Gene Blishen


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Christmas Eve. It will be over in a minute.

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Only a few days left in Autumn and then longer daylight returns. What will winter bring?

Israeli Local Council Head Calls to 'Flatten Gaza Like Auschwitz Today' in Radio Interview - Israel News - Haaretz.com

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One wonders to what level will a human being will allow themselves to be in making statements like these,

Israeli Local Council Head Calls to 'Flatten Gaza Like Auschwitz Today' in Radio Interview - Israel News - Haaretz.com:

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Sufjan Stevens has a great new album out. History surrounding it is tough.

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“The Greeks would then have built a tomb for him; he would have won fame for his son. But now, the winds have seized him, and he is nameless and unknown. He left nothing but tears for me. I do not weep only for him. The gods have given me so many other troubles.”

Book 1 Telemachus to Athena

Homer: The Odyssey

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No other than T.S. Eliot introduced the word ‘bullshit’ into literature.

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Some excellent reasons on why to get an ebike.

www.climateaction.center/ebike

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A very colourful day break.

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Currently reading: Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman 📚

Ganymede

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  A man trades his son for horses. That’s the version I prefer. I like The safety of it, no one at fault, Everyone rewarded. God gets The boy. The boy becomes Immortal. His father rides until Grief sounds as good as the gallop Of an animal born to carry those Who patrol our inherited Kingdom. When we look at myth This way, nobody bothers saying Rape. I mean, don’t you want God To want you? Don’t you dream Of someone with wings taking you Up? And when the master comes For our children, he smells Like the men who own stables In Heaven, that far terrain Between Promise and Apology. No one has to convince us. The people of my country believe We can’t be hurt if we can be bought!

Excerpt from: “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown.

Love

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THE religion of Jesus makes the love-ethic central. This is no ordinary achievement. It seems clear that Jesus started out with the simple teaching concerning love embodied in the timeless words of Israel: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might,” and “thy neighbour as thyself.” Once the neighbor is defined, then one’s moral obligation is clear. In a memorable story Jesus defined the neighbor by telling of the Good Samaritan. With sure artistry and great power he depicted what happens when a man responds directly to human need across the barriers of class, race, and condition. Every man is potentially every other man’s neighbor. Neighborliness is nonspatial; it is qualitative. A man must love his neighbor directly, clearly, permitting no barriers between. Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman

📌 The choice is not necessarily what we do but what our direct response will be. We will experience empathy for the human need we see. There is an absence of any barrier between us at that moment. But if we do nothing our inaction begins to dictate our differences and that stymies our response. We think in terms of no response as we fear what the difference will mean. __________________________________