Aphorism of the Day, February 2023

Aphorism of the Day, February 28, 2023

The Gospel of John contrast heavenly things and earthly things.  Earthly things refers to literalism while heavenly things refers to spiritual or the inward interpretation of what life means.

Aphorism of the Day, February 27, 2023

Some use the religious laws and recommended behaviors as a success and blessing formula.  If you do such and such, then God will bless you with wealth, success and happiness.  This simplistic formulaic method often proves wrong, especially because lots of bad things happen to good people.  Why not regard lawful living as simply good actuarial living.  In wise observation of probable outcomes, choose the statistically safer way of living.  Live toward probable likelihood, not in stubborn certitude about things which one cannot guarantee.

Aphorism of the Day, February 26, 2023

It is a mystery to ponder how such an account the temptation of Jesus would be relayed so as to be part of the reading public.  It assumes that Jesus told a person who would orally transmit it so that it could eventually become text.  And this text was not included in John's Gospel.  It is the writer presentation of Jesus as the Second Adam, returning to the garden degraded into a wild place, and there the Second Adam resists the serpent to redeem First Adam's failure to do so.

Aphorism of the Day, February 25, 2023

Before Jesus became a public minister, he is presented as having done his inner work.  Jesus was a people whisperer, because he had tamed the inward forces which tempt toward megalomania, exhibitionism, and even suicidal dying before one's time.  His inward conquest is presented in the temptation in the wilderness.

Aphorism of the Day, February 24, 2023

Would Jesus today be characterized as someone with the abnormality of "savant syndrome?"  In his encounter with the devil, Jesus is presented as one who could change stones to bread, jump off high places and not get hurt, and possess all the kingdoms of the world.  Jesus was humanly abnormal, not the average bloke in terms of abilities.  What made Jesus "normal" was that he was for others in connecting with people.  He was supremely gifted and the way that he was gifted does not have the pathological pejorative that the modern "savant" designation has.  His gifts were integrated with humanity for the common good.   Yes, he was alone and unique in his gifts but thoroughly integrated with humanity in his sharing of the same.

Aphorism of the Day, February 23, 2023

Jesus as the second Adam of early church retraces first Adam's confrontation with the serpent, only no longer in Eden but in a very wild threatening place, within and without.  Second Adam Jesus, was known to be hero Jesus in this encounter and initiate a new spiritual community, a new creation of how to be human going forward.

Aphorism of the Day, February 22, 2024

Ash Wednesday, day of macabre face painting or a day of remembering to cherish and care for our lives in our bodies before they return to dust?

Aphorism of the Day, February 21, 2023

The commercialization of Shrove Tuesday?  Carnivale and Mardi Gras celebrations are such public rituals of excess as if to enhance the fasting of Lent with its most extreme opposite.  Is the self control of moderation too boring?

Aphorism of the Day, February 20, 2023

Israel faced their 40 years of temptation with many failures.  Jesus went through his 40 days of testing and passed.  Jesus is the representative of God's solidarity with the human condition of probability.  Humans are continuously tested in many ways by the freedom of probability condition including the interior conditions of being tempted to do things at the wrong time and for the wrong reason.

Aphorism of the Day, February 19, 2023

The past is the only reservoir that we have to speak about what is new in the present.  Life is a continual process of comparing the past with the present.

Aphorism of the Day, February 18, 2023

Everything which is not unknowingly used by me in interpreting the present might be considered negligible.  And it remains a mystery regarding the negligible pertinent factors missed in my interpretation.  The great Negligible is what is mysterious to humanity.  We cannot designate specific causation to what we don't know.  But we can assume that much of what we don't know influences our situation.

Aphorism of the Day, February 17, 2023

Elevation, light, and clouds were landscape metaphors for speaking about interior events of epiphany with heighten closeness to the divine, seeing with wisdom, while living in the cloud of mystery signifying the humility of very limited human capacity in face of All.

Aphorism of the Day, February 16, 2023

How should people practice living together if all diverse ideological parties realize that there will never be conversion to one view by all?  Can there be a faith in the common good beyond parochial interests?

Aphorism of the Day, February 15, 2023

The transfiguration stories follow the tradition of how to communicate the Superlative in how the writers within the Christ communities felt about Jesus.  The New Testament is in fact a book of superlatives about Jesus.

Aphorism of the Day, February 14, 2023

What is the metaphorical difference of light in the ancient world that did not have but fire as a way of artificially creating light during darkness, from the metaphor of light today when we light up the night to avoid darkness?  Light still functions as what is needed to see, and using the metaphor of Christ as light, the nuance is about how we see.  Mere physical seeing is not enough; we must see through orientation to love and justice, for enlightenment to be more than merely physical sight.

Aphorism of the Day, February 13, 2023

The shiny face of Jesus on the Mount of the Transfiguration is the reuse of the Moses story motif whose face shone on Mount Sinai.  This motif is used to proclaim that Jesus is a God-ordained human like Moses but surpassing him in time and superlative significance for those who had come under his spell.

Aphorism of the Day, February 12, 2023

The beatitudes promote the requirement that the inward life of thoughts, dreams, and emotion be completely pure and so everyone is disqualified from the presumption of perfection.

Aphorism of the Day, February 11, 2023

Paul rebuked his Corinthian leaders for identifying themselves with their leaders.  Religious party identity seems to be the history of Christianity where ironically Christians are divided by having a "common" savior?

Aphorism of the Day, February 10, 2023

The words of the beatitude reveal the impossibility of getting outer action and inner self in agreement.  People can to right things for wrong reasons and motives.  People can do really lawful things and yet inside not want to do them.  If perfect is always doing the right thing for the right and pure motive then everyone is left needing a "clean heart."

Aphorism of the Day, February 9, 2023

Fulfilling the law in the words of Jesus seems to mean that right doing has to be accompanied by right "inner being."  You haven't murdered?  Have you been angry and desired to harm someone?  Gotcha!  Right being is the inward sphere and only the person knows about the inwardly secret life.  Fulfilling the law means discovering that one never can and so one needs the fulfillment of the grace of forgiveness.

Aphorism of the Day, February 8, 2023

Why would an imaginary past be written, one consisting of examples of things happening which violate the laws of nature?  To spin an heroic past of how people survived serves the providence of the present when the tales are told.  Divine Fate must have intervened heroically for our survival.

Aphorism of the Day, February 7, 2023

Let your "yes" be "yes," and your "no" be "no."  Does such a binary allow for any growth over time when one's future state surpasses and contradicts one earlier unenlightenment?  It probably means that one's oral contracts should be honored, i.e., do what you say you're going to do.

Aphorism of the Day, February 6, 2023

Is hating one's brother different from killing one's brother?  Of course it is in the jurisprudence practice of society.  A deed is the telling thing which gets one convicted, not the inward feeling of hatred.  What about in the sphere of inner or spiritual perfection?  One can be proud about not murdering anyone while harboring continuing hatred.  This disjunction was cited by the words of Jesus in the Beatitudes reminding us that we cannot exempt our inner lives from the higher spiritual laws in our quest for transformation in excellence.

Aphorism of the Day, February 5, 2023

Although the words of Jesus indicate that he did not come to abolish the law, but fulfill it, that fulfillment was more than having the outer appearances of abiding by society's rules.  The inner life of the one keeping rules also had to comport with the rules, and this is a much more difficult hidden dilemma.

Aphorism of the Day, February 4, 2023

What does humanity do with the great Negligible?  The Great Negligible being everything which might have existed, does, and will exists for which there is no human experience and yet co-exists with human experience.  What give human beings the right to speak with any certain knowledge about the vast unexperienced reality of All?  Whether we have the right to do so or not, the history is that people speak poetically about the Plenitude within which we find ourselves and such Plenitude has attained the Personal term of God, because humans find the personhood is what is highest about ourselves, and so the great One, as a very minimal aspect of greatness is regarded as Personal.

Aphorism of the Day, February 3, 2023

How does one harmonize the words of Jesus about not abolishing the law and the prophets with Paul's provision that Gentile not required to keep purity laws.  It indicates the diversity of Christ-centered Judaism in the first century.

Aphorism of the Day, February 2, 2023

Reading the Bible with hermeneutical charity means that one accepts the contexts of the writers, even citing the practices of slavery and subjugation of women.  However, one does not give up the advances that have been made in the applied justice to more people in our time and one must criticize harshly the use of biblical cultural practices to justify practice of injustice and inequity in our lives today.

Aphorism of the Day, February 1, 2023

Light is a metaphor discovery which changes one's life for the better.  The sun is always shining but we don't see it at night.  Light has to be refreshed in its contrast with darkness.  In life process, light events need to occur as continuous insights since no singular seeing event is final.