Failing, misfortune, and pain. Funny how we are terrified of those words. The old Scotch Presbyterians saw these as merely a divine hand steering them towards another opportunity with greater glory. When the oppression of Scotland started in 1748 by raising taxes 450%, clearing the highlands of all people living there, and banning and crushing the cultural marks in Scotland, they saw it as the end of one thing and the start of something greater. Strange how right they were. When they were no longer able to live in Scotland there was a mass exodus of the Scotch Presbyterians to America. King George the Third said the revolutionary war was caused of the black brigades. Black referring to the color of the pastoral robes.

George Washington said, “ the aspiration of our people in Scotland can be fulfilled. Freedom shall be our call, freedom shall be out motto and voice, since we are all Scots indeed.”

The Scots had everything taken from them. Their land, everything they owned,and the majority of the men had been killed in the war lead by Bonny Prince Charley just years before. The generation that immigrated was mostly children and widows. Even in this, they believed that this was all caused to create a greater glory and never lost vision and hope in the gospel. they still believed that misfortune steers us to something greater. How right they were.

Our failings, misfortune, and pain is so much less than the Scots had and we still loose our vision.

If there is, then we should.

Is there is a God, there is a truth and a beauty that isn’t subject to relativism. If we believe in a God, then we should pursue this beauty. Culture is religion externalized. If we believe in a God, then we should create the culture. The culture we live in today isn’t anyone’s fault, except our own.

" Men are different. They propound mathematical theorems in beleagured cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in comndemed cells, makes jokes on scaffolds, discuss the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not Panache; it is our nature." C.S.Lewis the weight of glory.

There is no lack of desire for culture, art, beauty. There never will be a lack of desire, since it is embedded in our nature. People are always looking for something to fill the desire. Perhaps we should provide something to meet their desires.

We tend not to notice something until either we put in the middle of something that is starkly contrasted or loose it completely. As i was sitting in the parking lot garden at work, i look down and see a cigarette butt filled parking lot with screaming kids. I look up, and i see a placid sky. i look down and i see people making out, fighting, and attempting to use stock cars as racers around a parking lot. i look up, and there's a placid sky. There is a gift of the peace in the placid sky. The interesting thing is that we always trade even noticing that peace for something. perhaps tomorrow it'll be to try and validate myself with to the person next to me, perhaps it will be to hopelessly indulge my ego. I think the desire for validation and peace doesn't mean that we will necessarily obtain it, but that proves the existence of it.

Realizations have their limits. Our insensate questions of why, to gather more information, fueled by emotion and pain. The answers we're seeking come after our healing.

Lust. This objectifies, there isn’t any debate about that. There is something else, it limits. It limits to the physical and denies anything deeper. There is nothing wrong with beauty, actually, it’s something good. Rather it is not good as an end in and of itself. It isn’t an end, rather a beginning and falls terribly short of what a woman actually is. It denies all the depth and essence of her.