Episode Details

• A huge thanks to Joseph McDade for his generous permission to use his music: https://josephmcdade.com/
• Thanks to Palmtoptiger17 for the beautiful logo: https://www.instagram.com/palmtoptiger17/
• Discord Discussion Board: https://disboard.org/server/474580298630430751 
• The Historic Faith Courses: https://thehistoricfaith.com/
• My Sonnet Compilation: https://www.amazon.com/My-First-Sonnets-J-G-Elliot-ebook/dp/B01LXXIIQN/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=my+first+sonnets&qid=1585870352&sr=8-2

• Richard Rohr's "Sermon on the Mount": https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003A0IASQ/ref=cm_sw_r_em_api_uOXEFbGCN7ASQ
• Dallas Willard's "The Divine Conspiracy": https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Conspiracy-Rediscovering-Hidden-Life/dp/0007596545/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=dallas+willard+divine+conspiracy&qid=1601907374&sr=8-1

Onyx

Words our minds hear are often left unsaid

Enlightened thoughts only see light of night

Divorced from ideal, to cynic wed

Our grounded beings never taking flight

In painful world most seek only pleasure

Juxtaposed lives, like black and white onyx

Living subjectively in great measure

Those who seek to find life in cryonics

But facing life means not avoiding pain

As we defend the clean from the besmirched

With courage we retreat from the inane

To battle fallen demons who are perched

Christ's illocution is not vacuous

The cross is and is not precipitous

  [Mt. 5:1-12 and Mt. 7:12-29] Onyx has a number of variations, but the one which I refer to here is the black and white style onyx. It was difficult to get a common theme for its use in mythology, but it seemed that a quelling of fear and pain were common. It was thought to give courage in Rome (or take away fear of death and injury), give eloquence in Europe (or take away fear of being humiliated), and taking away or dampening pain in childbirth as well as quell sexual lust. It was also thought to be able to constrain evil spirits. In all of these senses, onyx seems to be a depressive sort of material towards particular emotions and entities. 

Here I thought back to my poem “The Unspoken” (see Appendix 8). Most of the things we hear in our head throughout the day are left unsaid. While this may sometimes be good, there are many lovely thoughts we have which never see the light of day – only the dark of night - because we are too timid to share them with others. 

In our embracing of the fallen world as it is, rather than the ideal that it should be (and will be as God restores it), we refuse to live as God intends for us to live. A Christian realist may understand that an ideal will never be realized until Christ’s return, at least in terms of the effects. However, they should also understand that God calls us to live as idealists, with faith and reliance on him for the means. We are a foretaste of the Kingdom as we live it out in a world that is not yet fully in submission to the King.

We are most averse to the sensation of pain and are highly tuned into the presence of pain in our world. We seek to distance ourselves from this as much as possible. Our aversion to pain and attraction to pleasure means that even if something is good, but painful, we will avoid it (e.g. exercise, the way of God, healthy food), and if something feels good, but is harmful, we will ind