Daily pages of reflection...for knowledge, understanding, to wisdom
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

Beginning to End

October 2, 2019
Year 4, Day 275 | No Comments
Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

The end of The Revelation of the Apostle John in the New Testament is as positive, as glorious, and victorious as a narrative could be.  God’s disappointment on the admission of depravity to the human race in the early verses of Genesis is now ended with a summary of the redemptive conclusion to the bitter/sweet history of man and earth.  It is a story of restoration, and new beginnings, and in that process God is proved to mankind with clarity.  No longer will we look through a glass darkly (smoked glass). (1 Corinthians 13:12)  The contact between man and God will be quite direct.   I remember as a child that we were going to look as directly as we could… Read more

Civics and the Bible

October 1, 2019
Year 4, Day 274 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

During the years I have presented these Pages, I developed an improving orientation for my life that I prefer to call context.  It is an attempt to flesh out a holistic life, which is to say that it is fitting to self in all matters and, as I believe, to God when followed consistently.  I find that it is fitting in my relationships with others, especially seen with my family members and friends.  In a minor way I also measure legitimacy to my life by the affirmative views of others, especially in my extended family, who may not, by my evaluation, relate to me or my context on a daily basis.  This last does not mean they are enemy or… Read more

Social Hypocrisy

September 30, 2019
Year 4, Day 273 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

With revisions of history pressed upon the public, we forget that American native tribes sometimes played havoc upon one another before the Europeans arrived.  The tribes of South America murdered each other before the Spanish arrived, and often made the carnage a religious show.  Even the colorful Hawaiians, peaceful and gracious in story were warlike on occasion.  Similar conflicts but more sophisticated continue in our era with the vicious treatment that many Black Africans receive from Black Africans, or the brutality that is expressed between various Islamic groupings.  We may forget that men and women lost their heads (one belonging to the noble Sir Walter Raleigh) under Kings and Queens of England, and we remember the ugliness of Henry VIII… Read more

Continuity

September 29, 2019
Year 4, Day 272 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

One of the motivations for this Page through my four years’ journey about standard (righteous) Christian life and context relates to the ordinariness of life.  What do we do in day-by-day experiences to prepare for serving both ourselves and the everyday culture?  Whether live-and-let-live or highly motivated persons, what should accompany the life context of Christians, those who wish to develop values for themselves in cultivating wholesome life that is respectful of values and personhood?  We reviewed points like traditions (personal/social), continuity (faithfulness/meaning), habits (constructive/guided), devotion (prayer/worship – meditation for humanists).  We discuss here the integration of our lives.  All persons ought to give themselves the gift of an honest analysis of self, perhaps going over their project with an… Read more

Cycles

September 28, 2019
Year 4, Day 271 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

Most students off to college just before, during and after World War II, as I was, were aided by the Barnes and Noble College Outline Series.  I owned several of the slim volumes that outlined, in narrative form, this or that topic of study.  The outlines were helpful to remind students, in broad strokes, what they ought to know if tested broadly in the field addressed.  Before me is one copyrighted in 1940, and reprinted in 1967.  The author of this copy was Albert Hyman who, for decades, was a highly respected professor at the University of Michigan.  When he had completed his summaries about the ancients of the Mesopotamia area, including references to Egypt’s history of advanced culture, achievements,… Read more

Time and Eternity

September 27, 2019
Year 4, Day 270 | No Comments

C. S. Lewis wrote: Divine reality is like a fugue.  All [God’s] acts are different but they all rhyme or echo to one another . . . . Fix your mind on any one story or any one doctrine and it becomes at once a magnet to which truth and glory come rushing from all levels of being.   Although I believe the statement to be excellent and enlightening for study relating to God and experience from Scripture, I would need some enlightenment how it fits for some of God’s acts.  I don’t have at hand Lewis’s, God in the Dock, to check his treatment, but Kimberlee Ireton quotes it in the outset of her review of Philip Pfatteicher’s, Journey into… Read more

Proverbially Speaking

September 26, 2019
Year 4, Day 269 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

This list picks up from Volume 3 for this date.  151. If everything is working well, don’t change it.  152. If the proposal is new, test it with another look.  153. If monetary profit is the only motive, it isn’t worth the effort.  154. If there is hope in it, it deserves attention. 155. If it is old, there is likely a lesson in it.  156. If it is family, there is duty in it.  157. If after careful consideration it is still iffy, don’t do it.  158. If the information has to be yelled, it is either wrong or not useful for me – unless there is danger.  159. If sincerity were the test of right, Hitler would have… Read more

Value Added

September 25, 2019
Year 4, Day 268 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

The Atlantic magazine may close editions with an interesting question that is somewhat humorous, but also thought provoking.  For July/August, 2014, the question was: WHICH ANIMAL HAS MOST CHANGED THE COURSE OF HISTORY?  The ten answers from the ten selected respondents were: Colo, the first gorilla born into human care; The mockingbird collected in the Galapagos archipelago; Lucy (skeletal remains indicating mankind originating in Africa); Martha, the last known passenger pigeon; Rin Tin Tin, or whichever wolf was the first to slink up to a Paleolithic-era campfire; horses; earthworms, the male chimpanzee in Zambia who trusted Jane Goodall; rats (used for research); and, the first animal to emerge (perhaps the comb jelly or the sponge).  The affirmation of natural evolution… Read more

Proving

September 24, 2019
Year 4, Day 267 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

I was on the debate team in college, and immediately upon graduation was installed as a Teaching Assistant that included the assistant debate coach’s duties at the same college for which effort I received payment for graduate studies there.  Had I known the value of forensics to the intellectual development of the student I would surely have entered the high school program, and continued involvement as far as it would take me. I did not encounter a poor student in forensics programs from the time I was a debater and through the many following years that I coached debaters.  They also launched effective lives.  I continue the coaching process in my tenth decade in working with my family generations –… Read more

Biography

September 23, 2019
Year 4, Day 266 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

The concept of modeling as taught in Scripture is impressive, and practiced, commonly without awareness, by masses of persons.  The concept is often misperceived and misapplied, but that is not cause to by-pass the concept.  We ought to offer a pattern of life that other persons can follow to benefit.  It is sometimes followed to disaster.  Law enforcement personnel know that when some fad begins – like when a killing at a high school occurs – they will be faced with a bevy of persons mimicking the tragic example.  The public often takes up that follow-up principle in beliefs, in clothing styles, even in the way hair is groomed.  The move is endless for good and ill.  We must not… Read more

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