Aphorism of the Day, June 30, 2016
"Rejoice that your names are written in heaven." Such points to a poetic about writing. Writing in contrast to speech leaves a permanent trace and so it is a technology of enduring memory. This was written before the time of the recorded voice and today one might say, "Rejoice that a DVD of your life has been retained forever." In the Gospel, it might be a rebuke of the preachers who were enamored by the outcome of their ministry and Jesus warned them about how "temporal" such outcomes are and how wrong it is to attach the "worth" of one's life to the fame which comes from certain specific performance. Ultimate fame=esteem=personal worth comes by being in the memory of God as the one who can retain us beyond the history which ultimately will forget us because no one lasts forever and the last/latest are always first because they make the editorial decisions regarding who is to remembered in history. The last/latest are always changing since yesterday's last/latest persons are today's former persons. All people of the past could be designated as "Those formerly known as the latest people on earth."
Aphorism of the Day, June 29, 2016
The world has experienced another violent attack (Istanbul) and it makes us aware of what people can do with free choices. Using psychiatry as an analogy, one might see the major powers of the world in the role of psychiatrists in charge of the safety of the quotidian of commerce which is being disturbed by violent sociopathic events. The agents of violence are constituted by the trauma of wars on their lands and they are angered by failed "psychiatric" treatments of the "powers that be." The psychiatrists have the luxury of telling those who have suffered trauma to just "move on" and adjust to the present, even though losing home, life and family are not things that the psychiatrists really understand. The "clients" are mired in the trauma of revenge and avenging the past events which define their existence. We have the stalemate of true realities: the safety of quotidian life has to be protected no matter what the past has been for anyone and at the same time many people will remain in the throes of feeling as though they are victims of past events which leave them in desperate and violent psychopathy. Does time heal? Will a next generation be able to climb out of the cycle of being schooled in violence as an unrealistic attempt to repair a past which is gone? America eventually "dealt" with slavery but how long did it take and how many lives did it cost and what have been the long term after effects of it? The "Protestant/Catholic" wars of Northern Ireland came to some resolution. Apartheid ended in South Africa, but not without after effects. Will Time heal the violent psychopathy and sociopathy of those in the Middle East who feel that their trauma gives them the right to inflict trauma as their form of distorted and chaotic justice? The Hebrew Scriptures refers to the "sins" of the fathers which visits the second and third generation. We are weary of waiting out the results of trans historical karma and in our "cum bah yah" moments we sing, "We are the World," even while we at times are not sure we want to be together in all that that might happen. Welcome to the dilemmas of faith.
Aphorism of the Day, June 28, 2016
There is a problem for most people of the earth if Israel and the Jews are God's only favorite people and nation. A universalization of Israel and being chosen means that God manifests particularly apparent grace to a person or group of people as an example of what can become particular for all people and groups. If the Bible cannot be used as a book to proclaim particular experience and apparent grace for all then it would be a misrepresentation of the universality of God. The problem with many interpreting communities of the Bible is that they interpret the Bible as a preferential ideology for their own community to the exclusion of other communities of people. If God is truly held to be universal and not just a deity according to one's local interpretation, then one must admit that God can be transported in human language to universal correspondences among all of the language users of the earth. If one wants to really proclaim universality=catholicity, one must humbly admit that one's apparent and particular experience of grace cannot be the defining orthodoxy for everyone.
Aphorism of the Day, June 27, 2016
As we move to Independence Day, one might ponder the biblical function of nationhood. Israel is the privileged nation of the Bible by the fact of the building of the affirmation of national identity through the technology of memory, writing, which generated not just an earthly location for Israel but a cosmic significance of Israel. Biblical Israel in a paradigmatic sense, is a affirmation of human location in not only a geographical place but in an corporate identity. When control of the Israel was lost by Israelis, the corporate identity of Israel actually grew in exile and even expanded because the Hebrew Scripture is more about the myth of Israel than an actual Israel. The myth of Israel is more portable and universal than limiting Israel to a varying set of geographical borders and the definition of citizenship for those who lived within those variable borders (remember Abraham was promised land to the Euphrates?) St. Paul and the early church co-opted Israel and further mysticized the church as the "new Israel." How happy could observant Jews be with such interpretive poetic license? On Independence Day, we celebrate particular Independence even as we have to shudder deeply about how much our Independence costs our Native American peoples and the people who were brought to America as slaves. One of the teachings of Christ is about the kingdom of God or heaven. This is an interior state of existence through faith and it makes our status in earthly realms ambiguous in that we cannot be overly proud in an absolute sense about our "national" identity in light of what it cost those from whom we took land and the ones whose labor was forced to build it; at the same time we need to be inspired by the kingdom of heaven values of love and justice to continue to attempt a more perfect union to provide equal affirmation for all of our citizenry.
Aphorism of the Day, June 26, 2016
The Fruits of the Spirit are the most general call to ministry which everyone has. One needs these "spiritual assets" in all vocations, careers and occupations. The highest ordained cleric, the gardener, the banker, the lawyer, the parent, all need the Fruits of the Spirit as their main calling in life to assist them in the articulation of Grace in every situation. The Fruits of the Spirit are the end of "clericalism" and the affirmation of baptismal equality of all God's children.
Aphorism of the Day, June 25, 2016
Can grace, mercy and the uncanny which have attended saintly people be experienced after saintly people leave the earth? Elisha saw a vision of his mentor Elijah leaving this earth as a personal promise that a double portion of the spirit of Elijah would reside and remain with his protégé. Worry about the future often makes us presume to know more than God about God's continued existence, grace and sustenance. If the appearance of God's grace seems to get unevenly manifested in the lives of the saints and the incarnate Jesus Christ, it is only apparent and not actual. Belief in creation means that all creation is the immanence of Divine Omni-Becoming-Presence with equal grace distributed to all occasions of becoming even though difference of appearances creates the apparent uneven manifestations of grace. Is "God with us" as much when things are "unlucky" as when things appeared to be luckily in our favor? Appearances create the temporary experience which causes honest confession of the apparent; faith in the underlying real and actual of the dynamic freedom of God becoming and creating helps us to survive and thrive in the merely apparent.
Aphorism of the Day, June 24, 2016
St. Paul said the "Law" is summed up in one phrase, "you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Loving one's neighbor is never finished; it requires the continuous strategies of empathy in time. Yesterday's loving of one's neighbor is only good on one's resume if it contributes to new applications today for loving one's neighbor. As simple as "loving one's neighbor" might seem, it is attended with the nitty gritty of interpreting the particular neighbor in one's immediate circumstance which gives rise to the occasion for manifesting loving behavior. One can cloister and segregate one's life to fool oneself about one's obligation to the neighbors who fall into one's immediate perceptual field, but for those who are adjusting to the new global omnipresence of everyone being present to everyone, the seams of the enlargement of one's heart are ever bursting. One should note that adult physical growth begins on the slope of decline quite soon; it should be heartening to note that growth and the expansion of the "heart" need never cease into one's late maturity.
Aphorism of the Day, June 23, 2016
Transformation of the one's life is the reason faith traditions exists. Indeed, traditions accrue overtime so much cultural baggage, the essential goal of transformation gets lost in all of the requirements for group identity and loyalty. How does one come to the state of knowing that one has been made "good?" How does one deal with the reality of one's desires becoming projected and fixated upon objects and activities which compel one toward the state of not knowing oneself to be good, but rather addicted to distracting idols? Transformation and sublimation of Life Force whether one calls it chi, spirit, prana, desire, libido, et al, is the goal of the life of faith. Through our worded life we can come to know our life force as controlled and directed towards what is beneficial for us and expressive of love and justice in the world. The reason that religions today are caught supporting bigoted and prejudicial behaviors is that the personal transformation kernel has been sacrificed to making cultural clones who are loyal to features of "group identity" that have accrued which embed prejudicial practices under the name of "true" religion.
Aphorism of the Day, June 22, 2016
There is a call from God beyond one's job title or particular career; it is the call to manifest the fruits of the Spirit. The life work of everyone is to be in the process of transformation whereby the profound desire of one's life gets re-characterized as being the engine of the desire of the flesh and becomes the energy to practice the fruits of the Spirit because the projection of desire beyond all of the things which can become idol, a project on God who is the only One worthy of the profound focus of Desire.
Aphorism of the Day, June 21, 2016
Sometimes the exaggerated language of Jesus seems cruel like, "let the dead bury the dead." The hyperbole of Jesus might be understood as, "if you think that the call of God is impossible and is bad for you and your family," then you must have the wrong image of God. You must believe Jesus and God to be devoid of empathy (God devoid of empathy would be an oxymoron) if you believe the call of God cannot be integrated with the specifics of the ways in which your life is. The Call of God is everywhere and it is accessible and adaptable to anyone's circumstances. When one says, "I can't accept the call of God, it really means, I won't accept the call of God." The hyperbole of Jesus exposes the human "I can't" as really meaning "I won't." So, will you accept the call of God? You may and you can because you are so constituted to do so.
Aphorism of the Day, June 20, 2016
The call of Christ is about readiness and integration. Some people divide their lives into compartments which don't seem to overlap or mutually reinforce. The mystical call is an integration of everything in one's life such that nothing is competing; everything is integrated by the mystical call. People who do not "have time" are not ready to have their lives integrated by the mystical call.
Aphorism of the Day, June 19, 2016
Exorcisms have become the humor of Ghostbusting or Horror in Hollywood. In our scientific age we make into cinematic "art" our fascination with the weird and the strange. What is not funny and what is truly horrifying are the actual actions of those driven by the killer demons of death by guns. The " death by guns" ethos of America fed by virtual presentation of killing in video games and in the cinema needs some serious "ghostbusting." We should be truly frightened by the "death by guns ethos" of our society.
Aphorism of the Day, June 18, 2016
Countries with fewer guns have fewer gun fatalities. That is what actuarial science shows. One of the disadvantages of strategies of prevention based upon actuarial wisdom is that harmful events which are prevented remain anonymous in "non-existence" because the prevented event does not achieve exposure in the life experience of a person. This means that in some realm prevention is hard to sell because it is hard to convince about what never happened to a specific person or people. This does not prevent insurance company from basing their rates on the "negative" no-shows of events which do not happen to specific people. Wisdom tells us to go with probability and be thankful for not ever knowing about what might have happened if preventive measures had not been taken. What might have happened is not actual but framing what might happen as a function of probability to plan current action is wise prevention.
Aphorism of the Day, June 17, 2016
Biblical literature deals with describing how power is expressed in motivating or causing behaviors. One can note involuntary motivation in the force of oppression. Biblical justice means that the oppressed are set free. Suppression involves the voluntary application of recommended behaviors, i.e., rules and laws as methods of cultural training in "probability" theory of successful behaviors within a society. Repression are the involuntary interior forces causing one to perform harmful and unhealthy behaviors for self and society whose roots are sometimes forgotten or "repressed." Finally there is the force of "Spirit" or participation in another form of energy which allows one to do unimaginable creative and lyrical things. It creates the oxymoron of compulsion to perform freely excellence. Compulsion and freedom don't seem to fit, but the sense of being so gracefully helped to do creative things is the power and force which we seek in life and can find drawn from us in the Risen Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, June 16, 2016
The "inscape" spirituality of St. Paul is presented in the "landscape" stories of Jesus in the Gospels. In St. Paul's mystagogic cosmology, he believed in a cosmic interior, inner space battle: "For our* struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. " The spiritual battle of St. Paul was illustrated in the stories of Jesus' exorcisms since he is presented as one who could win the battle within the inner space of every person, which is also the place of heaven. The Gospel present the spirituality of St. Paul's and others in the "physicality" of the stories of Jesus because "physicality" is a Gospel metaphor that means something reality "substantial" and life changing and transforming was happening in the early churches.
Aphorism of the Day, June 15, 2016
Socrates who lived long before Christ acknowledged help from a mystical personal being, a daemon/daimon, or soul guide, someone like a guardian angel acquired at birth. Between this beneficent notion of the daimon and the demons and unclean spirits of the Gospel there has been quite some transformation of the notion of the "daimonic." Inner personal forces causing havoc in a person's ability to control oneself came to be the unclean spirits which Jesus in three Gospels (not John) casts out of people who were tormented. Within context of the developed purity code, one can find a simplistic binary classification system: clean or unclean, pure/impure or blessed/cursed. Certain the description of the behaviors of those possessed with interior "speaking" entities are important in the parables of the life of Jesus as a healer. He could not only deal with seascape issues in calming the exterior storms, he was one who whispered people and could bring order, peace and calm to their "inscapes." Rebalancing of the interior forces of one's life perhaps expresses the essence of health and salvation in the world of time where we all are going to eventually know the unhealthy state of death. If the Psalmist cried "Create in me a clean heart, O God," Jesus was the one who is presented as expelling or cleansing the "body temple" of unclean spirits as a prelude to coming to having a "Renewed Spirit" within oneself. We need to free the Gospel from the Hollywood images of "exorcisms" and from the "ghostbusters" who spend their time looking for and finding the devil and his fiends. People often find what they are looking for; why not just look for the "clean heart" instead?
Aphorism of the Day, June 14, 2016
The repetition of mass killings in America has brought us into the frustration with how freedom is manifested in our country. We should not have to be "standing" eulogists who frequent the rhetoric of comfort all too often. Even while we take comfort when people come together after great tragedy for mutual support, we acknowledge the frustrations of the conditions which force such outpourings in the first place. We are not supposed to be in a "war zone" with chaplains doing their duty of memorializing comrades at arm during a short pause in the battle. We are in "civilian" life. We take for granted the "normalcy" of safety. The repetition of mass killings reveal the protean nature of each event in that the killers arise from seeming context specific normalcy to carry out such destruction of life. As much as we cannot predict individual events we can note common elements: mental health and personal identity issues, weaponry meant for individual battlefield efficiency placed in the hands of an individual in a non-battlefield civilian situation and an oft target group of anger for the individual. We can remain frustrated or we could actually begin to change the wider context wherein these things happen. If we had adequate mental health care, it might help. If we had gainful employment for all to sublimate their life energy into, it might help. If all would really subscribe to "all are created equal" American philosophy in their personal lives and I daresay in their "religious" lives, it would also help. If we would acknowledge that battlefield weapons should not be licensed or sold to individuals in non-battlefield situations, the lack of accessibility to such weapons would surely limit the death. I am afraid that most Americans are resigned to the accessibility of battlefield weapons in civilian life, an expansion of the second amendment unforeseen by the Constitution wordsmiths.
Aphorism of the Day, June 13, 2016
The repetition of mass killings in America should make us ponder how the ethos of our country has been and is becoming constituted. Is it because we value individual freedoms so highly that we are willing to sacrifice actuarial wisdom which protects the common good? Is it because we attempt in a social experience of so much diversity such that heterogeneity is harder to exert predictable controls over than in countries where more homogeneity prevails? Do we have inconsistent safety standards based upon the influence of money? Actuarial wisdom can bring safety policies about seat belt use, warnings on cigarette packages, child toys safety requirements, helmets for motorcyclists, ratings for movies and TV shows and yet we are paralyzed to act on the actuarial data we have regarding willful and accidental deaths by guns in our country. Proverbs tells us that Wisdom cries out aloud in the streets. Should not the dear lives that we have lost be a very loud cry to us from Wisdom about not only our ethos, but the resulting policies of the American ethos?
Aphorism of the Day, June 12, 2016
Forgiveness is the most poignant expression of Patience. Forgiveness is an expression of a hopeful and personal belief in a perfectable future by the one who is more perfect. Forgiveness is what keeps us from being expelled from the School of Jesus because of our sin.
Aphorism of the Day, June 11, 2016
Is it ironic that people seem to love great conversions stories? Notorious sinners converting into great saints. King David and St. Paul were known for some notorious sins; one was the model for the messiah and the other was the chief apostle of Gentile Christianity. Sublimation of energy used once for sin and put in the cause of goodness is an epic story theme of Bible. One wonders if "lukewarm sinners become only lukewarm Christians" if one privileges the dramatic conversion theme. It is perhaps diagnostic of the human condition that dramatic conversion gets more attention that just being boringly good and faithful in day to day living.
Aphorism of the Day, June 10, 2016
We are told that Mary, called Magdalene was one from whom seven demons had gone out and was one who is mentioned with other women and the 12 disciples as being with Jesus. In psycho-spiritual terms one could understand that Mary Magdalene had become dissociated into seven foreign "inner persons" due to the trauma that must have happened to her. Christ as a healer in the mode of a "people whisperer" was able to be the one on whom Mary could project her own wholeness. This meant dispelling of the seven "defense mechanistic" personalities that arose as the way to cope with trauma. Mary Magdalene found in Jesus, finally, a Man whom she could trust, since it is likely that the trauma of her past life was caused by abusive men. One can hardly imagine women of her time having the power to abuse.
Aphorism of the Day, June 9, 2016
The good aspect of excess is that it can be the expression of a compelled desire to achieve excellence in a skill of living through practice. Excess can follow the magnet of desire to achieve the kinds of repetitions of practice which later can take the wings of lyrical creativity. The bad aspect of excess is that the magnets of desire can get fixated to compel the continual repetition in practices which we call addiction and addictive habits have a way of taking over one's life and spoiling life propriety and balance. Learning to read honestly the projections of one's desire and developing the spiritual practice of direction of that desire towards projection upon God as the only worthy "object" of desire is the task of life.
Aphorism of the Day, June 8, 2016
Probably one of the most excessive acts of devotion is the account of a woman or women in the various Gospels, anointing the feet of Jesus with perfume or tears and wiping them dry with her hair. Certain cultures regard touching the feet of a "significant" person such as a guru or royalty to be an act of devotion or respect. In a culture where women did not touch men, the Gospel makes it stand out as noteworthy. In such a culture of segregation between men and women, it has scandalous overtones. The woman in one passage was called a "sinner" (though not Mary of Bethany) which meant that due to her lack of condition of life support left her to support herself by being one who was forced to earn her living by "sinning" with "male sponsors." The event also highlights that women were prominent friends and followers of Jesus though the egalitarian habits of Jesus in sharing his ministry with men and women gets diminished as the Gospels and the Pauline writings get edited makeovers in trying to make the Christian message fit the highly patriarchal household codes of the Roman Empire.
Aphorism of the Day, June 7, 2016
We as humans are often more interested in trying to dwell at milestone markers rather than being on the journey. Time means our life journey never stops and language provides us with illusion that we can stop time with a phrase, but even language submits to time because there will be some more time, some more occasions, some more milestones, and many more phrases which can seem to freeze time (until they don't). Milestones are human arbitrary communal designations and such celebrations are appropriate if they do not delay our continual orientation to the new terrain of life's journey now. Let us not camp out at milestones too long; the road is before us.
Aphorism of the Day, June 6, 2016
The New Testament notion of sin is really a positive notion. We should learn how to be "rightly" related to our sins. Sin is metaphor derived from Greek archery and it means "missing" the mark. Each day of life is filled with targets onto which the arrows of our desire can be projected. Some of those targets are unworthy targets which are not good for our own health (salvation) or the health of our communities. Other targets are good and excellent and yet elusive because they remain for us the next day as surpassing targets of excellence. These are the targets of love and justice and we do not fail if we strive to reach them even though we always fail because love and justice is never complete, since both have a future. Analyze today, your relationship with sin? What are your targets? Are you enslaved to desire getting attached to addicting objects and habits? Or do you have the glorious failure towards love and justice because you know that you have to do them better tomorrow?
Aphorism of the Day, June 5, 2016
Scholars have looked for the models which characterize the actual ministry of Jesus. Two of the prominent ways of seeing him has been as a Wisdom Teacher and an Apocalyptic Prophet declaring the imminent end of life as we know it. He is presented as a "Wonder Worker" in his role as a Healer. He accrued other titles, Messiah and High Priest though he was not a Levite nor was he a Davidic conquering king. The versions of Jesus in the Gospels are revealing of the phases of teaching within the early Christian community and Jesus as the Risen Christ could be all things to all Christians depending upon the needs of the community. The Risen Christ could be accessed as an oracle in the Christian communities and the early church treated the oracles of Risen Christ as though they were uttered by him when he was physically present to his disciples. I would assert that Gospels are an incorporation of the oral traditions of Jesus as a vehicle for the secret mystagogy of the early churches. In this method, the "physicality" of the life of Jesus is actually a medium metaphor to emphasize the profound and real substantial spiritual transformation of the lives of the people in the Jesus Movement, or more properly, the Movement of the Risen Christ accessed through a Transmitting Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, June 4, 2016
The child motifs, the healing of the child and the raising of the young to life are prominent in the Gospel program of uniting original birth and new birth in the spiritual-psychical event of activation of one's birth lost in one's memory because of pre-lingual being of infancies and because harsh experience of becoming adult "beats" original blessing and joy out of us. The Gospel hid this recovery of "original joy" within the narrative of the life of Jesus who initiates us into the program of Abundant Life which is also the recovery of one's birth when the meaning of birth was not yet clouded with the imperfections of how we became coded by our environments.
Aphorism of the Day, June 3, 2016
St. Paul expressed the human condition as "being dead in one's trespasses and sin." For Paul, the Gospel of Christ through the Holy Spirit brought one into the state of new life. When the Gospels illustrated the theological metaphors of Paul within a presented narrative of Jesus, people who come back to life after an encounter with Jesus instantiate the experience in "story form" the reality of being brought to life from the condition of "being dead in one's trespasses and sins." All the more reason to read the Gospel mystagogically as the writers continually use the metaphors of "physicality" to reinforce poignantly the substance of spiritual transformation occurring in the lives of those who encountered Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, June 2, 2016
The Gospels are the art of Christian mystagogy as the method of inculcating the mystery of how the Risen Christ is known and experienced in the life of the initiate. The Gospels fool our chronological logic since we believe that Jesus came before Paul. But in the New Testament writings, the theology and mystical practice of Paul came before the writing of the Gospel. The Gospel writers buried within the narrative of the life of Jesus the mystical theology of Paul and the other early church mystagogues. So the versions of the life of Jesus in the Gospel are read by "chronological literalists" as eyewitness journalism, but they are read by the initiates in the mystagogy of the church as Christian mystical experience in a story program format. The Jesus "oral tradition" is blended with the mystagogical oracle of the Risen Christ who according to Paul "shared his mind" with them even after he was no longer visible.
Aphorism of the Day, June 1, 2016
"Rejoice that your names are written in heaven." Such points to a poetic about writing. Writing in contrast to speech leaves a permanent trace and so it is a technology of enduring memory. This was written before the time of the recorded voice and today one might say, "Rejoice that a DVD of your life has been retained forever." In the Gospel, it might be a rebuke of the preachers who were enamored by the outcome of their ministry and Jesus warned them about how "temporal" such outcomes are and how wrong it is to attach the "worth" of one's life to the fame which comes from certain specific performance. Ultimate fame=esteem=personal worth comes by being in the memory of God as the one who can retain us beyond the history which ultimately will forget us because no one lasts forever and the last/latest are always first because they make the editorial decisions regarding who is to remembered in history. The last/latest are always changing since yesterday's last/latest persons are today's former persons. All people of the past could be designated as "Those formerly known as the latest people on earth."
Aphorism of the Day, June 29, 2016
The world has experienced another violent attack (Istanbul) and it makes us aware of what people can do with free choices. Using psychiatry as an analogy, one might see the major powers of the world in the role of psychiatrists in charge of the safety of the quotidian of commerce which is being disturbed by violent sociopathic events. The agents of violence are constituted by the trauma of wars on their lands and they are angered by failed "psychiatric" treatments of the "powers that be." The psychiatrists have the luxury of telling those who have suffered trauma to just "move on" and adjust to the present, even though losing home, life and family are not things that the psychiatrists really understand. The "clients" are mired in the trauma of revenge and avenging the past events which define their existence. We have the stalemate of true realities: the safety of quotidian life has to be protected no matter what the past has been for anyone and at the same time many people will remain in the throes of feeling as though they are victims of past events which leave them in desperate and violent psychopathy. Does time heal? Will a next generation be able to climb out of the cycle of being schooled in violence as an unrealistic attempt to repair a past which is gone? America eventually "dealt" with slavery but how long did it take and how many lives did it cost and what have been the long term after effects of it? The "Protestant/Catholic" wars of Northern Ireland came to some resolution. Apartheid ended in South Africa, but not without after effects. Will Time heal the violent psychopathy and sociopathy of those in the Middle East who feel that their trauma gives them the right to inflict trauma as their form of distorted and chaotic justice? The Hebrew Scriptures refers to the "sins" of the fathers which visits the second and third generation. We are weary of waiting out the results of trans historical karma and in our "cum bah yah" moments we sing, "We are the World," even while we at times are not sure we want to be together in all that that might happen. Welcome to the dilemmas of faith.
Aphorism of the Day, June 28, 2016
There is a problem for most people of the earth if Israel and the Jews are God's only favorite people and nation. A universalization of Israel and being chosen means that God manifests particularly apparent grace to a person or group of people as an example of what can become particular for all people and groups. If the Bible cannot be used as a book to proclaim particular experience and apparent grace for all then it would be a misrepresentation of the universality of God. The problem with many interpreting communities of the Bible is that they interpret the Bible as a preferential ideology for their own community to the exclusion of other communities of people. If God is truly held to be universal and not just a deity according to one's local interpretation, then one must admit that God can be transported in human language to universal correspondences among all of the language users of the earth. If one wants to really proclaim universality=catholicity, one must humbly admit that one's apparent and particular experience of grace cannot be the defining orthodoxy for everyone.
Aphorism of the Day, June 27, 2016
As we move to Independence Day, one might ponder the biblical function of nationhood. Israel is the privileged nation of the Bible by the fact of the building of the affirmation of national identity through the technology of memory, writing, which generated not just an earthly location for Israel but a cosmic significance of Israel. Biblical Israel in a paradigmatic sense, is a affirmation of human location in not only a geographical place but in an corporate identity. When control of the Israel was lost by Israelis, the corporate identity of Israel actually grew in exile and even expanded because the Hebrew Scripture is more about the myth of Israel than an actual Israel. The myth of Israel is more portable and universal than limiting Israel to a varying set of geographical borders and the definition of citizenship for those who lived within those variable borders (remember Abraham was promised land to the Euphrates?) St. Paul and the early church co-opted Israel and further mysticized the church as the "new Israel." How happy could observant Jews be with such interpretive poetic license? On Independence Day, we celebrate particular Independence even as we have to shudder deeply about how much our Independence costs our Native American peoples and the people who were brought to America as slaves. One of the teachings of Christ is about the kingdom of God or heaven. This is an interior state of existence through faith and it makes our status in earthly realms ambiguous in that we cannot be overly proud in an absolute sense about our "national" identity in light of what it cost those from whom we took land and the ones whose labor was forced to build it; at the same time we need to be inspired by the kingdom of heaven values of love and justice to continue to attempt a more perfect union to provide equal affirmation for all of our citizenry.
Aphorism of the Day, June 26, 2016
The Fruits of the Spirit are the most general call to ministry which everyone has. One needs these "spiritual assets" in all vocations, careers and occupations. The highest ordained cleric, the gardener, the banker, the lawyer, the parent, all need the Fruits of the Spirit as their main calling in life to assist them in the articulation of Grace in every situation. The Fruits of the Spirit are the end of "clericalism" and the affirmation of baptismal equality of all God's children.
Aphorism of the Day, June 25, 2016
Can grace, mercy and the uncanny which have attended saintly people be experienced after saintly people leave the earth? Elisha saw a vision of his mentor Elijah leaving this earth as a personal promise that a double portion of the spirit of Elijah would reside and remain with his protégé. Worry about the future often makes us presume to know more than God about God's continued existence, grace and sustenance. If the appearance of God's grace seems to get unevenly manifested in the lives of the saints and the incarnate Jesus Christ, it is only apparent and not actual. Belief in creation means that all creation is the immanence of Divine Omni-Becoming-Presence with equal grace distributed to all occasions of becoming even though difference of appearances creates the apparent uneven manifestations of grace. Is "God with us" as much when things are "unlucky" as when things appeared to be luckily in our favor? Appearances create the temporary experience which causes honest confession of the apparent; faith in the underlying real and actual of the dynamic freedom of God becoming and creating helps us to survive and thrive in the merely apparent.
Aphorism of the Day, June 24, 2016
St. Paul said the "Law" is summed up in one phrase, "you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Loving one's neighbor is never finished; it requires the continuous strategies of empathy in time. Yesterday's loving of one's neighbor is only good on one's resume if it contributes to new applications today for loving one's neighbor. As simple as "loving one's neighbor" might seem, it is attended with the nitty gritty of interpreting the particular neighbor in one's immediate circumstance which gives rise to the occasion for manifesting loving behavior. One can cloister and segregate one's life to fool oneself about one's obligation to the neighbors who fall into one's immediate perceptual field, but for those who are adjusting to the new global omnipresence of everyone being present to everyone, the seams of the enlargement of one's heart are ever bursting. One should note that adult physical growth begins on the slope of decline quite soon; it should be heartening to note that growth and the expansion of the "heart" need never cease into one's late maturity.
Aphorism of the Day, June 23, 2016
Transformation of the one's life is the reason faith traditions exists. Indeed, traditions accrue overtime so much cultural baggage, the essential goal of transformation gets lost in all of the requirements for group identity and loyalty. How does one come to the state of knowing that one has been made "good?" How does one deal with the reality of one's desires becoming projected and fixated upon objects and activities which compel one toward the state of not knowing oneself to be good, but rather addicted to distracting idols? Transformation and sublimation of Life Force whether one calls it chi, spirit, prana, desire, libido, et al, is the goal of the life of faith. Through our worded life we can come to know our life force as controlled and directed towards what is beneficial for us and expressive of love and justice in the world. The reason that religions today are caught supporting bigoted and prejudicial behaviors is that the personal transformation kernel has been sacrificed to making cultural clones who are loyal to features of "group identity" that have accrued which embed prejudicial practices under the name of "true" religion.
Aphorism of the Day, June 22, 2016
There is a call from God beyond one's job title or particular career; it is the call to manifest the fruits of the Spirit. The life work of everyone is to be in the process of transformation whereby the profound desire of one's life gets re-characterized as being the engine of the desire of the flesh and becomes the energy to practice the fruits of the Spirit because the projection of desire beyond all of the things which can become idol, a project on God who is the only One worthy of the profound focus of Desire.
Aphorism of the Day, June 21, 2016
Sometimes the exaggerated language of Jesus seems cruel like, "let the dead bury the dead." The hyperbole of Jesus might be understood as, "if you think that the call of God is impossible and is bad for you and your family," then you must have the wrong image of God. You must believe Jesus and God to be devoid of empathy (God devoid of empathy would be an oxymoron) if you believe the call of God cannot be integrated with the specifics of the ways in which your life is. The Call of God is everywhere and it is accessible and adaptable to anyone's circumstances. When one says, "I can't accept the call of God, it really means, I won't accept the call of God." The hyperbole of Jesus exposes the human "I can't" as really meaning "I won't." So, will you accept the call of God? You may and you can because you are so constituted to do so.
Aphorism of the Day, June 20, 2016
The call of Christ is about readiness and integration. Some people divide their lives into compartments which don't seem to overlap or mutually reinforce. The mystical call is an integration of everything in one's life such that nothing is competing; everything is integrated by the mystical call. People who do not "have time" are not ready to have their lives integrated by the mystical call.
Aphorism of the Day, June 19, 2016
Exorcisms have become the humor of Ghostbusting or Horror in Hollywood. In our scientific age we make into cinematic "art" our fascination with the weird and the strange. What is not funny and what is truly horrifying are the actual actions of those driven by the killer demons of death by guns. The " death by guns" ethos of America fed by virtual presentation of killing in video games and in the cinema needs some serious "ghostbusting." We should be truly frightened by the "death by guns ethos" of our society.
Aphorism of the Day, June 18, 2016
Countries with fewer guns have fewer gun fatalities. That is what actuarial science shows. One of the disadvantages of strategies of prevention based upon actuarial wisdom is that harmful events which are prevented remain anonymous in "non-existence" because the prevented event does not achieve exposure in the life experience of a person. This means that in some realm prevention is hard to sell because it is hard to convince about what never happened to a specific person or people. This does not prevent insurance company from basing their rates on the "negative" no-shows of events which do not happen to specific people. Wisdom tells us to go with probability and be thankful for not ever knowing about what might have happened if preventive measures had not been taken. What might have happened is not actual but framing what might happen as a function of probability to plan current action is wise prevention.
Aphorism of the Day, June 17, 2016
Biblical literature deals with describing how power is expressed in motivating or causing behaviors. One can note involuntary motivation in the force of oppression. Biblical justice means that the oppressed are set free. Suppression involves the voluntary application of recommended behaviors, i.e., rules and laws as methods of cultural training in "probability" theory of successful behaviors within a society. Repression are the involuntary interior forces causing one to perform harmful and unhealthy behaviors for self and society whose roots are sometimes forgotten or "repressed." Finally there is the force of "Spirit" or participation in another form of energy which allows one to do unimaginable creative and lyrical things. It creates the oxymoron of compulsion to perform freely excellence. Compulsion and freedom don't seem to fit, but the sense of being so gracefully helped to do creative things is the power and force which we seek in life and can find drawn from us in the Risen Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, June 16, 2016
The "inscape" spirituality of St. Paul is presented in the "landscape" stories of Jesus in the Gospels. In St. Paul's mystagogic cosmology, he believed in a cosmic interior, inner space battle: "For our* struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. " The spiritual battle of St. Paul was illustrated in the stories of Jesus' exorcisms since he is presented as one who could win the battle within the inner space of every person, which is also the place of heaven. The Gospel present the spirituality of St. Paul's and others in the "physicality" of the stories of Jesus because "physicality" is a Gospel metaphor that means something reality "substantial" and life changing and transforming was happening in the early churches.
Aphorism of the Day, June 15, 2016
Socrates who lived long before Christ acknowledged help from a mystical personal being, a daemon/daimon, or soul guide, someone like a guardian angel acquired at birth. Between this beneficent notion of the daimon and the demons and unclean spirits of the Gospel there has been quite some transformation of the notion of the "daimonic." Inner personal forces causing havoc in a person's ability to control oneself came to be the unclean spirits which Jesus in three Gospels (not John) casts out of people who were tormented. Within context of the developed purity code, one can find a simplistic binary classification system: clean or unclean, pure/impure or blessed/cursed. Certain the description of the behaviors of those possessed with interior "speaking" entities are important in the parables of the life of Jesus as a healer. He could not only deal with seascape issues in calming the exterior storms, he was one who whispered people and could bring order, peace and calm to their "inscapes." Rebalancing of the interior forces of one's life perhaps expresses the essence of health and salvation in the world of time where we all are going to eventually know the unhealthy state of death. If the Psalmist cried "Create in me a clean heart, O God," Jesus was the one who is presented as expelling or cleansing the "body temple" of unclean spirits as a prelude to coming to having a "Renewed Spirit" within oneself. We need to free the Gospel from the Hollywood images of "exorcisms" and from the "ghostbusters" who spend their time looking for and finding the devil and his fiends. People often find what they are looking for; why not just look for the "clean heart" instead?
Aphorism of the Day, June 14, 2016
The repetition of mass killings in America has brought us into the frustration with how freedom is manifested in our country. We should not have to be "standing" eulogists who frequent the rhetoric of comfort all too often. Even while we take comfort when people come together after great tragedy for mutual support, we acknowledge the frustrations of the conditions which force such outpourings in the first place. We are not supposed to be in a "war zone" with chaplains doing their duty of memorializing comrades at arm during a short pause in the battle. We are in "civilian" life. We take for granted the "normalcy" of safety. The repetition of mass killings reveal the protean nature of each event in that the killers arise from seeming context specific normalcy to carry out such destruction of life. As much as we cannot predict individual events we can note common elements: mental health and personal identity issues, weaponry meant for individual battlefield efficiency placed in the hands of an individual in a non-battlefield civilian situation and an oft target group of anger for the individual. We can remain frustrated or we could actually begin to change the wider context wherein these things happen. If we had adequate mental health care, it might help. If we had gainful employment for all to sublimate their life energy into, it might help. If all would really subscribe to "all are created equal" American philosophy in their personal lives and I daresay in their "religious" lives, it would also help. If we would acknowledge that battlefield weapons should not be licensed or sold to individuals in non-battlefield situations, the lack of accessibility to such weapons would surely limit the death. I am afraid that most Americans are resigned to the accessibility of battlefield weapons in civilian life, an expansion of the second amendment unforeseen by the Constitution wordsmiths.
Aphorism of the Day, June 13, 2016
The repetition of mass killings in America should make us ponder how the ethos of our country has been and is becoming constituted. Is it because we value individual freedoms so highly that we are willing to sacrifice actuarial wisdom which protects the common good? Is it because we attempt in a social experience of so much diversity such that heterogeneity is harder to exert predictable controls over than in countries where more homogeneity prevails? Do we have inconsistent safety standards based upon the influence of money? Actuarial wisdom can bring safety policies about seat belt use, warnings on cigarette packages, child toys safety requirements, helmets for motorcyclists, ratings for movies and TV shows and yet we are paralyzed to act on the actuarial data we have regarding willful and accidental deaths by guns in our country. Proverbs tells us that Wisdom cries out aloud in the streets. Should not the dear lives that we have lost be a very loud cry to us from Wisdom about not only our ethos, but the resulting policies of the American ethos?
Aphorism of the Day, June 12, 2016
Forgiveness is the most poignant expression of Patience. Forgiveness is an expression of a hopeful and personal belief in a perfectable future by the one who is more perfect. Forgiveness is what keeps us from being expelled from the School of Jesus because of our sin.
Aphorism of the Day, June 11, 2016
Is it ironic that people seem to love great conversions stories? Notorious sinners converting into great saints. King David and St. Paul were known for some notorious sins; one was the model for the messiah and the other was the chief apostle of Gentile Christianity. Sublimation of energy used once for sin and put in the cause of goodness is an epic story theme of Bible. One wonders if "lukewarm sinners become only lukewarm Christians" if one privileges the dramatic conversion theme. It is perhaps diagnostic of the human condition that dramatic conversion gets more attention that just being boringly good and faithful in day to day living.
Aphorism of the Day, June 10, 2016
We are told that Mary, called Magdalene was one from whom seven demons had gone out and was one who is mentioned with other women and the 12 disciples as being with Jesus. In psycho-spiritual terms one could understand that Mary Magdalene had become dissociated into seven foreign "inner persons" due to the trauma that must have happened to her. Christ as a healer in the mode of a "people whisperer" was able to be the one on whom Mary could project her own wholeness. This meant dispelling of the seven "defense mechanistic" personalities that arose as the way to cope with trauma. Mary Magdalene found in Jesus, finally, a Man whom she could trust, since it is likely that the trauma of her past life was caused by abusive men. One can hardly imagine women of her time having the power to abuse.
Aphorism of the Day, June 9, 2016
The good aspect of excess is that it can be the expression of a compelled desire to achieve excellence in a skill of living through practice. Excess can follow the magnet of desire to achieve the kinds of repetitions of practice which later can take the wings of lyrical creativity. The bad aspect of excess is that the magnets of desire can get fixated to compel the continual repetition in practices which we call addiction and addictive habits have a way of taking over one's life and spoiling life propriety and balance. Learning to read honestly the projections of one's desire and developing the spiritual practice of direction of that desire towards projection upon God as the only worthy "object" of desire is the task of life.
Aphorism of the Day, June 8, 2016
Probably one of the most excessive acts of devotion is the account of a woman or women in the various Gospels, anointing the feet of Jesus with perfume or tears and wiping them dry with her hair. Certain cultures regard touching the feet of a "significant" person such as a guru or royalty to be an act of devotion or respect. In a culture where women did not touch men, the Gospel makes it stand out as noteworthy. In such a culture of segregation between men and women, it has scandalous overtones. The woman in one passage was called a "sinner" (though not Mary of Bethany) which meant that due to her lack of condition of life support left her to support herself by being one who was forced to earn her living by "sinning" with "male sponsors." The event also highlights that women were prominent friends and followers of Jesus though the egalitarian habits of Jesus in sharing his ministry with men and women gets diminished as the Gospels and the Pauline writings get edited makeovers in trying to make the Christian message fit the highly patriarchal household codes of the Roman Empire.
Aphorism of the Day, June 7, 2016
We as humans are often more interested in trying to dwell at milestone markers rather than being on the journey. Time means our life journey never stops and language provides us with illusion that we can stop time with a phrase, but even language submits to time because there will be some more time, some more occasions, some more milestones, and many more phrases which can seem to freeze time (until they don't). Milestones are human arbitrary communal designations and such celebrations are appropriate if they do not delay our continual orientation to the new terrain of life's journey now. Let us not camp out at milestones too long; the road is before us.
Aphorism of the Day, June 6, 2016
The New Testament notion of sin is really a positive notion. We should learn how to be "rightly" related to our sins. Sin is metaphor derived from Greek archery and it means "missing" the mark. Each day of life is filled with targets onto which the arrows of our desire can be projected. Some of those targets are unworthy targets which are not good for our own health (salvation) or the health of our communities. Other targets are good and excellent and yet elusive because they remain for us the next day as surpassing targets of excellence. These are the targets of love and justice and we do not fail if we strive to reach them even though we always fail because love and justice is never complete, since both have a future. Analyze today, your relationship with sin? What are your targets? Are you enslaved to desire getting attached to addicting objects and habits? Or do you have the glorious failure towards love and justice because you know that you have to do them better tomorrow?
Aphorism of the Day, June 5, 2016
Scholars have looked for the models which characterize the actual ministry of Jesus. Two of the prominent ways of seeing him has been as a Wisdom Teacher and an Apocalyptic Prophet declaring the imminent end of life as we know it. He is presented as a "Wonder Worker" in his role as a Healer. He accrued other titles, Messiah and High Priest though he was not a Levite nor was he a Davidic conquering king. The versions of Jesus in the Gospels are revealing of the phases of teaching within the early Christian community and Jesus as the Risen Christ could be all things to all Christians depending upon the needs of the community. The Risen Christ could be accessed as an oracle in the Christian communities and the early church treated the oracles of Risen Christ as though they were uttered by him when he was physically present to his disciples. I would assert that Gospels are an incorporation of the oral traditions of Jesus as a vehicle for the secret mystagogy of the early churches. In this method, the "physicality" of the life of Jesus is actually a medium metaphor to emphasize the profound and real substantial spiritual transformation of the lives of the people in the Jesus Movement, or more properly, the Movement of the Risen Christ accessed through a Transmitting Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, June 4, 2016
The child motifs, the healing of the child and the raising of the young to life are prominent in the Gospel program of uniting original birth and new birth in the spiritual-psychical event of activation of one's birth lost in one's memory because of pre-lingual being of infancies and because harsh experience of becoming adult "beats" original blessing and joy out of us. The Gospel hid this recovery of "original joy" within the narrative of the life of Jesus who initiates us into the program of Abundant Life which is also the recovery of one's birth when the meaning of birth was not yet clouded with the imperfections of how we became coded by our environments.
Aphorism of the Day, June 3, 2016
St. Paul expressed the human condition as "being dead in one's trespasses and sin." For Paul, the Gospel of Christ through the Holy Spirit brought one into the state of new life. When the Gospels illustrated the theological metaphors of Paul within a presented narrative of Jesus, people who come back to life after an encounter with Jesus instantiate the experience in "story form" the reality of being brought to life from the condition of "being dead in one's trespasses and sins." All the more reason to read the Gospel mystagogically as the writers continually use the metaphors of "physicality" to reinforce poignantly the substance of spiritual transformation occurring in the lives of those who encountered Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, June 2, 2016
The Gospels are the art of Christian mystagogy as the method of inculcating the mystery of how the Risen Christ is known and experienced in the life of the initiate. The Gospels fool our chronological logic since we believe that Jesus came before Paul. But in the New Testament writings, the theology and mystical practice of Paul came before the writing of the Gospel. The Gospel writers buried within the narrative of the life of Jesus the mystical theology of Paul and the other early church mystagogues. So the versions of the life of Jesus in the Gospel are read by "chronological literalists" as eyewitness journalism, but they are read by the initiates in the mystagogy of the church as Christian mystical experience in a story program format. The Jesus "oral tradition" is blended with the mystagogical oracle of the Risen Christ who according to Paul "shared his mind" with them even after he was no longer visible.
Aphorism of the Day, June 1, 2016
The history of the generation and reading of the Bible is a history which exposes the over-magnification of textual elements. The enforced and preferred reading of the Bible means lots of mental energy has gone into finding functional meanings for the lives of many people in many times and life situations even though there is a great textual chasm between the original contexts and the contexts in the lives of people in different times and places. The Bible is full of "forgotten contexts" because people cannot find functional relevance for such obscure context save arcane academic study of the same. Does saying that the "Bible is the word of God" mean that every single text within the Bible gets an equal hearing and equally functional application? The reading of the Bible is always edited and censored; and the traditional translations have been censored to fit the modesty codes of the time of translation. The belief that the Bible is the word of God exists within communities of people who continually collaborates determining how it is so. Only the naïve believe that final meanings of the Bible have been attained.
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