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

Emotion

May 14, 2019
Year 4, Day 134 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

Related to our life’s objectives is the investigation of our emotions for purpose of management.  For this there are key words/concepts to consider: comparisons/contrasts, balances/imbalances, illusions/delusions – personality, identification, mystery, mind, motives, and the like.  The individual finding a need for managing emotions, needs to form questions to be answered personally in these areas, dealing with life factors, that make for healthy emotions, self-control and put the understandings into action.  This relates to accumulating wisdom, and finding a full and satisfying life.  The issue of emotional life balance is so great that persons unable to control their emotions have, on occasions taken their lives, or suffering years, even creating miserable life contexts for others, even to the point of murder… Read more

Clues To Life – Education

May 13, 2019
Year 4, Day 133 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

Related to our life’s objectives is the understanding (interpretation) of education.  For this there are key words/concepts to consider: read, communicate, questions, answers, wisdom, growth, values, truth and applications.  We need to decide what kind of life-education to explore.  There are Christians (perhaps unofficial) who do not seek Christian education, or seeking it, do not commit to live by it.  There is hypocrisy possible in every context of life.  Living by truth is as important, as learning truth.  God holds us to what we know.  Violating truth invites banishment.  At the same time, we need to know there is humane hypocrisy.  In common grace it is possible to live well, follow God’s laws as they are found in nature for… Read more

Change

May 12, 2019
Year 4, Day 132 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

During my long lifetime I have observed and been affected by change in myself and society.  Substantive changes occurred for me beginning with birth from my mother to outer nature with immediate changes in context – changes that seem like miracles in some analyses.  The changes were developed so to make me capable of taking care of myself in a world not of my making.  Nature and society became primary in the process.  I was changed when I became a Christian so to move faith and values to the fore.  I was changed through my education that put thought before emotion so to guide life in a context of truth search pointing to understanding/wisdom.  I was changed when I married,… Read more

Disciplined Life

May 11, 2019
Year 4, Day 131 | No Comments
Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

Numerous authors have addressed the matter of aging and retirement even if their common themes and assignments do not engage it.  There is wide disagreement on when old age begins, and how it ought to be treated.  In centuries past elders were treated with honor, partly because long life was taken as a gift of God – even included in some of the promises of God.  Today we tend to warehouse the elderly, and this does not mean that the housing is poor.  Many elders like it that way, and so do the younger members of the family.  One author stated: I am old.  I am sixty-nine years old.  I’m not really old, of course.  Really old is eighty.  The… Read more

Christian Maturity

May 10, 2019
Year 4, Day 130 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

A review of reasons found to break up marriages, acknowledged the importance of even minor issues in the area of marriage and the family.  In practice many of the little irritations of life are made major leading to break-up of families.  A few of them were: 1) – is the tissue in the bathroom installed for the roll to be drawn from over the top of it, or under it; 2) – is the tooth paste tube to be rolled from the bottom toward the cap or pressed along the length of the tube; 3) – is the dish washing to be done today or tomorrow; 4) – are clothes to be stored after washing or left in the basket… Read more

Prejudice and Preference

May 9, 2019
Year 4, Day 129 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

This is a companion piece for this date from the dated Junior Page.  Oprah Winfrey, an African-American who emerged from poverty and abuse during childhood years, to become one of the wealthiest women in the world, wealth gained through her work in media assignments, works affirmatively to reduce racial prejudice.  When her work is done, if the flow continues as she has launched it, she may do more for the culture of women and the black race than anyone has done in secular society to date.  It is largely done in an affirmative approach, addressing interests, with a spiritual perception underlying her approach, and in energetic approaches to realism and vision.  It avoids the negative attitude that is advanced by… Read more

Body/Soul/Spirit

May 8, 2019
Year 4, Day 128 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

This threefold identification of the nature of mankind (body/soul/spirit) appears only once in the Bible (KJV) in these words and in this particular summary statement that captures the holistic nature of the human being.  Jesus refers to the theme in different words, like mind and strength – in verses noted above.  The body is physical which is to say animal, and houses the essence of the meaning of that life differentiated as vegetable and animal in the physical world with variant forms such as insect, fish, fowl, and forms rising in sophistication to vertebrates at the top of the various species.  Life is given various contexts.  The soul also takes its forms housed in higher and lowers forms in vertebrates… Read more

Discipline and Witness

May 7, 2019
Year 4, Day 127 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

Whittaker Chambers penned a long book (800 pages) to his children and the world, published in 1952. I still have my copy from Christmas, 1952, and will pass it on to my great-grandson who will inherit what remains of my materials from a long life of teaching and ministry.  Paragraphs from it were so gripping that even with the growing forgetfulness of old age I remember the following one almost as I remember Scripture passages.  I quickly recovered the page I wanted (Page 6) in that I remembered the name of the man in the piece, sixty years after reading Chambers – a name quite unfamiliar currently to an American ear.  Therein is an important concept in regard to the… Read more

Little Things

May 6, 2019
Year 4, Day 126 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

During my professional years I thought of my time as fruit in a basket.  The basket, no matter how large or small, could only contain what its volume indicated.  I did not want it to be less than full, nor did I want it to spill over and be lost.  The concept was an important control for my life.  I might be asked to include this or that, to do this or that, and I would either say yes or no – depending upon what the basket would hold.  The negative response did not mean the request was unworthy, but that I could not do it justice in point of available hours, or ability to perform.  A new commitment could… Read more

Counsel For Understanding

May 5, 2019
Year 4, Day 125 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

This is being written in early January, 2014.  On checking the news I found an article entitled: CNN Morality Poll Reveals Surprising Trends in America.  The Poll is a follow-up of a Time Magazine poll taken in 1987, and includes that poll’s results as part of current reporting.  I was drawn to the report for several reasons: I retired as President of Simpson College (now University) in California in 1987 on the edge of my 65th birthday, and will turn 91 this first month in January 2014, the year date for this follow-up poll; I am intensely interested in morality, personal and social; and, I have been working on the uses of what constitutes pertinent evidence in discussions about life… Read more

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