Aphorism of the Day, September 30, 2021
Parents may forgive children for breaking family rules but they do not quit promulgating the rule as the desired standard. The issue about the words of Jesus on divorce is similar; he was rebuking those who were all too familiar with divorce for seeming to want to make it the new norm. Jesus simply promulgated the norm. Even though charity fails, it does not falsify charity as the norm.
Aphorism of the Day, September 29, 2021 (Michaelmas)
Whether meaningful or not, it might seem as though sightings of angels decreased with the advent of modern science since the boundaries between inner reality and outer reality became fixed by the community objectivity of what everyone had sensorial access to. There remains those for whom in intermittency have their gates of perception open to interior stuff, dream stuff who can on occasion still bring to consciousness the visual "messengers," the Christian "Hermes" who represent the symbolic tying together of what is inside a person and what is outside a person. In a meaningful sense all words are angels in being the medium of how we relate our insides to our outsides. All words can be the symbolic messengers ascending and descending upon the ladder of Christ, the Eternal Word.
Aphorism of the Day, September 28, 2021
"Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will not enter it." This saying of Jesus bespeaks perhaps the difference between childishness, adult skepticism, and childlikeness which is a quality retained in everyone of having been in a former state of wonderment and not yet coded by the language of harsh brute facts that splash cold water on the aspect of wonderment. Spiritual experience involves wonderment. It involves the ability to open the gates of perception to "dream-scape" material. The problem of fundamentalism is to take "dream-scape" material and treat it as though it was sensorial, empirical, replicable experience.
Aphorism of the Day, September 27, 2021
When the words of Jesus seem to prohibit divorce, the canonical practice of the church essentially made it an unforgivable since one was denied communion. In stating the ideal and the perfect, Jesus was simply addressing people who were caught up with trying to imply that failing at the perfect is so normal that people need to establish that the probability of failure is the norm for humanity. But Jesus was simply saying that because we fail, the ideal is not falsified as the ideal.
Aphorism of the Day, September 26, 2021
"But if salt has lost its saltiness..." These words of Jesus raise an impossibility. Natural salt does not expire. Modern salt with additives have shelf life for the additives. The implication of this might be that if followers of Jesus are no longer adding preservation, purity, and taste to their world, don't blame it on the consistency of the presence of the divine in one's life. Get out of the way for the divine to be a salty presence through one's life.
Aphorism of the Day, September 25, 2021
One of the necessary phases of stewardship often is fasting. Jesus used hyperbole to illustrate fasting. If you eye offends you pluck it out. Arresting the wrong direction in our use of our faculties is an important event in gaining the self-control toward being a good steward.
Aphorism of the Day, September 24, 2021
The proverbial parent waiting for babies first word to be mama or dada with analogical imagination can be an insight into the Eternal Word waiting for all young human language users to say the name of the the divine parent in as many ways and languages as possible. Eternal Word begets word users whose tasks is to confess Eternal Word as the essence of human existence.
Aphorism of the Day, September 23, 2021
What do we do with things not worth saving because they are no longer useful? They are regarded to be refuse and garbage and thrown away. Put in the dump. Hell or Gehenna was the garbage dump and so when it was used as a metaphor for one's life it was a proclamation that wasting one's life or being totally unuseful in contributing loving value to this world was the state of existence to avoid. Wasting one's life is hell particularly if the aftermath of our wasteful deeds leaves a millstone around the neck of those who come after us.
Aphorism of the Day, September 22, 2021
To his disciples who were worried about "competitors" in ministry, Jesus said, "Whoever is not against us is for us." It is is easy to measure the worth of one's ministry/vocation/career by statistical metrics and like a commercial market view oneself as being in perpetual competition with others for the "market share." But if one is mainly concerned about orthopraxy, or always doing the right thing, then one can affirm and rejoice that the right things is done by many people as it pertains to love, kindness, and justice. Love, kindness and justice really does not have to have our particular doctrinal stamps of approval to be valid universal love, kindness, and justice. Let us not commodify the virtues to promote tribal exclusivity.
Aphorism of the Day, September 21, 2021
Many people are concerned about avoiding "hell" in the afterlife. It might be better to avoid hell in this life, that is, living with one's life deeds being regarded as waste to be discarded in a garbage dump. Hell or Gehenna was a "garbage dump" and a place for rendering dead animal carcases. Do not live one's life with deeds that are wasteful for self and others and fit for the garbage dump. Be more afraid of the hell of waste in this life and then have "waste" define the permanent character of one's life going into one's afterlife.
Aphorism of the Day, September 20, 2021
In the riddle-speak words of Jesus, one finds an oxymoron of saltless salt. Natural salt does not degrade; it has stable identity. So if one has Spirit and Light, Spirit and Light do not degrade or change because they keep manifesting Spirit and Light outcomes in a changing world. Therefore anchor one's behavior on the stability of the loving Spirit of God and don't degrade the outcome of Spirit and Light by doing unenlightened and unspiritual things.
Aphorism of the Day, September 19, 2021
We are attracted to babies, young children, and pets because they seem to live in the state of not having language or having underdeveloped language ability which gives them the air of innocence because they are not culpable yet for what they do. We have the air of superiority as caretakers of them, and we love them partly because we love ourselves in the caretaker role. When Jesus uses a child as a teaching example, it has both the meaning of a child's undeveloped ego structures, signifying more "pure" motives, but a child also represents the best of the adults who have to step up and care for another, and and care of the strong for the weak was the kind of love that Jesus preached and exemplified.
Aphorism of the Day, September 18, 2021
The Gospel often present Jesus as an "uncle" Jesus, since he seems to be a parentless male who is interested in promoting the meaning and worth of children for his theology of new birth and recovery of child-like joy in life.
Aphorism of the Day, September 17, 2021
The Gospel writers repeated present the disciples as those who misunderstood the suffering servant Messiah. The presentation of this misunderstanding should be understood as diagnostic of the conditions within a rather fluid Jesus Movement which had various relationship within the various synagogue communities.
Aphorism of the Day, September 16, 2021
The child motif used in the Gospel presentation of the teaching of Jesus bespeaks that the adult use of language codes a child to be constituted toward the abuse of power. The child as a "clean slate" become social constructed as an adult to want power to lord over others. Jesus rebuked his disciples and invited them to find the child like state before they had become coded to be "power hungry" even as chief "officers" in his "kingdom of God."
Aphorism of the Day, September 15, 2021
When does the "will to power" become the desire to have authority over others? Does a child bully as a jealous older sibling or playmate express this innate will to power? Does the use of the child by Jesus as one who is "innocent" of "authority" issues have its limitation when pondering innate "selfishness?"
Aphorism of the Day, September 14, 2021
Holy Cross Day. In the exploitation and oppression of the powerful over the weak, one can see the contradiction of the great sustaining power of God to even allow the abuse of power even as power is used in such horrendous ways. It seems a very high price for the maintenance of moral and spiritual excellence which requires even the genuine freedom that is so openly abused. The lure of God's freedom is to love and to use one's freedom in loving ways. God invites us continuously to overcome evil with good as the best way to celebrate the excellence of freedom.
Aphorism of the Day, September 13, 2021
To contrast the power hungry habits of adults, Jesus used the example of an innocent child. The infant/child motif are found in the words of Jesus. One can find a romanticization of the undeveloped linguistic being whose selfish ego has not yet been constituted by the words of the child's life. The practice of meditation is perhaps the attempt to access the memories of when we did not yet have language and we attempt to return to a "non-ego" oceanic state.
Aphorism of the Day, September 12, 2021
The writer of the epistle of James wrote about the dangers of an uncontrolled tongue, and certainly the individual tongue can cause havoc. But what about the corporate "tongue" of propaganda when "group speak" is used to incite racism, discrimination and hatred on a grand scale. One tongue of hatred is dangerous but a group tongue of propaganda is catastrophic on a grand scale.
Aphorism of the Day, September 11, 2021
Nine eleven has become a metaphor for a day of infamy when symbols of the American Empire were struck, but symbols are academic, it is the people who perished and the aftermath devastation in the lives of those collaterally affected are incalculable. And then there has been the cost of lives when the American Empire struck back in Afghanistan and Iraq triggering exiles of people and creating refugees of people who have not been wanted in new countries. Most killings happen in the name of the collective identities which we bear, when as individual neighbors, we would greet each other, wish each other well and practice hospitality. We need to stop "meeting" each other through the personal disconnection of our guns and bombs, and meet with smiles and handshakes and best wishes for the families of the world.
Aphorism of the Day, September 10, 2021
It is easy to pick and choose one's portions of the Scriptures to justify one's life situation. Empire Christianity has adopted the conquest of Canaan as the justification for their manifest destiny in subjugating and enslaving and "putting others on the cross of oppression." It becomes easy to forget that the faith of Jesus is the faith of the suffering servant on the cross.
Aphorism of the Day, September 9, 2021
Peter wanted a "half Messiah," one who was perpetually victorious and not one who would identified with the conditions of freedom in our world which include suffering and death. Seek the Messiah who will provide the identity and path to integrate the full range of probabilities of what can happen in human experience, and that includes suffering and death.
Aphorism of the Day, September 8, 2021
Why might Christianity be a "cross heavy emphasis?" To be realistic about actual condition of freedom when the natural competition of systems in time create passing and different states of becoming some of which are agony and some of which are ecstasy as well as various states of drudgery. To not have a strategy of coping with the negative conditions of freedom is not true to the way things are. A suffering servant dying Jesus on the Cross is realistic to the conditions of freedom which often manifest the condition of the strong predator overwhelming the weak prey. Any spiritual strategy which does not deal with living with the predator-prey possibility is living in the condition of denial.
Aphorism of the Day, September 7, 2021
The Gospel writers use the disciples as "teaching foils," exemplars of what famous church leaders once were. This contrasts with what they became and so the message was, even the great church leaders once lived in error and ignorance. The famous Peter was once rebuked for being Satan's voice because he would not allow that the Messiah could be a suffering servant. So Peter is used by the Gospel writers to highlight the competing notions which prevailed regarding the nature of the Messiah. Everyone knew that eventually Peter got it right in dying a death of a suffering servant.
Aphorism of the Day, September 6, 2021
Biblical literalists have to give way to the metaphor of the cross of Jesus which became the power of dying through cross of Christ identity to what is unworthy within us. Pauline Cross of Christ identity took the metaphorical form in the Gospels of "taking up one's cross" and "dying to oneself." The dying self in this reference is not the physical body self, but the "soul life" self, the selfish ego self.
Aphorism of the Day, September 5, 2021
The Bible is written by people who believed that they were God's favorites even as they recognized that they themselves did not live up to being a favorite. Being a favorite of God meant being in a covenantal relationship with God. The question that should be asked is whether only Jews and Christian could have a covenantal relationship with God. Being favored is the after the fact experience of knowing love; it does not limit the ability of one completely competent at loving that we say God is, from loving other people other than our group under different covenantal definition which take into account of how God is with people in different places.
Aphorism of the Day, September 4, 2021
Sometimes the past of our ancestors has to be embellished to fortify the current identity of the group identity at the time of the latest editing of the community texts. The Bible is a collection of texts of identity. Some of the texts of the "heroic" past do not comport with what we would call proof of God loving all people.
Aphorism of the Day, September 3, 2021
Opening eyes and ears and making the dumb to speak were physical signs fo spiritual seeing, hearing and speaking. The Gospel writers used the physical as a metaphor for the spiritual.
Aphorism of the Day, September 2, 2021
In the healing of the daughter of the woman from Tyre, Jesus demonstrates that the blessing of God is for everyone. He challenged the woman to exert herself for a mere "crumb" of blessing. Faith is believing that the blessing is available to receive and to be intentional in receiving it. Intentionally much go beyond the prejudices and biases which promote the wrong image of who God belongs to.
Aphorism of the Day, September 1, 2021
Truth and reconciliation in restorative justice are impossibilities, because historic events create an absolute past which can not be undone. When invaders have taken lands and killed and relocated residents there is abrupt discontinuity in space, time and culture. Did the Canaanites ever receive restorative justice, truth and reconciliation from God's people who were conquering as "obedience" to God? The biblical record provides a template for "might make" right and justification for the fittest to survive. The beatitudes of Jesus are Christian martial arts for surviving as oppressed people. The Christianity as Empire cannot be said to derive from beatitude Christianity. Christianity as Empire returns to the "manifest" destiny of the Hebrew Scriptures.
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