Beholding the Beauty

All formatting and spelling (or lack thereof) intentional. And if it turns out something wasn't -- well that just proves the point, I guess..... Life is messy  -- No doubt about it! Some of it can be UNmessed, Organized, packt up in Neat little boxes  -- With straight sides and Square corners flush and Trim -- Nary a slot for Carbon paper a-'tween 'em! Some of the boxes, on the other Hand, bulge a little bit, And the neat little grid Begins to drift.  The Yarn loosens, Unravels a tad, and Next thing you know you've got a Hair-Ball on the carpet and no idea Where the cat went.

I have an idea on how to solve immigration, and I'd like y'all's feedback: 1) Put protections in place for employers who hire illegal immigrants into this program, and for the illegal immigrants volunteering for this system as well. 2) Allow any foreigner who passes muster (normal background checks, not on terrorist watchlist, etc.) to enter this program. 3) Give anyone who completes this path full citizenship upon completion, assuming certain minimums of behavior in the interim (i.e. annual background checks, drug testing, etc., including a final comprehensive review at the end) 4) To prevent abuse by both the employers and the employees, set certain reasonable minimums on the contracts involved in this program.  These limits would initially be set by Congress, but the State Legislatures could amend these on an ongoing bases at will. 5) Tax Credits may or may not be offered by the States or the Congress for participation in the program. 6) The system is propose...

In this excellent romp through Church History, Khomiakov elucidates the impetus and disease underlying the Western Schism, and the means of its healing, clearly identifying the core values of the Western Schism in its two halves (Romanism and Protestantism [and touching on the two further halves of this as well]). Highly accessible to both scholar and layperson alike, this article includes a brilliant (and I dare say holy) description of the Orthodox Church, and a careful but direct demarcation of the ground it stands on (and a critical comparison of that solid rock to the shifting sands of the West). The reader will also have obtained, by the end of the piece, a clear understanding of the reason that the filioque  controversy is such a touchstone, and was the watershed of the schism, without having to melt his or her brain by touching (beyond the broad ecclesiological considerations being discussed, of course) on the particulars of the doctrine and/or the specific th...