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

Specificity

Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

In a scientific age we continue seeking truth, and we seem to do better with the issue than did the ancients.  They had neither the tools we now have, nor the ease of language forms now available. What they did have they appear to have moved along, even if slowly, in their emerging generations, finding how to formulate ideas.  Their cultivation of language was strong in meaning.  Studies of ancient languages show us how rich those languages were even with paucity of some words.  We now use a number of words to express the meanings they held in one word or phrase, and even then we may miss the meaning.  The problem becomes greater because we use language in so… Read more

Substantive Sermons

Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

At this editing I have been 30 years in semi-retirement.  On averages, ministers and professors have long lives – similar to each other in earthly context.  I have served both fields holding them in tandem – mutually helpful.  In the event that one might take some satisfaction in long life, I am reminded that the averages for these professions are nearly matched by comedians.  I hope the serious humorist is near the top of that group.  Like the humorist, I want to present life as true, pleasant even in conflict, often incomprehensible without God.  Without humor a person is in real trouble in conjuring life balances.  But I digress. Each day for me begins with the usual habits or preparations… Read more

Elections

Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

We return to the search of mankind for freedom.  Socially, in western nations it is presumed to be more fully promised under democratic procedures than in a court of royalists, or a confederacy of tribes, or a disorder of anarchy – or in combinations of systems.  Democracy is dependent upon an effective means for discovering the will of the majority of the population.  This is presumed to be that the nation will find an effective way to determine the will of the people.  In this there is, for democracy, laws and guidelines for gaining the votes of individuals.  Even if there is nothing better than a well formed plan to legalize authority in the electorate, there are problems, sometimes becoming… Read more

Family Mystery

Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

The support of the family, by the individual person, family unit itself, and the larger society is likely the major influence for gaining what might be called the good society.  The family is the microcosm of the larger society, and provides a miniature model of what that society may be – good or ill.  It is also a favored creation of God in which he nurtures life and in loving care makes a workable unit of persons, persons serving each other in love, and illustrating in the unit the hints of the family of God beyond nature.  It is also illustrated in the dysfunctional family – the splintering away from the family of God.  The family is a basic idiom… Read more

Education and Christianity

Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

We return on this Page to a very important theme: Values.  Each year the Minneapolis Star-Tribune publishes a supplement on the best companies in the state to work for.  It is an excellent and somewhat extensive narrative about the treatment of employees, and the consequence for the business relating to the values of the various companies, owners, and employees of the winning corporations.  Don MacPherson, president of the Modern Survey stated: Our research has found that employees who know and understand their organization’s values are 30 times more likely to be fully engaged than someone who works at an organization without values or who is unaware of the organization’s values.  We have found that having values makes full engagement possible… Read more

Depression

Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

If given the assignment to live my marriage of fifty seven years over again, what would I do differently than I did?  There are several large changes I would make, some of which would focus on my thinking, beliefs and conduct, and some on those of my wife.  On this date, which marks her birth date, I concentrate on a negative factor she faced.  She called it depression, and I accepted that identification.  My failure early on was that she ought to get over it.  The reasons from childhood she gave for it were no longer applicable.  Consequences should dissolve.  That was naive of me, and I got over that, but took away time to address realistically the context of… Read more

Paradise

Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

In science the dominating biological concept of mankind, at this point in history, is that we have evolved from simple life to complex over a span of millions of years.  A basic presumption in the process is that it is unguided except for whatever influences grew out of a big bang that set the process into action and provided whatever potential would survive to develop the resources.  That the process could develop without a guiding intelligence, related to God, is unattractive for me to believe.  The meaning of mankind in sight, hearing, feeling, smelling, believing, reflecting, and reproducing in kind is beyond any current evidence related to the large or small forces of neuter nature.  The concepts of God or… Read more

Scatalogical

Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

The city newspaper provided a carefully researched article on one girl’s journey into rebellion, sex and drug addiction, into adult life and a program of recovery.  The facts revealed sordidness, shame, drugs, pimps, violation and prostitution.  We must wait to find out how she will emerge for her future life.  We need to remember that she has life, the gift of God, and lives it in either a favorable or unfavorable context.  Life finds who and what we are.  What do we make of it?  Scripture informs us that the best context in which to form it is in righteousness.  The meaning of it is to serve others to their benefit.  God interprets that as devotion to him in that… Read more

Government

Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

It is interesting that long before Israel became a kingdom under the first king, Saul, that the prediction was made that Israel would become a kingdom.  They passed through theocracy under Moses, to confederacy under Judges in the Promised Land, punctuated with periods of anarchy (Judges 18-21).  After many decades passed monarchy was elected by the tribes.  In the end that too was lost in defeat and colonialism under other flags.  Israel had survived as a people in slavery in Egypt, as it has survived through Roman domination before the time of Jesus, and through variegated governments thereafter for about two thousand years until a land area was vouchsafed again to the Nation of Israel in 1948.  One of the… Read more

Life and Language

Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

Language is perceived by semanticists and literati, even archaeologists, in styles, which for the purpose of our interests may be perceived as degrees – from simple to complex, from crude to high art.  Any style can be used well or poorly.  When used poorly it offends, even distracts from language purpose.  Used well it dignifies, offers beauty, informs, lifts, persuades.  The ancients in Greece and Rome highly honored the spoken word, used it often and wrote books about it.  I have read some of them and have been well served by the study.  They come to us, even in our time from persons as significant as Aristotle and Cicero, but others not well known in our time, but highly influential… Read more