When you sit alone at night,
Fell spirits of the past are crowding in your sight;
When darkness cloaks your pain in art,
Shielding from mockery the face of your broken heart;
Shadows twist across the ceiling,
Grasping at the corner where the wall resists unfeeling;
And imps read horrid tales aloud from the diary of your mind,
Gnawing at your peace of heart and spitting out the rind.
Don’t omit one horrifying tale:
God is underneath your bed.

If wights of other peoples’ cruelty rattle in your breath,
Dragging in the chilly chains of ignominious death;
Hobgoblins with microphones and “live video feed”
Mob your plastic countenance until they see it bleed;
If a hundred thousand thorny bones
Grow from a tiny pit
Whose origin you cannot find
To kill or alter it;
Sate not your lust for woe upon this draught of bliss,
But save your tortured palette for the worst–for it is this:
God is underneath your bed.*

*The scientific Authority states this very plain:
That God is just a filament of dendrites in your brain.
The real truth, though less technical, is still an awful fact:
He’s much to big for ‘in your head;’ He’s underneath your bed.

Your will was sold in hell to bend you to its fire,
Hounds sent out to fetch you thence do chase and never tire;
Throngs of mediocre souls will hiss you as you pass,
Revile the frozen soil you trod and jeer at you en mass;
Refuge after refuge stands derelict and cold,
And vultures wheeling overhead are growing ever bold.
The fields are full of razors,
The woods are full of scissors,
The air is full of darkened verses
Your ears are full of blackened curses;
The worst I haven’t told you yet; now don’t forget:
God is underneath your bed.

When God is underneath your bed, you face a fate
Less fearful minds ignore or can’t appreciate.
Lesser fears must yield to Him as chief
Of all that vexes you to grief;
For He can move from underneath your bed;
Converse with you from deep inside your head.
And if you still don’t hear or comprehend
He’ll whisper to your heart to make it mend.

If His pleasure is to fill up all the room,
And banish all the cobwebs of its gloom
He can.
If He’d rather sit with you and speak
In quietness of things that happened just last week
He will.
If He chooses to exist,
If He chooses to comfort,
To cherish,
To heal…
He is always, always underneath your bed.

Christian music icon Larry Norman passed away on Sunday. Larry was a cultural phenomenon who left an outsized impact on many people. His unconventional mind left an indelible mark on me, mainly because of his influence on my father. My dad picked up (and performed) many of Larry’s songs, and many of his quotes became part of our family’s standard lexicography.

When I first heard about Larry’s death, I heard, but I didn’t hear. I was waking up, and the radio told me the news. But it was only when they announced it a second time during my drive to work that I really heard.

Whoever said there are no violins in real life has never seen the conclusion of a beautiful life like Larry’s. The death of a saint is a powerful thing which can reach those who knew him in life in ways that little else can. It has been my privilege to see this happen a few times in my lifetime. When the beloved goes home, it is the conclusion of a promise; God never takes without giving even more abundant gifts. The picture of a life well-lived in love with God and with others leaves more than an inspiring example. It leaves us hope and comfort because we are not forsaken, and our end is better than where we began.

I never heard of Larry saying anything trite, or even remotely conventional. His faith was unflinchingly honest, and thus it benefited me more. The day before he died he posted a message on his website which was classically Larry Norman:

I feel like a prize in a box of cracker jacks with God’s hand reaching down to pick me up.

He was only visiting this planet, but what a good visit it was.

But how do you setup Africa so that property-owning free people can thrive? How did it happen in Europe and North America? The fundamental groundwork laid by Moses, Rutherford, Blackstone, Locke and Jefferson must also be applicable in Africa. The overwhelming trend toward “l’etat c’est moi” dictatorships and collectivist experiments must give way to Lex Rex before Africa’s citizens can put an end to poverty in the only way that poverty can be ended: by leaving it.

Look for more changes in the near future as I have opportunity to go plugin shopping…

But the civilized nations of Europe are packing heat (30-60 per 100). The US has 90 firearms per 100 people.

Small Arms Survey director Keith Krause says, “Firearms are very unevenly distributed around the world. The image we have of certain regions such as Africa or Latin America being awash with weapons — these images are certainly misleading.”

Could it be the 1-3 guns per 100 people in those poorer, more violent countries corresponds to the percentage of people in those nations who will use firearms without moral compunction? What would happen if the percentage of firearms were large enough that large numbers of decent, law-abiding people owned a weapon?

Source: Reuters

He was a good man. I only wish he had been armed.

Although Monckton’s tone was gentlemanly and complimentary, there can be no doubt as to the sincerity of his challenge, as he proposed “the caution and skepticism of true science” should prevail over the “shibboleths and nostrums of the false, new religion of climate alarmism.”

Having called Albert out, and having proposed a venue (the Library of the Oxford Museum of Natural History), Lord Monckton offers Mr. Gore the “prerogative and right to choose his weapons by specifying the form of the Great Debate.”

Should Gore accept this challenge? Of course he ought to step up and defend his nefarious plan to crash the economies of compliant nations and drown the world’s poor in a blood-warm sea of starvation and disease, while consolidating global administrative power into the hands of a few priests of “the religion of climate alarmism.”

But will he accept? Gore has been pretty canny about sidestepping scenarios where he must face scientific arguments with an opposition view. He may (wisely) conclude his rickety case would not withstand the pounding that Lord Monckton would mete out. On the other hand, it is such a public provocation.

Oh man, I am all a twitter.