ability to view each candidate and every issue independently, we have cast our lot with a political party. We have sworn allegiance to something or someone who is not God and was never designed to be worshipped.

In a 1992 “spiritual warfare manual” called Prepare for War, Rebecca Brown informs us that abortion and sex outside of marriage “will almost always result in demonic infestation”; that meditation, yoga and martial arts are designed so unsuspecting Christians will be seduced into worshiping demons; and that “rock music didn’t ‘just happen,’ it was a carefully masterminded plan by none other than Satan himself.” Sometimes “your loved ones are demonically bound and blinded.

Hence a bolder techno-religion seeks to sever the humanist umbilical cord altogether. It foresees a world that does not revolve around the desires and experiences of any humanlike beings. What might replace desires and experiences as the source of all meaning and authority? As of 2016, there is one candidate sitting in history’s reception room waiting for the job interview. This candidate is information. The most interesting emerging religion is Dataism, which venerates neither gods nor man – it worships data.

It was Day Three, Freshman Year, and I was a little bit lost in the school library,looking for a bathroom that wasn't full of blindingly shiny sophomores checking their lip gloss. Day Three.Already pretty clear on the fact that I would be using secondary bathrooms for at least the next three years,until being a senior could pass for confidence.For the moment, I knew no one,and was too shy to talk to anyone. So that first sight of Edward: pale hair that looked like he'd just run his hands through it, paint-smeared white shirt,a half smile that was half wicked,and I was hooked. Since, "Hi,I'm Ella.You look like someone I'd like to spend the rest of my life with," would have been totally insane, I opted for sitting quietly and staring.Until the bell rang and I had to rush to French class,completely forgetting to pee. Edward Willing.Once I knew his name, the rest was easy.After all,we're living in the age of information. Wikipedia, iPhones, 4G ntworks, social networking that you can do from a thousand miles away.The upshot being that at any given time over the next two years, I could sit twenty feet from him in the library, not saying a word, and learn a lot about him.ENough, anyway, for me to become completely convinced that the Love at First Sight hadn't been a fluke. It's pretty simple.Edward matched four and a half of my If My Prince Does, In Fact, Come Someday,It Would Be Great If He Could Meet These Five Criteria. 1. Interested in art. For me, it's charcoal. For Edward, oil paint and bronze. That's almost enough right there. Nice lips + artist= Ella's prince. 2. Not afraid of love. He wrote, "Love is one of two things worth dying for.I have yet to decide on the second." 3.Or of telling the truth. "How can I believe that other people say if I lie to them?" 4.Hot. Why not?I can dream. 5.Daring. Mountain climbing, cliff dying, defying the parents. Him, not me. I'm terrified of an embarrassing number of things, including heights, convertibles, moths, and those comedians everyone loves who stand onstage and yell insults at the audience. 5, subsection a. Daring enough to take a chance on me.Of course, in the end, that No. 5a is the biggie. And the problem. No matter how muuch I worshipped him,no matter how good a pair we might have been,it was never, ever going to happen. To be fair to Edward,it's not like he was given an opportunity to get to know me. I'm not stupid.I know there are a few basic truths when it comes to boys and me. Truth: You have to talk to a boy-really talk,if you want him to see past the fact that you're not beautiful. Truth: I'm not beautiful. Or much of a conversationalist. Truth: I'm not entirely sure that the stuff behind the not-beautiful is going to be all that alluring, either. And one written-in-stone, heartbreaking truth about this guy. Truth:Edward Willing died in 1916.

If we see that God’s intention is to work Himself into us, we shall automatically eat and drink of Him. Mothers know that babies eat and drink automatically, not caring for any forms, manners, or regulations. Infants are better at eating and drinking than adults are. Our eating and drinking are often hindered by all the attention we give to table manners. Sometimes the more we pay attention to manners, the less we enjoy our food. I heard of a Chinese ambassador who attended a formal state dinner in Germany. Because he was so concerned about proper etiquette and table manners, he did not enjoy the food at all. He spent his time watching how others at the dinner conducted themselves and how they used their eating utensils. Table manners kept him from eating. Children are not like this. When my little granddaughter visits us, her grandmother often gives her something to eat. My granddaughter enjoys her food in a spontaneous and informal way. She is a good example of how we should pay less attention to forms and more to eating and drinking. At the very time the Lord Jesus was speaking with the Samaritan woman, the priests in the temple were worshipping God in the formal, systematic, prescribed manner. But where was God at that time? Was He in the temple with [517] the priests, or was He with the woman by the well in Samaria? As we all know, He was with the Samaritan woman. He met with her in the open air, away from the temple and the altar, without religious forms and rituals. Eventually, this Samaritan woman drank of the living water and offered real worship to God. At that time the true worship to God was offered not by the priests in the temple, but by the Samaritan woman who was drinking the living water. The priests worshipped God in vain; the Samaritan woman worshipped Him in reality by drinking Him into her being. The Spirit as the living water was infused into her. God was seeking real worship, and He received it from this Samaritan woman who drank of the Spirit as the living water. Today’s Christians need to see what real worship is. They condemn those in the Lord’s recovery as heretical, when they themselves are heretical and ignorant of the truth. Like the priests in the temple, they are blind to what true worship is. In John 4 the Lord Jesus did not spend time talking to typical Jews according to the Old Testament way of worship. Instead, He conversed with an immoral, semi-heathen woman concerning the worship which satisfies God’s heart. This woman worshipped God in her spirit by drinking of Him as the water to quench her thirst. Thus, God was worshipped by her in a genuine way. How much different this is from formal, religious worship! Throughout the centuries, most Christian worship has been like that of the priests in the temple. Only a small number have worshipped God in spirit by drinking of Him as living water.

A Christian will find it most beneficial to practice secret worship, corporate worship, and family worship. They are all important for our life in Christ. They each bear a necessary weight, and they all inform one another. When my secret worship is lacking or even non-existent, then my worship in the corporate community and family will be affected. When my attendance at corporate worship is sparse, then my secret worship and family worship will suffer as well. These three spheres of worship are related, informed, and encouraged by one another, because in each I am meeting with the Lord and benefiting from His grace. As I grow in my enjoyment of the Lord in my closet, so my enjoyment of Him in corporate worship will increase. As I hear the preached Word of God in corporate worship, this informs and stimulates my heart and mind in leading my own family in worship. As I worship God with my family, my affection and love for the Lord increases, which encourages my secret and corporate worship. They all inform one another. If I am starving in one area, then as I function in the other spheres I will find that I am malnourished there as well. p. 27

The difference between a monarch and a dictator is that the monarchical succession is defined by law and the dictatorial succession is defined by power. The effect in the latter is that the fish rots from the head down — lawlessness permeates the state, as in a mafia family, because contending leaders must build informal coalitions. Since another name for a monarchist is a legitimist, we can contrast the legitimist and demotist theories of government. […] Perhaps unsurprisingly, I see legitimism as a sort of proto-formalism. The royal family is a perpetual corporation, the kingdom is the property of this corporation, and the whole thing is a sort of real-estate venture on a grand scale. Why does the family own the corporation and the corporation own the kingdom? Because it does. Property is historically arbitrary. The best way for the monarchies of Old Europe to modernize, in my book, would have been to transition the corporation from family ownership to shareholder ownership, eliminating the hereditary principle which caused so many problems for so many monarchies. However, the trouble with corporate monarchism is that it presents no obvious political formula. “Because it does” cuts no ice with a mob of pitchfork-wielding peasants. […] So the legitimist system went down another path, which led eventually to its destruction: the path of divine-right monarchy. When everyone believes in God, “because God says so” is a much more impressive formula. Perhaps the best way to look at demotism is to see it as the Protestant version of rule by divine right — based on the theory of vox populi, vox dei. If you add divine-right monarchy to a religious system that is shifting from the worship of God to the worship of Man, demotism is pretty much what you’d expect to precipitate in the beaker.

Our schools cannot be improved by the blind worship of data. Data are only as good as the measures used to create the numbers and good as the underlying activities. If the measures are shoddy, then the data will be shoddy. If the data reflect mainly the amount of time invested in test preparation activities, then the data are worthless. If the data are based on dumbed-down state tests, then the data are meaningless. A good accountability system, whether for schools, teachers, or students, must include a variety of measures, not only test scores...our schools should be “data-informed”, “not data driven".

Who told you that you were naked? Who have you been listening to?..' This is a tragic reminder that we humans have the strange capacity to live a soulless life. Our inner voice was never supposed to be simply an echo. Our inner voice was always to resonate with the voice of God. Every other voice will either make us less than we were intended to be or convince us that we are more than we really are. Neither self-loathing nor self-worship helps us find our authentic voice. It is only when our inner voice responds to the voice of God that we begin to truly find to find our own voice. As critical as it is for us to understand that art is always an extension of ourselves, the creative act is also an expression of our essence. It is equally important for us to realize that our guiding narrative determines the story we tell through our lives. Our inner voice not only informs us of who we are, but affects everything we touch. And in the end, becomes the driving force through which we strive to shape the world around us. The principal creative act described in Genesis chapter 1 begins with God speaking the universe into existence. God speaks out of who He is and everything in creation is a declaration of His glory.

No one should have to live in secret shame. The burning desire of every self-injuring person I've ever spoken with is simply to be seen as human and not as a freak or an attention seeker—despite their scars, despite the fact that, yes, cutting is self-inflicted. As we begin to see that people who self-harm can be found in nearly every neighborhood, school, college, house of worship, or school group, we must become better informed so that we can better understand their language of pain and help them find a way out of their suffering. The first step, however, takes no special training or sophisticated understanding of psychology or neurochemistry. It simply takes the effort to listen with compassion.

How does that happen? I’m suggesting that Christian education has, for too long, been concerned with information rather than formation; thus Christian colleges have thought it sufficient to provide a Christian perspective, an intellectual framework, because they see themselves as fostering individual “minds in the making.”[6] Hand in hand with that, such an approach reduces Christianity to a denuded intellectual framework that has diminished bite because such an intellectualized rendition of the faith doesn’t touch our core passions. This is because such intellectualization of Christianity allows it to be unhooked from the thick practices of the church. When the Christianity of “Christian education” is reduced to the intellectual elements of a Christian worldview or a Christian perspective, the result is that Christianity is turned “into a belief system available to the individual without mediation by the church.”[

Sound waves, regardless of their frequency or intensity, can only be detected by the Mole Fly’s acute sense of smell—it is a little known fact that the Mole Fly’s auditory receptors do not, in fact, have a corresponding center in the brain designated for the purposes of processing sensory stimuli and so, these stimuli, instead of being siphoned out as noise, bypass the filters to be translated, oddly enough, by the part of the brain that processes smell. Consequently, the Mole Fly’s brain, in its inevitable confusion, understands sound as an aroma, rendering the boundary line between the auditory and olfactory sense indistinguishable. Sounds, thus, come in a variety of scents with an intensity proportional to its frequency. Sounds of shorter wavelength, for example, are particularly pungent. What results is a species of creature that cannot conceptualize the possibility that sound and smell are separate entities, despite its ability to discriminate between the exactitudes of pitch, timbre, tone, scent, and flavor to an alarming degree of precision. Yet, despite this ability to hyper-analyze, they lack the cognitive skill to laterally link successions of either sound or smell into a meaningful context, resulting in the equivalent of a data overflow. And this may be the most defining element of the Mole Fly’s behavior: a blatant disregard for the context of perception, in favor of analyzing those remote and diminutive properties that distinguish one element from another. While sensory continuity seems logical to their visual perception, as things are subject to change from moment-to-moment, such is not the case with their olfactory sense, as delays in sensing new smells are granted a degree of normality by the brain. Thus, the Mole Fly’s olfactory-auditory complex seems to be deprived of the sensory continuity otherwise afforded in the auditory senses of other species. And so, instead of sensing aromas and sounds continuously over a period of time—for example, instead of sensing them 24-30 times per second, as would be the case with their visual perception—they tend to process changes in sound and smell much more slowly, thereby preventing them from effectively plotting the variations thereof into an array or any kind of meaningful framework that would allow the information provided by their olfactory and auditory stimuli to be lasting in their usefulness. The Mole flies, themselves, being the structurally-obsessed and compulsive creatures that they are, in all their habitual collecting, organizing, and re-organizing of found objects into mammoth installations of optimal functional value, are remarkably easy to control, especially as they are given to a rather false and arbitrary sense of hierarchy, ascribing positions—that are otherwise trivial, yet necessarily mundane if only to obscure their true purpose—with an unfathomable amount of honor, to the logical extreme that the few chosen to serve in their most esteemed ranks are imbued with a kind of obligatory arrogance that begins in the pupal stages and extends indefinitely, as they are further nurtured well into adulthood by a society that infuses its heroes of middle management with an immeasurable sense of importance—a kind of celebrity status recognized by the masses as a living embodiment of their ideals. And yet, despite this culture of celebrity worship and vicarious living, all whims and impulses fall subservient, dropping humbly to the knees—yes, Mole Flies do, in fact, have knees!—before the grace of the merciful Queen, who is, in actuality, just a puppet dictator installed by the Melic papacy, using an old recycled Damsel fly-fishing lure. The dummy is crude, but convincing, as the Mole flies treat it as they would their true-born queen.

When high expectations are communicated to members, the unchurched are attracted to these churches that have meaningful membership. One such church among the churches we have received information on is Carron Baptist Church, an African-American church in Washington, D.C. They actually require their members to agree to a church covenant that mandates the following: To read the Bible daily. To pray with and for members of your family daily. To attend all worship services unless hindered by health or circumstances beyond your control. To abstain from gossip, backbiting, murmuring, or negative talk. To respond to conflict and disagreement according to biblical precepts. To share your faith regularly; to invite people to church. To participate in Bible study/ Sunday school To be in agreement with the church’s doctrine. To be involved in at least one ministry in the church. To tithe. To abstain from alcohol and illegal drugs. To be sexually pure. The unchurched that visit Carron Baptist Church quickly discern that it is a high-expectation church. Yet they keep returning, keep joining, and the church continues to grow.

The men who had inhabited prehistoric Egypt, who had carved the Sphinx and founded the world‘s oldest civilization, were men who had made their exodus from Atlantis to settle on this strip of land that bordered the Nile. And they had left before their ill-fated continent sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, a catastrophe which had drained the Sahara and turned it into a desert. The shells which to-day litter the surface of the Sahara in places, as well as the fossil fish which are found among its sands, prove that it was once covered by the waters of a vast ocean. It was a tremendous and astonishing thought that the Sphinx provided a solid, visible and enduring link between the people of to-day and the people of a lost world, the unknown Atlanteans. This great symbol has lost its meaning for the modern world, for whom it is now but an object of local curiosity. What did it mean to the Atlanteans? We must look for some hint of an answer in the few remnants of culture still surviving from peoples whose own histories claimed Atlantean origin. We must probe behind the degenerate rituals of races like the Incas and the Mayas, mounting to the purer worship of their distant ancestors, and we shall find that the loftiest object of their worship was Light, represented by the Sun. Hence they build pyramidal Temples of the Sun throughout ancient America. Such temples were either variants or slightly distorted copies of similar temples which had existed in Atlantis. After Plato went to Egypt and settled for a while in the ancient School of Heliopolis, where he lived and studied during thirteen years, the priest-teachers, usually very guarded with foreigners, favoured the earnest young Greek enquirer with information drawn from their well-preserved secret records. Among other things they told him that a great flat-topped pyramid had stood in the centre of the island of Atlantis, and that on this top there had been build the chief temple of the continent – a sun temple. […] The Sphinx was the revered emblem in stone of a race which looked upon Light as the nearest thing to God in this dense material world. Light is the subtlest, most intangible of things which man can register by means of one of his five senses. It is the most ethereal kind of matter which he knows. It is the most ethereal element science can handle, and even the various kind of invisible rays are but variants of light which vibrate beyond the power of our retinas to grasp. So in the Book of Genesis the first created element was Light, without which nothing else could be created. „The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the Deep,“ wrote Egyptian-trained Moses. „And God said, Let there be Light: and there was Light.“ Not only that, it is also a perfect symbol of that heavenly Light which dawns within the deep places of man‘s soul when he yields heart and mind to God; it is a magnificent memorial to that divine illumination which awaits him secretly even amid the blackest despairs. Man, in turning instinctively to the face and presence of the Sun, turns to the body of his Creator. And from the sun, light is born: from the sun it comes streaming into our world. Without the sun we should remain perpetually in horrible darkness; crops would not grow: mankind would starve, die, and disappear from the face of this planet. If this reverence for Light and for its agent, the sun, was the central tenet of Atlantean religion, so also was it the central tenet of early Egyptian religion. Ra, the sun-god, was first, the father and creator of all the other gods, the Maker of all things, the One, the self-born [...] If the Sphinx were connected with this religion of Light, it would surely have some relationship with the sun.

Knocking on a massive carved door minutes later, the sigils on it shouting to those literate enough to ‘Stay away or else!’ he received a nice surprise when the door swung open. Well, hello there. Reaching only his shoulder, with a wild mop of black hair, bright brown eyes and a rounded body made for worship – by his tongue – Remy wondered if he could convince the servant girl to come around the corner with him for a quickie before he met with this Ysabel person. Then she opened her luscious mouth. “If you’re done gawking, you might want to step back before I smash your nose with the door when I shut it.” Someone got up without sex today. He could fix that. “Hello beautiful, I actually have business with the occupant of this suite. I’m here to meet with Ysabel, the witch.” “Really.” Her tone said what she thought of his claim and her brown gaze looked him up and down, then dismissed him. “I don’t think so.” The door slammed shut in his face. What. The. Fuck. Remy pounded on the door. It immediately opened. The ebony haired vixen, her arms crossed under her bountiful tits, smirked. “Back already. What’s wrong? Did I hurt your feelings?” “Listen woman, I don’t know what crawled up your ass and turned you into an uptight bitch, but I’m here to see Ysabel, so get the fuck out of my way before I put you over my knee and –” “And what? Spank me?” Her eyes actually sparked with challenge, the minx. “I’d like to see you try. But, before you do, just so you know, my name is Ysabel. The witch.” Aaaaah, shit. Never one to admit defeat, he let a slow simmering smile spread across his face. It worked on demonesses, damned souls, human women, and even gay men, but apparently, it had no effect on scowling witches. Too bad. “It’s your lucky day. Lucifer has informed me that you’re my next assignment.” “Not by choice. And what are you supposed to do exactly? I need a tracker, not a gigolo. What happened? Did your gig as a pole dancer not work out? Equipment too small?” She dropped her gaze to his groin and sneered. A sudden, irrational urge possessed him to drop his pants, flip her over and show her there was nothing wrong with the size of his cock. He abstained, but couldn’t prevent himself from taunting her, eyeing her up and down in the same dismissive manner. “Anytime you want to measure my dick, you let me know. Naked.” “Pig.” “No, demon. Really, get your terminology straight, would you? After Lucifer’s warning, I expected someone older and badder.” To his credit he didn’t drop to the ground, but the pain in his balls did require he bend over to cup them gently which in turn meant he got the door in the face. Again. -Ysabel & Remy

He thinks with distracted affection of himself, the young Louis Waters, who spent his youth trying to live with Richard, who was variously flattered and enraged by Richard's indefatigable worship of his arms and his ass, and who left Richard finally, forever, after a fight in the train station in Rome (had it been specifically about the letter Richard received from Clarissa, or about Louis's more general sense of exhausted interest in being the more blessed, less brilliant member?). That Louis, only twenty-eight but convinced of his advanced age and missed opportunities, had walked away from Richard and gotten on a train that turned out to be going to Madrid. It had seemed, at the time, a dramatic but temporary gesture, and as the train steamed along (the conductor had informed him, indignantly, where he was headed) he'd been strangely, almost preternaturally content. He'd been free. Now he scarcely remembers his aimless days in Madrid; he does not even remember with great clarity the Italian boy (could his name actually have been Franco?) who convinced him to finally abandon the long, doomed project of loving Richard, in favor of simpler passions. What he remembers with perfect clarity is sitting on a train headed for Madrid, feeling the sort of happiness he imagined spirits might feel, freed of their earthly bodies but still possessed of their essential selves.

The entire pre-Columbian literature of Mexico, a vast library of tens of thousands of codices, was carefully and systematically destroyed by the priests and friars who followed in the wake of the conquistadors. In November 1530, for example, Bishop Juan de Zumárraga, who had shortly before been apointed 'Protector of the Indians' by the Spanish crown, proceeded to 'protect' his flock by burning at the stake a Mexican aristocrat, the lord of the city of Texcoco, whom he accused of having worshipped the rain god. In the city's marketplace Zumárraga 'had a pyramid formed of the documents of Aztec history, knowledge and literature, their paintings, manuscripts, and hieroglyphic writings, all of which he committed to the flames while the natives cried and prayed.' More than 30 years later, the holocaust of documents was still under way. In July 1562, in the main square of Mani (just south of modern Merida in the Yucatan), Bishop Diego de Landa burned thousands of Maya codices, story paintings, and hieroglyphs inscribed on rolled-up deer skins. He boasted of destroying countless 'idols' and 'altars,' all of which he described as 'works of the devil, designed by the evil one to delude the Indians and to prevent them from accepting Christianity.' Noting that the Maya 'used certain characters or letters, which they wrote in their books about the antiquities and their sciences' he informs us: 'We found a great number of books in these letters, and since they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the devil we burned them all, which they took most grievously and which gave them great pain.

The President is the King's father. He is an erect, strongly built, massive featured, white-haired, tawny old gentleman of eighty years of age or thereabouts. He was simply but well dressed, in a blue cloth coat and white vest, and white pantaloons, without spot, dust or blemish upon them. He bears himself with a calm, stately dignity, and is a man of noble presence. He was a young man and a distinguished warrior under that terrific fighter, Kamehameha I., more than half a century ago. A knowledge of his career suggested some such thought as this: "This man, naked as the day he was born, and war-club and spear in hand, has charged at the head of a horde of savages against other hordes of savages more than a generation and a half ago, and reveled in slaughter and carnage; has worshipped wooden images on his devout knees; has seen hundreds of his race offered up in heathen temples as sacrifices to wooden idols, at a time when no missionary's foot had ever pressed this soil, and he had never heard of the white man's God; has believed his enemy could secretly pray him to death; has seen the day, in his childhood, when it was a crime punishable by death for a man to eat with his wife, or for a plebeian to let his shadow fall upon the King—and now look at him; an educated Christian; neatly and handsomely dressed; a high-minded, elegant gentleman; a traveler, in some degree, and one who has been the honored guest of royalty in Europe; a man practiced in holding the reins of an enlightened government, and well versed in the politics of his country and in general, practical information. Look at him, sitting there presiding over the deliberations of a legislative body, among whom are white men—a grave, dignified, statesmanlike personage, and as seemingly natural and fitted to the place as if he had been born in it and had never been out of it in his life time. How the experiences of this old man's eventful life shame the cheap inventions of romance!

Babel led to an explosion in the number of languages. That was part of Enki's plan. Monocultures, like a field of corn, are susceptible to infections, but genetically diverse cultures, like a prairie, are extremely robust. After a few thousand years, one new language developed - Hebrew - that possessed exceptional flexibility and power. The deuteronomists, a group of radical monotheists in the sixth and seventh centuries B.C., were the first to take advantage of it. They lived in a time of extreme nationalism and xenophobia, which made it easier for them to reject foreign ideas like Asherah worship. They formalized their old stories into the Torah and implanted within it a law that insured its propagation throughout history - a law that said, in effect, 'make an exact copy of me and read it every day.' And they encouraged a sort of informational hygiene, a belief in copying things strictly and taking great care with information, which as they understood, is potentially dangerous. They made data a controlled substance... [and] gone beyond that. There is evidence of carefully planned biological warfare against the army of Sennacherib when he tried to conquer Jerusalem. So the deuteronomists may have had an en of their very own. Or maybe they just understood viruses well enough that they knew how to take advantage of naturally occurring strains. The skills cultivated by these people were passed down in secret from one generation to the next and manifested themselves two thousand years later, in Europe, among the Kabbalistic sorcerers, ba'al shems, masters of the divine name. In any case, this was the birth of rational religion. All of the subsequent monotheistic religions - known by Muslims, appropriately, as religions of the Book - incorporated those ideas to some extent. For example, the Koran states over and over again that it is a transcript, an exact copy, of a book in Heaven. Naturally, anyone who believes that will not dare to alter the text in any way! Ideas such as these were so effective in preventing the spread of Asherah that, eventually, every square inch of the territory where the viral cult had once thrived was under the sway of Islam, Christianity, or Judaism. But because of its latency - coiled about the brainstem of those it infects, passed from one generation to the next - it always finds ways to resurface. In the case of Judaism, it came in the form of the Pharisees, who imposed a rigid legalistic theocracy on the Hebrews. With its rigid adherence to laws stored in a temple, administered by priestly types vested with civil authority, it resembled the old Sumerian system, and was just as stifling. The ministry of Jesus Christ was an effort to break Judaism out of this condition... an echo of what Enki did. Christ's gospel is a new namshub, an attempt to take religion out of the temple, out of the hands of the priesthood, and bring the Kingdom of God to everyone. That is the message explicitly spelled out by his sermons, and it is the message symbolically embodied in the empty tomb. After the crucifixion, the apostles went to his tomb hoping to find his body and instead found nothing. The message was clear enough; We are not to idolize Jesus, because his ideas stand alone, his church is no longer centralized in one person but dispersed among all the people.

with the KABIRI. And we have shown that the latter were the same as the Manus, the Rishis and our Dhyan Chohans, who incarnated in the Elect of the Third and Fourth Races. Thus, while in Theogony the Kabiri-Titans were seven great gods: cosmically and astronomically the Titans were called Atlantes, because, perhaps, as Faber says, they were connected (a) with At-al-as "the divine Sun," and (b) with tit "the deluge." But this, if true, is only the exoteric version. Esoterically, the meaning of their symbols depends on the appellation, or title, used. The seven mysterious, awe-inspiring great gods—the Dioscuri,[420] the deities surrounded with the darkness of occult nature—become the Idei (or Idaeic finger) with the adept-healer by metals. The true etymology of the name lares (now signifying "ghosts") must be sought in the Etruscan word "lars," "conductor," "leader." Sanchoniathon translates the word Aletae as fire worshippers, and Tabor believes it derived from Al-Orit, "the god of fire." Both are right, as in both cases it is a reference to the Sun (the highest God), toward whom the planetary gods "gravitate" (astronomically and allegorically) and whom they worship. As Lares, they are truly the Solar Deities, though Faber's etymology, who says that "lar" is a contraction of "El-Ar," the solar deity, is not very correct. They are the "lares," the conductors and leaders of men. As Aletae, they were the seven planets -- astronomically; and as Lares, the regents of the same, our protectors and rulers—mystically. For purposes of exoteric or phallic worship, as also cosmically, they were the Kabiri, their attributes being recognised in these two capacities by the name of the temples to which they respectively belonged, and those of their priests. They all belonged, however, to the Septenary creative and informing groups of Dhyan Chohans. The Sabeans, who worshipped the "regents of the Seven planets" as the Hindus do their Rishis, held Seth and his son Hermes (Enoch or Enos) as the highest among the planetary gods. Seth and Enos were borrowed from the Sabeans and then disfigured by the Jews (exoterically); but the truth can still be traced about them even in Genesis.[421] Seth is the "progenitor" of those early men of the Third Race in whom the "Planetary" angels had incarnated—a Dhyan Chohan himself, who belonged to the informing gods; and Enos (Hanoch or Enoch) or Hermes, was said to be his son—because it was a generic name for all the early Seers ("Enoichion"). Thence the worship. The Arabic writer Soyuti says that the earliest records mention Seth, or Set, as the founder of Sabeanism; and therefore that the pyramids which embody the planetary system were regarded as the place of sepulchre of both Seth and Idris (Hermes or Enoch), (See Vyse, "Operations," Vol. II., p. 358); that thither Sabeans proceeded on pilgrimage, and chanted prayers seven times a day, turning to the North (the Mount Meru, Kaph, Olympus, etc., etc.) (See Palgrave, Vol. II., p. 264). Abd Allatif says curious things about the Sabeans and their books. So does Eddin Ahmed Ben Yahya, who wrote 200 years later. While the latter maintains "that each pyramid was consecrated to a star" (a star regent rather), Abd Allatif assures us "that he had read in Sabean books that one pyramid was the tomb of Agathodaemon and the other of Hermes" (Vyse, Vol. II., p. 342). "Agathodaemon was none other than Seth, and, according to some writers, Hermes was his son," adds Mr. Staniland Wake in "The Great Pyramid," p. 57. Thus, while in Samothrace and the oldest

DAY FIVE: ESTHER 1:20-22 At the end of the week, remember that God is still present — but beyond His presence, He is active and working in your life! Trust Him with the details of your day today!   FRIEND TO FRIEND... In Daniel chapter 3, we have a wonderful history about three determined young men and an equally determined king. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were Jews in Babylon, serving under the heathen King Nebuchadnezzar. One day, Nebuchanezzar commissions a statue to be built and worshiped by the inhabitants of the city. He gives an order that everyone is to bow down and worship this statue at the sound of an orchestra, threatening death by fire for those who do not bow. The account of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego does not suggest that there was any conflict in these young men’s minds. In obeying Nebuchadnezzar, they would be disobeying their true King. They would be breaking one of the Ten Commandments: ““You shall not make for yourself a carved image...you shall not bow down to them nor serve them” (Exodus 20:4,5). This was unimaginable. They would refuse to bow, and in doing so, they would trust the Lord in whatever consequences would follow their obedience to His commandments. When Nebuchadnezzar is informed of their refusal to bow, he has the young men brought to him. The king reminds them of his order, and the consequence of not obeying the order: they will be burned alive in a fiery furnace. Even finding themselves faced with dire consequences, these three young men remain determined to serve God and fulfill His purposes. They are prepared with an answer for him: “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king” (Daniel 3:17). Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego acknowledge that they are not bowing as Nebuchadnezzar wants them to, but they do not try to defend themselves. There was no need to get into an argument when their minds were already made up. My favorite part of this response, however, comes next: “But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up” (Daniel 3:18). In other words, “Even if our God decides NOT to rescue us, we still will not serve your idol.” That’s determination! Truly, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had made their minds up long before Nebuchanzzar even had his idol commissioned. The true reason they were able to face such a threat with such tenacity was that they had long ago decided to follow the Lord with their whole heart. The decision of this day was not whether to begin serving the Lord and refusing to bow; these young people already knew what they stood for, and they remained steadfast in their faithfulness to the Lord. Whether the Lord came to their rescue on this day was of little matter to them. They intended to serve the Lord. In order for you to fulfill the call that God has placed on your life, you will have to find yourself DETERMINED and TENACIOUS in following that call. On terrific days, you must be faithful. On terrible days, you must be faithful. When you display this kind of determination, you can be confident that God will show up every day. In Daniel 3:19-25, the history continues. At the close of this conversation with Nebuchadnezzar, things did not seem to go in Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego’s favor. As the king had threatened, these three were in fact thrown in the fire. What Nebuchadnezzar did not yet realize was that they would not go into the fire alone. Who was there in the midst of them? Three were thrown into the fire, but when Nebuchadnezzar looked into the furnace, he told his guards, “I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God” (Daniel 3:25). The Son of God was in the furnace with them! Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were confident

Americans have become passive and lazy. We are like ancient Romans who live to be entertained. And in our lust for entertainment, we are actually retraining the way our brains process information. And the result of our entertainment gluttony is that we are cultivating our appetites in a manner which is making us incapable of appreciating a meaningful sense of family life, community and hospitality. Consider A.C.Nielson Corporation reports that Americans on average watch more than 4 hours of TV each day. This equals 28 hours a week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year. If you maintain this average and live to the age of 65, nine years of your life will have been spent worshipping at the little black box of vacuity.

Americans have become passive and lazy. We are like ancient Romans who live to be entertained. And in our lust for entertainment, we are actually retraining the way our brains process information. And the result of our entertainment gluttony is that we are cultivating our appetites in a manner which is making us incapable of appreciating a meaningful sense of family life, community and hospitality. Consider A.C.Nielson Corporation reports that Americans on average watch more than 4 hours of TV each day. This equals 28 hours a week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year. If you maintain this average and live to the age of 65, nine years of your life will have been spent worshipping at the little black box of vacuity.

FIVE SIGNS OF OIKOS Another pattern we’ve seen is that MCs that really become extended families on mission have several common elements. We call these the Five Signs of oikos. These five markers give us an indication that we are functioning well together as an extended family on mission. If these five things are happening fairly regularly (perhaps weekly or so), in organized or organic ways, we will be on our way to cultivating oikos. 1) EATING TOGETHER Families on mission eat together a lot. There’s something inherently community-fostering about sitting down at a table together, or hanging around a barbecue grill, or just talking with snacks and drinks around. We often add food to the gathering even if it isn’t at a prescribed mealtime. It’s worth the preparation and cleanup required. 2) PLAYING TOGETHER Families on mission laugh together a lot because they are often having fun. It should be fun to belong to the family. All purpose and no play make for a dull MC! Make sure you’re playing as hard as you’re working. 3) GOING ON MISSION TOGETHER Families on mission have a mission, obviously, so they are often engaging in mission together, in organized events as well as informal conversations. All play and no purpose make for a pointless MC! Make sure people know why you exist as a community. 4) PRAYING TOGETHER Families on mission pray and worship together regularly, reading Scripture and listening to God together, because our connection to Jesus and one another is what makes our MC something worth belonging to. 5) SHARING RESOURCES Families on mission share their resources. This doesn’t necessarily mean we have a common purse, but there is some degree of sharing our resources with one another, because this is what families do. This might be people sharing a lawnmower, or pitching in to help someone pay an unexpected medical bill, or simply bringing food to share when we eat together. There is something about economic sharing that fosters a sense of family.

A great festival was at hand, on the occasion of which the people of Metz were in the habit of making a pilgrimage some miles out from the city to a chapel celebrated for its images of the Virgin and the saints. His mind filled with Old Testament denunciations of idolatry, Leclerc, informing nobody of his intention, crept out of Metz the night before the pilgrimage and destroyed the images in the chapel. When, the next day, the worshippers arrived and found the shattered fragments of their images strewn over the chapel floor, they were filled with fury. Leclerc made no secret of what he had done. He exhorted the people to worship God only and declared that Jesus Christ, who is God manifest in the flesh, is alone to be adored.

This is an era in the life of both Church and society which values individual choice over corporate identities; and which is inclined to depreciate the value of symbolic actions in worship, in contrast with the transmission of semantic content – in other words, preferring factual or propositional information to value-added (or ‘encoded’) physical actions such as rituals or sacraments.

However, without its essential attributes the concept of ‘God’ is empty on its own. Like any other concept, it contains some essential features for your mind — at least God is either merely the Creator, or also Regulator of everything in the Universe, including your brain, mind and behavior. On the surface, maybe there is no serious distinction between them, since the majority looks at the surface only, the interchange of their meanings causes little or no discomfort for the intellect. But at the bottom there is clear-cut distinction between them. God as only the creator is the first cause of the Universe, which in turn also affects your brain and mind states through deterministic relationships between everything, visible or invisible for you, in the Universe. But even God itself cannot break that determinism and regulatory. In that context God is passive rather than active super power, he is not omnipotent, he can neither damn nor forgive you. Therefore, there is no need to worship, to perform numerous rituals, sacrifice, struggle for God against God’s enemies and so on and so forth. There is no appearance of any phenomenon, only the deep content related to ’emotional-motivational’ sub-system of mind such as the ultimate purpose of life and after death. The concept of ‘God’ with the meaning of just creator is more philosophical, and in some context more ‘scientific’, than the concept of 'God' with also the meaning of the regulator. In the former meaning you can substitute the concept of ‘energy’, ‘information’, ‘hard determinism’ and so on, in their broader sense, for the concept of ‘God’. But you cannot do it related to the latter meaning, because unlike the former, it is ideological rather than philosophical and ‘scientific’. There is no free thought there, there is no free conceptual analysis there, your contemplation cannot circulate in any direction only on the base of the logical investigation and logical argumentation. it is going to be confined at some point after which would come all-powerful God’s will, expressed in the holy scriptures, and ideological interpretation of that will according to various political-economic interests. (The Denotation and Connotation of the concept of God, Part 3)

Empedocles informs us, modestly enough, that he is a god, who is decorated with wreaths wherever he goes, worshipped by the people, who beg him to bestow prophecy and healing upon them

A writer well acquainted with the sources of information says:[69] “it may be believed that many, from a real need of the heart, sickened by the recriminations and the mutual accusations of heresy from the different pulpits, sought refuge in being edified, quietly, and apart from all sectarianism…. It was a beautiful ideal which floated before the eyes of the purer spirits among the Anabaptists. They looked back with longing gaze to that glorious time when the pilgrim Apostles, going from town to town, founded the first Christian churches, where all came together in a spirit of love as members of one body.” Many hymns were written at this time in which the disciples expressed their worship and their experience

At the risk of trespassing in areas I know little or nothing about, let me simply hint at some ways in which this might work out. If you work in information technology, how is your discipline slanted? Is it slanted toward the will to power or the will to love? Does it exhibit the signs of technology for technology’s sake, of information as a means of the oppression of those who do not have access to it by those who do? Is it developing in the service of true relationships, true stewardship and even true worship, or is it feeding and encouraging a society in which everybody creates their own private, narcissistic, enclosed world? Luther’s definition of sin was homo incurvatus in se, “humans turned in on themselves.” Does your discipline foster or challenge that? You may not be able to change the way the discipline currently works. You may be able to take some steps in that direction, given time and opportunity, but that isn’t necessarily your vocation. Your task is to find the symbolic ways of doing things differently, planting flags in hostile soil, setting up signposts that say there is a different way to be human. And when people are puzzled at what you are doing, find ways—fresh ways—of telling the story of the return of the human race from its exile, and use those stories as your explanation.

The ultimate purpose of the Word of God is not theological information but heart and life transformation. Biblical literacy and theological expertise are not, therefore, the end of the Word but a God-ordained means to an end, and the end is a radically transformed life because the worship at the center of that life has been reclaimed.

Pleasing God is at the heart of worship. Therefore, our worship must be informed at every point by the Word of God as we seek God’s own instructions for worship that is pleasing to Him.

To those of us who pride ourselves on being “informal,” I’d encourage us to consider what story we could possibly be telling without form. Is our story merely about how cool our pastor is and how loud our subwoofers are? Or have we truly developed a biblical theology of worship that imparts the only story that really matters to the next generation?

Our conception of Christ colours our whole life; it informs everything that we touch with its spirit; it makes us what we are. Nothing could be more untrue than the often-repeated statement that we all worship the same God; or that other, that whatever we worship the result is the same. Nothing matters more than having a true knowledge of Christ. We become what our conception of Christ is: God made us in His own likeness, but we have an extraordinary power of changing ourselves into the likeness of the idols we make, of those caricatures of God which we set up on the altars of our egoism and worship. In the degree of the falseness of our conception of God, we restrict and narrow our interests and sympathies; we grow in intolerance and hardness or in a flabbiness which turns to a rot of sweetness like a diabetes of the soul.

The original American dream--the one held by the seventeenth-century Puritan settlers--was religious: to establish liberty as the condition that allowed them to worship and to serve God as dictated by their consciences. In our time, the American dream is not a religious ideal but rather one informed more by positivism than Christianity. For most people, the term means wealth and material stability and the freedom to create the life that one desires. The Puritan ideal was to use freedom to live by virtue, as defined by Christian Scripture; the modern American ideal is to use freedom to achieve well-being, as defined by the sacred individual--that is, a Self that is fully the product of choice and consent. The Myth of Progress teaches that science and technology will empower individuals, unencumbered by limits imposed by religion and tradition, to realize their desires.

[It] strikes me that my morning walks are like Post-it Notes to myself, the kind my mom put on my bathroom mirror when I was a kid. Unlike hers, they convey no information—no went to Star Market, no clean up your room. They just say: look around, go slowly, feel yourself a part of something bigger than yourself. Such a Post-it on my bathroom mirror would make me cringe. But to write and read it by walking just feels practical. Without the walk, I feel as though I’ve forgotten to do something important, something without which the rest of my day will go sideways. At bottom, maybe that’s what prayer is. A kind of note to yourself, with your God looking on, written in your religion’s handwriting, to remind you of whatever you think you need to be reminded of—to remind you how to live a better life. Maybe all the major religions knew that how you started your day would effectively be a prayer anyway, that whatever you do every morning, whatever frame you give to your day, effectively becomes what you worship.

Actually, the public reading of scripture in the course of the church’s worship is not about ‘teaching’; it’s not there to impart information. It is part of the worship and praise of God; it is a way, a central way, a more central way even than the best hymns and worship songs, of praising God for his mighty

Actually, the public reading of scripture in the course of the church’s worship is not about ‘teaching’; it’s not there to impart information. It is part of the worship and praise of God; it is a way, a central way, a more central way even than the best hymns and worship songs, of praising God for his mighty acts. We rehearse the story of what God has done, not primarily to remind ourselves of it (though that happens as it’s done, of course), but so that we can acclaim and celebrate God’s mighty acts. We praise him for creation itself, and within creation

All true worship is a response to the self-revelation of God in Christ and Scripture, and arises from our reflection on who He is and what He has done. . . . The worship of God is evoked, informed, and inspired by the vision of God. . . . The true knowledge of God will always lead us to worship.3

Trazyn had travelled the galaxy for so long he’d forgotten what year he’d started. Collecting. Studying. Ordering the cultures of the cosmos. And one thing he’d learned was that every society thought their mountain was special. That it was more sacred than the mountain worshipped by their neighbouring tribe. That it was the one true axis of the universe. Even when informed that their sacred ridge was merely the random connection of tectonic plates, or their blessed sword a very old but relatively common alien relic – a revelation they universally did not appreciate, he found – they clung to their stories.

TO MY DOG BLANCO My dear dumb friend, low lying here, A willing vassal at my feet, — Glad partner of my home and fare. My shadow in the street, — I look into your great brown eyes, Where love and loyal homage shine, And wonder where the difference lies Between your soul and mine. For all of good that I have found Within myself or human kind Hath royally informed and crowned Your gentle heart and mind. I scan the whole broad earth around For that one heart which, real and true, Bears friendship without end or bound. And find the prize in you. I trust you as I trust the stars; Nor cruel loss, nor scoff, nor pride. Nor beggary, nor dungeon bars. Can move you from my side. As patient under injury As any Christian saint of old; As gentle as a lamb with me, But with your brothers bold. More playful than a frolic boy, More watchful than a sentinel — By day and night your constant joy To guard and please me well. I clasp your head upon my breast — The while you whine and lick my hand — And thus our friendship is confessed. And thus we understand. Ah, Blanco I Did I worship God As truly as you worship me, Or follow where my Master trod, With your humility — Did I sit fondly at His feet. As you, dear Blanco, sit at mine, And watch Him with a love as sweet. My life would grow divine. - Josiah Gilbert Holland

are, what they care about, and where they “belong” has been reduced to decorative magnets that have been stuck all over the backs of their SUVs. These magnetized spheres and shapes will also tell you where they worship and where they vacation, what illnesses they’ve dealt with or would like to see eradicated, who they voted for in the last election and who they plan to vote for in the next. She was careful not to quote Melanie too closely in case her sister, who had never been a major newspaper devotee, ever happened across the column. But as Vivien typed, the words began to flow from her mind and through her fingertips in that wonderful way that she didn’t understand and tried not to question. Slowly, she began to relax, her body unclenching bit by bit as the words formed in her mind, then found their way onto the page. All of the schools their children attend from preschool to college are there like some public scrapbook. There are magnets and bumper stickers that inform you if their child made the honor roll or was once named the student of the month. Bottom line, if they or one of their children has ever done it or even thought about it, they’ve got the magnet to prove it. And every magnet deserves to be displayed on the back of the family chariot. She added a few jabs about what might drive people to reveal so much, then did some cutting and pasting until she had her observations in an order that belied the amount of editing she’d done and, instead, felt like a natural progression. And then she concluded, As it turns out, these clues aren’t even necessary because your entire

All true worship is a response to the self-revelation of God in Christ and Scripture, and arises from our reflection on who He is and what He has done…The worship of God is evoked, informed, and inspired by the vision of God…The true knowledge of God will always lead us to worship.

Every time we worship our minds are informed, our memories refreshed with the judgments of God, we are familiarized with what God says, what he has decided, the ways he is working out our salvation.

In addition to the worship of new Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, it also seems that the early Mahāyāna involved the worship of the new sūtras themselves. Many early sūtras contain passages where the hearer is encouraged to worship the sūtra, using incense, flags, and bells, much as one would a stūpa – and where stūpa worship itself is denigrated, or at least held to be inferior to praise of the sūtra and of the dharmabhāṇaka, the preacher of the sūtra.115 On an organizational level it seems likely that, in origin, the Mahāyāna was an informal coalition of mutually sympathetic sūtra cults, in which groups of followers recited, studied, and worshipped their own sūtra.

We find in Numbers 21 that the people got to another place where they didn’t seem able to move forward, and they grew very thirsty without water. We too will have dry times along the path to our promise. God commanded the people to gather and sing. Verse 17 informs us that they began to sing, “Spring up, O well,” the well began to fill with water so that they could drink and be refreshed. When we stop and praise, we will advance. Corporate worship is necessary for our victories in the days ahead. We need to find our place of corporate worship. Even if we don’t feel like worshiping, we need to worship. God will refresh us; He will give us strength; and we will be able to advance.

Prayer is therefore not a strictly private thing. As much as we can, we should pray with others both formally in gathered worship and informally. Why? If the substance of prayer is to continue a conversation with God, and if the purpose of it is to know God better, then this can happen best in community. C. S. Lewis argues that it takes a community of people to get to know an individual person. Reflecting on his own friendships, he observed that some aspects of one of his friend’s personality were brought out only through interaction with a second friend. That meant if he lost the second friend, he lost the part of his first friend that was otherwise invisible. “By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.”221 If it takes a community to know an ordinary human being, how much more necessary would it be to get to know Jesus alongside others? By praying with friends, you will be able to hear and see facets of Jesus that you have not yet perceived. That is why, Lewis thinks, that the angels in Isaiah 6 are crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy” to one another. Each angel is communicating to all the rest the part of the glory it sees. Knowing the Lord is communal and cumulative, we must pray and praise together. That way “the more we share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.

The worship to which we are called in our renewed state is far too important to be left to personal preferences, whims, or marketing strategies. Pleasing God is at the heart of worship. Therefore, our worship must be informed at every point by the Word of God as we seek God’s own instructions for worship that is pleasing to Him.

Their information for visitors makes no pretence that the gospels are accurate accounts of Christ’s life and teaching. Cambridge Anglicans stress that unknown hands wrote them long after Christ’s death. They offer worshippers a celebration of tradition, symbolic truths and parables, not literal truths. Everywhere liberal Christians, Jews and Muslims follow the same example. They worship in a narrow religious sphere, which is cautious and a touch vapid, and do not try to force the rest of society to accept their views. For them there is a secular world informed by science, and there is their world of faith.

Prayer is therefore not a strictly private thing. As much as we can, we should pray with others both formally in gathered worship and informally. Why? If the substance of prayer is to continue a conversation with God, and if the purpose of it is to know God better, then this can happen best in community. C. S. Lewis argues that it takes a community of people to get to know an individual person. Reflecting on his own friendships, he observed that some aspects of one of his friend’s personality were brought out only through interaction with a second friend. That meant if he lost the second friend, he lost the part of his first friend that was otherwise invisible. “By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets.”221 If it takes a community to know an ordinary human being, how much more necessary would it be to get to know Jesus alongside others? By praying with friends, you will be able to hear and see facets of Jesus that you have not yet perceived.

Two recent books that make this case are by James K. A. Smith: Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009); and Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013). Smith builds on Augustine’s idea that what makes us what we are is the order of our loves, and therefore what changes us is changing not what we think but what we love. Smith rightly critiques an approach to ministry that is too rationalistic and focused on information transfer and the transmission of right doctrine and beliefs. His response is that we change not by changing what we think as much as by changing what we worship—what we love and fill our imaginations with. He gives much more attention, however, to the liturgy and the shape of worship services, and little to preaching. I believe preaching can carry much of the weight of the ministry task of reshaping the heart. True to Smith’s critique, however, there is a relative dearth of evangelical books on preaching to the heart, in comparison with how to exegete and explain a biblical text. Some exceptions are Sinclair Ferguson, “Preaching to the Heart,” in Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Soli Deo Gloria, 2002), pp. 190–217; Samuel T. Logan, “The Phenomenology of Preaching,” in The Preacher and Preaching (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1986), pp. 129–60; and Josh Moody and Robin Weekes, Burning Hearts: Preaching to the Affections (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2014). I would add that “preaching to the heart” not only is quite biblical but also is an important way to adapt to our secular age, in which inherited religion will be on the decline. People will be coming to church not because they ought to, because it is an entailment of being part of a social body or community, but only if they choose with their hearts to do so.

This system of coercion, ruthless enough under Lenin and Trotsky, became absolute under Joseph Stalin, whose paranoid fears, suspicions, and murderous malevolence were in part signs that the new megamachine still lacked an essential feature that the old one possessed: an awe-inducing religion and a ritual of divine worship that would gain by mass suggestion a more complete submission and more abject obedience than terror alone can achieve. As with Hitler later, Stalin's methodical madness resulted in the deliberate slaughter on a wholesale scale not only of peasants, but of the informed groups and classes, the trained technicians and creative minds, upon whom such a complex fabric as a megamachine, even in its primitive state, depends for its existence.

If we have no doctrine, we have no Christianity. If we have scanty doctrine, we have scanty Christianity. If we have profoundly informed convictions, we will have a solid and substantial Christianity. If we do not think right thoughts about God, we will not worship him as he desires and deserves to be worshiped, and we will not experience the life intended for us. If we misunderstand Christian doctrine, it will result in a distortion or dwarfing of our religious life in some measure. The deeper and clearer our understanding of Christian truth, the greater will be its sanctifying effect on us. “The

The Binding of Isaac and the Binding of You and Me With Rosh Hashanah coming in a few weeks, it is a good time to think about some of its important lessons. The High Holy Days are a time to evaluate our relationship with important people in our lives. We ask their forgiveness, they ask ours, and if there is regret for past faults and insensitive acts (Tradition calls them “sins”), we lend forgiveness to others, and they to us. Rosh Hashanah is also a time to think about our relation with our Tradition, with Judaism. It is the Jewish New Year, and a time to reexamine where we stand with regard to the faith/culture/civilization we call Judaism. Those hearing these words have already taken significant steps toward solidifying their Jewish connections by joining a synagogue, coming to religious worship, and doing many other Jewish things in our lives. Take a few moments—even a few hours—to think about and discuss your Jewish values and priorities with your loved ones and intellectual sparring partners. How can you deepen and strengthen your Jewish ties and commitments in the coming year? Perhaps that is why we are bidden to hear the sound of the Shofar each morning for thirty days during the month of Elul, before Rosh Hashanah, as well as on the New Year itself. The Talmud, in tractate “Rosh Hashanah” (16a), tells us: “Rabbi Abahu said: Why do we use the horn of a ram on Rosh Hashanah? Because the Blessed Holy One is saying to us: If you blow a horn from a ram before Me on Rosh Hashanah, I will be reminded of the act of ultimate faith performed by Avraham when he was ready to carry out my demand, even though a ram was eventually sacrificed in place of Yitzhak. The merit of Avraham will reflect merit on you, his descendants. In fact, when you blow the Shofar, and I remember the Binding (Hebrew: Akedah) of Yitzhak I will attribute to you the merit of having bound (Hebrew: akad-tem) yourselves to me. As we begin to blow the Shofar each morning, from the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, let’s begin to think about how we bind ourselves to God. About our Jewish boundaries, the ties that bind us to our Jewish past. Let’s think of how our ritual lives can be enriched and enhanced with more song, custom, prayer and ceremony. Let’s think of how we can give ourselves to more Jewish causes (Israel, Jewish education, the synagogue), and how being Jewish can help bind and tie us to the needs of humanity (the environment, the needs of our community, the eradication of poverty and injustice). Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins

argue that the physical world matters no less today, but we are in denial about its power and relevance. We seek to control it, to hold it steady, and to marginalize it ideologically by worshipping Silicon Valley and elevating the value and power of information. We

Even though every discernment is unique, your search for data should always involve collecting four kinds of information: Intrapersonal information (from within your unique self). Ask yourself: What are my personality and work preferences? Time, energy, and health? Economic resources? Do I notice that I am having any particular physical responses as I think about the situation? What do I deeply desire? Interpersonal information (through face-to-face relationships). Ask yourself: Who are the people close to me who will be affected by my choice? How will this proposed option be likely to affect my interpersonal relationships, especially with those close to me or with whom I have prior commitments, especially my family? What supporting relationships exist for me personally? Structural information (from pondering those organizations, personal and impersonal, that exist regardless of the individual players). Ask yourself: What structures are in play here? What are their goals, their reasons for existing? What are their dynamics? What would be my role and responsibility in these systems if I were to make the decision I am pondering? How is power exercised? Who or what is marginalized in these structures, and what would they say if they could talk with me? Information from the natural world (from the environment in which we are embedded). Ask yourself: What is the environment—the physical context, both human and natural—like? How does the human-made environment exist within or against the natural world? Is this an environment that invites or repels me? What kind of impact will my actions have on the environment? After you’ve gathered your data, the next step is to interpret it, and it’s helpful to use the same four categories as interpretive lenses: Intrapersonal (your inner response). Ask yourself: Does the data give me energy? excitement? courage? confidence? tranquillity? satisfaction? Or are my reactions to it more like discouragement, anxiety, insecurity, agitation, dissatisfaction? Or, as is often the case, is my response a mixture of the two? Interpersonal (the reactions between you and those persons close to you or who would be affected by your decision). Ask yourself: How do I feel about the possible effects of my proposed decision on those close to me? What do these people say about my proposed option? How do others who are more objective about the choice facing me interpret the information that I have received; do expert interpreters agree or disagree regarding the information I have uncovered? Structural (what an analysis of the institutions, systems, and structures in which you live and work—or into which you would be moving—suggests about the matter at hand). Ask yourself: How will the various systems in my life have to be readjusted if I move in this direction: family, work, school, community involvement, relationship to worshiping community, and so on? What values are these systems preserving, and are these values worth it to me? In what way are the systems likely to resist my proposed change? What price could I pay? How does this feel to me? 4. Natural world (from the largest perspective, that of the grand scheme of things). Ask yourself: Does being in nature tell me anything about my proposed decision? Will it, or how will it, affect the environment? If I could stand on top of the world and look down, how would this decision appear?

The following approaches are likely to fall flat, with less than 10 percent of the churchless reporting they might be attracted by such efforts: information about a church provided through the mail advertising for a church on TV, in a newspaper, or on the radio an unsolicited phone call from someone representing a church in the community to describe the church and offer an invitation to attend advertising for the church on a local billboard a website that describes the church and invites people to attend a sermon from the pastor on CD or podcast emphasizing that the church has multiple locations in the community providing entry to a “video church”—a ministry that has a real-time video feed of live teaching from the main location, with live music and leadership at the remote location a contemporary seeker service showing a Hollywood-quality movie at the church that deals with issues like marriage, faith, or parenting providing a book club that discusses books about faith and life offering an open-mic discussion group or online chat that focuses on questions related to faith and spirituality a celebrity guest speaker appearing at a church’s worship services

summaries of Christian teaching, such as the Apostles’ Creed and the Heidelberg Catechism, and has informed the shape of historic Christian worship.

Living for Jesus was the ultimate "thrill," Templeton informed his audiences. He told young men and women that Christ was "the most exciting man who's ever lived ... the most extraordinary man who's ever lived,"63 and not just a man, but God Himself.

Thanksgiving has become the first day of what in now thought of as the “Holy or Holiday Season.” The “holidays” as they are generally known, are an annually recurring period of time from late November to early January. These days are also recognized by many other countries as well, with the “Christmas Tree” and all the trimmings, generally being considered secular. This period of time incorporates the shopping days, which comprises a peak season for the retail market. Regardless of religious affiliation, children and adults alike enjoy the many window displays and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies. To a great extent it really doesn’t matter that there are still some people believing that the commercialism of these holidays is blasphemy and that they should be reserved strictly for worship. There are virtually, no valid reasons why we can’t all enjoy these days in our own way. Children of all faiths and ages should be able to understand the true meaning and still be able to enjoy the music, surprises and magic of the season… This year we are again faced with a severely, politically divided country; with a great number of people fearing for their future. It might be too much to hope for, that politicians will be able to put aside their differences. Unfortunately many of them still believe that their hypocritical concept of Christianity is greater than that of their opposition. Regardless, they should however understand that we are all equal in the eyes of God as well as the law, and that America was built by a diverse people. Let us not slip back into a newer form of “Small Minded Bigotry,” but rather forge ahead in a unified way making our country stronger. The time has come to energize our nation by rebuilding our bridges and highways. Rebuilding our airports, investing in high-speed trains, and making education affordable is the way to a more productive future. If we head down this ambitious path of development, we will create jobs and put more people to work. It will help the middle class to regain their footing and it will strengthen our slowly growing economy. When our citizens earn more, the economy will lift us all out of the recession that so many.

If a Christian were to accost him and endeavor to put the fear of God into him, and if our visitor, being from Mars, already knew that of the world's population, only about 27 per cent are Christians, and the other 73 per cent are Non-Christians, is it logical to suppose that he would ever be convinced that an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent, Supreme Being would select only one quarter of his children whom he had created for redemption, with the infallible knowledge that nearly three-quarters of them would be confined to Hell for not believing what He could have made them believe if He were truly omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent? Would he not rather reply that on his planet such a "Father" who would select some of his children for rewards, and maliciously torture his other children, would not be designated as a God but a Devil? Were the Martian to be further informed that each one of God's children was represented in actual figures by hundreds of millions and that these have been living on the planet Earth for hundreds of thousands of years, and were the visitor to contemplate the vast incomprehensible number of souls that have been confined to Hell by such a father, might he not cut his visit short? He would be apt to repeat with James Mill, "Think of a being who would make a Hell, who would create the human race with the infallible foreknowledge and therefore with the intention that the great majority of them should be consigned to horrible and everlasting torment." I believe that our guest would assert that if such a Being actually existed and demanded worship, he would certainly have revealed his true belief to the first man Adam, and therefore saved his children an inestimable amount of suffering.

unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party's sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party's control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way she put it was: "When you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything. They can't bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?" That was very true, he thought. There was a direct intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account. They had played a similar trick with the instinct of parenthood. The family could not actually be abolished, and, indeed, people were encouraged to be fond of their children, in almost the old-fashioned way. The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police. It was a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately. (2.3.25-27) Julia teaches Winston about her musings on the dangerous effects of sex on loyalty to the Party: The Party not only seeks to sever private loyalties in encouraging chastity, but also to control its constituents’ use of time by advocating the abolition of sex at all.

Informality—prepared and practiced informality, not ramshackle casualness—is a keynote of contemporary worship, and worship blossoms when worship space matches worship style.

The animal guide is common to many cities. In Bern (Alemannic Switzerland) a she-bear (Bärin) guided the city’s founder, Berthold V, Duke of Zähringen, to a site where the goddess Artio was worshipped (as an inscription on an ancient bronze statue found there informs us). As we have seen, spirits often take on the appearance of an animal to guide humans to a site.

Most things in the world aren’t dangerous in their own right. It’s when people take those things, use them to further their own agenda, warp them to serve themselves rather than others, that turns something good, decent, or neutral into a devastating force. The entire world was a ticking time bomb. The digital world wasn’t all bad. It was neutral, really. But it also fueled polarization, discontent, and angst. It made things accessible that you used to have to find in dusty tomes, or had to research in libraries or at universities. You don’t need to travel the world to consult an expert any more. A bastardized version of almost any expertise was posted online for all the world to use and abuse. What should have united people, giving us access to information to understand other people, cultures, and worldviews, has instead become bent by the human pathology— the disease of narcissism— to do the opposite. We used the digital sphere to close our minds to anything that challenged our assumptions. People found it easier to congregate among the like- minded. It’s reached a point of absurdity. Rather than consider views that challenge one’s perspective of the world, people search out those who will ratify and confirm their biases. As such, rather than bringing people together, or debating their ideas in the public square, people on either extreme of any situation only grow more polarized, stretching the civilized world like a criminal on a medieval rack. All because everyone’s too damn blind to consider their own error, how they might be wrong, or to critically reconsider their own insecurities and fears. Understanding the other has never been more possible due to the accessibility of information. Anyone who genuinely wants to understand alternate lifestyles or views can do so quite easily— but no one wants to. Because when our idols fail, when our false- gods betray us, it leaves us grasping at straws. Even those like my father, who use religion to serve their own insecurities, and reforge their deity into an idol in their own image— worship at the altar of the unholy trinity of me, myself, and I. That’s always been the state of the world, in truth. Whatever we fear, love, or trust the most. That’s our god. And most people trust “number one” above all else, they prioritize themself over all others, and since they’ve become gods unto themselves, anyone who disagrees with them is no longer viewed as a dignified person with a right to their own opinions and choices. If their opinion contradicted and violated my divine me, then anyone who disagrees with me is by definition a heretic. And the world has only ever had one way of dealing with those they deem heretics. One thing I’ve learned more than anything else over the last century and a half of my existence is that being wrong isn’t a bad thing. We can’t grow at all if we can’t admit our error. We will never advance if we don’t grant ourselves permission to be wrong— if we aren’t thankful for being disproven, that we might evolve, adapt, and grow in our wisdom. That’s what’s crazy about the world. It’s spinning out of control, ready to tear itself apart. All it would take is a simple recognition that it’s okay to be wrong, that it’s a necessary part of life, and a realization that we can all learn something from anyone and everyone else. But we’ve all become zealots in the religion of self. We’re all staunch defenders of our personal dogma. The problem is that we all nod along to those insights— so long as they convict everyone else. While the god of “self” is weak, an idol no more trustworthy than gods of wood or stone, it doesn’t die easily. Who was I to think I could save the world ever? All I’d ever done was delay the inevitable. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t keep trying… I wouldn’t keep fighting. Because when we stop fighting for others we end up stuck in that damned religion of me. And I was never very religious. Why change now?

Harris had taken a phone call from a Dutch journalist friend who told him that Bergkamp was unhappy at Inter Milan and wanted to try his luck in England. As Bergkamp had always been a Spurs fan because of his boyhood hero worship of Glenn Hoddle, he wanted to know if Spurs would be interested. Informed of Bergkamp’s availability, Alan Sugar passed on the enquiry to Francis. Seeing Bergkamp as more of a midfield playmaker than the out-and-out striker he was looking for, Francis turned him down.

Your family is important to you, so if you want to tell them about us, go ahead. But if we are going to inform your dad that we’re dating, I’d rather it be over a nice, wholesome dinner, not when I’m leaving your place first thing in the morning because I’ve spent the night worshipping at the altar of your glorious, beautiful, intoxicating pussy.” “Oh my,” Mercy tittered, her cheeks heating. “That came out more vulgar than I had intended.” Mercy did not find it vulgar.

Getting his job as president of Morgan Stanley had been a struggle, and Mack was there to stay. Years earlier, he had ousted former president Robert Greenhill in a palace coup while Greenhill was on the ski slopes entertaining clients. Greenhill had not been a pushover; his tightly knit group of loyalists had earned the nickname Branch Davidians. Nevertheless, after a bitter contest, Mack had won, and Greenhill’s group, like the Waco, Texas, cult, was out. Mack was a charismatic leader, charming as well as intimidating. One Morgan Stanley manager described him as “the best salesman I’ve ever seen.” He scheduled informal lunches with all of the lowest-level employees at Morgan Stanley, in groups. His office had two glass canisters filled with candies and a gumball machine, to encourage colleagues to stop by and chat. Mack was worshipped for his patriotic addresses to the firm as well as his inspiring locker-room pep talks. Even the most hard-hearted of Morgan Stanley’s managers were moved by Mack’s most stirring speeches. He had given many of them goosebumps, and even made a few cry. Mack seemed adept enough to resolve just about any conflict. When the trustees of socialite Doris Duke’s $1.2 billion estate needed someone to step in and settle the brawl over her estate, including accusations of murder, whom did they ask? John Mack.

It was a strange passage. Most of it seemed more a dream than reality. Such things as the tremendous gait we built up—far more than light speed— and the great distances we traveled were the realities, but I barely noticed them. More real was the unreality of the thin, lovely forms of the Nor maids moving about their mighty princess, the soft fires of their floating hair like seedling flames from the vast fire of Vanue’s god-life crowned by its floating cloud of yellow; our own eyes burning like the spotted wings of moths against the screen of her will; the sad faces of our own maids beside us, gazing first at the fierce white flame of her body and then at our own bemused selves; the vaulting of the vast ship walls about us; the unfamiliar instruments blinking and whirring. It was a very real dream to me—a dream I knew I would never stop dreaming. Strange passage. . . Ever the whisper of the feet of the Nor maids on some swift errand; the soft rumble of the voice of their living Goddess and the answering bright song of her worshipping maidens. Yes, it was a strange passage, and every mile of it brought home a fascinating realization. I had embarked on the most amazing voyage of my whole life. The very thought of what now certainly lay before me was enough to stun my mind into an apathy of thinking that was hard to overcome; yet my mind was so full of excitement that it did strive to think, to add to the realization of what the future would hold. A new life was at hand; opening to wonders that staggered me to think of them—and awed me into all-engulfing reverence. To live to become what this Nor princess had become; to have the love of people as she had the love of these Nor maids—that is the real dream. I knew that I must gain the key to the door of a way of living that would lead to the full value of the Nortan life. So it was, sitting in the thrall of that too-strong beauty of woman-life, we noted so little. How much time passed? I will never know. It was as if all body functions ceased, as though food and drink were not needed—as long as we were in the presence of Vanue of Nor. But I did know that she was in continual communication with the planet Nor over the space telescreens. Face after face appeared before her, murmured briefly and intensely, and vanished; only to be replaced by others. I knew vaguely that she was calling for a conference on the strength of our information; and sensed also that we would attend that conference at her side. The thought dawned on me slowly. Here was an honor few ro ever attain in the first century of their growth. By old Mother Mu! To see those Elders of Nor, the whole lot of them, male and female, all at once. . . ! That would be more than one could well stand. An overpowering, devastating ecstasy. . . . Well, it would be an interesting death.

Consider the Magi. Arabian astrologers, for years they had bound themselves to study what they half-understood. They studied the planets and stars, not for mere facts and figures about the planets, but because they pursued deeper meaning. They were not "collecting data," building a bank of comprehensive information. They attended to the stars, we may surmise, in a loving and wondering search for wisdom: wisdom of the sort that comes to expression in a harrowing pilgrimage together beyond Arabia, across trackless wastes, across tense racial and political boundaries, into the unknown to find a foreign king to whom they deemed a certain star to belong, a king worth worshipping with their best gifts--treasures themselves fraught with portent.

In the North there are no words for things like "shopping malls," "liberty," or even "love," at least as the rest of the world knows it. The only true "love" we can express is worship for the Kims, a dynasty of dictators who have ruled North Korea for three generations. The regime blocks all outside information, all videos and movies, and jams radio signals. There is no World Wide Web and no Wikipedia. The only books are filled with propaganda telling us that we live in the greatest country in the world, even though at least half of North Koreans live in extreme poverty and many are chronically malnourished.

We read Revelation as words from a prophet-pastor (and ultimately from God), in order to be formed and transformed, not merely informed

I imagine, sometimes, what will happen if Kodiak and I die from a freak storm, if these feral children will grow up worshipping shreds of polycarb and a half-broken violin, digging up a sunken ship and studying its artifacts for information about the old gods who abandoned them to figure out the world's meaning for themselves.

It should be telling that even the most despotic governments that go out of their way to exploit their citizens often prioritise the formal schooling system and make it mandatory. The only way most of these governments have retained power other than brutal force was through indoctrinating its citizenry, from as young as possible with ideas meant to bolster the worship of the ruling party.

In general, the chakra system branched into two sections: the Vedic and the Tantric (now alive within Ayurvedic medicine and Tantric yoga, for example). The term tantra comes from two words: tanoti, or to expand; and trayati, or to liberate. Tantra therefore means “to extend knowledge that liberates.” Tantra is a life practice based on teachings about the chakras, kundalini, hatha yoga, astronomy, astrology, and the worship of many Hindu gods and goddesses. Tantric yoga originates in pre-Aryan India, around 3000 to 2500 BC. Many other varieties of Tantric yoga or spirituality have arisen from it, including Tantric Buddhism. Each system derived from Tantric yoga has a unique view on the chakras and their related gods, cosmology, and symbols. The history of chakras, as complex as it sounds so far, is even more complicated. The chakra system is intertwined with—and maybe even created by—several different cultures. Although usually associated with India, Tantric yoga was also practiced by the Dravidians, who originated from Ethiopia, as is revealed in the many similarities between predynastic Egyptian and African practices and ancient Indian Tantric beliefs.6 For example, numerous Hindu deities are rooted in “India’s black civilizations, which is why they are often depicted as black.”7 Some historians point out that early Egyptians were greatly affected by African beliefs,8 and in turn influenced Greek, Jewish, and, later, Islamic and Christian thought, in addition to the Indian Hindu.9 Other cultures also exchanged chakra ideas. Many practices of the early Essenes, a religio-spiritual community dwelling in Palestine in the second century BC through the second century AD, mirrored those of early India.10 The Sufis—Islamic mystics—also employed a system of energy centers, although it involved four centers.11 The Sufis also borrowed the kundalini process from Tantric yoga, as did certain Asian Indian and American Indian groups.12 As we shall see, the Maya Indians of Mexico, the Inca Indians of Peru, and the Cherokee Indians of North America each have their own chakra method. The Maya believe that they actually taught the Hindu the chakra system. The chakra system was brought to the West in yet another roundabout way. It was first thoroughly outlined in the text Sat-Chakra-Nirupana, written by an Indian yogi in the sixteenth century. Arthur Avalon then delivered chakra knowledge to Western culture in his book The Serpent Power, first published in 1919. Avalon drew heavily upon the Sat-Chakra-Nirupana as well as another text, Pakaka-Pancaka. His presentation was preceded by Theosophic Practica, a book written in 1696 by Johann Georg Gichtel, a student of Jakob Bohme, who refers to inner force centers that align with Eastern chakra doctrines.13 Today, many esoteric professionals rely on Anodea Judith's interpretation of Avalon’s work, to which she has added additional information about the psychological aspects of the chakras.