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

Faith Partners

February 4, 2017
Year 2, Day 35 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

We return to one of the major issues of theology – faith.  For some eras in history faith was about the only factor that kept society on an even keel.  Life was so hard in so many ways that only some faith in some sustaining spiritual future objective held or mesmerized the larger human mass.  Often without leadership and direction that faith would take odd turns for the ordinary folks in the countryside, gaining oddities (like snake handling, witch hunts, even voodoo) in culture as the neglected peoples often looked toward some frontier to escape the problems of life.  Those problems included warfare, decimating illnesses, poverty – even failed relationships (persons living in tension contexts).  One historian in reflecting on… Read more

Know Thyself Is a Mystery

February 3, 2017
Year 2, Day 34 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

It is good to know how persons think, the strengths and weaknesses they incorporate in the processes and uses of thinking.  Of late I have been reading about thinking as it relates to experience.  I am most interested in mystery – not the mystery thrillers that, I am told, make up much of print and broadcast programming, but the mystery that is often referred to in the Bible.  Mystery is a major issue in Scripture – not a minor one.  Read the work of persons like Cardinal Newman, an evangelical Anglican who turned to the Catholic Church; C. S. Lewis, a University Don who became firm and active in Christian apologetics at thirty years of age; Blaise Pascal, whose work… Read more

Evaluation As Judgment

February 2, 2017
Year 2, Day 33 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

Judgment is not an attractive word.  We have a feeling that it is necessary to an ordered society to protect us from anarchy, so we form official systems and courts to make decisions which hold as official judgments (evaluations in known laws).  Violations of those judgments have specific punishments attached.  The errors in the applications of human law systems, and the uneven oversights of the law enforcers, are not arguments against the ideal application of honorable systems meant to protect, perhaps advance, the common good – for the individual (person), and the group (societies of individuals).  Overlap of some values, human (legal) with the divine (moral) may be strongly regarded, as one of the evidences of the forms given to… Read more

Sublimity Is Transport

February 1, 2017
Year 2, Day 32 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

For persons of faith growing older, there may appear a witness within of what might be termed immortality.  It shows up in strong implications of Scripture.  One of these is: Pray without ceasing.  There is a sense of presence in the attitude of prayer that can, if chosen, take over one’s psychology – sometimes subliminally.  As noted on another Page, there are prayer brotherhoods in which the brothers are committed to prayer for the major part of their days.  From all I have seen and heard, they are quite genial and gracious persons.  In an interview by the program 60 Minutes on CBS, the priest talking to the reporter was clear that his attitude was prayerful, even when talking on… Read more

Leadership and Integrity

January 31, 2017
Year 2, Day 31 | No Comments
Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

We come again to the matter of integrity, principally our own.  Words used for integrity are several, and include a sense of wholeness.  There is meaning of completeness, of soundness (as in moral principle), of uprightness, even virtue in sincerity and honesty.  Or to approach the concepts from another direction, to have integrity is to be uncorrupted or unimpaired in the area of reference, but reinforced in the total integration of a life.  In limited integrity a person may have large integrity in personal matters, but violate it in business matters – so context needs to be known when one is called a person of integrity.  In the events of King David’s life, the highest integrity was in public life,… Read more

Acquisition and Faith

January 30, 2017
Year 2, Day 30 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

This is being edited on the cusp of 2012 AD.  The nation has been in the grip of an economic downturn that revealed itself and began to ramp downward in 2006, becoming intense in the final year of the George Bush Presidential Administration, and pressed on into Barack Obama’s – the period in which this page is written.  In addition, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has cost billions of dollars, and a monstrous catastrophe, especially when added to the devastating Katrina storm in Louisiana in 2005.  Wars have dragged on, with one becoming longer (10 years) than that led by Washington to gain American freedom.  The lengthy story, that includes nature’s furies, can be extended.  The tensions,… Read more

More On Wisdom

January 29, 2017
Year 2, Day 29 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

We need advocates for wisdom, especially the wisdom referred to in several books of the Bible.  When Christians mention wisdom in some discussion, thought commonly turns to Solomon.  In my perception the referral may become a limitation, caused by popular tradition.  The remark of Jesus, found in Matthew 12, may have been used to perpetuate the inference.  It is true that Solomon taught about the virtues of wisdom, wrote proverbs that reflected some practices of wisdom in his time, and proved in part of his reign that wisdom is an important factor in a successful society.  For example: his wisdom in evasion of warfare left a peaceful people to develop themselves and society so to advance the arts and education,… Read more

One of a Kind

January 28, 2017
Year 2, Day 28 | No Comments

Among the mysteries of society is the specialness of the individual.  For every person there may be something special that needs to be found and identified in a way that serves awareness in that person and for a human relationship in some way – perhaps remote, perhaps close by.  In my work over the decades, I have noted couples, especially on conference grounds where I was the speaker for family programs, giving more than the usual attention to their handicapped children.  On occasion the parents, in the denial of some standard factors in mind and body, had recovered a bond that had been strained before this child arrived. I have seen others, not perceptive of the highest meaning in themselves,… Read more

Sublimity Is Awesome

January 27, 2017
Year 2, Day 27 | No Comments

This paragraph in the Corinthian letter is the most private and personal spiritual experience revealed by Paul the Apostle.  The context of the event was entirely private, reluctantly recorded here by the Apostle, and unrelated to any natural proofs.  Much of what may be said here is not direct but strongly implied in the remarks of the Apostle, in the ten verses encapsulating the experience, and his private desire to keep the information between himself and God.  He knew it would be difficult to believe by others.  His conversion was a public event replicated in various less dramatic ways in the lives of many millions of persons.  At the time, his conversion became a major matter turning the most passionate… Read more

Grace and Works

January 26, 2017
Year 2, Day 26 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

Jesus made clear to the disciples that there were two forces that led to truth that would persuade them and the people to whom they would witness.  The first covers all, and that is faith, and the second is performance (works) in faith.  He treated it firmly in the closing messages to the disciples before his crucifixion. (John 14:11)  It appears as a subject in the closing of the biblical record of The Revelation. It is easy for leaders to lose some balance when they feel called to advance a pattern of thought and performance in any field, to downgrade or ignore much that seems to be paradoxical or contradictory to what they are trying to advance.  Even Martin Luther… Read more

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