Preface

Preface
It used to be that Americans believed in love and marriage, a honey-moon cottage with a white-picket fence and a sign over the door that said, "love is spoken here." Little girls grew up dreaming of becoming beautiful brides dressed in white escorted to the altar on their arms of their devoted fathers. Little boys dreamed of becoming heroic prince charmings, going out into the world to seek their fortunes and slay dragons for the benefit of their wives and children at home. It was not that long ago nor that far away that thoughts of happy-ever-aftering were a part of American children’s dreams of the future.
This book examines "Ascensions of the Fall," celebrates atonement, or unity rather than diversity, rising rather than falling, and redemption rather than redistribution. It begins with a focus on love and marriage, transitions into a study of men and women from Adam and Eve to the present, who have ascended above their fallen natures, and ends with a prescription for hope through a return to faith in God.
From such notable examples as Sarah and Abraham, we learn of faith and forgiveness; from Jacob and Rachel, temperance, and tenacity to stay the course through refiner’s fires; from Hannah and Samuel, obedience and sacrifice; from Peter and Mary Magdalene, repentance and rising every time we fall, and from Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, frugality and fidelity. In the lives of these flesh-and-blood historic figures we find the challenges to, and the prescriptions for, ascending above defeat.
More than a collection of poems, this book is a prescription for raising moral expectations. After the wedding and the ride off into the sunset, we find men and women keeping the fires of love alive in their lives. Glimpses into the thought-processes of men who have held up the world of their wives and children on their shoulders, unmasks the secret to God’s plan of happiness. These Atlases who never shrugged, and their Earth- Mother wives whose sacrificial love, frugality and loyalty to God, kept the world of home and family pure and clean, and above the morass of moral decay, provide the key to hope for the future, not only for America, but for the world.
Submission is the key. In a hedonistic world there is no power to ascend. The enabling power of grace which fuels ascension is released only by the triumph of the spirit over the flesh. Nothing less will do.