Aphorism of the Day, August 21, 2022
Hating family and carrying a cross (on the way to capital punishment by death) part of the family values and planning agenda found in the words of Jesus? The vision of worst case scenario apparently is part of readiness planning.
Aphorism of the Day, August 30, 2022
Sometimes the social settings does allow for a peaceful paradigm shift where parties in different hermeneutical circles can co-exist without violence against each other. The Gospel words of Jesus about conflicts within the communities are an indication of the situations which did not allow significant doctrinal disagreement to exist without a party resorting to persecution.
Aphorism of the Day, August 29, 2022
The words of Jesus which are channeled with the Gospel writers encourage his followers to be prepared for the reality of following him. The most difficult issue might be the non-acceptance of one's call by one's family and friend. The lesson: if one undergoes a significant paradigm change in one's life, one may be opposed by those who still reside in the paradigm that one has just left.
Aphorism of the Day, August 28, 2022
If the Eucharist means anything, it is the hospitality of God in Christ offered to all. Such hospitality makes very strange the notion of "closed communion."
Aphorism of the Day, August 27, 2022
Eucharist is a practice of hospitality among friends and it should be a prelude to practice hospitality to a wider group of people who are not yet our friends, but could become so after we offer them hospitality.
Aphorism of the Day, August 26, 2022
Space is socially coded and the wealthy and powerful usually designate the value of particular location. Best seats in the house or being about to sit with people who have socially coded positions of power is an aspiration of "risers" on the social ladder. Jesus warned his disciples about presumption of pride in wanting to be a social riser by seeking out the socially coded places of prestige.
Aphorism of the Day, August 25, 2022
Jesus challenges us regarding the practice of hospitality beyond our usual peerage. This should be both individual but corporate and governmental in that it should be the national ethos to take care of those who are not succeeding in individual and family sustainability for the basics of living.
Aphorism of the Day, August 24, 2022
It not who you are, it's who you know. Scope out the room, and get near and schmooze with the people who can promote you the best. Jesus countered the self-promotion with the recommended charisma of humility. If humble people get called up higher then, the people who recognize and reward humility are the people you want to work with.
Aphorism of the Day, August 23, 2022
With the hierarchy of "seating arrangements" at a banquet, Jesus revealed the pride of self promotion and he suggested relying on the charisma of humility as the more fitting way to be asked to "come up higher" in the lives of people. If people don't recognize the charisma of humility, then you really don't want to be asked to come up higher in their lives.
Aphorism of the Day, August 22, 2022
Space and location of the human body has social hierarchy within cultures. Redlining in real estate and "other side" of the tracks segregation are proof of the social hierarchy of space. Within buildings, party or social seating arrangement reflect hierarchy. Jesus suggested that one should chose the lower seats and be called up higher rather than chose the higher seat and be "demoted." He was suggesting that one rely upon the meritocracy of one's character and good character is comfortable in any space and is not dependent upon social spatial hierarchy to make one "better."
Aphorism of the Day, August 21, 2022
Humanity was not made for the sabbath; the sabbath was made for humanity. As profoundly deep in mythical history that sabbath is traced to, that is the God who rested on the seventh day after creating, Jesus saw the sabbath as a calendar for humanity to learn balance lifestyles with orientation to the divine. But the calendar was not to be a slavish schedule disqualifying the work of good and healing which needed to be done on any day at anytime
Aphorism of the Day, August 20, 2022
The Isaian writer railed against those who trampled on the sabbath, as perhaps a desecration of "holy time," while critics of Jesus railed against for violating the holy sabbath with healing "work." The abolitionary prayers of holy work are compatible with the honoring of the sabbath.
Aphorism of the Day, August 19, 2022
We may rigidly qualify time for general discipline and scheduling purposes but sometimes to uncaring outcomes. "I'll be late to work if I stop and help someone in need. The exigent need is inconvenient to my schedule." Healing and caring need to take precedence to our slavish devotion to schedule. We can have schedules and designate times and days without compromising their purpose for the occasional unplanned need to care for those who pain is never on our schedule.
Aphorism of the Day, August 18, 2022
If all things have created good, then time is good, and all time is good. So why vary the qualification as good time or bad time, as sabbath time or regular time? Time strategies are made for human tasks, division of labor, and giving due to human difference in vocational use of time. While one may honor the integrity of time categories, like the sabbath, for the practice of discipline, one cannot slavishly maintain distinction in time categories because there are certain works like healing which needs to be done at anytime, including on sabbath time when worked might otherwise be eschewed.
Aphorism of the Day, August 17, 2022
Not being able to heal on the sabbath because of a pious calendar conflict means that a calendar was absolutize in organizing continuous time, and health in continuous time is always appropriate especially as it is know in healing.
Aphorism of the Day, August 16, 2022
Not being able to do good on a day of rest would seem to contradict the nature of God. Human calendars can be suggestive in recommending giving due to a variety of human behaviors for balance, but they should not be slavish in prohibiting what is good. The human situation of freedom does not result in categorized human events happening according to calendar designations. Yes, emergency personnel have to work on holidays because illness and harm do not conform to calendars.
Aphorism of the Day, August 15, 2022, Feast of St. Mary the Virgin
Mary, in Christianity, came to bear the needed elevation of women and the feminine within psychical and spiritual hierarchy in a world where patriarchy squeezed women into the private realm and in that private realm they could have significant roles, but also face abuse without public advocacy. May Mary continue to bring women to their rightful public places which honor their gifts and their integrity as thoroughly indispensable for the creative advance of humanity. One cannot say that one honors Mary, if one does not honor the fullness of womanhood in our world.
Aphorism of the Day, August 14, 2022
Peace may only be the contrasting rest between dynamic sounding opposition. Peace may be a rest in a social "score" to contribute to the fullness of growth which includes sometimes leaving with conflict familiar views when surpassing views present themselves. Not everyone moves on at the same pace and when one moves and leaves others behind there is not always peaceful departures. Let not peace be static sameness; let it be the phases of new reintegration of the new with the old resulting in the peace of calming new insights.
Aphorism of the Day, August 13, 2022
Faith is present concrescent hope; as it were an attempt to slow down in time the dynamics of hope and make the future kiss the present with a blessing of goodness.
Aphorism of the Day, August 12, 2022
Scientific faith or persuasion is not religious or aesthetic faith. Scientific faith is persuasion about observed patterns leading to accurate and consistent future prediction based upon consistent behaviors of the past. Religious faith is a relational persuasion, an artistic persuasion, about one's projection of the totality being a great Friend, but a friend who persuades that freedom is the value which create moral and spiritual significance, but also a freedom which permits the range of probabilities of both harmonious and seeming competing free agents.
Aphorism of the Day, August 11, 2022
Faith: learning to accept the Mystery of Great Plenitude and funneling such learning into contextual relevant efforts of love and justice while not reifying those contextual relevant efforts as final but simply as positive building block exemplars for self-surpassable futures.
Aphorism of the Day, August 10, 2022
If religious people could understand their doctrinal situation as simply totemic identity for facilitating community relationship rather than as pens which purport to domesticate a "holy, more than we can know Being," we would live as certain of Plenitude but highly skeptical about our limited understanding and presentations of the Same
Aphorism of the Day, August 9, 2022
When ones faith in God becomes one faith in a particular presentation of the divine, one can surely find conditions which would falsify such a limited presentation of "that which none greater can be conceived." Limited definitions of the divine must go the way of all idols.
Aphorism of Day, August 8, 2022
Faith in God would need to specify what one means by God, and realistically faith would mean living appreciatively within a totality of expanding free conditions with a sense of goodness as being implied by significant freedom.
Aphorism of the Day, August 7, 2022
The certitudes of science involve the replication in time of coming to the same results given sameness of conditions. One can believe or have faith in the solid consistency of what might be called discovered scientific laws, even though the stating of the laws do not make events happen, the laws only "statistically" approximate what has, is, and is likely to happen. What scientists can accuse religionists of having is a faith which is directed toward an object too vague to quantify, and certainly for experimental purposes. Faith is more a religious art of living toward a plenitude which is the ground or everything continue to become in the great divine and all inclusive Becoming.
Aphorism of the Day, August 6, 2022
What can I take to the bank as meaningfully true now about the future? The process of doing such would be called "faith."
Aphorism of the Day, August 5, 2022
What is faith? Faith is trying to reduce the positive future objects of hope to the present time, in ways of positive present regard.
Aphorism of the Day, August 4, 2022
Am I persuaded that if I toss an apple into the air it will fall back toward me? Is that kind of persuasion "faith?" Do we have "faith" in natural laws based upon safe future prediction which arise from continuous experience of repetitions of the same? Such scientific faith about future natural events is different from the aesthetic relational "faith" in the divine, because faith in the divine implies a plenitude which mystifies the particular contexts which science purports to observe. Faith has many contexts including the scientific which can become perceived as the faith of the negligible because of the impossibility of knowing the causal relationships of an infinite number of entities with an infinite number of entities.
Aphorism of the Day, August 3, 2022
The Greek word for faith pistos can be used as a verb. When the verb form of pistos is translated into English it is "to believe." Retaining active faith or pistos in English translation would be to "have faith" in something. Faith as science would be like the falsification principle, meaning that a scientific law is believably valid until it was falsified by future evidence. In the religious sphere faith is a relational term, meaning that from one's relationship one can trust future regard and well-being from the one with whom one has had a relationship.
Aphorism of the Day, August 2, 2022
Are belief and faith synonyms? Both seem to imply a regard for things which are not empirically verified within the moment, but are profound "hunches" based upon intuitions arising from relationship which anticipates a yet unseen future.
Aphorism of the Day, August 1, 2022
"Faith is the assurance of things hoped for." Is this a tautology? Is faith persuasion and persuasion is assurance? Is faith living toward the future without knowing it but living in positivity about what the mysterious future will make actual? When the future arrives does one have to make it something which aligned with what we thought it would be in the past?
