Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
'Tis of the wave and not the rock;
'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee, -are all with thee!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Independence Day ADD Irregulars, WSN Devotees, Misfits & Phamily, Friends & Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Conversants and Lurkers, Seekers, Wanderers, and fellow Questioners.
You cannot help that which you do not love. Be it a person, a community, a nation or even yourself. For any who want to change something for the "better", however or whatever they think the better is, if it is not guided by some concept of love and a willingness to seek a understood good that can be shared between the the reformer and the reformed, it often becomes just another chapter of trading prevailing authorities.
I harp on the LEFT a lot (not you few remaining classic Liberals and wishful Hippies) because Marxism is not fueled by love but by conflict. Some must fall so that others may rise. James Lindsey has done great work in articulating the current manifestation of Marxism as it cloaks itself in race and gender issues when the philosophy cares for neither.
The United States of America is far from a perfect union or expression of liberty but if I honestly thought there was a better place to experience or try to achieve it, I would being looking to migrate there. There is much to muse and ramble on regarding how I think it ought to be reformed (mighty humble of me, thank you💖), but it begins with self while at the same time having the willingness to be discern engagement with neighbors and community. One has to constantly discern if you live among neighbors that espouse a live and let live attitude or if they are militant.
The militant (look at France) use the mob to enact the change the want or to at least sow the fear they hope promotes it. Militant neighbors (many graduate from universities year after year) do not believe in live and let live, they know better, they have seen the horrors you have ignored, and they are here to force you to face those horrors. That you may have to suffer the horrors they claim to be ending is all part of equity don't ya know?
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Yes, I am a curmudgeon, but I still have hope for our national future. My sight lies beyond it since faith provides a wider horizon, but I am not indifferent to the need reform of our nation and and need to find a way to agree to disagree without wanting to malign and destroy each other. My mindset is one of Kwai Chang Caine, be a passivist that can kick your ass when you interfere. I love that series. I think that was the last breathe of how America saw itself after WWII and in the middle of the Cold War. Be good neighbors unless you live next to jerks, then make sure the jerks possess no ability to interfere and impose on your life.
Well, enough rambling for today. I am so thankful for where I live, when I live and who are my neighbors. It ain't perfect, but I can't imagine wanting to live in another time or place. Peace and liberty Digitial Neighbors!
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
Padre - Tom Miller invites you to a Coffee Talk, Speakeasies, Schmoozes, Tea Times, Afterhours and other gatherings.
https://teams.live.com/meet/93792382189049?p=DiBHsYfuECPgDrG7vO
2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
Thursday, January 1, 2026
6:00 AM - 8:00 AM (CST)
Occurs every day starting 1/1 until 12/31/2027
Coffee Talk - Daily beginning at 6:00 AM Central Time Zone - USA
White Pilled Wednesday - A break from the heaviness of news and current events to focus upon things more personal & positive for the first hour of Coffee Talk.
Afternoon Chats - Most Tuesday, Friday & Sundays 2:00 PM Central
Other chats as posted in the community.
Good morning, digital neighbors! Happy Wednesday, my friends across the inter-webs! Today we celebrate the feast of St. Jerome, who gifted the early Church with the Vulgate, the Latin translation of Sacred Scripture from the Hebrew and Greek. It was not without its faults; to translate is to lose something in the process. There are subtleties of language and nuances of speech that do not always carry over from one language to another.
Jerome's big conversion moment was a dream in which Jesus told him that he loved Latin literature more than Him. And Jerome did love Latin; he was fond of Cicero, Virgil, and Horace, and many minor authors. He had difficulties with other languages and was not overly fond of Greek or Hebrew, but even with all his complaints, he strove to learn them so he could faithfully translate the Scriptures into Latin, making them available to any who wanted to read them in the common tongue of the West. The eastern part of the empire still relied on Greek as its common language.
His...
XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
