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

Trust

March 26, 2019
Year 4, Day 85 | No Comments

Trust is understood, as any major factor in life is likely to be interpreted, from different points of view. Out of trust I form my relationships, making them acceptable in their limitations and benefits.  I trust God to the point that anything occurring in my life is interpreted by me, as the context for my life to direct me in the growth of my spiritual experience.  If I deviate from what he instructs me to be and do, I trust him to shift the influence factors of my life to bring me into line.  He trusts me to be of this frame of mind and involves himself accordingly.  In this he does not overlook my freedom and individuality that he… Read more

Language

March 25, 2019
Year 4, Day 84 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

What a gift language is to us.  Animals communicate with each other, principally within their own species, even to mankind.  The difference between language expressing reflective thought and the sound/body factor of animals (as a wagging tail) although related to communication and understanding, are different to significant degree raising human language to higher level than nature can reach.  That higher level means that language can be visited to nature for meaning – as it has been and remains.  (We might speculate at this point about heaven’s language, retaining some human perceptions, such as music or mathematics.  The most common speculations, by secularists and saints, include math or music, or both.)   Zephaniah wrote of a perfect language, implying that in the… Read more

Common Miracles

March 24, 2019
Year 4, Day 83 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

Common miracles are so blended into nature that naturalists/humanists feel they are part of nature. Perhaps they are, but many of them have the stamp of some angelic inference that the benefitted person or persons feel compelled to recognize – that some extra-natural quality may attend a matter.  I have sensed it with intensity in timing.  The coordination of events, the unexpected provision, the moment of resolution, the escape from a dangerous situation, and the like – all seem like common miracles, like remission.  For example, persons who do not believe in the opening of the Jordan River bed for the Israelites to pass over, point out that there have been landslides on several occasions that dammed the river for… Read more

Miracle/Heroics

March 23, 2019
Year 4, Day 82 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

It is likely that the general use of the word miracle clouds the biblical use and meaning of it.  We apply this flexibility, sometimes confusing, to many words and ideas they express.  Much of reference to hero, for example, is not really that of a hero, even if the act of the person is heroic (like that of a hero).  The genuine hero is a person who, on his/her own volition, puts self at serious risk to achieve a result presumed to be a benefit to another person, or persons – especially for the purpose of rescue from danger or death.  Persons are heroes when they deliberately put themselves at risk for good purpose – not for profit, adulation, or… Read more

Symbolism

March 22, 2019
Year 4, Day 81 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

Andrew A. Rooney (Andy to everyone who knew him) was a wordsmith.  That is to say his life and career was taken up with writing and speaking.  He had a love-affair with words that began when he was a kid in high school when he won a prize for an essay.  It was the high point of his formal education, and portended his reporting of the experiences he had in Europe during World War II, and learning from other effective reporters.  The war gave him (as it did for other serious persons) a different look on life than would have been the case otherwise.  He became something of a curmudgeon, but a friendly one that was visited with self-criticism.  When… Read more

Society

March 21, 2019
Year 4, Day 80 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

Christians (or persons guided by any serious religion) are in some competition with any general social context in which they may be found.  Hopefully the competition is friendly, as it ought to be if both the society and the devout are free within their boundaries to acceptance, an acceptance that does not require approval.  It is a part of the context of life that we are flexible enough in our thought and experience to accept others without approving them.  This is an important dimension of life and love.  Christ is our first model, able to accept the variances he found in an imperfect context, and remain considerate in his knowledge and understanding so to act wisely in relationship with others… Read more

Lostness

March 20, 2019
Year 4, Day 79 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

We dislike the word lost.  That dislike prevents some persons from considering the meaning of lost-ness, even in inconsequential matters.  It has several contexts, one of which is spiritual, but all contexts of lost-ness are presumed to be negative.  It can be used in a positive sense, but that is simply juggling language, as we often do with words.  For example I may say that I have lost a bad habit.  I can’t lose a bad habit.  I might overcome it in thought and action but it was not lost.  Disappearance is not the clear meaning of lost.  I may overcome anger, but I don’t lose it.  It was overcome, defeated, trashed for what it is, a drag on my… Read more

Whole-Hearted

March 19, 2019
Year 4, Day 78 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

We will, for this Page, approach our theme from an angle.  Everyone is wholehearted about something even if it is wholeheartedness about not being wholehearted.  (I have followed the lives and thoughts of some persons who see themselves as superior animals, living for their share of decades, dying, and ending life like productive animals – perhaps living at high level in nature believing in endings and silence.  There appear to be many millions of men and women who live in that context of belief in unbelief.)  A person may be wholehearted about being a hypocrite, criminal, addict, or committed to some other context negative to self and/or society.  We generally presume, when we use the word wholehearted that it is… Read more

Possibilities

March 18, 2019
Year 4, Day 77 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

The mystery of God is the most intriguing mystery of all mysteries, but for us the mystery of mankind runs second to it.  The two mysteries may be joined, and when they are we say the connection is faith based with the proofs embedded in the person of faith, and identified in a pattern of belief and conduct that offer clues to both self and others relative to the truth or falsity of the identified faith.  The key to the vestibule of the solution to the mystery is found somewhere in free life.  All life comes from God and to study that life in a context that includes more than physical (nature) existence will take us farther along in understanding… Read more

Guiding Light

March 17, 2019
Year 4, Day 76 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

There are two keys to effective parenting.  One is conversation, and the other is modeling.  Well done in these two areas there isn’t a great deal more to add in nurture and discipline for children.  The matter sounds simple enough but takes more of parents (and family members) than appears on first consideration. Conversation requires a combination of factors to be effective for purpose.  Those factors include time periods, sometimes short, sometimes long.  It implies that we are devotees of the pattern of Solomon for wisdom in applying knowledge and understanding to matters addressed.  Even with lack of wisdom, the tutor and the pupil can find ways of learning together for the good of the student.  Conversation always includes non-verbals… Read more

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