Aphorism of the Day, July 31, 2016
The writer of Ecclesiastes states that he was a king of Israel and rabbinic tradition assumes it was Solomon in his old age. As king he experimented with excess and then lamented about his excess of age which will bring the end of his excessive life. Ironically, the wise king does not place much hope in the people who will live after him to tend to his legacy; he suspects that they will waste it. He who had much did not trust those for whom he would leave it; in the end one has to leave the excess or the meager legacy of one's life to the Most Excessive One of all, a Plenitudinous God. Hopefully we learn soon that all of our excess can either tempt us to greed or make us mindful that we cannot be greedy about time, because our days are numbered.
Aphorism of the Day, July 30, 2016
Once one comes into the world one is thereafter everlasting in that one has become an "absolute" past once one has became. One is everlasting in the sense that one's chain link in the human chain can never be removed. That one becomes an everlasting chain link in the human chain is not the question but how will we become everlasting. With deeds of love and justice we "play forward" a domino effect of loving goodness and kindness which then qualifies our time here with the kinds of adjectives and adverbs that our being and doing can have. This is how we build up treasure in heaven and not have the human chain link of our lives be remembered as a "rusty" link.
Aphorism of the Day, July 29,2016
The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote about being in despair about working and gaining things from labor but then having to die and leaving the gain to others who may not know how to maintain the gain properly. Sorry! The price of mortality and a limited life span means that we have to admit that we received context and situations from those who came before even if we tout our "individual" work and stewardship. Mortality means that one will leave lots of things without being able to be continually present to sustain the works of one's labor. The message for us is that living and moving and having our being in God means that God is great Corporate Entity including past, present and future and who is surpassing the Divine Self in the future of the Divine Self. The writer of Ecclesiastes eventually concludes that what is most important in life is to "fear=being in awe of" God. God is the biggest US. There is no I in God. God is the greatest TEAM US.
Aphorism of the Day, July 28, 2016
One of the tenets of biblical fundamentalism is that the entire Bible is the inerrant Word of God. It might be one thing to believe this and another thing to spend one's life explaining what this means and how it is so. The explanation can neither be simple nor simplistic and would have to be nuanced with endless qualifications to wit one would ultimately arrive at the only valid human metaphysic, viz., the co-extensive function of word or language in mediating all of human experience. Indeed, I just used words to establish that human experience refers to more than words. St. Paul could wax poetic about Christ being all and in all because he turns out to be like all of us, we are Wordologists, before we are theists or Christologists. Let us never forget that we are using words prior to whatever we might think that we believe or assert as our foundation or our "fundamental." For Paul, Christ can be all and in all because of the creating Word which is in the beginning and creation of human life "as we can know it."
Aphorism of the Day, July 27, 2016
Paul lists "evil desire" and greed as two human behavioral experiences which one is supposed to "put to death." Greed perhaps is just a more nuanced form of "evil desire" as it pertains to the hoarding instincts to possess and own as much as one can because of a fixation upon having a quantity of "stuff" while needing but a minute fraction of that stuff for subsistence. While putting to death "evil desire" and greed might be a fit metaphor for interdiction in things which must end, it is unrealistic to put to death desire as such. If salvation is healing, then what is called for is a "healing of desire." How does one heal desire? By directing the intense focus of desire toward a truly worthy object of desire, namely, toward no object at all, yes toward God. God, who is no idol, is the only worthy "Idol" of desire and following the great commandment by loving God with all that we are we heal our desire by expressing its energy in the positive form as desire for God.
Aphorism of the Day, July 26, 2016
The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote, "Vanities of vanities, all is vanity." The writer's experience was one of a wealthy "Renaissance Man/Woman" who had the money and power to explore the realm of aesthetics, ownership and knowledge to its fullest and s/he conclude, "all is vanity." It does seem rather skeptical and it points out the ambiguous experience of spirit and flesh. Spirit tempts us with everlasting life and flesh decays with the passing of time. Why would the creator tempt us with a hopeful spirit and not allow the flesh to instantiate that hope forever. In this dilemma, one can see how the afterlife comes to textuality in order to make the case that the gift of hope is not to mock the body for not having an eternal future; rather it gives birth to the imagination that a great God with a great memory could in fact reconstitute and save everything in distinct ways that would allow us to celebrate our gift of hope.
Aphorism of the Day, July 25, 2016
Descartes: "I think therefore I am." Skewed capitalist: "I have, therefore I am." Jesus: "Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." One can displace the being one's life with all of the adjective modifiers of one's being. Educated, wealthy, tall, et. al. The over-identification with what we think we have or possess is to lose one's being to one's "having." Practice the return to one's basic being and seek the following modifiers of that being: love, joy, faith, hope, just, self-control, gentleness, goodness, kindness. If one wants "possessions" the Fruits of the Spirit are expressions of one's holy self.
Aphorism of the Day, July 24, 2016
Often we regard prayer to be communication like speaking on the phone, viz., two parties in different and remote locations conversing. But if we live and move and have our being in God, and Christ is in us as the hope of glory and if we have the presence of God's Spirit within us, how can prayer be communication between two "remote" parties. I think prayer between two remote parties probably derives from an older cosmology when heaven was physically located through the top of the dome sky. But there are many biblical references to God's omnipresence and immanence and so prayer is basically the practice of overcoming eyes which cannot see God or physically locate God. Prayer is about practicing the arising of the portion of our original nature which is expressive of the image of God on our lives. Prayer is learning to practice that we are primarily sons and daughters of God and with practice we convince ourselves of this and practice the attending implications of the same.
Aphorism of the Day, July 23, 2016
St. Paul wrote about Christ: In Him dwells the whole fullness of Deity dwells bodily." This is quite a shocking poetic utterance for the radical monotheists since it would seem to over-identity all of deity within a historical particular person of Jesus of Nazareth. How could God be fully deity elsewhere if the Divine resided wholly in the body of the historical person of Jesus? However, if in the poetry of the New Testament, Christ is the eternal Word who created all bodily and physical existence, then the fullness of Christ dwells within the entire Body of Creation which continues to expand with the Creating/Sustaining work of God such that everything lives and moves and has being within the Creative Body of God. So the fullness of deity resides in the Cosmic Christ whose entire Body is all that was, is and shall be, visible, invisible, all constituted by and re-constituted in the perfect mind/memory of God.
Aphorism of the Day, July 22, 2016
The field of the apparent is drastically smaller than the field of the Real. The apparent is based upon the limitations of the focus of an individual or group experience of a certain event. The apparent dwells within the plenitudinous field of the Real. A goal of prayer is to be able to move from the apparent to the Real and then return to the particular apparent with such differing qualifications of the former apparent, that prayerful faith has created a new apparent which allows one to act in hope.
Aphorism of the Day, July 21, 2016
Prayer sometimes is the experience of getting the apparent non-desired "answer" as in a child who asks a parent for a fish and gets a snake instead. Faith is an experience which must accompany the apparent bad news of specific event with the over all good news of the Plentitude of everything, past, present and future all at once in knowing that "all is well indeed" even when specific event is particularly unpleasant and inconvenient.
Aphorism of the Day, July 20, 2016
Abraham as the intercessor used bargaining "prayer" discourse with God to try to get God to spare Sodom, if there were but ten righteous people there. Bargaining is one of the stages of the grief process before reaching acceptance. One of the functions of prayer as a discourse is the practice of wise probability theory of progressively adjusting our lives to the most probable outcomes in the human conditions. In such a practice, it does not mean that give up the absolute "uncanny" happening but it means that we don't regard God as our private interventionist whom we will drop like a hot potato when God does not apparently intervene as we wish. Petitionary prayer also serves as a discourse to adjust realistically to the truth of freedom in our world. Jesus went to the Cross, not receiving an exemption from death. He made peace with human death and it was okay for the early Gospel writer to have heard him quote the Psalm, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" This is quite an ambiguity in the Trinitarian relationship: The Son expressing forsakenness by his Father. Acceptance does not mean denying the sense of being forsaken; acceptance can be done in faith because intervention is also a matter of timing. Since God is everlasting, intervention can always be delayed until a future resurrection.
Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2016
"Give us this day our daily bread." We want the larder fully stocked and social security and good financial planning for our futures. The words of the "Lord's Prayer" were generated to people who were being taught to just ask each day for just enough for the day itself. This reveals how so many people who live in the world of excess cannot identify with people who live in the world of lack. How about a reasonable expansion of this prayer request, "Give us this day, O Father, from the vast excess of people who have way more than enough, some food, clothing and provision for this day." Unless there is miraculous daily manna delivered to all of the needy people of the world, the only way this prayer can be universally answered is for people who believe in an "enlightened and compassionate Free Market" to freely choose to re-distribute the resources of the world to give everyone enough. Can we believe in a truly enlightened and compassionate "Free Market?" Too many people who tout the "Free Market" do not believe in enlightened, creative and compassionate freedom.
Aphorism of the July 18, 2016
In the effort to elevate Jesus to such an exclusive place of Sonship, we forget that Jesus came to teach everyone to say, "Our Father," implying that Jesus understood that every person needed to be taught about one's primary identity as God's child. Indeed, none of us is Child of God like Jesus was; that is not the issue. The issue is for each of us to be uniquely a child of God in the only way in which one can. Please don't make Jesus Son of God to exclusion of your own DNA image of God stamped upon your life.
Aphorism of the Day July 17, 2016
We receive words and their meanings within social and cultural contexts. Even when something "new" arises, the expositors of the "new" have to use the familiar words with familiar meanings to explain what is "new." Paul came from Tarsus, a city steeped with Mystery Religion practice. Even though Mystery Religion practice had elements of secrecy, the language of ritual and practice was part of the common meanings of words for people of Tarsus and other Roman cities. Members of the Jesus Movement were necessarily secret in their practices since Christians did not openly participate in the civil religion of Emperor worship. The writings of Paul, the ritual practices of the Christian Movement and the stories of the life of Jesus, the Gospels, were Mystagogy or orientation into the central mystery of Christian which was embrace by each Christian mystic initiate, namely, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Jesus of Nazareth was regarded to be the historical personal manifestation of a pre-historical Word of God and the post-Jesus Risen Christ could become known as the indwelling alter-Person of anyone who wanted to really know for whom humanity is performing conscious existence. The mystagogical process goes from performing for the alter-Person Risen Christ to accepting that the alter-Person Risen Christ is performing through us.
Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2016
Paul wrote that he came to reveal a mystery: Christ in you, the hope of glory. One can note the poetic expansion of the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. He became known as the eternal Word from the beginning. He became after his resurrection a Person who could be "split" to reside within the interior lives of all people and yet remain the same Person. There is a sense that every person has one's own unique interior universe and while one can think that one's interior universe is understood by others, it is not fully understood, except by the imaginative and meaningful sharing with the One for whom our thoughts, words, and consciousness are performing all of the time. In one's interior life one can learn to be performing one's entirety for the Christ in us, and the Christ who whispers or shouts, "Bravo!" to one's performance is the telling fame and glory in being a special kind of recognition. People can seek endless recognition in their environments of other people and never be satisfied. The interior "bravo" offered by the Residing Christ is the hope of glory.
Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2016
There are advantages in being naively unaware of the events of evil which are happening in other places. Babies and children out of harm's way do not worry about some horrendous event that is happening elsewhere. Babies and children everywhere can, do and should feel naively safe wherever they are to prove to us that the few shouting events caused by terrorists are not the omnipresence of evil but rather a minute minority of events which can arise in a total field of freedom. This total field of Great Freedom is a Creating God Who in Becoming is also Sustaining the Greatness of Freedom. The Greatness of Freedom in being true to itself admits the probability of free people and random competition between people and systems to create the experienced chaos of evil. The clanging cacophony of evil events are so loud and seem to dominate because they reside within a plenitudinous field of goodness. Evil only stands outs because the Goodness of Creation is so normal.
Aphorism of the Day, July 14, 2016
The Christian monastic Myers-Brigg Personality profile for religious used a binary classification derived from the story of Mary and Martha of Bethany. Mary was the patron saint of the contemplative orders and Martha of the active "working" orders. This is certainly a simplistic personality classification "system" and one wonders if people can be divided into either/or categories of contemplation or active workers. Certain one's personality can direct the destiny of the nature of one's life work and no matter what one's personal tendencies, one is fully developed when one finds the balance between work and contemplation.
Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2016
The Gospels present Mary of Bethany as completely enamored with Jesus. She anoints his feet and dries them with her hair. Instead of doing the hosting activity when Jesus is in her home, she is totally captured by his word and teaching. Of her devotion to this spiritual friendship with Jesus, he said, "Mary has chosen the better part." Finding "spiritual friendship" which is perhaps the best way to advance in excellence is often not sought after in a world of busy-ness.
Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2016
Today when we feel embarrassed by receiving the detailed accounts of someone's life we cry, "TMI, Too Much Information!" But when we read the Bible, we may feel the exact opposite and exclaim, "Not Enough Information." What happens when we don't have enough information about biblical personalities? One or two events that are recounted become definitive of their entire lives and this means that the lack of information reduces the life of a person to one or two known deeds. Why do we do this? We use the "personality typology" of biblical people as teaching illustrations. So Mary of Bethany becomes known as the contemplative and her sister Martha becomes known as the busy bee worker who does not appreciate quiet time with Jesus. This reduction is unfortunate but it is also proof that "real people and actual events" in the Gospel narrative are used not for historical accuracy but as parables of the "real." The Gospels included the discursive dynamic of two layered parables: Stories of Jesus telling stories. The stories about Jesus and his friends are actually teaching parables and in those stories Jesus also tells story. We need to appreciate this subtle discursive practice of what is happening when we read the Gospels.
Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2016
Mary and Martha of Bethany became the archetypes of the life of contemplation and the life of work. Both are important ingredients in our lives. One needs to balance the life of work, career, job, vocation with the life of contemplation. The life of contemplation is not burdensome; it is completely portable and adaptable to anyone's life if one is like Mary and makes the contemplative choice. Contemplation is good health practice and it will improve good work performance.
Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2016
The "Good Samaritan" parable is a rather "in your face" parable. Jesus uses an enemy of the Jews, a Samaritan, to exemplify the loving neighbor who loves his unknown neighbor and the priest and Levite are presented as indifferent people who cannot be bothered to stop and help a dying man. We are so "ethnocentric" and such "homers" that the kindness done by people who are completely different than us might humiliate us. "Imagine that! God does good things from people different from me and who have different religions and life styles." Another word of Jesus, "By their fruits, you shall know them." A neighbor is not automatically Jew, Gentile, American, non-American; a neighbor is the one who bears the fruit of being neighborly in impartial caring behaviors.
Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2016
The parable of the Good Samaritan is about the event of how one knows oneself to be a neighbor by actually performing the neighborly act of care. None of us wants to be the "heroic" neighbor who is called upon in the emergencies to rescue someone who faces dire straits; in fact we have EMT's, police and first responders who are called and paid to be "heroic neighbors" in responding to exigent needs. Yet, each of us needs to develop the practice of everyday kindness in the quotidian as preparation for the event of when a situation arises for us to respond to exigent need that we just "happen" upon. Part of being prepared for the neighborly event is to rid ourselves of prejudices, indifference and our pre-occupation with our own sense of personal convenience so that we are not loaded with the temperamental baggage which prevents us from being an active neighbor through actual caring response.
Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2016
Pain is the sign to the body that something is wrong and that the normalcy of health is deprived. Pain is a sign to seek return to health. Civil unrest is "social pain" and it is a sign that the conditions of social pain have be addressed to return to the social health of peace. In our extreme individualism we in America often assume it is each individual's total responsibility for one's life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The laws are social and corporate guidelines and society should be structured to foster quality of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The obstacles for the quality life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are greater for many people in our society and we should begin to remove the obstacle of extreme economic inequality to foster the equal chance of all to have quality life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We pray that we might learn from our "social pain" and begin a more honest attempt at social health through the extension of economic justice to all.
Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 2016
Theism is a practice of the discourse of "totality." Those who are atheists and agnostics practice other discourses of totality. Discourses of totality are unavoidable because of the priority of word or language in how we are constituted as human beings. When we utter language products, the utterances participate is a universe of all possible utterances and language products. What we produce in a specific language products has meaning by everything in the language universe that it is not. So language assumes total linguistic possibilisms. All must use various discourses of totality without but being minute fragments of totality because totality cannot be fully represented by anything that is less than total. Totality is an expanding becoming and because of expanding environment the meanings of everything within the total expanding environment as it could arrive in the linguistic actual are constantly changing. In this total play, humility is the right response to such plentitude of what might come to discursive performance.
Aphorism of the Day, July 6 2016
The parable of the Good Samaritan is about the "kindness of strangers." Sometimes religion and one's own set agenda are so irretractable as to make one completely indifferent to the exigent needs which arise. Religion which is supposed to be based upon loving one's neighbor as oneself becomes even the justification for indifference. The world is full of religious people who use their religious pieties and practices to support not just indifference but even banal cruelty. Jesus pointed out that often "foreigners do true religion better than we do."
Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2016
The parable of the Good Samaritan is a contrast in the notion of neighbor as an active person rather than a passive person. We receive many titles and designation by the sheer accident of location; born in America makes one an American citizen. But active citizenship involves keeping the law, voting and sacrifice for one's country. We can be passive Christians, passive Episcopalians with sheer accidental identities or we can activate our Christianity with Christ-like practice. We can activated being Episcopalian by being bishoply. Bishoply? Not wearing miters and having a special ordination. A bishop is one who symbolizes the active connection of the church of the past with the present. A bishop is one who symbolizes the current fellowship among fellow Christians. All Christians are called to actively do what is symbolized in the calling of a bishop.
Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2016
The preamble of the U.S. Constitution states one of the purposes as being "in order to form a more perfect Union." Being a country is like marriage, it requires continuous work to be more "perfect" in being together. Those who wrote the Preamble held slaves and did not entertain full rights for but the "property" owners. The greatness of the American tradition like the biblical tradition is to be open to a more perfect union. Both are based upon the perfectability of individuals and individuals living together in society, never arriving but always striving asking for the assistance of the angels of grace to complete the task of being touched by the "better angels of our nature." (see Abraham Lincoln's Inaugural Address, 1861)
Aphorism of the Day, July 3, 2016
Jesus told his evangelists to "move on" if people did not respond to the message about the kingdom being near. An ingredient in good news is the timing and relevance of the news in the context specifics of a person. What is obvious good news to one may not yet be that for another. Rather than being naïve about all people being in the same "receptive" mode, the winsomeness of truth also involves the timing of the receptivity. Timing cannot be rushed.
Aphorism of the Day, July 2, 2016
"Say the kingdom of God has come near to you." The belief in God as a creator means the reality of God's kingdom being the pervasive fact. But the kingdom of God was not, has not, is not apparent to all because of people's self alienation, viz., not being aware of the obvious because of being constituted in a lie about one's primary personal identity as a child of God. Jesus wanted his chosen evangelists to make apparent what was already the fact. "Folks you have always, already been in the kingdom of God, and Jesus has come to make it "apparent" to your self identity.
Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2016
The writer of Ecclesiastes states that he was a king of Israel and rabbinic tradition assumes it was Solomon in his old age. As king he experimented with excess and then lamented about his excess of age which will bring the end of his excessive life. Ironically, the wise king does not place much hope in the people who will live after him to tend to his legacy; he suspects that they will waste it. He who had much did not trust those for whom he would leave it; in the end one has to leave the excess or the meager legacy of one's life to the Most Excessive One of all, a Plenitudinous God. Hopefully we learn soon that all of our excess can either tempt us to greed or make us mindful that we cannot be greedy about time, because our days are numbered.
Aphorism of the Day, July 30, 2016
Once one comes into the world one is thereafter everlasting in that one has become an "absolute" past once one has became. One is everlasting in the sense that one's chain link in the human chain can never be removed. That one becomes an everlasting chain link in the human chain is not the question but how will we become everlasting. With deeds of love and justice we "play forward" a domino effect of loving goodness and kindness which then qualifies our time here with the kinds of adjectives and adverbs that our being and doing can have. This is how we build up treasure in heaven and not have the human chain link of our lives be remembered as a "rusty" link.
Aphorism of the Day, July 29,2016
The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote about being in despair about working and gaining things from labor but then having to die and leaving the gain to others who may not know how to maintain the gain properly. Sorry! The price of mortality and a limited life span means that we have to admit that we received context and situations from those who came before even if we tout our "individual" work and stewardship. Mortality means that one will leave lots of things without being able to be continually present to sustain the works of one's labor. The message for us is that living and moving and having our being in God means that God is great Corporate Entity including past, present and future and who is surpassing the Divine Self in the future of the Divine Self. The writer of Ecclesiastes eventually concludes that what is most important in life is to "fear=being in awe of" God. God is the biggest US. There is no I in God. God is the greatest TEAM US.
Aphorism of the Day, July 28, 2016
One of the tenets of biblical fundamentalism is that the entire Bible is the inerrant Word of God. It might be one thing to believe this and another thing to spend one's life explaining what this means and how it is so. The explanation can neither be simple nor simplistic and would have to be nuanced with endless qualifications to wit one would ultimately arrive at the only valid human metaphysic, viz., the co-extensive function of word or language in mediating all of human experience. Indeed, I just used words to establish that human experience refers to more than words. St. Paul could wax poetic about Christ being all and in all because he turns out to be like all of us, we are Wordologists, before we are theists or Christologists. Let us never forget that we are using words prior to whatever we might think that we believe or assert as our foundation or our "fundamental." For Paul, Christ can be all and in all because of the creating Word which is in the beginning and creation of human life "as we can know it."
Aphorism of the Day, July 27, 2016
Paul lists "evil desire" and greed as two human behavioral experiences which one is supposed to "put to death." Greed perhaps is just a more nuanced form of "evil desire" as it pertains to the hoarding instincts to possess and own as much as one can because of a fixation upon having a quantity of "stuff" while needing but a minute fraction of that stuff for subsistence. While putting to death "evil desire" and greed might be a fit metaphor for interdiction in things which must end, it is unrealistic to put to death desire as such. If salvation is healing, then what is called for is a "healing of desire." How does one heal desire? By directing the intense focus of desire toward a truly worthy object of desire, namely, toward no object at all, yes toward God. God, who is no idol, is the only worthy "Idol" of desire and following the great commandment by loving God with all that we are we heal our desire by expressing its energy in the positive form as desire for God.
Aphorism of the Day, July 26, 2016
The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote, "Vanities of vanities, all is vanity." The writer's experience was one of a wealthy "Renaissance Man/Woman" who had the money and power to explore the realm of aesthetics, ownership and knowledge to its fullest and s/he conclude, "all is vanity." It does seem rather skeptical and it points out the ambiguous experience of spirit and flesh. Spirit tempts us with everlasting life and flesh decays with the passing of time. Why would the creator tempt us with a hopeful spirit and not allow the flesh to instantiate that hope forever. In this dilemma, one can see how the afterlife comes to textuality in order to make the case that the gift of hope is not to mock the body for not having an eternal future; rather it gives birth to the imagination that a great God with a great memory could in fact reconstitute and save everything in distinct ways that would allow us to celebrate our gift of hope.
Aphorism of the Day, July 25, 2016
Descartes: "I think therefore I am." Skewed capitalist: "I have, therefore I am." Jesus: "Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." One can displace the being one's life with all of the adjective modifiers of one's being. Educated, wealthy, tall, et. al. The over-identification with what we think we have or possess is to lose one's being to one's "having." Practice the return to one's basic being and seek the following modifiers of that being: love, joy, faith, hope, just, self-control, gentleness, goodness, kindness. If one wants "possessions" the Fruits of the Spirit are expressions of one's holy self.
Aphorism of the Day, July 24, 2016
Often we regard prayer to be communication like speaking on the phone, viz., two parties in different and remote locations conversing. But if we live and move and have our being in God, and Christ is in us as the hope of glory and if we have the presence of God's Spirit within us, how can prayer be communication between two "remote" parties. I think prayer between two remote parties probably derives from an older cosmology when heaven was physically located through the top of the dome sky. But there are many biblical references to God's omnipresence and immanence and so prayer is basically the practice of overcoming eyes which cannot see God or physically locate God. Prayer is about practicing the arising of the portion of our original nature which is expressive of the image of God on our lives. Prayer is learning to practice that we are primarily sons and daughters of God and with practice we convince ourselves of this and practice the attending implications of the same.
Aphorism of the Day, July 23, 2016
St. Paul wrote about Christ: In Him dwells the whole fullness of Deity dwells bodily." This is quite a shocking poetic utterance for the radical monotheists since it would seem to over-identity all of deity within a historical particular person of Jesus of Nazareth. How could God be fully deity elsewhere if the Divine resided wholly in the body of the historical person of Jesus? However, if in the poetry of the New Testament, Christ is the eternal Word who created all bodily and physical existence, then the fullness of Christ dwells within the entire Body of Creation which continues to expand with the Creating/Sustaining work of God such that everything lives and moves and has being within the Creative Body of God. So the fullness of deity resides in the Cosmic Christ whose entire Body is all that was, is and shall be, visible, invisible, all constituted by and re-constituted in the perfect mind/memory of God.
Aphorism of the Day, July 22, 2016
The field of the apparent is drastically smaller than the field of the Real. The apparent is based upon the limitations of the focus of an individual or group experience of a certain event. The apparent dwells within the plenitudinous field of the Real. A goal of prayer is to be able to move from the apparent to the Real and then return to the particular apparent with such differing qualifications of the former apparent, that prayerful faith has created a new apparent which allows one to act in hope.
Aphorism of the Day, July 21, 2016
Prayer sometimes is the experience of getting the apparent non-desired "answer" as in a child who asks a parent for a fish and gets a snake instead. Faith is an experience which must accompany the apparent bad news of specific event with the over all good news of the Plentitude of everything, past, present and future all at once in knowing that "all is well indeed" even when specific event is particularly unpleasant and inconvenient.
Aphorism of the Day, July 20, 2016
Abraham as the intercessor used bargaining "prayer" discourse with God to try to get God to spare Sodom, if there were but ten righteous people there. Bargaining is one of the stages of the grief process before reaching acceptance. One of the functions of prayer as a discourse is the practice of wise probability theory of progressively adjusting our lives to the most probable outcomes in the human conditions. In such a practice, it does not mean that give up the absolute "uncanny" happening but it means that we don't regard God as our private interventionist whom we will drop like a hot potato when God does not apparently intervene as we wish. Petitionary prayer also serves as a discourse to adjust realistically to the truth of freedom in our world. Jesus went to the Cross, not receiving an exemption from death. He made peace with human death and it was okay for the early Gospel writer to have heard him quote the Psalm, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" This is quite an ambiguity in the Trinitarian relationship: The Son expressing forsakenness by his Father. Acceptance does not mean denying the sense of being forsaken; acceptance can be done in faith because intervention is also a matter of timing. Since God is everlasting, intervention can always be delayed until a future resurrection.
Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2016
"Give us this day our daily bread." We want the larder fully stocked and social security and good financial planning for our futures. The words of the "Lord's Prayer" were generated to people who were being taught to just ask each day for just enough for the day itself. This reveals how so many people who live in the world of excess cannot identify with people who live in the world of lack. How about a reasonable expansion of this prayer request, "Give us this day, O Father, from the vast excess of people who have way more than enough, some food, clothing and provision for this day." Unless there is miraculous daily manna delivered to all of the needy people of the world, the only way this prayer can be universally answered is for people who believe in an "enlightened and compassionate Free Market" to freely choose to re-distribute the resources of the world to give everyone enough. Can we believe in a truly enlightened and compassionate "Free Market?" Too many people who tout the "Free Market" do not believe in enlightened, creative and compassionate freedom.
Aphorism of the July 18, 2016
In the effort to elevate Jesus to such an exclusive place of Sonship, we forget that Jesus came to teach everyone to say, "Our Father," implying that Jesus understood that every person needed to be taught about one's primary identity as God's child. Indeed, none of us is Child of God like Jesus was; that is not the issue. The issue is for each of us to be uniquely a child of God in the only way in which one can. Please don't make Jesus Son of God to exclusion of your own DNA image of God stamped upon your life.
Aphorism of the Day July 17, 2016
We receive words and their meanings within social and cultural contexts. Even when something "new" arises, the expositors of the "new" have to use the familiar words with familiar meanings to explain what is "new." Paul came from Tarsus, a city steeped with Mystery Religion practice. Even though Mystery Religion practice had elements of secrecy, the language of ritual and practice was part of the common meanings of words for people of Tarsus and other Roman cities. Members of the Jesus Movement were necessarily secret in their practices since Christians did not openly participate in the civil religion of Emperor worship. The writings of Paul, the ritual practices of the Christian Movement and the stories of the life of Jesus, the Gospels, were Mystagogy or orientation into the central mystery of Christian which was embrace by each Christian mystic initiate, namely, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Jesus of Nazareth was regarded to be the historical personal manifestation of a pre-historical Word of God and the post-Jesus Risen Christ could become known as the indwelling alter-Person of anyone who wanted to really know for whom humanity is performing conscious existence. The mystagogical process goes from performing for the alter-Person Risen Christ to accepting that the alter-Person Risen Christ is performing through us.
Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2016
Paul wrote that he came to reveal a mystery: Christ in you, the hope of glory. One can note the poetic expansion of the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. He became known as the eternal Word from the beginning. He became after his resurrection a Person who could be "split" to reside within the interior lives of all people and yet remain the same Person. There is a sense that every person has one's own unique interior universe and while one can think that one's interior universe is understood by others, it is not fully understood, except by the imaginative and meaningful sharing with the One for whom our thoughts, words, and consciousness are performing all of the time. In one's interior life one can learn to be performing one's entirety for the Christ in us, and the Christ who whispers or shouts, "Bravo!" to one's performance is the telling fame and glory in being a special kind of recognition. People can seek endless recognition in their environments of other people and never be satisfied. The interior "bravo" offered by the Residing Christ is the hope of glory.
Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2016
There are advantages in being naively unaware of the events of evil which are happening in other places. Babies and children out of harm's way do not worry about some horrendous event that is happening elsewhere. Babies and children everywhere can, do and should feel naively safe wherever they are to prove to us that the few shouting events caused by terrorists are not the omnipresence of evil but rather a minute minority of events which can arise in a total field of freedom. This total field of Great Freedom is a Creating God Who in Becoming is also Sustaining the Greatness of Freedom. The Greatness of Freedom in being true to itself admits the probability of free people and random competition between people and systems to create the experienced chaos of evil. The clanging cacophony of evil events are so loud and seem to dominate because they reside within a plenitudinous field of goodness. Evil only stands outs because the Goodness of Creation is so normal.
Aphorism of the Day, July 14, 2016
The Christian monastic Myers-Brigg Personality profile for religious used a binary classification derived from the story of Mary and Martha of Bethany. Mary was the patron saint of the contemplative orders and Martha of the active "working" orders. This is certainly a simplistic personality classification "system" and one wonders if people can be divided into either/or categories of contemplation or active workers. Certain one's personality can direct the destiny of the nature of one's life work and no matter what one's personal tendencies, one is fully developed when one finds the balance between work and contemplation.
Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2016
The Gospels present Mary of Bethany as completely enamored with Jesus. She anoints his feet and dries them with her hair. Instead of doing the hosting activity when Jesus is in her home, she is totally captured by his word and teaching. Of her devotion to this spiritual friendship with Jesus, he said, "Mary has chosen the better part." Finding "spiritual friendship" which is perhaps the best way to advance in excellence is often not sought after in a world of busy-ness.
Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2016
Today when we feel embarrassed by receiving the detailed accounts of someone's life we cry, "TMI, Too Much Information!" But when we read the Bible, we may feel the exact opposite and exclaim, "Not Enough Information." What happens when we don't have enough information about biblical personalities? One or two events that are recounted become definitive of their entire lives and this means that the lack of information reduces the life of a person to one or two known deeds. Why do we do this? We use the "personality typology" of biblical people as teaching illustrations. So Mary of Bethany becomes known as the contemplative and her sister Martha becomes known as the busy bee worker who does not appreciate quiet time with Jesus. This reduction is unfortunate but it is also proof that "real people and actual events" in the Gospel narrative are used not for historical accuracy but as parables of the "real." The Gospels included the discursive dynamic of two layered parables: Stories of Jesus telling stories. The stories about Jesus and his friends are actually teaching parables and in those stories Jesus also tells story. We need to appreciate this subtle discursive practice of what is happening when we read the Gospels.
Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2016
Mary and Martha of Bethany became the archetypes of the life of contemplation and the life of work. Both are important ingredients in our lives. One needs to balance the life of work, career, job, vocation with the life of contemplation. The life of contemplation is not burdensome; it is completely portable and adaptable to anyone's life if one is like Mary and makes the contemplative choice. Contemplation is good health practice and it will improve good work performance.
Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2016
The "Good Samaritan" parable is a rather "in your face" parable. Jesus uses an enemy of the Jews, a Samaritan, to exemplify the loving neighbor who loves his unknown neighbor and the priest and Levite are presented as indifferent people who cannot be bothered to stop and help a dying man. We are so "ethnocentric" and such "homers" that the kindness done by people who are completely different than us might humiliate us. "Imagine that! God does good things from people different from me and who have different religions and life styles." Another word of Jesus, "By their fruits, you shall know them." A neighbor is not automatically Jew, Gentile, American, non-American; a neighbor is the one who bears the fruit of being neighborly in impartial caring behaviors.
Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2016
The parable of the Good Samaritan is about the event of how one knows oneself to be a neighbor by actually performing the neighborly act of care. None of us wants to be the "heroic" neighbor who is called upon in the emergencies to rescue someone who faces dire straits; in fact we have EMT's, police and first responders who are called and paid to be "heroic neighbors" in responding to exigent needs. Yet, each of us needs to develop the practice of everyday kindness in the quotidian as preparation for the event of when a situation arises for us to respond to exigent need that we just "happen" upon. Part of being prepared for the neighborly event is to rid ourselves of prejudices, indifference and our pre-occupation with our own sense of personal convenience so that we are not loaded with the temperamental baggage which prevents us from being an active neighbor through actual caring response.
Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2016
Pain is the sign to the body that something is wrong and that the normalcy of health is deprived. Pain is a sign to seek return to health. Civil unrest is "social pain" and it is a sign that the conditions of social pain have be addressed to return to the social health of peace. In our extreme individualism we in America often assume it is each individual's total responsibility for one's life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The laws are social and corporate guidelines and society should be structured to foster quality of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The obstacles for the quality life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are greater for many people in our society and we should begin to remove the obstacle of extreme economic inequality to foster the equal chance of all to have quality life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We pray that we might learn from our "social pain" and begin a more honest attempt at social health through the extension of economic justice to all.
Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 2016
Theism is a practice of the discourse of "totality." Those who are atheists and agnostics practice other discourses of totality. Discourses of totality are unavoidable because of the priority of word or language in how we are constituted as human beings. When we utter language products, the utterances participate is a universe of all possible utterances and language products. What we produce in a specific language products has meaning by everything in the language universe that it is not. So language assumes total linguistic possibilisms. All must use various discourses of totality without but being minute fragments of totality because totality cannot be fully represented by anything that is less than total. Totality is an expanding becoming and because of expanding environment the meanings of everything within the total expanding environment as it could arrive in the linguistic actual are constantly changing. In this total play, humility is the right response to such plentitude of what might come to discursive performance.
Aphorism of the Day, July 6 2016
The parable of the Good Samaritan is about the "kindness of strangers." Sometimes religion and one's own set agenda are so irretractable as to make one completely indifferent to the exigent needs which arise. Religion which is supposed to be based upon loving one's neighbor as oneself becomes even the justification for indifference. The world is full of religious people who use their religious pieties and practices to support not just indifference but even banal cruelty. Jesus pointed out that often "foreigners do true religion better than we do."
Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2016
The parable of the Good Samaritan is a contrast in the notion of neighbor as an active person rather than a passive person. We receive many titles and designation by the sheer accident of location; born in America makes one an American citizen. But active citizenship involves keeping the law, voting and sacrifice for one's country. We can be passive Christians, passive Episcopalians with sheer accidental identities or we can activate our Christianity with Christ-like practice. We can activated being Episcopalian by being bishoply. Bishoply? Not wearing miters and having a special ordination. A bishop is one who symbolizes the active connection of the church of the past with the present. A bishop is one who symbolizes the current fellowship among fellow Christians. All Christians are called to actively do what is symbolized in the calling of a bishop.
Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2016
The preamble of the U.S. Constitution states one of the purposes as being "in order to form a more perfect Union." Being a country is like marriage, it requires continuous work to be more "perfect" in being together. Those who wrote the Preamble held slaves and did not entertain full rights for but the "property" owners. The greatness of the American tradition like the biblical tradition is to be open to a more perfect union. Both are based upon the perfectability of individuals and individuals living together in society, never arriving but always striving asking for the assistance of the angels of grace to complete the task of being touched by the "better angels of our nature." (see Abraham Lincoln's Inaugural Address, 1861)
Aphorism of the Day, July 3, 2016
Jesus told his evangelists to "move on" if people did not respond to the message about the kingdom being near. An ingredient in good news is the timing and relevance of the news in the context specifics of a person. What is obvious good news to one may not yet be that for another. Rather than being naïve about all people being in the same "receptive" mode, the winsomeness of truth also involves the timing of the receptivity. Timing cannot be rushed.
Aphorism of the Day, July 2, 2016
"Say the kingdom of God has come near to you." The belief in God as a creator means the reality of God's kingdom being the pervasive fact. But the kingdom of God was not, has not, is not apparent to all because of people's self alienation, viz., not being aware of the obvious because of being constituted in a lie about one's primary personal identity as a child of God. Jesus wanted his chosen evangelists to make apparent what was already the fact. "Folks you have always, already been in the kingdom of God, and Jesus has come to make it "apparent" to your self identity.
Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2016
"Rejoice that your name is written in heaven." One could look at the Bible around the theme of patriotism. The Hebrew Scriptures trace the epic journey of paradise lost and the attempt to rebuild it with a perfect land of Promise with perfect "God-given" laws. But the people of the land are not perfect angels and people from other lands do what the people of Israel did; take land from them just as they had taken it from the Canaanites. Human history is about people taking land from other people and then calling it their legitimate "home" and then building poetic and romantic images about one's glorious earthly "homeland." And it works because we do get constituted by the tear wrenching identity of patriotism. The Gospel is about people who have given up the "heaven on earth" theme in favor of experiencing the inner "heavenly" while living in very imperfect human communities in earthly locations. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews wrote that all of the heroes of faith of the Hebrew Scriptures were actually looking for a better "heavenly country." So the Christ-message is a rather ambiguous patriotism; one is supposed to live with dual citizenship, with earthly location and yet also retain an internal heavenly "spiritual passport" bespeaking one's primary divine image.
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