Is God My On-Call Personal Interventionist or Calling us to Creativity?

10 Pentecost, Cp12, July 28, 2013  

Gen. 18:20-33     Ps.85:7-13  

Col. 2:6-15   Luke 11:1-13 

Lectionary Link

   What is prayer?  If we look to the catechism in the Book of Common Prayer we find this answer:  Prayer is responding to God, with or without words.  That is a rather embracing notion of prayer.  We probably are more used to compartmentalized and occasion specific prayers, like table grace or the corporate prayers of the church when we gather to offer the Holy Eucharist or one of the other prayer offices.  Perhaps, you have your own style and practice of private prayer in the morning or in the evening.  Maybe you practice centering prayers, or meditation or contemplation as a way of remembering the fullness of God everywhere.  In centering prayer we can practice a command of God, written by the psalmist:  :Be still and know that I am God.”  In a busy life, it is sometime a necessity to take time to be still

  Today, we have some lessons from Holy Scripture on prayer.  We read that even after the great man of faith Abraham bargained with God, he still could not change the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Apparently, Abraham did not get his prayer answered and his prayer ended up in talking himself into accepting what actually was going to happen.

  In a Gospel tradition, the disciples of Jesus asked Jesus to teach them to pray.  And in the example of prayer that Jesus gave to his disciple and in his ironic explanations, one can sense the motive that his disciples had for learning to pray and we are given some insights that are attributed to Jesus about prayer.

  I suspect that the motive of the disciple for wanting to know how to pray was this:  They wanted to have influence with God.  They wanted God to be their own on-call personal interventionist for their needs.  I think that one of the reasons people quit church and quit praying is that they find out rather quickly that God is not an “on-call interventionist” stepping in to fulfill what I need and on my time schedule.

  God, I want bread and how come it seems that I am getting  a rock?  God, I want fish and how come it seems as though I am getting a snake?  God, I want an egg and how come it seems that I am getting a scorpion?

  We are or can be so ego-centric as to think that the universe should follow our own schedule so that when we are confronted with a delay in our needs gratification, we can bemoan the inconvenience of our actual circumstances not to give us what we need and when we need it.  And we can protest, “but God, I only want regular things…food, clothing, shelter, good health, safety for myself and my family and friends.  And what’s wrong with wanting those sorts of things?”  Could it be that in this prayer dilemma, Jesus is also giving us the invitation to the kind of abstract thinking needed for invention and creativity?  Necessity is the mother of invention?  Stone, instead of bread?  Perhaps I am to earn my bread by being a geologist?  My fish by being an herpetologist?  My egg by being an arachnologist? 
Sickness?  Maybe God is teaching us something about health and how to be with the suffering?  And how to be really appreciative and thankful when we do have health.  Perhaps poverty, lack of church participation is the challenge for us to learn how to be relevant to the lives of people in a different way?

    In our age of skepticism, some people might question the value and the purpose of prayer.  Why should we pray?  I mean if you can’t see God’s immediate intervention why should we pray?

  I believe that the ironic response of Jesus indicates that Jesus wanted his disciples to be attuned to the spiritual flow of life itself, rather than just see God as an omni-present Santa Claus dropping gifts to us whenever we ask.  Jesus was trying to teach his disciples that his Father was a giver of good gifts and maybe his disciples’ definition of “good gifts” was much too narrow.

  During the development of modern psychology, psycho-therapy was sometimes referred to as the “talking cure.”  What if we could understand prayer as the “talking cure” that we can have in our relationship with God?    How can we come to health through persistent “talking with God?”  How can prayer become our talking cure?

  I think that it is important for each person in life to find his or her voice.  Each person needs to practice the words that each one has and be able to use them to tie together their inner lives with the events in their outer lives.  Part of finding our voice has to do with finding a way to name and categorize all of what we experience.  Part of maturity involves an honest assessment of what is actually happening in our lives.  An egg is desired, but a scorpion appears.  A fish is desired, but we seem to get a snake.  We want bread, but apparently we receive a rock.  In finding our prayer voice we learn to find a way to deal with delayed gratification and one of the results is to receive an increased appreciation for even the things that we desire even the basic things of life, the fish, eggs and bread.   When we find our voice, our prayer voice, our talking cure with God, our life experience becomes more expansive.  We begin to deal with a larger spectrum of human experience and so we become better able to deal with more diverse circumstances and we become more useful to the people who need us and depend upon us.

  A wise parent does not just yield to a child in a temper tantrum who is demanding immediate needs gratification.  Why?  Because a parent wants to teach the child many other ways of responding and acting to an apparent situation of need.  Always giving in and being an interventionist at the whim of a child is not wise parenting.

  So we have  prayer as a practice to find our talking cure with God.  And if we are persistent with this talking cure, if we can find our prayer voice, we will find that God’s Spirit has been given to us and that we are in a wonderful flow.  Then from our relationship with God, we can find ways to integrate the human experience that comes our way.

  Learning to pray is not treating God as our own personal interventionist; it is more about getting in tune with God’s Spirit so that we can know how God is already intervening in and through us.

  Perhaps you have heard it said that “Prayer changes things.”  I don’t think that is true.  What is true is that things can become seen differently as we are changed by prayer and as we understand that we are in the flow with God’s Spirit.

  The words of Jesus encourage us to find our “talking cure” with God today.  Prayer is a way to find our voice; if you need to keep a journal of your prayer talk with God, do it.  Work to bring to language everything in your inside world in interaction with your outside world as a way of finding your voice.  If you find your prayer voice, then you will also have words of wisdom to share with the people who need you to find your prayer voice.

  May God help us to practice the “talking cure” of prayer today, and may we find our voice, a voice that is able to integrate our inner worlds with the events that are occurring in our outer worlds.  As we read the circumstances as the "response"  to our prayers, let us also be willing to let need and necessity be for us the inspiration for invention and creativity today.  Amen.

Be Ready to Make the Contemplative Choice

9 Pentecost, Cp11, July 21, 2013   

Gen. 18:1-14    Ps.15  

Col. 1:21-29  Luke 10:38-42 

Lectionary Link

  What if you gave a dinner party and invited a special guest and a report of that dinner party become written down.  And what if the written report of that dinner party became a part of Holy Scriptures and came to be regarded as God’s word.  When there are only a few vignettes that are recorded in the life of Jesus, each vignettes or narrative become metaphors and theology.

  This is what has happened to the Mary and Martha story.  The Mary and Martha story has become typology for religious personalities, or for that matter it models lots family or community disputes.  One could see a parish dispute along this line.  One person thinks that church is only for contemplation, communion and prayer.  Don’t ask me to work in the kitchen or do clean up on my “spiritual” time.   One can see every flustered parish worker who is upset that people benefit from the practical work without feeling any obligation to help out.

  And it does seem as though Jesus takes the sides of those who are more interested in contemplation and devotion rather than the practical work of hospitality.

  To counter this apparent preference of Jesus for those who practice contemplation over work, the church throughout history has tried to rehabilitate the Martha tradition.  After all, the church that became a vast institution with lots of property has had an incredible need for a vast division of labor.  The church has needed “free labor.”  The church has needed to valorize works of hospitality as creative ministry.

  The Mary and Martha religious personalities have been perpetuated in a very conscious way by monastic orders.  Some religious orders have defined themselves as “Mary” orders, or committed to contemplative prayer and have very little or no contact with the outside world.  Other orders have defined themselves as “Martha” orders or committed to works of service, education  and hospitality.  And other orders have tried the balance the two; work and contemplation.

  One of the things that happens when we generalize a narrative event into theologies and types, is that we steal its significance as a singular event.  If we generalized we could say that Jesus prefers contemplation and devotion to him over the works of hospitality.  And we forget that this is just one event in the life of Jesus, Mary and Martha.  One event does not establish everlasting character.  One event with the exchange of dialogue does not establish the final pronouncement upon anything.

  I would like for us for our reflections today to honor this event as a singular event in the lives of Mary, Martha and Jesus.  And in so doing, I think we could make the following statements.  This one event does not mean that Jesus disapproves of the works of hospitality.  It does not mean that Mary was a perpetual space cadet who used contemplation to “get out of doing the work.”  It does not mean that Martha was against contemplation because she was just a nervous uptight obsessive compulsive hostess with the mostest.

  This story is just one event in the life of Jesus, Mary and Martha.  And you and I may have unique, singular events of this kind at times in our lives when we are confronted with three aspects of our personalities that conform to the behaviors, decisions and words of the persons in our Gospel story.  For short hand, we might say we have the Mary aspect, the Martha aspect and the Christ aspect of our personalities.

  Mary had arrived at a crucial time in her life.  She had discovered a friend and a mentor who was getting through to her like no one had ever done before.  What does one do when the invitation to have a mentor friend and to have the possibility of creative advance and new insight is set right before us?  What does one do when one’s heart has fallen in love with one who offers personal enlargement and hope?  When those events of invitation are put before us, all of us have a very practical side; we have a proverbial “Martha aspect of our personalities.”  “You can’t take time off for the luxury of contemplation; there’s too much work to do.  How can you justify taking time off to do this when there is so much work to do?”  And then we have the umpire of our consciousness, the Christ aspect of our personality.

  What does the Christ aspect of our personality recommend?  Whenever we have the opportunity to be mentored into peace, wisdom, joy or further excellence of any sort, we need to take the time.  We need to hear the Christ aspect of our personalities give us the permission to attend to contemplation when a new opportunity is presented to us even though the ordinary work of life might have to be delayed or restructured.  It is so easy to let all of the ordinary tasks that need to be done to keep us from taking the invitation to an opportunity that may not come again.  And this is when we need the Christ-wisdom to choose contemplation insight over the practical chores that need to be done.

  Why would I refer to the Christ-aspect of personality?  In the writings in the Pauline tradition we have the expression, “Christ in you the hope of glory.”  The life of Jesus and the word of Jesus have left the legacy of the Holy Spirit making the risen Christ as the guiding presence of wisdom to which we have access.  And so we can know a Christ-aspect of our personalities to access the guidance of wisdom with our lives to read the signs of our lives that continually invite us to further excellence.

  Mary took the opportunity which was offered to her in a session of learning from Jesus.  She was affirmed for making the right decision even though it meant that she neglected some of the ordinary duties.  There will always be meals to serve and dishes to wash, but there is not always the unique invitation to advance one’s spiritual life forever.  So Mary made the right decision.

  We too need to make the right decision when it comes to invitations to new breakthroughs for our spiritual, intellectual and emotional lives.  May God give us grace to hear the Christ aspect of our personalities when we need to take new steps of spiritual excellence.  Amen.

For Jesus, Neighbor is a Verb

8 Pentecost, Cp10, July 14, 2013   

Deut. 30:9-14   Ps.25:3-9  

Col. 10:25-37  Luke 10:25-37 

Lectionary Link

  Have you ever experienced in a time of need the kindness of strangers?

  In 1975, I decided to make my Journey East, to the walk the Razor’s Edge, in a Passage to India. (My apologies to Hermann Hesse, Somerset Maugham and E.M. Forrester whom I happen to be reading at the time).

I had gone through Afghanistan, Herat, Kandahar and Kabul (saw the Bamiyan Buddhas….the one destroyed by the Taliban).  I had passed through the Khyber Pass into Pakistan and then into the Punjab region of Northwest India; I spent several days in New Delhi before arriving in Agra.  One goes to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and it was all and more than I expected.  I also took day trips to Fatehpur Sikri to a complex built by the same dynasty and I returned to Agra in preparation to leave to go to the north through Darjeeling of tea fame, toward Nepal.   I left my hotel with my back pack in tow; got a ride on a rickshaw to the train station to wait for the train.  Sudden I was overtaken by fever and the worst feelings of nausea imaginable.  I decided to take on some fluids because the weather was hot and humid.  I purchased two bottles of orange Fanta and sat on a bench to wait for the train.  I weakened, so much so that I begin to lie on the bench.   And then I vomited; what a sight, here I was on an island train bench in an incredible large puddle of bright orange Fanta (I’ve never drunk an orange Fanta again in my life).   I had been struck by the infamous Delhi Belly.  Alone in a train station with thousands of unknown Indians.  Too weak to even get up and I knew I could not take the train.  As I lay there, my eyes were drawn to the area underneath the opposite train platform and what did I see?  It was teeming with rats.  How’s that for an image of helplessness?

  A young man saw my situation and asked me if I needed help.  I told him that I probably had a very bad case of amoebic dysentery and that I would need some medicine.  This young man from Calcutta, helped me get up and get into a rickshaw; he asked about a local doctor and took me to a local doctor who gave me some medicine.  This young man took me back to my hotel where I spent several days recovering.  I tried to give him some money for his trouble but he would not take it; after I insisted he finally took a few Rupees for his train fare back to Calcutta.

  The kindness of a stranger.  This is the parable of the Good Samaritan that Jesus told when a young lawyer had recited to him the ancient summary of the Law: And love your neighbor as yourself.  The young lawyer interested in getting some legal qualifying information from Rabbi Jesus, asked a very dangerous question.  “And who is my neighbor?”

   Behind this question was really another question.  Who am I required to love?  The hated Romans?  The Samaritans?

  The lawyer was assuming like we often do a very limited meaning of the word “neighbor.”  Neighbor often means those who live closest to us in our immediate vicinity.  Neighbor is mostly used as a passive concept; we get designated as a neighbor because of where we live.  In the passive notion of neighbor we do not have to do anything to be designated as a neighbor.

  The parable of the Good Samaritan explodes the passive notion of being a neighbor.  And who is my neighbor? Wrong question. The question is: Am I a person who acts in a kind and neighborly way to the people who are brought into close proximity with me in my daily life?

  Jesus changes the word neighbor from being a noun into being a verb.  Yes, you are a neighbor by being in proximity to other people but neighbor is also a verb and let conjugate this verb.  I neighbor, you neighbor, he or she neighbors, we neighbor, they neighbor.  Past tense:  I neighbored.  We neighbored.  Future tense:  I will neighbor.  We will neighor.

  With the parable of the Good Samaritan (maybe that would be a good name for a hospital)  Jesus also expanded the meaning of being a good neighbor.  When is it the most difficult time to be a good neighbor?  When it is terribly inconvenient.  Exigent, arising emergencies are very inconvenient; they happen on no one’s schedules.  Accidents are not planned; they just happen and they are very inconvenient.

  The story of the Good Samaritan has the added dimension of the challenge of the inconvenient.  The notion of the suddenly random inconvenient event is the ultimate test of being a neighbor.  Ironically, people often are heroic in event of emergencies.  In fires, accidents, hurricanes, tornadoes, often people will be neighborly in heroic ways.

  Let us remember today the very dynamic notion of neighbor which we learn from the parable of the Good Samaritan.  The notion of neighbor is defined on a continuum of being a recipient of acts of compassion and empathy and being the one who performs acts of compassion and empathy.

  When you and I are in need of acts of kindness, we want to be regarded as neighbors. And we want someone to be an active neighbor towards us.  And we need to be ready to receive kindness from people who may not be our normal every day acquaintances.   And we too need to be active neighbors and be willing to respond in emergencies when it is inconvenient.  We need to know that anyone who is in need is our neighbor and respond accordingly.

  Let us learn from Jesus regarding this very expansive notion of neighbor.  Let us know that as disciples of Jesus we live today to have our hearts and lives be educated toward greater love and compassion.  Amen.

Evangelism and the Blessing and Cursing Traditions

7 Pentecost, C p 9, July 7, 2013  

2 Kings 5:1-14  Psalm 30

Gal. 6:1-18    Luke 10:1-12,16-20  

Lectionary Link

  A wrong assumption that we often make about the biblical writings is that the entire Bible is a like a single book with chapters and it is put together like a book in the same way that a modern book is put together by a single human author..  Since the Bible is not like that, if we try to force upon the Bible singular and consistent subject matter, we end up with contortions and the biblical writings can lose their intuitive reality in our lives.

  The Gospel of Luke is put together by an editor who was in possession of perhaps six decades of sources within the Christ communities.  These sources are presented in the speaking voices of Jesus; the early Christ communities believed that they were inspired by a continuing risen-Christ oracle that continued to be known within their various situations.

  In the Lucan collection of writings we can find policies differences and different understandings about the reception of the Gospel message with the people who were able to hear the early preachers of the Gospel.

  Sometimes the Gospel writers use agricultural metaphors; those who respond in a positive way to the preaching of the Jesus and the disciples are understood to be in the ripe condition of the harvest.

  So those who don’t understand or accept the Gospel preaching are not in the harvest condition; they are not ripe and ready to receive the message.  The people who harvest, the farmers have to know when to harvest and they need to know the conditions to bring crops to harvest.

  Persons who want to persuade others about good news need to have some psychological wisdom in order to establish mentor relationships that work for both parties.  If I try to force my good news on someone who cannot see the news as good, then they are going be angry and bothered at me and I am going to be challenged about how good my news is.  After all, if my news is not universally winsome, then I may have cause to doubt my good news or my ability to share it in the right way.

  It may really hurt when you are compelled to share one’s very best with someone and then be rejected.  In love we call this unrequited love; Boy loves a girl and that girl does not love the boy in the same way that he loves her.  Boy is unrequited.  Boy has dilemma.  “I can’t force her to love me when she doesn’t but why is this happening to me?  The power of love is so strong that it would seem ordained that she love me in a similar way.”  What does boy do?  Get’s angry.  Redoubles efforts to try to persuade love to happen.  Get’s angry at the one to whom he has just professed undying love (how ironic is that?) Get’s angry at self and goes into depression.  Sulks, pouts, and make life miserable for all around him.  Hurts self.  Writes poetry.  Writes a Country and Western song, makes a million dollars.

  There is this unrequited tradition within the Gospel.  It fits into the prayer tradition of blessings and curses that are found throughout the Bible.  In the Bible it is often presented as liturgically proper to use prayers and invectives to issue both blessings and curses.  This is for us a confusing tradition within the Gospel; why would Jesus who asks us in one place to bless and not curse, and to love our enemies; why would he in another place curse a village as a place deserving a punishment worse  than the fire and brimstone destruction of Sodom, simply because the people of the village did not respond positively to the disciple’s message about the kingdom of God.  If I were to say, if you don’t accept my sermon then you’re going to hell, you’d probably suggest that I might handle my rejection a bit better perhaps by writing a Country and Western Song.

  You see, we Episcopalians are not too good with this unrequited tradition of curses that is found in some threads of Gospel tradition.  Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and a host of other preachers embrace this tradition out of their certainty that they know the good guys and bad guys so clearly.

  We Episcopalians are more used to the tradition of cursing being exercised in scatological expletives when we’re angry at some one…”How many times have we heard, said or thought God damn someone….or Let him go to hell?”  We feel embarrassed about including our curse tradition under the umbrella of good religion, while others incorporate the cursing tradition because they believe they are so right and someone else is so wrong.  We as Episcopalians though often do get our dander up when it comes to basic social justice and we can feel in a “cursing” mood for those who foster injustice or delay justice.

  Within the Gospel today, we can glean some practical tips about sharing God’s good news.  No bag or extra shoes or money.  Travel light.  Why?  We don’t want the good news to be about our cultural baggage.  When I traveled and lived in an impoverished country, I determined not to carry a camera.  I did not want to be marked as a rich foreigner who had come over to observe the spectacle of poverty and ignorance in a foreign country.  Sometimes we can give the impression that the Good News means saying Thee and Thou, wearing fancy vestments, or being a King James Bible-toting American preacher with a white tie and white shoes.  Remember our Good News is about the people to whom we bring the message; not about them embracing an implied superiority of our culture.  We are not trying to make converts so that we can prove that we are right or better.  Remember we are not message; we are to prepare the way for the message of Christ.  And the message of Christ may come without us ever using religious words.  We need to be people who live and present ourselves in such a way that people can make positive transference upon our lives, because within us they see something of their fuller selves to which they are being called.  That fuller self is the risen Christ, within us.  We are to be bright and clear mirrors for people to find their fuller selves.  If our faith message comes across as egotistical people who think we have with the best religion; this is not going to be good news for others.  People can feel rightly put off when they are approached in this way.

  Next, take the message with peace.  If each one has found the place of peace in one’s heart then one can carry peace like a “vibe” as the hippies used to say.  If one has found inner peace, then that peace has a way of creating a safe and pleasing and attractive context for people to befriend one another and share their very best with each other.

  Next, don’t force the message or the encounter.  If there is not a receptive spirit for peace and befriending, be a good farmer and know that the harvest is not ready.  Put on one’s shoes and hit the road Jack.  Move on.  How many religious solicitors do we refuse to even let into our homes because they do not know how to read our non-receptive messages that we are giving to them.  People of entire faith communities get branded as “pushy solicitors.”  In regular life they may be kind people, but suddenly when they feel group pressure to “save other people” they lose their niceness because of their own group pressure.  This is not the wise evangelism of the good news of Christ.

  Finally, if we should not be discouraged if people do not accept us or our good news; we should be very modest about when we seem to blessed with “apparent” success.  Remember that we get to live and share our good news is self-rewarding whether it is received or rejected by others.  And rather than rejoicing in success, we should rejoice that our names are written in heaven.  To me, this simply means there more to do and become tomorrow so don’t get defeated by rejection and don’t get the ego inflated by success.  Keep looking onward and upward because that is hope’s invitation to continue to have a future in surpassing oneself.

  My Episcopal friends, probably you and I prefer the tradition of evangelism being like farming and waiting until people are ripe to receive the good news.   So you and I probably embrace the blessing tradition of the Gospel and not the cursing tradition of the Gospel.  But let’s be honest, we probably regard lots of religious people to be intellectual impaired because of the way in which they articulate their religion.  We have to admit we can be a bit snobbish in looking down our noses at “fundamentalists” and so that may be our subtle buy in to the cursing tradition found in the Bible.

  May God help us to find our Good News today, live in such a way that people can experience a peaceful presence, and be mirrors onto which other people can positively transfer a sense of their well-being because they see their fuller self in the risen Christ within us.  Amen.

June 2013 Aphorisms

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 30, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

This aphorist's goal in life is to convince us about our multidiscursive nature of being human because of how we are layered and nuanced through and through in how we have taken on language. In religion one can lose perspective through misunderstanding the processes of language even when the contexts provides us with the codes on how we are to interpret. A Stop sign on the corner is different from the Stop sign that decorates a bedroom as a sort of Warholian piece of "pop art." The word Stop on the sign on the corner results in different body language acts than does the word Stop on the sign in a piece of "pop art." We understand the processes of language from the context of our cultures even as we always need to be in the learning process of how we use language and how we are "used" by it in how we take it on in so many passive ways in our culture. In our faith experience we need to understand biblical language more appropriately in the aesthetic category rather than as scientific method or eye-witness journalistic accounts. Failing to do so results in using the wrong discursive practice to interpret a text.Saturday, June 29, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 29, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Multidiscursivity layers and intermingles and enlightens and confuses us in how we interpret or read our world. So a fundamentalist might acknowledge the "truth" of radioactive dating even while asserting that the world is just 6000 years old. After all, if God created an older man Adam, God also created "very old rocks." So the apparent conflict between science and literal myth is "resolved." Such is only one example of the interpretive knots that people tie themselves into as they fail to interpret the world and the interior self with the fitting discursive practice to process incoming information. To live according to all of the modern effects of knowing the laws of science while assuming the world is 6000 years old does manifest itself in a schizoidal disconnect from reality. And we see that in our public life today.Friday, June 28, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 28, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Some people have a difficult time in believing because they do not recognize or accept that they are multidiscursive beings. So they are trying to receive square data through a round hole on their language interpretive screens. When things don't fit, they can't believe because they finally admit that the square stuff will not enter their round hole. This happens when people try to force matters that properly belong to aesthetics through the holes that are dominate in philosophical and scientific method thinking. Do we have to quit being moved by poetry or music just because we can't explain its effect upon us philosophically or scientifically? Or do we admit that we need all of the multidiscursive processing slots to give our experience the fullness of poignant truths. We may stop believing when we privilege one certain discursive mode as being the end all mode of defining truth. Let's adopt a new version of Descartes, "We multidiscourse, therefore we are."Thursday, June 27, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 27, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

In the long effort to institutionalize the message of Jesus, the followers of Jesus have had to do much editing. First, there was the decision made about what to include and thus save in the collective memory. But the sayings of Jesus were saved in different ways to different groups of people. One version is "Blessed are the poor," and another is "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Why the difference? For a message to survive it must always be applied within a contemporary community who still find the message relevant and useful. We cannot time travel to the original contexts in the life of Jesus of Nazareth; we can study lots of historical background information. Today, there seems to be people who would rather say "my interpretation of Jesus is better than yours" rather than find insights to know God as worshipful and find inspiration to love all of our neighbors.Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 26, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Faith and hope are very contextual. For some it may be hopeful to merely rise in the morning do some very basic life tasks and be faithful in basic maintenance. But in other contexts where other levels of ability factor in hope raises the bar upon what we want to occur and hope can set what may be for us higher standards and faith for us then means being successful in meeting the standards of hope. Sometimes we hope for too much or hope does not seem to be grounded enough in realistic assessment of our situation and when our expression of faith does not reach hope's standard we may be tempted to feel "faithless" or not up to the task. Sometimes we have to accept the hope of being like a Cubs fan, living with the hope of "wait" till next year even while believing and working in the present towards hope's vision of excellence.Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 25, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Dreams can allow one to return backward in historical reconstruction of an event carrying with one the sense of foreknowledge that all will be not only well but better, even marvelous, glorious. In a dream one can return to a former scenario with hindsight redemption and it can make the experience of former pain, meaningful in a different way. When one reads the Passion narratives, particularly in John's Gospel, one finds that the authors have returned to the Passion event from the dream of resurrection redemption and the Passion event is appropriated in a different way than it would have been originally experienced. The atmospherics of the internal kingdom allows this confusion of time when one returns to the past memory and reconstructs it with a "will have become" knowledge.Monday, June 24, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 24, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Have the experiences of Jesus and St. Paul been recorded and institutionalized to be made the normative standard so that everyone else is to live second hand off the accounts of Jesus and Paul? Is the purpose of our faith to say Jesus and Paul already had all experiences of the godly, so why bother to embrace one's own with any originality? Or do the written records of Jesus and Paul exist so that we might embrace the originality of our own experience, not so new religions might be formed but to re-instantiate the Spirit again and again?Sunday, June 23, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 23, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

"Please understand me" can be an unrealistic impossible request because of differences no two people harmonically converge in sharing precise "same meaning." In the euphorics of love we can share mutual impressionism in meanings and in mob or herd thinking we can unite behind what we believe to be a common idea. Being unique in one's understanding preserves our distinction but demanding that someone else be exactly where one is in understanding is a kind of insecure dictatorship. One way of understanding God's Spirit is to live in the impressionism of love in mutual respect holding to things in common while granting that everyone is is an "exception" to any cookie cutter singular pattern of how one should be loving.Saturday, June 22, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 22, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Live radio has a seven second delay device to allow the censoring of unwanted material from being heard. Language stands as a delay filter between us and the reality of what is outside and inside. Since we only learn the outside and inside from learning language we begin to assume the language filter and reality are one and the same and are unaware of the delay. In that delay and on the screen of Word, our world is created, being created and will be created and though Word is very communal we still have the freedom to articulate particular Word manifestation in our speech acts and body language. We need to look at what we have on automatic through repetition to interdict habits that we want to change even as we rely on repetitive habits to be memorized redundancies so that we can take on creating what is truly new for the day beyond our habits.Friday, June 21, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 21, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

We look to the future, both immediate and long term to verify or falsify the current details of how we would articulate hope.  And if hope's detail become falsified when future becomes the present our organ of hope can still churn out new details but do we put more realistic parameters on what we hope for if past hope details have been falsified?  Do we make Hope into  a person who can cause us to be often in the situation of an unrequited lover?  Do we give up hope on the grand scale?  Do we stop loving hope?  And what kind of word gymnastics is this having dueling virtues, love and hope?  Can the expression of one virtue be in competition with the expression of another virtue?  Loving to hope and hoping to love are rather theoretical unless they are attached to details in our lives where we add the third virtue of faith to be unafraid to let theory be incarnate in the details of our lives where desire is really projected and the rubber really hits the road.Thursday, June 20, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 20, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

The mutual relationship of an uncountable number of beings, events, and things all sharing a degree of freedom is responsible for the experience what we call the "random." Randomness might get qualified as serendipitous fortune or blessing or as misfortune depending upon whose well-being is impacted by what is called "random." Where there is human behavior and human willfulness one can make judgments about "culpability," but even culpability is set up by a host of mysterious preconditions. If Godly salvation is the cosmic health insurance of living, we can be thankful that Grace comes to us even though we have many preexisting conditions. How's that for an affordable care act?Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 19, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

As multi-discursive people we need to have all pathways to insights open and not limit how we are going to be greeted and welcomed to our next step in excellence by a particular lure in our path.  Wisdom as possible insights lurks everywhere; we can we awestruck by the form of a gnarled live oak tree, a swooping raptor, a piece of music, a phrase in a novel, the right spot on the palate, a quip of a friend, an inadvertent over-hearing of someone else's conversation or the smile of a child.  The sublime is an always already possibility if we've learned to turn all of our radar on. Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 18, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

With all of the internet match-making sites, there is an effort to aid and assist the event of serendipity of love. The theory is that mutual love is more likely to happen if there are more "viewing" chances. One hopes that if God is love then there is possible in this life enough mutual people-whispering to happen so that everyone was befriended to one's heart content. How can we read our environment today as whispering us in befriending ways? Surely if everyone in this world had a significant other, there would be world peace? Timing is everything and we pray for propitious timing for all today.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

The Gospels portray Jesus as the ultimate People Whisperer to those who needed their lives brought into peaceful order. At the same time he is presented as one who did not whisper his religious opponents and the Roman authorities who were threatened by something other than his therapeutic presence to those who wanted and needed to be whispered to health. The realm or kingdom of Christ is seen as a parallel existence with other more obvious realms. The irony continues today; people can still be whispered by a risen Christ even when the outer realm and kingdoms indicate no peace at all.

Aphorism of the Day, June 16, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

In what way is history and the Bible writings for entertainment? Only exciting events and people are deemed worthy of memory in literature that becomes public even though 99 per cent or more of life is merely events of the quotidian (so ordinary and everyday) that we don't deem them worthy to remember. History and the Bible are stories about our identities; they make us see ourselves differently and we need to continually ask how they make us see ourselves. Literature and history involve reducing massive amounts of information to "time-lapsed" stories so that we can get the impression in a short viewing of "what happened." And we do not get to know much of what happened about those in history on whom the camera of history writers were not focused. In patriarchal and paternalistic cultures women, children and working class (slaves) did not get to appear much in the history books. So massive amounts of quotidian experiences determining outcomes never got recorded. If Christianity has anything to do with liberation, it would mean that the once marginalized can now be given an equal place in how our stories are to be told in the future.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 15, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Structuralism was based upon Saussurean lingistics which posited a signifer and a signifed. Post-structuralism came about because of the acknowledgment of not being able get to an unmediated signified; one simply ends up with an endless reference to synonym signifers. So words end up pointing only to other words and not to the "real thing," since "real thing" are also wordsignifers. One can appreciate the post-modern dilemma with words like God and love and hope and justice; they still have meaning, many meanings and different meanings for people who use these words in their experiences. One can appreciate the effort of science to simplify referential language for community agreement but at the same time one should not abandon the worded and aesthetic profundity of using words with feeling tones and moods because people in situ often use words like God, love, justice and hope as the only truly meaningful way to characterize their experiences. Post-modernism is an invitation to mysticism because we are people who are created in how we are significant by Word.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 14, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

One can find "fundamentalism" is perhaps a way in which one holds what one has come to regard as true. The insights "appear" to be so unique and so special to a person or to a group that it becomes exclusive. One takes the blessing of an insight and makes oneself or one's group so chosen, that others immediately become the impoverished "unchosen" who don't have the exclusive blessing of such insights. But what is the benefit of such an insight that separates one from humanity in such a judgmental way. Seems like it could be just as well characterized as a Folie à deux..trois,quartre, cinq.........

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 13, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Balancing excesses and austerity require wisdom in life. Excesses arise from the build up of desire that projects upon objects and people in the one's environment. They come easily because excess have the same energy of a pathology: It's easy to do things over which one does not seem to have much control as in "I have the gift of eating endless chocolate." The excess of worship comes from the deep sense of appreciation where one has come to take events of grace so personal that something of excessive devotion is drawn from within and after pinching oneself in disbelief regarding serendipitous grace, one offers prayers and acts of gratitude to Plenitude for coming into the arrangement of harmonic ambiance so as to permit such a state of well-being.

Aphorism of the Day, June 12, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Roland Barthes in his book "S/Z" introduced the notion of a writerly reader.  From this notion, I understood how little an author controls one's meanings when one's writes.  The reader is the writer of what is being read while it is being read because the reader is bringing the reader's meanings to the words on the page.  One could extend this notion to what would be called "speakerly listening."  Do we ever hear what someone is really saying or only how we filter it through our own meaning filters?  If we cannot own up to our own meaning filters in acknowledging that we are speakerly listeners, how do we do attentive listening?  Therapeutic listening involves a more intentional exercise, an impossible one, to withhold or practice deferring judgments upon what one's hear in order to let the speaker determine his or her own meanings before one rushes to interact with one's own judgments.  And if one's judgments are not asked for, then they need not be given.  This is a way of honoring a person with an attentive listening for the purposes of allowing a person to release pain through simply speaking.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 11, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Take note today of the focus of intentional acts that are required to complete issues of life maintenance and work today and the ambient factors that do not grab your immediate attention. Constant sirens, chirping birds, drone of freeway traffic, running water, colors, access to windows and light, etc. The great environment is expressed as living and having our being in God.We can only imagine God as the greatest expansion on a concentric horizon. The smaller concentric environments that surround us seem to make the inaccessible horizon negligible in our knowledge of immediate cause and effect. We experience environment as both spacial and inter-spatial. As spiritual directors of our own lives we need to conduct many kinds of environmental relationships in our daily lives. How do we neutralize an offending factor in our environment? How do we integrate incredible diversity into an experience of beauty? How do we appropriate cacophony as a great hummmmm.....OMMMMMM of meditative support?

Monday, June 10, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 10, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Go forth and stylize your good news today. Use the typical rhetorical devices of ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos is the appeal to one's character; how we back up our words with our living. Pathos, is appealing to our knowledge of the emotions and sentiments of others; one size does not fit all and so sensitivity to others is needed. Logos is making the reasonable case for our good news. Wisdom is using our accumulated life experience (ethos) and presenting ourselves with emotional intelligence of ourselves and others (pathos) and grounded in accessible common sense (logos) appeals. You can make the case that you are loved by God today and be that agent of love today.

Aphorism of the Day, June 9, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

If there is a God, God and the very notion of God is left to those who are not God to defend God's reality. One might question the wisdom of the Greatest to entrust the knowledge of divine existence to those who potentially could do it so poorly as to misrepresent the Greatest and cause people to disbelieve. This situation of great Creative Freedom being vulnerable to lesser but true freedom of human beings is our great epic in life. If we limit God to but phrases from the cultural details of the Bible, we can misrepresent the Greatness of a God of Creative Freedom who lures us to honor our lesser freedom through the practice of justice and care.

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 8, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

The Psalmist wrote that the Lord God gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger. Skeptics ask how does or is God doing this since oppression and hunger have always existed. If the Lord God is giving justice and food then one must ask serious questions about what is falsifying the reality of those words. Or is it that God is the utopian impossibility of human quest as the structural personal necessity to set the direction of preservation of life because if the direction is toward injustice and hunger with no counter gravity towards goodness, indeed we are doomed.

Friday, June 7, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 7, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Let us strive to be converted to generosity, not because there are people and causes who let their needs be known to us all of the time; rather let us be converted to generosity for the personal benefit of our own health and heart. Generous people are never poor because they have eyes to see their collective wealthy everywhere and enjoy their wealth without the hassle or anxiety of maintenance. No one can steal the sunrise or sunset from one who takes time to enjoy them as a personal possession. A generous person can help others to discover the wealth that comes from seeing how much is freely bestowed upon us by mere existence itself.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 6, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

The word "style" often has come to mean shallow individualism in manner of expression. It can also mean that one simply has the money to buy the latest models of clothes or any product. In another sense style does not need to mean a showy, shallow individualism for getting crass attention; rather it can be the way in which a person has mobilized the desire of one's life to energize the grace or charisma of one's personality to make truths one's own in very personal and original ways. Style in this sense is like improvisation in jazz music; learning all of the music rules so that one can break them in a profound lyricism. Style can mean to learn lyricism in living as one moves from imitation to invention in one's life of faith. No one can "do" faith exactly like you if you are doing your faith with lyrical "style."

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 5, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Graduation ceremonies are called Commencements. It is a threshold event between one's life in school and the next phase of life. The threshold event is liminal; betwixt and between. The so-call "real world" of finding a job contrasted with the student world means that a significant re-socialization begins to take place in one's life and re-socialization re-brands us in how we have to begin to know ourselves in the future. Baptism is the sacrament of life and continual re-adjustment to know ourselves differently as an individual based upon the community within which we live and the one that provides for the highest vision of who we are and can become. Whether a student or newly hired engineer in one's first post graduate job, the baptismal issue is how to continue to know oneself as loved and gifted within a community and to let the community make its impact upon oneself even as one contributes to the growth in excellence of the community. A blessed commencement to all new graduates!

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 4, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Graduation events in our education systems are perhaps crucial rites of passage in the lives of students and are rightly celebrated. It is good to celebrate achievements in knowledge even though learning is never completely attained and what one has learned has to be returned to and integrated for the rest of one's life. The sacraments are not rules and requirements of the the church; they are rite of passage wisdom events which if properly understood and taught are rituals for the dynamic remembering and renewal of life orientation realities. Too bad the church often has taught them as control of the "herd" and people have thus seen them as requirements for church membership rather than dynamic personal and social faith process in continual life orientation.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Aphorism of the Day, June 3, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Monday Recipe?  A dash of blues.  A kick of "get real."  A teaspoon of affirmation.  A tablespoon of classical music.  A sprinkle of lucky kindness.  A cup of drudgery.  A ton of patience.  A pinch of forgiveness.  Drops of smiles.  A quart of friendship. Served with copious amounts of God's grace.

Aphorism of the Day, June 2, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

What is the difference between having meaning or being meaningful and being true? Are unicorns true in terms of their empirical existence? Are unicorns meaningful for preschool girls? Truth cannot be limited to empirical verification unless one wants to deny poignant meanings of many unseen realities. Certainly if one's unseen realities do not connect one with what can be seen in ways other than fantasy then one's grip on reality and balance in life is in question. Truth may be a multi-faceted diamond with many showings corresponding to the many ways in which we express our humanity, all of which come to language in word and body language. Wisdom is worded pragmatism in doing justice to multi-discursive completeness in human experience.

Aphorism of the Day, June 1, 2013

Aphorism of the Day

Without being permanent member of Procrastinator's Anonymous, we can be sure that when we arrive at the end of this day there will be some things left undone. The question of anxiety regarding things left undone may have to do with self-expectation and one's specific check list or the expectations of others or the expectations that we have learned to project upon God for what God expects of us. Life involves learning to live with things left undone since we will leave this world "undone" and "unfinished" in the call of the future to always be self-surpassing. What can we tolerate leaving undone today? The poor and the hungry? Justice? Cleaning one's desktop? Assess how you want to go to sleep tonight and the "undone" things of one's life. And don't let perfectionism condemn you; let perfectability invite you.