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

Perfection

February 24, 2019
Year 4, Day 55 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

It is not uncommon for persons to confuse themselves, in mind and action, when they are drawn into conflict with sophisticated ideas and practice.  A writer to an advice columnist complained about being shut out of her community circle.  With her husband, likely in retirement, she had moved into a new community, and joined in the social interchange that had been formed among the neighbors.  As the new persons on the block they were invited into the home of the others for the planned periodic celebrations with food and banter.  They liked it, with one objection – two of the couples in the group were gay, obvious by their arrival at the parties, simple identity with each other, leaving parties… Read more

Faith and Mankind

February 23, 2019
Year 4, Day 54 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

In general society there appears some frustration with education at the time of this writing, not only with the young, but increasing doubts as generations grow older.  Elders tend to appear a bit better than the youthful generations, likely due simply to having lived longer and picking up some modest sophistication and life experience as they went along.  Part of the problem, as asserted in some of these Pages, is that there is inadequate understanding between education and training taken together with significant overlap of the two.  Education once referred to the development of the person – the person in relationship to self, other persons and the world, commonly referred to as the Humanities.  That included the study of religion… Read more

Healing and Faith

February 22, 2019
Year 4, Day 53 | No Comments
Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

A book by Bryan Johnson and Maria Pagano was accented in an article entitled: Can Faith Rewire an Addict’s Brain?  Because Johnson is a professor at Baylor University, and Pagano at Case Western Reserve University, I followed their academic approach to respond to the question posed in the article’s title.  Their answer is affirmative, that faith can revive the brain, perhaps achieved by moving the control from left to right lobes in the process.  Shift in brain lobes relates to science for evidence, and the reference to faith relates to testimonials from former addicts that faith played a part in their recovery.  The point struck me that the addicts were greatly helped to health through cooperative faith and science.  The… Read more

Faith and Mankind

February 21, 2019
Year 4, Day 52 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

It is difficult for mankind to get a fix on God.  I am reminded of my earliest algebra lessons when we learned how to work with fractions, and how to begin by finding the lowest common denominator.  If faced with the fraction of 16 under 4 the student would divide the lower figure by the upper figure to 4.  Both numbers were quartered.  The fraction then became the conclusion of one fourth (1/4) – gaining the lowest common denominator fraction.  If mankind is the lowest common denominator (1) in the piece, and God is the identified perfect 100 above the line, we presume God 100 times greater than mankind.   Although no human being can do more than play games with… Read more

Look of Wealth

February 20, 2019
Year 4, Day 51 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

The secular concepts of wealth are mixed.  Wealth is sometimes sought to the degree that persons will take on great risks to gain it even to the risk of life, the splintering of their families, the violation of their values, the loss of balance relating to self and society.  Gaining it is the central purpose of most crime.  With all his reputation for wisdom, Solomon risked the solidarity of Israel in his program for regal wealth.  God likely permitted the folly to demonstrate how insidious the love of wealth can become, even for a wise person.  Wealth may lead to waste.  Solomon had more horses than he needed to carry out the legitimate meaning of a head of state.  The… Read more

Philosophy

February 19, 2019
Year 4, Day 50 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

This matter of philosophy is vital for us, if life is taken to have meaning more than an accident of evolution.  As noted elsewhere in these pages, I hold no offense, as a believer in God, if God chose to achieve the development of nature to the point of forming a thinking animal in which he gave a unique dimension – his own image.  That is acceptable for me.  My concern is not with the past, but with the future.  This is with the understanding that sometimes origins offer keys to understanding.  Where do we go from here?  Of course we gain some clues from the past, but the reality will be future.  The information needed relates to what is… Read more

Rationalizations

February 18, 2019
Year 4, Day 49 | No Comments

Every good thing (like family) in our lives is dogged by shadows that can distort the good thing (like family) to something bad (like family).  We need to remember that everything bad is not bad-bad.  Much that is wrong is mild, even humorous, except that the accumulation adds up to unsatisfactory results – sometimes serious to life.  I just finished a conversation in which my caller reminded me that he had remembered the principles of effective debate we had reviewed long ago.  He was thankful that we had reviewed the difference between rationalization and being rational.  To rationalize was to take good rules of discovering the best thought and action, and distorting them to find what we wanted in the… Read more

Opinions

February 17, 2019
Year 4, Day 48 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

Opinions are important, important to personal and social life.  We need to find place for them as early in our lives as our maturity can manage them well – both for our own and the opinions of others.  We need to sense in our understanding the variant values we offer to so much of human concern: What is bad, fair, average, excellent (cum laude), superior (magna cum laude)?  In the course of a life to elderly status there will appear in both self-generation and that visited upon us from others, all the categories.  Those persons insightful so to extend upwards from failure to superior will likely register the most fulfillment in their lives, and impact their families and society to… Read more

Life Follies

February 16, 2019
Year 4, Day 47 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

A main folly of the general society is the disregard for human depravity as a major factor in the knowledge, understanding and developing orientation (wisdom) for life.  The secular world refers to it as a frailty of human nature, or lack of maturity, or other terms that represent what is seen as a self-defeating characteristic that causes persons to violate excellence of thought and behavior.  The negative characteristic (labeled the sin nature in biblical terms) leading to negative motivation seems obvious.  If it were not true and present our paradigms for personal and social contexts would be different than they are.  Scripture, whether in experiential or parable word presentations, goes to the core of human imperfection to focus the point… Read more

Happiness

February 15, 2019
Year 4, Day 46 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

For some weeks after a baby is born there is an adjustment period that is strongly physical.  The baby is adjusting and closing off the gestation period for outer nature.  Most of the time is spent in sleeping, so permitting the organs of the body to adjust to an independent environment from the body of mother.  The beginning of muscle tissue is fed through wriggling, flailing of arms and legs.  Diet is highly restricted, but magnificently nutritious, best if provided from the body of the mother who so recently had provided the fuel for life within her own biological system, now continued in a transitional function.  That feeding system is preparatory also for the mother to turn back to the… Read more

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