July 23, 2012
Aphorism
A question for today:
How can I surpass
myself in excellence, not worrying about comparing myself to others, but
attending to a current synthesis of the memories of my past to make the
memorial traces of the past serve my present experience in a positive way?
July 24, 2012
Faith is believing that
one's life is worthwhile and that one is valuable to God as one seeks to value
and be valued within the various communities where we are called to be.
July 25, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Each of us is reading
and interpreting the events of our lives and so we often need to ask if the
events of our lives can be read in other ways that can help us to make other
decisions. The reason for increasing our knowledge base is to provide a larger
context for us to begin to see and read the events of our lives in different
ways so that we can move out of the patterns of decisions that are no longer
successful.
July 26, 2012
Aphorism for today
Learning one’s hermeneutic
circles (the system of how we interpret our lives) within which one has lived
is a life quest. Each of us is
constituted by how the word has been made flesh in us. We have been given words to define our lives
by different authorities, some not chosen and others chosen. With reading and learning and new mentors we
change our hermeneutic circles, that is, the context of our lives which informs
and gives meaning to the various parts of our lives. If you want to explore the way in which your
own life is coded, just take note of the people you give attention to in how
you inform your faith, family, persona, entertainment and political
values. The Christian quest is to be
able to love beyond the current hermeneutic circle within which we live. It is a humbling recognition to realize how
much we are just plain socially constructed by our hermeneutic circle and how
our freedom is limited by being a prisoner to a hermeneutic circle.
July 27, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
What is the
"correct" interpretation of the Bible? The correct interpretation is
when the words of the God of Love inspire our body language to be loving
actions that others see and confess that God in Christ is wonderful. So we
don't just interpret the Bible with our minds as a mental act; the word of God
made flesh in our actions is the "correct" interpretation of Bible.
Love is quite infallible when people see it in action.
July 28, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
with a Poem
The future means that
there will always be more to be said about our lives and about everything and
so we should be careful about speaking with a sense of finality or over
seriousness. Following W.H. Auden's advice in this poem, we should keep
winking, because all that we say or know can only be very, very local
"partial knowledge."
At lucky moment, we
seem on the brink
Of really saying what
we think, we think.
But even then an honest
eye should wink.
July 29, 2012
Aphorism for the Day:
Christ's new
commandment was to love one another. How romantic is a "commandment?"
We don't usually associate love and commandment. The commandment to love
involves the task to do justice to everyone and we may not always
"feel" like doing justice to everyone. Justice is the tough love that
Christ calls us to, even commands us to do.
July 30, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
In the famous
"love chapter" of St. Paul in First Corinthian 13, Paul makes an
obvious but very humble confession in saying that now, "we know in
part." All of our knowledge is but partial knowledge. People who
pontificate in presuming infallible and final knowledge betray this confession.
Let us be satisfied to know "in part" yet continuously work to expand
"our part of knowing" as we seek adequate knowledge to help us get
through this day with the ability to recognize God's grace.
August 1, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
If you had any questions about
prayer being a method of “talking cure” check out the Psalms sometime. There is everything from lament and curses to
exultant and ecstatic praise written in the Psalms. Sometimes one can get the impression that for
the Psalmist, God was like a therapist saying, yes, go on, how did that make
you feel? After reading the Psalms, you
would have to admit that God is an attentive listener.
August 2, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Consider yourself an artist in the quest for the art of
good living. As an artist you use all of
the elements of your life to create the presentation of your life today as a
gift to God and to the people with whom you are called to be.
August 3, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
In the art of living it is good to know where we appear
on the continuum between self-blame tendencies or characterological tendencies
(blaming others). For the most part in
non-abusive situations we don’t have the personal power consciously to ruin the
lives of others nor do they ours. Too
much self-blame or blame of others is wasted psychological energy. Just knowing one’s tendency on the continuum
should inform us about our reflex responses in stressful situations.
August 4, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
The Olympic motto includes the Latin words Citius, Altius
and Fortius. The goal for individual and
team athletes is faster, higher and stronger.
What would Olympic values be in the community of faith? Kinder ? More Loving? More Generous? More
faithful? It could be that our faith
goals would be more communal than individual as we pray, work and give for the
health and happiness of all people.
August 5, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Holy Eucharist is not a religious ritual that we do to
get points with God; it is the Christian family meal of renewal and is the most
explicit expression of the social reality of the church. Each week we are
"reconstituted" as church in Holy Eucharist and are renewed to take
the values of Eucharist to our everyday lives, including confession,
absolution, forgiveness, belief, learning, peace, reconciliation and the
practice of Christ being present in the bread and wine that we receive. When we
leave church we are "tabernacles" carrying the presence of Christ
into all of our lives.
August 7, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
In the New Testament, sin is actually a “positive” notion
because it expresses an honest condition of our lives. The Greek word for sin is a term from archery
meaning “missing the mark.” If someone
is missing the mark, at least they are aiming towards a valid target of
excellence. I guess hitting the center
of the bull’s eye would mean that we would be perfect but no one can claim to
be hitting the mark perfectly. So the
notion of sin includes the notion of repentance or getting better every
day. We never achieve the target; it is
elusive and keeps moving away from us to lure us into further attempts at
excellence. The distance that our arrow
misses the mark by is the gap that is filled by God’s grace. Our belief is that God’s grace makes up what
we lack for ourselves and for everyone.
Did you know that sin is actually a pretty exciting notion?
August 8, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Are you finding your own "voice" or just
borrowing a "voice" from others? We need to be careful not to sell
ourselves to what someone else says and repeat it like a parrot. In finding our
own voice we read and learn and take on new information but then we find a way
to make it uniquely integrated with our own experience. Finding one's voice has
nothing to do with education or having a big vocabulary; it involves practicing
the words we already have as we use them like colors in our paint box to make a
new picture each time we speak. Practice your voice; write a diary or journal
or blog or endless letters. Somebody needs to hear the wisdom through your
voice in only the way that you can say or write it.
August 9, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Prayer is more about Inscaping than Landscaping. With
prayer we direct and reorder our interior thought life in an intentional and
practiced way and as a result we see the "landscapes" of our lives
differently and we are given the ability to make different choices.
August 10, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
“Give us this day our daily bread” is a request in the
Lord’s Prayer. It bespeaks conditions of
people who lived day to day uncertain of the next day’s provision. This is a reminder for us to be grateful as
we pray from the conditions of so many more options of food and provision than
just daily bread. Gratitude is a good
way to start the day; we are surrounded and upheld by countless blessings. Begin your day by counting them.
August 11, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Axiology is the study of values. It is always good to do a values review of
one’s life. How does one spend one’s
time and one’s resources? An analysis of
these will reveal one’s values.
Sometimes we receive our values in “passive” ways, in that our families
and cultures present us with “limited” choices, e.g. why do Europeans value
soccer style football and Americans, “American football?” If we want to change our values we first need
to understand what they are. Do a value
review today and ask oneself if they are worthy of a loving God.
August 12, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
What if Jesus actually gave the Eucharist to church so that
hunger and hungry people could not be anonymous? What if a public meal in each
neighborhood was a way for accounting for everyone to have something to eat and
the public meal was a guarantee of the same? By reducing the Eucharist to
merely "religious" bread and "ceremonial" wine, we can
truly lose the sign value of the intention of Christ for a fellowship meal that
included all getting something to eat. In this vein the notion of a
"closed communion" is truly an oxymoron. Hungry people in the world
are evidence that perhaps the Communion is closed and the invitation of the
church in word and deed still has lots to accomplish.
August 13, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Could it be that wisdom is more than accumulated
knowledge and information in that with wisdom we unite heart and mind in the
overall art of living? We can be
intelligent but not wise. Wisdom
involves another level of integration of the data of our lives and is oriented
toward how "knowledge" is practiced in our actual lives.
August 14, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
On the Eve of the Feast of the Virgin Mary, it might be
instructional to grasp how Blessed Mary is the paradigm of all Christians. The early church taught that “Christ in us”
is the hope of glory and Christ becomes in us when our lives are over-shadowed
by the Holy Spirit. This teaching was
encoded in the Christmas Story as the life of Christ was known to be so unique
it could only be accounted for by the overshadowing of the life of Mary by the
Holy Spirit. And so we have the
well-known hymn expressing the poetic metaphor of Mary for us, “let my soul
like Mary’s, be Thine earthly sanctuary.”
August 15, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Habits and rituals are good in that they allow us to have
some daily activities on “automatic” and this enables us to attend to the new
events that arise for the day. Habits
and rituals are a problem if they have locked us into unhealthy patterns which
we cannot recognize as unhealthy and cannot actually see what we need to change
in our lives.
August 16, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
How will the Word be made Flesh in you today? What will
be the memorable or telling way in which Language speaks you in your speech,
writing or body language conduct? Will you be able to say that the Word of God
spoke or created your life as Love today?
August 17, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Make each act of being you today, an intentional prayer
as you see your entire life a living and moving and having your being in God.
God is your environment today as ultimate "macro" environment but
look for God to be specific Icons or Signs incarnate in the love messages that
are trying to get through to you today.
August 18, 2012
Aphorism for today
Today is betwixt and between what we call the past and
the future, yesterday and tomorrow. Time passing makes the past and the future
moving targets in how we interpret them; how we construct them from our current
perch. Let us have grace to reconstruct the past to serve current excellence.
Let painful past be known as current redemptive excellence. Let us construct
the future as guided by hope and let the present day be expressed as a faith
that negotiates in action our constructions of both past and future.
August 19, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Wisdom is a name for God in the Hebrew Scriptures. Wisdom
is a feminine name and She is within all, in short She is a metaphor for God's
omnipresence. And being everywhere, She seduces all to know her and discover
her. Wisdom should be the goal and quest of our lives. In the New Testament
letters to the churches associated with the Apostle Paul, the Risen Christ is
said to be the Wisdom of God and All in All. Christ was associated and
identified with this figure Sophia or Wisdom.
August 20, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
If we are disciples of Christ, it means we are perpetual
students under the discipline of learning what we can from the life and witness
of the historical Jesus but also the risen Christ who has inspired much in our
world since his departure. As students, we daily have a "reading"
assignment. We are to read the signs of Christ that occur in our daily paths.
There is something standing out in our reading assignment for today that we
need to highlight. What will you and I highlight today?
August 21, 2012
The famous Serenity Prayer, attributed to the well-known
theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (who BTW has been read and admired by our president
in his studies on law and ethics) is: "God grant me the serenity to accept
the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to
know the difference." This prayer is a "pick your battle" prayer
as each day and each moment we are called to deploy the total resources of our
lives toward hopeful but realistic outcomes.
August 22, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Get in a centering space today to know yourself as
“called” by God to be where you are. If you can do that you will not divide
your life into secular or sacred classifications; it will all be sacred.
Replace your global Angst of having great worries about our world with very
local diligence. The pebble of each of our small deeds has to hit the pond of
our local location to have a ripple effect and become a domino effect to the
end of the world. Let’s just make sure that the effect that we originate is one
of love and kindness.
August 23, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
God's omnipresence means that we should be like children
today who are playing the anticipatory game of "peek a boo, I see
you." At any moment there can be an unveiling of the sublime presence when
God as it were, is known and is saying to us, "peek a boo, I see you, and
I love you." And the surprise effect is what makes it exciting. Just
remember not to have rigid preconceived notions about how the surprise will
come or you might miss it.
August 24, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Life often means being "lost in translation" in
that people use the same words but mean something entirely different because
they subscribe to different contexts that provide different meaning for words.
This happens in all spheres of life which is why people in political and
religious conversations end up yelling at each other in disagreement. Different
sides use words such a God and justice, power and democracy from different
paradigms so even when there is the same word, there are different meanings and
no agreement. The passing of time and innovation in every field of human
endeavor means that history may retain the same words but new contexts give the
words significantly different meanings.
August 25, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Could it be that 75% of our moods are due to actual
physical and chemical conditions of our bodies?
Too much to eat, too little to eat, too much to drink, not enough
exercise, not enough sleep, too much sleep, a medication with
contra-indications or sickness. The art
of life involves dancing with our bodies and learning the secrets to how to
treat them so that they do not become a tyrant due to our poor stewardship of
our bodies. Once we understand a mood,
perhaps then we can work to tap its energy for creative purposes and that is
truly the art of making a “silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”
August 26, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Probably one of the strongest forces of life is the
unseen force of negative possibilities that incite fear and anxiety and result
in many hopeful possibilities never being attempted. Faith in part is an interior
warring posture to stand against the unseen forces of fear that spin such
imaginations of the negative.
August 27, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Can you recognize today's serendipity? As we are locked
into schedule and routine to avoid "unplanned" surprises of any sort
so as to "control" our lives we need to allow our general tendency
toward "censorship" of what we might face to allow for the influence
of wonder that will guide us to acknowledge the kisses of the divine that occur
in the midst of "our routine."
August 28, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
In John’s Gospel Jesus said that his words were spirit
and life. Did you ever think of words as
“spirit” and “life?” In the postmodern
world, philosophers of language have come to regard our lives as constituted by
words. Words organize and direct our
lives. We only live by food after our
words have directed our lives to eat it, so words precede food. Words enter us by hearing and seeing and they
become us at the deepest level of our being and then influence our future
performance. Meditate today on how the
word of your life is spirit and life.
August 29, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
What evangelism is not:
Wanting people to agree with my understanding of Christian truth so that
I can be reinforced that I believe correctly
since the more people who agree with me makes something that much more
true.
August 30, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Evangelism is how we share our good news. If we have come to persuasive insights that
have encouraged and helped us in our lives, we can be generous to offer the
insights helpful to us to others in ways that are not coercive or
chauvinistic. We cannot offer them as
some “final salvation” answer if we ourselves are still living each day open to
more good news that will surpass what we’ve already gained. How can we be dogmatically chauvinistic if we
still are looking for further conversion in excellence ourselves?
August 31, 2012
As we approach Labor Day, we contemplate what labor
means. Labor has for us "strenuous" overtones; work seems less severe
and career seems downright upper middle class. In church parlance we might
elevate labor to the word "calling." Our aspiration and prayer at
Labor Day would be to imagine a world where all find their callings and have
adequate compensation for what they do in their lives. If we can come to know
our life work as a calling, we are indeed blessed. Let us pray that all find
the joy of their life's calling today.
September 1, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Probably the greatest philosophical contribution of
America is what is called Pragmatism, associated with the Henry and William
James, John Dewey and Charles Sanders Pierce. Pragmatism judges truth value by
utility; does it work or is it useful? If we allow Christian truth to reside in
the speculative realm of the sort of "how many angels can dance on the
head of a needle?" we can find that many will not find our truth very
useful; only entertaining for a few arcane eccentrics. Pragmatic Christian
truth comes to its utility in the practice of justice. We continually need to
ask ourselves if perhaps the work of God in the realm of social justice,
welfare and health care is getting done outside of the church as we in the
church argue about arcane topics.
September 2, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
St. Augustine said that the heart is restless until it
finds its rest in God. The restlessness of desire is caused by the profoundness
of desire; it demands completeness and perfection and we become disillusioned
or addicted when desire fixates on objects that we unwittingly want to be God
but turn out to be idols when they cannot deliver godly reward. The secret in
life is to accept desire and to ride its flow of energy as it passes through
all things that can give us pleasure as desire returns to God who is no
particular object. The end result is that we get to enjoy everything by
refusing to let idols clog up the flow of worship in our lives. So worship is
letting desire return to God passing through everything in it path without
giving birth to an idol. Desire is the energy of worship if we do not let idols
obstruct its flow back to God.
September 3, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The background apparent negligible mysterious events are
more than what I focus upon with my very limited attentive powers. And so I pray for compatibility and
complementary co-existence of events today.
September 4, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
One can contemplate a piece of art or listen to music as
evidence that God as muse inspires creativity and hope that in the areas where
one is exerting the energies of one’s life today can also be events where God
as creative muse touches our lives with the sublime. “Being used” by someone is generally seen as
demeaning unless it is by God and for the benefit of others; then it is a
blessed state.
September 5, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Even though we may have goals and destinations, in the
continual openness of life to the future there is always more and so we need to
be reconciled to being on the perpetual journey. What time means is that arrival and departure
are simultaneous; as so as we arrive we are also departing.
Centering Prayer
Aphorism for the Day
Use a prayer phrase or mantra to organize yourself today.
As you say the prayer imagine it to be like a sonar beep traveling to the ends
of your body and plumbing the depths of your interior life and bouncing back to
you with each deep breath. A prayerful mind can organize a body that is given
too many simultaneous directions by the apparent demands of the tasks at hand.
Phrase: Be Still and Know that I am God.
September 6, 2012
Aphorism and centering Prayer for the Day
Today's centering prayer suggestion. Acknowledge that you
are a moving address, a location within the greatest environment of all. See
yourself as within concentric circles of named environments that impinge upon
your existence: home, city, county, state, country, world. You also have
personal and people environments: family, neighbors, colleagues, fellow
citizens. We can know both joy and frustration with both geographical and
people environments and so we use this centering prayer to put it all in
perspective as we say over and over again to convince ourselves: I live and I
move and I have my being in God. Being convinced of the greatest environment
can help us navigate our lesser environments.
September 7, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
A metaphor of our lives might be living within a slow
turning kaleidoscope. The shards of
glass retain a continuity with our view yesterday but in fact both us and what
we see in our environment have changed.
How do we maintain being those who are changing within a changing environment? How do we avoid vertigo? Probably through faith in the fixity of words
that tell us that things remain the same.
Yet education is teaching us that new words can arise to see our world
in significantly different ways. This
merry-go- round can be seen as either fearful loss of things familiar or
exciting adventure into the hopeful new.
Since we cannot really stop the merry-go-round of time and change, faith
is the attitude of integrating the hopeful new.
September 8, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Since too much is always happening in our foregrounds and
backgrounds we through our language ability have to make selections of events
and one might say that our memory is based upon the story unit. The story unit is like time-lapsed
photography; we have to reduce vast units of time to but a few words of
memorial highlights. So we live by the
story in how we present the time-lapsing of our lives. How we remember and tell our time-lapsed
stories tells us something about our editorial selection of events. The presentation of our story often involves many
editorial deletions of things that we want to leave out or don’t want to
revisit. Present faith is ability to
face the truth of our past and learn how to make it serve our present quest for
excellence. We are still forming our
life story now.
September 9, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Are you ready for some football? We ask on first Sunday
of NFL games and ponder the mystery of how sports and our hobbies engage our
lives more than our religion. What is the secret of the hold of sports on us?
Is it a mystical identity with a place, a hometown, memories of youth, college
days? Is is vicarious return to days of competitions that formed our identities?
Is it a healthy benign militarism that is cathartic? Is it an impulse and a
tradition as old as the Olympics? Is it simply being human? Can it rival our
spiritual lives? Can it co-exist with spiritual excellence? Does religion as
public spectacle in a megachurch tap into the same energy of the spectacle of
the sporting impulse? Is liturgy just too boring to compete with sports or
other entertainment? And now with youth sports on every day of the week and
especially on Sundays we are inculcating another generation into the sporting
impulse and soon Sunday will indeed be a day of sports. Verkempt? Talk amongst
yourselves.
September 10, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
If someone offer me a generous gift, am I to be
congratulated and celebrated for taking the gift or should the one celebrated
be the generous giver? Similarly, if our
faith is our joy and delight in "taking" God's grace, the emphasis
should be upon the Giver and not the Taker.
On the other hand, if we receive with faith the good things that God
provides we have the continuous occasion to check our egos because of God's
generosity.
September 11, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
On 9/11 after eleven years we still remember those lost
in the attacks and those who were brave and sacrificing in rescue. We note that our world seems to have aged a
hundred years in but eleven years because of the aftermath of those attacks. And we mourn the loss of pre-9/11 naivete when
such imaginations of evil had not yet been actualized. We stand different today in ways that we did
not want to be different. Our lives have
not gone unaffected for even a day in these eleven years. We mourn the loss of feeling safer than we do
now in our world. And we pray for
healing of relationships in our world toward, dare we say it, PEACE!
September 12, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The Book of Common Prayer is essentially a book of
time. It is the practice of invoking the
presence of God within all of the times of our lives. The prayers in the Book of Common conform to
the way we as humans experience time.
Regular time as provided by the sun rising and setting; hence we have
Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer.
Special time that includes Church Seasons for the annual presentation of
the curriculum of Christian knowledge.
Feast Days, Holy Days, Fast Days as observances of events in the life of
Jesus and the saints so as to be renewed in our Christian identity. Sacramental time or crisis time; the
sacraments are like "rite of passage" time and they comprise the
major crises or tasks of life that we are forever living out. So the Book of Common Prayer is not a book of
hoops to jump through given by the clergy; it is a book of prayers and it is
anthropologically sound. It is honest to
human experience if you believe that an experience of the sublime presence of
God is honest to human experience.
September 13, 2013
We remember the lives of those who died in the ruthless
attacks in Libya and we thank God for the service of people who work to bridge
different cultures in order to work for peace and friendship.
Aphorism of the Day
When we read the news we have to read with our diffusion
lenses, otherwise we will generalize from events that are taking place on one
block in Libya to the entire country. When I lived overseas and some calamity
happened a thousand miles from where I lived, my family immediately thought
that I "could" be in harm's way. With our diffusion lenses on we will
not let the media "bad news" broadcasters trick us into generalizing
that bad news is everywhere when in most places moms and dads are just
struggling to take care of children and get them to school and tend to the
elderly. We need to know that any bad news in one particular place is diffused
and overcome by the myriad acts of unrecognized kindness that are mainly
responsible for our survival. When bad news is broadcast we are tempted to
forget about the good news of kindness that engulfs us and people around the
world.
September 14, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
On Holy Cross day we might contemplate the transformation
in value of this horrific instrument of capital punishment. This method of punishment is now worn as
perhaps the most favorite piece of jewelry of all time. How does the event of Jesus upon the Cross amass
unto it so many different values and meanings?
The cross has been on war planes and tanks; it has been worn mockingly
by irreligious rock stars. It is
embraced as a symbol of protection and a talisman of good luck. Perhaps what it means for us is embracing the
fact that bad things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people;
bad things of loss occur to all. The
cross stands as hope that no matter what is thrown at us there can be a
subsequent experience of redemption.
There can be sweet revenge for the losses that we know in life and the
Cross of Jesus draws from us the faith to hope and expect this redemption. The reason that Cross can be rendered in gold
and silver is because for us the Cross also includes its own undoing, namely our
knowledge of the resurrection of Christ.
September 15, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
As we read the events that arise in our lives today let
us be aware of an interior switch mechanism that can allow us to interpret an
event in a different way and thus be able to make a different choice. In the op art picture of the duck and rabbit
there is an interior switch that allows us to see either the duck or the
rabbit. If you see the duck you may want
to feed bread crumbs; if you see the rabbit you may want to feed carrot
sticks. How we see and read determines
our actions.
September 17, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
September 17th turns out to be a "taxing" day
since the weekend gave us two extra days in paying our tax quarterlies. As much as taxes seem to hurt our cash flow,
did you ever see taxes as a triumph of the Gospel? Jesus did say to "render unto Caesar the
things that belong to Caesar" and taxes don't always make us cheerful
givers. In the society where the Bible
derived there were religious economic requirements for the common good. And now governments have been converted to
organize and provide for the common good through taxes. There have been times when the church did
health, education and welfare and we should consider it to be a success in
conversion by the church to expect that government now organize health,
education and welfare. As much as we may
disagree on amounts, policies and how money is spent, taxes in themselves can
be important for "doing unto the least of these." Hopefully we can be cheerful in giving but
also knowing it to be a patriotic act of giving towards all that we now require
to be done for us and our fellow citizens.
September 18, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
How is the history of our lives discovered to be
providential, or enhanced by what we call God's will? It could be that
providence works in hindsight; we with subsequent actions redeem what has
happened to us previous so that with wisdom when we receive lemons, we make
lemonade and when we receive Champagne we have a party. In the end, current
wisdom can make the past providential.
September 19, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
If I start with the premise that life is my teacher and I
am its student, then I ask what will I learn today? What can be added to the total number of
occasions of my life experiences that will become a part of the thought pool of
my life such that new creative combinations can arise for me to achieve new
actions. And each occasion has to be
mediated through language so I ask what will come to language in and through my
life today? And I remember that Christ
is called the Word of God. Our lives
then are involved in being filled with the fullness of the Word of God, not in
how word is limited on the pages of the Bible but in the sense of all creation
being a Word experience and therefore a learning experience.
September 20, 2012
Dear Lord,
We made it to Thursday...Thank you!
Over the hump of Wednesday....Thank you!
Headed towards Friday....Thank you!
Then the Week end....Thank you!
Then we begin again...Okay
Maybe I should get off the treadmill mental state of
mind.
And live fully committed to Now!
As the best yet moment ever in your Grace.
And let tomorrow's worry not be born today when the event
has not yet occurred.
Yes, I will commit to your Grace NOW!
Amen
Aphorism of the Day
On this eve of autumn day, one notes how the seasons of
the year are often used for age phases of our lives. If the proverbial
"Autumn Leaves" is the name of our last place of residence on earth,
what does that make winter? Autumn has accrued unto itself lots of human
traditions and as harvest time it can be the beginning of the year in some
cultural views. But in jobs that are are not in the agricultural world harvest
cannot always be predicted. Isn't the whole point of stretching pay out evenly
over an entire year to avoid the situation of feast or famine dependent upon
the outcome of the crops? Ponder today the meaning of autumn in your
psychological, social and spiritual cycle. Has modern life away from
agricultural mode of living changed the fall for us and are we left with but
traditions that no longer have the same sign value for us? Think about how much
the church calendar derived from agricultural economies and how modern industry
and technology has nullified the agricultural effect upon our lives, now that
in mid-winter we can get food and produce from places all over the world.
September 21, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Today is the first day of autumn. Think about today all of the calendars that
impinge our existence as we organize and plan the times of our life: The
seasons, the 12 month year, the fiscal calendar, the tax calendar, our job
calendar, children’s school calendar, the children’s sports calendar, dance
season, opera season, symphony season, College football, NFL calendar, Baseball
Calendar, et al. Calendars are created
to incorporate people into certain community behavior for the “critical mass”
or success of those events. We’ve gotten
to the place where there is lots of competition between the calendars of our
lives. Let’s see, “the Forty-Niners or
Church?” Indeed there is a battle for
our time out there. And let us not
forget that the Psalmist wrote, “Our times are in God’s hand.” Blessings to all in the juggling of your
calendars. Your time is so valuable that
the ancient Sabbath of one day of God’s rests means that God is portrayed as
one who is more interested in one’s time than one’s money (a tithe is only one
tenth whereas the Sabbath is one
seventh). In our era of the fluidity of
schedules, it is harder to commit an entire block of time. A spiritual goal might be to learn how to
weave “God time” within all of the calendars of one’s life and why would you
want to forget God even when you are watching your favorite football team or
doing your favorite recreation? Learn to
be worshipful of God in all that you do and you might find new integration of
your life in the midst of so many competing schedules.
September 22, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Ponder today the meaning of Jesus revealing God as his
Father and parent. Look at the metaphors
of the Gospels: “born again,” “being like a child to understand the kingdom of
God”, “the kingdom of God belongs to children.”
What might be the macro-program of Jesus? Perhaps one might say he saw the need for a
massive “re-parenting” of many in his social setting. The revelation of God in the metaphor of a
Father means that there must have been massive failures in the nurture roles
required to bring people into their full potential. And Jesus hints that adults who missed
understanding the kingdom of God had lost access to the child aspect of wonder
that is required for seeing in a way beyond just the brute facts of an adult
and scientific mindset.
September 23, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
It is not hard to conclude from reading the Gospel that
Jesus loved children. He used the child metaphor to teach about the kind of
receptive mode that we need to access in our lives to be able to perceive the
Abundant life that is present in the seeming ordinary life. Adulthood often has
taught us to lose access to our child aspect of our personalities and so we
miss the ability to wonder. Finding wonder again is a cure for the skepticism
that can easily grow from contemplating the harsh realities of life.
September 24, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Stewardship may seem to be a church code word for
“fundraising” but it is much more embracing than that. It pertains to how we deploy our total
personhood on behalf of what we believe our chief value or values of to
be. I invite us to an entire season of
reflection upon the meaning of stewardship in our personal and corporate lives.
September 25, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Christian Stewardship is about asking God for blessings
of resources in order to bless others with one's resources. Being good stewards means that we desperately
want to be brokers of generosity.
September 26, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
How would the serenity prayer be adopted to our
stewardship? God grant me the serenity to accept my resource situation over
which I have no control and the courage to make honest needed adjustments in my
life style and the wisdom to know my own motives for both acceptance and
change.
September 27, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Stewardship premise. The earth was here before we arrived and will
be here after we leave. So we who are but here for a drop in the myriads of
years cannot make much of a property claim upon our earthly place. So how do we
live knowing that we will not always be here? Do we not live hoping that we
provide the occasion of enjoyment for the people of the future. How do we have
empathy for people who do not yet exist? We live with gratitude for the
precious life on this earth.
September 28, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Stewardship as the wise deployment of our resources
begins with discernment and we need to work at being more discerning. This
writer has been reduced to an aphorist as the most fitting way to try to
discern concrete action in light of the fact that we are on the merry-go-round
of time where everything is moving. It is as though we are on a boat going downstream
and the description of the shore scenery for yesterday does not fit today.
Platitudes for yesterday's scenery have exceeded their shelf date; yes they
will help in our describing what we see today but we need to see anew.
Stewardship begins with wise seeing of what is happening now. Lord give us
discernment.
September 29, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
It is too bad that the word stewardship gest limited to
how the parish encourages people to give.
Stewardship is perhaps the only issue in life: What do I do with my life
given my situation and how do I perform what I do with the excellence that my
situation will allow.
September 30, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Stewardship and calling are related. We may find it more
pleasant to be engaged if we are doing things that we actually enjoy. We may
find it easier to give our time, talent and treasure towards community success
of efforts which are really promoting the faith values which we can affirm. A
pastor or priest probably fears most the apparent irrelevance of ministry to
enough people and the resulting failure to comprise and maintain the witness of
a parish community.
October 1, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
In politics it has been said that "all politics are
local." Stewardship can get lost in the Charlie Brown theory of love when
he says, "I love mankind, it's people I can't stand." Stewardship can
suffer the same theoretical disconnect. "I love to be generous; it's just
that I can't find anyone or any cause perfect enough for my generosity."
Ultimately for stewardship to be worth anything, it has to end up in action in
a here and now situation, and that is very local. If we were only generous to
people or causes who perfectly deserved it, why would we keep anything for
ourselves?
October 2, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Stewardship means that we are in constant evaluation of
our values in life. In this evaluation
we look at the ones that we have taken up passively because of where we have
lived. Our tacit cultural values, the
“everyone does it” values have to be reviewed in order for us to begin the
stewardship of being more intentional in what we choose.
October 3, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
In Christian movements stewardship is influenced by how
Christians regard what is understood by creation and the fall. If Christians
believe that a "literal" fall when Adam ate the forbidden fruit
initiated humanity into a "total depravity" whereby faithful people
hang on by sheer grace in the midst of an evil world until they are rescued by
catastrophic intervention, such people have a different view of stewardship
than people who still believe that God calls this world and the people of this
world "good." Anglicans, though not naive about evil in this world,
tend to believe in the goodness of creation as more definitive of God's grace
that has always already remained within the created order. This more optimistic
view means we want to cherish this world with good stewardship rather than
dominate this world as those who await an apocalyptic fatal outcome.
October 4, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Stewardship is a neutral word; it defines what we do with
our lives and hence it can be qualified upon a continuum from poor stewardship
to excellent stewardship. It is also true that one might be a better steward in
one aspect of one's life than another. If we qualify stewardship with Christian
stewardship then it means we aspire to live our lives as though we belong to
God and as imitating of the life of Jesus Christ. St. Francis imitated the
lifestyle of Jesus in ways that we will not but the principles that drove the
life of Jesus can still be adopted to our more materialistic existence. After
all, there were people who gave Jesus and Francis food and shelter at various
times in their lives. We can view our lives as being constituted to being good
hosts for the Gospel or Good News of God in Christ.
October 5, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
Liturgy may be likened to the stewardship of a therapy of
play. In it we as children of wonder act
out our aspirations of universal love, peace and forgiveness with the hope that
those patterns of play will steep the stewardship of our lives outside of the
liturgy.
October 6, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Language allows for ironic reflexivity and putting into
question the very question. The
stewardship of stewardship involves how we talk about and present
stewardship. Do we wear people out with
endless flyer and appeals for money? In
the understanding of stewardship by this aphorist, stewardship only seems to be
money; it really is about matters of the
heart and the head.
October 7, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Sunday gathering for Eucharist is part of the stewardship
promise we make at baptism when we answer the following question: Will you
continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread,
and in the prayers? Certainly the stewardship of corporate worship time is
important for the survival of the parish church in any locale even when there
are many other places we would rather be. Being present is a stewardship
ministry.
October 8, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The stewardship of the moment was chronicled in a special
way by Brother Lawrence in “The Practice of the Presence of God.” Brother Lawrence discovered that there are
many things in life that pertain to our vocations that can be seen as draining
and non-fulfilling. Brother Lawrence
learned through an intentional method of conversation that drudgery could
become divinity. It’s worth a try if
there are aspects of our days that have the occasions to put us on a path of
“burn out.”
October 9, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Probably the major stewardship task involves the
stewardship of words. Words form who we
are and how we experience our world. It
is not surprising that the author of John said, “In the beginning was the
Word,” and all things were created by the “Word.” Our existence is mediated by how we have
taken on the words of our lives and the words code us very deeply even in how
our bodies talk with the actions of our lives.
Part of the therapeutic adventure of our lives is to return to the word
contexts of how our lives were coded in our upbringing and in understanding
these contexts or paradigms we can then come to insights on how we can “create”
new actions and new understanding through new use of words.
October 10, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The Stewardship of our time might begin with seeing our
lives as a collection of occasions of becoming. With age we assume that we are
surpassing our former collections of occasions of becoming with a greater
quantity. Quantitative self-surpassing will happen without our deliberation or
intention; with stewardship intention we endeavor to add qualitative
self-surpassing occasions in our future states. If we add quality to our
moments, we set the foundation for better quality in our self-surpassing
states. That you are adding self-surpassing occasions of becoming needs to
involve how you are adding self-surpassing occasions of becoming and that is
the stewardship question, in short, a question of excellence.
October 11, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Stewardship means that as consumers our conscious portals
are open to consume life experience. The
proverbial computer tech saying is “garbage in, garbage out.” What we feed ourselves with in terms of
experience reconfigures within us at some deep level and then “comes out” of us in some future
manifestation. So we should be good
gatekeepers of what we take in.
October 12, 2012
The stewardship of the things of our lives often means
asking the question, “Do things own me or do I own them?” The more things that we have the more energy
and time we have to put out to take care of them. If we find ourselves spending too much time
archiving, insuring, protecting and worrying about our possessions then we may
have to be realistic about whether we are truly enjoying the “things” of our
lives.
October 13, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The Stewardship of Saturday may involve the intentional
variation of one’s schedule to do something else than what one does on Monday
through Friday. Could be house chores,
shopping, kid’s soccer games, watching
college football or working in one’s hobby.
By varying the activities one can discover the cross fertilization of
creativity. Leaving one’s work
completely for another kind of activity can help one return to work with
freshness and creativity and new perspective.
October 14, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
We often are more likely to regard our stewardship resume
of yesterday when Christ is more interested in our stewardship today and
tomorrow.
October 15, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The main Gospel message for the stewardship of leadership
is how leadership can be service. How
can we serve others when our defined roles actually gives us authority? Authority can be seen as brute power or the
charm of charisma. Where we have
authority let us pray that we have the grace of a calling so that our authority
has a "charming" invitation to help the team perform the best.
October 16, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The stewardship of the self may be summed up in the
injunction of the Delphic Oracle: “Know Thyself.” The personality that is housed in one’s body
is the total “instrument” through which each person knows the world and the
contours of the personality shapes or funnels what we are experiencing. So stewardship involves knowing how we
collect information and come to our decision making. And we do it differently and so each person
has the individual responsibility to always be on the journey of “knowing
oneself.” Just be glad that the journey
never ends and that you are more interesting than you probably give yourself
credit for.
October 17, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Stewardship is learning how to be open to the next
inspiring insight that comes to give us specific direction in our lives. Through reading and seeking the direction of
mentors we can put ourselves in the place for inspiration to occur. To restate Thomas Edison, when one puts in
98 % perspiration one can have the grace, the favor, the serendipity and the
“luck” of the 2 % inspiration. And the
experience of that 2 % makes the effort worthwhile.
October 18, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The stewardship of reading the Bible involves overcoming
of the foreignness of this textbook of the church. It is foreign because of the
cultural details of ancient societies. To read for biblical insights means we
look for the enduring principles behind the particular cultural details and
then look for corresponding principles in our contemporary situation. And we
will find that in cultural details actual evolution into closer fidelity to the
great principle of a loving God. The abolition of slavery and the equality of
women in society are just two examples of cultural details where we evolved
from practices that did not instantiate a fuller fidelity to God as a loving
God.
October 19, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
One way to gain insights in the stewardship of one’s self
within a community is to use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. This type indicator helps one assess how one
collects information, relates in group settings, organizes one’s life and comes
to make decisions. Often we might find
that our discomfort with certain people has more to do with personality and not
a matter of genuine dislike. The goal is
to appreciate differences in family and community and then build a team
utilizing the natural strengths of personality types. And one will find that prayer life and
spiritual practices can be tailored to one’s personality.
October 20, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The stewardship of space has to do with where you are and
your favorite places. If you saw
yourself via GPS, you would be a moving address within the various locations
where you live and move and have your being.
Do you have favorite quiet places?
Places where you go to think and meditate or curl up with a good
book. A place becomes a sacred space for
you based upon your experience in a certain place. And we tend to return to those favorite
spaces. If you don’t have such a space,
look for one and find a place where you can center yourself upon a really deep
Peace beneath all emotions and sentiments.
If you can find your way to your own place within of deep Peace your
body can be a moving address for sacred space.
October 21, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
In the stewardship of our future we cannot know what is
possible as actual, so it is open. From our current knowledge we can study
probabilities and plan according to probabilities and yet with faith we can
begin to act now as though what we hope for is a current intuition which
unifies our being and community in what we call a plan.
October 22, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The stewardship of dealing with what Kenneth Burke call
the human tendency to be “rotten with perfection” is a crucial issue in
life. We can be very self- critical and
critical of others based upon perfection, perfectionism and our utopian
visions. We want to be as good as we
can be, “right now.” We want our selves,
family; church and country to be as good as can be “right now.” The very slow and unsteady incremental steps
in the process sometimes makes us impatient with the slow process and anger and
lashing or apathetic “giving up” are unhealthy
responses. In our stewardship as
citizens and voters we need learn patience in how we relate to perfection, perfectionism
and utopian vision. And we cannot
arrogate to ourselves the burden of being completely “correct” on all issues.
October 23, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
In our stewardship of time it might be good to chart how one spends one's time. Classify how time is used? And see if there is time for intentional prayer, meditation and worship. And is there a way to intentionally include prayfulness as one of the multi-tasks that one uses to accompany other activity. The mind can generate transmitting prayers anywhere.
October 24, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Analyzing the stewardship of the moment: What am I doing? Why am I doing it? How am I doing it? These questions will address issues of honesty and denial, motivation and the matter of excellence.
October 25, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Disillusionment in people or groups or movements is part of the process of the stewardship of our emotional lives. When we find ourselves thinking, "I thought so and so was going to be this for me and they have failed me," we only need to turn it around and wonder who has been disillusioned by us. We are not and no one can be omni-competent to someone else's need. Disillusionment comes because people have been made to live on pedestals of our own making. We can be disillusioned and still love others and hope they do the same for us. Disillusionment often happens because we are caught being in the "taking" mode rather than the "giving" mode.
October 26, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
If Democrats and Republicans are people who are divided by having a common country; Baptists, Roman Catholics and Episcopalians are people divided by having a common religious faith, what is the nature of division? Is division the result of seeing the world differently and proposing different policies and modes of action to prevent any one party from being corrupted absolutely by having absolute or unanimous power? We have come from a past when "heretics" used to be persecuted or burned at the stake for non-compliance. In many countries dissent is not permitted. Even while we can observe the checks and balances of democratic division resulting in a seeming paralyzing stalemate that appears to hinder effective action, there is wonderful democracy hidden and at work even in our bureaucracy and that keeps many things functioning that we don't see because we take them for granted. Remember to vote.
October 27, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Stewardship is learning how to be honest about when the excuse "I can't" really means "I won't."
October 28, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The book of Job presents a satire on the theological thinking of his day regarding suffering. The stewardship of suffering involves not knowing precisely why anything happens; the stewardship of suffering is about what we do when it happens to us and to others. One of the possible outcomes of suffering is that we accept our lives as offered to God and to each other and as a result we become those who can like Job, pray more effectively for our friends. There is no guaranteed meaning for any suffering; in our lives of faith we hope that we can redeem suffering by future ministry to those who are suffering currently.
October 29, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Total imaginary Utopian aspiration for a different kind of stewardship: Imagine all of the military spending in the world converted to standing readiness to respond to natural disasters and their aftermaths. When will we realize that the fury of nature is such a challenge so as to make war a total waste of human resources? For now we pray for graceful co-existence with Hurricane Sandy, wisdom and safety for those who are in harm's way and comfort for those who have already experienced loss.
October 30, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
A storm of the century reveals to us how much we are all connected in our world. Flights cancelled, transportation halted, power down, the market closed and the effects of the storm will ripple around the world even as its most poignant impact is on those who live in its path. Our prayers ascend for those who suffer and for the first responders and we look forward to the restoration of a normal day on the East Coast. The storm reminds us how wonderful an "ordinary" day is.
October 31, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Halloween is a cultural event that proves that the meanings of such events get altered depending upon the contexts where they are celebrated. Religious traditions that arose as reactions against the veneration of the saints and did not have the afterlife soul travel tradition of purgatory would not celebrate Halloween. If members of a tradition do not celebrate All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day then Halloween loses its religious significance. Today, Halloween is mostly a commercial tradition that caters to our desire to provide an event for children with parties, costumes and treat or treating. For adults it is a good excuse for a party, being someone else by means of a costume and expressing the fascination with the genre of horror for entertainment. Halloween also has involved the catholicizing of pre-Christian traditions in cultures that were evangelized by Christians. So in the British Isles there was the Samhain tradition and in Mexico there were pre-Christian cultural practices that morphed into the current dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).
November 1, 2012
Aphorism for the Day
All Saints Day is a day akin to the induction of sports figures into their respective Halls of Fame. On this day we celebrate the fact that people have made significant contribution to the life of the church in their own time but they have also left a historic witness beyond their time. The first step in learning is imitation and so it is important to have those who have set the bar high and are worthy of imitation. We need those in our lives who show us a direction of excellence and the "saints" embody that direction towards excellence. It is not enough to put the saints on a pedestal; like the song says, "God help me to be one too." Each of us has to be on the path of self-surpassing in the direction of excellence.
November 2, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Today on All Souls Day, the Day of Commemoration of All of the Faithful Departed is a day when we are reminded that our lives are strongly conditioned by dealing with the loss of accessibility to the telling people in our lives who can no longer intentionally interact with us in the ways that characterize our communal existence of "living with" someone. The resurrection has become for us the truest imagination of learning to live with our situation of "having lost" significant people in our lives through that portal called death. Memories of people fuel the imaginations of extrapolation of how those persons can and do still live towards us in our patterns of having less accessibility to those who have passed through the portals of death. Yet, they did leave great impressions upon our lives which remain for us traces of significant inspiration.
November 3, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
A mood is a state of mind and we may experience a variety of states of mind. We are assailed by moods and they may change according to events and conditions that arise or assail us. Perhaps thwarted intentionality by a situation of resistance to what we desire has a mood changing power over us. In the art of life, learning to tap the energy of a mood is crucial and in our spiritual life prayer may be the practice of mood alchemy.
November 4, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Voting is an expression of belief in group wisdom. It does not mean that a group is necessarily infallible and perfect and is free from mistakes. It is a commitment to be in things together as humble majority or as loyal opposition. And if we often feel as though we "muddled" into the future, we do it together and in all of the vulnerability of community life we pray for grace and hope and strength to continue to care for those who do not have the realization of freedom and justice and well-being in a caring society.
November 5, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Life involves the stewardship of the not-yet mystery. What is "not-yet" in our lives that impels such a state of curiosity that keeps us going? We do need to balance an unrealistic "win the lottery" future outlook with more actuarial probabilities. There are lots of events this day within the realm of probability that can delight us and keep us engaged. We should not let "win the lottery unreality" rob us from tapping the sublime that can occur within the ordinary probable.
November 6, 2012 (Election Tuesday)
Aphorism of the Day
A voting question for each election: What if I perceive that self-interest and the common good do not agree? How should I vote? Self interest or common good? Is what is best for all also best for me and how do I inform myself about what is the common good?
November 7, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
In the aftermath of elections the heart that identifies with a particular candidate or proposition either feels elated or disappointed. The passions of identification happen in politics and in sports and we can be very defensive and vulnerable about those identifications. And depending upon outcomes and our own degree of attachment it may take time for the hope expressed in sports as "wait till next year" to return. And what is a Christian response to the election? A simple, "The Lord be with you. And also with you. Let us prayer."
November 8, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Survey your emotional intelligence today using the Big Five Personality Traits: Openness (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious) Conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless) Extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved) Agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. cold/unkind) Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident) The One who is More than us uses the contours of our personalities to deliver grace to this world. It is not a question of us doing it perfectly; stewardship is making ourselves available to be the "rubber hitting the road" to let God's grace be applied in our situation. So there are graceful events that will not happen unless we make ourselves available.
November 9, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
If it is shown that we inherit our personality traits and to a degree our brain is wired a certain way, does that mean our personality is the determining destiny of our lives? Yes and no. Yes, discovery and acceptance of who we are is very important but context and challenge in new situations can help us round ourselves out and challenge the stereotypes of what kind of person can do certain kinds of things. Shy children can surprise themselves and become very fluid in public even while honoring that same introversion inheritance. Faith means we are willing to take creative risk beyond our self-perception. Moses told God that he could not speak. He went on to be quite a speaker. Don't be surprised if God is calling you beyond what you think your own personal "limitations" are.
November 10, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
In archaeology a shaft is dug and items that were used in ancient society are uncovered and those items do not always have a corresponding modern use. A piece of pottery from a vessel or plate represents an object that has corresponding vessel or plates in our times. When we do an archaeology of human intellectual and religious traditions we assume a continuous utility of the ideas of faith even when our modern culture dominated by scientific challenges the previous utility of such ideas. Our task is not to compartmentalize faith into a box that denies scientific thinking; our task is to discern the faith discourse of the past and to restate the enduring human issues in a discourse of faith that is applicable and relevant to our lives today. And that can be done.
November 11, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
With world knowledge increasing exponentially each day how do spiritual and intellectual traditions survive with recognizable identities which connect them with how they have been known and experienced in the past? A sugar cube in a body of water eventually gets dissolved and flavors the water without being seen in it cube identity. Does the church "Amishize" itself to keep from a slow dissolution by the morass of exponential knowledge growth? Or does the church continually find new corresponding relevance to articulate what Good News means in a new time and place? How have you and I survived with our identities having changed and been changed many times since we were 16 years old?
November 12, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
We salute our Veterans this weekend. What unites all of our Veterans is their willingness to serve on behalf of all. Thankfully, not all had to "lay down their lives" for their friends, but in their oath of service they expressed that willingness. The training that Veterans received gave them initiation into a bond with their team units and the team commitment is perhaps unrivaled because they put their lives into each other's hands. An expression of "laying down one's life for one's friends" is needed in church and society in the form of checking our egos for the common good. The Veterans can lead us all in service for the common good.
November 13, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
You will never meet a poor generous person since they do not regard themselves as such. Generous people have learned another kind of wealth living as though they own sun, moon, oceans, mountain and beauty of flowers without have to pay tax and maintenance on all of that wealth.
November 14, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
As linguistic beings we are constituted by incredible reductions of how we can know ourselves. The endless possible meanings of our lives are reduced to story unit of our particular lives since our egos are able to maintain a continuing sense of "I-ness" even through incredible change. How is it that we are the same persons we were when we were five or six years old? Our memory is able to constitute the sense of being the same person through all of the changes that we go through.
November 15, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
As linguistic beings we are constituted by incredible reductions of how we can know ourselves. The endless possible meanings of our lives are reduced to story unit of our particular lives since our egos are able to maintain a continuing sense of "I-ness" even through incredible change. How is it that we are the same persons we were when we were five or six years old? Our memory is able to constitute the sense of being the same person through all of the changes that we go through.
November 16, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Faith involves a willing intentionality to choose from
all imaginations of future possibles and to execute current activity that is
oriented toward the hopeful outcome for yourself and for the common good. We can have a bean counter on each
shoulder; one whispers that this is the negative possibility and the other
whispers that this is the hopeful possibility.
We must collate the whispers of our two actuarial statistical advisers
regarding probability and in faith act creatively and realistically toward our
future. Wisdom will prove that we may
not always attain a completely positive outcome but wisdom will prove that it
is always better to have faith than to live by passively just letting things
happen to us or to live as pessimistic devotees of the Law of St. Murphy.
November 17, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
How do we move from being thankful for things and people and situations that benefit our life or make them just plain pleasurable to being thankful for life itself to becoming aware that it is more important that we act and do things that can create the possibility for other people to be thankful because of our discovery that indeed it is more blessed to give than receive.
November 18, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Thanksgiving involves the humility of real recognition of needing others in many, many ways and at many times. It is regarded to be a strength to be a self-reliant giver but humility and thanksgiving are needed to shatter the illusion of self-sufficiency.
November 19, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
I am living and having my being today in a context and my being is the instrument of registering and filtering life that can only be known through my unique filters. How do I exercise the limits of my freedom today in what I am to experience? With prayer do I set some priorities on the portals of my instrumental being as to what I let enter me and thereby exercise some quality control upon the influences that will coalesce within me to determine the acts of my life today? Much of this has to do with words and with Christ, we can probably say, "My words are spirit and they are my life."
November 20, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Now is the bridge between past and future; how we build this bridge determines in part the destination where we will be arriving. We may be building over the ravine or river of challenge right now and the arrival on the other side will mean that we live to build another bridge tomorrow. Long live bridge building.
November 21, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Tempted to have holiday depression as we approach Thanksgiving? Where do we start in being thankful? With the logic of comparing situations as expressed in the famous, "I complained about having no shoes until I met the man who had no feet." We can be rather insulated from deprivation in our lives and most of the pain and suffering of the world comes to us "virtually" through the media. That sort of "virtual pain" can be turned off. If we can adopt a attitude of always having a mission to others then we can overcome our insulation to real pain and deprivation of others and it can help shame us into thanksgiving.
Recent News
The English Synod voted not to allow women bishops in the English Church. The vote passed in the orders of bishop and clergy but failed by four votes in the order of laity. We, who have been blessed by the ministry and presence of our Bishop, Mary Gray-Reeves, may find this rejection difficult to understand. In the office of bishop are represented the succession of our faith through history and our connection in this time with other Christians. Women of faith certainly have been responsible for the succession/transmission of faith and they too, are adept at connecting us with each other. The ministry of women is already winsome and we mourn the delay of the service of women as bishops in the English Church. We mourn the impoverishment of the episcopate by denying women this expression of pastoral service. And with the temporary setback what will women do? They will just keep transmitting faith and connecting us with each other.
November 22, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
American Thanksgiving in some way is an ironic day for Episcopalians since that feast in the Plymouth Colony was a group of Pilgrims who were in part thankful to be rid of the established church in England, namely the Church of England, our Mother Church. We can be thankful too for perhaps our Country's greatest contribution to this world, namely, separation of church and state. By law you can't persecute people whom you think to be "heretics." In the USA, you just go down the block and open your own "church." Ironically, the ideals of justice of our Constitution require by law more Christ-like practice than what is practiced in most churches that have rules of exclusion for certain type of people. We should be thankful today that our Constitution encourages us to be more Christ-like in justice than is practiced in most of our churches.
November 23, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
How are we, the non-Amish, to process this day known as Black Friday? As above-it-all super Christian non-materialistic prigs deluded by thinking we are not co-opted by our economic situation? As hopeful that it is black ink and not red ink for our economy at the end of the year? As those who enjoy the sport of a good deal and shop with people and for people we love? As those who know that this day ripples around the world in the total number of people who have been involved in the production of Christmas gifts? As thankful for having what we have knowing that others do not have it so well. As willing to let the crumbs of our Christmas table fall to those who live on those "crumbs?" As those who accept the need for such seasons of excess in the rhythm life? As those willing to access our child-aspect-of-personality to not let adult seriousness cause imbalance in our lives? As those who accept the manifold effect of the Christ Child way beyond what anyone ever imagined?
November 24, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Many metaphors for the presentation of the significance of Jesus for Christians have come to be used. One such metaphor is the metaphor of Christ as King. Monarchies have undergone quite some adjustments in human history and are not really looked to as "ideal" forms of government now. It seems inappropriate for one person at the top to be solely responsible for all authority in governing a people particularly when universal education has resulted in wisdom being known by so many people in a society. It could be now that Christ the King stands now as a metaphor of what is "kingly" or what is to be privileged in what we are continuously trying to do in surpassing ourselves in excellence. We seek to privilege excellence and the life of Jesus gives us a model of that excellence, hence we celebrate a very "kingly" Jesus Christ.
November 25, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Where are the armies of Christ the King? They are the angelic messenger armies of metaphors, Spirit words that have been very winsome in inspiring love and justice in people who look to a kingly risen Christ in their lives.
November 26, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
We are in the last week of the last church season in the liturgical calendar. There are six seasons in the liturgical calendar and they present us with a "cycle." Cycle implies an end of something and the beginning of something new. The season of Pentecost is ending and there will never be another one exactly like the one we are finishing even though we assume there will be a new season of Pentecost next year. We will begin a new church year on the first Sunday of Advent. One of the themes of Advent is "the ending" of life as we know it. The mode of appropriating a sense of the end of life as we know it is influenced by the experience of those who contemplate the end. For those in terror and persecution and exploitation and oppression, a sort of divine cataclysmic interventionism gives hope of immediate relief and immediate justice. These are the conditions that inspired the visualizations of the "apocalyptic." What we should venerate is the eternal sense of justice that oppressed people cry out for and not the specific visualizations of how justice is ever achieved in any final sense. As long as there is Time, justice will always call out for a better future.
November 27, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Let us today ponder the future anterior tense expressed as "it will have happened." Our faith works in the future anterior tense; we act now as yesterday's "it will have happened" even while we act now toward further events that "will have happened." The "have happened" aspect of that verb means that hope is not just a general "whatever might happen" but it includes the intentional act done now that contributes to the "will have happened" of the future. What will have happened by December 31st for us, our family, our parish and society? And what are we doing intentionally right now for that date specific "will have happened?"
November 28, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
As intercessors let us realize that we are living with and for others today and our epidermis is not an impregnable barrier of separation. We live beyond our body boundary and as conscious persons our borders are open whether we want them to be or not. And so we take in others with our senses; we take in others from our memories which get refreshed about the people in our lives; we take in the news of events of the day. At the same time we are continuously generating events of our own becoming. In this marvelous communion of generating our own becoming and receiving all that is becoming to us from others, we have the intercessory occasion to be with and for each other and for our world. And so we are invited to make the assent to be the location of prayer. It is better than resisting or complaining or pouting about why we're not exempted from our situation.
November 29, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Where is the grace and help going to come to us today and we miss it because we find ourselves enculturated to desire amiss? Sometimes we only recognize grace in hindsight when what we have taken for granted has been lost. And we ponder, "Wow, I didn't realize how important it was to my life." The challenge is not to let desire for the unnecessary blind us from seeing the under girding of graceful people and things right now.
November 30, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Our language acts like an invisible screen that filters knowing who we are with introspective looks within and looking out to the world outside. So what are the taxonomic girds on this invisible screen that categorize who we think we are and what we think is in the world outside of us? How did they get there? By culture and nurture? Eskimos see from their taxonomic grids many
different kinds of snow and have corresponding words for which English does not have single corresponding words. So how does that invisible grid of our personalized language use get constructed and how does it get changed when trial and error gives us a message that we need to see ourselves and the world differently in order to make fresh choices? Any notion of Christ as Word means that our lives are going through a continual evaluation of the specific word experience that "creates" our specific world experience. Let our taxonomic grids change with education so that we don't get stuck in seeing ourselves and the world as always the same.
December 1, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
From T.S. Eliot's "Little Gidding," perhaps on a visit to a place that was a shrine because of the people who had lived and prayed in that place:
You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid.
We participate in the phenomenon of creating "sacred space" when we offer prayers together in a place. The many unseen caverns of the souls of people who enter a church find a refuge in a place of prayer. People hope that life will be sorted out for another day and another week. And can I believe that God accepts all of me and my experience and convince me to accept it too and apply all of me to faithful purposes for the day and for the week, the month and the year? And will I find my prayer valid in the place of prayer?
December 2, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Happy Christian New Year! Today, the First Sunday of
Advent we acknowledge the fact that the church liturgical calendar is one of
the many calendars in our lives that we use to mark the cycles of time. We are
invited to observe the liturgical calendar not as some infallible system of
spiritual bio-rhythms that we can force people to practice; see it as simply a
calendar of the church's annual curriculum. The body of Christian knowledge is
divided up into themes and we return to these themes each year but never in the
same way. We have surpassed ourselves since last Advent and we are different
people now with a new Advent. The challenge is to be ready to learn something
new when going down a seeming familiar path. The path is not a rut that has
become a valley "prison" of Christian truth; the path is an ever
widening highway and widens this year to give us a new view. Let us pray for
some "eureka" insights that will bring us wisdom or at the very least
some very good humor for surviving life's ambiguities.
December 3, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Faith's questions for today: What will have been done by bedtime tonight? Some things will be the normal routines dictated by all of our previous commitments and obligations and being faithful in the ordinary is important because small things like "the trains not running on time" can set off a chain of disruptive events. You may want to ponder doing one thing different or new today. And you may want to be the location of some wonderful thoughts and insights arising in your mind today. Always have your "mental" nets out to snag one of your lovely butterfly thoughts. Catch it, enjoy it and let it go. (Or if you are afflicted with "aphoritis," write it down)
December 4, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Not knowing the possible future as actual now is what adds excitement to life but also it is what makes worry and anxiety interior phenomena that can sap the energy of our lives. We do the math of our interior budget and we wonder if there is going to ample supply in the future. How do we transform the temptation to worry into creative planning for our future? The temptation to worry can also be the stimulus to think outside of our current box towards different strategies in the future. The pearl of invention may not get formed unless we have the sandy burr of irritation in the form of the cloud of anxiety.
December 5, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
How do we avoid overrating the importance of our own experience because we are in some way a prisoner of the barrier walls of our epidermis? At the same time how do we avoid underrating our own experience by refusing to act as being useful to the people who are in our life and world? I think that faith is a quality of life that helps us moderate between these two extremes.
One can accept the uniqueness of one's experience without believing in one's "universal" importance; at the same time one should not live with one's head in one's shell afraid to offer one's appearances to the world. With wisdom and faith we learn to offer what we find our gifts to be and we hope that our gifts find the needed recipients. And if they don't, we resist being unrequited pouters and just keep giving because it is the giving that is creative and fun.
December 6, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Who controls what can happen to a person or event in the public imaginations? Should we be bah humbug folk about how a humble kind bishop of Myra has morphed into a red-suited, portly man who wears a collapsible red mitre and flies a sleigh through the air pulled by reindeer and who lives at the uninhabitable North Pole? Is it because the public needed an entirely grandfatherly personage as the universal spoiler or children? Jesus loved children but other things happened to him that we really don't want to share with children at a very young age and so this omnipresent magical Santa Claus who lives forever and does not worry about his cholesterol becomes the saint of children. Santa has become the grandfather who spoils the children once a year and then departs. Human beings are myth makers and yet they understand the codes that govern myth are different than the ones that govern science and journalistic eyewitness accounts. Perhaps the public has turned to Santa Claus because people in religion too often confuse their codes. Confusion of interpretative codes perhaps is what defines what is called "fundamentalism."
December 7, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Faith for today means to learn how to live today without
regret. Regret is about the future in the past expressed by the verb tense,
"might have been." It is very reasonable with wisdom and experience
to conclude that many decisions of the past were made in ignorance or without
the fullness of knowledge that we came to have at a later time and so we have
the cliche, "hindsight is always 20/20. Faith means that we learn to live
redemptively by bringing good outcomes from less than ideal events. And if
we're not used to forgiving ourselves for not being perfect, get used to it!
December 8, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
It is curious to see how religious words have come to have negative meaning because of the way in which they have been presented. Repentance and penitential associated with the "harsh" seasons of Lent and Advent get such a bad rap. But what if you simply used the word "Education" for repentance and penitence then you might have a different perspective. It could be that the church is perceived as devising behaviors that you just don't want to do while if we understood that education is the endless process of life, we might not be so intimidated by the word repentance. The Greek word is "metanoia" or the "after mind" or the new mind that you have in a state of subsequent insight which also allowed you to change a behavior.
December 9, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
John the Baptist is a figure who pops out of the lectionary every Advent. He was a rather severe drill sergeant and critic of the status quo in his society. He warned people to flee from the "wrath" to come and though he may have had apocalyptic expectation, the actual wrath came in the form of the Roman Army that devastated Jerusalem in the year 70. John the Baptist serves us as an archetype of the ascetic impulse, meaning that sometimes we have to fast from or give up completely habits that prevent a progress in excellence in our lives.
December 10, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Everything before now in our lives remains as a trace. How does that trace influence our current action and thought? Our memory retains traces of ways that we did things before and thought things before; we think and act differently now in the newness of the present. But how do traces determine us? Do they form the wall of a rut to determine the direction of our lives today? Do our body chemistry and muscles and nerves retain the memory of automatic actions such that we make coffee in the morning without thinking about it? And what else do we do without thinking about it because the traces of the past have us on "automatic." Are there some things on automatic that we would like to change? How do we interdict a trace of the past and implement a new action for the future so that we can begin to leave traces or directional indicators for the new places we want to go and the new things we want to do? Advent is a time for us to at least articulate and expose the determining "traces" of our past.
December 11, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The older one gets the more one depends upon rituals just as a memory aid. If one loses one's keys one can depend upon the consistency of one's rituals and retrace and usually find the needed lost object. The liturgy of the church are the corporate rituals so that we can return and remember some important community identity factors. Too often the church seems to present lit
urgy as a community obligation without articulating what important values are being perpetuated within the liturgy itself. If the vital connection between the liturgy and one's life is lost then there are lots of secular rituals that one can participate in. We are invited to understand the sacraments as the Rites of Passages into which we live our entire lives. We traverse the Rites of Passages whether we understands the sacraments or not, however, in observing the sacraments we understand our deepening age as psychological, spiritual, moral and with reference to the mystery of the presence of God.
December 12, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
During Advent we have readings from the prophets that are predictions of better times and when one reads about lions and lambs playing together and poisonous snakes and children befriending one wonders how to interpret such magical imagery. The typical literalist is happy to delay such to an actual future whereas more practical people are willing to see such literature akin to a mom singing lovely lullabies to a sick baby. "There, there, now, things will get better." It is amazing how literalists can ruin the function of beautiful comforting poetic imagery.
December 13, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Theodicy involves making the case for the existence of a loving, all-knowing and all powerful God given the presence of innocent suffering in our world. The prophets of Advent seem to say the future events of a new heaven and new earth or the reality of a general resurrection will make justice remove the tears of former existence and so redemption is a retroactive phenomenon. In the end or eschatologically justice and faith will be verified. This implies the wait of one's entire life for many.
December 14, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
In former days it would seem that the mystics embraced all of their psychological and spiritual states and so states that would be characterized as depression today were named under the guidance of their spiritual directors, "dark night of the soul" or "cloud of unknowing." Today it is more likely that the cause of the dark night or the cloud would be targeted with psychotropic action. So context does influence interpretation and meaning.
December 15, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
After the Newtown, CT tragic events we are tempted in denial to want to retroactively rewind history and rewrite and interdict in the minds of those who come to commit awful deeds. We also want to interdict in a society that provides for the easy accessibility of the weapons of war within a peace loving "it-could-not-happen-here" suburb. As we look at future probability we s
hould let the actuarial science people inform us about saving future lives with rational laws. In the meantime, we can only mourn the loss of Holy Innocents: " Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims and frustrate the designs of evil." Comfort those who know an unfathomable permanent loss. Amen.
December 16, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Rejoice is the command for the third Sunday in Advent even when we don't feel like being joyful? It is a liturgical command to correct the effects that evil and pain can inflict as evil tries to assert itself as the "normal" condition of life. Rejoice is the corrective command because in obeying this command we rally all of the water of blessing and goodness to quench the encroachment of the fire of an evil event. Let us in the face of evil, reestablish in our hearts and lives the primacy of goodness, love, kindness, health and safety. So we heed the command to rejoice.
December 17, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
If the aphorist has writer's block (someone's prayer answered?) the aphorist writes about writer's block. So if I say "I can't write" then I can write about the inability to write and by foregrounding the topic of writer's block the writer's block is cured by having writer's block which turns out not to be writer's block because one is writing about it. Such is the case for all of life's seeming situations of feeling the moments of "uninspired I can'ts." When one is diligent about one's "I can'ts or I don't feel like it" one can find within the negative an energy for the positive creative production. And for an aphorist, the readership of one is enough.
December 18, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
This season of excess does have its pressures and requires more multi-tasking than most of the other times of the year. We want it to be special for children and we worry about spending; impulse buying is high at this time. We consume more of food and drink because it's there (we would not want to offend the host). And the power of memory is greater at this time when though ts linger about who is no longer with us who made Christmas so special. For some this time can be lonely and highlight loss or broken relationships. One can feel sorry for the bah hum bug folks who really perhaps do not have the coping or adaptive skills to deal with the excess. Let our faith work with our adrenaline to handle the season of excess but let our faith and the priority of our values moderate in our management of events in our lives during this time of the year. And let us withhold judgments since there are as many ways to celebrate Christmastide as there are people.
December 19, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
If everything that we hoped for in the past has not become actual does that negate the actual divine and spiritual function of hoping? The hope factor is absent in depression partly because of a bitterness of not actually getting all that we hoped for or even significant things that we hoped for. But having hope and even having hope's narratives of dreams and fantasies function for us in life as long as we don't literalize all of those narratives and end up being disappointed. Hope is the way that we can access our child aspect of personality which allows us to perceive the kingdom of God. So don't let the harsh rational adult mind go all "bah hum bug" on your hope today.
December 20, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The Christmas story narratives in the three Gospels (remember John does not have one) were late in coming to composition. The Gospels were spiritual manuals for the corporate gathering of the early communities and so the Christmas story encodes the chief spiritual reality of the early community, which was according to St. Paul, "Christ in you, the only hope of glory." How does Christ get in us? One's life is overshadowed by the Holy Spirit? Now can you see how the Virgin Mary becomes the paradigm of every Christian in teaching the chief reality of the risen Christ who is mysteriously known to be present within the life of a person who has had the spiritual experience of new birth?
December 21, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Did you ever think about how Eurocentric our religious customs are? Down Under folk (which is what they could equally call us Northern Hemispherites) are having their summer solstice and what is it like to be singing carols about the bleak midwinter? Have you noticed how Christmas practices retroactively Euro-winterizes ancient Palestine when their temperatures are more like the averages in Northern California? That is climatic-o-centric behavior. If it is cold where I am, it was and should have been cold everywhere else. This what we would call rhetorical climate change.
December 22, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
God had a brilliant idea: "I am going to put myself as a baby in the midst of this world and see what people will do. Will they raise me well; will they bring me from complete vulnerability into adulthood and then what would they do with me? Christmas may be in part a test regarding what we do with the childly in our world.
December 23, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Faith implies purpose and it results in "answered prayer" but rarely in the way in which we first understood what we thought that we wanted from God in our life. Faith often involves waiting upon hope's vision to become fine-tuned.
December 24, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The Christmas Story in the Gospel of John is stated in five words: The Word was made Flesh. That Word dwelt among us. Herein lies why we always will live in mystery. We have to use words to speak about us being worded beings. The only way that we can relate "non-worded experiences" is through words. This reflexivity of continual words about words; this Word dwelling among us and continuously being the lens through we see all is the human voyage on which we have been placed. Every conversion or new birth for us comes through a rebirthing in the ways in which we are able to reconfigure our lives through words of our lives. The birth of Christ expressed as the Word made flesh invites us to the new birth in our lives that the same author of John's Gospel invited us to experience. Merry Christmas. Merry New births in the Word made flesh in our lives.
December 25, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
Today is the day to give into the child-like that will enable you to perceive the kingdom of God. A mystery of living well involves learning how to reignite or retain the wonder of one's child aspect of personality to accompany everything else that we have to do in our adult lives. Growing up in a harsh world with events of trauma seems to punish the child-like within us and tells us that we cannot have wonder any more. In the the tapestry of our lives we need to let the golden thread of the child-like be manifest. And Christmas day is a good day to awaken deep wonder from within.
December 26, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The force of the calendar comes into play now as the end of the year draws near. What does December 31st force upon us in terms of the deadlines in our lives? End of tax year, fiscal year? Deadlines force us to think about a plan after the deadline date to meet the next deadline. Deadlines also are tinged with the invitation of evaluations and judgments. How did I/we do regarding deadlines? And what do we need to do differently before the next deadline? Can I learn anything from past history? Are my cycles of repetition locked into unchangeable patterns? Can I make higher personal standards that will enable me to meet all of the standards that our society requires me to fulfill? Post-Christmas sets in motion a time of evaluation. How do we integrate our lives so that our spiritual, social, psychological and community lives are balanced and approach what we would call excellence in the art of good living?
December 27, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
In the aftermath of the time of receiving gifts we return to the gifts that are always given: the light of the sun, the freshness after the rain, the fresh air to breath, the ocean, the mountains and hills and the green on the hillsides, art and music and laughter and smiles and children and reliable people in our lives and friends and for the possible sublime to lurk as a parallel universe and break the surface of our perceptual plane at any moment. We indeed are favored with amazing gifts.
December 28, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The Feast of the Holy Innocents this year has poignant impact this year after the Newtown event. In a world that is so dominated by adult motives we need to protect the innocent ones who remind us of the original blessing of our births. If innocent life is seen as a threat to selfish adult activity or when the deranged would harm the innocent out of revenge or a distorted quest for notoriety we need to redouble our efforts for the safety of children. Today we mourn all the future that we lost in the lives of those untimely taken.
December 29, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The clock ticks down the end of the year. Time is based upon a binary of before and after. We think that we can quantify all of the befores into measurable time and the future is but actuarial probabilities. Time is not age since all of our body parts seem to age in uneven ways. Time in our psychologies is not very precise since time is based upon what our memories end up choosing to remember. The remembering editor of our memory replays our life like a time-lapsed video and so the psychology of time involves how and what we remember as the telling units that create the story of our lives that we tell. It could be that we are stuck in telling the same story over and over again. There may be a way to re-edit other memories so as to neutralize a "losing story" by giving it more context and so dilute the poison of a losing story. Happy re-editing of one's life is not lying; it is the finding of lost tape on the editing floor and doing some splicing.
December 30, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
The Christmas story in the Gospel of John has no Mary, Joseph, shepherds, angels, magi, Bethlehem, stable or star in the sky. There is a philosophical entity with personality called the "Logos" or Word. This Word was from the beginning, was with God and was God. And this Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And so in telling the story of Jesus some related to a pastoralnarrative of origin while another group of witnesses to the risen Christ used a poetic philosophical approach. Different appeals to the significance of Christ work differently to people at different stages of their faith. The Gospels present different kinds of appeals to people with different intellectual and spiritual needs
December 31, 2012
Aphorism of the Day
New Year's Eve and it might be resolution time regarding changes that we might want to make in our health habits, work, relationships and all manner of things. A start is to be brutally honest about where we are right now. From this honesty follows some realistic and incrementally accessible goals. Unrealistic or dream goals often will bury us in immediate failure. Plan things that can be integrated into your existing patterns of life with very subtle changes in daily routine. Think long term (losing half ounce a day is 11 pounds over a year). For "serious" change call in reinforcement in terms of a support team. You also may want to do a "life confession" with a confessor or counselor as a way of making transparent the current script of one's life. Understanding the script of one's unconscious body language is a step in interdiction of one's habits. Believe that God's perfection is not judgmental but as always shared in what we lack or think that we are lacking. As much as wanting to please others may be a forced motivation for wanting to change our lives with others is only one factor in wanting to change. We seek wisdom and a self-esteem based upon the orchestration and integration of all of the complex occasions of experience in our lives. God bless each as we try to surpass ourselves in a future state. No one can be you better, except You in a future state. Happy 2013.
