Aphorism of the Day, February 2024

Aphorism of the Day, February 29, 2024

Being spiritual in the New Testament refers to a habit of wisdom which allows one to read the world in a different way than the merely literal way.  It is a more aesthetic way of viewing the world, which does not contradict empirical verification.  The New Testament writers ask that the substantiality of other ways of perceiving the world be accepted with the respect which we have for "believing our eyes."  Poetry and science can co-exist with each mode receiving it proper use.

Aphorism of the Day, February 28, 2024

One of the subtexts of the Gospel of John is that spiritual discourse is figurative and not "literal" discourse.  Repeatedly in John's Gospel, the writer mocks the crassly literal.

Aphorism of the Day, February 27, 2024

The purpose of the law can be viewed in various ways.  Laws can be the insight of actuarial wisdom to recommend best behavioral practices for the goals of the common good of the particular group for which the rules are to be applied.  Laws can be view with the penal outcome in mind to deter bad behaviors.  Laws can become legalism when imposed structuration is applied to manifold areas of life and the relative importance of certain laws can be lost.  Picking up dog poop rules can attain the equal status of how one treats one's neighbor.

Aphorism of the Day, February 26, 2024

A chief task in life is the orchestration in the use of discourse.  When to use what kind of discourse when we are articulating values in word and deed and when we are interpreting the values which arrive to us in the texts, words, and deeds of other.  To to be confused in the use of discourse results in at best comedy, but at worst in human cruelty.

Aphorism of the Day, February 25, 2024

Ever notice how there is profound outrage for new events of oppression while the populace have been inured to situations of continuing oppression, as if, such were more acceptable?  Is common life about learning to live with the tacit hypocrisy of our own country and people while getting righteously outraged when we think we can see it in people who are not us?

Aphorism of the Day, February 24, 2024

Being located with space and time limitation feeds into the ease of liking what we know and knowing what we like.  If charity begins at home, it is too easy to only practice charity to those with whom we are familiar.  To believe in a God of all means that we are constantly challenge to love beyond our natural borders.

 Aphorism of the Day, February 23, 2024

Taking up of one's cross was a symbolic mystagogic phrase of the early church.  It did not mean that one should seek capital punishment in the Roman Empire situation; it meant, using the phrase of St. Paul, "being crucified with Christ," as a spiritual method of identity with this interior higher power source to motivate repentance, or the getting better today than yesterday.

Aphorism of the Day, February 22, 2024

The dying of states of becoming in time results in the birth of what comes after.  The death and birthing of states of the mind is the meaning of repentance in the Gospel.  The words of Jesus refer to the death of the soul life pseuche in order to experience the continual salvation of the "after life," or the birth of a more excellent orientation of one's inner life toward love and justice.

Aphorism of the Day, February 21, 2024

In our time, the way in which one can be absolved of not having love or empathy, is to refer to love and empathy as being "woke."  If one can highlight the fact that people who attempt love and empathy are sometimes preaching a standard that they themselves cannot perfectly keep, then they are "woke," and so no one should be woke.  The attempt to be empathetic and practice justice toward people who are struggling to be honest about personal identities that are unfamiliar to other people is regarded to be "woke" and therefore something bad.  The practice of justice is to find supporting ways for all persons to know the pursuit of well-being and happiness.  The common good has to include justice for those who are regarded to be minorities, which is simply a statistical designation.

Aphorism of the Day, February 20, 2023

In the words of Jesus, pain and suffering cannot be excluded from the experience of the messiah or God.  God encompasses the full range of probability necessary for the kind of freedom needed for moral authenticity.  It is oddly true that we have to be able at our human worst to authenticate the value at choosing to be our best.

Aphorism of the Day, February 19, 2024

The Gospels present in story form the disagreement about the messiah which existed within the synagogue and Jesus Movement.  Peter's misunderstanding of what was to happen to the messiah instantiates that disagreement.

Aphorism of the Day, February 18, 2024

Everything arises within the field of what probably will happen according to how happening is defined and interpreted because we have language.  Probability is a designation of what may happen in time by language users.

Aphorism of the Day, February 17, 2024

The life of probabilities is the life of freedom of not knowing the future as actual and not have certainty about outcomes requires from us continuous actuarial wisdom.  Such is based upon, given our observations of what has happened, how can we be prepared for the likely happenings in the future.  We need to be practical statisticians at all times, even without knowing statistic formulas. 

Aphorism of the Day, February 16, 2024

Since we don't always voluntarily chose extended fasts or periods of discipline, the intent behind the church offering the discipline of the season of Lent is to do it together.  Our special disciplines may be primarily private, but there are also corporate disciplines which we do together as a community.

Aphorism of the Day, February 15, 2024

Before we knew about atoms and the sub-atomic, we thought perhaps particles of dust and ashes were the smallest things which human flesh could be reduced. Humanity has longed believed in the invisible sub-microscopic using words like heart, spirit, soul, and inner being.  Language itself is mostly invisible though it has it wordy effects in what we say, write, and act out in our body language.  It is in fact with our invisible aspect of language that we come to have our identities because people in every culture know themselves beings who give names to everything.

 Aphorism of the Day, February 14, 2024

When one wants to learn something new, it often requires a change of one's normal schedule to devote time for the new learning goal.  Such is what the season of Lent is about.  Just view it as rearranging one's previous allocation of time to devote to further excellence in how one can better practice love and justice with others.

Aphorism of the Day, February 13, 2024

The presentation of Jesus in his temptation ordeal was to highlight the need for an experience of a higher power to win the interior struggles which vary for everyone because of the specifics of one's nature and nurture.

Aphorism of the Day, February 12, 2024

Temptation is both a general and specific reality.  How so?  Temptation is essentially about timing and mistiming in what we do and say, and a general vocation in life is to be in right timing with our impulse control so that "God's will" can be done on earth through us.  Temptation is a specific reality in that there are periods of time when the struggle is what we might call an ordeal and the inner forces of accusation seem to say we can't have self control.  The life of Jesus is presented with a period of specific ordeals for him to achieve the timing of his life mission.  But the general presentation of Jesus' life is about him doing things in God's time.

Aphorism of the Day, February 11, 2024

Light is a metaphor for the conversion moment in embracing a new paradigm and changing one's thought orientation in the world with attending behavioral changes as well.

Aphorism of the Day, February 10, 2024

Consider language as an inner kaleidoscope with words as the "colored sherds" to be shone through and projected as meaning in our lives.  The words have both randomness the feature of arbitrary selection but with structured limitations due to rules of syntax and grammar.

Aphorism of the Day, February 9, 2024

With incredible reflexivity in language and by language, we arrive at our identity as language users, and through language we name the interior ability to shuffle words in communicative patterns.  Our life of knowing is having awareness of being within language reflexive being.

Aphorism of the Day, February 8, 2024

The power of words within us includes the naming of the retaining of words in the phenomenon of memory.  With memory the words within us also get associated with seeing things in the exterior world and the interior picture words have the ability to double expose and create fantasia which is not possible in the external limitation.  This is what happens with dreams and interior or visionary seeing.  This does not clash with science because science has a discourse proper to itself and visionary seeing has its own discourse.

Aphorism of the Day, February 7, 2024

Visionary seeing as experiences of the sublime occur because one's interior life, which is really an inner linguistic lens through which one perceives the world, causes one to see the exterior world in an enhanced different, "enlightened" way.

 Aphorism of the Day, February 6, 2024

With the travel among the people in various locales of Jesus Movement communities one could say that there was something of social osmosis in the spread of theology.  A worthy study is to look at the expressions of mystagogy in St. Paul, who wrote before the Gospel writings, and see how such mystagogy became the narrative of Jesus as a parable to provide an origin discourse for practices of the early Jesus Movement.

Aphorism of the Day, February 5, 2024

Infancy narratives, baptism, transfiguration, resurrection are the butterfly moments in the metamorphosis in the presentation of the life of Jesus.  Surely the narrative was the mystagogy of the early Christ-communities who taught an identity with the Risen Christ involving a continuous metamorphosis in spiritual experience.

Aphorism of the Day, February 4, 2024

The most basic medicine for health is food.  So to be food healthy, first one must have enough.  The first food people eat is the food of one's family and culture.  Some people are worried about getting any food at all whereas the prosperous are worried about the amount and kinds of food they eat.  Bread from heaven should be interior words which change people's actions to make sure that everyone in the world has enough to eat.  The piety of Eucharist without reference to those who are hungry, may be a pointless piety.

Aphorism of the Day, February 3, 2024

Does folk medicine work?  It does if the ill and their society perceive a better outcome than alternatives even while the big illness of death to which all of us are headed only get some temporary delays.  Life and Death are part of holistic natural cycle, except in our meaningful living interaction with life and people we get helplessly attached and so we cannot regard death to be but part of the cycle of becoming.

Aphorism of the Day, February 2, 2024 

The folk meteorology of Ground Hog's Day co-exists with modern meteorology as well as the dated traditions of the Farmer's Almanac.  People can switch between the discourses of folk traditions and science without problem.  People should also be able to switch between the folk biblical traditions and science too.

Aphorism of the Day, February 1, 2024

The creative advances in science and technology have changed the thought environments.  How has medical science changed the discussion of reproductive rights?  How did orality come to be known after writing provided a different kind of technology of memory, since it could only be known once a contrast arose.  Cultures with writing can no longer know what orality means without already having textual practice.