Aphorism of the Day, May 31, 2019
What does one do with the Ascension when the cosmological view of the world is no longer the netherworld below a flat earth which has a domed sky with a "trap door" in the top that can be threaded at the lift off of Jesus? Using physicality as metaphor for substantiality, the ascension illustrates the truth of the disappearance of Christ from the physical and sensual realm but indicates his promotion to an interior and invisible realm. This is continuum of the word being made flesh being made word.....bespeaking the human occupation of dancing in the dynamic of interior words in signifying play with the physical and inner psychical worlds.
Aphorism of the Day, May 30, 2019
Overwhelmed by the threat of the truth of science the church has felt pressured to make a reading of the ascension into a physical lift off and thus diminished the truth of mystical and poetic being raised with Christ to be seated in heavenly places as the experience of one’s most profound Interiority.
Aphorism of the Day, May 29, 2019
Chariot to heaven, Jacob's ladder to heaven, Jesus as the ladder on whom the angels ascend and descend, and the Ascension. This is all about mystical travel between the realm of seen and unseen. Angels and the appearance of a vertical ascent use the physical as a metaphor for the mystical. Remember when the physical is used as a metaphor, it means that the writer is stressing something is "really real," i.e., it is as meaningful true as the kitchen table that you see.
Aphorism of the Day, May 28, 2019
The mysticism of Paul and others had to do with experiencing an identity with Christ, such that one walks with, sleeps with, eats with, dies with, rises with, lives with Christ in heavenly places. How do these metaphors of identity get taught within the church? Encoding them within a narrative of Jesus of Nazareth such that the appearance of an historical narrative is interwoven with the mystical states of identity. The mystics understand being in the world but not of the world; the fundamentalist import scientific historicism onto the Gospel text and insist they have to be meaningfully true if and only if they could have been events which could have been empirically verified. They became the literalists which are mocked by the words of Jesus in the Gospel of of John throughout.
Aphorism of the Day, May 27, 2019
In the Gospel of John there is the understanding that the physical is presented as metaphor for the spiritual. In John's Gospel, Jesus does not tell parables, he speaks in long discourses. In John as the last Gospel, the program of the Gospel writing becomes evident; the Gospels present the narrative of the life of Jesus as a cover metaphor for the early Christian mysticism of those who used the poetry of being crucified with Christ, of having been raised with him, and having ascended with him to be seated in heavenly places. All this seems totally absurd if we try to impose strict empirical verification criteria on all of the events in the narrative of the life of Jesus. But if we understand the Gospel narrative as encoding the early mystical transformation of lives, then we crack the interpretive code of the Gospels and salute the discursive practice of the Gospels as not being incompatible with the discourse of science.
Aphorism of the Day, May 26, 2019
God sets up house. Jesus said about the Trinity in the Royal "We:" "We will come and and make our home with them." The metaphor of God using our bodies as a home where the divine lives set up home is indicative of moving the notion of presence from a sacred temple to the interior within each person. Such decentralization of sacred space should not make us think any less of holy place of worship where prayers have been valid; it should only inform us that no place can exhaust God's presence. God's presence in experienced on a continuum of general and particular based upon the apparent experience of the same in the experience of a person.
Aphorism of the Day, May 25, 2019
The Gospel of John is in part about how to live in the world but not be "of" the world. World was cosmos and that is quite an embracing term. What world was there to live in during Gospel of John time? The most embracing "world" of the time would be the "Roman Empire World" which would include the Christians communities and the synagogues. What kind of peace did the Roman World offer? It was the Pax Romana, a peace which was built upon the force of armies defeating any opposition to the Roman order as it came to be expressed in the laws and customs distilled throughout the provinces of the Empire. The followers of Jesus lived something like "Amish" in the Roman World, perhaps even a bit more appearance of integration with the societal order but not participating in the public cult. The peace of Christ was the experience of an interior world, a different kind of "cosmos", realm or kingdom. Nascent Christianity was generated as a spirituality without prominent public institutions and only began to become to "be" the Roman world following the Emperor Constantine. When Christian spirituality became the "world," one can discover that spirituality began to get compromised.
Aphorism of the Day, May 24, 2019
Words and Jesus in the Gospel of John. Jesus is the Word as God from the beginning through whom all things come into being. Jesus said is words were spirit and Jesus promise the Holy Spirit to be the continuation of his words given to him by the Father. John's Gospel indicates every thing playing out upon the default position of being human, i.e., having words. Words have been the origin, the beginning, the arche or human life as it can be known. Words will be the continuation of human life as it can be known, particularly as we admit that we know words through words. So if Word is all embracing, why do we need Jesus? Word made flesh is exemplary word in a human person to give us the model for how word should be articulated best in the human life forms of speaking, writing and body language deeds.
Aphorism of the Day, May 23, 2019
On Kepler and Copernicus day it might be good to remember the threat of scientific empirical observation which challenged the former theological explanations for how things were perceived. Science has been such a threat to religion that religionists have had to contort themselves to contrive unhealthy reconciliations of science and religion. We should rejoice that in the human use of language to assert and codify human experience, we arrived at the best tool for practical wisdom, i.e., science. With the scientific method we have been able to achieve the very best and latest of "probability" thinking because as we are able to determine more precise predicatability, we have the ability to take preventative actions within the system of freedom within which we live. But the system of freedom has room for discourses of faith, love and beauty, resembling the aesthetic meanings and truth that are as inspiring as scientific discourse. Science has made religionists think that our discourse is a bastard step-child and we are too often defensive because we are not willing to accept the specific difference of aesthetic discourse, which are meaningful, for one, in entertaining ways. Have you noticed that all of the entertaining speculation discourse has moved out of religion into the entertainment fields of science fiction and cinema and other virtual imaginative offerings. We don't give ourselves or biblical writers permission to find their imaginations as entertainingly meaningful because Big Brother Science now tells us that all of that stuff has to have been empirically verified to be "true." We allowed ourselves to be in a conflict that didn't need to be there in the first place.
Aphorism of the Day, May 22, 2019
John in his vision of the New Jerusalem saw that the new city had no Temple because God was the Temple. We all know that everything that is, is in fact the great Cathedral that we always already live and have our being in.
Aphorism of the Day, May 21, 2019
The Gospels were written and edited by preachers and writers of the early Christian communities whose contemporary reality was the effervescence of group spiritual experience that had derived because of Jesus of Nazareth. The writers were trying to explain the dynamic of how the earthly Jesus of Nazareth morphed into the Risen Christ becoming spontaneously known in the lives of those who never saw Jesus. The Gospels are a narrative theology of Providence by those who were profoundly impacted by Post-Death-of-Jesus encounters with his Divine Traces in their lives.
Aphorism of the Day, May 20, 2019
Significant portions of the Gospel of John might be called farewell discourse. The author is trying to impart insights about the transition from Jesus of Nazareth to the Risen Christ of the church of the Holy Spirit. One of the major feature of this liminal phase of Jesus leaving and returning as the Risen Christ, is the assurance of the validity of another kind of divine presence known as the Advocate of Jesus, the Holy Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, May 19, 2019
In the age of the Risen Christ and the experience of the Holy Spirit, how did the early Christians write about the actual age of Jesus of Nazareth? They wrote his life in an anticipatory way of what he had become as the Risen Christ in both Jewish and Gentile followers.
Aphorism of the Day, May 18, 2019
"The home of God is among mortals..." Home is the permanent dwelling place of someone and if the home of God is among mortals, such is an expression of the accessibility of God to humanity. In practical terms it means that the anthropomorphic impulses validly acknowledge a greater than human milieu in which we live which is our home, and metaphorically God is the Home within whom we live and move and have our being.
Aphorism of the Day, May 17, 2019
The separation of the followers of Jesus from the synagogue involved a "food fight." The rules in the Torah regarding diet was inaccessible to the Gentiles who were following the teachings of Christ. Peter had a vision which was authoritative for him to dispense with the dietary rules of Judaism for Gentile followers of Jesus. Holiness as being ritually observant Jews in being distinguished from others in this world was something that could not be compromised by those who remained in the synagogue. The followers of Jesus "spiritualized" holiness, by proclaiming that the inward evidence of the Holy Spirit was what made one separate from the world and not the outward physical evidence of how one ate or marked the body through circumcision.
Aphorism of the Day, May 16, 2019
"Where I am going, you cannot come." The Gospel of John writer understands Jesus to be preparing the disciples for the new presence of Christ within them even while he will be visually absent.
Aphorism of the Day, May 15, 2019
John the Divine had a vision of "Death will be no more." What would that mean? Time will be no more? Change will be no more? Aging will be no more? Becoming has become a static Being? But would the state formerly known as death be dead? Does a timeless state mean a static roboticity? John's vision is a surrealistic vision and normal reality gets melted like a Dali painting.
Aphorism of the Day, May 14, 2019
The Psalmist implores all orders of existence to "praise the Lord." What kind of assumptions are involved in this poetry? A star has the ability to speak? A poet projects languaged existence upon everything. Does the poet assume "Word" is embedded in some way in all things or is Word embedded in humans who project a worded existence upon everything such that everything can "praise" God. Or is it a poetic way of saying everything and everyone are at their best in the state of testifying to the greatness of creator who made them? But all of this happens in the worded existence of the Psalmist.
Aphorism of the Day, May 13, 2019
The Last Supper as presented by John's Gospel showed some of the dysfunction of the disciples of Jesus. Peter too proud to receive a foot-washing. Judas plotting to betray Jesus. James and John worried about their good seats in the kingdom of God. How was the dysfunctional group to be made "re-functional?" They will know that you are unified around Christ by your love for one another. It is the love within community which announces the value of unity and draws others. Many congregations have become the intermittent gathering of independent agents, each who fear one's own community involvement would result in inconvenience and dysfunction because of the differences one has with others. The lack of love does not allow for people to know discipleship.
Aphorism of the Day, May 12, 2019
The five senses in biblical poetry are often elevated as metaphors for accessing another realm, the spiritual realm, the kingdom of God. In John's Gospel, the healing of the physical realm is the initiation into the spiritual realm. The sign of God is that one sees beyond seeing, hears beyond hearing, tastes beyond tasting, and touching and feeling beyond touching and feeling. Physical existence in the Gospel of John becomes poetic metaphor for existence on a parallel plane.
Aphorism of the Day, Aphorism of the Day, May 11, 2019
Aristotle is associated with the Peripatetic School of Philosophy, given that name derived from teaching by walking with students in the colonnades or portico that were in the Lyceum campus. The Lyceum was a temple dedicated to Apollos. Jesus was presented as a peripatetic rabbi teaching, while walking in the portico of the Temple at the feast of the Dedication. Jesus was a "walking" teacher; he did not confine students to a classroom. He taught in the way and the Spirit of the Risen Christ continues to teach as we are walking throughout the situations which may arise. We cannot control the world or our environment by being locked into the limited exposure of being "inside" a classroom. Rabbi Jesus introduces the "walking" learning program.
Aphorism of the Day, May 10, 2019
Ironic Gospel reading for Mother's Day 2010. Jesus said, "The Father and I are one." Jesus was literally one with Mary as the gestational Jesus. Jesus could have said," My mom and I were one for at least 9 months."
Aphorism of the Day, May 9, 2019
The Gospel of John presents that post-resurrection Christ as an oracle in their congregations in a narrative of his life. The Johannine Community regarded the success of the Jesus Movement as manifestation of Risen Christ to be the greater work that had occurred because Jesus had returned to his Father in his physical earthly disappearance.
Aphorism of the Day, May 8, 2019
"The Father and I are one." Can children say this in a spatio-temporal way? A father precedes a child? How can a child be spatio-temporally one with one's father? Can't be done. A a child one or united in any way with one's father? One is genetics relationship, one is family membership, and one in purpose for life. Could it be that "the Father and I are one," means that he did not ever separate himself from the Plenitude and so he was not an independent agent in Plenitude? Could it be that being one with "the Father" in contrast with Joseph as his father, meant that he understood that he had a relationship beyond psychological determination in the way in which Freud understood the "mommie, daddy, me" dynamic?
Aphorism of the Day, May 7, 2019
"My sheep hear may voice." The flock of Jesus could be a metaphor for the paradgim or hermeneutical circle within which the early followers of Jesus lived. They had been converted to this paradigm; others who had not the conversion experience could not "hear" /understand the teaching of Jesus. That people inhabit different paradigms which don't seem to be compatible is a statement of fact. There is lots of anger in the world because people live in different and incommnensurable paradigms of faith, politics and social experience in life, and it seems almost impossible to translate between paradigms to live in peaceful co-existence. It happens that those who inhabit the paradigm which permits and succeeds at suppressing others seems to be the most "popular," even though it does not comport with a paradigm which valorizes love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, May 6, 2019
For those who tout the superiority of "plain reading" of biblical texts one must ponder such phrases as "the Lamb will be the shepherd." This is so contradictory on many levels and yet it evokes meaning for those who have appropriated the symbolism of the tradition of lamb and shepherd in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Modern science has made many people of faith embarrassed by "poetic" meanings as though these are inferior truths. Many people of faith want to pretend they can play checkers while using the rules of chess and such attempts only look silly. One can play chess and checkers at the same time on different boards. One can be different discursive performers in different games at the same time.
Aphorism of the Day, May 5, 2019
Self disillusionment, "I thought that I was better than that," can be the event for rehabilitation in one's high values or it can be the temptation to give up. I'll never be perfect so why should I try. Life is always about being rehabilitated in the right direction for moral perfection, not ever presuming to have arrived.
Aphorism of the Day, May 4, 2019
If the love of God will winsomely persuade and reconcile everyone and everything, does it do so coercively or as a creative lure which attends endless trial and error until everyone finally is able to respond freely having eventually learned from one's errors?
Aphorism of the Day, May 3, 2019
The Book of Revelation envisions every living creature singing a song of praise to the Lamb. This vision is a presentation of hope that eventually sacrificial love will persuade everyone, everywhere and at all times that it is the chief value of life which was exemplified in Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, May 2, 2019
A metaphor for a profound change in one's life is, "Damascus Road experience." It refers to the event which changed Saul, the persecutor of followers of Jesus to Paul, the follower and apostle of Jesus. Saul was involved in the killing of other people for religious differences. The history of religion indicates that this has often been the outcome of the practice of religion. Religion has been used to make people different that oneself in their beliefs, "the other," who can be eliminated as a threat. Most religions have had times needed to have "Damascus Road" conversions.
Aphorism of the Day, May 1, 2019
The rehabilitation of Peter by Jesus was to get Peter to reaffirm the general character of his life, namely that he had followed, walked and talked with Jesus during his ministry. In a moment of fear, he denied Jesus, even vehemently three times, during the arrest and trial of Jesus. Jesus rehabilitated Peter by getting him to return to his proven character shown by the fact that he had been with Jesus as a friend. "Come on Peter, admit that you both love and like me." "You're right Jesus, I disappointed myself when my fear overcame my pride." Love and friendship are what heals our lives of fear and pride.
What does one do with the Ascension when the cosmological view of the world is no longer the netherworld below a flat earth which has a domed sky with a "trap door" in the top that can be threaded at the lift off of Jesus? Using physicality as metaphor for substantiality, the ascension illustrates the truth of the disappearance of Christ from the physical and sensual realm but indicates his promotion to an interior and invisible realm. This is continuum of the word being made flesh being made word.....bespeaking the human occupation of dancing in the dynamic of interior words in signifying play with the physical and inner psychical worlds.
Aphorism of the Day, May 30, 2019
Overwhelmed by the threat of the truth of science the church has felt pressured to make a reading of the ascension into a physical lift off and thus diminished the truth of mystical and poetic being raised with Christ to be seated in heavenly places as the experience of one’s most profound Interiority.
Aphorism of the Day, May 29, 2019
Chariot to heaven, Jacob's ladder to heaven, Jesus as the ladder on whom the angels ascend and descend, and the Ascension. This is all about mystical travel between the realm of seen and unseen. Angels and the appearance of a vertical ascent use the physical as a metaphor for the mystical. Remember when the physical is used as a metaphor, it means that the writer is stressing something is "really real," i.e., it is as meaningful true as the kitchen table that you see.
Aphorism of the Day, May 28, 2019
The mysticism of Paul and others had to do with experiencing an identity with Christ, such that one walks with, sleeps with, eats with, dies with, rises with, lives with Christ in heavenly places. How do these metaphors of identity get taught within the church? Encoding them within a narrative of Jesus of Nazareth such that the appearance of an historical narrative is interwoven with the mystical states of identity. The mystics understand being in the world but not of the world; the fundamentalist import scientific historicism onto the Gospel text and insist they have to be meaningfully true if and only if they could have been events which could have been empirically verified. They became the literalists which are mocked by the words of Jesus in the Gospel of of John throughout.
Aphorism of the Day, May 27, 2019
In the Gospel of John there is the understanding that the physical is presented as metaphor for the spiritual. In John's Gospel, Jesus does not tell parables, he speaks in long discourses. In John as the last Gospel, the program of the Gospel writing becomes evident; the Gospels present the narrative of the life of Jesus as a cover metaphor for the early Christian mysticism of those who used the poetry of being crucified with Christ, of having been raised with him, and having ascended with him to be seated in heavenly places. All this seems totally absurd if we try to impose strict empirical verification criteria on all of the events in the narrative of the life of Jesus. But if we understand the Gospel narrative as encoding the early mystical transformation of lives, then we crack the interpretive code of the Gospels and salute the discursive practice of the Gospels as not being incompatible with the discourse of science.
Aphorism of the Day, May 26, 2019
God sets up house. Jesus said about the Trinity in the Royal "We:" "We will come and and make our home with them." The metaphor of God using our bodies as a home where the divine lives set up home is indicative of moving the notion of presence from a sacred temple to the interior within each person. Such decentralization of sacred space should not make us think any less of holy place of worship where prayers have been valid; it should only inform us that no place can exhaust God's presence. God's presence in experienced on a continuum of general and particular based upon the apparent experience of the same in the experience of a person.
Aphorism of the Day, May 25, 2019
The Gospel of John is in part about how to live in the world but not be "of" the world. World was cosmos and that is quite an embracing term. What world was there to live in during Gospel of John time? The most embracing "world" of the time would be the "Roman Empire World" which would include the Christians communities and the synagogues. What kind of peace did the Roman World offer? It was the Pax Romana, a peace which was built upon the force of armies defeating any opposition to the Roman order as it came to be expressed in the laws and customs distilled throughout the provinces of the Empire. The followers of Jesus lived something like "Amish" in the Roman World, perhaps even a bit more appearance of integration with the societal order but not participating in the public cult. The peace of Christ was the experience of an interior world, a different kind of "cosmos", realm or kingdom. Nascent Christianity was generated as a spirituality without prominent public institutions and only began to become to "be" the Roman world following the Emperor Constantine. When Christian spirituality became the "world," one can discover that spirituality began to get compromised.
Aphorism of the Day, May 24, 2019
Words and Jesus in the Gospel of John. Jesus is the Word as God from the beginning through whom all things come into being. Jesus said is words were spirit and Jesus promise the Holy Spirit to be the continuation of his words given to him by the Father. John's Gospel indicates every thing playing out upon the default position of being human, i.e., having words. Words have been the origin, the beginning, the arche or human life as it can be known. Words will be the continuation of human life as it can be known, particularly as we admit that we know words through words. So if Word is all embracing, why do we need Jesus? Word made flesh is exemplary word in a human person to give us the model for how word should be articulated best in the human life forms of speaking, writing and body language deeds.
Aphorism of the Day, May 23, 2019
On Kepler and Copernicus day it might be good to remember the threat of scientific empirical observation which challenged the former theological explanations for how things were perceived. Science has been such a threat to religion that religionists have had to contort themselves to contrive unhealthy reconciliations of science and religion. We should rejoice that in the human use of language to assert and codify human experience, we arrived at the best tool for practical wisdom, i.e., science. With the scientific method we have been able to achieve the very best and latest of "probability" thinking because as we are able to determine more precise predicatability, we have the ability to take preventative actions within the system of freedom within which we live. But the system of freedom has room for discourses of faith, love and beauty, resembling the aesthetic meanings and truth that are as inspiring as scientific discourse. Science has made religionists think that our discourse is a bastard step-child and we are too often defensive because we are not willing to accept the specific difference of aesthetic discourse, which are meaningful, for one, in entertaining ways. Have you noticed that all of the entertaining speculation discourse has moved out of religion into the entertainment fields of science fiction and cinema and other virtual imaginative offerings. We don't give ourselves or biblical writers permission to find their imaginations as entertainingly meaningful because Big Brother Science now tells us that all of that stuff has to have been empirically verified to be "true." We allowed ourselves to be in a conflict that didn't need to be there in the first place.
Aphorism of the Day, May 22, 2019
John in his vision of the New Jerusalem saw that the new city had no Temple because God was the Temple. We all know that everything that is, is in fact the great Cathedral that we always already live and have our being in.
Aphorism of the Day, May 21, 2019
The Gospels were written and edited by preachers and writers of the early Christian communities whose contemporary reality was the effervescence of group spiritual experience that had derived because of Jesus of Nazareth. The writers were trying to explain the dynamic of how the earthly Jesus of Nazareth morphed into the Risen Christ becoming spontaneously known in the lives of those who never saw Jesus. The Gospels are a narrative theology of Providence by those who were profoundly impacted by Post-Death-of-Jesus encounters with his Divine Traces in their lives.
Aphorism of the Day, May 20, 2019
Significant portions of the Gospel of John might be called farewell discourse. The author is trying to impart insights about the transition from Jesus of Nazareth to the Risen Christ of the church of the Holy Spirit. One of the major feature of this liminal phase of Jesus leaving and returning as the Risen Christ, is the assurance of the validity of another kind of divine presence known as the Advocate of Jesus, the Holy Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, May 19, 2019
In the age of the Risen Christ and the experience of the Holy Spirit, how did the early Christians write about the actual age of Jesus of Nazareth? They wrote his life in an anticipatory way of what he had become as the Risen Christ in both Jewish and Gentile followers.
Aphorism of the Day, May 18, 2019
"The home of God is among mortals..." Home is the permanent dwelling place of someone and if the home of God is among mortals, such is an expression of the accessibility of God to humanity. In practical terms it means that the anthropomorphic impulses validly acknowledge a greater than human milieu in which we live which is our home, and metaphorically God is the Home within whom we live and move and have our being.
Aphorism of the Day, May 17, 2019
The separation of the followers of Jesus from the synagogue involved a "food fight." The rules in the Torah regarding diet was inaccessible to the Gentiles who were following the teachings of Christ. Peter had a vision which was authoritative for him to dispense with the dietary rules of Judaism for Gentile followers of Jesus. Holiness as being ritually observant Jews in being distinguished from others in this world was something that could not be compromised by those who remained in the synagogue. The followers of Jesus "spiritualized" holiness, by proclaiming that the inward evidence of the Holy Spirit was what made one separate from the world and not the outward physical evidence of how one ate or marked the body through circumcision.
Aphorism of the Day, May 16, 2019
"Where I am going, you cannot come." The Gospel of John writer understands Jesus to be preparing the disciples for the new presence of Christ within them even while he will be visually absent.
Aphorism of the Day, May 15, 2019
John the Divine had a vision of "Death will be no more." What would that mean? Time will be no more? Change will be no more? Aging will be no more? Becoming has become a static Being? But would the state formerly known as death be dead? Does a timeless state mean a static roboticity? John's vision is a surrealistic vision and normal reality gets melted like a Dali painting.
Aphorism of the Day, May 14, 2019
The Psalmist implores all orders of existence to "praise the Lord." What kind of assumptions are involved in this poetry? A star has the ability to speak? A poet projects languaged existence upon everything. Does the poet assume "Word" is embedded in some way in all things or is Word embedded in humans who project a worded existence upon everything such that everything can "praise" God. Or is it a poetic way of saying everything and everyone are at their best in the state of testifying to the greatness of creator who made them? But all of this happens in the worded existence of the Psalmist.
Aphorism of the Day, May 13, 2019
The Last Supper as presented by John's Gospel showed some of the dysfunction of the disciples of Jesus. Peter too proud to receive a foot-washing. Judas plotting to betray Jesus. James and John worried about their good seats in the kingdom of God. How was the dysfunctional group to be made "re-functional?" They will know that you are unified around Christ by your love for one another. It is the love within community which announces the value of unity and draws others. Many congregations have become the intermittent gathering of independent agents, each who fear one's own community involvement would result in inconvenience and dysfunction because of the differences one has with others. The lack of love does not allow for people to know discipleship.
Aphorism of the Day, May 12, 2019
The five senses in biblical poetry are often elevated as metaphors for accessing another realm, the spiritual realm, the kingdom of God. In John's Gospel, the healing of the physical realm is the initiation into the spiritual realm. The sign of God is that one sees beyond seeing, hears beyond hearing, tastes beyond tasting, and touching and feeling beyond touching and feeling. Physical existence in the Gospel of John becomes poetic metaphor for existence on a parallel plane.
Aphorism of the Day, Aphorism of the Day, May 11, 2019
Aristotle is associated with the Peripatetic School of Philosophy, given that name derived from teaching by walking with students in the colonnades or portico that were in the Lyceum campus. The Lyceum was a temple dedicated to Apollos. Jesus was presented as a peripatetic rabbi teaching, while walking in the portico of the Temple at the feast of the Dedication. Jesus was a "walking" teacher; he did not confine students to a classroom. He taught in the way and the Spirit of the Risen Christ continues to teach as we are walking throughout the situations which may arise. We cannot control the world or our environment by being locked into the limited exposure of being "inside" a classroom. Rabbi Jesus introduces the "walking" learning program.
Aphorism of the Day, May 10, 2019
Ironic Gospel reading for Mother's Day 2010. Jesus said, "The Father and I are one." Jesus was literally one with Mary as the gestational Jesus. Jesus could have said," My mom and I were one for at least 9 months."
Aphorism of the Day, May 9, 2019
The Gospel of John presents that post-resurrection Christ as an oracle in their congregations in a narrative of his life. The Johannine Community regarded the success of the Jesus Movement as manifestation of Risen Christ to be the greater work that had occurred because Jesus had returned to his Father in his physical earthly disappearance.
Aphorism of the Day, May 8, 2019
"The Father and I are one." Can children say this in a spatio-temporal way? A father precedes a child? How can a child be spatio-temporally one with one's father? Can't be done. A a child one or united in any way with one's father? One is genetics relationship, one is family membership, and one in purpose for life. Could it be that "the Father and I are one," means that he did not ever separate himself from the Plenitude and so he was not an independent agent in Plenitude? Could it be that being one with "the Father" in contrast with Joseph as his father, meant that he understood that he had a relationship beyond psychological determination in the way in which Freud understood the "mommie, daddy, me" dynamic?
Aphorism of the Day, May 7, 2019
"My sheep hear may voice." The flock of Jesus could be a metaphor for the paradgim or hermeneutical circle within which the early followers of Jesus lived. They had been converted to this paradigm; others who had not the conversion experience could not "hear" /understand the teaching of Jesus. That people inhabit different paradigms which don't seem to be compatible is a statement of fact. There is lots of anger in the world because people live in different and incommnensurable paradigms of faith, politics and social experience in life, and it seems almost impossible to translate between paradigms to live in peaceful co-existence. It happens that those who inhabit the paradigm which permits and succeeds at suppressing others seems to be the most "popular," even though it does not comport with a paradigm which valorizes love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, May 6, 2019
For those who tout the superiority of "plain reading" of biblical texts one must ponder such phrases as "the Lamb will be the shepherd." This is so contradictory on many levels and yet it evokes meaning for those who have appropriated the symbolism of the tradition of lamb and shepherd in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Modern science has made many people of faith embarrassed by "poetic" meanings as though these are inferior truths. Many people of faith want to pretend they can play checkers while using the rules of chess and such attempts only look silly. One can play chess and checkers at the same time on different boards. One can be different discursive performers in different games at the same time.
Aphorism of the Day, May 5, 2019
Self disillusionment, "I thought that I was better than that," can be the event for rehabilitation in one's high values or it can be the temptation to give up. I'll never be perfect so why should I try. Life is always about being rehabilitated in the right direction for moral perfection, not ever presuming to have arrived.
Aphorism of the Day, May 4, 2019
If the love of God will winsomely persuade and reconcile everyone and everything, does it do so coercively or as a creative lure which attends endless trial and error until everyone finally is able to respond freely having eventually learned from one's errors?
Aphorism of the Day, May 3, 2019
The Book of Revelation envisions every living creature singing a song of praise to the Lamb. This vision is a presentation of hope that eventually sacrificial love will persuade everyone, everywhere and at all times that it is the chief value of life which was exemplified in Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, May 2, 2019
A metaphor for a profound change in one's life is, "Damascus Road experience." It refers to the event which changed Saul, the persecutor of followers of Jesus to Paul, the follower and apostle of Jesus. Saul was involved in the killing of other people for religious differences. The history of religion indicates that this has often been the outcome of the practice of religion. Religion has been used to make people different that oneself in their beliefs, "the other," who can be eliminated as a threat. Most religions have had times needed to have "Damascus Road" conversions.
Aphorism of the Day, May 1, 2019
The rehabilitation of Peter by Jesus was to get Peter to reaffirm the general character of his life, namely that he had followed, walked and talked with Jesus during his ministry. In a moment of fear, he denied Jesus, even vehemently three times, during the arrest and trial of Jesus. Jesus rehabilitated Peter by getting him to return to his proven character shown by the fact that he had been with Jesus as a friend. "Come on Peter, admit that you both love and like me." "You're right Jesus, I disappointed myself when my fear overcame my pride." Love and friendship are what heals our lives of fear and pride.
