INSIGHT and OUTSIGHT

Herschel E. Moore

Description

These essays, written over a period of several years, touch on the shared human values that are necessary for integrity: personal, relational, and societal. Taken together, they suggest that integrity requires integrating within ourselves the values based on love of God and fellowman. In some cases, they warn of the dangers of the disintegration of these values beginning with the individual soul and extending beyond.

Sujets

• Self-help

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 26 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798369401972
• Langue: English

Extrait

INSIGHT and OUTSIGHT

Toward the Integration of Soul and Community







Herschel E. Moore








Copyright © 2023 by Herschel E. Moore.

ISBN:
Softcover
979-8-3694-0198-9
eBook
979-8-3694-0197-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Cover Photo by Harvey Warren




Rev. date: 06/26/2023




Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
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Contents
Prologue
I
Spirit River
The Hidden Stream
The Quarry Of The Soul
Like A Wandering Aramean
Giving Attention To God
What Held Mother Teresa Together?
The Teacher’s Touch
Church – The Wonder Drug
The Effect Of Music
Christ, The Anchor
Holy Grails
He Driveth Me To The Watering Hole?
Perfectionsim
Humor And Sanity
Fooling The Kids
You Mean Me?
II
To Build A Fire
Traps Of Fire And Ice
The Ethics Of The Kingdom
A Whole Church
The Persecuted Church
Executing The Wounded
Breeding Respect
Meteorology
Coffee With A Friend
The Pilgrim’s Progress
Beatitudes
My Eye And I
Dependence And Overdependence
Martyrdom
Not Without Prayer
The Bible, Change, And Eternal Love
Testimonial
III
The People In The Back Of The Pickup Truck
The City Of Cain
Sex, Drugs, And Condescending Commentators
Individualism?
The Legal Lethal Needle
A Right To Kill
The Message On The Wall
The Vote Re: Earth
Absurd Portrayals
Terrorist Rhetoric
Manipulating Opinion
The Evil Of Banality
Thanksgiving
On The Endurance Of Democracy Henceforth
Heads And Hearts
The Folly Of Our Time
The Flow Of Parental Love
Under The Gun
Big Potatoes
Fight At The Fault Line
Revoutionary New Greed
An Economic Summit
A Dream Of Home
A Hand To Stand
The People In The Back Of The Pickup Truck
Coffee And Cream
Looking Straight Across
IV
The Fetal Christ
Pietà, Century 21
Comparative Religion
Heaven
Shall We Say Infallible?
A Christmas More Easily Comprehended?
The Creeds And Christ
The First Confession
The Revelation
Skinned Knees
















YOLANDA



PROLOGUE
The turmoil of uncertainty and regret that we human people so often feel within ourselves is intensified by the violent conflict we witness raging throughout the world. Who could not feel shaky when so many governments are disintegrating and so many institutions are crumbling and the earth itself is threatening disaster?
Does our inner turbulence, conversely, contribute to the instability of the world around us? Surely it does. Whether borne in silence or released in violent outbursts, what goes on inside us affects those around us, including those we encounter only briefly as well as those with whom we share the days of our lives.
Our injured pride, our well-nursed grudges, our arrogant dismissal of those we consider less important than ourselves, our idolatry of power, and a thousand other factors unsettle our souls, deny us the integrity that would make us whole, and extend our inner storm far beyond our immediate contacts. Ripple effects from the turmoil within one personality have been known to destabilize nations.
Notwithstanding the futility we feel at all this, we hope for a better world, and we pray to be better people. Each of these brief essays is an attempt to express, however obliquely, the deep human prayer for a truly integrated soul and community.
HEM 2022








INSIGHT AND OUTSIGHT
A cloud blanket like damp batting
Hung over me warm and made me indolent
Closed me in and blocked my aspiration
Recalled the walls of the womb
Soft and comforting for a while.
But I was awakened in wonder by a bump
And a thought.
I thought I heard something:
“You cannot take this lying down.”
(Feeling pressure all around)
“Get up and strive for something here.
“Ask for vision if not a view.
“Others are under cover, too.
“No one can see beyond what’s near.
“Imagination is pushing through:
“With outsight shut, insight is dear.”

HEM 2020



I
SPIRIT RIVER
The Source of Integrity










THE POET AND THE SCIENTIST
The poet and the scientist are really quite alike.
You’ll see the very twist (should inspiration strike)
Of lip and squint of eye in both as if they’re under
The strain of seeking knowledge or the mystery of wonder.

Yet, the poet and the scientist are not alike at all.
One sees what lies before us, and one looks beyond the wall.
And if they share a single brain and live within one heart
Then pray the God who made them that they never fall apart.

HEM 2021



THE HIDDEN STREAM
O NE EVENING IN springtime, I pulled down a volume of Robert Frost’s poetry from the shelf and opened to a poem I had long since forgotten. It was titled, “A Brook in The City” and portrayed a man who wondered, as the city had expanded into the country, what had been done with a brook he used to know as a child. After all, one can’t just take water out of an eternal spring the way you would take trees out of a forest for lumber or heating fuel.
After investigation, the man discovered that the brook had merely been redirected into a storm sewer under the street:
In fetid darkness still to live and run
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps.
No one would know except for ancient maps,
That such a brook ran water.
The brook in the storm sewer dungeon may serve as a metaphor for the human spirit or for the Spirit of God in Man. We could say that the city, the primary tool of Man’s drive for domination, paves over the spirit, not killing it, just keeping it out of our consciousness and thus impoverishing the soul.
But there are ancient maps of the soul by which we may find renewed access to spiritual waters. One marker on the map is Matthew 6:25 where Jesus reminds us that we are more than what we eat or drink or put on. Another is Matthew 4:4 where he teaches us that we do not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from of the mouth of God.
Following the ancient maps laid out in scripture and accessed by prayer, we can find those places where the stream of the spirit emerges from its dungeon and glistens again in the sunlight of our consciousness, refreshing our souls with the power of beauty, peace, joy, and love – allowing not our domination of, but our participation in the life-giving flow.
HEM ca. 1998



THE QUARRY OF THE SOUL
Think of the rock from which you were hewn, and the pit from which you were dug. (Isaiah 51:1)
W E HUMAN BEINGS tend to forget where we came from, especially when our origins are humble (and what could be humbler than dust?)
In Julius Caesar , Brutus observes that
Lowliness is young ambition’s ladder
Whereunto the climber upward turns his face,
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back
And looks in the clouds,
Scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend.
People of faith, by contrast, are called to remember where they came from. “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there,” says Deuteronomy 5:15. The fact that we are given a special facility for doing so is illustrated in Eudora Welty’s memory of the hymns she sang as a girl in the Methodist Church.
Those hymns always sounded very happy, even when
The words ran quite the other way. “Throw out the
Lifeline! Someone is sinking!” went one cheerful tune.
And “I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful
shore, very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no
more” made you want to dance.
What a delightful observation! The song went on:
“But the Master of the Sea heard my despairing cry,
From the waters lifted me; now safe am I!”
Remembering the pit from which you were dug can be an uplifting experience when you remember also the solid rock from which you are hewn. It can make you want to dance!
HEM ca. 1998



LIKE A WANDERING ARAMEAN
(See Deuteronomy 26:5-11)
A STOWED-AWAY IRISHMAN WAS my ancestor. Fearful, lonely, hungry, and suffering under the restrictions of a government hostile to his faith, he received from the Lord’s hand, in 1790, transportation on a ship to New York where those in power took advantage of him, limiting him to labor that no one else would do, treating him dishonorably, and refusing him full rights of citizenship.
Still, the Lord sustained him, strengthening his determination to become part of this new nation, making it possible for him to move to Ohio and raise a family. He watched his children go to war to preserve the unity of his adopted nation.
Finally, heartened by the faith God gave them, his descendants