Posted on 04/06/2016 5:28:34 PM PDT by Lazamataz
Rudyard Kipling wrote a prescient poem in 1919, called "Gods of the Copybook Headings.". This is, simply put, a must-read poem.
Copybooks were texts that allowed British schoolchildren of the time to practice penmanship, and the phrase they would copy -- often a phrase of a sermon, or some wise aphorism -- would be featured on the copybook heading. Kipling was appalled by the counterintuitive modern thoughts of the day, and wrote the poem to point out how eons of wisdom and experience of humankind were hard-won, and he urged us not to embrace the depraved 'shortcuts' we began to take.
Like Kipling -- though lacking his talent -- I, too, urge us to take stock of where we are. Are we in open rebellion with morality and common-sense? Are we in a pitched war with reality? Have we become a Demonic America?
Take yourself back ten years, and (except for the last item, which is older) ask if you would have physically struck a future-you that claimed that any of the above would come to pass.
I know I would.
There can be no doubt. We are in the clutches of great evil. Common sense has been thrown aside for bizarre and absurd conclusions that fly in the face of 2000 years of civilization, and the ideals of decency that surrounded us.
I have not even discussed other forms of evil, such as the Administration's betrayals of Israel -- including an implied threat to shoot down Israeli aircraft that would have struck Iran's nuclear facilities. There are so many other examples, too numerous to list. It all comes together to inform us that this is Satan's time, a time of unbridled evil.
Back in the 1970's and 1980's, I used to listen Iran call us the 'Great Satan' with a combination of derision and bemusement.
Now, I actually wonder... is that what we have become?
But before that, once "we" did, or at least some of "us" did, just as only some of us now do. (Yes, I could diagram that sentence.)
There is nothing new under the sun. It's all been done before, if not in precisely the same combinations, and terror and slaughter ensued.
More religiose, maybe.
I’m not sure this was more than a civic religion, a fig leaf. Fig leaves work great until they crack and disintegrate.
Gah.
I wish I had Kipling’s talent.
But his was singular.
We hewed more closely to the Word once.
As did chattel slave owning Tom Jeff, but that is a part of our heritage most honest people wish never had been there.
The take away point should be, at best, an object lesson about things that are eternal, and a practice ground for such virtues. We’re going to shuffle off this mortal coil one way or another.
Maybe America is going to hell in a handcart, but God is most interested in whether we will at least give the handcart a push in the other direction for the sake of love, anyhow.
Planned Parenthood, a company that performs mass abortions, are selling the body parts of their victims.
"Are" should be "is," and "their" should be "its." You noticed it was a singular subject when you correctly used the singular "a company that performs" in the adjectival dependent clause.
You're also overgenerous in your use of commas. For example:
Companies, and now the Obama administration, are now punishing states ...
The commas shouldn't be there. If you'd left out the commas, you might have noticed the redundant "now."
These little details distinguish elegant writing from effective speech. If you were presenting this material verbally at a town meeting, it would be great as it is. You've got organization, supporting detail, and a dramatic conclusion. In writing, following the conventions of grammar is a strength. Even if the conventions seem irrelevant or unnecessarily constricting, they force you to build your argument on powerful words and solidly logical construction.
From, "The Betrothed".
Kipling was a great writer. His best poems are unsurpassed in their structure and detail. (His worst are doggerel, but a man’s got to pay the rent.) His short stories combine brilliant psychology with ethnographic interest and top-drawer narrative construction.
Argh. Perhaps I should abandon writing and speak.
Before billions.
In mandatory townhalls.
LOL
If I could have only one wish, it would be to have Rudyard Kipling’s creativity enter my soul.
And thus, I write.
LOL! You and Tom the Son ...
Many writers, even some in syndication, don't ever reach the point of a creative premise, a solid argument, effective organization, and clear (if not technically perfect) composition.
You're doing excellently!
Thank you, madam. I asked for the corrections, then wilted in shame when they were proferred. LOL
I shall take your criticism and grow. :)
According to Bishop N.T. Wright, it was Albert Schweitzer, the famous (to my generation) Christian doctor of tropical medicine, who came up with this image:
The wheel of history was rolling downhill from the Fall of Man. Occasionally, the slope diminished - during the reigns of David and Solomon, for instance - and the wheel slowed, but the downhill trend was inexorable.
Finally, “in the fullness of time,” Jesus the Messiah came. He was born, lived, taught, and finally, He was crushed beneath the weight of the great wheel, like a grain of wheat beneath a millstone ... BUT HE STOPPED THE WHEEL, like a piece of hard candy under your shopping cart wheel. He died, but He rose, and then His disciples, empowered by His spirit, began slowly, with incredible effort, to push the great wheel back uphill.
Sometimes its progress is undiscernible. Sometimes, perhaps, it rolls back down a bit (although that perception may depend on our limited viewpoint). However, every follower of Christ, by every choice he makes in imitation of Christ, is helping to push the wheel up the hill, from the worst human beings have ever been toward ... not perfection by human effort ... but a better thing, until He returns and remakes the whole shebang in His image.
I would like to have his ability to convey the stuff of life: smells, tastes, sounds, heat. When you read a Kipling story or poem, you really know what it was like to be there.
Come. Read.
Then request to be on my pinglist.
Not sure this is the best perspective... the earth as we know it will still end up going to figurative hades. However, a very large contingent of souls will now go to heaven instead of hell.
Not criticism: suggestions. I don’t think any writer can reach his or her potential without a (okay ...) critical reader to say, “That adjective is weak: you can find a better one,” or “Are you sure that’s the exact verb you want?” or “This structure isn’t perfectly clear ... maybe if you broke it up and put this before that?”
That is but one of his many myriad skills.
His turn of a phrase, too, is breathtaking.
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
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