While we may hold that the laws of science were essentially the same in biblical times as they are now, we cannot assume the sameness regarding cultural and social practice. We don't criticize the people of the past for being different that we are in our understanding of social justice for more people, but we don't valorized ancient biblical social practices as being an absolute standard for all times. The cultural manifestations of justice have changed as we have become aware of some primary identities of people. Does anyone think that Jesus today would tell parables about servants and slaves?
Aphorism of the Day, January 30, 2024
Salvation is holistic health and when one looks at the healing stories in the Gospel, one should do it as a historical medical anthropologists. Healing arts are contextual the accounts of cures are many on this side of death. Of course, the Gospel believe that the big sickness of death does get "cured" eventually.
Aphorism of the Day, January 29, 2024
The Plenitude of All is only experienced locally. From having location one assumes that ones can be everywhere and when one adds language to being everywhere, one has personalized the world because language is personal. With language we label non-personal things, extra-personal entities in personal ways. Language does not let us escape personal-morphic practice.
Aphorism of the Day, January 28, 2024
How does humanity ascribe superlative value? By saying something is superhuman or above human or out of this world. One can understand how the divine enter human discourse. We say that things are "out of this world," while remaining very much in it. Religions present systems of axiology (values) and have hyperbolic discourse to represent the highest values. Please do not confuse scientific language and the language of religion.
Aphorism of the Day, January 27, 2024
Everyone is necessarily a "relativist" because one can only see and know in part, that is, the things relative to ones time and place. However, all relativists use discourses of totality because in using language one assumes the entire linguistic universe of differences without be able to comprehend the totality. Any relativist is always already committed to the absolute reality of there always being MORE.
Aphorism of the Day, January 26, 2024
Is Being the absolute abstracted past of everything that has become? The now is new arising occasions being made into inclusive Being. Our freedom repertoire may be limited in how we contribute to new occasions, but it is significant if we choose to creatively advance love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, January 25, 2024
Some people absolutize the ancient human awareness models of the Bible to support the refusal to offer justice, rights, and care to people whose personal identities differ from "cookie cutter" binary modes of understanding the human person. The Bible models many creative advances and paradigm shifts, which means we should also know how to integrate change with justice and dignity for all peoples.
Aphorism of the Day, January 24, 2024
It is impossible to avoid discourses of totality since when we speak we assume the entire universe of discourse even though we are limited in the portion which we can actually use. We should not mistake the use of the discourse of totality for actually comprehending it or presuming to know its meaning. Stated simply, the discourse of totality is the fact that "there is MORE" is the always already reality.
Aphorism of the Day, January 23, 2024
The supreme insult in philosophy is to call someone a "relativist." Yet anyone can only know what is relative to one's circumstance and time of living. It is more presumptuous to be the one who is an "absolutist" and claim to speak exclusively on behalf of the absolute while having but a relative profile. Wisdom would demand that like St. Paul we confess that we know in part and that everyone uses a discourse of totality in assuming the entire universe while but actually using but a paltry portion of it. The vastness of life demands being humble relativists, but let's do our relative parts well, in love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, January 22, 2024
Having language is interiority; language comes from within. It is a within which becomes an exterior in sound and text on its way to awakening the interior language points of new language users.
Aphorism of the Day, January 21, 2024
Interpreters error when they try to force a correspondence between ancient cultural practices in biblical times to our current day. Some ancient cultural practices can be recommended as a model for us today, while some ancient cultural practices are rightfully regarded as unworthy of justice. See slavery and the subjugation of women. Some interpreters pick and choose in arbitrary ways which ancient cultural "biblical" practices they want to retain as models for our lives today.
Aphorism of the Day, January 20, 2024
Wisdom in life involves knowing justice as something which is permanent among changes. Being permanent does not mean that application of justice to people in current situation doesn't change. When people's self awareness change, the apparent nature of justice seems to change, but justice does not change, only the application of it to people previously denied justice changes.
Aphorism of the Day, January 19, 2024
It is said that Inuit have more than fifty words for snow, which have come from their close interaction with the many varieties of snow. For ages biblical interpreters have assumed that human beings are or should be "cookie cutter" binary or male and female. As honesty has been allow on observing who people are and how they speak about their own identity, the binary typology is no longer accurate to the diversity that is present. New words arise to speak about this diversity, and we discover that people are more comfortable with a variety of words for snow than they are with a variety of descriptions of how people know themselves to "human." People have a sentient existence quite different from snow which means sentient people should strive for empathy.
Aphorism of the Day, January 18, 2024
Being a conservative is basically a relationship to time and change and the pace in which one is able to integrate innovation in one's life to respond to new social understanding of what is happening in the ecological and the social environments. Conserving may include lots of nostalgia.
Aphorism of the Day, January 17, 2024
Jesus brought the pronounced "fatherization" of God, not because the Divine can be limited to the masculine but rather to teach the divine familization of all people based upon being created in the image of God.
Aphorism of the Day, January 16, 2024
Those who think that America should be a theocracy miss the genius of the founders who set up a system that was designed to keep Christians from persecuting other Christians with whom they disagreed. Thou shalt have freedom of religious belief, but thou shalt not and the government shalt not burn Christians at the stake for not having the "established and correct" Christianity.
Aphorism of the Day, January 15, 2024
The story of Jonah is a satire on theocratic patriotism. Jonah was angered when God told him that the same love he assumed God had for his people was also available to the foreigners of Nineveh. It is a warning to anyone who thinks that God's love is exclusively "exceptional" to any group of people. One can feel thankfully "favored" as long as one allows that everyone else can also know that same favor.
Aphorism of the Day, January 14, 2024
Seeing is actually a language or text in "pictures." Picto-syntax and picto-grammar in nature because language co-exists with seeing.
Aphorism of the Day, January 13, 2023
What is seen is like word creating what we call vision of objects. From our interior lives we are able to project holographic images as well and so dream-like angels appear as do unicorns, dragons, and fauns.
Aphorism of the Day, January 12, 2024
Jesus is Word and Ladder in the first chapter of John. The "dream ladder" in reference to Jacob. In short, Jesus the Christ is the metaphor for word as the communicative essence of human existence being evidence of what is divine or superlative about human identity.
Aphorism of the Day, January 11, 2024
Among the many obvious "I am" statements of Jesus in John's Gospel, we should also add an unobvious one. To Nathaniel Jesus said he/Son of Man was the (Jacob's) ladder from heaven on whom whom the angels would go up and down. Being in John 1, Christ as Word is the connecting ladder between what comes from profound interiority and what words become in the "external" world, i.e., the world exterior to what is inside of us. Angels are specific messenger words manifest upon the Word as the connecting ladder of interior and exterior.
Aphorism of the Day, January 10, 2024
Some people only perform "under the lights," and crumble in the too ordinary conditions of drudgery. Though there may be a difference between practice and performance the rote of practice is required for the attaining of lyricism in performance.
Aphorism of the Day, January 9, 2024
The "call" of God is the discover of particular purpose among general purpose. If everything has an inherent purpose, the discover of particular purpose for a specific person might be descriptive of what "call" of God means.
Aphorism of the Day, January 8, 2024
Constitutional originals and biblical fundamentalists can be inconsistent in how they use the principles of meaningfulness in ancient texts and meanings which clearly are relative to ancient and former cultural practices which were made "true" by sheer widespread practice. Fundamentalists will oppose gay relationships based upon Leviticus writings while forsaking the restrictions on pork and the stoning of insolent children, as well a seeing it very cultural appropriate to now condemn slavery. Constitutional originalists are not very original when they don't limit bearing of arms to 18th century muskets. Such convenient and fickle casuistry is done for other motives than for justice and safety for actual people. They use "fidelity" to the founding documents to avoid and prohibit the application of justice and safety.
Aphorism of the Day, January 7, 2024
Language is ritualistic in that we cannot help but repeat patterns of word order for specific hierarchical value purpose in any given moment. Language users are repetitive for the sake of their values.
Aphorism of the Day, January 6, 2024
Because something if finally discovered does not make it suddenly it more true than it was before it was discovered. That things unfold in the history of discovery does not change the always already. Things can be always already in possibility before becoming actual in experience. However, possibility should not diminish the significance of the actual, if the actual is creative advance toward goodness and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, January 5, 2024
In the attempt to remove words from one's life, one has to use and assume words to do so and overlook that one's body language and environment are already pre-coded by language in the effort to "forget worded existence" and also by using the words "forget worded existence." There is no escape from language.
Aphorism of the Day, January 4, 2024
Lots of people who say they don't believe in ritualistic efficacy belie this with their own endless repetitions that indicate a degree of irrationality. Lots of religious people believe in a kind of ritual magic and divorce the sacraments from anthropological soundness.
Aphorism of the Day, January 3, 2024
Interpretation is the art of creating new traces in language for the future by sorting through the inherited memorial traces available to the interpreter. It is an illusory art of being tricked to think that we attain contact with a "real something" instead of the shuffling of traces within language. We can build a hierarchy of values based upon characterizing the "real something," and such hierarchical values may be a way of saying, "my community is the best," or the real something might be an interpretation in body language of what love and justice means in practice. Choose today your interpretation of "real something." My community is better than yours or my humble attempt to instantiate a vision of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, January 2, 2023
Ritual is the stylized and community performance of repetition involving words and gestures which encapsulate important community values to be perpetuated for continuing and new members initiated into community practices.
Aphorism of the Day, January 1, 2024 (Feast of the Holy Name)
Language and Naming is the human attempt to preserve identity across time. Time means that everything is changing and we can observe that the human body eventually breaks down and is integrated with what surrounds its molecular composition. If the body cannot retain its identity as singular throughout time, how can personhood? Naming is the hope of attaining continuity in identity throughout time.
