Aphorism of the Day, July 31, 2019
As profound as the writer of Ecclesiastes sounds in his skepticism, there is the subtle personal temporal provincialism purporting to have achieved so much that one would hardly want such brilliance to be sullied and ruined by those incompetent heirs. How would they value what I have achieved and maintain it with the same valuing organ that I have valued it. The universe is "moi;" it dies when I die because I will no longer be around to keep creating it in time. It probably is good to remember that as one is center of one's own perceptual universe, one is but a satellite in the perceptual universes of the others.
Aphorism of the Day, July 30, 2019
Is being as personal identity a property that one has? What we have represents the conditions of the dynamic of what we've been given and the limited amount of freedom that we use in "taking" what we've been given to shape the "givenness" of our human situation. The All into which we've been born but known filtered and funneled mainly through temporal location, really has us more than we have the All. What is All really has us more that we have the All since the All will continue after us even as we assume the All is self-surpassing in a future state and like a large expanding kaleidoscope, the turn of time rearranges all of the shards of the traces of what has been into different existence than what has been. We been had by the All, and we can only say that we have All in the like way in which a guppy might say that "it has the Ocean." All and Universe have functional poetic meaning without having exact and precise meaning.
Aphorism of the Day, July 29, 2019
How is being and having related? Can being be having, as in one's has existence as a possession or property? Does one have successively an accumulating number of occasions of becoming in time. So does one possess or have the total number of occasions of becoming? In the process of sheer becoming one also can become identify, even over-identified with what one has. Family heritage, money, property, education, fame, power. One can view one's identity in terms of personal possession to the point of saying, "I am what I have."
Aphorism of the Day, July 28, 2019
How is God's will being done on earth when one asks for a fish and an egg and gets a snake and a scorpion? One has to submit to the higher condition of Freedom even while the secondary agents of freedom live parasitically off this greater freedom to account for the weal and the woe, the sublime and the ridiculous and everything in between. The higher Freedom does not intervene among secondary agents except to be the conditions for their very existence. The competition and the lack of the totally coordinated conditions among secondary agents accounts for the seeming chaos, even while the greater Freedom has the lure of an order which structures everything. In our prayer we trying to respond to the lure of this greater Freedom which is trying to structure us toward goodness and counter the freedom of the deprived goodness, called evil.
Aphorism of the Day, July 27, 2019
Prayer is the practice of learning how to live when God seems to be either apparent or non-apparent. Greatness encompasses what is apparent and what is not apparent. Most of us prefer to live in the conditions when it seems as God's favor shines upon us as the apparent proof of God presence. Faith is the state of living with the belief of God as actual during the perceptual states of God when God seems apparent or when God seems non-apparent. The phrases of the "Our Father," deal with living in a stable attitude toward God even God's will is apparently done on earth as it is in heaven and when it is apparently not. Trials and temptation arise when we confront what does not seem to be God's will being done on earth.
Aphorism of the Day, July 26, 2019
"Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." "Save us from the time of trial." Obviously, we want to be exempt from having to face life situations which would challenge us beyond our capacity of maintaining faith, hope and love. But think about all of the people who have been victims of extreme circumstances in life who have not had this prayer "answered." We still ask for good things even though we know that none is exempt from extreme dire events occurring. The Lord's prayer is based less upon outcome and more upon relationship. It means that healthy relationship is based upon wanting good things for ourselves, e.g., salvation as general good holistic health. A healthy relationship is also based upon not being mis-theistic (God-hating), or starting from the perspective that the universe is basically an unfriendly place without having a Big Friend within it All to inspire a phile-theistic (God loving) basis for relationship. Prayer means we begin our relation with God assuming our good motives toward God and likewise assuming God is inclined toward our well-being. Such a relationship is what might be called faith and trust.
Aphorism of the Day, July 25, 2019
Translation and interpretation. Forgive us our sin, our debts, or our trespasses? Debts imply a monetary obligation and might imply that God is the landlord of the universe to whom we owe everything and such seems to be a limited metaphor for human/divine relations. Forgive us our sins in the sense of the archer who shoots the arrow and perpetually misses the target might better characterize the human situation of the clash between now and the future, hope and the actual. Hope is what is not yet in terms of what we should be and the human dilemma of the quest for excellence means we always hold ourselves responsible for what we are not yet because we are haunted by hope. We want to be forgiven for what we are not yet, mildly accepting our current deficiencies and those of others whom we often deem to be deficient towards us in their behaviors. Forgiveness is the reciprocal dynamic of mutual tolerance of people living together helping each other surpass themselves in future states of excellence. In such a practice we look for Hope as future possible betterment to forgive us for not being yet what we want to be.
Aphorism of the Day, July 24, 2019
Prayer can be narrowly understood as offering petitions to God and getting them answered in in a way that is favorable to that way in which the petitioners understands his or her welfare. A more embracing understanding of prayer pertains to the relationship to God as all. How can we be faithfully related to the total situation of Freedom within which we live and in which we have our degree of freedom, including the freedom to pray? Can we live imputing loving motives of God even when we ask for a fish and we seem to receive a snake, or when we ask for bread and receive a rock? Prayer might be understood as adjusting to the conditions of freedom in our lives with God as the One who is Most Free but as such, shares degrees of freedom to all lesser agencies such that in the total play of free agents lots of outcomes can be experience that may be characterized as weal or woe or indifferent in terms of favorability to one's self-assessment of one's welfare. Prayer is the expression of a relationship with All in believing that one's life is beneficial to the total common good, even when the details of how it pertains in each life event such benefit is not always evident.
Aphorism of the Day, July 23, 2019
"Your kingdom come." This is a personal request for one to know that one lives and moves and has one's being in God. An assumption of believing in a creator, would be that all that is created is in the "realm" of the creator. So why does the realm of the creator have to come when it never left? It appears to have left because other realms have usurped the the hidden background of the tacit realm of God. Jesus was one who called us to return to the original obvious Realm of life.
Aphorism of the Day, July 22, 2019
The Gospels of Matthew and Luke indicate the belief that Jesus taught his followers to pray, "Our Father in heaven...." Certainly the poetry of this opening address suggests not some "sky God" who dwells in the realm beyond the trap door at the top of the domed sky, but One who dwell in an interior space within all, who is the spiritual conceiving One of all who wish to know their interior lives as the constellation of One who perfectly befriends without exempting us from all of the agony and ecstasy of living within the free conditions of the world. This profound interior Parent does not exempt us from the conditions of life but can be experienced as One who mentors us through same.
Aphorism of the Day, July 21, 2019
Mary and Martha of Bethany have become the proto-types for the active and contemplative orders of monasticism. Martha was interested in hospitality for Jesus in the family home; Mary was interested in hospitality for the words of Jesus within her inward home. The apparent "clash" between the sisters is the balancing act of tending to the outer world or our inward world. It is continual and both are important, even as Jesus said, "Mary has chosen the better part." For that specific occasion with Jesus being so accessible, Mary chose the better part. We always need to chose the better part when the occasions arise for significant opportunity for soul-work to be done. The better part is to be discerning of the opportunity for creative advance of inward awakening.
Aphorism of the Day, July 20, 2019
The origin of faith movements begin with mystical and serendipitous experience of the people who have them. They change the world with moral and spiritual awakening in ways that inspire people to conserve, perpetuate and promulgate the values which arise from these experiences. In short they become institutionalized and they can become efforts to "mass produce" the serendipitous. And sudden the "genie" has left the bottle and all that is left is the bottle, beautiful in its own right, but spiritless and without mysticality. The bottle becomes an artifact for remembering what it once contained. The bottle becomes a replacement for the once resident "Genie."
Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2019
An insight regarding the Gospel writings might be to understand them as the coding of the mystical experiences of the Risen Christ into a "physical historical narrative," since "believing our eyes" is a metaphor for indicating that something is really real. The mystical experiences of the Risen Christ created the accounts of the physical journey of Jesus in the Gospel narratives, with the mixture of oral remnants of the traditions of Jesus' words and actions coupled with oracular "voice" of the Risen Christ directing the narratives for the needs of the particular communities of the Gospel preachers/writers who were speaking and writing in the name of the Risen Christ. The Gospel writing is in koine Greek and not Aramaic, the language of Jesus. The Gospels represent interpretations, translations and expansion into the post-resurrection era of the meaning of Jesus Christ for those who had and would find him to be the telling life changing event of their lives.
Aphorism of the Day, July 18, 2019
New wine in old wineskins, is perhaps an aphorism highlighting the incommensurable between an older paradigm and a new paradigm. Old systems are not able to contain new situations. Our understanding of equal dignity of all people means that the old wines skins of biblical cultures which supported oppression for many people cannot contain the expanding arc of justice. The "from many one" phrase of American idealism could romantically presume to prevail when the ones with the power and the wealth could convince themselves that they were being "good masters" of those who had very little influence in the political, social and economic outcomes.
Aphorism of the Day, July 17, 2019
Synecdoche is a figure of speech where something refers to the whole or vice versa. The Pentagon is a building but in speech can refer to the entire Department of Defense. In speech we use these sweeping reductive or expansive devices for "abbreviation" to conserve speech act or writing acts energy. The use of synecdoche is effective when all participants understand the "abbreviations." The famous Christological poetic hymns function in a similar way. Jesus of Nazareth expands to the Christification of all things: Christ is all and in all. Christ is WORD from the Beginning. Christ is the Invisible God. One should understand the meaning of the Trinity as poetic expansiveness and not as empirical observations of three different persons in a space time sensorial context.
Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2019
Christ Jesus is the image (icon) of the invisible God. Such is what is written in Pauline writings. It is like the poetry of the introduction to John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." Word as Word is still invisible but through itself, Word is evident. Word continually refers beyond itself to what is not Word, but it really ends up just referring to other words which are supposed to be signifying what is not words. We are ordered and created as humans because we have Word as the ordering and structuring reality of our existence. I say that because in a very circular argument, I use and must use words to establish the primacy (the arche status) of Word. We are totally caught inwardly and outwardly in Words.
Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2019
"The better part." This is what Jesus said about Mary the contemplater in contrast with Martha the compulsive worker. If this was a parable of Jesus in the early church which privilege mystical experience, then one can see the priority which is established for the early mystics. You don't win the lottery if you don't play? You don't have the recognition of one's mysticality unless one spends the contemplative time.
Aphorism of Day, July 14, 2019
"For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished." These words of Jesus about the law seem to contradict the notion that "love" fulfills the law rather than a legalistic literalism about all of the written rules found in the Torah. This could also mean that whatever is accomplished in the future cannot change how the law was written in the past. What will be accomplished seems to be uncertain even while we can interpret endlessly about it referring to what was accomplished in the life of Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2019
To ask the question, "who is my neighbor?," is to pretend ignorance about something that might be obvious. It covers the hidden agenda, "who am I required to treat with dignity and respect?" "Jesus, would I have to regard a Samaritan as my neighbor, and therefore worthy of the love required by fulfilling the law?" Jesus then told a story about a Samaritan who helped a victim of roadside crime. Jesus was pointing out that everyone is a passive neighbor who needs help at some time. But the neighbor who keeps God's law is the one who is doing the loving and not just the recipient who receives the love.
Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2019
According to the punchline for the parable of the Good Samaritan, a neighbor is one who shows mercy. Show mercy means that regardless of the conditions of either party, one party has empathy for someone in need and that empathy results in an action of care. Mercy is empathy plus an action of care. This is how Jesus defines "being a neighbor." As passive neighbors, we also want to be on the receiving end of such care when we need it.
Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2019
Love your neighbor as yourself. Who is my neighbor? Wrong question. The neighbor is the one who is suppose to love any other person. In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus was saying "You love your neighbor as yourself," and you loving is what defines "neighbor."
Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2019
Doesn't it humiliate you when someone about whom you have preconceived notions and predisposed not to like, does something totally nice and wonderful. That is the spot of conscience which Jesus hit in telling the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2019
In the parable of the Good Samaritan dialogue, Jesus subtly changed the debate from a who is the neighbor in the Summary of the Law, whom I have to love into a neighbor is really the lover of God as a neighbor loving whomever is placed before one in life. The Samaritan is presented as the example of the active neighbor. And isn't it galling when the "natural enemy" is seen to be more neighborly than our presumed "natural friends." Those who have experienced the kindness of "strangers" understand the unbiased nature of "neighorly love."
Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2019
The parable of the Good Samaritan has a very subtle but profound shift that is evident in saying, being a neighbor and being a neighbor to. The shift is from the passive to the active. Passively a neighbor can be anyone who is geographically close to one; Actively, a neighbor is someone who is neighborly. Lots of people are passive neighbors without being neighborly. Jesus shatters the bias of his time by present the bad guy, the Samaritan, as one who is neighborly. Jesus was elevating the notion of neighbor from location proximity to the act of being neighborly.
Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 2019
"Rejoice that your name is written in heaven." Jesus told his evangelist not to rejoice in their success; rather rejoice that you in fact embraced the message that you are preaching. What was the message? God's realm is near and you are a member, a citizen of that realm. (Hence you are enrolled in the "heavenly" records as such a citizen). Act and be a citizen of God's realm. That is its own reward.
Aphorism of the Day, July 6, 2019
The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few, is what Jesus is saying. What is plentiful? The number of people who need to know good news about God's love. Why so few laborers? Perhaps there are not enough people who have been able to embrace good news in their own life to the point of being compelled to share it with others. It is a shame that there are not enough satisfied customers of "good news" to be available to share the excess with others.
Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2019
"Whenever we have the opportunity, let us work for the good of all." That is from St. Paul but it is the universal "common good" ethic. Everything should be judged by the question, "will this benefit everyone?" Whether the environment, health care and the economy, we often find individual "justice" at odds with distributive justice. The world is in need of a correction toward distributive justice.
Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2019
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States provides the framework for different people to be envious of the gifts of each other in the affirmation that we are all needed for our corporate wholeness and we cannot say of another, "I have no need of you." There are many universal and Christ-like values of strategies of love within our American ideals documented in our founding charters.
Aphorism of the Day, July 3, 2019
St. Paul's law of "karma" is expressed, "you reap what you have sowed." What we do now affects the future and sometimes the causes are directly observed and known and other times there are cumulative effects and the direct causal effect is unknown. This can be in our health and diet and in how we treated the environment. It is not that we don't believe in God's forgiving grace when we mess up really badly; God's law of karma is God as pure freedom sharing a degree of freedom with everyone and everything else and in the law of freedom current harm causes future harm to self and others through the reinforced repetitions which harden habits as well as actual future outcomes. Our world has been building up incredible cumulative effects that threatens us with a future grim reaper.
Aphorism of the Day, July 2, 2019
In the instructions for the evangelical mission, Jesus told his messengers not to stay around if their message was not received. Just move on. Not everyone is "ripe for harvest" in their life experience to be receptive for a paradigm shift. The sadness in life is most people are not ready to take a step in the direction toward what they need to become.
Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2019
Great idea remain such without strategies and action plans to make them actual. Perhaps the most native American philosophy is called "pragmatism," which means the truth of something includes it actual functional outcome in people's lives. The Gospel present Jesus using a mission strategy to get the message out including going in pairs and evangelical poverty. The corresponding application for us is that the Gospel needs strategies or it remains a hidden ideal; the strategies can vary depending upon the individual circumstances.
As profound as the writer of Ecclesiastes sounds in his skepticism, there is the subtle personal temporal provincialism purporting to have achieved so much that one would hardly want such brilliance to be sullied and ruined by those incompetent heirs. How would they value what I have achieved and maintain it with the same valuing organ that I have valued it. The universe is "moi;" it dies when I die because I will no longer be around to keep creating it in time. It probably is good to remember that as one is center of one's own perceptual universe, one is but a satellite in the perceptual universes of the others.
Aphorism of the Day, July 30, 2019
Is being as personal identity a property that one has? What we have represents the conditions of the dynamic of what we've been given and the limited amount of freedom that we use in "taking" what we've been given to shape the "givenness" of our human situation. The All into which we've been born but known filtered and funneled mainly through temporal location, really has us more than we have the All. What is All really has us more that we have the All since the All will continue after us even as we assume the All is self-surpassing in a future state and like a large expanding kaleidoscope, the turn of time rearranges all of the shards of the traces of what has been into different existence than what has been. We been had by the All, and we can only say that we have All in the like way in which a guppy might say that "it has the Ocean." All and Universe have functional poetic meaning without having exact and precise meaning.
Aphorism of the Day, July 29, 2019
How is being and having related? Can being be having, as in one's has existence as a possession or property? Does one have successively an accumulating number of occasions of becoming in time. So does one possess or have the total number of occasions of becoming? In the process of sheer becoming one also can become identify, even over-identified with what one has. Family heritage, money, property, education, fame, power. One can view one's identity in terms of personal possession to the point of saying, "I am what I have."
Aphorism of the Day, July 28, 2019
How is God's will being done on earth when one asks for a fish and an egg and gets a snake and a scorpion? One has to submit to the higher condition of Freedom even while the secondary agents of freedom live parasitically off this greater freedom to account for the weal and the woe, the sublime and the ridiculous and everything in between. The higher Freedom does not intervene among secondary agents except to be the conditions for their very existence. The competition and the lack of the totally coordinated conditions among secondary agents accounts for the seeming chaos, even while the greater Freedom has the lure of an order which structures everything. In our prayer we trying to respond to the lure of this greater Freedom which is trying to structure us toward goodness and counter the freedom of the deprived goodness, called evil.
Aphorism of the Day, July 27, 2019
Prayer is the practice of learning how to live when God seems to be either apparent or non-apparent. Greatness encompasses what is apparent and what is not apparent. Most of us prefer to live in the conditions when it seems as God's favor shines upon us as the apparent proof of God presence. Faith is the state of living with the belief of God as actual during the perceptual states of God when God seems apparent or when God seems non-apparent. The phrases of the "Our Father," deal with living in a stable attitude toward God even God's will is apparently done on earth as it is in heaven and when it is apparently not. Trials and temptation arise when we confront what does not seem to be God's will being done on earth.
Aphorism of the Day, July 26, 2019
"Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." "Save us from the time of trial." Obviously, we want to be exempt from having to face life situations which would challenge us beyond our capacity of maintaining faith, hope and love. But think about all of the people who have been victims of extreme circumstances in life who have not had this prayer "answered." We still ask for good things even though we know that none is exempt from extreme dire events occurring. The Lord's prayer is based less upon outcome and more upon relationship. It means that healthy relationship is based upon wanting good things for ourselves, e.g., salvation as general good holistic health. A healthy relationship is also based upon not being mis-theistic (God-hating), or starting from the perspective that the universe is basically an unfriendly place without having a Big Friend within it All to inspire a phile-theistic (God loving) basis for relationship. Prayer means we begin our relation with God assuming our good motives toward God and likewise assuming God is inclined toward our well-being. Such a relationship is what might be called faith and trust.
Aphorism of the Day, July 25, 2019
Translation and interpretation. Forgive us our sin, our debts, or our trespasses? Debts imply a monetary obligation and might imply that God is the landlord of the universe to whom we owe everything and such seems to be a limited metaphor for human/divine relations. Forgive us our sins in the sense of the archer who shoots the arrow and perpetually misses the target might better characterize the human situation of the clash between now and the future, hope and the actual. Hope is what is not yet in terms of what we should be and the human dilemma of the quest for excellence means we always hold ourselves responsible for what we are not yet because we are haunted by hope. We want to be forgiven for what we are not yet, mildly accepting our current deficiencies and those of others whom we often deem to be deficient towards us in their behaviors. Forgiveness is the reciprocal dynamic of mutual tolerance of people living together helping each other surpass themselves in future states of excellence. In such a practice we look for Hope as future possible betterment to forgive us for not being yet what we want to be.
Aphorism of the Day, July 24, 2019
Prayer can be narrowly understood as offering petitions to God and getting them answered in in a way that is favorable to that way in which the petitioners understands his or her welfare. A more embracing understanding of prayer pertains to the relationship to God as all. How can we be faithfully related to the total situation of Freedom within which we live and in which we have our degree of freedom, including the freedom to pray? Can we live imputing loving motives of God even when we ask for a fish and we seem to receive a snake, or when we ask for bread and receive a rock? Prayer might be understood as adjusting to the conditions of freedom in our lives with God as the One who is Most Free but as such, shares degrees of freedom to all lesser agencies such that in the total play of free agents lots of outcomes can be experience that may be characterized as weal or woe or indifferent in terms of favorability to one's self-assessment of one's welfare. Prayer is the expression of a relationship with All in believing that one's life is beneficial to the total common good, even when the details of how it pertains in each life event such benefit is not always evident.
Aphorism of the Day, July 23, 2019
"Your kingdom come." This is a personal request for one to know that one lives and moves and has one's being in God. An assumption of believing in a creator, would be that all that is created is in the "realm" of the creator. So why does the realm of the creator have to come when it never left? It appears to have left because other realms have usurped the the hidden background of the tacit realm of God. Jesus was one who called us to return to the original obvious Realm of life.
Aphorism of the Day, July 22, 2019
The Gospels of Matthew and Luke indicate the belief that Jesus taught his followers to pray, "Our Father in heaven...." Certainly the poetry of this opening address suggests not some "sky God" who dwells in the realm beyond the trap door at the top of the domed sky, but One who dwell in an interior space within all, who is the spiritual conceiving One of all who wish to know their interior lives as the constellation of One who perfectly befriends without exempting us from all of the agony and ecstasy of living within the free conditions of the world. This profound interior Parent does not exempt us from the conditions of life but can be experienced as One who mentors us through same.
Aphorism of the Day, July 21, 2019
Mary and Martha of Bethany have become the proto-types for the active and contemplative orders of monasticism. Martha was interested in hospitality for Jesus in the family home; Mary was interested in hospitality for the words of Jesus within her inward home. The apparent "clash" between the sisters is the balancing act of tending to the outer world or our inward world. It is continual and both are important, even as Jesus said, "Mary has chosen the better part." For that specific occasion with Jesus being so accessible, Mary chose the better part. We always need to chose the better part when the occasions arise for significant opportunity for soul-work to be done. The better part is to be discerning of the opportunity for creative advance of inward awakening.
Aphorism of the Day, July 20, 2019
The origin of faith movements begin with mystical and serendipitous experience of the people who have them. They change the world with moral and spiritual awakening in ways that inspire people to conserve, perpetuate and promulgate the values which arise from these experiences. In short they become institutionalized and they can become efforts to "mass produce" the serendipitous. And sudden the "genie" has left the bottle and all that is left is the bottle, beautiful in its own right, but spiritless and without mysticality. The bottle becomes an artifact for remembering what it once contained. The bottle becomes a replacement for the once resident "Genie."
Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2019
An insight regarding the Gospel writings might be to understand them as the coding of the mystical experiences of the Risen Christ into a "physical historical narrative," since "believing our eyes" is a metaphor for indicating that something is really real. The mystical experiences of the Risen Christ created the accounts of the physical journey of Jesus in the Gospel narratives, with the mixture of oral remnants of the traditions of Jesus' words and actions coupled with oracular "voice" of the Risen Christ directing the narratives for the needs of the particular communities of the Gospel preachers/writers who were speaking and writing in the name of the Risen Christ. The Gospel writing is in koine Greek and not Aramaic, the language of Jesus. The Gospels represent interpretations, translations and expansion into the post-resurrection era of the meaning of Jesus Christ for those who had and would find him to be the telling life changing event of their lives.
Aphorism of the Day, July 18, 2019
New wine in old wineskins, is perhaps an aphorism highlighting the incommensurable between an older paradigm and a new paradigm. Old systems are not able to contain new situations. Our understanding of equal dignity of all people means that the old wines skins of biblical cultures which supported oppression for many people cannot contain the expanding arc of justice. The "from many one" phrase of American idealism could romantically presume to prevail when the ones with the power and the wealth could convince themselves that they were being "good masters" of those who had very little influence in the political, social and economic outcomes.
Aphorism of the Day, July 17, 2019
Synecdoche is a figure of speech where something refers to the whole or vice versa. The Pentagon is a building but in speech can refer to the entire Department of Defense. In speech we use these sweeping reductive or expansive devices for "abbreviation" to conserve speech act or writing acts energy. The use of synecdoche is effective when all participants understand the "abbreviations." The famous Christological poetic hymns function in a similar way. Jesus of Nazareth expands to the Christification of all things: Christ is all and in all. Christ is WORD from the Beginning. Christ is the Invisible God. One should understand the meaning of the Trinity as poetic expansiveness and not as empirical observations of three different persons in a space time sensorial context.
Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2019
Christ Jesus is the image (icon) of the invisible God. Such is what is written in Pauline writings. It is like the poetry of the introduction to John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." Word as Word is still invisible but through itself, Word is evident. Word continually refers beyond itself to what is not Word, but it really ends up just referring to other words which are supposed to be signifying what is not words. We are ordered and created as humans because we have Word as the ordering and structuring reality of our existence. I say that because in a very circular argument, I use and must use words to establish the primacy (the arche status) of Word. We are totally caught inwardly and outwardly in Words.
Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2019
"The better part." This is what Jesus said about Mary the contemplater in contrast with Martha the compulsive worker. If this was a parable of Jesus in the early church which privilege mystical experience, then one can see the priority which is established for the early mystics. You don't win the lottery if you don't play? You don't have the recognition of one's mysticality unless one spends the contemplative time.
Aphorism of Day, July 14, 2019
"For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished." These words of Jesus about the law seem to contradict the notion that "love" fulfills the law rather than a legalistic literalism about all of the written rules found in the Torah. This could also mean that whatever is accomplished in the future cannot change how the law was written in the past. What will be accomplished seems to be uncertain even while we can interpret endlessly about it referring to what was accomplished in the life of Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2019
To ask the question, "who is my neighbor?," is to pretend ignorance about something that might be obvious. It covers the hidden agenda, "who am I required to treat with dignity and respect?" "Jesus, would I have to regard a Samaritan as my neighbor, and therefore worthy of the love required by fulfilling the law?" Jesus then told a story about a Samaritan who helped a victim of roadside crime. Jesus was pointing out that everyone is a passive neighbor who needs help at some time. But the neighbor who keeps God's law is the one who is doing the loving and not just the recipient who receives the love.
Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2019
According to the punchline for the parable of the Good Samaritan, a neighbor is one who shows mercy. Show mercy means that regardless of the conditions of either party, one party has empathy for someone in need and that empathy results in an action of care. Mercy is empathy plus an action of care. This is how Jesus defines "being a neighbor." As passive neighbors, we also want to be on the receiving end of such care when we need it.
Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2019
Love your neighbor as yourself. Who is my neighbor? Wrong question. The neighbor is the one who is suppose to love any other person. In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus was saying "You love your neighbor as yourself," and you loving is what defines "neighbor."
Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2019
Doesn't it humiliate you when someone about whom you have preconceived notions and predisposed not to like, does something totally nice and wonderful. That is the spot of conscience which Jesus hit in telling the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2019
In the parable of the Good Samaritan dialogue, Jesus subtly changed the debate from a who is the neighbor in the Summary of the Law, whom I have to love into a neighbor is really the lover of God as a neighbor loving whomever is placed before one in life. The Samaritan is presented as the example of the active neighbor. And isn't it galling when the "natural enemy" is seen to be more neighborly than our presumed "natural friends." Those who have experienced the kindness of "strangers" understand the unbiased nature of "neighorly love."
Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2019
The parable of the Good Samaritan has a very subtle but profound shift that is evident in saying, being a neighbor and being a neighbor to. The shift is from the passive to the active. Passively a neighbor can be anyone who is geographically close to one; Actively, a neighbor is someone who is neighborly. Lots of people are passive neighbors without being neighborly. Jesus shatters the bias of his time by present the bad guy, the Samaritan, as one who is neighborly. Jesus was elevating the notion of neighbor from location proximity to the act of being neighborly.
Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 2019
"Rejoice that your name is written in heaven." Jesus told his evangelist not to rejoice in their success; rather rejoice that you in fact embraced the message that you are preaching. What was the message? God's realm is near and you are a member, a citizen of that realm. (Hence you are enrolled in the "heavenly" records as such a citizen). Act and be a citizen of God's realm. That is its own reward.
Aphorism of the Day, July 6, 2019
The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few, is what Jesus is saying. What is plentiful? The number of people who need to know good news about God's love. Why so few laborers? Perhaps there are not enough people who have been able to embrace good news in their own life to the point of being compelled to share it with others. It is a shame that there are not enough satisfied customers of "good news" to be available to share the excess with others.
Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2019
"Whenever we have the opportunity, let us work for the good of all." That is from St. Paul but it is the universal "common good" ethic. Everything should be judged by the question, "will this benefit everyone?" Whether the environment, health care and the economy, we often find individual "justice" at odds with distributive justice. The world is in need of a correction toward distributive justice.
Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2019
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States provides the framework for different people to be envious of the gifts of each other in the affirmation that we are all needed for our corporate wholeness and we cannot say of another, "I have no need of you." There are many universal and Christ-like values of strategies of love within our American ideals documented in our founding charters.
Aphorism of the Day, July 3, 2019
St. Paul's law of "karma" is expressed, "you reap what you have sowed." What we do now affects the future and sometimes the causes are directly observed and known and other times there are cumulative effects and the direct causal effect is unknown. This can be in our health and diet and in how we treated the environment. It is not that we don't believe in God's forgiving grace when we mess up really badly; God's law of karma is God as pure freedom sharing a degree of freedom with everyone and everything else and in the law of freedom current harm causes future harm to self and others through the reinforced repetitions which harden habits as well as actual future outcomes. Our world has been building up incredible cumulative effects that threatens us with a future grim reaper.
Aphorism of the Day, July 2, 2019
In the instructions for the evangelical mission, Jesus told his messengers not to stay around if their message was not received. Just move on. Not everyone is "ripe for harvest" in their life experience to be receptive for a paradigm shift. The sadness in life is most people are not ready to take a step in the direction toward what they need to become.
Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2019
Great idea remain such without strategies and action plans to make them actual. Perhaps the most native American philosophy is called "pragmatism," which means the truth of something includes it actual functional outcome in people's lives. The Gospel present Jesus using a mission strategy to get the message out including going in pairs and evangelical poverty. The corresponding application for us is that the Gospel needs strategies or it remains a hidden ideal; the strategies can vary depending upon the individual circumstances.
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