Aphorism of the Day, June 2023

Aphorism of the Day, June 30, 2023

Deconstruction is like refreezing ice cubes in lake water.  One holds to the illusion of the solidity of the text even while the text is being dissolved while in the process of re--texting new "solidity" from the surrounding lake of words.

Aphorism of the Day, June 29, 2023

When writing about the "past" in the present, creeping anachronism of the present in text about the past is unavoidable.  One cannot avoid the place one is in time when one writes about "another" time. 

Aphorism of the Day, June 28, 2023

Plain reading or meaning of Scripture assumes continuous unbroken universal same language contexts through time avoiding the specifics which influence how meanings are constituted in a reading situation.

Aphorism of the Day, June 27, 2023

St. Paul's letter to the Romans includes a mystical practice to sublimate or rearrange one's desires to become an engine to do good things instead of bad things.  Finding the Holy Spirit, according to Paul, is the ability to experience agency toward what is good and better than we were before.

Aphorism of the Day, June 26, 2023

Mutual welcome, mutual hospitality expresses what an ideal state of human communion might be.  The intentional expression of belonging together should be the human symphony of unity in differences.

Aphorism of the Day, June 25, 2023

Texts like the Gospel can give the impression that writing as a technology of memory can fix the meanings of the words forever.  Texts as fixed meanings is the illusion of infallibility which some church leaders use to fix church administrative behaviors.  "This texts is saying what I need it to say for the authority of practice within my community."  Perhaps we should regard holy texts as open texts seeking to enlighten us toward what justice would mean in our new settings.

Aphorism of the Day, June 24, 2023

Religious identity is mostly a poetic ideology which provides a story identity for cohesive formation and maintenance of community.  What is empirically verified by poetry is not the text but the effects upon the readers/participants behaviors.

Aphorism of the Day, June 23, 2023

The word peace used by Jesus is contrastive; on one hand it can mean the lack of warfare and conflict, on the other, it can refer to a fruit of Spirit inner calmness which can be known within conflictive situations of life.

Aphorism of the Day, June 22, 2023

Peace cannot be a static condition which denies becoming and change.  Peace needs to understood as an adjustment to the continual conditions of change and that also means some conflictive difference between conditions of injustice and better future justice.

Aphorism of the Day, June 21, 2023

Dynamic peace needs to include the ability of adaptive change to new circumstances and new paradigm particularly when the issue is the application of justice in new situations.  Finding new application of justice does not always involve seeming peace.

Aphorism of the Day, June 20, 2023

The words of Jesus in the Gospels highlight family discord regarding faith paradigms.  Each person has their own constitution regarding their pacing through the faith paradigms relevant to their own perceived progress.  Hence there always seem to be people divided over having a God in common.

Aphorism of the Day, June 19, 2023

"I did not come to bring peace."  Peace as the status quo of conditions of injustice continually need to be disrupted with "good trouble."

Aphorism of the Day, June 18, 2023

"Wise as serpents and innocent as doves."  This describes the need to be fully disillusioned with humanity in its weakness, but completely gentle without cynicism for being all too human.

Aphorism of the Day, June 17, 2023

Something which belongs to all, especially when many are ignorant of their inheritance, needs executors of God's will to promulgate and inform the intended recipient.  Jesus was the executor of God's standing Will for all humanity and he found that many were not informed of their inheritance.

Aphorism of the Day, June 16, 2023

Being languaged-beings means that we are multi-discursive and this means we can be poets and scientists at the same time.  The confusion and conflict happens when poets treat their discourse as science and when scientists deny the meaningful truth values of entertaining poetry.  Some religionists are afraid to admit that religious discourse is part of their aesthetic entertainment just as some scientists might dismiss the meaningful truth value of artistic products which benefit and inspire the morals and ethics of our cultures.

Aphorism of the Day, June 15, 2023

The basic message of Jesus was about the always already Realm of God, the total field of Plenitude in which we live and move and have our being, and Jesus taught that we should not be isolated in our minds from knowing it.

Aphorism of the Day, June 14, 2023

Love requires strategies, tactics, action plans, and actions, as well as spontaneous love acts, to keep from being a good theory of Christian living.

Aphorism of the Day, June 13, 2023

Having faith is more accessible than saying "I am spiritual," because faith as persuasion is more easily known in what we are persuaded about.  With an inventory of one's values, one can find out rather easily one's persuasions.  Spiritual is a rather elusive term.

Aphorism of the Day, June 12, 2023

The use of the word faith should be returned to its Aristotelian roots in his Rhetoric, meaning "persuasion."  Faith is what one is persuaded about and everyone lives a persuaded lives.  Once we acknowledge living persuaded live, we can look at the sources, goals, and objects of our persuasions.

Aphorism of the Day, June 11, 2023

Sin and repentance involves accepting that we live in time and in sequence, we can be better than we have been before.  Time does not allow a static plateau of having been perfect, because perfection is always deferred to the future and know as simply being more complete.

Aphorism of the Day, June 10, 2023

Human systems seem to reach their level of incompetence when they have to negotiate within too much diversity of interests and needs of constituents.  While we proclaim that Love will find a way, we must work hard at strategies of justice.

Aphorism of the Day, June 9, 2023

The words of Jesus in the Gospels are mostly against people whose sense of entitled rightness did not allow others into their righteous club.

Aphorism of the Day, June 8, 2023

Jesus said he came to call sinners and not the righteous.  But isn't thinking that one is righteous, a chief sin and therefore worthy to be called to be dislodged from the sin of thinking one is righteous?  The words of Jesus can be deconstructed from being simplistic binaries.

Aphorism of the Day, June 7, 2023

Physician, heal thyself.  Sometimes one can be blindingly hypocritical in one's own profession, like doctors and nurses smoking outside hospital doors.  Learning to practice what we preach is a life long goal.

Aphorism of the Day, June 6, 2023

One can easily retreat to mystery as an excuse not to act or do something, waiting for more perfect and fuller information.  Mystery is not supposed to suppress the actions for love and justice needed now.

Aphorism of the Day, June 5, 2023

Is it an oxymoron to say a mystery is revealed, meaning that it is revealed that the Trinity is a mystery?   If something remains a mystery, has the content of the mystery been revealed?

Aphorism of the Day, June 4, 2023

The Trinity is an insight which has come to language as a paradigmatic way of to conceive of the divine as relational essence.

Aphorism of the Day, June 3, 2023

Trinity is a mode of relationship living which tries to unfold in sequential time something which can't be done with synchronicity, i.e., everything, everyone, everyone, all at one.

Aphorism of the Day, June 2, 2023

The Trinity is an insightful metaphor in using language to speak about how Plenitude becomes particularized in human experience, particularly in the insights about the Jesus traditions about God.  We cannot make idols out of metaphors even as we cannot ignore their genuine insights.

Aphorism of the Day, June 1, 2023

St. Paul wrote about the "communion" of the Holy Spirit.  Holy Spirit is the conducting essence between in the best mutual appreciative regard.