Masters of Rhetoric
On Whose Authority? God help us.
Todd White is now revealed as a salesman and a narcissist… I believe with a sincere love of God but also a severe blindness.
Patriarch Bartholomew approved a document called “For the Life of the World” which incorporates liberal and temporal (zeitgeist) nonsense regarding migration, eliding asylum seekers, economic upward-suasion seekers, and general knockers on western doors as morally identical — applying the Christian standard not only to welcome all equally and universally but also offer free healthcare and retirement pensions to all. What madness. This publication was revealed to be senseless not more than 4 years after its release. 25 million migrants later, and the system near bankruptcy, Trump was re-elected. They enjoyed a president who had lost his faculties, and believed him virtuous because he did not offend their “communication-based” progressive sensibilities — a pacification and spell-casting effective against the sensitive mind even without action for the poor, or afflicted, and which ignores what is actually happening at the open border, the increase in crime and suffering, and the destruction of the economy. Their pacification beneath their anesthetic president nearly brought us to ruin… but they were not offended by his speech, so his administration was glorious and Christian? Pseudo-Christian madness.
Orthodoxy as a harbor, as well as a charism for the voice, has lost its luster. What can a man do when the spirit of newness is revealed as the dearest self, and the spirit of the tradition as the same? Nietzsche’s lament helps us not, for his lament is the dearest self par excellence… under Nietzsche there is nothing but the spinning wheel of the self and therefore nothing at all. Credo discerned these things and relies upon God entirely, but what does this mean in practical parlance? Seraphim spoke of a loving heart as the way to hear God. Institutions betray, but they do relay what is true. Institutions standardize knowledge and make the world intelligible and corrupt — at one and the same time. The body seems the same — living while dying, bringing life and death to every surrounding.
What is man? What is man or life that life would preserve us? That we would persist? Man thinks himself precious, which is a powerful survival instinct and self-aggrandizing, unless it’s true — then it’s just true. But what makes man, man? What makes him precious as he is? Is it his achievement? His potential? Is it innate in him and “just so” regardless of how one acts? No. Man is human, and can become less man as he becomes less humane, less precious, less worth preserving, and more deserving of being snuffed out.
What is man? Who gets to do the choosing as to what is humane and what is banal and what is profane? Only God, some say, but the charismatic witness has fallen, and the ecumenical patriarch the same… yet who am I to judge? What gives me the right to divide light from dark and assign to each creature their name?
A master of spin and compromise am I. Greater than Todd White, more powerful and terrible to behold if given the spotlight. Like my heroes I would take this energy in an attempt and desire to do good, and it would find in me this hope and use it against me, and blind me, and bind me in darkness and make me a servant of foul things… a ring of power which all of us deceives… fame… special charisms… living authorities… like Gandalf and Galadriel I see into this future because you, oh Spirit of Life, have made me see.
Yet, Spirit of Life, do you not give us being? Do you not call us to pursue life and the common good? Is it possible to know the truth and by the powers of the mind ascertain proper things, divisions, decisions, and viewing frames? Does our mind mirror your infinity, and therefore is it possible to know true things because we, of like mind, can see what you see, God? Oh God, help us see. How can we have confidence in what we see? We who want to see rightly. Perhaps we trust in you and say “God help me,” and then we move about our day and immediately notice that others who pray the same prayer disagree. They read the same Bible, or another sacred book — does not matter. Not all agree, and it is ultimately between the soul and its maker as to whether the man hears or sees anything real.
Yet what is real? How can we know? Do we just practice rather blindly and then hope? How then do we resist people who press against us and seek to rob us, or move us within their own vision, if our vision cannot be known, and if we cannot have confidence in what we see? The sacred text is an open book and freely one may interpret. Hart takes universalism as the obvious end, and so does Gregory of Nyssa, yet the tradition disagrees.
Frankly, God, I am tired. I believe that truth may be real, and probably is, but because of these issues, one needs to be convinced. For those who say that the Spirit does the work, they have obviously never seen a spirit of death at work in a populace. There are always spirits at work, and the spirit of a politician, the voice of him and the voice of a movement, can move mountains and throw stones into the sea… influence is what is act-ually real, and powers of persuasion…
But what gives persuasion its power? Influence its ability to en-act change? Put bodies in motion, in Aristotelian and Aquinas’ ways? Naturally, you, oh Being, oh Spirit of Life. Chiefly, belief in you — belief that we can know the truth — is what gives persuasion its power, and influence its ability to act upon spatial bodies, and change psychical and soulish states. The Logos, powerful words energized by the truth, has always had the power to bind and loose, to forgive sins, to bind the strongman, and set the captives free.
Because of belief in you, man speaks, and man hears, and is persuaded one way or another. The logos of one speaks to the logos of another in regards to the Logos which is higher, but which each can know according to their own interior. Because this is the case, I must become a master of rhetoric.
What to say now of my fallen stars? Why become a master of rhetoric? Ought I influence to make myself free of influence? To save myself from being pressed against by pressing against? My salvation is to be found in me becoming an overwhelming force? No. This is deceit.
I ought to become a master of rhetoric because I see its power, and I do desire the good. But I do not pretend that the good and I are commensurate. Perhaps I should become a master of rhetoric to begin deep dialogue. Perhaps to try to win some, and to be open to being won myself… perhaps as an act of obedience, an act of mercy, even to my own self. Perhaps as a way of coping with the fallen stars around me, all those who were to be my light tearing me apart — from my Tradition poem… an articulation of past things and future prophecy fulfilled… why, God?
How to deal with fallen stars and the problem of knowing? Logos begets logos, which means logikos is possible and natural. It is unnatural to be a-logos or irrational or insane. Therefore, when one deviates from the truth, it is a passion that they need healing from — a sickness. Why are some of varying opinions? Some sicknesses cause death; others, disease. What makes me free of illness? I am not sure. Let’s sit here and reason together.
For my reader,
I share these things because I want the very best life for you;
the very best life in Christ.
This is my prayer
and these;
these are my Confessions.