Aphorism of the Day, December 31, 2015
When people have lost connection with the Church's liturgical season presenting an annual curriculum with varying emphases in teaching and recommended pieties, they still seem to invent their own secular season of moral emphases. On the last day of the year we are in the season of a "secular penitential season of Lent." This secular season of Lent has the highlight of the high sacred vow of amendment of life, otherwise known as the "New Year Resolution." Laden under the guilt of the holiday excesses and extra pounds due to the same, people feel inspired toward amendment of life and taking this vow of a New Year's resolution. Those same people might be scornful about the people who "give things up" for Lent and yet the New Year's resolution is an arbitrary vow based upon the secular calendar. It is interesting how universal the amendment of life is and if one does not share this emphasis within the Church community, one often does it in other settings. New Year's resolutions often are broken early, and maybe such recidivism is due to the fact that they are attempted alone without the support and the mutual embrace of the same disciplines by a community. Happy secular Lent to all who embrace New Year's resolutions for the amendment of life. Long live your perfectability as you surpass yourself in excellence in a future state.
Aphorism of the Day, December 30, 2015
When people have lost connection with the Church's liturgical season presenting an annual curriculum with varying emphases in teaching and recommended pieties, they still seem to invent their own secular season of moral emphases. On the last day of the year we are in the season of a "secular penitential season of Lent." This secular season of Lent has the highlight of the high sacred vow of amendment of life, otherwise known as the "New Year Resolution." Laden under the guilt of the holiday excesses and extra pounds due to the same, people feel inspired toward amendment of life and taking this vow of a New Year's resolution. Those same people might be scornful about the people who "give things up" for Lent and yet the New Year's resolution is an arbitrary vow based upon the secular calendar. It is interesting how universal the amendment of life is and if one does not share this emphasis within the Church community, one often does it in other settings. New Year's resolutions often are broken early, and maybe such recidivism is due to the fact that they are attempted alone without the support and the mutual embrace of the same disciplines by a community. Happy secular Lent to all who embrace New Year's resolutions for the amendment of life. Long live your perfectability as you surpass yourself in excellence in a future state.
Aphorism of the Day, December 30, 2015
Embedded in word and language and in the body language of humanity are what we confess by using language to be the abiding themes of what can be said with words and what can be said in body language. Therefore the repetition of certain words and themes and the repetition of body language acts are not only possible but likely. But repetition of the same are all done with difference because the passing of time always means the setting of the act is different and the accumulation of the reservoir of the memory of repeated word acts is greater so as to effect how a word act in speech, writing or deed is articulated. One can say the past is predictive of the future in that humanity will do the "same ol', same ol'" stuff over and over again but with new setting and context. The fact that a current event seems to line up perfectly with a previous aspiration of a former generation often results in the experience which produces the confession of fulfilled prediction as destiny. In the New Testament, the writers were so enamored with the Jesus of history effects and the Risen Christ effects, they could not help but use poetic utterance to make claims about "Deja vu all over again" regarding how Jesus lined up with the great holy people of the past like Moses, David, Elijah, Melchizadek, Son of Man and others. When a current event seems to partake of the "salvation energy" that characterized an event of the past, in ecstasy one might confess the past precisely predicting the current salvation event. We need to understand how the principle of the "eternal return of the same" can come to language in the New Testament as being prophetic prediction, at the same time we need to avoid wandering into the assignation of specific clairvoyance in the writings of the ancient prophet "predictors."
Aphorism of the Day, December 29,2015
In the Feast of the Holy Innocents King Herod is presented in the role of the ancient Pharaoh who attempted to snuff out the lives of the Hebrew children. In hero stories the theme of providential rescue in the very early life of the hero is the author's attempt to show how divine intervention was working on behalf of the chosen hero long before the hero becomes known as the hero. There is an attempt to draw back a curtain to reveal the struggle between the forces of evil and God. Ironically, it is shown that the forces of evil have an early inkling about the hero-to-be and tries to place an interdiction in the path of the hero in fulfilling the hero's destiny. The life of Jesus was presented using the major themes of the presentations of the heroes of Hebrew Scriptures. Every new hero in life is presented using comparison with the great heroes of the past. Hank Aaron is like but greater than Babe Ruth. Jesus is like but greater than Moses and Elijah. In interpretive presentations the themes do not have to be actual historical events; the teaching issue is the surpassing greatness of the new hero. One can take the wrong offense with the Gospel writers if one is requiring that they write in the method of one' s own requirement of "literary" truth. If something is only meaningfully true "if and only if" it can be empirically verified, then one has placed a severe limitation upon meaningful truths and this limitation can't really be consistently instantiated in anyone's life.
Aphorism of the Day, December 28,2015
In the Feast of the Holy Innocents King Herod is presented in the role of the ancient Pharaoh who attempted to snuff out the lives of the Hebrew children. In hero stories the theme of providential rescue in the very early life of the hero is the author's attempt to show how divine intervention was working on behalf of the chosen hero long before the hero becomes known as the hero. There is an attempt to draw back a curtain to reveal the struggle between the forces of evil and God. Ironically, it is shown that the forces of evil have an early inkling about the hero-to-be and tries to place an interdiction in the path of the hero in fulfilling the hero's destiny. The life of Jesus was presented using the major themes of the presentations of the heroes of Hebrew Scriptures. Every new hero in life is presented using comparison with the great heroes of the past. Hank Aaron is like but greater than Babe Ruth. Jesus is like but greater than Moses and Elijah. In interpretive presentations the themes do not have to be actual historical events; the teaching issue is the surpassing greatness of the new hero. One can take the wrong offense with the Gospel writers if one is requiring that they write in the method of one' s own requirement of "literary" truth. If something is only meaningfully true "if and only if" it can be empirically verified, then one has placed a severe limitation upon meaningful truths and this limitation can't really be consistently instantiated in anyone's life.
Aphorism of the Day, December 28,2015
The foreign Magi seeking the Christ Child are metaphors for the Gentiles seeking the Messiah without the benefit of the Law and th Prophets but with the "natural" theology when the heavens declared to them God's glory.
Aphorism of the Day, December 27, 2015
"And the Word was made flesh and dwell among us." How about this paraphrase? "And the Word became Body Language and because expressive to us of what divinity would look like in a human person?"
Aphorism of the Day, December 26, 2015
St. Stephen's Day could be a study of crime in different times. The famous St. Paul would still remain Saul in a prison in America for being complicit in a religious hate crime in the stoning of Stephen. Makes one ponder how the "crimes" of religious heresy used to be "adjudicated" and sometimes still are when how one exercises one's faith is criminal behavior. How long in human history have people been divided even to the point of persecution over believing in One God, differently? One can see how secularists see such behaviors and cry, "Bah hum bug" on not only the behaviors but belief in God. How much "atheism" is inspired by "religious" people of all religions acting very badly?
Aphorism of the Day, December 25, 2015
Read the Christmas story as a metaphor to relate the reality of being born again when the arising of the divine image upon one's life splashes evidence of the same to our emotional and intellectual fields to inspire the volitional events empowering the actions to change our lives in the direction of excellence.
Aphorism of the Day, December 24, 2015
Be a Christmas literalist tonight, attend the Mass of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, December 23, 2015
In the midst of all that has accrued around "Christmas" don't forget that both the Mass of Christ and the Infancy Narratives of the Gospel are the word and sacrament of personal transformation deriving from the actual experiences of people in the early church wanting to inculcate the teaching of "Christ in us, the hope of Glory."
Aphorism of the Day, December 22, 2015
Blessings and curses seemed to be included in ancient prayers. In our time it might be proper to "curse Satan and the forces of darkness" but not people unless they are diabolically evil. So how could curses be regarded to be kind and merciful? They probably weren't but it was a liturgical way of expresses the unavoidable thoughts of revenge which people feel when they have been harmed or mistreated. Hannah, the scorned childless women offered this as a part of her song when she was finally able to conceive: "My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in my victory." In the Song of Mary there are pronounced curses, "the rich He has sent away empty and he brought down the mighty from their throne." It seems that there is rejoicing and praise when one's tormenters are tormented by the fate of "God's hands." The poetic words of the Psalmist often are words of wishing terrible things upon the enemies of the "writer and the writer's interests." Jesus who said to love our enemies did not seem to have loving regard for the Pharisees and Sadducees who openly opposed him. He told parables about weeping and gnashing of teeth as punishment for those who did not "get with the program." On the other hand, from the cross he pronounces a final forgiveness for those who acted in ignorance: "Father forgive them for they do not know what they do." In short, there is not a general consistency about the rhetoric of blessing and curses in the Bible and it is probably the same today as we still cry out in situations of pain, intensified by the circumstance of personal attack. Cursing may be an honest cry of pain or a cry of triumph if "just" punishment has been accomplished. In the end we can say that the ways of the realization of justice are often very messy and even when we try to absolve our personal conscience by acting with the motive of causing no harm, we can in our group loyalties be committing acts of harm against other unbeknown and so we never know if and how we are the recipients of the curses of others.
Aphorism of the Day, December 21, 2015
The perception of there being a "war on Christmas" by the media and commercial sectors of our society perhaps is driven by those with a nostalgia for Empire Christianity. In Empire Christianity one assumes if everyone is not Christian, they should be and they can be helped by adopting all Christian holy days whether they want to or not. Empire Christianity has had various notions of legitimizing power to proclaim "official" holidays. If the majority of people in a locale are "Christian" then Christians should be able to determine official holidays. If a conquering nation is "Christian" then "Christian" conquerors should be able to determine the "official" holidays. It could be that members of minority religious communities have adjusted to the "forced" Christmas holidays by "secularizing" them and taking the "religious" aspects out of them while retaining the vestiges of joy and giving. How many secular "Christmas" songs have been penned by Jewish songwriters? It could be that any Christian worth his or her salt, is more interested in the gentle persuasion of the Christ child being born into one's life, rather than relying upon forcing one's religion upon everyone. We need to be sensitive about the after effects of Empire Christianity rather than feeling like members of an emasculated Christianity under siege because "Merry Christmas" is replaced with "Happy Holidays" by a store clerk.
Aphorism of the Day, December 20, 2015
A week of aphorisms on the Song of Mary. The promise made to our forebears, * to Abraham and his children for ever. One can note in any family the practice of strategic genealogy and by this I mean that we highlight the more notable people in our family tree rather than those who "made no impression" or lived toward infamy. The New Testament writers used branches on the family tree of Judaism for strategic purpose. St. Paul used the pre-Israelite Patriarch Abraham and the promise of God to him as the father of faith as the place to graft Gentile Christianity on the tree of salvation history. And this appears in the Song of Mary in the reference to the promise of God made to Abraham. So the Christ child in Mary was in the lineage of the promise to Abraham. In this Song one can see the strategic retrofitting of the period of the gestational Jesus toward the Patriarch who provides the interpretive possibilities of the Gentile church within the long tradition of salvation history of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Aphorism of the Day, December 19,2015
A week of aphorisms on the Song of Mary. The song of Mary is proof that both visions of utopia and dystopia can come to language. There is enough of bliss and perfection in the world to envision its victory but there is also enough chaos to project catastrophic outcomes. The Song of Mary is the mystical vision of justice winning and this vision can be experienced even when actual situations of justice are not fully realized. The conception and birth of Jesus did not result in the immediate realization of justice on earth. On the continuum between dystopia and utopia we need the arising of figures who show us how utopia or "no such place" can be manifest in a "no such person" who is not yet because a self surpassing person in our future will always deconstruct each of us as the not yet and "no such person." The Risen Christ born in us is also subject to Time and Becoming within us. The Song of Mary seems to seal a moment of time by assuming completeness, "He has filled the hungry with good things." What is more true to process would be the statement, "He is continuously and always filling the hungry with good things." Being hungry and being filled are moments in process. Might we offer that mystical vision occurs in the threshold location between being hungry and being filled, justice rendered and justice lacking? In the threshold one has a directional orientation. One can look toward justice rendered or turn 180 degrees and look toward justice lacking. In the Song of Mary, we are encouraged to choose the direction of our vision in the threshold experience of always being between.
Aphorism of the Day, December 18, 2015
A week of aphorisms on the Song of Mary. He has filled the hungry with good things, * and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel, * for he has remembered his promise of mercy, The promise he made to our fathers, * to Abraham and his children for ever. Again the words of this song are words of poetic arousal in the state of a lover being loved and loving. The words of poetic arousal clearly distort the nature of what is actually happening outside of the state of arousal. The good things which fill the hungry is the self-authenticating reality of mystical union; in the outside world people are still hungry. And the rich want to buy a drug replacement for the mystical union and are left empty. The grace of mystical union cannot be bought. And how has God helped Israel in the conception event for the maiden Mary? The Temple and Jerusalem has been/will be destroyed and the people of Israel will be scattered and divided between synagogue and church. But in the mystical experience the ancient promise is renewed; the promise that all could discover the life of the heavenly parent arise as the telling identity of one's life. The promise of creation funneled through Abraham and given covenantal fluidity in the life of the people of Israel and exploding as a gift to a wider world in the Christo-centric Judaism. The promise is fulfilled when each person can sing the song of Mary as one's own song of knowing the mystical union of one's divine identity, one's original image being brought to the surface in the ecstatic moments when the Song of Mary really makes sense.
Aphorism of the Day, December 17, 2015
A week of aphorisms on the Song of Mary. He has shown the strength of his arm, * he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, * and has lifted up the lowly. Songs and poetic utterance produce statements which are meaningful but do not have regular empirical verification. In ecstatic trance one can like Lady Julian confess that "all manner of things shall be well" even when there is in actual circumstantial proof to the contrary. What is true about experiences of mystical union is that the rational facilities get flooded by the parallel heavenly realm and one confesses that "God's will on earth is done as it is in heaven." However, in the earthly realm, Caesar was still on the throne and the strength of God's arm is the poetic state of knowing the "Time Before" when strength is represented in Pure Creativity and in the "Time After" because the One who endures the longest has the power and the right to re-write and re-interpret all outcomes. In mystical union, one confesses in the present tense a present faith based upon the future anterior tense, that "Every manner of things will have been well."
Aphorism of the Day, December 16, 2015
A week of aphorisms on the Song of Mary. He has mercy on those who fear him * in every generation. Given the plenitude of what the definition of God implies and understanding God to be addressed with a personal pronoun, Mary's song reveals what each person in every generation needs to discover. Plenitude like an ocean inspires the fear known as awe or reverence. Plenitude is the giant realm of what has been, what is and what might be with the full expression of the freedom of every sort of causal connection, and in the awe and reverence of living in this great zone of possibilisms to discover and isolate the experience of mercy as the significant and telling experience one confesses as one's own is most significant. Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. If in the Plenitude of what has happened, is happening and what will happen, one discovers the experience of Mercy as the telling experience then founding the character of one's life on mercy rather than upon "what-might- go-wrong-fear" is a way of living in the Plenitude of God as Merciful Fate and weaver of a protective garment with multi-experiential threads all with the providential purpose of surrounding one with warmth and beauty.
Aphorism of the Day, December 15, 2015
A week of aphorisms on the Song of Mary. From this day all generations will call me blessed: * the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name. In the tradition of Sarah, Hannah and Elizabeth who had marvelous births because of their "barren" conditions, Mary as a young maiden had miraculous conception. Because of the way in which women's bodies are made, they are the child-bearers. In ancient times, their child-bearing was used to limit them into roles pertaining only to child-bearing. Their "success" was defined by bearing children since a child was the evidence of objective immortality for their families in the future. Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth and Mary all believed that God had done a great thing for them. This Song of Mary turns out to be her also being a prophetess about her own standing in the memory of the people of this world. The famous prayer, "Hail Mary" retains the phrases from the Magnificat: The Lord is with thee=looked with favor. Bless art thou among women=all generations will call me blessed. While most want to read this song as one which was composed on the spot on the occasion of the visitation of Elizabeth to Mary, its spiritual practice is a prayer of ecstasy of the experience of knowing the life of Christ being born in oneself by the presence of the Holy Spirit. All generations calling one blessed is the poetic expression of eternal life and knowing the holy Name of God is the experience of intimacy with God because of permission to know and be known by God in the way of spiritual union.
Aphorism of the Day, December 14, 2014
A week of aphorisms on the "Song of Mary." My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; * for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. This song is in the song tradition of Hannah who was given a special child. It is an ecstatic song of praise attributed to Mary and retains a delight in reading in a immediate "primary naïveté." As we move to reading it as Mary being the paradigm of every Christian who has Christ born in one as the "hope" of glory, one understands the spirituality of the early church which in turns uses the Gospel narratives to encode spiritual events of the soul. The salvific event of the soul draw the response of knowing God's greatness and one's own smallness and there is also a comfort which creates the condition of joy because one has that sense of being rescued or saved even in the experience of being so small in experience of the plenitude of God. The mystical experience makes one feel favored even while one feels very "lowly" at the same time. A love experience of being seduced and befriended by God is a powerful event of personal esteem. It should not be made into megalomania; it should become a prayer for everyone to know the event of personal esteem of being "favored" by God. From the event of God's favor, one becomes less reliant upon strokes from people and one is spared from being personally disillusioned with others. After God provides the event of favor, one only asks perfection of God's greatness and not of one's fellow earth companions.
Aphorism of the Day, December 13, 2015
One of reasons that John the Baptist and Jesus were presented in polemical discourse with the scribes and Pharisees was to teach to the early churches the origins of the disagreements which led to the separation of the church from the synagogue. One of the chief disagreements was about what might be called legacy salvation or "entitled" salvation due to being born into a family that gave one "automatic" salvation from birth without the requirement of the performance of salvific acts of love, justice and kindness which were an indication that one lived the merit of salvation. In every religious group, the notion of "entitled" salvation raises itself. Salvation by group identity is the smug self righteousness that can occur within any group that begins to take its structure more serious than the actual practice of love and kindness.
Aphorism of the Day, December 12, 2015
Gaudete is the name for the third Sunday of Advent. It is the Latin for "Rejoice." The command to rejoice always is sometimes clouded by the actual harsh situations in life. Rejoicing in the "right now" involves not letting the current experience of evil, badness or misfortune dominate the vision of everything in life. There is always enough goodness presence to rejoice and there is always a future which can be given a vision informed by utopian hope to inspire the act of rejoicing to be an act of faith in claiming better things.
Aphorism of Day, December 11, 2015
It is ironic that lots of discourse in the Gospel about "loving one's enemies" is deconstructed by equal amounts of vitriolic polemic discourse decrying one's doctrinal enemies as "brood of vipers" and "white washed tombs." It used to be part of liturgical tradition for prayers to include both blessings and curses. Polemics are discourses characteristic of reformation movements. How much of Reformation and counter-Reformation writings are full of mutual venom of Christians divided by having a "common Messiah?" Polemics are the words of leaving. One often does not leave a paradigm of thought or the people who expound such thinking without dissent and dissatisfaction often expressed in anger and sharp discourse of critique. John the Baptist could be likened to the Reformation Anabaptists who did not regard the validity of infant baptism and so a person had to be "re-baptized" to be regarded as a member of the Christian faith. Proselyte baptism in Judaism was for non-Jews who wanted to convert to Judaism. In the baptism required by John the Baptist, the Jews were treated as those who needed to be proselytized. This act of baptism in the living waters of the Jordan River was a polemical act against the validity of certain practices of Judaism. He was insisting that Jews re-enter the Promised Land of being God's people all over again because what they had in the performance of their heritage was lacking. Christians often practice re-baptism when one group does not regard the validity of a previous baptism. All of this is the indication of persons in faith journeys through various paradigms of faith; some transitions are smooth but others happen with polemics. The Gospel polemic discourses of John the Baptist and Jesus are oracles of the early church accounting for the separation of synagogue and the church. We today do not have to re-live the ancient feuds which occurred in specific situations. Many of our modern "Christian" preachers seem to equate the Gospel with polemics against those who disagree with them, as if they are saying, "I love you even though you are going to hell in a handbasket because you don't agree with me in how I specifically understand Christian teaching."
Aphorism of the Day, December 10, 2015
John the Baptist as a prophet was not known for his practice of "appreciative inquiry." He is quoted as calling the religious leaders of his day a "brood of vipers," which essentially is calling them offspring of the serpent. The problem of having a prophet's tongue includes a implied insider's view to be sufficiently infallible as to what is most correct in the interpretation of reality. I suspect that the recommendable infallible position has to do with justice and advocacy on behalf of the poor and weak. To speak strongly against those who maintain the structural poverty of so many in a society is to invite a prophet's fate, persecution or death.
Aphorism of the Day, December 9, 2015
The New Testament writing are in part generated to explain why the church became separated from the synagogue. The origin of separation is often found in the rhetoric of disagreement among parties within a community, organization or religion. The rhetoric of John the Baptist is presented within the Gospel as a critique of the "official" religious parties within Judaism. The rhetoric of John the Baptist provides the seeds of early dissent which influenced Jesus and the direction of the Jesus Movement. By the time John the Baptist is reported in the Gospel communities, his words against certain parties within Judaism are used as justification for the ascendency of Gentile Christianity. The tree of salvation history as it was known in Judaism was cut down and the Gentiles were grafted in. The result was a new hybrid of religious messianic thinking. But remember this critique is only an "outsider's critique" of Judaism by those who left it. Christians should have the humility to acknowledge that Jews had their own continuity within their synagogues while being quite unaffected by what those in the Jesus movement said or did. That we have an apologetic discourse in the New Testament for why we think we became a separate from Judaism should not hinder us from accepting that continuing Judaism did not agree with such apologetic discourse. The history of ideas reveals that people form their identity by what they have left, even while not everyone leaves what one has left.
Aphorism of the Day, December 8, 2015
Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots and the Herodians were various religious parties within Judaism. Perhaps the major religious party of the Gospel was the great following of John the Baptist. The invisibility of the community of John the Baptist as a separate community within the Gospels is perhaps due to the attempt to show a seamless transition from the community of John to the community of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, December 7, 2015
The witness of John the Baptist is used by the Gospel writers to present a proto-Christian movement based upon the questioning of one have automatic faith because of one's religious and ethnic heritage. The performance of the act of repentance is made the criteria for "standing" with God. John promised that his movement of repentance would be completed by Jesus who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and this over-shadowing "baptism" would result in having the life of Christ born within one. And one's soul would be like Mary's and be an "earthly sanctuary" for the presence of Christ. The Gospel narratives are essentially the story form of the spiritual methodology of the early Christian communities.
Aphorism of the Day, December 6, 2015
The proto-church could rightly be called the Community of John the Baptist. The writing purpose of the Gospel was an appeal to the followers of John the Baptist to embrace Jesus as the protégé and the designated successor of John the Baptist. The favorable presentation of John the Baptist in the Gospel reveals the dynamic transition of many members of the community of John the Baptist making the transition to the Jesus Movement.
Aphorism of the Day, December 5, 2015
Study of the Bible can be variously done. It can be done by those who is a members of a confessional community who regards the Bible to authoritative be in one's faith practices. If one has converted and made doctrinal commitments one reads the Bible as an eisegete, as one who reads with preconceived meanings. Exegesis is the study of Scripture and involves an attempt to leave aside one's doctrinal commitments and try to understand the particulars of the thought paradigms within which a biblical text was originally written. Hermeneutics is the general "science" of interpretation and can be done with or without prior commitments to doctrinal positions. Homiletics is art of preaching and involves an "applied" hermeneutic for the morals, ethics and spirituality of a community. In some post-modern approaches there is the attempt to let the ancient paradigms function within their own setting since everyone in their own setting has or takes the right to "define" one's own reality. In our own time we acknowledge the hermeneutic distance from the ancient settings where biblical texts were generated. We exist as temporal prisoners of our own time, yet the "prison" walls of our own time share some universally corresponding functional patterns with the "thought prisons" of people of the ancient past. Such correspondences are the fruitful topics of translation between modernity and the ancient world.
Aphorism of the Day, December 4, 2015
To read and interpret the meanings of what is happening in our current life we use the entire accessible vocabulary of the traces of the past. We say this person is similar to the person who is in the memorial traces of our past. The New Testament writers had the Hebrew Scriptures of the past and if John the Baptist looked like someone Isaiah wrote about in his own time long ago, then that trace from Isaiah became "prophetic" in proving the "eternal return of the same." Features of human words and action recur in new settings in different way. It is rather silly to view prophecy as specifically predictive when the prophecy of the eternal return of the same is always generally true. Interpretation of a ancient text is to uncover the universal archetypes present within the details of ancient settings and then find the corresponding manifestations of the same universal archetype in our present setting.
Aphorism of the Day, December 3, 2015
In the aftermath of another mass shooting in America, we ponder the freedom to bear every kind of weapon even while we dismiss the freedom of those who have the right to have protection from the regular misuse of such an expansive freedom to bear weapons. Our politicians will allow regulations based upon actuarial projections in so many areas of American life even while many and various deaths due to the misuse of omni-available firearms eludes the kind of rational actuarial scrutiny leading to wise regulation in the sale of firearms. The wisdom of God would require actuarial honesty resulting in the appropriate regulation, if we confess that we value the freedom of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There are people who have untimely been denied these freedoms when our actuarial knowledge has resulted in no rational actions of regulation.
Aphorism of the Day, December 2, 2015
Pope Francis, who has the right to speak within the Roman Catholic Church as one who can make infallible pronouncements on matters of doctrine, is one who has said that he will not speak from the platform of infallibility. Today, he condemned fundamentalism in all religions including his own as being idolatrous, not religious, (where) God is lacking. God is always lacking and too small when anyone presumes to know some final interpretation of the meaning of God or the ways in which God is articulated or made known to people. The future means that the word God as designating the surpassing Sublime still has a future in humanity and the future of God does not allow the door of the many meanings of God to be closed.
Aphorism of the Day, December 1, 2015
The infancy narratives of the Gospel are given for John the Baptist and Jesus. The Infancy Narratives are a literature of "must have had a miraculous" beginning discourse. In the days when Caesars were deified by senates and discourse was generated to proclaim the divinization at birth stories regarding the emperor gods, the infancy narratives fit the genre of the time which would have been read by a Gentile audience. The infancy narrative of John the Baptist fits in with the marvelous birth genres in Hebrew Scriptures found in the stories of Isaac and Samuel. The infancy narrative of John the Baptist contrasts with the "miraculous" birth story of Jesus. The writers are appealing to the followers of John the Baptist in the interpretation of the support role which John had in the Gospel presentation of salvation history. John the Baptist was a very important "set up" man for the transition to a more Gentile friendly Christo-Judaism which the very early churches became.
"And the Word was made flesh and dwell among us." How about this paraphrase? "And the Word became Body Language and because expressive to us of what divinity would look like in a human person?"
Aphorism of the Day, December 26, 2015
St. Stephen's Day could be a study of crime in different times. The famous St. Paul would still remain Saul in a prison in America for being complicit in a religious hate crime in the stoning of Stephen. Makes one ponder how the "crimes" of religious heresy used to be "adjudicated" and sometimes still are when how one exercises one's faith is criminal behavior. How long in human history have people been divided even to the point of persecution over believing in One God, differently? One can see how secularists see such behaviors and cry, "Bah hum bug" on not only the behaviors but belief in God. How much "atheism" is inspired by "religious" people of all religions acting very badly?
Aphorism of the Day, December 25, 2015
Read the Christmas story as a metaphor to relate the reality of being born again when the arising of the divine image upon one's life splashes evidence of the same to our emotional and intellectual fields to inspire the volitional events empowering the actions to change our lives in the direction of excellence.
Aphorism of the Day, December 24, 2015
Be a Christmas literalist tonight, attend the Mass of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, December 23, 2015
In the midst of all that has accrued around "Christmas" don't forget that both the Mass of Christ and the Infancy Narratives of the Gospel are the word and sacrament of personal transformation deriving from the actual experiences of people in the early church wanting to inculcate the teaching of "Christ in us, the hope of Glory."
Aphorism of the Day, December 22, 2015
Blessings and curses seemed to be included in ancient prayers. In our time it might be proper to "curse Satan and the forces of darkness" but not people unless they are diabolically evil. So how could curses be regarded to be kind and merciful? They probably weren't but it was a liturgical way of expresses the unavoidable thoughts of revenge which people feel when they have been harmed or mistreated. Hannah, the scorned childless women offered this as a part of her song when she was finally able to conceive: "My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in my victory." In the Song of Mary there are pronounced curses, "the rich He has sent away empty and he brought down the mighty from their throne." It seems that there is rejoicing and praise when one's tormenters are tormented by the fate of "God's hands." The poetic words of the Psalmist often are words of wishing terrible things upon the enemies of the "writer and the writer's interests." Jesus who said to love our enemies did not seem to have loving regard for the Pharisees and Sadducees who openly opposed him. He told parables about weeping and gnashing of teeth as punishment for those who did not "get with the program." On the other hand, from the cross he pronounces a final forgiveness for those who acted in ignorance: "Father forgive them for they do not know what they do." In short, there is not a general consistency about the rhetoric of blessing and curses in the Bible and it is probably the same today as we still cry out in situations of pain, intensified by the circumstance of personal attack. Cursing may be an honest cry of pain or a cry of triumph if "just" punishment has been accomplished. In the end we can say that the ways of the realization of justice are often very messy and even when we try to absolve our personal conscience by acting with the motive of causing no harm, we can in our group loyalties be committing acts of harm against other unbeknown and so we never know if and how we are the recipients of the curses of others.
Aphorism of the Day, December 21, 2015
The perception of there being a "war on Christmas" by the media and commercial sectors of our society perhaps is driven by those with a nostalgia for Empire Christianity. In Empire Christianity one assumes if everyone is not Christian, they should be and they can be helped by adopting all Christian holy days whether they want to or not. Empire Christianity has had various notions of legitimizing power to proclaim "official" holidays. If the majority of people in a locale are "Christian" then Christians should be able to determine official holidays. If a conquering nation is "Christian" then "Christian" conquerors should be able to determine the "official" holidays. It could be that members of minority religious communities have adjusted to the "forced" Christmas holidays by "secularizing" them and taking the "religious" aspects out of them while retaining the vestiges of joy and giving. How many secular "Christmas" songs have been penned by Jewish songwriters? It could be that any Christian worth his or her salt, is more interested in the gentle persuasion of the Christ child being born into one's life, rather than relying upon forcing one's religion upon everyone. We need to be sensitive about the after effects of Empire Christianity rather than feeling like members of an emasculated Christianity under siege because "Merry Christmas" is replaced with "Happy Holidays" by a store clerk.
Aphorism of the Day, December 20, 2015
A week of aphorisms on the Song of Mary. The promise made to our forebears, * to Abraham and his children for ever. One can note in any family the practice of strategic genealogy and by this I mean that we highlight the more notable people in our family tree rather than those who "made no impression" or lived toward infamy. The New Testament writers used branches on the family tree of Judaism for strategic purpose. St. Paul used the pre-Israelite Patriarch Abraham and the promise of God to him as the father of faith as the place to graft Gentile Christianity on the tree of salvation history. And this appears in the Song of Mary in the reference to the promise of God made to Abraham. So the Christ child in Mary was in the lineage of the promise to Abraham. In this Song one can see the strategic retrofitting of the period of the gestational Jesus toward the Patriarch who provides the interpretive possibilities of the Gentile church within the long tradition of salvation history of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Aphorism of the Day, December 19,2015
A week of aphorisms on the Song of Mary. The song of Mary is proof that both visions of utopia and dystopia can come to language. There is enough of bliss and perfection in the world to envision its victory but there is also enough chaos to project catastrophic outcomes. The Song of Mary is the mystical vision of justice winning and this vision can be experienced even when actual situations of justice are not fully realized. The conception and birth of Jesus did not result in the immediate realization of justice on earth. On the continuum between dystopia and utopia we need the arising of figures who show us how utopia or "no such place" can be manifest in a "no such person" who is not yet because a self surpassing person in our future will always deconstruct each of us as the not yet and "no such person." The Risen Christ born in us is also subject to Time and Becoming within us. The Song of Mary seems to seal a moment of time by assuming completeness, "He has filled the hungry with good things." What is more true to process would be the statement, "He is continuously and always filling the hungry with good things." Being hungry and being filled are moments in process. Might we offer that mystical vision occurs in the threshold location between being hungry and being filled, justice rendered and justice lacking? In the threshold one has a directional orientation. One can look toward justice rendered or turn 180 degrees and look toward justice lacking. In the Song of Mary, we are encouraged to choose the direction of our vision in the threshold experience of always being between.
Aphorism of the Day, December 18, 2015
A week of aphorisms on the Song of Mary. He has filled the hungry with good things, * and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel, * for he has remembered his promise of mercy, The promise he made to our fathers, * to Abraham and his children for ever. Again the words of this song are words of poetic arousal in the state of a lover being loved and loving. The words of poetic arousal clearly distort the nature of what is actually happening outside of the state of arousal. The good things which fill the hungry is the self-authenticating reality of mystical union; in the outside world people are still hungry. And the rich want to buy a drug replacement for the mystical union and are left empty. The grace of mystical union cannot be bought. And how has God helped Israel in the conception event for the maiden Mary? The Temple and Jerusalem has been/will be destroyed and the people of Israel will be scattered and divided between synagogue and church. But in the mystical experience the ancient promise is renewed; the promise that all could discover the life of the heavenly parent arise as the telling identity of one's life. The promise of creation funneled through Abraham and given covenantal fluidity in the life of the people of Israel and exploding as a gift to a wider world in the Christo-centric Judaism. The promise is fulfilled when each person can sing the song of Mary as one's own song of knowing the mystical union of one's divine identity, one's original image being brought to the surface in the ecstatic moments when the Song of Mary really makes sense.
Aphorism of the Day, December 17, 2015
A week of aphorisms on the Song of Mary. He has shown the strength of his arm, * he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, * and has lifted up the lowly. Songs and poetic utterance produce statements which are meaningful but do not have regular empirical verification. In ecstatic trance one can like Lady Julian confess that "all manner of things shall be well" even when there is in actual circumstantial proof to the contrary. What is true about experiences of mystical union is that the rational facilities get flooded by the parallel heavenly realm and one confesses that "God's will on earth is done as it is in heaven." However, in the earthly realm, Caesar was still on the throne and the strength of God's arm is the poetic state of knowing the "Time Before" when strength is represented in Pure Creativity and in the "Time After" because the One who endures the longest has the power and the right to re-write and re-interpret all outcomes. In mystical union, one confesses in the present tense a present faith based upon the future anterior tense, that "Every manner of things will have been well."
Aphorism of the Day, December 16, 2015
A week of aphorisms on the Song of Mary. He has mercy on those who fear him * in every generation. Given the plenitude of what the definition of God implies and understanding God to be addressed with a personal pronoun, Mary's song reveals what each person in every generation needs to discover. Plenitude like an ocean inspires the fear known as awe or reverence. Plenitude is the giant realm of what has been, what is and what might be with the full expression of the freedom of every sort of causal connection, and in the awe and reverence of living in this great zone of possibilisms to discover and isolate the experience of mercy as the significant and telling experience one confesses as one's own is most significant. Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. If in the Plenitude of what has happened, is happening and what will happen, one discovers the experience of Mercy as the telling experience then founding the character of one's life on mercy rather than upon "what-might- go-wrong-fear" is a way of living in the Plenitude of God as Merciful Fate and weaver of a protective garment with multi-experiential threads all with the providential purpose of surrounding one with warmth and beauty.
Aphorism of the Day, December 15, 2015
A week of aphorisms on the Song of Mary. From this day all generations will call me blessed: * the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name. In the tradition of Sarah, Hannah and Elizabeth who had marvelous births because of their "barren" conditions, Mary as a young maiden had miraculous conception. Because of the way in which women's bodies are made, they are the child-bearers. In ancient times, their child-bearing was used to limit them into roles pertaining only to child-bearing. Their "success" was defined by bearing children since a child was the evidence of objective immortality for their families in the future. Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth and Mary all believed that God had done a great thing for them. This Song of Mary turns out to be her also being a prophetess about her own standing in the memory of the people of this world. The famous prayer, "Hail Mary" retains the phrases from the Magnificat: The Lord is with thee=looked with favor. Bless art thou among women=all generations will call me blessed. While most want to read this song as one which was composed on the spot on the occasion of the visitation of Elizabeth to Mary, its spiritual practice is a prayer of ecstasy of the experience of knowing the life of Christ being born in oneself by the presence of the Holy Spirit. All generations calling one blessed is the poetic expression of eternal life and knowing the holy Name of God is the experience of intimacy with God because of permission to know and be known by God in the way of spiritual union.
Aphorism of the Day, December 14, 2014
A week of aphorisms on the "Song of Mary." My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; * for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. This song is in the song tradition of Hannah who was given a special child. It is an ecstatic song of praise attributed to Mary and retains a delight in reading in a immediate "primary naïveté." As we move to reading it as Mary being the paradigm of every Christian who has Christ born in one as the "hope" of glory, one understands the spirituality of the early church which in turns uses the Gospel narratives to encode spiritual events of the soul. The salvific event of the soul draw the response of knowing God's greatness and one's own smallness and there is also a comfort which creates the condition of joy because one has that sense of being rescued or saved even in the experience of being so small in experience of the plenitude of God. The mystical experience makes one feel favored even while one feels very "lowly" at the same time. A love experience of being seduced and befriended by God is a powerful event of personal esteem. It should not be made into megalomania; it should become a prayer for everyone to know the event of personal esteem of being "favored" by God. From the event of God's favor, one becomes less reliant upon strokes from people and one is spared from being personally disillusioned with others. After God provides the event of favor, one only asks perfection of God's greatness and not of one's fellow earth companions.
Aphorism of the Day, December 13, 2015
One of reasons that John the Baptist and Jesus were presented in polemical discourse with the scribes and Pharisees was to teach to the early churches the origins of the disagreements which led to the separation of the church from the synagogue. One of the chief disagreements was about what might be called legacy salvation or "entitled" salvation due to being born into a family that gave one "automatic" salvation from birth without the requirement of the performance of salvific acts of love, justice and kindness which were an indication that one lived the merit of salvation. In every religious group, the notion of "entitled" salvation raises itself. Salvation by group identity is the smug self righteousness that can occur within any group that begins to take its structure more serious than the actual practice of love and kindness.
Aphorism of the Day, December 12, 2015
Gaudete is the name for the third Sunday of Advent. It is the Latin for "Rejoice." The command to rejoice always is sometimes clouded by the actual harsh situations in life. Rejoicing in the "right now" involves not letting the current experience of evil, badness or misfortune dominate the vision of everything in life. There is always enough goodness presence to rejoice and there is always a future which can be given a vision informed by utopian hope to inspire the act of rejoicing to be an act of faith in claiming better things.
Aphorism of Day, December 11, 2015
It is ironic that lots of discourse in the Gospel about "loving one's enemies" is deconstructed by equal amounts of vitriolic polemic discourse decrying one's doctrinal enemies as "brood of vipers" and "white washed tombs." It used to be part of liturgical tradition for prayers to include both blessings and curses. Polemics are discourses characteristic of reformation movements. How much of Reformation and counter-Reformation writings are full of mutual venom of Christians divided by having a "common Messiah?" Polemics are the words of leaving. One often does not leave a paradigm of thought or the people who expound such thinking without dissent and dissatisfaction often expressed in anger and sharp discourse of critique. John the Baptist could be likened to the Reformation Anabaptists who did not regard the validity of infant baptism and so a person had to be "re-baptized" to be regarded as a member of the Christian faith. Proselyte baptism in Judaism was for non-Jews who wanted to convert to Judaism. In the baptism required by John the Baptist, the Jews were treated as those who needed to be proselytized. This act of baptism in the living waters of the Jordan River was a polemical act against the validity of certain practices of Judaism. He was insisting that Jews re-enter the Promised Land of being God's people all over again because what they had in the performance of their heritage was lacking. Christians often practice re-baptism when one group does not regard the validity of a previous baptism. All of this is the indication of persons in faith journeys through various paradigms of faith; some transitions are smooth but others happen with polemics. The Gospel polemic discourses of John the Baptist and Jesus are oracles of the early church accounting for the separation of synagogue and the church. We today do not have to re-live the ancient feuds which occurred in specific situations. Many of our modern "Christian" preachers seem to equate the Gospel with polemics against those who disagree with them, as if they are saying, "I love you even though you are going to hell in a handbasket because you don't agree with me in how I specifically understand Christian teaching."
Aphorism of the Day, December 10, 2015
John the Baptist as a prophet was not known for his practice of "appreciative inquiry." He is quoted as calling the religious leaders of his day a "brood of vipers," which essentially is calling them offspring of the serpent. The problem of having a prophet's tongue includes a implied insider's view to be sufficiently infallible as to what is most correct in the interpretation of reality. I suspect that the recommendable infallible position has to do with justice and advocacy on behalf of the poor and weak. To speak strongly against those who maintain the structural poverty of so many in a society is to invite a prophet's fate, persecution or death.
Aphorism of the Day, December 9, 2015
The New Testament writing are in part generated to explain why the church became separated from the synagogue. The origin of separation is often found in the rhetoric of disagreement among parties within a community, organization or religion. The rhetoric of John the Baptist is presented within the Gospel as a critique of the "official" religious parties within Judaism. The rhetoric of John the Baptist provides the seeds of early dissent which influenced Jesus and the direction of the Jesus Movement. By the time John the Baptist is reported in the Gospel communities, his words against certain parties within Judaism are used as justification for the ascendency of Gentile Christianity. The tree of salvation history as it was known in Judaism was cut down and the Gentiles were grafted in. The result was a new hybrid of religious messianic thinking. But remember this critique is only an "outsider's critique" of Judaism by those who left it. Christians should have the humility to acknowledge that Jews had their own continuity within their synagogues while being quite unaffected by what those in the Jesus movement said or did. That we have an apologetic discourse in the New Testament for why we think we became a separate from Judaism should not hinder us from accepting that continuing Judaism did not agree with such apologetic discourse. The history of ideas reveals that people form their identity by what they have left, even while not everyone leaves what one has left.
Aphorism of the Day, December 8, 2015
Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots and the Herodians were various religious parties within Judaism. Perhaps the major religious party of the Gospel was the great following of John the Baptist. The invisibility of the community of John the Baptist as a separate community within the Gospels is perhaps due to the attempt to show a seamless transition from the community of John to the community of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, December 7, 2015
The witness of John the Baptist is used by the Gospel writers to present a proto-Christian movement based upon the questioning of one have automatic faith because of one's religious and ethnic heritage. The performance of the act of repentance is made the criteria for "standing" with God. John promised that his movement of repentance would be completed by Jesus who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and this over-shadowing "baptism" would result in having the life of Christ born within one. And one's soul would be like Mary's and be an "earthly sanctuary" for the presence of Christ. The Gospel narratives are essentially the story form of the spiritual methodology of the early Christian communities.
Aphorism of the Day, December 6, 2015
The proto-church could rightly be called the Community of John the Baptist. The writing purpose of the Gospel was an appeal to the followers of John the Baptist to embrace Jesus as the protégé and the designated successor of John the Baptist. The favorable presentation of John the Baptist in the Gospel reveals the dynamic transition of many members of the community of John the Baptist making the transition to the Jesus Movement.
Aphorism of the Day, December 5, 2015
Study of the Bible can be variously done. It can be done by those who is a members of a confessional community who regards the Bible to authoritative be in one's faith practices. If one has converted and made doctrinal commitments one reads the Bible as an eisegete, as one who reads with preconceived meanings. Exegesis is the study of Scripture and involves an attempt to leave aside one's doctrinal commitments and try to understand the particulars of the thought paradigms within which a biblical text was originally written. Hermeneutics is the general "science" of interpretation and can be done with or without prior commitments to doctrinal positions. Homiletics is art of preaching and involves an "applied" hermeneutic for the morals, ethics and spirituality of a community. In some post-modern approaches there is the attempt to let the ancient paradigms function within their own setting since everyone in their own setting has or takes the right to "define" one's own reality. In our own time we acknowledge the hermeneutic distance from the ancient settings where biblical texts were generated. We exist as temporal prisoners of our own time, yet the "prison" walls of our own time share some universally corresponding functional patterns with the "thought prisons" of people of the ancient past. Such correspondences are the fruitful topics of translation between modernity and the ancient world.
Aphorism of the Day, December 4, 2015
To read and interpret the meanings of what is happening in our current life we use the entire accessible vocabulary of the traces of the past. We say this person is similar to the person who is in the memorial traces of our past. The New Testament writers had the Hebrew Scriptures of the past and if John the Baptist looked like someone Isaiah wrote about in his own time long ago, then that trace from Isaiah became "prophetic" in proving the "eternal return of the same." Features of human words and action recur in new settings in different way. It is rather silly to view prophecy as specifically predictive when the prophecy of the eternal return of the same is always generally true. Interpretation of a ancient text is to uncover the universal archetypes present within the details of ancient settings and then find the corresponding manifestations of the same universal archetype in our present setting.
Aphorism of the Day, December 3, 2015
In the aftermath of another mass shooting in America, we ponder the freedom to bear every kind of weapon even while we dismiss the freedom of those who have the right to have protection from the regular misuse of such an expansive freedom to bear weapons. Our politicians will allow regulations based upon actuarial projections in so many areas of American life even while many and various deaths due to the misuse of omni-available firearms eludes the kind of rational actuarial scrutiny leading to wise regulation in the sale of firearms. The wisdom of God would require actuarial honesty resulting in the appropriate regulation, if we confess that we value the freedom of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There are people who have untimely been denied these freedoms when our actuarial knowledge has resulted in no rational actions of regulation.
Aphorism of the Day, December 2, 2015
Pope Francis, who has the right to speak within the Roman Catholic Church as one who can make infallible pronouncements on matters of doctrine, is one who has said that he will not speak from the platform of infallibility. Today, he condemned fundamentalism in all religions including his own as being idolatrous, not religious, (where) God is lacking. God is always lacking and too small when anyone presumes to know some final interpretation of the meaning of God or the ways in which God is articulated or made known to people. The future means that the word God as designating the surpassing Sublime still has a future in humanity and the future of God does not allow the door of the many meanings of God to be closed.
Aphorism of the Day, December 1, 2015
The infancy narratives of the Gospel are given for John the Baptist and Jesus. The Infancy Narratives are a literature of "must have had a miraculous" beginning discourse. In the days when Caesars were deified by senates and discourse was generated to proclaim the divinization at birth stories regarding the emperor gods, the infancy narratives fit the genre of the time which would have been read by a Gentile audience. The infancy narrative of John the Baptist fits in with the marvelous birth genres in Hebrew Scriptures found in the stories of Isaac and Samuel. The infancy narrative of John the Baptist contrasts with the "miraculous" birth story of Jesus. The writers are appealing to the followers of John the Baptist in the interpretation of the support role which John had in the Gospel presentation of salvation history. John the Baptist was a very important "set up" man for the transition to a more Gentile friendly Christo-Judaism which the very early churches became.
