Simple Gifts

One of the great works of American poetry, without doubt, Longfellow's HIAWATHA gets into one's bloodstream with its trochaic tetrameter, sounding the drums of the native warriors of a bygone era. Enjoy this tribute to Native Americans along with us!

Longfellow: The Song of Hiawatha, The Song of Hiawatha (hwlongfellow.org)

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Check out our first book, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: THE IMPLODING OF AN ATHEIST PROFESSOR'S WORLDVIEW

#hiawatha #ayenwatha #aiionwatha #iroquois #onondaga #mowhawk #dekanawidah #thegreatpeacemaker #hiawathabelt #ojibway #manabozho #nativeamerica #nativeamerican #thesongofhiawatha #longfellow #henrywadsworthlongfellow

C. S. Lewis called George MacDonald his spiritual "Master." In Surprised by Joy Lewis recounts his first encounter, as an atheist, with MacDonald:

The glorious week-end of reading was before me. Turning to the bookstall, I picked out an Everyman in a dirty jacket, Phantasies, a faerie Romance, George MacDonald. Then the train came in. I can still remember the voice of the porter calling out the village names, Saxon and sweet as a nut--"Bookham, Effingham, Horsley train". That evening I began to read my new book.

What he found there was life-changing.

I had not the faintest notion what I had let myself in for by buying Phantastes.

What MacDonald's Phantastes did for Lewis, he would eventually do with his Chronicles of Narnia, the presentation of God's reality through the medium of fiction.

The woodland journeyings in that story, the ghostly enemies, the ladies both good and evil, were close enough to my habitual imagery to lure me on without the perception of a change. It is as if I were carried sleeping across the frontier, or as if I had died in the old country and could never remember how I came alive in the new. For in one sense the new country was exactly like the old. I met there all that had already charmed me in Malory, Spenser, Morris, and Yeats. But in another sense all was changed. I did not yet know (and I was long in learning) the name of the new quality, the bright shadow, that rested on the travels of Anodos. I do now. It was Holiness.... Meanwhile, in this new region all the confusions that had hitherto perplexed my search for Joy were disarmed. There was no temptation to confuse the scenes of the tale with the light that rested upon them .... Yet, at the same time, never had the wind of Joy blowing through any story been less separable from the story itself. Where the god and the idolon were most nearly one there was least danger of confounding them. Thus, when the great moments came I did not break away from the woods and cottages that I read of to seek some bodiless light shining beyond them, but gradually, with a swelling continuity (like the sun at mid-morning burning through a fog) I found the light shining on those woods and cottages, and then on my own past life.... For I now perceived that while the air of the new region made all my erotic and magical perversions of Joy look like sordid trumpery, it had no such disenchanting power over the bread upon the table or the coals in the grate. That was the marvel. Up till now each visitation of Joy had left the common world momentarily a desert--"The first touch of the earth went nigh to kill". Even when real clouds or trees had been the material of the vision, they had been so only by reminding me of another world; and I did not like the return to ours. But now I saw the bright shadow coming out of the book into the real world and resting there, transforming all common things and yet itself unchanged. Or, more accurately, I saw the common things drawn into the bright shadow.... In the depth of my disgraces, in the then invincible ignorance of my intellect, all this was given me without asking, even without consent. That night my imagination was, in a certain sense, baptised; the rest of me, not unnaturally, took longer.

"The Day Boy and The Night Girl" was published 20 years after Phantastes, and it reveals a deep intellect and a profound mastery of the art of fiction. It serves as a wonderful introduction to MacDonald's work, and will reward any amount of effort in unraveling its beauty. Like all great literature, it is endless. We pray you enjoy it!

If you enjoy our content, why not buy us a cup of coffee? via https://ko-fi.com/thechristianatheist

Check out our first book, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: THE IMPLODING OF AN ATHEIST PROFESSOR'S WORLDVIEW

#thedayboy #thedayboyandthenightgirl #thenightgirl #georgemacdonald #macdonald #photogen #nycteris #fairytale #1882 #watho #aurora #vesper #light #darkness #dark #fantasy #thechristianatheist #christian #christianity

Plato's Phaedo is one of his most read, and certainly one of the most dramatically interesting of his dialogues. It gives the account of Socrates' death-day, but contains a great deal of Plato's own philosophical musings. For the scholarly, this dialogue is from Plato's early middle period, in which we think he was using Socrates as the mouthpiece for his own philosophical theories, whereas in the earlier dialogues - for example, Euthyphro, Apology and perhaps Crito, Socrates was much closer to his actual practice as the "gadfly of Athens." Phaedo almost certainly was written before Republic, and in many ways prefigures it. One of my favorite passages from Phaedo is when the character Simmias says this to Socrates on the topic of life-after-death:

It seems to me, Socrates, and perhaps to you too, that definite knowledge of such matters is either impossible or extremely difficult in this life. That said, however, it is a very faint-hearted person who does not scrutinize the arguments about these matters in every manner possible, without giving up until totally exhausted by the enquiry. For we should proceed on these issues in one of two ways, either learn or discover how matters stand, or if this is impossible, then adopt the best and most unassailable argument of humankind, climb on board that, as if it were a raft in a perilous sea, and sail upon it through life, unless one can travel on a more secure vessel, some divine word, safely and free from danger.

This passage speaks to me of faith in a way consonant with Socrates's views (and, perhaps to a lesser extent, with Plato's), and has played an important role in my own thinking about the nature of faith in human life.

There are innumerable other valuable insights to gain here, not least the noble death to which Socrates committed himself, and the manner in which his death prefigured that of the Lord Jesus.

Enjoy!

If you enjoy our content, why not buy us a cup of coffee? via https://ko-fi.com/thechristianatheist

Check out our first book, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: THE IMPLODING OF AN ATHEIST PROFESSOR'S WORLDVIEW

#phaedo #plato, #socrates, #platoandsocrates, #socratesandplato, #euthyphro, #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 #apology #plato #socrates #socraticdialogue #trialofsocrates #piety #justice #aporia #socraticirony

Authored by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay to appear anonymously in New York papers under the pseudonym "Publius" in 1787 and 1788, the Federalist Papers aimed to rally public support for the proposed Constitution of the United States. As such, it is one of the most important sources for understanding the original intent of the US Constitution by those who participated in its construction.

In Federalist number one Alexander Hamilton sets forth the ambition of arguing the following positions in favor of the adoption of the Constitution:

"I propose, in a series of papers, to discuss the following interesting particulars:

THE UTILITY OF THE UNION TO YOUR POLITICAL PROSPERITY

THE INSUFFICIENCY OF THE PRESENT CONFEDERATION TO PRESERVE THAT UNION

THE NECESSITY OF A GOVERNMENT AT LEAST EQUALLY ENERGETIC WITH THE ONE PROPOSED, TO THE ATTAINMENT OF THIS OBJECT

THE CONFORMITY OF THE PROPOSED CONSTITUTION TO THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT

ITS ANALOGY TO YOUR OWN STATE CONSTITUTION and lastly,

THE ADDITIONAL SECURITY WHICH ITS ADOPTION WILL AFFORD TO THE PRESERVATION OF THAT SPECIES OF GOVERNMENT, TO LIBERTY, AND TO PROPERTY."

Articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the collective pseudonym "Publius" to promote the ratification of the Constitution of the United States.

If you enjoy our content, why not buy us a cup of coffee? via https://ko-fi.com/thechristianatheist

#thefederalistpapers #federalist #alexanderhamilton #hamilton #jamesmadison #madison #johnjay #publius #ratification #constitution #unitedstates #thefederalist #independentjournal #newyorkpacket #dailyadvertiser #poem #poetry #verse #literature #aestheticliterature #aesthetic #history #historical #philosophy #religion #christianity #bible #god #jesus #science #culture #society #humanities #wisdomofthepast #wisdom #classics #faith

THE EVERLASTING MAN by Gilbert Kyle Chesterton

Part One: On The Creature Called Man

Chapter Two: Professors and Prehistoric Men

Gilbert Kyle Chesterton remains one of the great voices of Christian faith in the last century, and it is a tragedy that more Christians are not familiar with his work. C. S. Lewis credits Chesterton, and in particular The Everlasting Man, with displaying the rationality of the Christian worldview par excellence, though it was not one work alone, but a progressive development away from atheism and toward God, that Lewis discusses.

I was at this time living, like so many Atheists or Antitheists, in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with Him for creating a world.

It was while in the army in WWI that Lewis said:

It was here that I first read a volume of Chesterton's essays. I had never heard of him and had no idea of what he stood for; nor can I quite understand why he made such an immediate conquest of me. It might have been expected that my pessimism, my atheism, and my hatred of sentiment would have made him to me the least congenial of all authors. It would almost seem that Providence, or some "second cause" of a very obscure kind, quite over-rules our previous tastes when It decides to bring two minds together. Liking an author may be as involuntary and improbable as falling in love. I was by now a sufficiently experienced reader to distinguish liking from agreement. I did not need to accept what Chesterton said in order to enjoy it.... For the critics who think Chesterton frivolous or "paradoxical" I have to work hard to feel even pity; sympathy is out of the question. Moreover, strange as it may seem, I liked him for his goodness. I can attribute this taste to myself freely (even at that age) because it was a liking for goodness which had nothing to do with any attempt to be good myself. I have never felt the dislike of goodness which seems to be quite common in better men than me.... It was a matter of taste: I felt the "charm" of goodness as a man feels the charm of a woman he has no intention of marrying. It is, indeed, at that distance that its "charm" is most apparent.

It seems as though Lewis himself took up this "charm" when he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia years later, introducing the real-world content of the Gospel message in a digestible form for those who might not wish to taste it full strength, and thus avoiding the censor.

In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere--"Bibles laid open, millions of surprises," as Herbert says, "fine nets and stratagems." God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.

This is a point that motivates ALL of our work here on Simple Gifts ... ALL of God's creation, and thus all of man's best creative efforts, when properly understood point us to the Creator. For Lewis, one work in particular was the proverbial "straw":

Then I read Chesterton's Everlasting Man and for the first time saw the whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense. Somehow I contrived not to be too badly shaken. You will remember that I already thought Chesterton the most sensible man alive "apart from his Christianity". Now, I veritably believe, I thought--I didn't of course say; words would have revealed the nonsense--that Christianity itself was very sensible "apart from its Christianity".

We present here this text with the hope that the effect might be reproduced in others, too.

Enjoy!

#christianapologetics #gkchesterton #chesterton #orthodoxy #westerncivilisation #theeverlastingman #poem #poetry #verse #literature #aestheticliterature #aesthetic #history #historical #philosophy #religion #christianity #bible #god #jesus #science #culture #society #humanities #wisdomofthepast #wisdom #classics #faith

The ending of this epic journey!

Paradise Lost Book 12 Summary & Analysis | LitCharts

This is an excellent summary and commentary on each of the books in PARADISE LOST. I strongly recommend reading these commentaries over as you listen to our readings of this great poem!

If you enjoy our content, why not buy us a cup of coffee? via https://ko-fi.com/thechristianatheist

PLEASE check out our first book, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: The Imploding Of An Atheist Professor's Worldview

#paradiselost #paradise #johnmilton #milton #poetry #poem #epic #epicpoem #classicpoetry #classicpoem #classics #westernliterature #satan #hell #earth #christianity #religion #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

C. S. Lewis called George MacDonald his spiritual "Master." In Surprised by Joy Lewis recounts his first encounter, as an atheist, with MacDonald:

The glorious week-end of reading was before me. Turning to the bookstall, I picked out an Everyman in a dirty jacket, Phantasies, a faerie Romance, George MacDonald. Then the train came in. I can still remember the voice of the porter calling out the village names, Saxon and sweet as a nut--"Bookham, Effingham, Horsley train". That evening I began to read my new book.

What he found there was life-changing.

I had not the faintest notion what I had let myself in for by buying Phantastes.

What MacDonald's Phantastes did for Lewis, he would eventually do with his Chronicles of Narnia, the presentation of God's reality through the medium of fiction.

The woodland journeyings in that story, the ghostly enemies, the ladies both good and evil, were close enough to my habitual imagery to lure me on without the perception of a change. It is as if I were carried sleeping across the frontier, or as if I had died in the old country and could never remember how I came alive in the new. For in one sense the new country was exactly like the old. I met there all that had already charmed me in Malory, Spenser, Morris, and Yeats. But in another sense all was changed. I did not yet know (and I was long in learning) the name of the new quality, the bright shadow, that rested on the travels of Anodos. I do now. It was Holiness.... Meanwhile, in this new region all the confusions that had hitherto perplexed my search for Joy were disarmed. There was no temptation to confuse the scenes of the tale with the light that rested upon them .... Yet, at the same time, never had the wind of Joy blowing through any story been less separable from the story itself. Where the god and the idolon were most nearly one there was least danger of confounding them. Thus, when the great moments came I did not break away from the woods and cottages that I read of to seek some bodiless light shining beyond them, but gradually, with a swelling continuity (like the sun at mid-morning burning through a fog) I found the light shining on those woods and cottages, and then on my own past life.... For I now perceived that while the air of the new region made all my erotic and magical perversions of Joy look like sordid trumpery, it had no such disenchanting power over the bread upon the table or the coals in the grate. That was the marvel. Up till now each visitation of Joy had left the common world momentarily a desert--"The first touch of the earth went nigh to kill". Even when real clouds or trees had been the material of the vision, they had been so only by reminding me of another world; and I did not like the return to ours. But now I saw the bright shadow coming out of the book into the real world and resting there, transforming all common things and yet itself unchanged. Or, more accurately, I saw the common things drawn into the bright shadow.... In the depth of my disgraces, in the then invincible ignorance of my intellect, all this was given me without asking, even without consent. That night my imagination was, in a certain sense, baptised; the rest of me, not unnaturally, took longer.

"The Day Boy and The Night Girl" was published 20 years after Phantastes, and it reveals a deep intellect and a profound mastery of the art of fiction. It serves as a wonderful introduction to MacDonald's work, and will reward any amount of effort in unraveling its beauty. Like all great literature, it is endless. We pray you enjoy it!

If you enjoy our content, why not buy us a cup of coffee? via https://ko-fi.com/thechristianatheist

Check out our first book, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: THE IMPLODING OF AN ATHEIST PROFESSOR'S WORLDVIEW

#thedayboy #thedayboyandthenightgirl #thenightgirl #georgemacdonald #macdonald #photogen #nycteris #fairytale #1882 #watho #aurora #vesper #light #darkness #dark #fantasy #thechristianatheist #christian #christianity

Plato's Phaedo is one of his most read, and certainly one of the most dramatically interesting of his dialogues. It gives the account of Socrates' death-day, but contains a great deal of Plato's own philosophical musings. For the scholarly, this dialogue is from Plato's early middle period, in which we think he was using Socrates as the mouthpiece for his own philosophical theories, whereas in the earlier dialogues - for example, Euthyphro, Apology and perhaps Crito, Socrates was much closer to his actual practice as the "gadfly of Athens." Phaedo almost certainly was written before Republic, and in many ways prefigures it. One of my favorite passages from Phaedo is when the character Simmias says this to Socrates on the topic of life-after-death:

It seems to me, Socrates, and perhaps to you too, that definite knowledge of such matters is either impossible or extremely difficult in this life. That said, however, it is a very faint-hearted person who does not scrutinize the arguments about these matters in every manner possible, without giving up until totally exhausted by the enquiry. For we should proceed on these issues in one of two ways, either learn or discover how matters stand, or if this is impossible, then adopt the best and most unassailable argument of humankind, climb on board that, as if it were a raft in a perilous sea, and sail upon it through life, unless one can travel on a more secure vessel, some divine word, safely and free from danger.

This passage speaks to me of faith in a way consonant with Socrates's views (and, perhaps to a lesser extent, with Plato's), and has played an important role in my own thinking about the nature of faith in human life.

There are innumerable other valuable insights to gain here, not least the noble death to which Socrates committed himself, and the manner in which his death prefigured that of the Lord Jesus.

Enjoy!

If you enjoy our content, why not buy us a cup of coffee? via https://ko-fi.com/thechristianatheist

Check out our first book, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: THE IMPLODING OF AN ATHEIST PROFESSOR'S WORLDVIEW

#phaedo #plato, #socrates, #platoandsocrates, #socratesandplato, #euthyphro, #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 #apology #plato #socrates #socraticdialogue #trialofsocrates #piety #justice #aporia #socraticirony

Authored by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay to appear anonymously in New York papers under the pseudonym "Publius" in 1787 and 1788, the Federalist Papers aimed to rally public support for the proposed Constitution of the United States. As such, it is one of the most important sources for understanding the original intent of the US Constitution by those who participated in its construction.

In Federalist number one Alexander Hamilton sets forth the ambition of arguing the following positions in favor of the adoption of the Constitution:

"I propose, in a series of papers, to discuss the following interesting particulars:

THE UTILITY OF THE UNION TO YOUR POLITICAL PROSPERITY

THE INSUFFICIENCY OF THE PRESENT CONFEDERATION TO PRESERVE THAT UNION

THE NECESSITY OF A GOVERNMENT AT LEAST EQUALLY ENERGETIC WITH THE ONE PROPOSED, TO THE ATTAINMENT OF THIS OBJECT

THE CONFORMITY OF THE PROPOSED CONSTITUTION TO THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT

ITS ANALOGY TO YOUR OWN STATE CONSTITUTION and lastly,

THE ADDITIONAL SECURITY WHICH ITS ADOPTION WILL AFFORD TO THE PRESERVATION OF THAT SPECIES OF GOVERNMENT, TO LIBERTY, AND TO PROPERTY."

Articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the collective pseudonym "Publius" to promote the ratification of the Constitution of the United States.

If you enjoy our content, why not buy us a cup of coffee? via https://ko-fi.com/thechristianatheist

THE EVERLASTING MAN by Gilbert Kyle Chesterton

Part One: On The Creature Called Man

Chapter One: The Man in the Cave

Gilbert Kyle Chesterton remains one of the great voices of Christian faith in the last century, and it is a tragedy that more Christians are not familiar with his work. C. S. Lewis credits Chesterton, and in particular The Everlasting Man, with displaying the rationality of the Christian worldview par excellence, though it was not one work alone, but a progressive development away from atheism and toward God, that Lewis discusses.

I was at this time living, like so many Atheists or Antitheists, in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with Him for creating a world.

It was while in the army in WWI that Lewis said:

It was here that I first read a volume of Chesterton's essays. I had never heard of him and had no idea of what he stood for; nor can I quite understand why he made such an immediate conquest of me. It might have been expected that my pessimism, my atheism, and my hatred of sentiment would have made him to me the least congenial of all authors. It would almost seem that Providence, or some "second cause" of a very obscure kind, quite over-rules our previous tastes when It decides to bring two minds together. Liking an author may be as involuntary and improbable as falling in love. I was by now a sufficiently experienced reader to distinguish liking from agreement. I did not need to accept what Chesterton said in order to enjoy it.... For the critics who think Chesterton frivolous or "paradoxical" I have to work hard to feel even pity; sympathy is out of the question. Moreover, strange as it may seem, I liked him for his goodness. I can attribute this taste to myself freely (even at that age) because it was a liking for goodness which had nothing to do with any attempt to be good myself. I have never felt the dislike of goodness which seems to be quite common in better men than me.... It was a matter of taste: I felt the "charm" of goodness as a man feels the charm of a woman he has no intention of marrying. It is, indeed, at that distance that its "charm" is most apparent.

It seems as though Lewis himself took up this "charm" when he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia years later, introducing the real-world content of the Gospel message in a digestible form for those who might not wish to taste it full strength, and thus avoiding the censor.

In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere--"Bibles laid open, millions of surprises," as Herbert says, "fine nets and stratagems." God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.

This is a point that motivates ALL of our work here on Simple Gifts ... ALL of God's creation, and thus all of man's best creative efforts, when properly understood point us to the Creator. For Lewis, one work in particular was the proverbial "straw":

Then I read Chesterton's Everlasting Man and for the first time saw the whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense. Somehow I contrived not to be too badly shaken. You will remember that I already thought Chesterton the most sensible man alive "apart from his Christianity". Now, I veritably believe, I thought--I didn't of course say; words would have revealed the nonsense--that Christianity itself was very sensible "apart from its Christianity".

We present here this text with the hope that the effect might be reproduced in others, too.

Enjoy!

#christianapologetics #gkchesterton #chesterton #orthodoxy #westerncivilisation #theeverlastingman #poem #poetry #verse #literature #aestheticliterature #aesthetic #history #historical #philosophy #religion #christianity #bible #god #jesus #science #culture #society #humanities #wisdomofthepast #wisdom #classics #faith