Roger Bacon

Where men once said, Credo at intelligam (understanding can come only through belief)

They now said (Intelligo ut credam) belief can come only through understanding:

In 1277 , Roger Bacon was imprisoned for an indefinite period for holding these opinions. Free and rational investigation of nature was to come hard in clash between reason and faith which would echo down to our own time.

Chief Seattle
 

     "The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy are land But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land ? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the of the air and the sparkle of the water ,how can you buy them? "Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle , every sandy shore , every mist in the dark wood, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people. "We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and its part of us. The perfumed flower are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to same family. "The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors.

    If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is scared. Each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father. "The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give to rivers the kindness you would gives any brother "If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives is last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers. "Will you teach your children what we taught our children? That earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. "This we know: the earth does not belong to man man belong to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of

    Life he is merely a strand in it whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. One thing we know: our god is your god The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator "Your destiny is a mystery to us What will happen when the when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hill is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and beginning of survival.

    "When the last Red Man has vanished with his wilderness and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of my people left? "We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it Hold in your mind the memory of the land, as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all. "As we part of the land, you too are part of land. This earth is precious to us Its is also precious to you. One thing we know: there is only one God. No man be Red Man or White Man, can be apart. We are brothers after all

 Chief Seattle Letter

I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon I seek

Opportunity to develop whatever talents God gave me ----- not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me .I want to take the calculated risk ; to dream and to build ,to fail and to succeed I refuse to barter incentive for a dole .I prefer the challenges of life to the stale calm of utopia. I will not give up freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any earthy master nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say ---- 'This , with God's help, I have done

All this is what it means to be an American"

Documents

3 NEPHI 18:24

Therefore, hold up your light that it may shine unto the world Behold l'am the light which
ye have seen me do. Behold ye see that I have prayed unto the Father and ye all have witnessed.

GOD PHILIPPIANS 2.1

In everything you do stay away from complaining and arguing so that no one can speak a word
of blame against you .You are to live clean innocent lives as people of God in a dark world full
of people who crooked and stubborn Shine our among them like beacon of lights.
 

As for the problem of imitating Jesus as a human model, or meditating upon Him as a God ,the history of
literally follows:

(1) a period of literally following the master ,Jesus ,by renouncing the world as he did(Primitive Christianity);

(2) a period of meditating on Christ Crucified as the divinity within the heart mean- while leading one’s life in
     the world as the servant of this God (Early and Medieval Christianity);

(3) a rejection of most of the instruments support-ing meditation, meanwhile ,however, continuing to lead
     one’s life in the World as the servant or vehicle of the God whom one has ceased to visualize
     (Protestant Christianity);

(4) an attempt to interpret Jesus as Model human being, but whitout accepting his ascetic path
     (Liberal Christianity). To hear and profit ,

The Koran
However one may to submit somehow to purgation and surrender and that is part of our problem: just how to do that "Or do ye think that shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trails as came to those who passed this way before you"
 
 

Martin Luther King

"Like they use to say in the old Negro spiritual free at last, free at last! thank God almighty free at last!!!"

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of skin but by the content of their character"

"We accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope."
 

Matthew 22:37-40 Mark, 12:28-34 Luke 10:25-37.

Jesus is also reported to have commissioned his apostles ( to teach all nations) (Matthew, 28:19), but not to persecute and pillage, or to turn over to the (secular arm ) those who would not hear. Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves :be ye therefore wise as serpents’ and harmless: as doves...
 

D&C= 6 D&C= 42-6-9
 

FEB21, 1997

Compare D.C. Section 58.2,3,

The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for is community to cast off its slough of pride fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding . (Live), Nietzsche says, (as though the day were here.) It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero ,but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us share the supreme ordeal--- carries the cross of the redeemer - not in the bright moments of is tribe,s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.
 

 For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changealbe being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity L.D.S has giving God limitation List of things God could not do, among such limitation as "change himself" "forget anything" and "commit sins" "God cannot make the sum of the internal angles of a triangle add up to more than two right angles."
 

Why do LDS think it important to pray aloud ?

This may be Why

The oral chewing of the words had a dual purpose . The act of prayer was closely associated with reading aloud . The words written in a prayer would therefore take on added significance through being spoken The reading of holy text was more a matter of savoring divine wisdom than of seeking information. taste the goodness of your Redeemer chew the honeycomb of his words, suck their flavor which is sweeter than honey, swallow their wholesome sweetness ; chew by thinking, suck by understanding , swallow by
loving and rejoicing

Pierre Abelard author of  Sic et Non " Yes and No"

Use systematic doubt and question everything.

Learn the difference between statements of rational proof and those merely of persuasion.

Be precise in use of words, and expect precision from other.

Watch for error ,even in Holy Scripture.
 
 

Teddy Roosevelt

"THE CREDIT BELONGS TO THE MAN WHO IS ACTUALLY IN THE ARENA, WHO

KNOWS THE GREAT DEVOTIONS, AND SPENDS HIMSELF IN A WORTHY CAUSE

WHO AT THE BEST, KNOWS THE TRIUMPH OF HIGH ACHIEVEMENT; AND

WHO, AT THE WORST, IF HE FAILS WHILE DARING GREATLY, SO THAT HIS

PLACE SHALL NEVER BE WITH THOSE COLD AND TIMID SOULS WHO KNOW

NEITHER VICTORY OR DEFEAT"
 
 

The will to receive is when you first join the church. Later on after you have receive much is when you have the will to impart. What you have learn. By serving a mission or becoming a teacher in your ward.

"The will to receive and the will to impart."
 

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

The trouble with me is that I'm an outsider. And that's a very hard thing to be in American life.
 

The unpardonable sin, in Campbell’s

Book, was the sin of inadvertence, of not being alert, not quite awake.

    These missions are mystical journeys with all of the details of the typical mystical journey. First, there is disengagement fromsecular life. Everybody who is going to go on this expedition has to make a complete confession of all the faults of his or her recent living. And if they don’t, the magic is not going to work. Then they start on the journey .They even speak a special language ,a negative language instead of saying yes, for example, they say no, or instead of saying,(We are going) they say, (We are coming).

    They are in another world. Then they come to the threshold of the adventure There are special shrines that represent stages of mental transformation on the way And then comes the great business of collecting the peyote The peyote is killed as though it were a deer .They sneak up on it ,shoot a little arrow at it, and then perform the ritual of collecting the peyote.

    The whole thing is a complete duplication of the kind of the experience that is associated with the the inward journey, when you leave the outer world and come into the realm of spiritual beings. They identify each little stage as a spiritual transformation They are in a scared place all the way.
 

MOYERS Why do they make such a intricate process out of it?

CAMPBELL: Well, it has to do with the peyote being not simply a biological,

Mechanical, chemical effect but one of spiritual transformation. If you undergo a spiritual transformation and have not had preparation for it, you do not know to evaluate what has happened to you, and you get the terrible experience of a bad trip, as they used to call it with LSD or LDS If you know where you are going, you won’t have a bad trip.

MOYERS: So this is why it is a psychological crisis if you are drowning in the water

CAMPBELL: where you ought to be able to swim, but you weren’t prepared. That is true of spiritual life ,anyhow. It is a terrifying experience to have your consciousness transformed.

MOYERS: You talk a lot about consciousness.

CAMPBELL: Yes.

MOYERS: What do you me by it?

CAMPBELL: It a part of the Cartesian mode to think of consciousness as being something peculiar to the head ,that the head is an organ originating consciousness. It isn’t. The head is an organ that infects consciousness in certain direction , or to a certain set of purposes. But there is a consciousness here in the body. The whole living world is informed by consciousness.
 
 

    Henley, William Ernest (1849-1903), English writer and editor, born in Gloucester, and educated at the Crypt School, where the headmaster, the poet Thomas Edward Brown, inspired him. Although crippled early in life by osteomyelitis, he was a remarkably courageous, spirited, and prolific writer. His most famous poems are "England, My England" and "Invictus," which concludes with the well-known lines, "I am the master of my fate;/I am the captain of my soul."

    Henley's books of poetry include A Book of Verses (1888) and In Hospital (1903). Views and Reviews, essays on art and literature, appeared in 1890. Henley collaborated with his friend Robert Louis Stevenson on four plays, and Stevenson modeled the character Long John Silver in Treasure Island after him. Henley collaborated with J. S. Farmer on the Dictionary of Slang and Its Analogues (1894-1904). He also helped popularize the works of the British writer Rudyard Kipling and the Irish poet W. B. Yeats.
 

Faith

What is Faith?

     It's funny how something so dear can be so hard to describe my first day here a member describe it perfectly it this warm feeling right here in the middle of my chest. I'm always looking too that moment. This has had to be my best day so far Faith is to believe in what you cannot see, touch. and feel good doing it. One thing that come out in faith is, at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. It at this black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation to come. At the darkest moment come the light.

Faith P.149 Teaching Prophet Joseph Smith.

For Faith comes not by signs, but by hearing the word of  God ! The person who has had a religious experience knows that all the symbolism expressions are faulty. The symbol do not render the experience, how can you explain the joy of skiing to somebody living in the tropics who has never seen snow.

There has to be an experience to catch the message, some clue other wise you're not hearing what being said. In the first book of Corinthians: "when I was a child I spake as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things."
I don not know how many times I heard this without it really sinking in. In the 1920 & 30 boys use to wear short pants. Then one day come this great moment where they put on long pants and you were transform so you don't have a child body anymore you're something else entirely new there no going back your no longer your mother child but your father son ! It's your faith in the larger communality that will bring you through this ordeal.

In Matthew , "Great is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth to life, and few there be who find it " or from The Koran " do you think that you shall enter the garden of bliss without such trails as came to those who passed before"  Its take great deal of faith to go on a mission or pushing parents. I don't know which the first thing you do is confess your faults of your recent living a mission is something you under take it intentionally you are going to go through a transformation first thing you do is put on a new uniform you receive a new name this let you know that you have gone under gone death and resurrection your entirety a new being you are reborn to a larger way of living. It is said Christ preach the word of God for two years at some point you have to lose yourself to your mission. Your sacrificing yourself for another just as Christ atone for are sins. L.D.S. provide a unique opportunity to live your faith in a very large way. Bearing your testimony is an act of that faith

In the name of  Jesus Christ

Amen
 
 

 He who does My work and regard Me as the Supreme Goal, who is devoted  to Me A corresponding formulation by Jesus makes the point more succinctly: (Whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it) The meaning is very clear: it is the meaning of all religious practice.The individual, through prolonged psychological discipline, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limitations idiosyncrasies hopes and fears, no longer resists  the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, and becomes so ripe, at last for the great at-one-ment. His personal ambitions being totally dissolved, He no longer tries to live but  willingly relaxes to whatever may come to pass in him: he become, that is to say, an anonymity.

The Law lives in him with his unreseved consent.
 
 

Initiation

One serpent is biting the youth between the eyes of inner vision, which sees past the display of the field of time and space. A second serpent is biting under the ear, opening the ear to the song of the music of the spheres, the music,the voice of the universe. the third serpent is biting the heel,the bite of the Achilles tendon, the bite of death. one dies to one's little ego and becomes a vehicle of the transcendent --- becoming tranparent to transcendence. that was the sence of the initiation that we have been reading about.
 

Blessing and Praising the Name of the Lord

Many texts from Qumran contain hymns of praise and thanksgiving. Some of these are clearly prayers,others are identified as hymns inasmuch as they are not specifically addressed to God and refer to him in the third person. The most remarkable of these texts is a collection of over thirty hymns found in one of the original seven scrolls. The collection is called the Thanksgiving Hymns, or in Hebrew, the Hodayot-a passage of which we will look at below.I have the privilege of working with Professor Moshe Weinfeld of Hebrew University on a collection of six small scrolls from Cave 4. Five of these scrolls are part of Barki Nafshi-a single text of hymns blessing the Lord, named after the opening phrase Bless, O My Soul. The first several lines of one of the text read as follows:

Bless, O my soul, the Lord,
for all his wonders forever,
and blessed be his name.

For he has delivered the soul of the poor
and the humble he has not despised,
and he has not forgotten the distress of the helpless.

He has opened his eyes to the helpless,
and the cry of the orphans he has heard,
and he has turned his ears to their cry.

In the abundance of his mercy he was gracious to the needy
and he has opened their eyes to see his ways
and their ears to hear his teaching.

And he circumcised the foreskin of their heart
and he delivered them because of his grace
and he set their feet to the way.17

Here God is portrayed as the champion of the poor, the humble, and the helpless.
As he has opened his eyes to their plight and his ears to their cry, so has he the power to
open their eyes to see his ways and their ears to hear his teaching, and most importantly
he has "circumcised the foreskin of their heart" and has set their feet to "the way."

Elsewhere in Barki Nafshi there is reference to the fact that the Lord
"gave them another heart" 4Q434 1 i 10). Another passage states, "My heart thou hast
commanded it and my in most parts thou hast taught well, lest thy statutes be forgotten"
(4Q436 1 i 5). The Qumran community understood that true religion can only be judged
by the internal man and not just by external acts, and they sang praises to the
God who had the power to change their hearts.
 

2. The Twofold Object of Affliction 638

4-8. Our Heavenly Father had two objects in view, in permitting the enemy to afflict the Saints:
To chastise them for their sins, and to try them, as He tried Abraham (v. 4). The sins referred to are enumerated. There were jarrings, and contentions, envyings, strife, lustful and covetous desires; the people were slow to hearken to the voice of God, when they had peace, though in the days of trouble they prayed fervently. These were their sins. It behooves us to search ourselves to see whether we are better in these respects than they were.

638

"Some may ask why we did not tarry at the Center Stake* of Zion when the Lord planted our feet there. We had eyes, but we did not see; we had ears, but we did not hear; we had hearts that were devoid of what the Lord required of His people; consequently, we could not abide what  the Lord revealed to us. We had to go from there to gain an experience. Can you understand this? I think there are some here who can. If we could have received the words of life and lived according to them, when we first gathered to the Center Stake of Zion,
" we never would have been removed from that place"

(Brigham Young, Jour. of Dis., Vol. XI., p. 102).