“Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.”– Christian Johann Heinrich Heine

“Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.”– Christian Johann Heinrich Heine

“We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.” – John Adams (1797)

Poinsettia Day 2023
by Michael Doyle
Usually quiet and sometimes reserved
Sometimes death seems so undeserved
It's hard to find the words to say
Like on this present Poinsettia Day
Life is sad, yet interesting, in procession
Moments like these reveal this is not a possession
But a gift to be lived each moment with love
As if always aware of the heavens above
I saw this often in David's eyes
As he looked on his family as if wise
Enough to know what was important
And accept his life without resentment
But to be lived in its fullness and giving
Filled with laughter and forgiving
His smile was a smile to always remember
And I do, on this sad day in December
Poinsettia, a flower so much like a star
Observed up close or even from afar
It makes me think of the story of the first Noel
As shepherds woke to find that first Christmas tale
Up above their heads in the dark midnight
There, they saw that star shining bright
How I wish I could share its healing light
And make everything turn out right
How I wish I could share its healing light
And make everything turn out right
This isn't the kind of news angels usually bring
But I pick up my guitar and start to sing
Plucking notes with a heart filled with sorrow
Wishing I could breathe some of my life for him to borrow
Here on this cold winter's night that feels so deep
I do my best to not breakdown and openly weep
(c) December 12, 2023 Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved
“He who allows oppression, shares the crime.” -Erasmus Darwin, physician, scientist, reformer, and poet; grandfather of Charles Darwin (12 Dec 1731-1802)

“There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honour, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty.” – John Adams (1776)

Life As We Wear It
by Michael Doyle
It is one thing to feign ignorance
And another to protest our innocence
This is especially true when it can be shown
That the facts in dispute are easily known
If we'd only question what it is that we should
The sky might crack open if it were understood
That sometimes it's not about what we can do
But, ultimately, comes down to what we should do
When we act as if there is no recognized authority
What, then, is the answer that weighs in sufficiently
Too often, the need is to keep our powers in check
As the fundamental jigsaw begins to connect
In this decrepit world, despite the stars above
It takes a lot of courage to even attempt to love
Holding on as we do to the cupboard of our capability
We become caged by our would-be abilities
Life leaves us branded with the stains of our battles
As we move forward, limping along at our full addle
Growing too old to ever dream of dying while young
Though that's not really an accolade we wish hung
Like a cross to bear heavily laden around our neck
Our million questions that arise can make life a wreck
As we pull together in our one life, we have to live
Searching deeply, we wonder how much more we have to give
Outside, the gods rage, tossing thunderbolts in the sky
With a twist of fate seen through Odin's one good eye
It seems that however hard we've tried as the innocent die
We demand truth and then find ourselves choking on the reply
Here is the fever pitch of life's anguish and powerlessness
As life crushes us into dark levels of awareness
We find however good our intentions were or might still be
In the end, all we've lived strains at our dignity
(c) December 11, 2023 Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved
“The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.” – James Madison (1788)

“You only have power over people as long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power — he’s free again.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn, novelist, Nobel laureate (11 Dec 1918-2008)

Revisiting Truth In the Post-Modernist Age
by Michael Doyle
It can be said with conviction of feeling
That the ways of God are revealing
Here in this mid-December
It seems timely to remember
All of God's loving traces
In all the history of a life's embraces
Are like the Jordan River stones
Memorializing the walk that atones
As we live through post-modernism
It's hard to look out with optimism
Against the ideology of modern imposition
We are prepared to give our reasoned position
Convicted yet, gently spoken
We don't need to further damage the broken
Each step taken must be counted as actual cost
If we are to truly reach the lost
It comes down to Christ's incarnation
The subject calls out for fascination
From the moment Word existed in the beginning
God has given us a righteous path for winning
There'll be no checking your brain at the door
Pushing out the chaos and slowing destruction's pour
The grace of Jesus moved into the neighborhood
Full of grace and truth revealed for our own good
Through life's jungle, we continue to struggle
To survive, regardless of how much we bungle
Moses brought the law and truth, while grace
Came when humanity looked into Jesus' face
The Law we could not ever truly, fully follow
It was Jesus, who by grace, took us from the shadows
Through the life of Jesus laid bare, it was shown
The clarity of God's ways were made known
All based on the two principles of truth and grace
Both of these are equally needed by the human race
Both of these in balance are clearly needed
Humanity is best off when these are clearly heeded
Truth without an element of grace is heartless
We would do well to remember that humanity is faithless
Without God's mercy at the hint of mankind's contrition
We would all be caught up within the soul's rebellion
Grace without truth lacks conviction's courage
And leads the dysfunctional to become discouraged
Modeled with whimsy into any shape that comes
This brings the questions that rock the kingdom
Because this is the path of stubborn confusion
Bringing our wanton ways into a mass illusion
Walking mankind into overt relativism
That seduces savage minds into dark nihilism
We seek to teach others against this as a preacher
And other times, we play the role of the kind teacher
But there we are to speak the truth as join to lean-in
And in the keeping of the truth in all of its rich meaning
Cultural poison often causes the best of us to stumble
It is misleading and disruptive of life in all its jumble
The distractions of made-up narratives are simply pretense
It takes God's good order to bring about commonsense
Post-modernism removes logic, truth, and real science
As such, the honest find it troubling to the conscience
Objective God is knowable and guarded against desire
Instead, lighted by eternal truth's illuminating fire
Reality and humanity are more than linguistic construction
To believe we aren't is the path toward our destruction
It's a tyranny's paradox filled with a set of complexes
That need to be controlled against by morality's reflexes
As society destroys truth, chaos raises its head
Removing the cornerstone leaves civilization dead
Ruinous theories are bringing us to this brink
Instead, what is needed is to truly think
In thinking, we will rediscover God's full glory
And in re-embracing God's full and complete story
W will mercifully walk through all our holy days
Embracing truth, logos, ethos, and pathos in God's ways
(c) December 10, 2023 Michael Doyle
All Rights Revisited
“A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” – John Adams (1775)

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