The study of religions, their adherents, their holy books, their histories, their commonalities, their borrowings, their differences, and their provenance, can make the religion of the student of religion, the religious phenomenon itself and religious discourses found within language users. When the student has the exposure to the language products of all religions, the basis for choosing one becomes serendipitous to one's location within one's own experiential settings.
Aphorism of the Day, November 29, 2025
The Bible is not mainly a book of empirical facts but collections of writing generated to promote community identity in the many settings where the writers wrote.
Aphorism of the Day, November 28, 2025
The exterior language product environment into which we are born enters us and activates or infects a receptive inner environment and slowly takes over our interior life as its most dominant "parasite." And whatever happens involves the co-extensive presence of language because even as we say there is more than language, we have to use it to do so.
Aphorism of the Day, November 27, 2025 (Thanksgiving Day, USA)
Is gratitude as natural as hope? Hope seems to be the automatic rider of time and there always being a future. Is gratitude totally relative to one's conditions or is consciousness itself a naturally grateful state? Probably not the latter, which means that as much as we have the ability we should endeavor to be gratitude conditions makers for others.
Aphorism of the Day, November 26, 2025
The Bible should be read in literary way, not a literal way because there is not a one to one correspondence of ancient cultural practices and understandings with how we understand and practice our lives today. Because we judge the ancient practice of slavery in biblical times and cultures as unjust and cruel does not mean we can arrogate to ourselves on total moral superiority while we truly have developed the methods of mass destruction unknown in ancient times. Within the human sphere of communities of interaction and the extension of empathy to people in the way that they struggle to know dignity for themselves, the universal notions of love and justice have to be updated to how people who practice no desire to harm each other (for those who who criticize this as anything goes mentality) can be affirmed in having dignity in their social settings.
Aphorism of the Day, November 25, 2025
The Bible is a language product and language is common and therefore it is relevant to all language users. But not all of the writing is always already cosmically or even locally applicable to any given reader at any given time since it was written in many actual human situations. Every human situation has the potential for becoming like what someone in the future might experience. The Bible is a voted main textbook of human experience to be a settled catalogue on the types of experiences people can have vis a vis their relationships to the divine and each other.
Aphorism of the Day, November 24, 2025
Can apocalyptic thinking be selfish thinking? One might understand the function of comfort of apocalyptic thinking for oppressed people in hopeless situations, even while oppression forces upon us a kind of self regard about our worth in thinking that "this should not be happening to us." We can be nobly selfish if it about escape from or being comforted in the conditions of suffering. When one's group is suffering and definitely feeling singled out, it can seem natural to assume that the entire cosmic system of justice should stop the entire world to end the suffering to one's group because it is such a violation. But what kind of thinking it is to posit the end of the entire world for the divine to intervene on behalf of one group of people in certain geographical locations; what about all of the other people on earth who are not part of the situation where the drama of suffering is being lived out? And what about people who are now on the side of the empires of the world who can oppress and in their ease and freedom from pain still hold out for a apocalyptic ending of the world so that their religious point of view might be proved to be superior? Indeed apocalyptic thinking can be very selfish thinking in such situations.
Aphorism of the Day, November 23, 2025
The Greeks had a notion of "fiction" often called the "noble lie," which involved the accepted rhetorical practice of creative imagination coming to language about the unknowable past of origins. It was noble to establish something of current relevant grandeur with a fantastic origin grandeur. Modern history as the sole criteria of "truth" has become scientific way to say that myth is not validly true.
Aphorism of the Day, November 22, 2025
Karma or the "law" of reaping what one sows seems to be the application of probability theory of a subsequent event influence by a previous chosen events, and the Bible and religious writers try to pin one to one correspondence between all specific deeds and future outcomes. But even Bible writers have doubts about this when they mourn about why evil people seem to proper over good people.
Aphorism of the Day, November 21, 2025 (An Our Father paraphrase)
Seeming generative Being parallel to the life we know and say but who resists being limited by the names we give you; let your mysterious energies and emanations be filtered in directing best world outcomes, including enough daily food for all people and your forgiving tolerance for our imperfections even as we access that same forgiveness for others. Save us within the world of the freedom of probabilities where good and bad things and occur and help us avoid evil happenings. For your Realm is comprehensive and powerfully and awesomely creative, now and forever. Amen.
Aphorism of the Day, November 20, 2025
For many years the Bible became the most used and accessible language event for people. Since it is written in diverse literary forms it had to be presented in abbreviated forms and re-purposed for instruction, theology, liturgy, as well as its use for community identity building. Every word in it could not and cannot have equal use value within the many communities and for myriad individuals who read it for devotional insights. The narratives within the Bible do not lend themselves to easy or obvious theology or doctrine or Creed or dogma. The fact that no writing is "self interpreting," the Bible is both unifying for communities and divisive for communities depending upon the various interpretations and uses of it. To say that the Bible is an easy document to read or interpret is drastically simplistic.
Aphorism of the Day, November 19, 2025
The Psalmist writes often as one who is experiencing situations of believing that many people are "out to get him" in many different ways. I guess it's not poetic paranoia if people are really trying to harm you. Since such "personal" laments are public liturgy, the hymns serve as a reminder of what can happen personally and communally to people in the range of probable human experience.
Aphorism of the Day, November 18, 2025
The Psalms have so much human experiential diversity that it is very difficult to categorize them with precise consistency. When one thinks a theme has been established, suddenly a meandering flow of consciousness in words arises with poetic confounding.
Aphorism of Day, November 17, 2025
People who hold to messianic beliefs need to consider whether such beliefs implies any earthly empire which coerces such beliefs upon the world populace. Any notion of theocracy must include whether those who do not find the realm's notion of the divine to be irresistibly valid and relevant. If one views one's view of God to be superior and singular then the fault must lie with those who can't see in the same way.
Aphorism of the Day, November 16, 2025
The inner world of dreams can produce images with a plastic nature to blend and do the sort of thing which AI deep fakes and CGI does now. Long before CGI the inner world create figures like the goat-man. The Bible is full of such plastic figures in the various visionary states of the prophets as well as the writer of Revelations.
Aphorism of the Day, November 15, 2025
The number of "word" events inside all the people of this world could never be known or tallied but what is the neural energy effected of everything unpublished and unsaid? How does thought life, day dream life, dream life actually effect our bodily life especially when it is in stark disagreement?
Aphorism of the Day, November 14, 2025
If we're honest, most read the Twenty Third Psalm as, "The Lord is my pet owner," not the "Lord is my shepherd," because we know what happens to sheep even if their shepherd is a good temporary caretaker. The Lord as the very best pet owner means that the metaphor of a caring God is to our end and there is no commercial exploitive aspect of the relationship at all because the shepherd-sheep aspect of the metaphor limits our current notions of unconditional care.
Aphorism of the Day, November 13, 2025
Modern historical method in being honest about only having ancient texts without certain of how the specific locations of composition tries to do essential a "linguistic archeology" and because the modern era assumes the reign of empirical verification, it is retroactively applied to accounts of what could have actually happened in ancient times, and material which does not comport to empirical verification gets assigned an appropriate non-literal genre.
Aphorism of the Day, November 12, 2025
In many ways, the Hebrew Scriptures are explanatory writings about why things happened to the people of Israel in the way that they did. The simple answer is this: Israel was successful when they were most Torah compliant, and they were given suffering and oppression when and because they weren't significantly Torah compliant.
Aphorism of the Day, November 11, 2025 (Veterans Day in the U.S.A.)
Since we have never known ourselves to live in the Garden of Eden Paradise, except as the innocent but clueless state of infancy, the warrior as a class of human occupation has been constant, because groups of people have found themselves needing to be protected from other groups of people with competing interests in life resources. War and fighting is the ultimate failure of charity among people who are unable to find equitable distributions of land and its resources for all populace. While we mourn the necessity for our warriors, and pray for their safety and their perpetual honor in the eyes of those they defend, we pray for conditions which make fighting unnecessary and we would hope that future armies could be organized to deal with the catastrophic events of nature which can threaten any society, rather than situation of people against people.
Aphorism of the Day, November 10, 2025
Biblical writers often present images of the end, the death transitional state, both personally (death) and communally (apocalypticism) while they are writing in their "now" with functional meanings for maintaining their communities through comfort or motivating current actions of excellence.
Aphorism of the Day, November 9, 2025
Modern historians can note that social movements are successful for irrational and mysterious and unknowable reasons because of so many complex social variables, even while their highly rational methodology would imply that they could not be involved in such movements.
Aphorism of the Day, November 8, 2025
What's the difference between the Gospel generating situations and the D.C. Comics era of Superman? Modern science. Modern science demythologized the accounts of the "uncanny" violations of natural laws and removed the sense of the sacred connected with narrative. In the modern era of science, the uncanny violations of natural laws have moved to the realm of popular entertainment. Modern science is responsible in part for dividing up the realm of what can come to language into more diverse genres.
Aphorism of the Day, November 7, 2025
With sociological analysis one can try to state the success of any "movement" whether Christian, Islam, or any sect or denominations within the same. One can seek to find the recipe for the success of political movements, even the so called MAGA phenomenon. And since the dynamics are so multi-faceted, one cannot be sure of why they are successful, and so one plays the ultimate card, calling it "spirit," the sort of collective effervescence which fuels the growth. Since the success is a mystery, how can and should one appraise any movement. The American system sought to provide an extra-sectarian mode of appraisal, namely, equal justice for all even those who do not subscribe to the tenets of a sectarian or cult-like political movement. The American system based on justice for all is an attempt to mediate between sectarian parties providing rules of public behavior that allow a mode of living together while agreeing to disagree on many personal and social issues.
Aphorism of the Day, November 6, 2025
We live and move and have our being and becoming within language in passively coded ways as well as active use. And we live and move and have our becoming in all that language refers to but are limited to using language to say that IT is there.
Aphorism of the Day, November 5, 2025
Resurrection of the varieties that are presented in Hebrew Scriptures and the apocalyptic writings, which may have derived from the exiles in Persia, seem to be about how people living in pain and oppression can still uphold the notion of divine justice, by delaying it to an afterlife where tables are turned and places are traded.
Aphorism of the Day, November 4, 2025
Nietzsche wrote, "The thought of suicide has gotten me through many a night." It seems a bit unhealthy even though the thought of it is not the actual action of doing it, perhaps meaning he was trying to achieve a parallel post-life place to comfort his current distressed state of mind. One can find the seeming obsession of New Testament writers with the afterlife personally and the afterlife socially in the apocalyptic imagery as diagnostic of distressed people seeking a parallel state of comfort while not actually trying to harm themselves to end it all or attempting catastrophic damage of the world.
Aphorism of the Day, November 3, 2025
The phrase "God of the living" is attributed to Jesus to support the preserving nature of the Divine and could mean that the latest outcome preserves within itself the cumulative evidence of everything before the latest.
Aphorism of the Day, November 2, 2025
Existence itself is tolerant and sustaining of everything that happens. When one considers all the destructive and genuinely cruel things that occur in specific places we often like to assume the whole should apocalyptically punish the whole for the cruelty in one place to one person or significant groups of people. Yet existence itself goes on with sustaining tolerance of the probable conditions of freedom. Since language is personal because it derives in people who cannot but live anthropomorphically, the naming of existence with divine names give existence a personality, an omni-benevolent one if one assumes that existence supports all within it and not just local favorites as certain times.
Aphorism of the Day, November 1, 2025. (All Saints Day)
Dead People linger in the lives of the living in unavoidable ways. The living have tried to channel the lingering in a variety of ways to deal with how the departed linger in our lives. Outright "seeing" of the departed by the serendipitously gifted for such sightings is seen in the entire social phenomenon of ghosts and the entertainment sector embracing the traditions of ghosts is perhaps symptomatic of the continuum of processing the lives of the departed from horror to humor.
