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

Daemons

September 12, 2019
Year 4, Day 255 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

There is an old word that seems to have fallen out of favor, but needs to be retained for serious discussion related to the examination of self, and the discovery of who we are as holistic persons.  The word is daemon.  The word demon has emerged to express not only the influence generated from some force presumed to be satanic in order, or from whatever negative force there is in the ephemeral creation, but also that negative factor (daemon) within us that drives us in ways unacceptable to self, and often to others.  The inner negative drive is our interest here and was once identified as our personal daemons.  To understand it as likely appearing to greater or lesser degrees… Read more

Secular Religion

September 11, 2019
Year 4, Day 254 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

This page is being written in 2011, and edited in 2018.  On this date in 2001, clever and vicious terrorists flew high-jacked airplanes into the Twin Towers in downtown New York City.  Soon after the first plane struck the first tower, I was following the on-site human responses on television, when I saw the second plane circle around and strike the second tower.  The second tower collapsed before the first one fell.  The devastation was unbelievable, and the loss of life was in the vicinity of 3,000 persons.  One is unsure what the collateral damages have been.  In the hours of this holocaust, another plane, likely bound for the White House in Washington, D. C. was aborted by brave persons… Read more

Scripture Interrupted

September 10, 2019
Year 4, Day 253 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

A review of Scripture provides evidence that God does not only permit change in human history, but orders it.  For so strong statements against change as we are faced in the verses above there seems to be some sort of contradiction or paradox.  In God there is no contradiction (propositions in which at least one of the two or more cannot be true) so we may treat the matter here as paradox (at seeming contradictions to be true).  Warning against change as violating him, God offers change in the long story of mankind.  It is interesting that studies show that love is found as a universal preference in the emotional lives of the peoples of every culture.  It has also… Read more

Ministry

September 9, 2019
Year 4, Day 252 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

We are informed that there are more than seven billion human beings living on earth, and it is presumed that each one is different than the remaining persons – with bonding similarities.  So strong is that belief that when two persons are found to be quite similar, it is presumed newsworthy.  Identical twins may actually get along well, and usually live, maintaining family ties.  They may tend to think alike, feel alike and even live for the same length of years.  Only they can inform the public that they are different from one another.  The Eng brothers, Siamese twins, married and each had children by their separate wives so we can imagine how closely they had to manage – even… Read more

Divorce

September 8, 2019
Year 4, Day 251 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

Inability to live with a person once loved is revelatory of the human condition, the misunderstanding of genders, relationships with family members and friends, human rigidity, fragility of romance.  A marriage with children when broken becomes for some persons the insane grief.  Divorce redirects relationships, even definitions of values.  When life should be ripening into a magnificent fruit of life, the adult must start over having lost the most magnificent and intimate relationship possible to mankind in nature.  Divorce as defined by God is permitted, but that because some human beings so distort the parable of God in marriage that God must protect his method of communication with us by offering a way out of that which has lost its… Read more

Self and Paradox

September 7, 2019
Year 4, Day 250 | No Comments
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

Unless we manage carefully, our lives are sometimes cluttered with misunderstood contradiction and/or paradoxes.  When we feel that the issues have appeared in us we tend to begin defense with the common statement: But that is not who I really am.  When Senator Ted Kennedy left the site of the accident at Chappaquiddick that cost the life of his passenger, he acted irresponsibly and illegally.  In the tumultuous follow-up, and in a serious self-analysis, he announced publicly: My children know that was not who I really am.  I agree with his statement, but on the day of the accident that irresponsible cad was the person he was.  Not so dramatically as Kennedy’s experience (which may have cost him the achievement… Read more

God In Affirmation

September 6, 2019
Year 4, Day 249 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

We are greatly helped in the mystery of God to sense that he is in affirmation, not in negation.  It takes some doing to grasp that meaning.  We have been told that God is a person, and that tempts us to make God somewhat like ourselves.  Without some of that anthropomorphic perception we would not likely grasp the concept of God to human meaning and participation.  We are greatly helped in the matter by the visit of Christ through incarnation.  We have enough trouble with that matter, an easier factor to manage than the reality of an eternal God in an invisible majesty that is self-sustaining and active in an eternal present.  He has no past and no future but… Read more

Church

September 5, 2019
Year 4, Day 248 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

These Pages are meant to differentiate, but not separate the Church from the church, with high respect for that each of the terms stands for in the story of Scripture and history – higher case (Church) and lower case (church).  Often the two contexts have been at odds although God would never have them to be so.  They overlap.  The Church is a spiritual creation of a body of believers adopted by God in one divine family in a mystery from God identified in the individuals who through a penitent (humble) experience relating to the offering of Jesus Christ for acceptance as citizens to purpose in the Kingdom of God.  Although Scripture reveals much about the Church, much remains a… Read more

Sociology and Self

September 4, 2019
Year 4, Day 247 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

We need privacy to formulate the answers to the questions of self and life context.  Questions are among the first line of resources to work through the matters of our lives – large or small.  Forming the best questions for life, in the humble attitude of learning, and a disposition toward the truth in all matters will offer vision and motivation for life fulfillment.  All this must be attended by a willingness to take responsibility for investing self in finding the answers to the questions and living by those answers.  There isn’t much time to get it all done.  In the tenth decade of my life, I am still working on some questions and feel the decades slipped by me… Read more

Stewardship of Life

September 3, 2019
Year 4, Day 246 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

During the last half of my life I have afforded time to some study of finances related to taxing (a major concern for persons in Bible times as well as the present); for wage and status concerns (also appearing in Scripture); and, investing/savings (an issue that arises in Scripture and treated with some care in that the issue may become a wrong motive for obedience or disobedience to God).  The open secret of Scripture is that God seems to be on the side of the working stiff.  Working stiff was a popular title organized labor took for the common worker early in the turn to the 20th century, when many laborers organized focusing on poor conditions and wages.  Many of… Read more

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