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

Order

September 17, 2018
Year 3, Day 260 | No Comments

The ancient Greeks believed in order.  This is fairly often referred to by historians and philosophers.  One can induce/deduce from the Greek preoccupation with order in nearly everything they did.  For example, even the architecture followed a prescribed order.  If the columns were a particular length one could deduce what the size of the windows would be, or the doors, or the cross beams.   Buildings were constructed to last, partly because the order would last.  Deduction prevailed.  This is addressed by Murray Jardine in his: The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society. (Page 184 ff.)  He accented the differences between induction and deduction known so well to scientists and logicians.  Deduction moves from an observation (statement) back through factors to… Read more

Self-Esteem

September 16, 2018
Year 3, Day 259 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

An excellent article appeared in The Atlantic magazine related to the theme of self-esteem.  Though excellent, the title, as for so many articles, wounds the meaning of great concepts as in this instance on self-esteem.  The cover title is How the Cult of Self-esteem Is Ruining Our Kids, authored by Lori Gottlieb.  I too have been detoured by editorial choices for titles of books and articles I have written, so I do not lay my blame at the author’s paper or computer.  The title in location of the article may be ascribed to its author, and it is different and improved over the cover title: How To Land Your Kid in Therapy.  This title does not refer to self-esteem, preferring… Read more

Prayer Logic

September 15, 2018
Year 3, Day 258 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

We are almost always at our best in the way we feel about ourselves when we contribute to the context of mature life and experience.  Persons who provide for themselves in this or that factor feel better about circumstances and the matter at hand than those who learn to work a system in which their only contribution is to wangle a privilege, or a product, or a position.  My son and his wife owned a four-unit building in which I lived.  The negative in the ownership was that, from time to time, a renter did not pay the rent, at first late, then dropping back a month, then two months.  Ultimately they were asked to move.  The cost of their… Read more

Future Assumptions

September 14, 2018
Year 3, Day 257 | No Comments
Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

For years I have given considerable time to analyzing substantive newspapers, magazines, and other communications for faith meaning.  For this page I will limit notes from mostly one day’s source, but concepts might be easily traced in current materials published by respected authors/publishers/analysts.  On Monday, December 9, 2013, I went through the Sunday paper of the day before – then repeated the venture.  It would be impossible to cover everything on one Page, but I launch. Article #1: Singing the Sunday Blues.  Once the day of rest, Sunday has devolved into a day of stress. Article #2: Mental Illness: Want to talk about it?  The anti-stigma movement has married itself to a drug-industry script that mental illnesses are diseases like… Read more

Speed Of Change

September 13, 2018
Year 3, Day 256 | No Comments
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

We have already noted in these Pages that change is a constant for life in the generations.  We can be sure that whatever may be current and important to us today may have changed tomorrow.  If it is change in our thought and conduct, and the change is serviceable to mankind, that change is counted as progress.  If the change is regressive there may be a stall period in society, or even what may be called social backsliding so that future experience is seen as falling back, losing ground perhaps causing tragedy for masses of the population.  It is common belief that the Greeks and the Romans in the West moved forward from about 500 BC to the period just… Read more

Gifted

September 12, 2018
Year 3, Day 255 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

All persons of mental and physical balance have gifts that may or may not be utilized up to the level of which the gifted person is able.  Many do poorly, and in the course of events either lose the primary and neglected gift or function at acceptable levels so to be honored of God for discipleship. The theme is large, but not really cultivated in child nurture or formal education.  Part of this omission is likely due to an feeling that the more gifted persons in the human mix will find their way, by dint of their elevation above general norms.  Not all of the super-gifted persons have the energy, the self-administration, the opportunity, or even awareness of their gifted… Read more

Cynical Religion

September 11, 2018
Year 3, Day 254 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

There are many genuine skeptics in the world.  A healthy dimension of skepticism is good in a wise person. Skeptic, like so many words in language, has so many nuances of meaning that we tend to believe that connotation and denotation that fit our preset contextual meaning for it. The matter of interpretation may be helped or hindered by our constructions of various ephemeral factors in our experience.  Prejudice, which is unsupported belief, without adequate reason, plays a part.  The matter of context, when it is badly formed in us, can become ugly.  The stronger we feel about our ideas the greater is the danger of attaching pride to them, rather than humility, so to distort truth.  Students, even scholars,… Read more

One And Many

September 10, 2018
Year 3, Day 253 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

All of our lives we are faced with what we find in paradox and contradiction.  This is referred to several times in these Pages.  Taken together they are main factors in understanding the contexts of the world and our functioning both personally and socially.  They, paradox and contradiction, are worthy of study in that for some persons they seem to point away from faith, and for others they nudge toward faith.  If there be God, why is there so much contradiction/paradox; why so many poor and so few rich; why so many in illness and so many in health; why so many in ignorance and so many educated?  The questions of opposites are long.  True equality and opportunity seem far… Read more

Cultural Evolution

September 9, 2018
Year 3, Day 252 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

Both as a visitor and on assignments I have walked or driven along Times Square streets in New York City. The first time was in 1940 and the last time during the late 1990s, more than fifty years after the first event. Since my last visit twenty years have passed to this writing, and I have been reviewing my memory on the emergence of secular and religious culture as represented in this American context that reflect meaningfully the major cultures in the world of influence.  New York is for much of the world what Rome was to the Roman Empire, or Athens was to ancient Greece, but not interpreted in militaristic or governmental terms as the Roman and Greek cultures… Read more

Imbalance

September 8, 2018
Year 3, Day 251 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

The call of Scripture for Christian unity is firm, but casually treated by many Christians – holding numerous differentials in faith, Scripture, applications, emphases, truth and fiction, even attitudes toward each other and the world.  As the old saying goes: Brethren this ought not so to be.  The problem might be illustrated in a number of contexts, but we will refer to the issues of emphasis in Christian culture and activity.  Early in my personal experience the emphasis was on evangelism in the evangelical community, which espoused Christian conversion.  Christian culture was affirmed, but insufficient time was given to the context of culture.  There was considerable negativity, with some humor about the issue, related to the general culture, even little… Read more

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