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

Encountering Worry

Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

Perhaps all of us have heard someone say to us: Don’t worry.  We may not be worrying, but the glib friend thinks we may be worrying, or will worry.  It may be said in jest: Not to worry.  The situation in such an instance is usually simple so may set up an entertaining exchange.  It is said that Martin Luther was something of a worrier.  He was confronted one morning with his wife dressed in mourning garb.  He wanted to know who had died.  His wife answered matter-of-factly: God!  When he remonstrated with her about the joke, she replied: You have been going around with such a worried manner that I was sure that God had died.  There are persons… Read more

Humanism

Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

For the celebrity, John Kennedy, Jr., his wife, and her sister, the funeral ceremonies in several Catholic Churches were well attended and received world coverage.  People lined the streets outside the Churches, and along the curb near the residence of the young Kennedys.  Even some reporters (Dan Rather and Barbara Walters were the best known) permitted their own public tears and addressed the dead John Kennedy in heaven – united there with his mother especially).  They seemed to believe he could hear what they had to say.  Their words were gracious and assuring for the memory of young Kennedy, and for family members preceding him.  Those persons were declared to be somewhere on the Elysian Fields.  If we were to… Read more

Experiencing God

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

This Page will require more than usual concentration, consideration and response than most of the other Pages in this series.  We are dealing with experience, and experience is sufficiently related to eternal perceptions more than we may have imagined.  The main concept, for our purposes here, relates to the time factor that is so meaningful to the creation, and we relate it to earth experience.  We relate it to our understanding of all things earthly.  Einstein, as we have noted elsewhere, believed time had a beginning so time itself was as much a part of whatever started the natural context as was anything else in the human experience.  For the Christian the Creator of time was God.  For the humanist… Read more

Inclusive Education

Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

There needs to be some method found to educate the public in all nations that the way to social problem solving is found in a moral (value) pattern for personal and social conduct.  Scripture makes clear that God has a general (universal) approach to the world that works even for those persons (individuals) and nations (social groups) who do not acknowledge God or any spiritual context to human life.  Part of the context of the evolutionary theory presents a case for creation and humanity – that what we have has arrived to us through a flow of natural forces offering the present earth and cosmos that appear in our self-conscious experience.  It is interesting that the general view of evolution… Read more

Experiencing God

It seems to normal secular perceptions, even for many persons of faith, an odd claim that mankind can experience God in their personal lives.  Many millions do claim such experience, and others believe that God may involve himself in some large social event like a flood in which there are no lives lost, or the recovery from a pandemic threat to health.  Stories have been written about the unaccountable cause for ending circumstances related to the black death of centuries ago that may have taken a third of the European population, or the end of the flu epidemic following World War I that may have taken more American lives than the war.  Doubters about God argue that if he existed… Read more

Perception

Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

It requires a divine inspiration of prophets to work through the movements, machinations, and matters of daily life in the disturbing flow of the history of mankind.  Much of history is affected by prevailing carnality.  During my lifetime eminent careers, both from those at home and abroad, have been ruined or sullied by the sin factor.  It registers on social programs.  This negative perception is widely held even by the masses of persons who do not include Deity in their lives.  Even though that factor is not understood and/or played out effectively in recorded history, common citizenry is often guilty of negative contexts of thought and conduct.  This sort of reckless life challenges values for history.  Fault is destructive in… Read more

Affirmation

Both spiritually and physically the life-successful person lives by affirmation, not by negation.  Scripture often includes in the discourses of Jesus the negatives of leading or authoritative persons and follows with the affirmations of Jesus.  Often the negatives are shrouded in questions that imply the questioner already knows the answers he and his colleagues believe to be the acceptable ones – and is trying to trip-up the visiting peripatetic evangelist.  Often Jesus poses a question, perhaps to keep the discussion on a high level.  There is commonly a mixture of objectivity and closed mindedness among his listeners.  On some occasions Jesus and the disciples move on to another venue and on others the questioners drop away – or act in… Read more

Future Wisdom

Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

The world needs problem-solvers – the theme we follow on this date.  To solve problems we look for wisdom (maturity) which is the conclusion of knowledge and understanding.  We find it in persons who have a wholeness concept of the world and mankind.  It is obvious in the family relationship, a relationship with many facets: genders, mates, parents, workers, and other factors which, if in balance builds community starting with individuals in families.  Accents change as decades roll by, but there is a trace of optimism in the person or community that gains good leadership from safe and sane persons who hold objectives for all. What happens when we disassociate ourselves from some segment of the society, a society we… Read more

Future Wisdom

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

Several analysts of the circumstances related to the April, 1995, bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, have suggested that a major cause of this and other dramatic tragedies, in America, is the anger of white (Caucasian) men in the young through early middle-age periods of their lives.  These men, according to the analysts, feel put-upon by society, perhaps by parents, by government, by various interest groups and by the rhetoric of much of the mass media.  Caucasian men have been taking their lumps.  There is little doubt.  They are portrayed as the murderers of native Americans (in Custer’s case, the Indians got to him as he was on his way to encounter them).  But the exploiters of black… Read more

Biblical Inspiration

Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

Is the Christian Scripture, identified as the Old Testament (Judeo) and New Testament (Christian), inspired of God?  If it is inspired, what is its doctrine?  That is: 1) the concepts are, in faith, ordered as they are communicated originally, and may be found in various forms of language: myth, poetry, parable, reality (history); or, 2) the God words, as they were approved, utilizing the styles of the human writers as a factor in revelation of meaning.  In the original writings, the words were the choices of God in relating to the author so carry a force of meaning that would not be likely in any other context – unique.  In both theories of inspiration there is presumed to be God’s… Read more