Aphorism of the July 31, 2022
If desire can be evil, how can desire be good? Surely, desire is the gift of life force which continuously propels us into the next moment? For desire to be good, it has to be rightly directed in the love and affinity of appreciation for the gift of life, with its things, locations, and people. But things, activities, people, cannot become idols which addict us and make desire evil as wrongly used life force. The secret is to find the Holy Spirit underneath our desire so as to constitute it primarily as worship of God, and life force on its way to God can be the good and healthful desire of enjoyment of the goodness of life.
Aphorism of the Day, July 30, 2022
Ever notice how alcoholics and drug abusers get castigated whereas for the greedy celebrated lists of the most wealthy are published to record the Olympics of the Wealthy?
Aphorism of the Day, July 29, 2022
When life force is misdirected and projected upon objects leading to addicting idolatry, we use terms like lust, greed, alcoholism, substance abuse et. al. Life force is named as desire, chi, and libido. Life force is not bad, but it needs to be directed in worship toward God who is "no-thing." We need Holy Spirit to direct life force so that all things can be "transparent" for our enjoyment and use, even as we allow Spirit to direct our life force through all things back to our Creator All.
Aphorism of the Day, July 28, 2022
The writer of Ecclesiastes was successful at accumulating wealth of all sorts, and concluded, "Vanity of vanities," or perhaps the futility of presuming permanent ownership, because you can't take it with you, and one's heirs may be devoid of stewardship values. It's better to just let God be the continuing owner of everything and gladly and thankfully settle into a stewardship role of care with the gifts that one has been given and developed.
Aphorism of the Day, July 27 2022
The consumer society's response to Descartes, "I think, therefore I am," is "I have, therefore I am." It is existence as greedy lifestyle.
Aphorism of the Day, July 26, 2022
Greed seems to be elevated to a public virtue as if life is an an olympic competition for wealth. Some believe that democratic capitalism is comprised of strategies to "trick greed" to make its energy serve common good projects so as to try to convince the greedy that the common good can benefit even the wealthy, as in, giving the masses enough to buy the bread and circuses which the wealth are selling.
Aphorism of the Day, July 25, 2022
Greed is the complete lack of moral creativity. If profit is the only motive in a "free market" system, then the very few amass the most. A morally freed and creative market would make universal human care the sign of success.
Aphorism of the Day, July 24, 2022
The Bible present a continuous version of adjusting providence to fit the human occasion. How can the greatness of God be upheld when things seem to be so bad for humanity in intermittent contextual settings? Providence is an adjustment to the conditions of weal or woe, but mainly providence is an apology for the conditions of freedom which create the all of the probable situations. This need not be like the mocking Voltaire in Candide, "whatever is, is right." Whatever is, is because of the free conditions, and the possibility of future condition means that value judgments are merely contextually limited to the valuing agent in the moment saying, "I am experiencing what is bad, or I am experiencing what is good, for me/mine."
Aphorism of the Day, July 23, 2022
Forgiveness is the mode of living we adapt so that we can be continually accountable to the perfection which beckons us to surpass ourselves in excellence, even while we fall short of the ideals we confess. Forgiveness and accountability go together because without adding accountability to forgiveness, we can be mere hypocrites, acting as though we have attained the high standard when we haven't.
Aphorism of the Day, July 22, 2022
Features of the most used prayer: Being a child of God by referring to God as Father. Ask for enough food, daily bread. Ask for forgiveness. Ask to be spared trials. It's pretty basic and we find ourselves asking for much more. It is also a corporate prayer using the pronouns "our" and "us." We are asking all this on behalf of "us." Let keep expanding who we mean by "us."
Aphorism of the Day, July 21, 2022
"Deliver us from evil, or "save us from the time of trial," and "if this cup pass from me," are all words of Jesus indicating the normalcy of not wanting bad things to happen to us, even as Jesus knew that the world of freedom has trial and evil as probable occurrences, and with death as the eventual occurrence. The scenario of the teaching about the "Lord's Prayer" includes a realistic view of what can probably happen, but a happening is only a moment in time which will be superseded by a future. Eternal or everlasting life hopeful thinking means that the present and past occurrences will always be superseded by other events of freedom with the distinct possibility of something better.
Aphorism of the Day, July 20, 2022
The first words of The Lord's Prayer are "Our Father." The one who says this is believing that one is a child of God. People as children of God is a chief metaphor of the Bible even as people often live as though they are orphans, without any knowledge of such high parentage.
Aphorism of the Day, July 19, 2022
Prayer is like perpetual voting within the interior realm; we add up the prayers to tip the psychic order of freedom toward the values of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, July 18, 2022
The advice in the words of Jesus about prayer is "be persistent." We may think that in perpetual "nagging" we might succeed in getting what we want, but it could be that persistence in wanting the right thing is how our character is formed to be right in our behaviors of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, July 17, 2022
Martha said to Mary, "Get up and help me serve food to Jesus." Mary remained silent. Jesus spoke for Mary, "Chill Martha, Mary is doing what is needed now." And what did the church say? "Let make spiritual typology out of Mary and Martha forever from one event in their lives."
Aphorism of the Day, July 16, 2022
It is a messy world often, and speaking truth to power even when we know that we aren't perfect still has to be done because our failure has nothing to do with the standard of love and justice. Yes, there is more fruitful validity when we can more fully approximate love and justice in our behaviors, but we cannot give up the standard because we're not perfect. This is why this "messy" dilemma requires contemplation in continually finding the place of renewal to "keep on, keeping on."
Aphorism of the Day, July 15, 2022
Be a contemplative activist and an active contemplator and do not pit contemplation against activism. Contemplation involves an inner discipline of prayer; activism toward justice and love is the prayer of oblation when one's body language deeds are presented as active prayers to God.
Aphorism of the Day, July 14, 2022
If the God of Love and Freedom is dependent upon coercive religious and political authorities to "enforce their versions of love and freedom," is that not a complete contradiction of genuine Love and Freedom? God's Love and Freedom is a persuasive Lure, not a coercive suppressive or oppressive force.
Aphorism of the Day, July 13, 2022
Seeing images from the Webb Space telescope makes one feel small and in that smallness one projects a Totality, an endless More-than-human existence, confessed from merely the human perspective. Some persons project the Totality to be a Personal Totality because the medium of projecting is language which is a personal entity. Is Totality a friendly place and if it is how can we make friendliness contextual in our lives?
Aphorism of the Day, July 12, 2022
Anthropomorphism might best be said to be linguistic-centrism, since we assume language and language use before we posit anthropomorphic practice in seeing everything through human experience. In our language prison, we seek to speak/write of the extra-linguistic, i.e., everything that is not language. In valuing exercise we try to honestly state the superlative. Contextually in time, Jesus Christ came to be called the Word from the Beginning, and the image (icon) of the Divine. The quest for the superlative in how we speak about the ideal involves the effort to articulate the specifics in contexts of how the arc of history bends toward justice. This assumes though that one embraces justice as a supreme value.
Aphorism of the Day, July 11, 2022
The Mary and Martha story of Martha as a troubled anxious active hostess and Mary as the contemplating space-case are overblown stereotypes and simplifications. Mary and Martha can model both personal differences between people and their callings but also the need for inner balance between action and contemplation. It is not either/or; but both/and.
Aphorism of the Day, July 10, 2022
Loving one's neighbor is not about who my neighbor is, it is about who I am as a neighborly person.
Aphorism of the Day, July 9, 2022
Good Samaritan Message answers the question: Does God require that I love outside of my own immediate circle of people?
Aphorism of the Day, July 8, 2022
The meaning of "neighbor" can become limited to people proximity or to one's favorite people to hang out. I love my neighbor as long as they are quite like me, can be the the way in which we interpret loving neighbor as self. The wisdom story of the Good Samaritan deconstructs any limiting notions of neighbor. A neighbor is anyone who offers love and care. A neighbor is everybody who deserves love and care. Our world is full of lots of neighbors and our world needs continuous neighboring in the giving and receiving of care and kindness.
Aphorism of the Day, July 7, 2022
The set up for the Good Samaritan wisdom story is when a lawyer wants clarification on which people qualify as neighbors required to be loved by the law, "love one's neighbor as oneself." The story exposed the lawyer's impoverished notion of "neighbor" by revealing that both the caregiver and the receiver of care are neighbors. It is more important that one is being a neighbor by giving neighborly care rather than trying to limit the people one thinks worthy of such care.
Aphorism of the Day, July 6, 2022
In our world, neighbor has often come to mean someone who shares our own ideological proclivities. The Christ ideal and the American ideal of humanity is that we are all neighbors, passively and actively, in deserving care and in offering care to anyone who needs it. The parable of the Good Samaritan highlights the active and passive notions of being neighborly. If one is wounded on the roadside, one wants care. If one see one wounded on the roadside, one offers care. Both wounded and care-provider sum up neighborly reciprocity.
Aphorism of the Day, July 5, 2022
When someone asks, "Who is my neighbor", the hidden question might be "whom am I required to help according to local religious law." Can I morally get away with ignoring people who are inconvenient to me?
Aphorism of the Day, July 4, 2022
The Good Samaritan? Essence of the kindness of strangers. One who has not been on one's "A-list" can be the one who kindly saves one's life, simply because responding to need is the neighborly thing to do.
Aphorism of the Day, July 3,2022
It is easy to interpret Scriptures as being community identity building for a very small group of people within the specific context and then to make one's own current community the God ordained corresponding community. It is one thing to find universal patterns embedded in biblical language which have human correspondence for anyone; it is another thing to falsely believe that we are the divinely ordained people who are precisely intended for a Christo-triumphalism over our own designated foes.
Aphorism of the Day, July 2, 2022
Time is what deconstructs in that meanings are shifted with the growing field of actual linguistic use. More occasions of language events means that every previous language event gets altered/deconstructed by the new larger contexts of greater fields of possible meanings.
Aphorism of the Day, July 1, 2022
Discovering something that has always been available for the first time creates the exaggeration: "I must have originated it." The experience may be original with solipsistic overtones in being so individual as to be truly unshared with anyone, but such does not change the fact that wonderful things like love, preceded our discovery of them. Solipsism is deconstructed by having being within language which is the most universally shared human trait.
