Virtue

Service brings reward,
And Vice is a good slave-master,
For it always recompenses;
So does Virtue.

But Vice is a vain-master
For at dusk the hand is empty,
And all gathering,
Good when at hand;
But to the end, a venomous sting.

Pleasure is a murderer;
Pain, a saviour:
For, Pleasure sticks to the Present,
While Pain looks to the Future.

The Present is time;
The Future, eternal.
Time kills Contentment;
Eternity, Boredom.

Time is surface;
Eternity, depth.
Time is a shadow;
Eternity, the real.

Time’s encaged by Boredom;
Which Pleasure strikes, to kill,
But makes it stronger again;
And the harder does Pleasure strike
With ever decreasing strength,
The stronger does Vice get,
Killing Contentment.

True Pleasure is Eternal
Bringing eternal contentment.
The eternal is beyond this time-bound-body.
Therefore, true pleasure is non-physical.
The physical is transitory.

Pleasure kills Pain.
Pleasure kills Work (Strain).
Pleasure kills Thought
And revels in Imagination.

This body is death;
So is Pleasure, death.

Virtue strengthens the spirit;
Vice, destroys it.
Virtue lives by the Spirit;
Bringing Pain to the Flesh –
Then, welling up to life eternal.

Ecclesiastes; 1 & 2 Corinthians..

13 June 2007

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People

I must be interested in people, they say. I’m not. I’m interested in ideals. People come and go: ideals do not.

….

Reality is now visible, after many years.
Childhood fancies of fairies and friars gone.
I searched for an ideal, but in vain.
What I’ve found is truth so cold,
That untrained youth can’t hold.
Religion is a cloak.
Virtue is intermittent; vice, perpetual.
Virtue is pretention; vice, desire.
Virtue is a feeling; vice, the current.
Virtue is a fancy; vice, reality.
Man, in ministry, is a self-centered animal.

The Christian…doesn’t exist.
Heart is witness.
Only Christ exists.
And the Christian will never exist until
Only Christ exists.

Religion is the temple; secularity, the market.
The temple can’t survive without the market.
The market pervades the temple.

June 6, 2007

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