Aphorism of the Day, April 30, 2022
The first stage in acceptance of loss is an actual truthful acceptance of what happened or is happening. In the case of the war in Ukraine, accepting in true assessment of what is happening cannot get over-shadow by the unreality of "I wish it weren't happening," or "it shouldn't be happening." Those sentiments are realistic in asserting the normalcy of the "non-warring" state and such "stories" can serve as models for what is the desired future state. They can serve as analgesic during the conflict even though too much analgesic may hinder the implementation of a vigorous defense against perpetrators of ill will. Keep the story of what is normal alive, but don't let it hinder the battle against those who would harm.
Aphorism of the Day, April 29, 2022
How much identity comes from polemic? Knowing ourselves because we sure aren't like the people we eschew. Can identity be built only on what is good and noble without reference to the people we don't like?
Aphorism of the Day, April 28, 2022
If we think that we have enemies, then we have to admit that the path of our lives is in various ways dictated by them, since our lives easily become apologetic adjustments to what are enemies are saying about us. The Christ question was, how can love change this dynamic?
Aphorism of the Day, April 27, 2022
Some people believe that St. Paul was perhaps the chief architect of the Christian Movement. He was insightful about the Roman Empire's unification modalities being vehicles for spreading a message far and wide, having "inter-net" capabilities via the connection between cities. In making Christo-centric Judaism evangelical through the dispensing with ritual purity requirements which were inaccessible to most Roman citizenry, he paved the way for metropolitan centers in the Empire to become "Christian centers," and the exclusive Hebraic/Jerusalem roots of the movement were altered with the creative writing of the Gentiles into the genealogy of salvation history.
Aphorism of the Day, April 26, 2022
Hot-headed, adamant denier of best friend, over-confident, criticizing faith leaders, accessory to murders, and persecutor, are on the resumes of Saints Peter and Paul. And yet they ended up dying martyrs' deaths for Christ in Rome. What they had to add to their resumes were reconciliation, rehabilitation, conversion, desert training, and leadership credibility by example. And this they did as the Risen Christ through the Holy Spirit took them to places and and situation which they would not have gone without the transformations of their lives.
Aphorism of the Day, April 25, 2022
It seems as all roads led to Rome, since both Peter and Paul ended up there and it was the traditional place of their deaths. Why Rome for both of these pillars? As a communication center, it probably was the place to get the message sent to all parts of the empire. As a place with many varieties of "Christ-communities," it was a place that could house the different "pieties" within the Jesus Movement, including the perspectives of both Peter and Paul, who had been at odds regarding Jews and Gentiles interactional practice as followers of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, April 24, 2022
The Doubting of Thomas perhaps is more a fellowship issue. Thomas doubted the reality of his friends encounter with the Risen Christ. "Guys, I don't believe that you had an experience of the Risen Christ." That was doubting of the validity of the significance and reality of the kinds of encounters with Risen Christ was the fellowship issue being dealt with in the Gospel Story of Doubting Thomas.
Aphorism of the Day, April 23, 2022
The post-resurrection appearances of Christ "morphed" into the post-resurrection effects of the Risen Christ as known in evidence of Spirit-life, being called and sent, the experience of peace, the forgiveness of sin, and the acknowledgment of the effects of Christ being known in and through Word products of oral transmission and writing as modes of knowing the sublimity of Christ. This may sum up what the purpose of the Doubting Thomas story was.
Aphorism of the Day, Earth Day, April 22, 2022
There are Christians who believe humanity should be in "dominion" over the earth. Many of these also wish for a speedy end of the world in an apocalyptic return of Christ. The end result is that good stewardship of the gift of the earth is not important since why take good care of something we will leave soon. We are not supposed to be "earth tyrants," we are supposed to be earth stewards taking good care of the gift of our earth which provides us with our life support. To the degree that we humans have power, it needs to be power to care for the earth and her peoples.
Aphorism of the Day, April 21, 2022
Thomas' doubting episode is an instructional parable for the Johannine churches. If the eye-witnesses of Jesus have died, then can people have valid encounters with the Risen Christ which are not regarded to be inferior second-handed hearsay because the "evidence" is in oral transmission or writing. The Gospel is writing for the vitality and freshness of the "transhistorical" presences of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Aphorism of the Day, April 20, 2022
One of the positive features of doubting is the possibility of humility since all doubting is tinged with "self-doubting" because doubting involves a loss of confidence in one's version of the world experience. The doubting in the Thomas story indicates that he doubts the his version of the second handed reports about the presence of Christ of his friends. "I do not perceive my "friends" as credible enough to believe." Does that tell us more about Thomas or the groups of his disciple friends?
Aphorism of the Day, April 19, 2022
As we approach the report of the famous Doubter in the Gospel, it behooves us to look at the significance of doubting. Doubting mostly is about the doubter who doubts the adequacy of the information that has one to impel belief or action. Doubting also has to do with the assignment for truth values. Is the significant truth and superior truth that which can only be empirically verified. I would suggest in the post-resurrection communities, "truth" status and empirical verification was an issue. Was Paul's experience of the risen Christ superior to Peter's, or merely equal but different?
Aphorism of the Day, April 18, 2022
We need not limit Easter to one event or one day; we continue in the following train of Easter committed to all of the collateral effects of God's hope for the world and for everyone and everything to know that we were made in love and for love.
Aphorism of the Day, Easter, April 17, 2022
Easter is a foundational day of hope because the resurrection promises us that the time of everlasting life is on our side. But this is no excuse for not getting done the things of love and justice that can be attained while our time is on this side of the afterlife.
Aphorism of the Day, Holy Saturday, April 16, 2022
The disposition of the body of Jesus took place. Burial habits take over. The mourning of the loss of Abundant Accessible Life reveal people in a state of shock. How can such Abundant Life be ended? The body-trace of such life has to be hidden away as the life of decay makes one ritually impure. Today is moment of identity for all who have lost the loved ones of their lives while having their entire beings still possessed by the redundancies of the goodness of someone being in one's life.
Aphorism of the Day, Good Friday, April 15, 2022
Being forsaken is a "feeling" but being forsaken is not literally true since one cannot ever leave the divine environment and having co-existence with everything else that exists. The feeling of forsakenness is a real human feeling which Christians believed that Jesus felt on the cross. The result of power being used to oppress is the power to create the feeling of forsakenness. All such power to oppress people to the feeling of forsakenness should be resisted. We have enough temptation to be overcome by personal aloneness; we don't need oppressing forces to prohibit people from the opportunity to be with the comfort of others.
Aphorism of the Day, Maundy Thursday, April 14, 2022
The Eucharist in practice has become ritualized bread and wine divorced from the kind of public eating which can guarantee that all people in the world have enough to eat and drink. The purpose of the ritual is to connect with real life in loving and serving ways and that is the message of Maundy Thursday.
Aphorism of the Day, April 13, 2022
We approach the time of observing a three day transition. Sitting at dinner with his friends, praying in the Garden with sleepy friends, betrayed by a friend, seized, imprisoned, mocked, flogged, crucified, died, buried, and re-appears to friends with recognizable continuity with his pre-death state. Quite some transitions for three days. In mystagogy, they represent the always, already spiritual transitions and identity with the visualized transitions of the three-days in the life of Jesus bespeaks of dealing hopefully with the full spectrum of change in our lives.
Aphorism of the Day, April 12, 2022
How is liturgical observance related to real life? When children play "doctor," "dentist," "school," or "family," such playing could be the innate story preparation for such "real life" situations. The liturgy of the season is our "ludic=playful" stories with ceremony as preparation to deal with the harsh probabilities of life, namely, suffering, sorrow, sickness, and death. But not just the negative, because we also let our lives be punctuated with hope's ceremonial in preparation for actual joy as a chief ingredient of living.
Aphorism of the Day, April 11, 2022
In Holy Week-Easter, there is a presentation abstract of the major defining realities of the church: Eucharist, Service, Dying with Christ, Salvation History, Baptism, and Rising with Christ. What is missing? The birth of Jesus. We did that at Christmas, but one can see the theological import of Holy Week-Easter in contrast. Yet, which feast gets the most attention? It is more commercially feasible to build around the birth of a baby, than things like death, even when resurrection is the outcome.
Aphorism of the Day, April 10, 2022
The juxtaposition of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem with the crucifixion indicates the diversity of crowds and opinions about Jesus. The theology of the cross is the adjudgment of the early church in coming to meaning about what the life of the risen Christ meant in the spiritual of those early mystagogues, like Paul.
Aphorism of the Day, April 9, 2022
By the time the Passion accounts were written down, they represented the elevation of the cross as a visualization of the process of spiritual transformation in the Pauline identity formula, "I have been crucified with Christ."
Aphorism of the Day, April 8, 2022
If God seems to forsake people, it is because the inapparency of God happens because people will not make love, kindness, and care happen to each other. Lesson: Be the apparent presence of God with love and care.
Aphorism of the Day, April 7, 2022
The churches of the "empires" have wielded power and in unwitting embarrassment would probably claim that "we would not have let the cross of Jesus happen." The embarrassment regarding a God who would not intervene to prevent the death of the divine Son, means that the church of societal power would like to project upon God, the forms of expression of human power. While God as stealthy presence continues to want to do an inside job to lure us to love, kindness, justice, humility, which is a different expression of power.
Aphorism of the Day, April 6, 2022
The Jesus Movement was born during the apparent "weakness" of God being that genuine freedom allows for the apparent triumph of evil, even though even evil is but a temporal parasite within the overall expanding Container of God. The Container is greater than the temporal parasite. The power that Paul preached was in the inner world, even while in the external world, the church needed the non-violent beatitudinal lifestyle to survive oppression. It is interesting to note that once religion get power, it loses the spiritual for the rise of the temporal and visual signs of worldly authority, and the church even valorizes it. So the model of the all powerful monarch then becomes a metaphor and analogy for God as a heavenly monarch, only God being the best kind of King. How is God different when Jesus is on the cross than when the "church triumphant" has all of the support of earthly empires?
Aphorism of the Day, April 5, 2022
Are the Passion Accounts meant to be historical accurate accounts or are they the physical being used to orient to the spiritual identity as stated in the Pauline, "I have been crucified with Christ...?" Are the Gospels spiritual manuals or are they to be regarded modern historical accounts of things which all could be empirically verified even as the laws of nature allowed so many exceptions in the past?
Aphorism of the Day, April 4, 2022
"My God, why have you forsaken me/us?" The experience of forsakenness is assigning the wrong blame? The people who perpetrated the cross of Jesus were the ones who forsook Jesus and the true witness of his life. We let those who are inhumane off the hook by assigning the blame "upstairs" to an all-powerful God. The cry is a cry about the non-apparency of the care and protection of God, even while the big Container in which everything that happens is the great container of permissive freedom for even atrocities. We complain continuously about the perception of the unfairness of the freely committed evil things which happen and we must complain about everything that is deprivation of the normalcy of goodness.
Aphorism of the Day, April 3, 2022
"The poor you will always have with you but you will not always have me." This seems like a rather harsh reply to Judas by Jesus although the motives of Judas are revealed in the context. It could be insightful about a priority of contemplation. If one avoids the real presence of Christ, one will likely also avoid taking care of the poor. It is not an either/or proposition. Contemplation goes us the action of helping the poor. One should always multitask with contemplation being the God-connecting priority which provides the energy and peace of contemplation within one's effort to help those in need.
Aphorism of the Day, April 2, 2022
We are Lazarus Johannine Christian in that we have been raised from the death of sin and given a foretaste of resurrection life, even as we know that we will die. Notice how the Lazarus back to life parable encrypts the Risen Life which we know live in? Mary perfume anointing of the feet of Jesus is here poignant response to Jesus as source for the risen life of Lazarus. Wink, wink, understand the parable you who have Risen Life even before you die.
Aphorism of the Day, April 1, 2022
Today, the proverbial "fools day," we remind ourselves that Paul said that we are fools for Christ. He did not say be foolish for Christ, especially since the wisdom of Paul was based upon a mystical and spiritual experience of the Risen Christ and not an empirically verified one. Being wise for Christ would be to understand the meaningful truths of life-changing experience which has its most poignant empirical proof in living lives of love and justice. Each person's inside mysticality is unique and different and unreplicable; what can be seen are the behaviorial results of one's mysticality, namely deeds of love and justice.
