Simple Gifts

Simple Gifts

By John and Jenny WiseEducationArtsBooksHistory
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Simple Gifts episodes

  • George Washington’s Farewell Address, Part 1

    Our first President of the United States was certainly ONE of the greatest, and arguably THE greatest we've ever had. Even today politicians turn to his Farewell Address for support and inspiration. It is certain that he saw clearly many of the pitfalls into which we fell, ignoring the advice given here. Let us listen again with fresh ears and open minds. Perhaps timeless wisdom can help us overcome the foolishness of our time.

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    #unitedstatesofamerica #revolution #independence #washington #georgewashingtonfarewell #foundingfather #americandocuments #foundingdocuments #unitedstatespresident #unitedstateshistory #americanhistory #unitedstates #foundingideals #spiritualaspirations #georgewashington #thomasjefferson #colonialamerica #colonies #liberty #greatestpresident

    15 min
  • C.S Lewis, ”Religion: Reality or Substitute,” Part 1

    One of my favorite essays by CS Lewis. A highlight from the perspective of the Christian Atheist:

    "I am not now saying that no one's reason and no one's experience produce different results. I am only trying to put the whole problem the right way round, to make it clear that the value given to the testimony of any feeling must depend on our whole philosophy, not our whole philosophy on a feeling. If those who deny the spiritual world prove their case on general grounds, then, indeed, it will follow that our apparently spiritual experiences must be an illusion; but equally, if we are right, it will follow that they are the prime reality and that our natural experiences are a second best. And let us note that whichever view we embrace, mere feeling will continue to assault our conviction. Just as the Christian has his moments when the clamour of this visible and audible world is so persistent and the whisper of the spiritual world so faint that faith and reason can hardly stick to their guns, so, as I well remember, the atheist too has his moments of shuddering misgiving, of an all but irresistible suspicion that old tales may after all be true, that something or someone from outside may at any moment break into his neat, explicable, mechanical universe. Believe in God and you will have to face hours when it seems obvious that this material world is the only reality: disbelieve in Him and you must face hours when this material world seems to shout at you that it is not all. No conviction, religious or irreligious, will, of itself, end once and for all this fifth-columnist in the soul."

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    #thechristianatheist #drjohndwise #drjohnwise #johnwise #christian #atheist #christianity #atheism #jesus #jesuschrist #god #bible #oldtestament #newtestament #nocompromise #rationality #faith #philosophy #philosopher #culture #society #religion #religious #evangelical #reason #incarnation #history#psychology #theology #literature #humanities #hardquestions #postmodernism #woke #wisdom #ethics #science #poetry #essay #cslewis #lewis #religion #religionrealityorsubstitute #reality #substitute

     

     

    12 min
  • Poems by Robert Frost, Part 1

    Three poems by one of America's greatest poets:

    "Nothing Gold Can Stay," "Leaves Compared with Flowers," and "Mending Wall."

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    #mendingwall #leavescomparedwithflowers #poem #poetry #verse #literature #aestheticliterature #aesthetic #rhythmic #phonaesthetics #soundsymbolism #metre #prosaic #literarycomposition #poet #ambiguity #symbolism #irony #poeticdiction #muse #prosody #meter #metricalpatterns #rhymescheme #robertfrost #frost #nothinggoldcanstay #naturesfirstgreenisgold #nature #gold  #thechristianatheist #drjohndwise #drjohnwise #johnwise #christian #atheist #christianity #atheism #jesus #jesuschrist #god #bible #oldtestament #newtestament #nocompromise #rationality #faith #philosophy #philosopher #culture #society #hegelism #hegel #reason #incarnation #history#psychology #theology #literature #humanities #hardquestions #postmodernism #woke #wisdom #ethics #science #poetry

    7 min
  • Christmas Message 2021

    Please listen to our Simple Gifts podcast throughout the month of December for classical Christmas storytelling, beginning with Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL, and including "The gift of the Magi," and Eliot's "Journey of the Magi," along with "The Man Who Missed Christmas," "Why Christmas Trees Aren't Perfect" "The Other Wise Man," and the Luke 2 Christmas story.

    5 min
  • C S Lewis‘ SURPRISED BY JOY, Chapter 15
    The final chapter of C S Lewis‘ autobiography, SURPRISED BY JOY, THE SHAPE OF MY EARLY LIFE. He calls this chapter ”The Beginning.” Lewis relates his acceptance of the specifically Christian faith in addition to ”mere” theism. God, he says, by His very nature as God demands our obedience, our reverence, our worship. Why Christianity rather than another faith tradition?
    ”The question was no longer to find the one simply true religion among a thousand religions simply false. It was rather, ‘Where has religion reached its true maturity? Where, if anywhere, have the hints of all Paganism been fulfilled?‘ With the irreligious I was no longer concerned; their view of life was henceforth out of court. As against them, the whole mass of those who had worshipped--all who had danced and sung and sacrificed and trembled and adored--were clearly right. But the intellect and the conscience, as well as the orgy and the ritual, must be our guide. There could be no question of going back to primitive, untheologised and unmoralised, Paganism. The God whom I had at last acknowledged was one, and was righteous. Paganism had been only the childhood of religion, or only a prophetic dream. Where was the thing full grown? or where was the awaking? (The Everlasting Man was helping me here.) There were really only two answers possible: either in Hinduism or in Christianity. Everything else was either a preparation for, or else (in the French sense) a vulgarisation of, these. Whatever you could find elsewhere you could find better in one of these. But Hinduism seemed to have two disqualifications. For one thing, it appeared to be not so much a moralised and philosophical maturity of Paganism as a mere oil-and-water coexistence of philosophy side by side with Paganism unpurged.... And secondly, there was no such historical claim as in Christianity. I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths. They had not the mythical taste. And yet the very matter which they set down in their artless, historical fashion--those narrow, unattractive Jews, too blind to the mythical wealth of the Pagan world around them--was precisely the matter of the great myths. If ever a myth had become fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this. And nothing else in all literature was just like this. Myths were like it in one way. Histories were like it in another. But nothing was simply like it. And no person was like the Person it depicted; as real, as recognisable, through all that depth of time, as Plato‘s Socrates ..., yet also numinous, lit by a light from beyond the world, a god. But if a god--we are no longer polytheists--then not a god, but God. Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man. This is not ”a religion”, nor ‘a philosophy.‘ It is the summing up and actuality of them all.”
    21 min
  • George Orwell‘s 1984, Part 2, Chapter 3, Part 2

    George Orwell's 1984 is classic dystopian literature, but it is also psychologically astute and prescient concerning the totalitarian tendencies of the 20th century's ideologies. With the rise of 21st century Wokism currently in vogue, its message is a clarion call for the present, too. Let us beware of embracing rather than opposing the lies that are being forced upon us, lest we find ourselves, too, living in a world in which we must guard our very thoughts, lest they betray us. Hold fast to the truth, no matter the consequences!

    Enjoy ... and be vigilant!

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    #georgeorwell #animalfarm #classic #classicdystopianliterature #dystopianliterature #dystopianfiction #dystopian #literature #fiction #psychologicalliterature #psychological #psychology #totalitarian #totalitarianfiction #totalitarianliterature #20thcentury #20thcenturyliterature #woke #wokism #orwell

     

    12 min
  • Plato‘s REPUBLIC, Book 7, Part 4

    Book 7 of REPUBLIC is arguably the most well-known, important and foundational texts in all of Western letters, and no educated person can remain unfamiliar with its teachings. The book opens with the famous Allegory of the Cave, which Plato says is about the education of the soul, its journey from ignorance to knowledge. It must be added to the former allegories of the Line and the Sun to complete the picture of Plato's metaphysics and epistemology:

    "This entire allegory ... you may now append ... to the previous argument; the prison-house [Cave] is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world.... [M]y opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of [the] good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed."

    Education, Socrates asserts, is a conversion process, of turning away from what is less real toward that which is more real, toward the transcendent eternal and unchanging realm of the Forms. Our guardians, then, must be taught to "see" the truth of transcendent reality by an ascending process of understanding, culminating in the discipline of dialectic, philosophical reasoning which allows us to "achieve a unified vision." In this way our true guardians will rule the city in the best manner possible, being able to model True Being here in the imperfect realm of becoming. We must, then, discover the disciplines that will lead our philosophers toward Being. It turns out that paradox, those disciplines and experiences that strike our understanding with oppositions that cause us to explore the ideals that lay beyond the mixed-up realm of becoming.

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    #plato, #socrates, #platoandsocrates, #socratesandplato, #republik, #republic, #westerntradition, #philosophy, #rationality, #drjohndwise, #philosopher, #philosophical, #philosophicalauthor #westerntraditionphilosophy, #traditionalphilosophy, #foundations, #foundationalphilosopher, #foundationaltext, #platosrepublic, #philosophy, #dialogue, #dialogues, #greekphilosophy, #ancientgreekphilosophy, #athens, #platonicdialogue, #platonic, #ancientgreeks, #ancientgreece,#hellen, #hellenistic, #athenian, #atheniantradition, #greekcivilization, #greeksociety, #greekhistory

    18 min
  • Anne Bradstreet: ”Verses Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1666”

    In this season of Thanksgiving, we remember those famous Pilgrims who dared to leave comfort, home, family and the safe structures of society to establish a new life in a new world. This month we celebrate and remember the courage, love and devotion, the strength and sacrifice that founded our country.

    In this poem, Anne Bradstreet recounts the terror and loss of her home to fire and her complex reaction to that loss, recalling the words of Job.

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    #poem #poetry #verse #literature #aestheticliterature #aesthetic #rhythmic #phonaesthetics #soundsymbolism #metre #prosaic #literarycomposition #poet #ambiguity #symbolism #irony #poeticdiction #muse #prosody #meter #metricalpatterns #rhymescheme #annebradstreet #bradstreet #versesupontheburningofourhouse #1666 #housefire #houseonfire #grief #memories #loss

    6 min

About Simple Gifts

From the publisher's feed

Simple Gifts is the gift of time and freedom. It is the simple presentation of the written word spoken without commentary. Join us in ruminating on great stories, poems, history, philosophy, theology, art and science. Amidst chaos, find the “valley of love and delight,” a true simplicity, where “to bow and to bend we will not be ashamed,” where we can ponder the greatest words ever written, turning them over and over, “till by turning, turning, we come round right.”