That Perfect Day in May

Heaven shall be that perfect day in May
When the leaves have newly unfolded
And they impress upon you a sense
That the whole world has changed in one instant.
The roses shall be in full bloom
And scent the forest with subtle perfume
Not overbearing, but natural.
The black snake shall slither upon the path
And it shall have a joyful jubilance
And a tiny little life imbued within it
And feed upon the dust;
No one shall be frightened by him.
The ivy shall not be poisonous
And shall give forth its hips
In scrumptious berries, 
Twelve kinds, to the ever changing
Seasons of Heavenly flora.

Of Symbol and Allegory

So, it may come to a surprise that Tolkien hated Allegory. And one may consider his Lord of the Rings is an Allegory, but it is not.

This gets to the subject of today's essay, of what is the significant difference between Symbol and Allegory? I will try to explain as best I can the difference, not in Tolkien's view, but in my own.

To me, Symbol is Symbol. It is not concrete, but rather abstract. It doesn't point to something in the literal world, where we can say, "This means this," but rather it strikes at an archetype and a form. A good example is that Tolkien's Orc Army is not literally the Raping Huns--though that's what he fought in World War I--but rather, a symbol, and aesthetic representation of evil. I almost said allegory--as I don't differentiate between the two, though maybe I ought.

But, should I cut between them, and read The Lord of the Rings, Sauron is not an allegorical representation of Hitler. Neither is the Ring an allegorical representation of power. Rather, Sauron is a symbol for Power-lust, and the ring a symbol of the instrument which coerces entire nations to go to war and destroy.

As, the Lord of the Rings the central conflict is Green versus Black. It is Lush versus Waste. It is Nature versus Industrialism. But even then... it becomes allegorical when it represents industrialism. Rather, the form nature ought to take, to shape our technologies around conforming them to be one with nature, that is what fights against the coercive powers of lust and greed and hate. 

No allegory. Tolkien's Orcs do not represent Asian or Black foes, coming across and destroying the Western World. Quite the opposite, it represents oppression coming across the valleys, making No Man's Land--which Tolkien witnessed first hand and scarred him deeply--and taking the might of industry, and stripping away entire landscapes for minerals, and destroying the Earth through combat.

Tolkien's work is a metaphor, but not an Allegory. Tolkien's themes are symbols, but not Allegorical representations of things in the world, but rather universal truths that reach across all time and space. It is not "Spice" in Dune, that we know it means oil. Rather, it is self contained within its own universe, and within its own tautological makeup, where it perfectly fits in the world, without reaching into this one. It is separate, but still, evil is understood to be evil, and good good. And in this separate existence, in the Lord of the Rings, we see human behavior, we see parallels to our own world, but not outright allegories. Symbols, but not Allegories.

A symbol is more rooted in the form, while an allegory is more rooted in the existential. A symbol exists in the imagination, an allegory exists in the real world. A symbol has no racial, cultural or ethnic specified, but transcends it, while the Allegory pokes at a thing which we can all say, "This is what it represents."

Nothing in Tolkien's world represents anything. It rather is what it is, and symbolizes the real power structures and struggles in the real world. Independent of the things in our world, but rather exist in his world unattached and unrelated. As they mimeses, but they do not mimic.

The Vain War

Armies railed against
Each other for forty
Years. Their ships
Beaching upon shores
Their planes bombing cities
There men women and children
Laying dead in valleys.
Waves upon waves collided
Into each other, numbering casualties
In the billions.

The only thing that stopped it
Was that both countries had nothing
Left... both economies in shambles
Their natural resources expelled;
The Oil and Natural Gas wells dried,
The fish depleted,
The farmland all made marginal,
The wild game destroyed,
The shelters all broken,
The walls all torn down,
Their silicon no more,
Their gold all spent...

There was no winner.
There was no loser.
It was just an awful draw;
And who suffered?
Was it not everyone
Save those who perished in the waves?

I Worship a God Who

I worship a God who drowns the world because it’s painting cave walls with paints made from human blood, and pottery, and keeps dead relative’s corpses with them as decoration, and does who knows what else.

I also worship a God who tells the Israelites to destroy nations that cannibalize their own children, and have orgies just so they can cannibalize their own children, to practice gross satanic rituals.

Mrs. Elena

Do you hear the subtlety of her breath?
The terse, spondee sentences? 
Declarative, and so direct?
Do you hear how she makes
Me like Thomas Chatterton
And with lies, demolishes an entire career?
The Special Education Teacher
Meets the Poet, the Essayist and Novelist
And she in one utterance undoes it all?

Yet. I still write.

For if I wrote by her rules,
I'd have little joy.

On My Sin and Theology

I'm like a hybrid Protestant and Catholic. I get my Old Testament from Baptists, my New Testament from Lutherans, and my Creativity and Aesthetics from Catholics. My aunt was a Catholic, and she taught me the value of beauty (but so did my school, when they brought in paintings to look at). I [...] don't answer to a church authority. I'm kind of like a monk, that I detail a lot of interesting proof the Bible is true. I don't fit well into systems. I'm not a Rogue Priest, as my authority comes from Christ. But, I'm a friend to Catholics and Protestants, and would like the religion to be strong into the future, which I have a feeling if it takes certain directions that's not going to happen. I'm afraid the great falling away will be in my lifetime, and I'm called to preach against sin. Like Christ called Herod a fox, like you said in another sermon, we have to hold our governments accountable for the evil they do. But, we cannot accept LGBTQ as a church. We just cannot. We also have to understand Jesus wasn't necessarily someone who was fascinated with high ritual, or doing everything according to the book. And Christ liked to use insignificant losers like me. Paul was a murderer, so was Moses, David committed three unpardonable sins in the world's eyes, rape, adultery and murder. I mean, the whole world can be against me, but I know God is for me. I didn't do anything like that. But, in the world's eyes I did awful things. Like, I think if there's going to be a Bible verse written about me, it's that my sins were exposed, so the world rejected me, but they were none of them uncommon among men. It's just the flamboyant nature of some of them... it's like, I know what my sins are. I know I sinned. It's just, most people's sins nobody knows about. How much murder is in the average person's heart or adultery? It's just mine could not be hidden.

Why I Believe

For me belief in God is an acceptance of a proposition of descriptive facts. 1. The Moral Evidence that Jesus taught, 2. The Physical Evidence that proves the Bible, 3. The textual evidence within the Bible itself that predicts Jesus and 4. The natural conscience of man. And 5. The coherent nature of our universe--which is what Newton described, and when he discovered Gravity everyone thought was proof God exists, because the universe had actual laws that determined it. 6. The light that shines off of a person who has God, as that's called Shekinah Glory (וְשָׁכַנְתִּי) in the Bible. And 7. The fruits of the Spirit.

Morality just is. Like Thales' Theorem. Morality exists, it's on our consciences and obeying it produces the best quality life not only for you, but for everyone around you. However, there've been societies where rape and murder was perfectly legal, that lasted for at least a millennia. That's not why Rape and Murder are wrong.

Why Rome Fell

Rome fell for a number of reasons, [homosexuality] being one of them. I wouldn't say it's the cause of the fall, but it's definitely a correlation. Probably, you can read in Horace that women were getting promiscuous, and that's usually the first sign toward social failure, which Rome's was a long winding spiral downhill for about three hundred years, ever since Augustus. Like, under Tiberius they literally crucified God, and put a Pear Tree on Trial. And in the time of Horace, we see the women are beginning to be predatory, and are starting to not have fidelity, which that stirs up a lot of problems in a culture. Probably that's the root cause of why societies fall, is men lose faith in women and the fidelity of marriage as a binding social contract, and begin to be androgynous as a result. And that leads to weak ethics, and men who can't bear the weight of society, so another society comes and conquers them.

Homily on Fortune

I don't think Faith is a means to getting rich. Paul wasn't rich. Neither was Jesus. Neither was Onesimus or Polycarp, or Titus, or Ignatius. Lydia was rich, but she happened on her riches before she became saved.

Fortune's a lot. God gives people riches according to their work, not their level of obedience. Which, if you're in obedience to the LORD, and doing the work He's given you faithfully, you'll be made rich, and will come the added effect of having not one sorrow attached to it, or even a hindrance to your faith.

But the reverse is also true, if you work evil, and wrought destruction for yourself, your riches will add many sorrows, both worldly and spiritual.