Aphorism of the Day, February 29, 2016
The parable of the Prodigal Son, Merciful Father and Just Older Brother draws from us many projected meanings. Permissive freedom, rebellion, individualism, bad judgment, coming to the end of oneself, repentance, confession, forgiveness, restoration, angry and offended justice violated by forgiveness and restoration. Jesus used wisdom parables to teach, not by direct didactic injunction but by the indirect method of getting people trapped within a story and not being able to avoid judgments which came to convicting "gotcha" moments. In indirect teaching a person comes under self judgment and it is more effective to come to self conclusions than to have someone tell me directly where they think that I am offending.
Aphorism of the Day, February 28, 2016
We need to read the Bible primarily as an artistic text with some fragments which could be regarded as having empirically verifiable meanings. As an artistic text with the purpose of evoking the holy sublime in serendipitous readings by a wide audience, reading outcomes cannot be precisely predicted because the ways in which the sublime comes to individuals is widely varied. People with theological, philosophical and even scientific intentions have tried to bend the narratives of the Bible into neat and tight syllogisms forcing upon the Bible a coherence and consistency not to be found in an artistic text. Theologians, philosophers and scientists often are embarrassed by presentations which don't comport to the discursive practices of their own disciplines and so they bend the biblical narratives to fit their own disciplines. Fundamentalism in part is a product of people who really want the biblical narratives to be empirically verifiable scientific discourse so it can be touted as have "truth meanings" consistent with the science of the modern period. Accepting the Bible as a legacy in re-edited writings of people who struggled with having faith in God in particular communities over hundreds of years gives us a collage of universal recommendable principles which did not find perfect instantiation in the details of ancient culture and yet we can be inspired to find a better instantiation of love and justice in the details of our own times.
Aphorism of the Day, February 27, 2016
Humanity made a transition from speaking to become both speakers and writers. Writing became a technology of memory and it became a "replacement presence" for face to face conversation. When people are not face to face, they cannot have immediate feedback on understanding meanings. Speaking face to face is live; writing is dead and the "dead text" can become something different in the reading of the absent reader, absent from the writer who is no longer present to clarify meanings. In the modern and postmodern eras we have developed more virtual or cyber forms in the technologies of memory. With rhetoricity we can appropriate the discourses of intimacy and the notions of how presence is experienced in absence. St. Thomas wanted to see and touch the Lord to validate his faith. The Gospel of John understood that one could have a presence of the Risen Christ by "reading the words" of the Gospel. Sacramental understanding of life invites the poetics of experiencing the presence of Christ in bread and wine in a fellowship context. In the degree of intimacy, which is a "closer" intimacy, video chatting with a friend or experiencing the Risen Christ in bread and the wine? Modern people are opting for video chatting intimacy as being a closer sense of presence than the séance-like invocation of the presence of Jesus in his afterlife to reappear or become made apparent in the bread and the wine. In a real sense the sacraments are based upon presence in absence known through the transporting of the presence of the Risen Christ in other people and objects, such as is known in the Eucharistic event. Christianity has been sacramentally virtual long before we have come to speak of virtual presence. We postmodern Christian are sometimes befuddled by our own proto-virtual practices because the postmodern media seems to be more intimate.
Aphorism of the Day, February 26, 2016
I can recommend actual church attendance as a way of balancing our lives as increasing being lived in the world of virtual reality. Virtual reality is "time-lapsed" and so things are speeded up and we don't have to wait and we can avoid dealing with the long periods of what might be called drudgery. We often forget that drudgery can be transformed to the practice of meditation and instead of running quickly to the time-lapsed artistic and cosmetically time-lapsed simulacra of virtual presentation of the news, sports, and videos, we deal with "real time." Have you even noticed how "Reality TV" is not real, it is just another time-lapsed virtual presentation. Being in a church with real people and with no cosmetic edited removals of the awkward or unplanned is a very good way to balance our lives so much being taken over by virtual experience as we are getting really clogged up with a high volume of time-lapsed information and entertainment.
Aphorism of Day, February 25, 2016
After we have pondered why things happen to us and to others in the way in which they have, we cannot get obsessed by the unrealistic bargaining and denial impulse of thinking things should not have happened and could I turn back the clock and prevent it from having happened? We can be led to the moment of when we drop the why and assess, "Now that it has happened, what do we do?" Actuarial wisdom first begins by making the past event a statistic; it become plotted as a statistical fact as a manifestation of the probable as an actual. A gardener looks at all of remains of plants after the fruit has been picked and the green has withered and asks, "Now that this has happened what do I do the plants?" This is time of transition to the change in the function of the plant; it becomes compost. The deathly plants teeming with a different kind of life, are used to bring new life. Jesus used the composting parable after the question of why bad things had happened to certain people and speculation has arisen about the causes. Jesus went to the issues of hope and faith. The past and all its causes cannot be changed but hope is the vision of the future and faith is the application of the composted former past to a hopeful fruitful future.
Aphorism of the Day, February 24, 2016
Compost might be an evocative metaphor for how leftovers and after states of being contribute to future fruitfulness. In nature plants and grass wither and die and manure happens. Compost is the celebration of the after states of once living and vital organic stuff. Compost has the appearance of being dead and it can be the mixtures of the left over states of being of former stuff which once had the appearance of green and colorful life. Compost teems with active life energy under the appearance of death. Compost is applied to the plants which we want to bring to fruition. Past experiences and the words attached to those past experiences participate in the "appearance" of death due to the fact that the past is absolute, over and finished. But words attached to past "dead experiences" are embedded in the memory and these words can serve as something like compost does to future plant life. Past "dead" experiences memorialized in words can promote fruitful present and future action. The interpretative task of life is to make all of the "dead" past serve a fruitful present and future.
Aphorism of the Day February 23, 2016
Hegel wrote that what we learn from the writing of history is that people don't learn from reading history. We can be cynics who believe that human beings are so proud they want to be like Adam and claim originality in sin as their own unique patented intellectual property. Those from the Wisdom School of Jesus might admit that indeed "compost happens," but compost appearing to be dead stuff is really teeming organic stuff to fertilize future plants. The dead past can be the passive stuff which hangs around and "stinks" up the joint or it can be "the living compost of the dead past" re-applied toward more fruitful outcomes. The question for us is whether we are going to let the dead past stand around to stink up our lives or are we going re-possess it as "living compost" re-applied to nurture new and better outcomes. Indeed, manure happens, so make compost.
Aphorism of the Day, February 22, 2016
Hermeneutics can either be blatantly anachronistic or subtly anachronistic. Blatant interpretation of past events as solely serving present events occurs in the New Testament writers. The New Testament writers "Christianized" all of the Hebrew Scriptures asserting that the events and the writings of the Hebrew Scriptures really were "anonymous" Christian writings before Jesus even was born. This is like saying in baseball that Babe Ruth existed to reveal his eventual record breaker, Henry Aaron. We may want to say that all of the past was simply to reveal what became significant in the future. Using this thinking do we diminish our present by saying that we don't matter because we only exist for those in the future who will surpass us? We only exist for those whom we do not and cannot know? St. Paul wrote about the Rock from which Moses milked the miraculous water for the thirsty Israelites and St. Paul proclaimed: That Rock was Christ. This is the theory of metaphorical relativity gone wild and yet in interpretation time gets bent into contortionist appearances under the freedom of artistic poetic utterance. This is the kind of artistic utterances which one finds in the New Testament.
Aphorism of the Day, February 21, 2016
In life we have to deal with competing citizenship claims. We are members of many different groups from which we get personal identity through participation. But each group makes requirements upon us for our allegiance and when pledges of allegiance conflict between groups loyalty competition can arise. For St. Paul, he was a Jew, a Cilician from Tarsus, a Roman citizen and a follower of Jesus. Often these identities came into conflict for him which is why he wrote that "our citizenship is in heaven." This is another way of saying that we live and move and have our being in God. So God is the outer ring of expanding concentric circles each of which represents a citizenship group which exerts allegiance requirements. We need to live from the outer most encompassing ring of our identity relationships, viz., live and move and have our being in God as heavenly citizens.
Aphorism of the Day February 20, 2016
St. Paul wrote, "Our citizenship is in heaven." This was also expressed in the words of Jesus to Nicodemus, "you must be born from above." In biblical psychology, the original human being "Adam" before "Adam" was split into two complementing halves of Adam and Eve, was said to be created from spirit and clay or in the case of Eve, Spirit and Rib. The Divine Potter takes clay and forms the physical being and then breathes Divine Breath (Spirit) into this clay figure and "the proto-Adam before Adam and Eve" was created. The combination of dust and deity created the Delta state of being between the physical and the spiritual called the "nephesh" or the soul. In the biblical personal epic one attempts to be drawn towards the eternal Spiritual side even while one's physical body wastes away in a physical world where the effects of time results in the continual metamorphosis of physical states even to the apparent deathless cocoon state as the prelude to the escape of the butterfly spirit to a continuing afterlife. This personal epic is a poetry of hope and corresponds to the sense that something of us will never cease to be since there is hope in a greater Memory who could guarantee that we will have always have been.
Aphorism of the Day February 19, 2016
The oft crypto-poetic Paul wrote, "Our citizenship is in heaven." This sounds other worldly. In a spatially conceived universe it sounds like the Commonwealth of Heaven had issued passports to colonists who had never yet visited the home of the Commonwealth but in time would be able to achieve actual location in the Heaven City. In the world of inner-space it would seem that our citizenship in heaven means that we live from within ourselves from the arising of God's Spirit as the Omni-presence of God reclaiming lost citizens to their always already status as children of God.
Aphorism of the Day, February 18, 2016
The holy books include lots of writing about war and fighting and the assumption that God has been on the side of the righteous, meaning the side of whoever is doing the writing. The ancient world integrated war and fighting as part of life and the figure of the Warrior was one of chief occupations of life. The Christian crucible from the time of Jesus and the early church indicate that it was easier for oppressed people to be "pacifists" than when Christians came to "power" in the Roman Empire. When Christians came to power theories for just war had to be generated to justify the change of the former status of Christians as "forced pacifists" to those who could now not only protect their own but also use the privilege of power to "colonize" the world for Christ. In the modern era we have science and industry to account for effective warfare. We have the moral neutrality of the scientific worldview which serves the free market as much for "sword making" as for the making of ploughshares. The scientific worldview does not require ethics, but one needs ethics to value building agricultural products rather than war products. We are faced with the dilemma of not being able to embrace the "forced pacifism" of our early Christian roots because we live in an Empire which protects people who can be very "forceful" about Christianity. In theory, we want to be Gospel pacifists but in practice we tend to be more Old Testament "God is on our side" bellicose religionists. We might be those who "wish war would go away" even while we cannot leave the Empire within whose military might we live. In the end we might justify our Empire position by saying that it is better that we are in military control because we believe that we treat our minorities better than minorities would be treated under the realm of other competitors for world or national power, based upon our observations of how minorities fare in other countries.
Aphorism of the Day, February 17
A theophany in the life of Abram, to become Abraham, occurred when God commanded him: "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." And this was a "private rite between God and Abram which sealed a covenant. "He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away." This blood covenant meant that Abram was saying, "May this bi-section happen to me if I don't obey God." Fortunately we live in the New Covenant of being "living sacrifices" though it is often very difficult to the tame the ego toward better excellence. For our covenants, we prefer a few drops of water on an infant and reciting the baptismal covenant. Though if we look at the actual practice of the baptismal covenant the promises which we make require that our egos take continual alternation toward more Christly behaviors.
Aphorism of the Day, February 16, 2016
In a Lucan saying of Jesus, there occurs two animal metaphors, Herod as the fox and Jesus as the mother hen who wants to shelter the vulnerable in Jerusalem under her wings. The fox plunders the henhouse and "kills" the prophets in Jerusalem. A mother hen hides her chicks from the fox to sacrifice herself to the fox. In world history we have the record of powerful people harming the vulnerable and the record of sacrificial heroes who speak truth to power. The actual practice of justice would be the perfect expression of power and would remove the need for sacrifice forced by the violent acts of the powerful.
Aphorism of the Day, February 15, 2016
The lament of Jesus or Jerusalem included a reflection that it was a place where prophets are killed. Prophets who want to reform what has become the status quo in "holy cities" or places where the people with power use religion to justify that power, get killed or silenced or diminished. As complicit as the Jews are presented in the demise of Jesus, the political facts of the time was that Jerusalem was a "holy" city of the Emperor, holy in the sense that emperors were treated as "gods" and wherever they held sway was their holy city. Jerusalem was a "holy Roman city" of the deified Emperors. The Gospel accounts often do not fully represent this Roman truth because there is more of an emphasis upon the inter-sectarian strife between competing parties within Judaism which presaged the separation of the church and synagogue.
Aphorism of the Day, February 14, 2016
If one looks at the content of the temptations of Jesus by Satan, one could say that they involved the Satanic voice attempting to get Jesus to act out upon "literal and plain" meaning of words. The Satanic voice was tempting Jesus to be a fundamentalist in his interpretation of images and voices which arose to him when we was in a state of starvation which allowed the wall between the "dream and visionary" state and the conscious mind to be taken away. Much of art and literature is inspired from the liminal zone between conscious state of language use and the visionary state of being which is more dream-like. When a scientist decries a fundamentalist, the scientist is not denying the artistic states on which religious experience derives, since this state has much in common with the sublime of the aesthetic mood evoked in the encounter with a work of art; the scientist is troubled when a fundamentalist pretends that dreams and visionary material are states that conform to the empirical methods of science. Fundamentalists use the wrong method of interpretation for the wrong experience and then they "act" out in some "inappropriate" ways. Even though fundamentalists can have salutary moral practices such practices are not complemented with sound reasoning in the use of appropriate interpretative practice to a particular discursive event. The temptation of Jesus by Satan was to try to get Jesus to act out upon irrational suggestions arising in a dream-like state.
Aphorism of the Day, February 13, 2016
The practice of fasting is an exercise in learning self control. Self control is about dealing with the time between a perceived need and the gratification of that need. Infants and young children do not want delayed gratification. Like a pet that can hardly wait to gobble its food, infants demand immediate gratification. Teaching social behavior means teaching how to delay gratification and not have it ruin one's temperament. Fasting is a practice to help regulate delayed gratification for personal and social benefit. One of the ironies of the success of power and wealth is that often people want to be wealthy and powerful so as to never have to delay gratification. With wealth and power one does not have to wait; one gets what one wants when one wants it. It is ironic that some want to be wealthy and powerful so as not to have to exercise the self control of delayed gratification. Fasting is a method of control with social manifestations in that when one fasts one should also empower other people to be immediately gratified to have the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter satisfied. Some people learn self control so that eventually they can take what they want when they want it; others fast and learn self control so that they can share what they have to others when others need it. The latter is the desired purpose of the Lenten Fast.
Aphorism of the Day, February 12, 2016
The arising of the Satanic voice within Jesus during his time of temptation invites some reflection toward possible meanings. An interior voice seems to be something of an oxymoron since we may associate voice with the physical act of speaking involving the activation of the "voice box" in the throat. The meaning of an interior Satanic voice resides within the general voice of all language and all word on which the very creative identity of humanity is founded and according to the Gospel of John, Word has a personal equivalence with God. If Word is the most accessible way to understand both the ground of human being and divine being, then word expresses the omnipresence of being/Being as an infinitely open and borderless state of possibilities, or whatever may come to language. The Satanic voice arose within Jesus as the word fragments which gathered to create an interior personality even to the point of being given the name Satan, expressive of the role of a nagging Accuser. Satan as a nagging Accuser is a potential interior voice to be heard and overheard within each person, since in the collective memory of all of the words that a person has heard or witnessed there are words which have derived from imperfect human situations which are lodged and ready to arise as the return of the repressed. From all of the bad, painful, hurtful words which a person has heard within life, crisis human situations like magnets can cause the structures of bad words to coalesce and rise to form the voice of the contrary Accuser within one's interior life. And what is the best way to over-come the voice of the Accuser? To acknowledge the singularity of that loud Voice within the total field of God as the Eternal Word and Ground of all human being. One cannot let the Accusing Voice take the place of the Plenitude of the Fullness of Christ as Eternal Word. Within Eternal Word as Possibilisms the events of singular articulations of the voice events of the internal Accuser get dissolved and when the words of the Accuser get dissolved they may serve other functions in new grammatical and syntactic events, even events expressing affirmation and kindness. The interior trick is to deconstruct the parts of speech found in the Accuser's Voice and reuse them for articulating words of kindness, and thus within the linguistic field, evil is overcome by re-arranging bad words into expressions of goodness.
Aphorism of the Day, February 11, 2016
The temptations of Jesus involved the Satanic voices. These voices were concrescences of linguistic fragments which attained a personified substantiality within the inner life of Jesus and essentially tried to convince Jesus to do natural law defying things and act on imaginations as though they were empirical possibilities; something like acting out upon all of the subject matter of one's dream life.
Aphorism of the Day, February 10, 2016
The ashes of Ash Wednesday may signify the sad shortness of our mortal lives but also the precious shortness of our mortal lives. The mark of the ashes is a sign to be used as motivation as "if this were the last day of our life what sort of intensity would we bring to our living?" The Christian intensity which we are supposed to bring to every day of our lives is called repentance. Repentance is the continual practice of the renewing of one's mind (metanoia=Greek for "after mind). It is a word which means educating ourselves toward excellence and the defining standard of excellence would be love and justice. The ashes of this day remind us to live in such a way that we cherish the gift of life.
Aphorism of the Day, February 9, 2016
Musings on shriving on Shrove Tuesday. One of the sacramental roles of a priest is that of being a Shriver or Confessor, one who hears private confession and pronounces absolution. Shriving became early institutionalized using the Gospel words of Jesus granting his disciples the "power" to forgive or retain sins. One can appreciate the Reformer suspicion of such an institutional practice and its loss of institutional status in Protestant churches. Granting a person access to one's secret sins does give a person institutional power to control a person with such "forbidden" knowledge and part of the Reformation ethos was built upon the re-vitalization of the "individual" as an attending consequence of the Enlightenment. Promoting the "priesthood" of all believers decreased the institutional role of the Official Shriver. Anglicans attempted the perhaps laughable "middle way" regarding shriving with the quasi-comedic expression regarding Private Confession: All may, no one must and SOME SHOULD! One can suspect that the institutionalization of Shriving is the indication of the demise of healthy community; in healthy community the normal practice is to confess and forgive each others' sins and faults. Retaining the sins of each other is in fact a sign of impoverished community life. If retaining sins is so easy, then Shriving became institutionalized as a juridical procedure to enforce something which can't be enforced, i.e., forgiveness. Today, we live in a different climate of Shriving; there is public shriving as tabloid news attempts to publicly announce for entertainment the faults of people. There is the Jerry Springerization of Shriving when people want to make their sins and faults public acts of exhibitionism for their "fifteen minutes of fame." We have healthy "secular" shriving which takes place in wonderful 12 Step programs of people who are deliberate about amendment of life and reparation. At the heart of Shriving is the understanding that we are connected with each other both in sin and in virtue. No sin is "private sin" and the heart of Shriving is to know that one's faults can affect the community adversely. Being Shriven is a way of acknowledging one's connectedness with community and over-coming the denial phrase, "It's okay if it doesn't hurt anyone." Strive to make your community life one of forgiving and not retaining the sins of others, and if one's sin is a problem, go see a Shriver. And gets some pancakes on Shrove Tuesday as a bonus.
Aphorism of the Day, February 8, 2016
If our lives are continual metamorphoses of being the same person with different and changing appearances, we journey to Ash Wednesday when with extrapolative imagination we fast forward our bodies to their ashen and dusty manifestations as the pride of everlasting bodily life gives way to the realism of mortality. In the words of the Requiem kontakion we chant, "you are dust and to dust you shall return for so did God ordain. Yet even at the grave we make our song, Alleluia!" To disperse the lingering crowds at an Elvis concert wanting to see or touch the "King," the PA announcer would exclaim, "Elvis has left the building." The ashes of Ash Wednesday are a proclamation to grave lingerers, "He or she has left the body." Ashes are the final appearance of bodily metamorphosis before reintegration with other atoms of the created order. Such an reintegration erases the trace of our bodies and in faith we look for a higher preserving force with a Memory to reconstitute our existence in other ways.
Aphorism of the Day, February 7, 2016
The collect for Transfiguration Sunday invites us to continual metamorphosis. In the life cycle of the butterfly there are changes in appearance which are so stark that each stage is given a different name for the resulting "appearance:" egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly. Human life is a longer metamorphosis than the life of a butterfly. One could understand spiritual metamorphosis as spiritual cycles within the human lifetime in a process of transformation toward the higher values espoused by the witness of Christ and driven by the Holy Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, February 6, 2016
What is the difference between individual self surpassability and comparative statistical surpassability? The two are related in the sense that the standards for my own self improvement are influenced by my social setting. But in comparative statistical surpassability one has metrics of comparison; Henry Aaron hit more career homeruns than Babe Ruth. The statistical comparison establishes surpassability in the specific categories of hitting homeruns. How does one deal with surpassability in areas where the metrics do no lend themselves to quantifiable statistical comparison? How does one compare Moses, Elijah and Jesus, who were different religious figures in different ages with entirely different "constituents?" Do we count the number of loyal devotees? The religious leader with the largest congregation is ipso facto the best and the statistical superiority is a valid proof? Lots of statistical "winners" have turned out to be some pretty "rotten" people. The early Christ communities were trying to establish the connection of Jesus of Nazareth with the important people of the Judaic-Hebrew tradition, men like Moses and Elijah. Even as the Gospels provide a genealogy of Jesus through the actual bloodline, they are also concerned about the spiritual genealogy of Jesus. Jesus is in spiritual succession with Moses and Elijah. Moses and Elijah were not included in the messianic genealogy for Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In the messianic line of succession Christians proclaimed Jesus as one greater than David and in the spiritual succession they believed him to be one who surpassed Moses and Elijah. Why did the community get into comparisons in the first place? It probably has do with the specifics of "loving the one you're with." The focus of love upon one's favorite mentor renders the vocabulary of the superlative: "No one can compare to the one whom I love." The New Testament is not impartial writing. Its premise is essentially, "No one can compare to the One whom we love, Jesus." Take the writings of the New Testament for what they really are, i.e., love testimonials for the favored one, Jesus. One does not have to diminish or dismiss those who have other loves and who have not had the "love event with Jesus." Love is a different kind of metrics than statistics.
Aphorism of the Day, February 5, 2016
The writings in the Bible include many kinds of metaphors for the spiritual journey of faith, in faith. Terrain, weather phenomena, elevation and light and darkness. The Mount of Transfiguration account includes the journey up a mountain. It includes clouds and light. Clouds signify the "fuzzy and liminal" zone between empirical mind and unconscious mind where the uncanny sense of being touched by the luminous happens. Light can be the result of blindness caused by being overwhelmed by the experience of plenitude and when the eyes adjust to what can be seen, one's highest insight occurs as the breakthrough encounter with person, or event or some other providential beckoning. The mountain top experience includes a panoramic view of the journey one has taken to get to the top and so from the top one's past life is given a new providential perspective. The significance of the past is re-invented from the mountain top. For the early Christian community the significance of the tradition of Moses and Elijah was completely re-valued and re-providentialized in light of the new experience of Jesus Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, February 4, 2016
The event on the Mount of the Transfiguration has elements that one finds in the art of necromancy when the liturgy of a séance is held to consult with the deceased. On the Mount, the deceased Moses and Elijah appear representing the Hebraic-Judaic traditions. Traditions and the people who constituted them are dead in the absolute past and yet the past speaks through traces which have been handed on within traditions. That past speaks through the texts of the tradition and the current spokespersons of the Tradition who interpret it. Is a new event faithful to our Tradition? Regarding this new prophet Jesus, what would Moses say? WWMS bracelet anyone? What would Elijah say? (WWES) Let there be a conjuring of Moses and Elijah to get their opinions on Jesus of Nazareth. And what happened? The voice of God the Father spoke and trumped the tradition of Moses and Elijah: "This is my Son, the Chosen, listen to him." The séance was over, Moses and Elijah were gone and there was Jesus alone. The higher authority of God the Father conferred the identity of His Son. This event is a legitimizing parable of how the authority of Jesus was established by the early churches vis a vis the chief representatives of the Hebraic-Judaic tradition.
Aphorism of the Day, February 3, 2016
Who were the "no shows" or uninvited to the Mount Transfiguration events? None of the Patriarchs; why not Enoch, Noah or Abraham? Why not the great Judge Samuel? Why not the idealized Messiah, King David? Why not Ezekiel, Jeremiah or Isaiah? Elijah and Moses were the two witnesses who were invited into the vision of the Mount of the Transfiguration. They were known in apocalyptic literature and regarded to be "deathless" figures "Assumed" into heaven and therefore sort of escalator figures between heaven and earth, able to ascend and descend. They were credible witnesses in Judaism who would have the authority to confer the validity of Jesus as an Innovation, but as an Ordained Innovation in Salvation History. Moses was pre-messianic since he came before the oil anointings (from which messiah is derived) of the kings of Israel. The prophets were religious figures who functioned during the monarchy to guide or correct monarchs of Israel regarding their "anointing" or messiahship, namely their fidelity to the Law given by Moses. So the list of attendees at the Mount of the Transfiguration: Peter, James, John, Moses, Elijah and Jesus and the Voice of God (the Father?) makes the perfect Seven. One can see in this the members of the early church claiming a valid transition from Judaism through Jesus to chief apostles of the church, since the New Testament is largely an apology for how and why the church separated from the synagogue. Christianity is a continuity with the Jewish traditions but not the same continuity which has prevailed within the synagogues.
Aphorism of the Day, February 2, 2016
If one were going to write the special effects of a theophany what would one include? How would one write about the twilight time between leaving a dreamlike visionary state and returning to one's "ordinary" mind? Mountain top location for the archetypal meeting place between divinity and humanity. Clouds to signify the mystery of not being fully able to fully connect the visionary state with the ordinary state of mind. Things get "fuzzy." Lots of light especially highlighting the central focus of the vision within the clouds. Reconnoiter with famous mountain top men of the past, Moses and Elijah, who are associated as apocalyptic figures who unveil the meaning of events. Cue the voice of God as another element conveying authority. Include some star-struck students who are not sure what to make of the "shock and awe." Highlight what the new message is; in this case not the Law of Moses, not the Prophetic message of Elijah but the Person of Jesus Christ. And finally, write about its secrecy; no better way to gain literary curiosity than to say something should be kept a secret. To include the secret in the writings of the Book with the largest readership in the history of the world is an invitation for the reader to seek to know the secret in a personal way. The report of the theophany of the Transfiguration reveals the method of mystagogy (teaching the mystery of Christ) in the early churches.
Aphorism of the Day, February 1, 2016
The parable of the Prodigal Son, Merciful Father and Just Older Brother draws from us many projected meanings. Permissive freedom, rebellion, individualism, bad judgment, coming to the end of oneself, repentance, confession, forgiveness, restoration, angry and offended justice violated by forgiveness and restoration. Jesus used wisdom parables to teach, not by direct didactic injunction but by the indirect method of getting people trapped within a story and not being able to avoid judgments which came to convicting "gotcha" moments. In indirect teaching a person comes under self judgment and it is more effective to come to self conclusions than to have someone tell me directly where they think that I am offending.
Aphorism of the Day, February 28, 2016
We need to read the Bible primarily as an artistic text with some fragments which could be regarded as having empirically verifiable meanings. As an artistic text with the purpose of evoking the holy sublime in serendipitous readings by a wide audience, reading outcomes cannot be precisely predicted because the ways in which the sublime comes to individuals is widely varied. People with theological, philosophical and even scientific intentions have tried to bend the narratives of the Bible into neat and tight syllogisms forcing upon the Bible a coherence and consistency not to be found in an artistic text. Theologians, philosophers and scientists often are embarrassed by presentations which don't comport to the discursive practices of their own disciplines and so they bend the biblical narratives to fit their own disciplines. Fundamentalism in part is a product of people who really want the biblical narratives to be empirically verifiable scientific discourse so it can be touted as have "truth meanings" consistent with the science of the modern period. Accepting the Bible as a legacy in re-edited writings of people who struggled with having faith in God in particular communities over hundreds of years gives us a collage of universal recommendable principles which did not find perfect instantiation in the details of ancient culture and yet we can be inspired to find a better instantiation of love and justice in the details of our own times.
Aphorism of the Day, February 27, 2016
Humanity made a transition from speaking to become both speakers and writers. Writing became a technology of memory and it became a "replacement presence" for face to face conversation. When people are not face to face, they cannot have immediate feedback on understanding meanings. Speaking face to face is live; writing is dead and the "dead text" can become something different in the reading of the absent reader, absent from the writer who is no longer present to clarify meanings. In the modern and postmodern eras we have developed more virtual or cyber forms in the technologies of memory. With rhetoricity we can appropriate the discourses of intimacy and the notions of how presence is experienced in absence. St. Thomas wanted to see and touch the Lord to validate his faith. The Gospel of John understood that one could have a presence of the Risen Christ by "reading the words" of the Gospel. Sacramental understanding of life invites the poetics of experiencing the presence of Christ in bread and wine in a fellowship context. In the degree of intimacy, which is a "closer" intimacy, video chatting with a friend or experiencing the Risen Christ in bread and the wine? Modern people are opting for video chatting intimacy as being a closer sense of presence than the séance-like invocation of the presence of Jesus in his afterlife to reappear or become made apparent in the bread and the wine. In a real sense the sacraments are based upon presence in absence known through the transporting of the presence of the Risen Christ in other people and objects, such as is known in the Eucharistic event. Christianity has been sacramentally virtual long before we have come to speak of virtual presence. We postmodern Christian are sometimes befuddled by our own proto-virtual practices because the postmodern media seems to be more intimate.
Aphorism of the Day, February 26, 2016
I can recommend actual church attendance as a way of balancing our lives as increasing being lived in the world of virtual reality. Virtual reality is "time-lapsed" and so things are speeded up and we don't have to wait and we can avoid dealing with the long periods of what might be called drudgery. We often forget that drudgery can be transformed to the practice of meditation and instead of running quickly to the time-lapsed artistic and cosmetically time-lapsed simulacra of virtual presentation of the news, sports, and videos, we deal with "real time." Have you even noticed how "Reality TV" is not real, it is just another time-lapsed virtual presentation. Being in a church with real people and with no cosmetic edited removals of the awkward or unplanned is a very good way to balance our lives so much being taken over by virtual experience as we are getting really clogged up with a high volume of time-lapsed information and entertainment.
Aphorism of Day, February 25, 2016
After we have pondered why things happen to us and to others in the way in which they have, we cannot get obsessed by the unrealistic bargaining and denial impulse of thinking things should not have happened and could I turn back the clock and prevent it from having happened? We can be led to the moment of when we drop the why and assess, "Now that it has happened, what do we do?" Actuarial wisdom first begins by making the past event a statistic; it become plotted as a statistical fact as a manifestation of the probable as an actual. A gardener looks at all of remains of plants after the fruit has been picked and the green has withered and asks, "Now that this has happened what do I do the plants?" This is time of transition to the change in the function of the plant; it becomes compost. The deathly plants teeming with a different kind of life, are used to bring new life. Jesus used the composting parable after the question of why bad things had happened to certain people and speculation has arisen about the causes. Jesus went to the issues of hope and faith. The past and all its causes cannot be changed but hope is the vision of the future and faith is the application of the composted former past to a hopeful fruitful future.
Aphorism of the Day, February 24, 2016
Compost might be an evocative metaphor for how leftovers and after states of being contribute to future fruitfulness. In nature plants and grass wither and die and manure happens. Compost is the celebration of the after states of once living and vital organic stuff. Compost has the appearance of being dead and it can be the mixtures of the left over states of being of former stuff which once had the appearance of green and colorful life. Compost teems with active life energy under the appearance of death. Compost is applied to the plants which we want to bring to fruition. Past experiences and the words attached to those past experiences participate in the "appearance" of death due to the fact that the past is absolute, over and finished. But words attached to past "dead experiences" are embedded in the memory and these words can serve as something like compost does to future plant life. Past "dead" experiences memorialized in words can promote fruitful present and future action. The interpretative task of life is to make all of the "dead" past serve a fruitful present and future.
Aphorism of the Day February 23, 2016
Hegel wrote that what we learn from the writing of history is that people don't learn from reading history. We can be cynics who believe that human beings are so proud they want to be like Adam and claim originality in sin as their own unique patented intellectual property. Those from the Wisdom School of Jesus might admit that indeed "compost happens," but compost appearing to be dead stuff is really teeming organic stuff to fertilize future plants. The dead past can be the passive stuff which hangs around and "stinks" up the joint or it can be "the living compost of the dead past" re-applied toward more fruitful outcomes. The question for us is whether we are going to let the dead past stand around to stink up our lives or are we going re-possess it as "living compost" re-applied to nurture new and better outcomes. Indeed, manure happens, so make compost.
Aphorism of the Day, February 22, 2016
Hermeneutics can either be blatantly anachronistic or subtly anachronistic. Blatant interpretation of past events as solely serving present events occurs in the New Testament writers. The New Testament writers "Christianized" all of the Hebrew Scriptures asserting that the events and the writings of the Hebrew Scriptures really were "anonymous" Christian writings before Jesus even was born. This is like saying in baseball that Babe Ruth existed to reveal his eventual record breaker, Henry Aaron. We may want to say that all of the past was simply to reveal what became significant in the future. Using this thinking do we diminish our present by saying that we don't matter because we only exist for those in the future who will surpass us? We only exist for those whom we do not and cannot know? St. Paul wrote about the Rock from which Moses milked the miraculous water for the thirsty Israelites and St. Paul proclaimed: That Rock was Christ. This is the theory of metaphorical relativity gone wild and yet in interpretation time gets bent into contortionist appearances under the freedom of artistic poetic utterance. This is the kind of artistic utterances which one finds in the New Testament.
Aphorism of the Day, February 21, 2016
In life we have to deal with competing citizenship claims. We are members of many different groups from which we get personal identity through participation. But each group makes requirements upon us for our allegiance and when pledges of allegiance conflict between groups loyalty competition can arise. For St. Paul, he was a Jew, a Cilician from Tarsus, a Roman citizen and a follower of Jesus. Often these identities came into conflict for him which is why he wrote that "our citizenship is in heaven." This is another way of saying that we live and move and have our being in God. So God is the outer ring of expanding concentric circles each of which represents a citizenship group which exerts allegiance requirements. We need to live from the outer most encompassing ring of our identity relationships, viz., live and move and have our being in God as heavenly citizens.
Aphorism of the Day February 20, 2016
St. Paul wrote, "Our citizenship is in heaven." This was also expressed in the words of Jesus to Nicodemus, "you must be born from above." In biblical psychology, the original human being "Adam" before "Adam" was split into two complementing halves of Adam and Eve, was said to be created from spirit and clay or in the case of Eve, Spirit and Rib. The Divine Potter takes clay and forms the physical being and then breathes Divine Breath (Spirit) into this clay figure and "the proto-Adam before Adam and Eve" was created. The combination of dust and deity created the Delta state of being between the physical and the spiritual called the "nephesh" or the soul. In the biblical personal epic one attempts to be drawn towards the eternal Spiritual side even while one's physical body wastes away in a physical world where the effects of time results in the continual metamorphosis of physical states even to the apparent deathless cocoon state as the prelude to the escape of the butterfly spirit to a continuing afterlife. This personal epic is a poetry of hope and corresponds to the sense that something of us will never cease to be since there is hope in a greater Memory who could guarantee that we will have always have been.
Aphorism of the Day February 19, 2016
The oft crypto-poetic Paul wrote, "Our citizenship is in heaven." This sounds other worldly. In a spatially conceived universe it sounds like the Commonwealth of Heaven had issued passports to colonists who had never yet visited the home of the Commonwealth but in time would be able to achieve actual location in the Heaven City. In the world of inner-space it would seem that our citizenship in heaven means that we live from within ourselves from the arising of God's Spirit as the Omni-presence of God reclaiming lost citizens to their always already status as children of God.
Aphorism of the Day, February 18, 2016
The holy books include lots of writing about war and fighting and the assumption that God has been on the side of the righteous, meaning the side of whoever is doing the writing. The ancient world integrated war and fighting as part of life and the figure of the Warrior was one of chief occupations of life. The Christian crucible from the time of Jesus and the early church indicate that it was easier for oppressed people to be "pacifists" than when Christians came to "power" in the Roman Empire. When Christians came to power theories for just war had to be generated to justify the change of the former status of Christians as "forced pacifists" to those who could now not only protect their own but also use the privilege of power to "colonize" the world for Christ. In the modern era we have science and industry to account for effective warfare. We have the moral neutrality of the scientific worldview which serves the free market as much for "sword making" as for the making of ploughshares. The scientific worldview does not require ethics, but one needs ethics to value building agricultural products rather than war products. We are faced with the dilemma of not being able to embrace the "forced pacifism" of our early Christian roots because we live in an Empire which protects people who can be very "forceful" about Christianity. In theory, we want to be Gospel pacifists but in practice we tend to be more Old Testament "God is on our side" bellicose religionists. We might be those who "wish war would go away" even while we cannot leave the Empire within whose military might we live. In the end we might justify our Empire position by saying that it is better that we are in military control because we believe that we treat our minorities better than minorities would be treated under the realm of other competitors for world or national power, based upon our observations of how minorities fare in other countries.
Aphorism of the Day, February 17
A theophany in the life of Abram, to become Abraham, occurred when God commanded him: "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." And this was a "private rite between God and Abram which sealed a covenant. "He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away." This blood covenant meant that Abram was saying, "May this bi-section happen to me if I don't obey God." Fortunately we live in the New Covenant of being "living sacrifices" though it is often very difficult to the tame the ego toward better excellence. For our covenants, we prefer a few drops of water on an infant and reciting the baptismal covenant. Though if we look at the actual practice of the baptismal covenant the promises which we make require that our egos take continual alternation toward more Christly behaviors.
Aphorism of the Day, February 16, 2016
In a Lucan saying of Jesus, there occurs two animal metaphors, Herod as the fox and Jesus as the mother hen who wants to shelter the vulnerable in Jerusalem under her wings. The fox plunders the henhouse and "kills" the prophets in Jerusalem. A mother hen hides her chicks from the fox to sacrifice herself to the fox. In world history we have the record of powerful people harming the vulnerable and the record of sacrificial heroes who speak truth to power. The actual practice of justice would be the perfect expression of power and would remove the need for sacrifice forced by the violent acts of the powerful.
Aphorism of the Day, February 15, 2016
The lament of Jesus or Jerusalem included a reflection that it was a place where prophets are killed. Prophets who want to reform what has become the status quo in "holy cities" or places where the people with power use religion to justify that power, get killed or silenced or diminished. As complicit as the Jews are presented in the demise of Jesus, the political facts of the time was that Jerusalem was a "holy" city of the Emperor, holy in the sense that emperors were treated as "gods" and wherever they held sway was their holy city. Jerusalem was a "holy Roman city" of the deified Emperors. The Gospel accounts often do not fully represent this Roman truth because there is more of an emphasis upon the inter-sectarian strife between competing parties within Judaism which presaged the separation of the church and synagogue.
Aphorism of the Day, February 14, 2016
If one looks at the content of the temptations of Jesus by Satan, one could say that they involved the Satanic voice attempting to get Jesus to act out upon "literal and plain" meaning of words. The Satanic voice was tempting Jesus to be a fundamentalist in his interpretation of images and voices which arose to him when we was in a state of starvation which allowed the wall between the "dream and visionary" state and the conscious mind to be taken away. Much of art and literature is inspired from the liminal zone between conscious state of language use and the visionary state of being which is more dream-like. When a scientist decries a fundamentalist, the scientist is not denying the artistic states on which religious experience derives, since this state has much in common with the sublime of the aesthetic mood evoked in the encounter with a work of art; the scientist is troubled when a fundamentalist pretends that dreams and visionary material are states that conform to the empirical methods of science. Fundamentalists use the wrong method of interpretation for the wrong experience and then they "act" out in some "inappropriate" ways. Even though fundamentalists can have salutary moral practices such practices are not complemented with sound reasoning in the use of appropriate interpretative practice to a particular discursive event. The temptation of Jesus by Satan was to try to get Jesus to act out upon irrational suggestions arising in a dream-like state.
Aphorism of the Day, February 13, 2016
The practice of fasting is an exercise in learning self control. Self control is about dealing with the time between a perceived need and the gratification of that need. Infants and young children do not want delayed gratification. Like a pet that can hardly wait to gobble its food, infants demand immediate gratification. Teaching social behavior means teaching how to delay gratification and not have it ruin one's temperament. Fasting is a practice to help regulate delayed gratification for personal and social benefit. One of the ironies of the success of power and wealth is that often people want to be wealthy and powerful so as to never have to delay gratification. With wealth and power one does not have to wait; one gets what one wants when one wants it. It is ironic that some want to be wealthy and powerful so as not to have to exercise the self control of delayed gratification. Fasting is a method of control with social manifestations in that when one fasts one should also empower other people to be immediately gratified to have the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter satisfied. Some people learn self control so that eventually they can take what they want when they want it; others fast and learn self control so that they can share what they have to others when others need it. The latter is the desired purpose of the Lenten Fast.
Aphorism of the Day, February 12, 2016
The arising of the Satanic voice within Jesus during his time of temptation invites some reflection toward possible meanings. An interior voice seems to be something of an oxymoron since we may associate voice with the physical act of speaking involving the activation of the "voice box" in the throat. The meaning of an interior Satanic voice resides within the general voice of all language and all word on which the very creative identity of humanity is founded and according to the Gospel of John, Word has a personal equivalence with God. If Word is the most accessible way to understand both the ground of human being and divine being, then word expresses the omnipresence of being/Being as an infinitely open and borderless state of possibilities, or whatever may come to language. The Satanic voice arose within Jesus as the word fragments which gathered to create an interior personality even to the point of being given the name Satan, expressive of the role of a nagging Accuser. Satan as a nagging Accuser is a potential interior voice to be heard and overheard within each person, since in the collective memory of all of the words that a person has heard or witnessed there are words which have derived from imperfect human situations which are lodged and ready to arise as the return of the repressed. From all of the bad, painful, hurtful words which a person has heard within life, crisis human situations like magnets can cause the structures of bad words to coalesce and rise to form the voice of the contrary Accuser within one's interior life. And what is the best way to over-come the voice of the Accuser? To acknowledge the singularity of that loud Voice within the total field of God as the Eternal Word and Ground of all human being. One cannot let the Accusing Voice take the place of the Plenitude of the Fullness of Christ as Eternal Word. Within Eternal Word as Possibilisms the events of singular articulations of the voice events of the internal Accuser get dissolved and when the words of the Accuser get dissolved they may serve other functions in new grammatical and syntactic events, even events expressing affirmation and kindness. The interior trick is to deconstruct the parts of speech found in the Accuser's Voice and reuse them for articulating words of kindness, and thus within the linguistic field, evil is overcome by re-arranging bad words into expressions of goodness.
Aphorism of the Day, February 11, 2016
The temptations of Jesus involved the Satanic voices. These voices were concrescences of linguistic fragments which attained a personified substantiality within the inner life of Jesus and essentially tried to convince Jesus to do natural law defying things and act on imaginations as though they were empirical possibilities; something like acting out upon all of the subject matter of one's dream life.
Aphorism of the Day, February 10, 2016
The ashes of Ash Wednesday may signify the sad shortness of our mortal lives but also the precious shortness of our mortal lives. The mark of the ashes is a sign to be used as motivation as "if this were the last day of our life what sort of intensity would we bring to our living?" The Christian intensity which we are supposed to bring to every day of our lives is called repentance. Repentance is the continual practice of the renewing of one's mind (metanoia=Greek for "after mind). It is a word which means educating ourselves toward excellence and the defining standard of excellence would be love and justice. The ashes of this day remind us to live in such a way that we cherish the gift of life.
Aphorism of the Day, February 9, 2016
Musings on shriving on Shrove Tuesday. One of the sacramental roles of a priest is that of being a Shriver or Confessor, one who hears private confession and pronounces absolution. Shriving became early institutionalized using the Gospel words of Jesus granting his disciples the "power" to forgive or retain sins. One can appreciate the Reformer suspicion of such an institutional practice and its loss of institutional status in Protestant churches. Granting a person access to one's secret sins does give a person institutional power to control a person with such "forbidden" knowledge and part of the Reformation ethos was built upon the re-vitalization of the "individual" as an attending consequence of the Enlightenment. Promoting the "priesthood" of all believers decreased the institutional role of the Official Shriver. Anglicans attempted the perhaps laughable "middle way" regarding shriving with the quasi-comedic expression regarding Private Confession: All may, no one must and SOME SHOULD! One can suspect that the institutionalization of Shriving is the indication of the demise of healthy community; in healthy community the normal practice is to confess and forgive each others' sins and faults. Retaining the sins of each other is in fact a sign of impoverished community life. If retaining sins is so easy, then Shriving became institutionalized as a juridical procedure to enforce something which can't be enforced, i.e., forgiveness. Today, we live in a different climate of Shriving; there is public shriving as tabloid news attempts to publicly announce for entertainment the faults of people. There is the Jerry Springerization of Shriving when people want to make their sins and faults public acts of exhibitionism for their "fifteen minutes of fame." We have healthy "secular" shriving which takes place in wonderful 12 Step programs of people who are deliberate about amendment of life and reparation. At the heart of Shriving is the understanding that we are connected with each other both in sin and in virtue. No sin is "private sin" and the heart of Shriving is to know that one's faults can affect the community adversely. Being Shriven is a way of acknowledging one's connectedness with community and over-coming the denial phrase, "It's okay if it doesn't hurt anyone." Strive to make your community life one of forgiving and not retaining the sins of others, and if one's sin is a problem, go see a Shriver. And gets some pancakes on Shrove Tuesday as a bonus.
Aphorism of the Day, February 8, 2016
If our lives are continual metamorphoses of being the same person with different and changing appearances, we journey to Ash Wednesday when with extrapolative imagination we fast forward our bodies to their ashen and dusty manifestations as the pride of everlasting bodily life gives way to the realism of mortality. In the words of the Requiem kontakion we chant, "you are dust and to dust you shall return for so did God ordain. Yet even at the grave we make our song, Alleluia!" To disperse the lingering crowds at an Elvis concert wanting to see or touch the "King," the PA announcer would exclaim, "Elvis has left the building." The ashes of Ash Wednesday are a proclamation to grave lingerers, "He or she has left the body." Ashes are the final appearance of bodily metamorphosis before reintegration with other atoms of the created order. Such an reintegration erases the trace of our bodies and in faith we look for a higher preserving force with a Memory to reconstitute our existence in other ways.
Aphorism of the Day, February 7, 2016
The collect for Transfiguration Sunday invites us to continual metamorphosis. In the life cycle of the butterfly there are changes in appearance which are so stark that each stage is given a different name for the resulting "appearance:" egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly. Human life is a longer metamorphosis than the life of a butterfly. One could understand spiritual metamorphosis as spiritual cycles within the human lifetime in a process of transformation toward the higher values espoused by the witness of Christ and driven by the Holy Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, February 6, 2016
What is the difference between individual self surpassability and comparative statistical surpassability? The two are related in the sense that the standards for my own self improvement are influenced by my social setting. But in comparative statistical surpassability one has metrics of comparison; Henry Aaron hit more career homeruns than Babe Ruth. The statistical comparison establishes surpassability in the specific categories of hitting homeruns. How does one deal with surpassability in areas where the metrics do no lend themselves to quantifiable statistical comparison? How does one compare Moses, Elijah and Jesus, who were different religious figures in different ages with entirely different "constituents?" Do we count the number of loyal devotees? The religious leader with the largest congregation is ipso facto the best and the statistical superiority is a valid proof? Lots of statistical "winners" have turned out to be some pretty "rotten" people. The early Christ communities were trying to establish the connection of Jesus of Nazareth with the important people of the Judaic-Hebrew tradition, men like Moses and Elijah. Even as the Gospels provide a genealogy of Jesus through the actual bloodline, they are also concerned about the spiritual genealogy of Jesus. Jesus is in spiritual succession with Moses and Elijah. Moses and Elijah were not included in the messianic genealogy for Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In the messianic line of succession Christians proclaimed Jesus as one greater than David and in the spiritual succession they believed him to be one who surpassed Moses and Elijah. Why did the community get into comparisons in the first place? It probably has do with the specifics of "loving the one you're with." The focus of love upon one's favorite mentor renders the vocabulary of the superlative: "No one can compare to the one whom I love." The New Testament is not impartial writing. Its premise is essentially, "No one can compare to the One whom we love, Jesus." Take the writings of the New Testament for what they really are, i.e., love testimonials for the favored one, Jesus. One does not have to diminish or dismiss those who have other loves and who have not had the "love event with Jesus." Love is a different kind of metrics than statistics.
Aphorism of the Day, February 5, 2016
The writings in the Bible include many kinds of metaphors for the spiritual journey of faith, in faith. Terrain, weather phenomena, elevation and light and darkness. The Mount of Transfiguration account includes the journey up a mountain. It includes clouds and light. Clouds signify the "fuzzy and liminal" zone between empirical mind and unconscious mind where the uncanny sense of being touched by the luminous happens. Light can be the result of blindness caused by being overwhelmed by the experience of plenitude and when the eyes adjust to what can be seen, one's highest insight occurs as the breakthrough encounter with person, or event or some other providential beckoning. The mountain top experience includes a panoramic view of the journey one has taken to get to the top and so from the top one's past life is given a new providential perspective. The significance of the past is re-invented from the mountain top. For the early Christian community the significance of the tradition of Moses and Elijah was completely re-valued and re-providentialized in light of the new experience of Jesus Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, February 4, 2016
The event on the Mount of the Transfiguration has elements that one finds in the art of necromancy when the liturgy of a séance is held to consult with the deceased. On the Mount, the deceased Moses and Elijah appear representing the Hebraic-Judaic traditions. Traditions and the people who constituted them are dead in the absolute past and yet the past speaks through traces which have been handed on within traditions. That past speaks through the texts of the tradition and the current spokespersons of the Tradition who interpret it. Is a new event faithful to our Tradition? Regarding this new prophet Jesus, what would Moses say? WWMS bracelet anyone? What would Elijah say? (WWES) Let there be a conjuring of Moses and Elijah to get their opinions on Jesus of Nazareth. And what happened? The voice of God the Father spoke and trumped the tradition of Moses and Elijah: "This is my Son, the Chosen, listen to him." The séance was over, Moses and Elijah were gone and there was Jesus alone. The higher authority of God the Father conferred the identity of His Son. This event is a legitimizing parable of how the authority of Jesus was established by the early churches vis a vis the chief representatives of the Hebraic-Judaic tradition.
Aphorism of the Day, February 3, 2016
Who were the "no shows" or uninvited to the Mount Transfiguration events? None of the Patriarchs; why not Enoch, Noah or Abraham? Why not the great Judge Samuel? Why not the idealized Messiah, King David? Why not Ezekiel, Jeremiah or Isaiah? Elijah and Moses were the two witnesses who were invited into the vision of the Mount of the Transfiguration. They were known in apocalyptic literature and regarded to be "deathless" figures "Assumed" into heaven and therefore sort of escalator figures between heaven and earth, able to ascend and descend. They were credible witnesses in Judaism who would have the authority to confer the validity of Jesus as an Innovation, but as an Ordained Innovation in Salvation History. Moses was pre-messianic since he came before the oil anointings (from which messiah is derived) of the kings of Israel. The prophets were religious figures who functioned during the monarchy to guide or correct monarchs of Israel regarding their "anointing" or messiahship, namely their fidelity to the Law given by Moses. So the list of attendees at the Mount of the Transfiguration: Peter, James, John, Moses, Elijah and Jesus and the Voice of God (the Father?) makes the perfect Seven. One can see in this the members of the early church claiming a valid transition from Judaism through Jesus to chief apostles of the church, since the New Testament is largely an apology for how and why the church separated from the synagogue. Christianity is a continuity with the Jewish traditions but not the same continuity which has prevailed within the synagogues.
Aphorism of the Day, February 2, 2016
If one were going to write the special effects of a theophany what would one include? How would one write about the twilight time between leaving a dreamlike visionary state and returning to one's "ordinary" mind? Mountain top location for the archetypal meeting place between divinity and humanity. Clouds to signify the mystery of not being fully able to fully connect the visionary state with the ordinary state of mind. Things get "fuzzy." Lots of light especially highlighting the central focus of the vision within the clouds. Reconnoiter with famous mountain top men of the past, Moses and Elijah, who are associated as apocalyptic figures who unveil the meaning of events. Cue the voice of God as another element conveying authority. Include some star-struck students who are not sure what to make of the "shock and awe." Highlight what the new message is; in this case not the Law of Moses, not the Prophetic message of Elijah but the Person of Jesus Christ. And finally, write about its secrecy; no better way to gain literary curiosity than to say something should be kept a secret. To include the secret in the writings of the Book with the largest readership in the history of the world is an invitation for the reader to seek to know the secret in a personal way. The report of the theophany of the Transfiguration reveals the method of mystagogy (teaching the mystery of Christ) in the early churches.
Aphorism of the Day, February 1, 2016
An old preacher was asked about his favorite Bible words and he replied, "And it came to pass." This is a King James Bible translation of a Hebrew phrase used with some ubiquity in the King James Version of the Bible. And it came to pass means "it happened." It is a marker of the passage of time in the sense of differentiation of events such that one stands out to be recorded by the recorder of history. The season of the Epiphany is a season of "manifestation" of Christ to the people of this world. We today live in the Christly Effect as we can say that "Christ Came to Pass" in being realized to a greater degree than most people in the history of the world. The repeating biological cycles of life are called the process of metamorphoses. There are static states in this process where appearance does not seem to change and then "it comes to pass" that a butterfly struggles to manifestation as being gloriously different from the previous appearance as a seeming lifeless cocoon. The Last Sunday after the Epiphany highlights the event of the Transfiguration, a translation of the Greek word from which derives metamorphoses. In the cycle of the life of Jesus it came to pass that his light shined a bit brighter in that people took note of him because of the life changing effects which he had upon them. In his risen life, Christ becomes a part of the metamorphosis of one's life in effecting states of differentiation which give one confidence that one is progressing in the art of living. A cocoon and a butterfly have life equally but their manifestations are different. The events of the manifestations of differentiation are milestones of progression. Our spiritual lives could be view as in repeatable cycles of metamorphosis and we in preparation are always looking for the slow cumulative effects that render some significant "breakthroughs."
