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

Freedom

July 4, 2019
Year 4, Day 185 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

If Americans were asked which day of the year should be declared Freedom Day it would be July 4, not only for the work of the founding fathers but because it was on July 4, 1863 that the Confederate Army was defeated at Gettysburg after three days of fierce fighting.  It was the beginning of the end of slavery in America.  Even with all that may be said here about freedom, and the American dedication to it, we seem to little understand all that it is.  It is a virtue, even honored of God who is free, so determined to make persons free to enjoy as he enjoys life.  The virtue can be turned into a sin.  In simplest terms,… Read more

Distraction

July 3, 2019
Year 4, Day 184 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

Distractions in our lives are important and need attention, but they are slippery and create disorder for us.  Distractions are deplored in many areas of lives and press us to lesser performance in many matters we care about in the course of a lifetime.  When I was younger I heard about the common tendency of elders to distraction.  When I reached that slippery slope I began to understand how true the perception is.  Starting out to do one thing, I catch the need to address another – then another.  At the conclusion of shifting objectives and activities one forgets what it was that he or she started out to do.  Turning to each new duty I find another, and turn… Read more

Learning

July 2, 2019
Year 4, Day 183 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

In the tenth decade of my life, and bounding toward the century mark of my earthly sojourn, I possess a deep urge to write about the factors that I believe have formed my life, and I believe others may use to form theirs to satisfaction, inner peace, and free from fear about the future to ultimate decline, death and heaven.   The factors are not to be thought of so much in a sequence as to be engaged when they first appear for knowledge (discovery of facts related to personhood), understanding (evaluation to affirmative meaning) and wisdom (application in thought/faith to conduct).  All this requires some effort and the rewards are commensurate to the efforts.  Insufficient efforts lead to lack of… Read more

Poverty

July 1, 2019
Year 4, Day 182 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

Poverty rightly has an unhappy reputation, unpopular among all peoples.  It soaks into everything related to the persons found in poverty, and remains in the corners of virtually all adults as a siren of calamity for those not enveloped by it.  It forms us in many ways, psychologically, materially, status, family, health, values, and the story extends.  The mystery is that mankind, with adequate resources and knowledge has not addressed the matter to solution that would relieve the burdens of massive numbers of poor people. Permit me to tell a story – my own.  I am the product of a poor home, but I don’t feel I was deprived in that life emerged well for me.  There were deprivations: in… Read more

Humanist/Christian

June 30, 2019
Year 4, Day 181 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

Knowing what I now know in the limited dimensions of my single life experience that has included an extended education and exposure to life and history – even if I were not a Christian, I would want to be christianly even in a total humanist life context.  It would give me the most of what the earth experience has to offer – for the nature experience.  That view was arrived at late in my life – that earth life for mankind has one morality to which all are called, arrived at in a variety of styles, but one standard for all. God offers righteousness (right) to accomplish the goal in an imperfect world. (Faulty man has not achieved the available… Read more

Commandments

June 29, 2019
Year 4, Day 180 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

We have trouble with commandments.  Not understanding perfect commandments we may resist them as though they are orders imposed on our freedom as self-directed persons.  We lose proper humility.  In our pride of self-determination, in the way order statements are delivered, and in the way that those delivering them may be somewhat casual in violating the directives themselves – all contribute to natural resistance.  We may not even like suggestions when we ask for them – especially if we don’t like the suggestions given in answer to invitation.  Wise persons are careful about giving advice or counsel knowing that offense, sometimes serious offense, can be taken from a person or persons hearing or reading any words of counsel. The strength… Read more

Death and Finality

June 28, 2019
Year 4, Day 179 | No Comments

This is a follow-up Page to June 24, in this Quarter.  I noted there, in closing the first paragraph, the matter of Near Death Experience (NDEs) reviewed by Robert Gottlieb.  He followed a spate of books on the subject, and followed up with still another article.  This Page takes up on the second of the two articles, also prompted by a number of relevant book titles, some repeated appropriately from the first.  It is obvious that he is reaching out for objectivity but admitting his inner personal skepticism.  I acknowledge my orientation in a belief in life after death, based on faith in God prompted by the biblical account and the mercy of the Creator with some skepticism that evidence… Read more

Transition

June 27, 2019
Year 4, Day 178 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

Jesus was a mentor to the disciples, and that involvement changed the world.  He was to lesser degree mentor to Mary, Martha, Lazarus, even Mary and Joseph.  Anyone answering our life and work questions, including spiritual and physical factoring, is playing (even for a single contact between them) a mentoring, ministering and problem-solving person in lives.  There must be some wisdom in the relationship, with one member presumed to be more knowledgeable, understanding and therefore wiser in some instance or way.  It happened with Barnabas as mentor to Paul, until the mentored person surpassed the mentoring in the areas of the relationship.  This did not mean that Paul became more spiritual than Barnabas, but that he likely became more competent… Read more

Living Largely

June 26, 2019
Year 4, Day 177 | No Comments

Who were my mentors?  My mother was not only my parent, but something of a mentor as well – in several ways.  That mentoring was not full blown, but was more than useful in my development.  The publisher, Pat Zondervan, and his wife, Mary, were mentors to me for publishing and completing a doctoral degree.  The effort was tied to spiritual expectations we all had, as well as professional.  Dominic LaRusso became a mentor for me in becoming chairman of my doctoral committee at the University of Washington.  I had related, on a personal basis, to several professors at both Nyack and Wheaton before the intense experience in education with LaRusso.  We even talked about educational achievement and spiritual meaning… Read more

Life Orientation

June 25, 2019
Year 4, Day 176 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

Sin is the catch-all word for turning anything from virtue (righteousness/affirmation) to loss which is (violation/negation) related to truth in the context of God and mankind for gaining good life.  Mankind sins not only against God but against mankind.  Righteousness (right) is offered by God to form orderly life.  Sin is anything that violates God’s nature (holiness) in values communicated to mankind in scriptural definition (righteousness).  Without that objective standard we are left to define our own values, and that leads to considerable disagreement about right and wrong.  Some persons and entities attempt to disengage on determining value orientation with the proviso that one person should not injure another, which orientation is impossible in a social world of person to… Read more

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