“Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.” – Mineko Iwasaki
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Thought For the Day: Stab the Body and It Heals, But Injure the Heart and the Wound Lasts A Lifetime
Posted in Thought For the Day
Tagged Body, Heal, Heart, Injure, Lasts, Lifetime, Mineko Iwasaki, Stab, Thought For the Day, Wound
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First Principles: Facts Are Stubborn Things
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” – John Adams (1770)
Posted in First Principles
Tagged Alter, Dictate, Evidence, Facts, First Principles, Inclination, John Adams, Passion, State of Facts, Stubborn, Wishes
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Something Somehow Selfish Worn
Based in part on 1 Cor.10:31:
Something Somehow Selfish Worn by Michael Doyle There is something selfish in loving the Lord Because He loves us and we're looking forward To that fellowship we feel here and up above And know the eternal embrace of His love Here we are gathered to listen as we await and hear it The blessings borne by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit Thankful as we are in all of our best given gratitude Doing our very best to always wear the right attitude It's such a total and amazing flow of Heaven's grace As we turn toward those depths of our Father's face We praise His name for having freed us from our chains Knowing that despite the struggles it is not in vain Our Lord has called us to the very foot of the cross So that we might gain all the truth and not the loss That there within God's deep caressing breath Are the things of life and escape from our own death In all that we dare to do, we do for our Lord's glory Always grateful in all that we are part of His story Thanks be to God for all the best things that we see And knowing that the yoke put on us has set us free All the things, be these simple or other times complex Are the patterns of integrity in which all else connects We, as the ambassadors of truth and living in the light, Are God's vessels in setting the example lived right There is no requirement to be in church to live His glory This truth is as old as the essence of our human story Despite the wrong turns of going places that are astray And yet, like the prodigal son, we will return some day It's better to keep on the path toward our called destination It's somehow bittersweet and, yet, lived with fascination If only there would be no distraction causing us to lose our way We must patiently learn to live each day best as a godly day Each blessing given in each part of our passing flow of years Are lived in as we persevere never quitting despite the tears Never giving up but rather pursuing our God given dreams Pressing on even when it seems we're bursting at our mortal seams When obstacles come along that drag us temporarily down We must get back up and strive again for the winning crown With the prayerful help of our loving Father we shall always Gain more than we have been giving in living out our best days (c) June 10, 2020 Michael Doyle All Rights Reserved
Posted in Poetry and Poems
Tagged Above, Always, Ambassador, Astray, Best, Best Days, Best Things, Bittersweet, Blessing, Breath, Call, Chains, Church, Complex, Connect, Crown, Dare, Day, Death, Depth, Despite, Destination, Distraction, Down, Drag, Dreams, Embrace, Escape, Essence, Eternal, Face, Fascination, Father, Feel, Fellowship, First Corinthians, Flow, Foot of the Cross, Forward, Free, Gain, Gather, Get Back Up, Give, Glory, God, God Given, Grace, Grateful, Gratitude, He, Hear, Heaven, His Story, Holy Spirit, Human, Integrity, Light, Listen, Live Right, Living, Lord, Lose, Loss, Love, Name, Never Quit, Obstacles, Passing, Path, Patient, Pattern, Persevere, Photograph, Poem, Poetry, Praise, Prayer, Pressing On, Prodigal Son, Requirement, Return, Right Attitude, See, Selfish, Set Free, Simple, Somehow, Something, Struggle, Tears, Thankful, Things of Life, Total, Truth, Vain, Way, Winning, Wisdom, Wrong Turn, Years, Yoke
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Given the Dickens I’ve Known
Show of hands, who has read Charles Dickens in their lives? Who in the last 30 years? Yet, he stands as perhaps the greatest novelist in the English language. It almost scares me to know that I had read five of his works by the seventh grade. I think I would be lucky to find five people who even know that the classics A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities was written by this giant. Yet, we wonder why civilization seems to be in trouble these days, right?
Given the Dickens I've Known by Michael Doyle On June 9, 2020, life in its severity Found Charles Dickens struck from life After decades of telling tales of clarity Of the hope of life and all of its strife Buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abby This novelist was the English epitome Of a literary master who stood by the poor Helping them to endure and hope for a bit more Blending adventure with sentimentality His every tale was one of industrial morality Having made his way up from society's lower reaches His were and are the words that fill the breaches Of society's contract for the classes The push through in their struggling masses Debt was cause enough for imprisonment then As Dickens would look back on childhood again Descriptive of the lawyers' misery And the squalor that suffered the century Little bits of darkened, hidden alley ways Were the common cause of Dickens' days (c) June 10, 2020 Michael Doyle All Rights Reserved
Posted in Poetry and Poems
Tagged Adventure, Alley Ways, Breach, Century, Charles Dickens, Childhood, Clarity, Classes, Common Cause, Days, Debt, Decade, Endure, English, Hope, Imprisonment, Industrial, Lawyer, Life, Masses, Misery, Morality, Novelist, Photograph, Poem, Poet's Corner, Poetry, Reaches, Sentimentality, Severity, Society, Society's Contract, Squalor, Strife, Struck, Struggle, Tales, Westminster Abby
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Thought For the Day: I Believe In A Heavenly Father Who Is Loving and Caring and Who Rejoices In Our Every Effort To Stand Tall and Walk Toward Hiim
“I do not believe in a God who would set up rules and commandments only to wait for us to fail so He could punish us. I believe in a Heavenly Father who is loving and caring and who rejoices in our every effort to stand tall and walk toward Him. Even when we stumble, He urges us not to be discouraged-never to give up or flee our allotted field of service-but to take courage, find our faith, and keep trying.” – Dieter F. Uchtdorf
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Tagged Believe, Caring, Commandments, Dieter F Uchtdorf, Disxourage, Effort, Fail, Faith, Flee, God, Heavenly Father, Him, Keep Trying, Loving, Never Give Up, Punish, Rejoice, Rules, Set Up, Stand Tall, Stumble, Take Courage, Thought For the Day, Urge, Wait, Walk
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First Principles: Without Liberty, Law…Becomes Oppression. Without Law, Liberty…Becomes Licentiousness
“Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.” – James Wilson (1790)
Posted in First Principles
Tagged Becomes, First Principles, James Wilson, Law, Liberty, Licentiousness, Name, Nature, Oppression, Without
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On Understanding Children’s Literature
A wisely crafted tale invites its reader or listener, young and old, to inquire what good might be learned from the tale.
On Understanding Children's Literature by Michael Doyle The stories we have heard from childhood Are the classics of morality teaching good And the very best needed to be understood There is much to learn and enjoy as we should As Jesus knew, truth comes best in tale Parables, fables and such do so very well In teaching by metaphor all that we see Whether works of fiction or profound history Aristotle's Poetics drives its points of history That while they are important do not touch poetry Because that license allows for near perfection Sharpened and shaped for our worthy detection The creation of other worlds brings us to place Places that we might never be, but, need to embrace Telling us the things of what can be and never be And yet point out the depths of missed reality The truths met by most are perhaps for the first time And yet these truths in their marvel lead to the sublime This then draws the mind in its very attention And in so doing, this then fosters the heart's retention It is not and could never be a blunder That God has blessed children with a sense of wonder It is true that the awe and wonder become the yearning That serves as the force for the deepest learning We can learn the things needed on smaller scale Where the magic steadily allows the good to prevail It's not so much a matter of hocus pocus But in bringing the good things more into focus It is not really a matter of escapism but true liberation When you can see into the worlds of imagination The prison of our own making and sterility Knows nothing of the passages of nobility The sum of darkness in a children's story Brings it around to lessons without being gory Simply and clearly is how a tale must be told It is the learning of imitation as it unfolds There in the first acts of truly understanding Presented as these are as not too demanding Life in all its imposing bits of limitation Does well to allow for this initiation Like all art, a children's story aims for good The good is that which all things aim to be understood Every work of literature is an open inquiry Seeking after that good to understand its legacy Education is not something that we do to the other It is something we do together with one another Children are endowed with the want and will to know It is from this knowledge that they think and grow (c) June 9, 2020 Michael Doyle All Rights Reserved
Posted in Poetry and Poems
Tagged Aim, Allow, Aristotle, Art, Attention, Awe, Bless, Blunder, Childhood, Children's Literature, Classic, Craft, Creation, Deep Learning, Demanding, Depth, Detection, Draw, Education, Embrace, Endow, Enjoy, Escapism, Fable, Fiction, First Acts, First Time, Focus, Foster, God, Good, Grow, Heart, History, Hocus Pocus, Imagination, Imitation, Jesus, Know, Knowledge, Learn, Legacy, License, Limitation, Literature, Magic, Making, Met, Metaphor, Morality, Near Perfection, Nobility, Open Inquiry, Other Worlds, Parable, Passages, Photograph, Poem, Poetics, Poetry, Points, Prison, Reality, Retention, Seek, Sense of Wonder, Sharpen, Smaller Scale, Sterility, Story, Sublime, Sum of Darkness, Tale, Tell, Think, Together, Told, True Liberation, Truth, Understand, Understanding, Understood, Unfold, Want, Will, Work, Yearning
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Thought For the Day: The Democrats Are Running the Cities With the Worst Police Brutality In America
“Democrats, from top to bottom, are running the cities with the worst police brutality in America right now. We voted for them.” – BLM activist Shaun King
So maybe it’s time to vote for Republicans and insist the police departments Mr. King is mentioning are not defunded but properly trained?
Posted in Thought For the Day
Tagged America, BLM, Democrats, Police Brutality, Run, Shaun King, The Cities, Thought For the Day, Top To Bottom, Vote, Worst
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First Principles: Nothing Deserves the Name of Law But that Which Is Certain and Universal In Its Operation On All the Members of the Community
“Where there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community.” – Benjamin Rush (1788)
Posted in First Principles
Tagged Benjamin Rush, Certain, Community, First Principles, Members, Name, No Law, No Liberty, Operation, Universal
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Choice To Be Made
What it really all comes down to, I think, anyhow…
Choice To Be Made by Michael Doyle What this all comes down to For the likes of me and you Is if we'll let our nation live in fear Or, if we'll walk together and persevere Our nation is founded, as I recall To be lived in equal justice under rule of law Together, we must determine our destiny And what it is that we'll leave as our legacy In our Christian nation, it seems a little odd That we are all equally loved by God And that a righteous nation shall be known By the goodness and mercy it has shown Not in treating any as somehow above But in showing the least some of God's love Sharing hope and seeing hopelessness as poverty As we learn to walk together in our dignity Let no more innocent lives be taken Let us by more brutality no more be shaken Walking side by side each of us on mankind's side But becoming together more known for being on God's side (c) June 8, 2020 Michael Doyle All Rights Reserved
Posted in Poetry and Poems
Tagged Above, Brutality, Choice, Christian Nation, Comes Down, Destiny, Determine, Dignity, Equal Justice, Equally Loved, Fear, Founded, God, God's Love, God's Side, Goodness, Hope, Hopelessness, Innocent Lives, Known, Legacy, Made, Mankind, Me and You, Mercy, Nation, Odd, Persevere, Photograph, Poem, Poetry, Poverty, Recall, Righteous Nation, Rule of Law, Shaken, Share, Shown, Side By Side, Taken, The Least, Together, Walk, Walk Together, Well Off
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