tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571146151683416940.post1407409616204694703..comments2024-03-16T10:05:23.129-07:00Comments on LA Quaker: If the Universe is friendly, why is there so much hostility?LA Quakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11084465501021443492noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571146151683416940.post-49165729414035615432016-09-07T11:19:00.790-07:002016-09-07T11:19:00.790-07:00Beautiful poem. I love it and can resonate with he...Beautiful poem. I love it and can resonate with her feelings. Thanks for sharing it. LA Quakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11084465501021443492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571146151683416940.post-48109740384805677532016-08-31T17:33:51.960-07:002016-08-31T17:33:51.960-07:00And here's a powerful poem for your wife's...And here's a powerful poem for your wife's memory, and for Christian, and for all those who are dying now, including my relative's best friend, a single mom who just died of cancer at 33, leaving behind 3 pre-schoolers:-(<br /><br />And for all those who've died this week in Syria, and elsewhere, horrific deaths...<br /><br />Dirge Without Music<br /><br />I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.<br />So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:<br />Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned<br />With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.<br /><br />Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.<br />Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.<br />A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,<br />A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.<br /><br />The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—<br />They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled<br />Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. <br />More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.<br /><br />Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave<br />Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;<br />Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.<br />I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.<br /><br /><br />by Edna St. Vincent Millay, <br />“Dirge Without Music” from Collected Poems © 1928, 1955 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted with permission of Elizabeth Barnett and Holly Peppe, Literary Executors, The Millay Society.Daniel Wilcoxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05178375087492786696noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3571146151683416940.post-78069343877126220362016-08-31T17:26:18.988-07:002016-08-31T17:26:18.988-07:00Hello Anthony, I just I saw this and my name;-) an...Hello Anthony, I just I saw this and my name;-) and I'm not Daniel in the lyin's den...<br /><br />Of course, like many of us do, Einstein is contradicting himself, because if everything is determined then it was determined that the Germans must murder 12 million in the gas chambers. <br /><br />None of them had any choice.<br /><br />Indeed, there can be no evil, if no one has a choice.<br /><br />Nor any good.<br /><br />Even worse, if everything is determined then, everything that happens--no matter what--was determined, and everything that ever will happen in the future was already determined from the moment of the Big Bang. (Or for the many Calvinists I battled against for 55 years--determined by the Reformed God's foreordination of all events, both good and evil down to the movement of a molecule in the distant future (R.C. Sproul's imfamous example). Or as Piper explains, every time a tornado kills people, it is Jesus causing the slaughter with his "winds."<br /><br />In other words, we humans are only finite specks in conscious despair caught in petrified cosmic amber:-(.<br /><br />If everything is determined, then, contrary to Einstein's statement, there can be no curiosity, because curiosity can only happen if there is the ability to choose, the ability to receive, the ability to marvel. "Puppets" can do none of that.<br /><br />We studied all of this at university with a professor who earned his PhD. in determinism, and then I had the misfortune to encounter thousands of determinists in my life (all sorts--atheist, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, etc.:-( for many years.<br /><br />If everything is determined (which I am totally opposed to), I guess I can be thankful that it was determined that I not be a determinist;-) Well, no I can't even be thankful...Daniel Wilcoxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05178375087492786696noreply@blogger.com