Aphorism of the Day, January 31, 2019
When events of love happen within a person they seem so right and providential that one in poetic utterance one exclaims that such must have been preordained and designated from the beginning, wherever and whenever the beginning was. Love seems preordained when it happens.
Aphorism of the Day, January 30, 2019
Love is one of those trillion megaton words; it has exploded and its energy is diffusely omni-present but it does seek specificity in human situation and testimony of the same even if comes in a meaningfully corny Country luv song.
Aphorism of the Day, January 29, 2019
St. Paul famous praise of "love" is proof that the biblical language is mainly poetic and aesthetic. Even the historical narrative with actual references to seemingly actual people and places are used for spiritual teaching goals. When one speaks of love, it is a meaningful word but rather imprecise. Most everyone knows what it means but knows the meaning of it in highly personal and individual ways. When one moves from the general meaning of love to the more individual experiences of it, it moves into the subjective meanings and truths. Subjective truths cannot be general truths and so when religionists present religious meanings as empirically verified truths they should not be surprised at the rejection.
Aphorism of the Day, January 28, 2019
St. Paul wrote some incredible things about what/whom he seems to make a person in his 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians. What does it mean to say "love believes all things?" Is love an impersonal "virtue" or is love a personified force? By saying such a thing, he is implying that to invoke the word love is to speak about the most valuable value of all namely, namely the force of such a positive regard for existence that "believing" all things means that regard is given toward everything that could possibly come to language by a language user or language users. Too much of theology is built upon the negative or what we don't believe about God because we hold that God is too big to presume that we know how and what to believe. Love is believing all things because it is the affirming of the positive plenitude of everything that has and will become. Love is the cure for those who commit quietism and apophatic minimalism for fear of unwieldy involvement with everything.
Aphorism of the Day, January 27, 2019
Propriety can be regarded as a sentimental flowery flattery language used to impress people about one's cleverness or propriety might be regarded as saying and acting in the way that fits a situation in the best possible way. In this sense propriety is good news and Gospel. One should seek propriety in the way in which words come to structure one's life so one can live good news for others.
Aphorism of the Day, January 26, 2019
I would like to add to the meaning of Gospel, the rhetorical goal of the belle-lettrists, namely propriety. Gospel means enlightened and wise propriety, or saying, writing or doing the best possible language manifestation in the particular situation such that the poor have good news, the captives are freed even as the captors are rebuked and the oppressed are freed and the oppressors rebuked and the blind are given the understanding eyes to see what is truly good for them.
Aphorism of the Day, January 25, 2019
The conversion of Paul may be the most important turning point in the Jesus Movement Why? Paul as Saul opposed the nascent Jesus rabbinical movement as being heretical within Judaism. Saul not only wanted to excommunicate followers of Jesus from the synagogue and Temple; he wanted to remove them from life. The threat of their success obviously troubled him greatly. Saul snapped when his life situation devoted to keeping the commandments found him trying to justify a holy war to kill some heretics. Saul internal condition made him vulnerable to a major event. It happened on the road to Damascus when the one who was devoted to love and forgiveness even at his death, call Saul to a mission of love. When Saul became Paul, he became the architect of Gentile Christianity and his mission was subtly written into the later Gospel stories to highlight the arc of a message out of Israel reaching the entire known world.
Aphorism of the Day, January 24, 2019
The self understanding of Jesus about his ministry? Bring good news to the poor. Release to the captives. Recovery of sight to the blind. Proclaim the year of God's favor. Jesus of Nazareth in three years of known active ministry was limited to doing this in very context specific ways. To do this in a general way to the vast need requires that the Gospel become institutionalized, politically activated and complete systemic for maximal effect. The church has become comfortable with handing out context specific band aids in a world that is hemorrhaging from a great bleeding wound of need. The Gospel has to convert toward great systemic healing acts to ably do the Gospel healing that is needed in our world. Will our world heal if 26 people own equal to what half of the rest of the world own?
Aphorism of the Day, January 23, 2019
Evangelicals have reduced the meaning of the Gospel or Good News (Evangel=Gospel=Good New=euangelion=basar) to preaching about "accepting Christ" but what is forgotten is that the Gospel for Jesus meant the "doing of the good news" as defined by the prophet Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." The messianic action=anointing is about having the power to make good news happen in the lives of people who need it.
Aphorism of the Day, January 22, 2019
One result of success is the institutionalization of success to make it further accessible and available to more people. In the process of institutionalization, the truth of administration subtly becomes more important than the original attractive effervescence. What happens is that cookie cutter membership ensues and the institution says to many who do not fit the molds, "I have no need of you.....unless you can contort yourself to fit one of the institutional molds." And so people get locked out. It happened in the history of churches.
Aphorism of the Day, January 21, 2019
It is easy to assume that "gospel" originated in the Jesus Movement but it is as old as the prophet Isaiah. Good news or "basar" is what the prophet said the Spirit of the Lord was on him to bring. And when Jesus read Isaiah, he understood that bringing "basar" or good news summed up the purpose of his life.
Aphorism of the Day, January 20, 2019
Consistent with the first verse of John's Gospel of the Word, being God, Jesus is Word in flesh and as Word in flesh he is a sign and a sign maker pointing to the fact that language is inseparable from human experience as anything that can be known. In the trivial and the crises, all occurs within the field of language users being used by Language.
Aphorism of the Day, January 19, 2019
St. Paul called Christ as "all and in all?" How could that be possible? In the Gospel of John Christ is the omni-linguistic reality of everything that we can know. The WORD was God. By privileging Word as co-extensive with even knowing that we exist or that we are language users, we posit through having words that we have words as language users and the omni-language user would the total possible discursive universe. That God is Word and we are in God's image because we are word users.
Aphorism of the Day, January 18, 2018
Today, the feast of the Confession of St. Peter, one might note that the Gospel presentation of the same is not without poignant irony. Peter confesses Jesus as the "Messiah" and is rebuked by Jesus when his view of the Messiah does not line up with what Jesus tells him about his imminent suffering and death. Peter and the disciples in the Gospels are presented as naive and unenlightened as teaching examples all disciples in the process of coming to know about the mystery of Christ as it was known in Jesus. The Gospels are teaching stories which use the disciples as examples of any disciple in the process of coming into the higher mystagogy of the Risen Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, January 17, 2019
The Gospel of John is a narrative form of the Pauline and metaphorically poetic exclamation regarding Christ as "all and in all." The Book of Signs within the Gospel of John presents the sign as a faith switch that occurs within a person something what happens when one switches from seeing the duck to seeing the rabbit in the famous op art picture. Where is Christly presence to be found? Everywhere including a wedding, stormy sea, starving crowd, blind person, lame person, in foreigners and strangers, at a well of water and in death. Being born again is having one's faith switch engage to perceive another kingdom, another reality at work in the midst of the seeming quotidian or everlastingness with everydayness.
Aphorism of the Day, January 16, 2019
In spite of John's Gospel, Irenaeus said the "Plain reading," was the preferred reading for Scripture. John's Gospel uses the term "sign" to refer to the acts of Jesus which defy the natural laws of causation. Sadly, the aesthetic and artistic value of the John's Gospel has been diminished because empirical verification has been the sole arbiter of what is "true," even while in experience we have more honest evocative experiences because of aesthetic and artistic truth. Why have we sold out the incredible value of aesthetic truth, artistic truth of beautiful moving truth? John's Gospel perhaps uses the notion of the sign for people to "switch" their interpretative behavior from the literal to the spiritual. This is back up by the continual scorn that Jesus shows for his interlocutors who are "crassly" literal, e.g. Nicodemus trying to get back into his mother's womb, the disciples thinking that Lazarus is "sleeping," and the Pharisees reflecting on what "blindness" means.
Aphorism of the Day, January 15, 2019
In the mysticism of the early church the historical Jesus was seen as lifted up on the cross something like a rocket to become the Risen Christ who poetically was "all and in all." Such an ascension from particular Jesus of Nazareth to universal Christ is indicative of the continuum between the particular and the general or universal. The "re-entry" of the universal Christ back into the particulars of each person's life is a testimony to the adaptability of the Gospel message. If my particulars of the Risen Christ are not yours because you have different context and setting, then so be it. However, one should not elevate the relativity of one's differences in the particular to overwhelm the universal Christ who is "all and in all." Once institutions, nationality, politics and other particulars are elevated to the universal, people find reasons to fight and disagree and become divided over having a Common Christ. To which I say, "Rise to the universal to protect oneself from the pettiness that can occur because of the prison of the particular."
Aphorism of the Day, January 14, 2019
On the scale of significant problems, Mary had a rather trivial one but important if one is helping in some way to cater a wedding in Cana of Galilee. What was the problem? They've run out of wine. Guests are going to think the hosting family was unprepared and it will be major family embarrassment. Seems that Jesus had at first, a "mom, it's no big deal" kind of response. Mary, despite his dismissive response, put Jesus in charge of getting the wine. No late night convenience stores open, Jesus did his first "sign" in perhaps hypnotically bringing the feast members to agree that anything served in a wine goblet was wine. And water can taste winely, if wine is a standard of what tastes best. And if one is honest, water is the "wine" of all beverages. People who live on wine get drunk; people who live on water are properly hydrated for living. The sign of God's incarnation in Jesus is that God being with us reaches to all of the trivial things of life too, even running out of wine at the wedding party.
Aphorism of the Day, January 13, 2019
Jesus was with humanity; he became so much "with humanity" that he died with humanity, because every human being must die. Jesus is God being so baptized, so immersed into humanity that he even went to the terminal place of humanity, death itself.
Aphorism of the Day, January 12, 2019
The baptism of Jesus presented as a Trinitarian event. Jesus is declared to be Son by a Heavenly Parent and the Dove Spirit descends upon Jesus. That Jesus underwent baptism by John in John's community is a sign that he saw himself in solidarity with a particular group of people. Baptism is the ritual of solidarity with God and one's community with solidarity being expressed in vows: vows of the baptized to God and the community, vows of the community to the baptized and faith in the vows of the Trinity to initiate the baptized in the "holy" family.
Aphorism of the Day, January 11, 2019
The Spanish language departure blessing for good bye (God be with you) means Go with God. The name of Jesus borrowed from Isaiah was Emmanuel or God with us. In the solidarity ritual with humanity expressed when Jesus was baptized by John, ironically we have the divine expression of Humanity with God. God with us as humanity; Humanity with God. This expresses the reality of the divine as a human experience. The incarnation is the admission that within human experience there is the designation of such an exalted horizon that seems so extra-human in our experience as to be called the Divine. So the incarnation is the acceptance of human experience as a valid way to come to know what is very best about human experience, namely, the divine or the exalted Horizon expressing the best and greatest.
Aphorism of the Day, January 10, 2019
People who deride baptism for its irrational silliness should be careful to be consistent and rid themselves of all "silly" significant initiatory ritual of human solidarity. It is impossible to do; might be better and more humble to say "my silly initiatory is not yours. For those who admit that they are embedded in the web of language, they also must admit they practice all sorts of initiatory rituals which bind them within the communal solidarities of their lives even if they absent themselves like a hermit from physical presence with others. The stealthy tether of language co-opts one everywhere and cannot be escaped from the always already coding of community participation.
Aphorism of the Day, January 9, 2019
Aphorism of the Day, January 8, 2019
Baptism has been both an active and passive rite of human solidarity. Passive when it is ministered to infants who have no choice but to have their lives through their linguistic words thoroughly coded with the taxonomic practice of their adult mentors. As a child becomes more active in language use, he or she can embrace the received baptismal values in the development freedom which occurs with aging.
Aphorism of the Day, January 7, 2019
Why baptism? Why the baptism of Jesus by John? One could ask, why human solidarity and human solidarity rituals? To be human is to have language and be organized by having language. The essence of language is communication among language users. Language is also visual in body acts and rituals are body language acts signifying solidarity which expresses the personal identity of an individual within a community. The mutual dynamic between an individual and community has both the promise of aid and support and the crisis of conflict and disagreement. The ritual of baptism is a declaration that the group ego will be checked to receive one more person who will change the group even as the individual ego is checked in submission to the solidarity identity. Baptism signifies the continual human dynamic of individual in community and community in the individual. Baptism is different from "secular" initiation ritual in the acknowledgement of the need of interior Spirit grace to achieve the beneficial marriage of individual and community.
Aphorism of the Day, January 6, 2019
The Epiphany is referred to as the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. Gentiles comes from Hebrew words meaning nations in a general sense but sometimes specifically refers to people other than the people of Israel. The Epiphany sums up the paradigm shift in religion and theology for the Jesus Movement which began as a party within Judaism and became separated "structurally" from Judaism when the theology of Gentiles embracing Jesus as the Messiah became definitive of the Jesus Movement without the requirements of the ritual purity observances that characterized those who frequented the synagogue as an expression of their practice of religion. Christians, who had a Jewish upbringing, found it difficult to remain ritually pure in their piety as they embraced Gentile followers of Christ who did not observe the rituals of Judaism. The Christian Movement purported to be a Movement of the interior event of having the Risen Christ realized in oneself through the Holy Spirit. This interior event gave one freedom to dispense with the piety requirements of synagogue Judaism, even while it began the process of Christians beginning to develop their own ritual piety. Becoming a follower for Christ meant a change in ritual piety. The change in ritual piety requirements signaled that a paradigm shift had occurred.
Aphorism of the Day, January 5, 2019
What about the motive of the "unrequited" in New Testament writings? The preachers who saw the success of the Gospel for many Gentiles were disappointed that the Gospel was offered to and not accepted by many in the synagogues. One cannot discount the experience of incommensurability between the church and synagogue which factors into the New Testament writings. The paradigm shift to the Gentile populace meant that the Jesus Movement and the synagogue were using the same words but the words had different meanings within the different paradigms, e.g., God as Father,Son and Spirit and Messiah as Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, January 4, 2019
The appearance of the magi in the Gospel after the writings of St. Paul were an apology for letting the Gentiles into the stream of salvation history without full ritual compliance means that wise people everywhere are to follow the natural signs to find the birth of Christ within. Like the story of Simurgh in Attar's "Parliament of the Birds," so is the meaning of the birth of Christ as the discovery of the always already image of the divine upon each person. The birds of the Parliament decided to journey to find the mystical "Simurgh" and they came back to their original location and found out that "Simurgh" was themselves, viz., Simurgh means "30 birds," and that how many they were in number. The wise travel long distances to discover the "original" blessing that has been so close but missed. The image of the divine upon each is the Christ nature which resides like a Trojan House within each of us and is ready at any vulnerable moment to break out within us with an Epiphany.
Aphorism of the Day, January 3, 2019
The magi symbolize the long journey that Gentiles made to receive the "Christ event." The heavens declaring God's glory in the form of a star became the guide to bring these foreigners to Christ. The story of the magi evokes one of the many "non-standard" journeys that are taken on the way the epiphany of the realization of the Christ nature within oneself. The journey to Epiphany has as many paths as there are travelers. Each person is to follow the "lodestar" to one's highest insight.
Aphorism of the Day, January 2, 2019
When someone has an epiphany he or she experiences a revealing, an uncovering of something hitherto unknown. An epiphany marks human experience with life changing results. It is an event which does not let one's life be the same and it is an event which requires response to a new state of enlightenment. The Epiphany as it has come to be known in Christian faith community sums of the effects of the life of Jesus Christ for the world. The world couldn't and hasn't been the same since Christ has been manifested in many different ways to many different people. And the Epiphany is still ongoing.
Aphorism of the Day, January 1, 2019
On the feast of the Holy Name one can observe the competing dynamics of the Gospel writings There is great care to present Jesus and his family as fully observant Jews in the ritual life of his nascent community; at the same the Gospels present Jesus as a radical reformer of the practices of Judaism of his time such that the basis of the separation of synagogue and the Jesus Movement is "anachronistically" presaged. The Gospels were written as "we want to be the legitimate successor of the Hebrew Scripture tradition" even while we have broken with some of the basic requirements of Judaic identity enforced in the practice of the synagogue.
When events of love happen within a person they seem so right and providential that one in poetic utterance one exclaims that such must have been preordained and designated from the beginning, wherever and whenever the beginning was. Love seems preordained when it happens.
Aphorism of the Day, January 30, 2019
Love is one of those trillion megaton words; it has exploded and its energy is diffusely omni-present but it does seek specificity in human situation and testimony of the same even if comes in a meaningfully corny Country luv song.
Aphorism of the Day, January 29, 2019
St. Paul famous praise of "love" is proof that the biblical language is mainly poetic and aesthetic. Even the historical narrative with actual references to seemingly actual people and places are used for spiritual teaching goals. When one speaks of love, it is a meaningful word but rather imprecise. Most everyone knows what it means but knows the meaning of it in highly personal and individual ways. When one moves from the general meaning of love to the more individual experiences of it, it moves into the subjective meanings and truths. Subjective truths cannot be general truths and so when religionists present religious meanings as empirically verified truths they should not be surprised at the rejection.
Aphorism of the Day, January 28, 2019
St. Paul wrote some incredible things about what/whom he seems to make a person in his 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians. What does it mean to say "love believes all things?" Is love an impersonal "virtue" or is love a personified force? By saying such a thing, he is implying that to invoke the word love is to speak about the most valuable value of all namely, namely the force of such a positive regard for existence that "believing" all things means that regard is given toward everything that could possibly come to language by a language user or language users. Too much of theology is built upon the negative or what we don't believe about God because we hold that God is too big to presume that we know how and what to believe. Love is believing all things because it is the affirming of the positive plenitude of everything that has and will become. Love is the cure for those who commit quietism and apophatic minimalism for fear of unwieldy involvement with everything.
Aphorism of the Day, January 27, 2019
Propriety can be regarded as a sentimental flowery flattery language used to impress people about one's cleverness or propriety might be regarded as saying and acting in the way that fits a situation in the best possible way. In this sense propriety is good news and Gospel. One should seek propriety in the way in which words come to structure one's life so one can live good news for others.
Aphorism of the Day, January 26, 2019
I would like to add to the meaning of Gospel, the rhetorical goal of the belle-lettrists, namely propriety. Gospel means enlightened and wise propriety, or saying, writing or doing the best possible language manifestation in the particular situation such that the poor have good news, the captives are freed even as the captors are rebuked and the oppressed are freed and the oppressors rebuked and the blind are given the understanding eyes to see what is truly good for them.
Aphorism of the Day, January 25, 2019
The conversion of Paul may be the most important turning point in the Jesus Movement Why? Paul as Saul opposed the nascent Jesus rabbinical movement as being heretical within Judaism. Saul not only wanted to excommunicate followers of Jesus from the synagogue and Temple; he wanted to remove them from life. The threat of their success obviously troubled him greatly. Saul snapped when his life situation devoted to keeping the commandments found him trying to justify a holy war to kill some heretics. Saul internal condition made him vulnerable to a major event. It happened on the road to Damascus when the one who was devoted to love and forgiveness even at his death, call Saul to a mission of love. When Saul became Paul, he became the architect of Gentile Christianity and his mission was subtly written into the later Gospel stories to highlight the arc of a message out of Israel reaching the entire known world.
Aphorism of the Day, January 24, 2019
The self understanding of Jesus about his ministry? Bring good news to the poor. Release to the captives. Recovery of sight to the blind. Proclaim the year of God's favor. Jesus of Nazareth in three years of known active ministry was limited to doing this in very context specific ways. To do this in a general way to the vast need requires that the Gospel become institutionalized, politically activated and complete systemic for maximal effect. The church has become comfortable with handing out context specific band aids in a world that is hemorrhaging from a great bleeding wound of need. The Gospel has to convert toward great systemic healing acts to ably do the Gospel healing that is needed in our world. Will our world heal if 26 people own equal to what half of the rest of the world own?
Aphorism of the Day, January 23, 2019
Evangelicals have reduced the meaning of the Gospel or Good News (Evangel=Gospel=Good New=euangelion=basar) to preaching about "accepting Christ" but what is forgotten is that the Gospel for Jesus meant the "doing of the good news" as defined by the prophet Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." The messianic action=anointing is about having the power to make good news happen in the lives of people who need it.
Aphorism of the Day, January 22, 2019
One result of success is the institutionalization of success to make it further accessible and available to more people. In the process of institutionalization, the truth of administration subtly becomes more important than the original attractive effervescence. What happens is that cookie cutter membership ensues and the institution says to many who do not fit the molds, "I have no need of you.....unless you can contort yourself to fit one of the institutional molds." And so people get locked out. It happened in the history of churches.
Aphorism of the Day, January 21, 2019
It is easy to assume that "gospel" originated in the Jesus Movement but it is as old as the prophet Isaiah. Good news or "basar" is what the prophet said the Spirit of the Lord was on him to bring. And when Jesus read Isaiah, he understood that bringing "basar" or good news summed up the purpose of his life.
Aphorism of the Day, January 20, 2019
Consistent with the first verse of John's Gospel of the Word, being God, Jesus is Word in flesh and as Word in flesh he is a sign and a sign maker pointing to the fact that language is inseparable from human experience as anything that can be known. In the trivial and the crises, all occurs within the field of language users being used by Language.
Aphorism of the Day, January 19, 2019
St. Paul called Christ as "all and in all?" How could that be possible? In the Gospel of John Christ is the omni-linguistic reality of everything that we can know. The WORD was God. By privileging Word as co-extensive with even knowing that we exist or that we are language users, we posit through having words that we have words as language users and the omni-language user would the total possible discursive universe. That God is Word and we are in God's image because we are word users.
Aphorism of the Day, January 18, 2018
Today, the feast of the Confession of St. Peter, one might note that the Gospel presentation of the same is not without poignant irony. Peter confesses Jesus as the "Messiah" and is rebuked by Jesus when his view of the Messiah does not line up with what Jesus tells him about his imminent suffering and death. Peter and the disciples in the Gospels are presented as naive and unenlightened as teaching examples all disciples in the process of coming to know about the mystery of Christ as it was known in Jesus. The Gospels are teaching stories which use the disciples as examples of any disciple in the process of coming into the higher mystagogy of the Risen Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, January 17, 2019
The Gospel of John is a narrative form of the Pauline and metaphorically poetic exclamation regarding Christ as "all and in all." The Book of Signs within the Gospel of John presents the sign as a faith switch that occurs within a person something what happens when one switches from seeing the duck to seeing the rabbit in the famous op art picture. Where is Christly presence to be found? Everywhere including a wedding, stormy sea, starving crowd, blind person, lame person, in foreigners and strangers, at a well of water and in death. Being born again is having one's faith switch engage to perceive another kingdom, another reality at work in the midst of the seeming quotidian or everlastingness with everydayness.
Aphorism of the Day, January 16, 2019
In spite of John's Gospel, Irenaeus said the "Plain reading," was the preferred reading for Scripture. John's Gospel uses the term "sign" to refer to the acts of Jesus which defy the natural laws of causation. Sadly, the aesthetic and artistic value of the John's Gospel has been diminished because empirical verification has been the sole arbiter of what is "true," even while in experience we have more honest evocative experiences because of aesthetic and artistic truth. Why have we sold out the incredible value of aesthetic truth, artistic truth of beautiful moving truth? John's Gospel perhaps uses the notion of the sign for people to "switch" their interpretative behavior from the literal to the spiritual. This is back up by the continual scorn that Jesus shows for his interlocutors who are "crassly" literal, e.g. Nicodemus trying to get back into his mother's womb, the disciples thinking that Lazarus is "sleeping," and the Pharisees reflecting on what "blindness" means.
Aphorism of the Day, January 15, 2019
In the mysticism of the early church the historical Jesus was seen as lifted up on the cross something like a rocket to become the Risen Christ who poetically was "all and in all." Such an ascension from particular Jesus of Nazareth to universal Christ is indicative of the continuum between the particular and the general or universal. The "re-entry" of the universal Christ back into the particulars of each person's life is a testimony to the adaptability of the Gospel message. If my particulars of the Risen Christ are not yours because you have different context and setting, then so be it. However, one should not elevate the relativity of one's differences in the particular to overwhelm the universal Christ who is "all and in all." Once institutions, nationality, politics and other particulars are elevated to the universal, people find reasons to fight and disagree and become divided over having a Common Christ. To which I say, "Rise to the universal to protect oneself from the pettiness that can occur because of the prison of the particular."
Aphorism of the Day, January 14, 2019
On the scale of significant problems, Mary had a rather trivial one but important if one is helping in some way to cater a wedding in Cana of Galilee. What was the problem? They've run out of wine. Guests are going to think the hosting family was unprepared and it will be major family embarrassment. Seems that Jesus had at first, a "mom, it's no big deal" kind of response. Mary, despite his dismissive response, put Jesus in charge of getting the wine. No late night convenience stores open, Jesus did his first "sign" in perhaps hypnotically bringing the feast members to agree that anything served in a wine goblet was wine. And water can taste winely, if wine is a standard of what tastes best. And if one is honest, water is the "wine" of all beverages. People who live on wine get drunk; people who live on water are properly hydrated for living. The sign of God's incarnation in Jesus is that God being with us reaches to all of the trivial things of life too, even running out of wine at the wedding party.
Aphorism of the Day, January 13, 2019
Jesus was with humanity; he became so much "with humanity" that he died with humanity, because every human being must die. Jesus is God being so baptized, so immersed into humanity that he even went to the terminal place of humanity, death itself.
Aphorism of the Day, January 12, 2019
The baptism of Jesus presented as a Trinitarian event. Jesus is declared to be Son by a Heavenly Parent and the Dove Spirit descends upon Jesus. That Jesus underwent baptism by John in John's community is a sign that he saw himself in solidarity with a particular group of people. Baptism is the ritual of solidarity with God and one's community with solidarity being expressed in vows: vows of the baptized to God and the community, vows of the community to the baptized and faith in the vows of the Trinity to initiate the baptized in the "holy" family.
Aphorism of the Day, January 11, 2019
The Spanish language departure blessing for good bye (God be with you) means Go with God. The name of Jesus borrowed from Isaiah was Emmanuel or God with us. In the solidarity ritual with humanity expressed when Jesus was baptized by John, ironically we have the divine expression of Humanity with God. God with us as humanity; Humanity with God. This expresses the reality of the divine as a human experience. The incarnation is the admission that within human experience there is the designation of such an exalted horizon that seems so extra-human in our experience as to be called the Divine. So the incarnation is the acceptance of human experience as a valid way to come to know what is very best about human experience, namely, the divine or the exalted Horizon expressing the best and greatest.
Aphorism of the Day, January 10, 2019
People who deride baptism for its irrational silliness should be careful to be consistent and rid themselves of all "silly" significant initiatory ritual of human solidarity. It is impossible to do; might be better and more humble to say "my silly initiatory is not yours. For those who admit that they are embedded in the web of language, they also must admit they practice all sorts of initiatory rituals which bind them within the communal solidarities of their lives even if they absent themselves like a hermit from physical presence with others. The stealthy tether of language co-opts one everywhere and cannot be escaped from the always already coding of community participation.
Aphorism of the Day, January 9, 2019
Since people have language, they are made for
solidarity. Baptism is a body language
rite of human solidarity aided by the helpful discourse of grace need for
successful human solidarity.
Baptism has been both an active and passive rite of human solidarity. Passive when it is ministered to infants who have no choice but to have their lives through their linguistic words thoroughly coded with the taxonomic practice of their adult mentors. As a child becomes more active in language use, he or she can embrace the received baptismal values in the development freedom which occurs with aging.
Aphorism of the Day, January 7, 2019
Why baptism? Why the baptism of Jesus by John? One could ask, why human solidarity and human solidarity rituals? To be human is to have language and be organized by having language. The essence of language is communication among language users. Language is also visual in body acts and rituals are body language acts signifying solidarity which expresses the personal identity of an individual within a community. The mutual dynamic between an individual and community has both the promise of aid and support and the crisis of conflict and disagreement. The ritual of baptism is a declaration that the group ego will be checked to receive one more person who will change the group even as the individual ego is checked in submission to the solidarity identity. Baptism signifies the continual human dynamic of individual in community and community in the individual. Baptism is different from "secular" initiation ritual in the acknowledgement of the need of interior Spirit grace to achieve the beneficial marriage of individual and community.
Aphorism of the Day, January 6, 2019
The Epiphany is referred to as the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. Gentiles comes from Hebrew words meaning nations in a general sense but sometimes specifically refers to people other than the people of Israel. The Epiphany sums up the paradigm shift in religion and theology for the Jesus Movement which began as a party within Judaism and became separated "structurally" from Judaism when the theology of Gentiles embracing Jesus as the Messiah became definitive of the Jesus Movement without the requirements of the ritual purity observances that characterized those who frequented the synagogue as an expression of their practice of religion. Christians, who had a Jewish upbringing, found it difficult to remain ritually pure in their piety as they embraced Gentile followers of Christ who did not observe the rituals of Judaism. The Christian Movement purported to be a Movement of the interior event of having the Risen Christ realized in oneself through the Holy Spirit. This interior event gave one freedom to dispense with the piety requirements of synagogue Judaism, even while it began the process of Christians beginning to develop their own ritual piety. Becoming a follower for Christ meant a change in ritual piety. The change in ritual piety requirements signaled that a paradigm shift had occurred.
Aphorism of the Day, January 5, 2019
What about the motive of the "unrequited" in New Testament writings? The preachers who saw the success of the Gospel for many Gentiles were disappointed that the Gospel was offered to and not accepted by many in the synagogues. One cannot discount the experience of incommensurability between the church and synagogue which factors into the New Testament writings. The paradigm shift to the Gentile populace meant that the Jesus Movement and the synagogue were using the same words but the words had different meanings within the different paradigms, e.g., God as Father,Son and Spirit and Messiah as Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, January 4, 2019
The appearance of the magi in the Gospel after the writings of St. Paul were an apology for letting the Gentiles into the stream of salvation history without full ritual compliance means that wise people everywhere are to follow the natural signs to find the birth of Christ within. Like the story of Simurgh in Attar's "Parliament of the Birds," so is the meaning of the birth of Christ as the discovery of the always already image of the divine upon each person. The birds of the Parliament decided to journey to find the mystical "Simurgh" and they came back to their original location and found out that "Simurgh" was themselves, viz., Simurgh means "30 birds," and that how many they were in number. The wise travel long distances to discover the "original" blessing that has been so close but missed. The image of the divine upon each is the Christ nature which resides like a Trojan House within each of us and is ready at any vulnerable moment to break out within us with an Epiphany.
Aphorism of the Day, January 3, 2019
The magi symbolize the long journey that Gentiles made to receive the "Christ event." The heavens declaring God's glory in the form of a star became the guide to bring these foreigners to Christ. The story of the magi evokes one of the many "non-standard" journeys that are taken on the way the epiphany of the realization of the Christ nature within oneself. The journey to Epiphany has as many paths as there are travelers. Each person is to follow the "lodestar" to one's highest insight.
Aphorism of the Day, January 2, 2019
When someone has an epiphany he or she experiences a revealing, an uncovering of something hitherto unknown. An epiphany marks human experience with life changing results. It is an event which does not let one's life be the same and it is an event which requires response to a new state of enlightenment. The Epiphany as it has come to be known in Christian faith community sums of the effects of the life of Jesus Christ for the world. The world couldn't and hasn't been the same since Christ has been manifested in many different ways to many different people. And the Epiphany is still ongoing.
Aphorism of the Day, January 1, 2019
On the feast of the Holy Name one can observe the competing dynamics of the Gospel writings There is great care to present Jesus and his family as fully observant Jews in the ritual life of his nascent community; at the same the Gospels present Jesus as a radical reformer of the practices of Judaism of his time such that the basis of the separation of synagogue and the Jesus Movement is "anachronistically" presaged. The Gospels were written as "we want to be the legitimate successor of the Hebrew Scripture tradition" even while we have broken with some of the basic requirements of Judaic identity enforced in the practice of the synagogue.
