Outstanding chorus on this one and that reaches right to the soul (truly a classic for that reason.)
["BEST Bon Jovi Living On A Prayer Live 1987"]
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The girls may be a little bit over the top here, but I loved this video when I first saw it years ago (and still do.)
["En Vogue - My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)" -- official video]
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They paid Harry Potter a million dollars to fight those people in a movie, yet I fought them in real life and didn't get a dime!
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The beasts of the field and forest had a Lion as their king. He was neither wrathful, cruel, nor tyrannical, but just and gentle as a king could be. He made during his reign a royal proclamation for a general assembly of all the birds and beasts, and drew up conditions for an universal league, in which the Wolf and the Lamb, the Panther and the Kid, the Tiger and the Stag, the Dog and the Hare, should live together in perfect peace and amity. The Hare said, 'Oh, how I have longed to see this day, in which the weak shall take their place with impunity by the side of the strong.'"
~ "The Kingdom of the Lion."
It is not all that rare or uncommon for me to recommend to the magician that, instead of
incessant gossiping, brain torture radios, dispatching demons and sprights, etc., his time
would be utilized to far better and salutary advantage by re-reading the good old fables of
Aesop (c. 6th century B.C.) As wholesome as milk and only a little less venerated as human tradition than the Bible,
I think we tend to take them for granted, and yet they are familiar to us like few other things.
Who, with any shred of literacy, for instance, doesn't know the stories of the tortoise and the
hare, the ant and the grasshopper, the fox and the sour grapes, or the lion and the mouse?
Then there is the aesthetic appeal of fables; serving as they do as the subtlety elegant and
exquisite models of clarity and succinctness. There are, you understand (and as related by Aesop
editor and translator of the 19th century George F. Townsend), three rules to a fable properly so denoted, namely:
1) The narration must be sparse and only include essential details.
2) The narrative should provide a logical deduction of the moral.
3) There ought be a careful maintenance of the individual characteristics of real life people and
animals.
For many, fables are a fundamental and rudimentary basis (and [musical-like] tonic, as it were) of our ethical development and capacity for just disquisition; as well as being an adamantine touchstone of sound practical
reasoning. True, we may no always concur with the concluding moral a given tale imparts. But at the
very least the fables, in all, teach us (usually in our intellectual infancy and nascent maturation)
that there is a moral. And if Our Lord loved a parable, it is hard to imagine him not to have looked with
fondness on the fable as our nursery school for his own wisdom and gospel.
In them also we often find a strong empathy for animals. The very use of animal tales (and
which had their precedent in Egypt and the Near East) is considerate (towards them), and they are
usually depicted with artful faithfulness and precision; having it's source in animals in real
life.
At the same time the character portraits are sympathetic and sometimes moving. A sheep, for
example, finds fault with his owner's shearing him incompetently and suggests it would be more
profitable and efficient to just put him up for slaughter instead (in "the widow and the
sheep"); out of which emanates a great philosophical calm and sense of acceptance that is not
readily apparent or inherent to many of us, not to mention an implied notion of
universal morals and brotherhood, including fraternity with the animals as founded in nature and
creation.
For an authentic and very nice online collection of Aesop, with an informative and a more
thorough than usual introduction to the Phrygian fabulist and the time honored lineage of literature (not to mention the plastic arts and later film) he spawned, see, via Google Books:
Three Hundred and Fifty Aesop's Fables (1885) by Rev. George Fyler Townsend. (.pdf)
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The teachings of the ghoulish magician, or the gospel maleficis (so far.)
Honesty and truthfulness are not allowed (i.e. "Truth is not allowed.")
No one may return to Eden (i.e. not if he can help it.)
Inasmuch as Christians and other religious have a next world and or a next life to look forward to, this world then must necessarily exist, at last, for the benefit and triumph of evil.
Those who "have it too good" (without his express permission) are answerable to his wrath.
For all his admitted faults and shortcomings, he, nonetheless, gets to be interesting too.
(To which we, as always, reply – "Villain! Mind your own business!")
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He's a compulsive stalker, torturer, and murderer. Why then not transform these negatives into positives by adapting these compulsions to serve respectable and praiseworthy ends, such as besting the competition in business and politics?
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Even allowing for his fantastic wealth, he never rose in the grand scheme of creation higher than television or film executive extrordinaire. Yet others, even so and captivated by his wiles, take his to be a religious mandate.
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Some people are funny. They will curse God but dread defying Satan. This phenomena is what some people call predestination.
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When the richest person in America is an illegal alien (not to mention a ghost) then you know this country is in some serious trouble.
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A catchy motet at that...
["3 Stooges teach the alphabet" -- aka "the ABC song"]
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The thought occurred to me -- what if those running Hollywood and the mass media (both film and television) actually had to compete; the way athletes do in sports? What an enormous difference for the better in quality it would be for the public and consumers -- don't you think? (As it stands, and as you know, "the one with the gold [irregardless of how they got that gold] makes the rules.")
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Earlier I had asserted that spirit was infinite and indivisible. Yet if this is so how is it possible for us to define and delineate spirit say with respect to heart spirit versus intellect (or noetic spirit); in noumena versus phenomena; in thesis versus antithesis; in cause versus effect; in true versus false proposition; in valid versus invalid logic; etc.? The answer, or at least one possible answer, is that we can only see spirit by way of and distinguished from matter. So that just as we cannot see light itself, we can see, know, and judge light by and in contrast to the shadows it casts. Similarly then, while we cannot objectively see and talk about pure spirit or spirit of itself, we can know and discuss it objectively by its effects on and relationship to that which is material. St. Thomas Aquinas takes this view so far as to say there is no individuation or individual anything that we can know or speak of objectively that does not pertain to or involve some reference to matter; for spirit otherwise (sans matter) is infinite, immeasurable, and indivisible.
