Man the Sub-Creator

Man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

—from J.R.R. Tolkien, Mythopoeia, The Tolkien Reader p74, quoted in Bruner and Ware, Finding God in the Lord of the Rings, p111.

Malcolm Muggeridge

Let us then as Christians rejoice that we see around us on every hand the decay of the institutions and the instruments of power, see intimations of empires falling to pieces, money in total disarray, dictators and parliamentarians alike nonplussed by the confusion and conflicts which encompass them. For it is precisely when every earthly hope has been explored and found wanting, when every possibility of help from earthly sources has been sought and is not forthcoming, when every recourse this world offers, moral as well as material, has been explored to no effect, when in the shivering cold the last faggot has been thrown on the fire and in the gathering darkness every glimmer of light has finally flickered out, it's then that Christ's hand reaches out sure and firm. Then Christ's words bring their inexpressible comfort, then his light shines brightest, abolishing the darkness forever. So, finding in everything only deception and nothingness, the soul is constrained to have recourse to God Himself and to rest content with Him.

—Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom ©1980, p56, quoted in Bruner and Ware, Finding God in the Lord of the Rings, p75.

Found in an abandoned house in NO, LA 3/5/09.

4/19/03
"Praise the Lord"

Hi Baby Girl

Well first of all I give thank's to the Father God and his Son Jesus our Lord and saviour.

Kisha I prayed that I will here from you, but the year's passed and I been asking my Brother's and sister to find where you are living and get your address for me but nothing happen. So I just plead the blood of Jesus over you and the situation. I ask to be move to another prison and they transfer me to Dequincy, La. Well to cut, make a short story here I'am my baby girl your daddy or father. Also Herbert said Hello.

Kisha it's pretty hard to express not being there with you as a father to his children. or child. Yes you are me only child and I love you with all my heart. I just ask you for forgiveness once again. I know you do, I remember the letter you wrote me about (5) Five of (6) six year's ago and it realy touch my soul and I still have it in my heart. Whereas, them pictures I send to you. I was very, very disappoint of you not sending me a picture or two of you. Baby girl that will lift me up sweet-heart _I need a picture_ of you once and a while and I put the imagination of you in my mind.

Kisha I been incarcerated (13) year's and it's; hurts me for not being there to help you. I am just reaping what I sowes as the Bible says's the life style that I was in, but truely God bless me in the incarceration. I am in Christ a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 Corinthians 5:17 Read it. Also I am asking you to go to the Lord house sometime OK. Now Kisha I am in here for Arm Robbery I always was trying to make money fast. You was (8) year's old going on (9) year's old when I came to jail, you are twenty (2) now and a woman, but alway be my baby girl Kisha. there is many thing's I have to share with you. I will surprize you when I come home. Now I still have a few year's but by the Grace of God. Well I am about to receive a blessing very soon my lawyer inform me and I will tell you more about it OK. so keep in touch with me baby girl I love you. _Send me a picture. I am serious a picture from you._

Now I am getting sleep and Herbert and me is in the same Dorm OK. Tell you mother Hello and I still love her OK (smile) because you are our daughter our beautiful daughter. Tell Ms Ann + James + everyone Hi.

Love you
Daddy

On Back

Kisha I been transfer the next Day I wrote this letter. I'am closer Home now, I'am in DCI that in Jackson, La. Next to Baton Rouge. Dequincy were I was it - was so, so for 30 mile from Texas.

So Now I'am about 1½ Hour from New Orleans.

Love you
Baby Girl.

May God Bless.

Write soon.

The Pearl of Orr's Island

Then the narrow straits that look so full of rocks and quicksands, widen into a broad, clear passage, and one after another, rosy with a celestial dawn, and ringing silver bells of gladness, the isles of the blessed lift themselves up on the horizon, and the soul is flooded with an atmosphere of light and joy. As the burden of Christian fell off at the cross and was lost in the sepulchre, so in these hours of celestial vision the whole weight of life's anguish is lifted, and passes away like a dream; and the soul, seeing the boundless ocean of Divine love, wherein all human hopes and joys and sorrows lie so tenderly upholden, comes and casts the one little drop of its personal will and personal existence with gladness into the Fatherly depth.

—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Pearl of Orr's Island, p382.

Psalm 127:2

It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for He gives to His beloved sleep.

—Psalm 127:2 ESV

The Pearl of Orr's Island

If you break the cup out of which a soul has been used to take the wine of the gospel, you often spill the very wine itself. After all, these forms are but shadows of which the substance is Christ.

—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Pearl of Orr's Island, p284.

The Pioneers

So prodigious was the number of the birds [passenger pigeons] that the scattering fire of the guns, with the hurling of missiles and the cries of the boys, had no other effect than to break off small flocks from the immense masses that continued to dart along the valley, as if the whole of the feathered tribe were pouring through that one pass. None pretended to collect the game, which lay scattered over the fields in such profusion as to cover the very ground with fluttering victims....

"This comes of settling a country!" he [Leather-Stocking] said. "Here have I known the pigeon to fly for forty long years, and, till you made your clearings, there was nobody to skeart or to hurt them, I loved to see them come into the woods, for they were company to a body, hurting nothing — being, as it was, as harmless as a garter-snake. But now it gives me sore thoughts when I hear the frighty things whizzing through the air, for I know it's only a motion to bring out all the brats of the village. Well, the Lord won't see the waste of his creatures for nothing, and right will be done to the pigeons, as well as others, by and by."

—James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers ©1823, ch22.

Darkness of waters

Then the earth shook and quaked;
And the foundations of the mountains were trembling
And were shaken, because he was angry.
Smoke went up out of his nostrils,
And fire from his mouth devoured;
Coals were kindled by it.
He bowed the heavens also, and came down
With thick darkness under his feet.
He rode upon a cherub and flew;
And he sped upon the wings of the wind.
He made darkness his hiding place, his canopy around him,
Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.

—Psalm 18:7-11 NASB

Father Brown on Miracles

"I'm exactly in the position of the man who said, 'I can believe the impossible, but not the improbable.' ... It really is more natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don't understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand."

—Father Brown, in G. K. Chesterton, The Curse of the Golden Cross, The Complete Father Brown ch29, quoting Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying, which says "Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable."

Father Brown on Aviation

I've flown a good deal there myself, of course, and I know most of the fellows about here who flew in the war; but there are a whole lot of people taking to it out there now whom I never heard of in my life. I suppose it will be like motoring soon, and every man in the States will have [an aeroplane].

—G. K. Chesterton, The Arrow of Heaven, The Complete Father Brown ch26, 1926.