Scriptures for Chaos

There are some among us who say we are shifting into a modern dark age of High Technology and Dystopian Society in general. There is a darkness about the modern day, and we are called to fight, as we are set against our desire to a spiritual war of wills for control over our very minds. The chaos that we are made to withstand day by day, met with the flood waters of apathy which rise by the passing of every moment, is enough to break the strongest of us. My response was to pray for peace while working to bring peace to my own life like it's all up to me to save me because there will be no Caesar coming to save anyone from the doom around us all. Whether there is or there isn't, I went beyond praying alone and began writing words to live by as I face the darkness alone. In Lesterian High Philosophy, a Scripture is a compact statement of principle which names something worth remembering or exposes something worth rejecting, and it sets the standard our decisions are measured against. As we work to become ReForged and then to cobble Routes from Ruin and Paths to Progress in service to chasing our highest ambition with the most ruthless determination, this is the foundation of our Pocket Philosophy and the home of the truest weapons of words for the war of wills and the fight for the future amidst this darkness about the modern day. Lesterian Liturgies are deliberate sequences of words and actions used to bring specific principles into practice. These are repetition with purpose and a means of returning to what matters when exhaustion and the familiar voices of our former selves drag us back downward toward doubt. And Exorcisms; these are targeted rejections of destructive beliefs and patterns that have been permitted to exercise false and usurped authority over us. Each strips away the legitimacy we granted the intruder and plants a deliberate counter-principle in the ground it occupied. "for man cannot cast out what he refuses to acknowledge, and he cannot reclaim ground he refuses to enter." Consider the arrival of despair. Scripture gives us a truth to hold: Despair is not prophecy. The inability to see a way forward does not mean no way forward exists. Liturgy returns us to that truth when our minds wander. Exorcism confronts the corruption directly: --- I know you, Demon of Despair. You came in the hour of my exhaustion, dressing surrender in the language of wisdom. Your blasphemous whispers, that my efforts are meaningless, are lies carried upon the breath of the Dark Pantheon into the house of my mind. Whatever ground you hold here, you hold by my leave. I withdraw all invitation and name you now, unwelcome. You have proclaimed the death of my ambitions an inevitable truth, feeding upon my suffering and growing fat in the kingdom of all I abandoned. I renounce your lies. With spite, I revoke the power surrendered unto you. I cast you from my mind and sever your claim upon my will. In the name of the life I have chosen, I command thee: BEGONE, devil of darkness. Return to the pit that birthed thee. BE GONE! --- Left unchallenged, despair and apathy become familiar companions and then masters. We begin to serve what is destroying us, offering our attention and our remaining years to the false idols of the Dark Pantheon. Their High Priests whisper that striving is pointless and that the human spirit is too weak to bear the weight of a life deliberately chosen and fiercely pursued. Their greatest victories are the things we willingly surrender, the years we abandon and the capabilities we leave to rot. The demons that haunt our lives draw their strength from the authority we grant them, and deprived of it they may be cast out. We must take care not to become so consumed by the darkness that we forget what we entered it to protect, so our Scriptures must also preserve the principles of the life we intend to build. One might declare that a man must not surrender his ambitions to the expectations of others. Another might affirm the necessity of rest and meaningful companionship. We preserve what we refuse to become, and we preserve what we intend to become, so that nothing is left standing in the idols' place that deserves the same condemnation. If we are destined to endure a modern Dark Age, then I shall take up the monk's mantle. I will withdraw from the noise long enough to study the nature of the darkness and preserve what is worth knowing. I shall purge Chaos through Scripture, restore order through Liturgy, and cast out the demons through Exorcism. Frameworks help us recognize what is happening. Constructs establish the ground from which we operate. Practices govern our actions. Scriptures preserve the truths that hold the whole undertaking together, so that the man who emerges from the work can build something worth protecting. - Creator Captain TheIsaacLester w/ Quartermaster Bobert L'UnBending Lux Ex Tenebris Per Aspera Ad Astra Legio Sum