Sunday, June 30, 2013
This aphorist's goal in life is to convince us about our multidiscursive nature of being human because of how we are layered and nuanced through and through in how we have taken on language. In religion one can lose perspective through misunderstanding the processes of language even when the contexts provides us with the codes on how we are to interpret. A Stop sign on the corner is different from the Stop sign that decorates a bedroom as a sort of Warholian piece of "pop art." The word Stop on the sign on the corner results in different body language acts than does the word Stop on the sign in a piece of "pop art." We understand the processes of language from the context of our cultures even as we always need to be in the learning process of how we use language and how we are "used" by it in how we take it on in so many passive ways in our culture. In our faith experience we need to understand biblical language more appropriately in the aesthetic category rather than as scientific method or eye-witness journalistic accounts. Failing to do so results in using the wrong discursive practice to interpret a text.Saturday, June 29, 2013
Multidiscursivity layers and intermingles and enlightens and confuses us in how we interpret or read our world. So a fundamentalist might acknowledge the "truth" of radioactive dating even while asserting that the world is just 6000 years old. After all, if God created an older man Adam, God also created "very old rocks." So the apparent conflict between science and literal myth is "resolved." Such is only one example of the interpretive knots that people tie themselves into as they fail to interpret the world and the interior self with the fitting discursive practice to process incoming information. To live according to all of the modern effects of knowing the laws of science while assuming the world is 6000 years old does manifest itself in a schizoidal disconnect from reality. And we see that in our public life today.Friday, June 28, 2013
Some people have a difficult time in believing because they do not recognize or accept that they are multidiscursive beings. So they are trying to receive square data through a round hole on their language interpretive screens. When things don't fit, they can't believe because they finally admit that the square stuff will not enter their round hole. This happens when people try to force matters that properly belong to aesthetics through the holes that are dominate in philosophical and scientific method thinking. Do we have to quit being moved by poetry or music just because we can't explain its effect upon us philosophically or scientifically? Or do we admit that we need all of the multidiscursive processing slots to give our experience the fullness of poignant truths. We may stop believing when we privilege one certain discursive mode as being the end all mode of defining truth. Let's adopt a new version of Descartes, "We multidiscourse, therefore we are."Thursday, June 27, 2013
In the long effort to institutionalize the message of Jesus, the followers of Jesus have had to do much editing. First, there was the decision made about what to include and thus save in the collective memory. But the sayings of Jesus were saved in different ways to different groups of people. One version is "Blessed are the poor," and another is "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Why the difference? For a message to survive it must always be applied within a contemporary community who still find the message relevant and useful. We cannot time travel to the original contexts in the life of Jesus of Nazareth; we can study lots of historical background information. Today, there seems to be people who would rather say "my interpretation of Jesus is better than yours" rather than find insights to know God as worshipful and find inspiration to love all of our neighbors.Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Faith and hope are very contextual. For some it may be hopeful to merely rise in the morning do some very basic life tasks and be faithful in basic maintenance. But in other contexts where other levels of ability factor in hope raises the bar upon what we want to occur and hope can set what may be for us higher standards and faith for us then means being successful in meeting the standards of hope. Sometimes we hope for too much or hope does not seem to be grounded enough in realistic assessment of our situation and when our expression of faith does not reach hope's standard we may be tempted to feel "faithless" or not up to the task. Sometimes we have to accept the hope of being like a Cubs fan, living with the hope of "wait" till next year even while believing and working in the present towards hope's vision of excellence.Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Dreams can allow one to return backward in historical reconstruction of an event carrying with one the sense of foreknowledge that all will be not only well but better, even marvelous, glorious. In a dream one can return to a former scenario with hindsight redemption and it can make the experience of former pain, meaningful in a different way. When one reads the Passion narratives, particularly in John's Gospel, one finds that the authors have returned to the Passion event from the dream of resurrection redemption and the Passion event is appropriated in a different way than it would have been originally experienced. The atmospherics of the internal kingdom allows this confusion of time when one returns to the past memory and reconstructs it with a "will have become" knowledge.Monday, June 24, 2013
Have the experiences of Jesus and St. Paul been recorded and institutionalized to be made the normative standard so that everyone else is to live second hand off the accounts of Jesus and Paul? Is the purpose of our faith to say Jesus and Paul already had all experiences of the godly, so why bother to embrace one's own with any originality? Or do the written records of Jesus and Paul exist so that we might embrace the originality of our own experience, not so new religions might be formed but to re-instantiate the Spirit again and again?Sunday, June 23, 2013
"Please understand me" can be an unrealistic impossible request because of differences no two people harmonically converge in sharing precise "same meaning." In the euphorics of love we can share mutual impressionism in meanings and in mob or herd thinking we can unite behind what we believe to be a common idea. Being unique in one's understanding preserves our distinction but demanding that someone else be exactly where one is in understanding is a kind of insecure dictatorship. One way of understanding God's Spirit is to live in the impressionism of love in mutual respect holding to things in common while granting that everyone is is an "exception" to any cookie cutter singular pattern of how one should be loving.Saturday, June 22, 2013
Live radio has a seven second delay device to allow the censoring of unwanted material from being heard. Language stands as a delay filter between us and the reality of what is outside and inside. Since we only learn the outside and inside from learning language we begin to assume the language filter and reality are one and the same and are unaware of the delay. In that delay and on the screen of Word, our world is created, being created and will be created and though Word is very communal we still have the freedom to articulate particular Word manifestation in our speech acts and body language. We need to look at what we have on automatic through repetition to interdict habits that we want to change even as we rely on repetitive habits to be memorized redundancies so that we can take on creating what is truly new for the day beyond our habits.Friday, June 21, 2013
We look to the future, both immediate and long term to verify or falsify the current details of how we would articulate hope. And if hope's detail become falsified when future becomes the present our organ of hope can still churn out new details but do we put more realistic parameters on what we hope for if past hope details have been falsified? Do we make Hope into a person who can cause us to be often in the situation of an unrequited lover? Do we give up hope on the grand scale? Do we stop loving hope? And what kind of word gymnastics is this having dueling virtues, love and hope? Can the expression of one virtue be in competition with the expression of another virtue? Loving to hope and hoping to love are rather theoretical unless they are attached to details in our lives where we add the third virtue of faith to be unafraid to let theory be incarnate in the details of our lives where desire is really projected and the rubber really hits the road.Thursday, June 20, 2013
The mutual relationship of an uncountable number of beings, events, and things all sharing a degree of freedom is responsible for the experience what we call the "random." Randomness might get qualified as serendipitous fortune or blessing or as misfortune depending upon whose well-being is impacted by what is called "random." Where there is human behavior and human willfulness one can make judgments about "culpability," but even culpability is set up by a host of mysterious preconditions. If Godly salvation is the cosmic health insurance of living, we can be thankful that Grace comes to us even though we have many preexisting conditions. How's that for an affordable care act?Wednesday, June 19, 2013
As multi-discursive people we need to have all pathways to insights open and not limit how we are going to be greeted and welcomed to our next step in excellence by a particular lure in our path. Wisdom as possible insights lurks everywhere; we can we awestruck by the form of a gnarled live oak tree, a swooping raptor, a piece of music, a phrase in a novel, the right spot on the palate, a quip of a friend, an inadvertent over-hearing of someone else's conversation or the smile of a child. The sublime is an always already possibility if we've learned to turn all of our radar on. Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Aphorism of the Day, June 18, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
With all of the internet match-making sites, there is an effort to aid and assist the event of serendipity of love. The theory is that mutual love is more likely to happen if there are more "viewing" chances. One hopes that if God is love then there is possible in this life enough mutual people-whispering to happen so that everyone was befriended to one's heart content. How can we read our environment today as whispering us in befriending ways? Surely if everyone in this world had a significant other, there would be world peace? Timing is everything and we pray for propitious timing for all today.
Aphorism of the Day
With all of the internet match-making sites, there is an effort to aid and assist the event of serendipity of love. The theory is that mutual love is more likely to happen if there are more "viewing" chances. One hopes that if God is love then there is possible in this life enough mutual people-whispering to happen so that everyone was befriended to one's heart content. How can we read our environment today as whispering us in befriending ways? Surely if everyone in this world had a significant other, there would be world peace? Timing is everything and we pray for propitious timing for all today.
With all of the internet match-making sites, there is an effort to aid and assist the event of serendipity of love. The theory is that mutual love is more likely to happen if there are more "viewing" chances. One hopes that if God is love then there is possible in this life enough mutual people-whispering to happen so that everyone was befriended to one's heart content. How can we read our environment today as whispering us in befriending ways? Surely if everyone in this world had a significant other, there would be world peace? Timing is everything and we pray for propitious timing for all today.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
The Gospels portray Jesus as the ultimate People Whisperer to those who needed their lives brought into peaceful order. At the same time he is presented as one who did not whisper his religious opponents and the Roman authorities who were threatened by something other than his therapeutic presence to those who wanted and needed to be whispered to health. The realm or kingdom of Christ is seen as a parallel existence with other more obvious realms. The irony continues today; people can still be whispered by a risen Christ even when the outer realm and kingdoms indicate no peace at all.
Aphorism of the Day
Monday Recipe? A dash of blues. A kick of "get real." A teaspoon of affirmation. A tablespoon of classical music. A sprinkle of lucky kindness. A cup of drudgery. A ton of patience. A pinch of forgiveness. Drops of smiles. A quart of friendship. Served with copious amounts of God's grace.
The Gospels portray Jesus as the ultimate People Whisperer to those who needed their lives brought into peaceful order. At the same time he is presented as one who did not whisper his religious opponents and the Roman authorities who were threatened by something other than his therapeutic presence to those who wanted and needed to be whispered to health. The realm or kingdom of Christ is seen as a parallel existence with other more obvious realms. The irony continues today; people can still be whispered by a risen Christ even when the outer realm and kingdoms indicate no peace at all.
Aphorism of the Day, June 16, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
In what way is history and the Bible writings for entertainment? Only exciting events and people are deemed worthy of memory in literature that becomes public even though 99 per cent or more of life is merely events of the quotidian (so ordinary and everyday) that we don't deem them worthy to remember. History and the Bible are stories about our identities; they make us see ourselves differently and we need to continually ask how they make us see ourselves. Literature and history involve reducing massive amounts of information to "time-lapsed" stories so that we can get the impression in a short viewing of "what happened." And we do not get to know much of what happened about those in history on whom the camera of history writers were not focused. In patriarchal and paternalistic cultures women, children and working class (slaves) did not get to appear much in the history books. So massive amounts of quotidian experiences determining outcomes never got recorded. If Christianity has anything to do with liberation, it would mean that the once marginalized can now be given an equal place in how our stories are to be told in the future.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Aphorism of the Day, June 15, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
Structuralism was based upon Saussurean lingistics which posited a signifer and a signifed. Post-structuralism came about because of the acknowledgment of not being able get to an unmediated signified; one simply ends up with an endless reference to synonym signifers. So words end up pointing only to other words and not to the "real thing," since "real thing" are also wordsignifers. One can appreciate the post-modern dilemma with words like God and love and hope and justice; they still have meaning, many meanings and different meanings for people who use these words in their experiences. One can appreciate the effort of science to simplify referential language for community agreement but at the same time one should not abandon the worded and aesthetic profundity of using words with feeling tones and moods because people in situ often use words like God, love, justice and hope as the only truly meaningful way to characterize their experiences. Post-modernism is an invitation to mysticism because we are people who are created in how we are significant by Word.
Structuralism was based upon Saussurean lingistics which posited a signifer and a signifed. Post-structuralism came about because of the acknowledgment of not being able get to an unmediated signified; one simply ends up with an endless reference to synonym signifers. So words end up pointing only to other words and not to the "real thing," since "real thing" are also wordsignifers. One can appreciate the post-modern dilemma with words like God and love and hope and justice; they still have meaning, many meanings and different meanings for people who use these words in their experiences. One can appreciate the effort of science to simplify referential language for community agreement but at the same time one should not abandon the worded and aesthetic profundity of using words with feeling tones and moods because people in situ often use words like God, love, justice and hope as the only truly meaningful way to characterize their experiences. Post-modernism is an invitation to mysticism because we are people who are created in how we are significant by Word.
Friday, June 14, 2013
Aphorism of the Day, June 14, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
One can find "fundamentalism" is perhaps a way in which one holds what one has come to regard as true. The insights "appear" to be so unique and so special to a person or to a group that it becomes exclusive. One takes the blessing of an insight and makes oneself or one's group so chosen, that others immediately become the impoverished "unchosen" who don't have the exclusive blessing of such insights. But what is the benefit of such an insight that separates one from humanity in such a judgmental way. Seems like it could be just as well characterized as a Folie à deux..trois,quartre, cinq.........
One can find "fundamentalism" is perhaps a way in which one holds what one has come to regard as true. The insights "appear" to be so unique and so special to a person or to a group that it becomes exclusive. One takes the blessing of an insight and makes oneself or one's group so chosen, that others immediately become the impoverished "unchosen" who don't have the exclusive blessing of such insights. But what is the benefit of such an insight that separates one from humanity in such a judgmental way. Seems like it could be just as well characterized as a Folie à deux..trois,quartre, cinq.........
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Aphorism of the Day, June 13, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
Balancing excesses and austerity require wisdom in life. Excesses arise from the build up of desire that projects upon objects and people in the one's environment. They come easily because excess have the same energy of a pathology: It's easy to do things over which one does not seem to have much control as in "I have the gift of eating endless chocolate." The excess of worship comes from the deep sense of appreciation where one has come to take events of grace so personal that something of excessive devotion is drawn from within and after pinching oneself in disbelief regarding serendipitous grace, one offers prayers and acts of gratitude to Plenitude for coming into the arrangement of harmonic ambiance so as to permit such a state of well-being.
Balancing excesses and austerity require wisdom in life. Excesses arise from the build up of desire that projects upon objects and people in the one's environment. They come easily because excess have the same energy of a pathology: It's easy to do things over which one does not seem to have much control as in "I have the gift of eating endless chocolate." The excess of worship comes from the deep sense of appreciation where one has come to take events of grace so personal that something of excessive devotion is drawn from within and after pinching oneself in disbelief regarding serendipitous grace, one offers prayers and acts of gratitude to Plenitude for coming into the arrangement of harmonic ambiance so as to permit such a state of well-being.
Aphorism of the Day, June 12, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
Roland Barthes in his book "S/Z" introduced the notion of a writerly reader. From this notion, I understood how little an author controls one's meanings when one's writes. The reader is the writer of what is being read while it is being read because the reader is bringing the reader's meanings to the words on the page. One could extend this notion to what would be called "speakerly listening." Do we ever hear what someone is really saying or only how we filter it through our own meaning filters? If we cannot own up to our own meaning filters in acknowledging that we are speakerly listeners, how do we do attentive listening? Therapeutic listening involves a more intentional exercise, an impossible one, to withhold or practice deferring judgments upon what one's hear in order to let the speaker determine his or her own meanings before one rushes to interact with one's own judgments. And if one's judgments are not asked for, then they need not be given. This is a way of honoring a person with an attentive listening for the purposes of allowing a person to release pain through simply speaking.
Roland Barthes in his book "S/Z" introduced the notion of a writerly reader. From this notion, I understood how little an author controls one's meanings when one's writes. The reader is the writer of what is being read while it is being read because the reader is bringing the reader's meanings to the words on the page. One could extend this notion to what would be called "speakerly listening." Do we ever hear what someone is really saying or only how we filter it through our own meaning filters? If we cannot own up to our own meaning filters in acknowledging that we are speakerly listeners, how do we do attentive listening? Therapeutic listening involves a more intentional exercise, an impossible one, to withhold or practice deferring judgments upon what one's hear in order to let the speaker determine his or her own meanings before one rushes to interact with one's own judgments. And if one's judgments are not asked for, then they need not be given. This is a way of honoring a person with an attentive listening for the purposes of allowing a person to release pain through simply speaking.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Aphorism of the Day, June 11, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
Take note today of the focus of intentional acts that are required to complete issues of life maintenance and work today and the ambient factors that do not grab your immediate attention. Constant sirens, chirping birds, drone of freeway traffic, running water, colors, access to windows and light, etc. The great environment is expressed as living and having our being in God.We can only imagine God as the greatest expansion on a concentric horizon. The smaller concentric environments that surround us seem to make the inaccessible horizon negligible in our knowledge of immediate cause and effect. We experience environment as both spacial and inter-spatial. As spiritual directors of our own lives we need to conduct many kinds of environmental relationships in our daily lives. How do we neutralize an offending factor in our environment? How do we integrate incredible diversity into an experience of beauty? How do we appropriate cacophony as a great hummmmm.....OMMMMMM of meditative support?
Take note today of the focus of intentional acts that are required to complete issues of life maintenance and work today and the ambient factors that do not grab your immediate attention. Constant sirens, chirping birds, drone of freeway traffic, running water, colors, access to windows and light, etc. The great environment is expressed as living and having our being in God.We can only imagine God as the greatest expansion on a concentric horizon. The smaller concentric environments that surround us seem to make the inaccessible horizon negligible in our knowledge of immediate cause and effect. We experience environment as both spacial and inter-spatial. As spiritual directors of our own lives we need to conduct many kinds of environmental relationships in our daily lives. How do we neutralize an offending factor in our environment? How do we integrate incredible diversity into an experience of beauty? How do we appropriate cacophony as a great hummmmm.....OMMMMMM of meditative support?
Monday, June 10, 2013
Aphorism of the Day, June 10, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
Go forth and stylize your good news today. Use the typical rhetorical devices of ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos is the appeal to one's character; how we back up our words with our living. Pathos, is appealing to our knowledge of the emotions and sentiments of others; one size does not fit all and so sensitivity to others is needed. Logos is making the reasonable case for our good news. Wisdom is using our accumulated life experience (ethos) and presenting ourselves with emotional intelligence of ourselves and others (pathos) and grounded in accessible common sense (logos) appeals. You can make the case that you are loved by God today and be that agent of love today.
Go forth and stylize your good news today. Use the typical rhetorical devices of ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos is the appeal to one's character; how we back up our words with our living. Pathos, is appealing to our knowledge of the emotions and sentiments of others; one size does not fit all and so sensitivity to others is needed. Logos is making the reasonable case for our good news. Wisdom is using our accumulated life experience (ethos) and presenting ourselves with emotional intelligence of ourselves and others (pathos) and grounded in accessible common sense (logos) appeals. You can make the case that you are loved by God today and be that agent of love today.
Aphorism of the Day, June 9, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
If there is a God, God and the very notion of God is left to those who are not God to defend God's reality. One might question the wisdom of the Greatest to entrust the knowledge of divine existence to those who potentially could do it so poorly as to misrepresent the Greatest and cause people to disbelieve. This situation of great Creative Freedom being vulnerable to lesser but true freedom of human beings is our great epic in life. If we limit God to but phrases from the cultural details of the Bible, we can misrepresent the Greatness of a God of Creative Freedom who lures us to honor our lesser freedom through the practice of justice and care.
If there is a God, God and the very notion of God is left to those who are not God to defend God's reality. One might question the wisdom of the Greatest to entrust the knowledge of divine existence to those who potentially could do it so poorly as to misrepresent the Greatest and cause people to disbelieve. This situation of great Creative Freedom being vulnerable to lesser but true freedom of human beings is our great epic in life. If we limit God to but phrases from the cultural details of the Bible, we can misrepresent the Greatness of a God of Creative Freedom who lures us to honor our lesser freedom through the practice of justice and care.
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Aphorism of the Day, June 8, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
The Psalmist wrote that the Lord God gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger. Skeptics ask how does or is God doing this since oppression and hunger have always existed. If the Lord God is giving justice and food then one must ask serious questions about what is falsifying the reality of those words. Or is it that God is the utopian impossibility of human quest as the structural personal necessity to set the direction of preservation of life because if the direction is toward injustice and hunger with no counter gravity towards goodness, indeed we are doomed.
The Psalmist wrote that the Lord God gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger. Skeptics ask how does or is God doing this since oppression and hunger have always existed. If the Lord God is giving justice and food then one must ask serious questions about what is falsifying the reality of those words. Or is it that God is the utopian impossibility of human quest as the structural personal necessity to set the direction of preservation of life because if the direction is toward injustice and hunger with no counter gravity towards goodness, indeed we are doomed.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Aphorism of the Day, June 7, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
Let us strive to be converted to generosity, not because there are people and causes who let their needs be known to us all of the time; rather let us be converted to generosity for the personal benefit of our own health and heart. Generous people are never poor because they have eyes to see their collective wealthy everywhere and enjoy their wealth without the hassle or anxiety of maintenance. No one can steal the sunrise or sunset from one who takes time to enjoy them as a personal possession. A generous person can help others to discover the wealth that comes from seeing how much is freely bestowed upon us by mere existence itself.
Let us strive to be converted to generosity, not because there are people and causes who let their needs be known to us all of the time; rather let us be converted to generosity for the personal benefit of our own health and heart. Generous people are never poor because they have eyes to see their collective wealthy everywhere and enjoy their wealth without the hassle or anxiety of maintenance. No one can steal the sunrise or sunset from one who takes time to enjoy them as a personal possession. A generous person can help others to discover the wealth that comes from seeing how much is freely bestowed upon us by mere existence itself.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Aphorism of the Day, June 6, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
The word "style" often has come to mean shallow individualism in manner of expression. It can also mean that one simply has the money to buy the latest models of clothes or any product. In another sense style does not need to mean a showy, shallow individualism for getting crass attention; rather it can be the way in which a person has mobilized the desire of one's life to energize the grace or charisma of one's personality to make truths one's own in very personal and original ways. Style in this sense is like improvisation in jazz music; learning all of the music rules so that one can break them in a profound lyricism. Style can mean to learn lyricism in living as one moves from imitation to invention in one's life of faith. No one can "do" faith exactly like you if you are doing your faith with lyrical "style."
The word "style" often has come to mean shallow individualism in manner of expression. It can also mean that one simply has the money to buy the latest models of clothes or any product. In another sense style does not need to mean a showy, shallow individualism for getting crass attention; rather it can be the way in which a person has mobilized the desire of one's life to energize the grace or charisma of one's personality to make truths one's own in very personal and original ways. Style in this sense is like improvisation in jazz music; learning all of the music rules so that one can break them in a profound lyricism. Style can mean to learn lyricism in living as one moves from imitation to invention in one's life of faith. No one can "do" faith exactly like you if you are doing your faith with lyrical "style."
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Aphorism of the Day, June 5, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
Graduation ceremonies are called Commencements. It is a threshold event between one's life in school and the next phase of life. The threshold event is liminal; betwixt and between. The so-call "real world" of finding a job contrasted with the student world means that a significant re-socialization begins to take place in one's life and re-socialization re-brands us in how we have to begin to know ourselves in the future. Baptism is the sacrament of life and continual re-adjustment to know ourselves differently as an individual based upon the community within which we live and the one that provides for the highest vision of who we are and can become. Whether a student or newly hired engineer in one's first post graduate job, the baptismal issue is how to continue to know oneself as loved and gifted within a community and to let the community make its impact upon oneself even as one contributes to the growth in excellence of the community. A blessed commencement to all new graduates!
Graduation ceremonies are called Commencements. It is a threshold event between one's life in school and the next phase of life. The threshold event is liminal; betwixt and between. The so-call "real world" of finding a job contrasted with the student world means that a significant re-socialization begins to take place in one's life and re-socialization re-brands us in how we have to begin to know ourselves in the future. Baptism is the sacrament of life and continual re-adjustment to know ourselves differently as an individual based upon the community within which we live and the one that provides for the highest vision of who we are and can become. Whether a student or newly hired engineer in one's first post graduate job, the baptismal issue is how to continue to know oneself as loved and gifted within a community and to let the community make its impact upon oneself even as one contributes to the growth in excellence of the community. A blessed commencement to all new graduates!
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Aphorism of the Day, June 4, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
Graduation events in our education systems are perhaps crucial rites of passage in the lives of students and are rightly celebrated. It is good to celebrate achievements in knowledge even though learning is never completely attained and what one has learned has to be returned to and integrated for the rest of one's life. The sacraments are not rules and requirements of the the church; they are rite of passage wisdom events which if properly understood and taught are rituals for the dynamic remembering and renewal of life orientation realities. Too bad the church often has taught them as control of the "herd" and people have thus seen them as requirements for church membership rather than dynamic personal and social faith process in continual life orientation.
Graduation events in our education systems are perhaps crucial rites of passage in the lives of students and are rightly celebrated. It is good to celebrate achievements in knowledge even though learning is never completely attained and what one has learned has to be returned to and integrated for the rest of one's life. The sacraments are not rules and requirements of the the church; they are rite of passage wisdom events which if properly understood and taught are rituals for the dynamic remembering and renewal of life orientation realities. Too bad the church often has taught them as control of the "herd" and people have thus seen them as requirements for church membership rather than dynamic personal and social faith process in continual life orientation.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Aphorism of the Day, June 3, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
Monday Recipe? A dash of blues. A kick of "get real." A teaspoon of affirmation. A tablespoon of classical music. A sprinkle of lucky kindness. A cup of drudgery. A ton of patience. A pinch of forgiveness. Drops of smiles. A quart of friendship. Served with copious amounts of God's grace.
Aphorism of the Day, June 2, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
What is the difference between having meaning or being meaningful and being true? Are unicorns true in terms of their empirical existence? Are unicorns meaningful for preschool girls? Truth cannot be limited to empirical verification unless one wants to deny poignant meanings of many unseen realities. Certainly if one's unseen realities do not connect one with what can be seen in ways other than fantasy then one's grip on reality and balance in life is in question. Truth may be a multi-faceted diamond with many showings corresponding to the many ways in which we express our humanity, all of which come to language in word and body language. Wisdom is worded pragmatism in doing justice to multi-discursive completeness in human experience.
What is the difference between having meaning or being meaningful and being true? Are unicorns true in terms of their empirical existence? Are unicorns meaningful for preschool girls? Truth cannot be limited to empirical verification unless one wants to deny poignant meanings of many unseen realities. Certainly if one's unseen realities do not connect one with what can be seen in ways other than fantasy then one's grip on reality and balance in life is in question. Truth may be a multi-faceted diamond with many showings corresponding to the many ways in which we express our humanity, all of which come to language in word and body language. Wisdom is worded pragmatism in doing justice to multi-discursive completeness in human experience.
Aphorism of the Day, June 1, 2013
Aphorism of the Day
Without being permanent member of Procrastinator's Anonymous, we can be sure that when we arrive at the end of this day there will be some things left undone. The question of anxiety regarding things left undone may have to do with self-expectation and one's specific check list or the expectations of others or the expectations that we have learned to project upon God for what God expects of us. Life involves learning to live with things left undone since we will leave this world "undone" and "unfinished" in the call of the future to always be self-surpassing. What can we tolerate leaving undone today? The poor and the hungry? Justice? Cleaning one's desktop? Assess how you want to go to sleep tonight and the "undone" things of one's life. And don't let perfectionism condemn you; let perfectability invite you.
Without being permanent member of Procrastinator's Anonymous, we can be sure that when we arrive at the end of this day there will be some things left undone. The question of anxiety regarding things left undone may have to do with self-expectation and one's specific check list or the expectations of others or the expectations that we have learned to project upon God for what God expects of us. Life involves learning to live with things left undone since we will leave this world "undone" and "unfinished" in the call of the future to always be self-surpassing. What can we tolerate leaving undone today? The poor and the hungry? Justice? Cleaning one's desktop? Assess how you want to go to sleep tonight and the "undone" things of one's life. And don't let perfectionism condemn you; let perfectability invite you.
