Counting Stars

I counted stars today.
As prophets and dreamers,
Glimpsing God through the darkness,
My wonder soared.
I, too, beheld
The promise of eternity,
Stretched across the eons.

Mere points of light
In a midnight sky,
Announcing Truth veiled in mystery,
Of things hidden and unseen,
Of ages long past and yet to be.
Who with me
Knows that there is more,
Much more?

Lanterns hung in the heavens
Make of me their lampstand,
That Eternal Light
Might shine more brightly,
Giving voice to creation.

No dumb marvel,
Rather angelic themes,
To sing high praises
In celestial chants,
For all who turn their gaze
Heavenward, counting,
And loosing count,
Journey home.

Copyright 2012 Joann Nelander

This Is The Real Goal Of the LGBT “Rights” Movement

by Erik Rush

Source: This Is The Real Goal Of the LGBT “Rights” Movement

“The press coverage and rhetorical tempest over North Carolina’s HB2 (the new law which prevents individuals who identify as “transgender” from using public restrooms based on their chosen gender identity) and the widespread activism on the part of homosexuals in recent years has a lot of Americans wondering why there is such a high degree of concern on the part of the political left over the so-called rights of an assortment of mouthy sexual deviants in the first place. It’s even more baffling to those unfamiliar with the dynamic behind it all, given that this faction represents less than 4% of our population.The answer is simple: The so-called “struggle for LGBT rights” in America has never been anything more than a pretext for the complete disenfranchisement of Christians. Leftist leaders have always known that a socialist state must be the sole arbiter of morality, and that this cannot come about in a moral society – one in which citizens honor and obey God over the state, which is of course comprised of fundamentally flawed human beings.The scenario that has been framed by the left wherein Christian doctrine is manifestly oppressive to homosexuals, transvestites, and assorted sexual deviants is a ruse, and the said oppression of these people is nonexistent. To be fair, things might have played out differently in a Christian theocracy, but we do not live in a Christian theocracy.Ultimately, the constitutionally-guaranteed religious liberties once enjoyed by Christians will be negated via the courts. Christians will be severely stigmatized, and their position will become untenable. The Church will be all but driven underground, as in Britain and Canada. Once “God is dead,” as it were, the State will be free to impose its own secular doctrine – one that is more conducive to its control and manipulation of the populace in perpetuity.This methodology need not be relegated only to the eradication of religious groups or even a majority faith. The same tactic is in fact being used, for example, to dilute the political power and civil liberties of whites in America (another majority) by characterizing them as bigoted and oppressive toward other ethnic groups. In the secular realm, the political power and civil liberties of heterosexuals and, more importantly parents, are again being supplanted by the counterfeit “rights” of those who advocate aberrant concepts of family, sexual deviants being chief among these.The reason that such a vigorous campaign was marshaled to target Christians is because Christianity was the second greatest impediment to those advancing the socialist state, the first being the Constitution itself, specifically, the Bill of Rights.Anyone who has been exposed to concepts of Natural Law (to which American students no longer are exposed since the study of Civics was abandoned) knows that these were a fundamental basis for the Bill of Rights. Natural Law was revered by our nation’s founders as a basis for the set of liberties they recognized as being granted by God; without these acknowledged and/or codified into the law of the land, individuals remain ill at ease, and society founders. These are the liberties for which so many have fought against their governments through the ages, even if they were ignorant of these concepts as such. Recognition of Natural Law and its incorporation into law, as so many over the years once recognized, was the height of wisdom, and why the United States prospered so conspicuously for so long a time.These concepts of liberty as understood by America’s founders were distilled into what became the law of the land in America from a broad and studious view of history, the zeitgeist of the Enlightenment (which was ongoing at that time), religious texts and doctrines, British Common Law, and yes, even such things as Freemasonry (whose basis in philosophy rests largely in the foregoing).The secular humanist view to which socialists ascribe however, holds that it is our exalted and refined intellect itself that will ensure moral behavior; thus we need not worry that humanity will descend into chaos or tyranny. This of course ignores the fact that in a society which universally adopted this worldview, there would be as many codes of morality as there were people, with many of these being wildly divergent and in inevitable conflict.Inasmuch as that worldview is little more than a profoundly dishonest marketing ploy based upon human conceit and calculated to empower socialist leaders, it is no wonder that socialism has failed to do anything save for exalting socialist leaders, and why it led to the deaths of nearly half a billion human beings during the last century.”

Source: This Is The Real Goal Of the LGBT “Rights” Movement

No Moral Equivalency between Jihad and the Crusades

 Jihad vs Crusades – Bill Warner, PhD

Why Be Catholic

Canticle of Zachariah

Luke 1:68-79
The Messiah and his forerunner

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel;
he has come to his people and set them free.

He has raised up for us a mighty savior,
born of the house of his servant David.

Through his holy prophets he promised of old
that he would save us from our enemies,
from the hands of all who hate us.

He promised to show mercy to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant.

This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
to set us free from the hands of our enemies,
free to worship him without fear,
holy and righteous in his sight
all the days of our life.

You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
to give his people knowledge of salvation
by the forgiveness of their sins.

In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

via divineoffice.org

Early Christians Believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist

I love this site for a frequent dose of reality:

http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/father/a5.html