Saints And Sinners

September 30, 2018

Year 3, Day 273 | No Comments

Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

Mankind is interested, significantly, in status. Status can be used to advantage or disadvantage as persons and society choose. The Untouchables of India have had a much harder row to hoe than the ordinary citizen, and an impossible one related to the Brahman class. As the president of a college I hired as a professor a scientist with a documented doctoral degree, a man originally from India. When he earned his graduation, he had to sit separately from the general audience, was called and received his degree, and returned to his seat outside the main body, and walked home barefoot in the mud. He had overcome to become a highly respected member of our faculty, and after our move to… Read more

Continuity

September 29, 2018

Year 3, Day 272 | No Comments

Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

Persons ought to have a collection of habits that characterize their lives. In the present society there are so many persons dominated by bad habits that we have begun to give, perhaps have already given, the word habit a bad connotation, even bad denotation. The problem may be ancient. In both 2 Thessalonians 3:6 (idle habits) and 2 Peter 2:7 (dissolute habits) in the New English Bible, the word is used in negative context. The King James translates the word as disorderly in the first instance and filthy conversation in the second. From the various words used in relevant passages the negative concept holds that the reference is to that related to unsatisfactory and repeated behavior. Translations appear to prefer… Read more

Friendship

September 28, 2018

Year 3, Day 271 | No Comments

Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

I just received a letter and a notification from the eldest son of a friend informing me of the death of my friend a few days ago. I had received a Christmas letter from Mel a week or so before he died, and I sensed that he was in serious concern about his health. He had not told me about his bout with prostate cancer in earlier letters. The only time he ever revealed any serious concern about health was when I saw him several years ago during a professional stopover when I was in Phoenix, where he lived. He was then recovering from a medical procedure which kept manifesting itself in some dysfunction, but he insisted that he was… Read more

More On Excellence

September 27, 2018

Year 3, Day 270 | No Comments

We return to problems of complexity. This relates understanding, a factor of the trinity summary of wisdom. Wisdom comes from the order of learning (truth), understanding (perceiving the meaning of learning to useful ends), and application (experience that includes mystery related to life, so to manage unknowns, complexities, and necessities). We are expected to seek wisdom and practice it up to adequacy level. That requires some energy, and overcoming human weaknesses like laziness. Students fail, not for intellectual incompetency so much as neglect of duty, of interest, of challenge, of purpose. Once I determined the purpose of my life, I awoke and moved from unsatisfactory evaluations to glowing ones. Currently most persons seem not to like parenting discipline. They love… Read more

Proverbially Speaking

September 26, 2018

Year 3, Day 269 | No Comments

Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

This list picks up from Volume 2. 101. Blessed are they who see things as they are, and as they ought to be. 102. Blessed are they who have a loving prayer partner. 103. Blessed are they who turn criticism into analysis to be checked for truth. l04. Blessed are they who have a caring pastor in their lives. 105. Blessed are they who believe it is better to give than to receive. 106. Blessed are they who do not turn concern into worry. 107. Blessed are they who celebrate life. 108. Blessed are they who live in a context of prayer. 109. Blessed are they who do not permit negative attitudes of others to set their own life contexts. 110…. Read more

Value Added

September 25, 2018

Year 3, Day 268 | No Comments

Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

Value Added has occupied our theme for this date. In the Freshman Series we reviewed the five star evaluating designates: poor, fair, good, excellent, and superior with some of the legitimate effort we exert to gain the biblical concept of excellence in Christian life performance. For the Sophomore Series we reviewed oddities for self-improvement, likely to gain interest without contributing to self-improvement. For this date we try again to accent specific points rather well known we can try to achieve maturity. Give attention to language – this includes such factors as avoidance of expletives, enlargement of vocabulary which leads to greater objectivity and sensitivity to the context, especially in questions. Give attention to values – the authority for values for… Read more

Ideas and Geeks

September 24, 2018

Year 3, Day 267 | No Comments

On television’s long running and excellent program, 60 Minutes, for November 24, 2013, a section of about fifteen minutes was devoted to an interview with a fellow sometimes called a geek, sometimes a genius, sometimes hippie-like in his life. Without much publicity he has become a millionaire in meeting the demand for him to speak and interact with professional persons in conferences. He did not have a normal childhood, but it was lived in an accepting and different combination of factors, including the responses of his parents. He is appealing in that he does not follow just the standard order of things, arguing for ways to be creative. The program began with his analogy of difference as demonstrated in the… Read more

Biography

September 23, 2018

Year 3, Day 266 | No Comments

Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

If we are interested in summarizing Christianity as a lifestyle we look to the biography of Jesus Christ, and attempt to live according to his pattern, motivations, tolerances, concepts, habits, treatment of the human experience, and all that goes into practical living. We follow to the best of our ability, but assisted by the Holy Spirit. It is marked by love, truth, righteousness (devotion, values, exemplary) and service within the individual’s life context. For the sake of discussion we leave here the understanding that Jesus Christ incorporated two natures, human and divine, so to make him unique among all the persons who have ever lived. He tended to mute his divinity somewhat in the objectivity of his speech and conduct… Read more

Space Mystery

September 22, 2018

Year 3, Day 265 | No Comments

We return to the theme of space, galaxies, supernova, dark energy, time – and theories. Theories vary widely in some contexts, until emerging evidence moves them in proper directions. About the time there is agreement, new evidence replaces old evidence. The old remains in some way, but newly discovered evidence move circumstances along in another function or meaning. For some decades it was felt that the expanding universe was slowing down. Further, the supply of matter thins out. Like a balloon, the universe can take only so much expansion and the usable air is lost, perhaps by explosion or contamination. The newer telescopes, developed in my lifetime, are informing the scholars that instead of slowing down, or even holding, the… Read more

Problem Solving

September 21, 2018

Year 3, Day 264 | No Comments

One of the best choices in my college experience was to become a debater. It was the practice of education not only for life and meaning, but for the factors that achieve persuasion to solve problems, to find better ways, to find improvement for persons and the environment of life. We always began with a problem. We were not offended by the problem, but welcomed it as a means for finding the available skills and approaches to get the solutions we believed in to be accepted. One hour in a tournament we were assigned to debate the affirmative of the proposition and the next hour to take the negative position. It was always assumed that whatever existed related to the… Read more

Monthly Archives: September 2018