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

Cultural Context

December 1, 2017
Year 2, Day 335 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

Not much attention is given to the fact that the Northern Hemisphere has so fully developed in power, creativity and modernization in contrast to the Southern Hemisphere.  This advanced pattern extends to nearly every factor of world life that is measured in historical records.  The accepted religions, the scientists and education, the inventors and technology, together with other leaders, creators, systems, movers of the world have commonly risen out of the Northern Hemisphere.  One quickly acknowledges that the greatest problems, like world war and great depressions, have also come from the north.  The story ought to be balanced.  The Southern Hemisphere had both affirmative and negative factors in cultures and communities, but on a scale not as wide as that… Read more

Tears Ask For Answers

November 30, 2017
Year 2, Day 334 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

Scripture appears to have recorded three occasions when Jesus wept.  He wept at the tomb of Lazarus for a person deceased and the mourners in attendance; for the city of Jerusalem, something of a limited town by modern standards of perception; and, for the world in the Garden of Gethsemane in prayer, at a time period when the world was opening up for larger occupation by mankind.  The experiences suggest to us Christ’s abiding interest in the individual, in communities and in the encompassing world.  We must remember that Christianity is a world religion – for all peoples.  Those of the church who do not absorb that belief in God’s world, do not understand Christianity fully enough.  Their prayers are… Read more

Value And Balance

November 29, 2017
Year 2, Day 333 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

It appears that a desire for recognition is common with self-aware human beings.  It may be that lack of any feeling for recognition is a sign that a person is unaware of the dignity of mankind, a special creation in the physical (natural) world, perhaps for the universe which mankind has invaded.  Man may be a unique presence in all of creation even to the outer rim of space.  All efforts to pick up signs from another creation have failed.  Only a few unverified sounds have been received.  They apparently can be accounted for in what is known of the universe, where no other civilization has yet been found.  As reported on another Page, a lengthy effort to find another… Read more

Location

November 28, 2017
Year 2, Day 332 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

Our education, to be effective in the marketplace, demands of us knowledge and understanding of the follies, slogans, prejudices, and the like, that have the attention, and often the approval, of the general public.  Some of the approval would not hold if time were taken to analyze what has been tacitly approved.  It is not unlike a service offered on the internet that is free if the recipient will read and acknowledge approval of the conditions in which the service is offered.  It is known that most of the subscribers do not read all the fine print, but answer that they did approve.  They are obligated to carry through the agreement even if they did not read it in that… Read more

Cultural

November 27, 2017
Year 2, Day 331 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

Cultures vary, touching nuch related to citizens of other cultures.  Cultures ebb and flow with change, or no change, rising and declining through generations.  Concepts touch and form even the small child.  Some cultures have begun the life of a child in binding feet; to placing rings around the neck to stretch the neck for a tribe known to be tall without the stretch; to circumcision of males. or clitoral clip of females; and so the story proceeds  This last has been taken to American courts when persons emigrated to the United States have continued the practice of clitoral circumcision on their infant girls, or circumcision for males.  The defense relies on the tradition of their people, presumed to be… Read more

Double Duty

November 26, 2017
Year 2, Day 330 | No Comments

We return to the compound life of the Christian.  It is a compound that unites two contextual factors, one natural and one supernatural.  It is sometimes a difficult life because it has many ramifications that are paradoxical and more sophisticated than either element may be defined in its own meaning.  It is the combination of oxygen and hydrogen into a water compound.  Two gasses are made a liquid.  Such is the way of Christian life, if it is lived out in the biblical pattern revealed for that life.  Many persons try to live one or the other life without regard that both exist at the same time, and will continue unless or until they are changed.  Simplistic men and women… Read more

Awareness

November 25, 2017
Year 2, Day 329 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

Awareness is one of those factors of life that is commonly overlooked.  Often, when we are asked to participate in something, we respond affirmatively or negatively without giving thought about what both a proposal and our response might mean in all.  A man, goaded by the words pressed on him by an acquaintance, and fortified by his drunkenness, was driven to go to the home of a Christian minister, and on entrance shoot the minister, and the minister’s wife.  The wife died.  The minister wounded, lived for about seven more years.  The family accounted their father’s death to the grief of having lost his wife.  Thirty three years later the adult children were brought face to face with the murderer… Read more

Processes

November 24, 2017
Year 2, Day 328 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

One of the several important reasons for seeking advanced education is to learn and practice systems for finding truth – and, when appropriate, to transfer that truth into conduct.  Some processes are better than others and some sources are superior to others.  There is a period in a child’s life when if an idea appears in print it is automatic that it must be true.  It becomes a major concern in education to clear the level plain toward truth, and to keep that plain true.  Persons bent on gaining their own objectives, whether by truth or fiction, are always at work.  Tools for learning can be made bludgeons to truth, when activated by hypocritical minds and persons harboring distorted objectives. … Read more

Thanksgiving

November 23, 2017
Year 2, Day 327 | No Comments
Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

Voltaire, the radical revolutionary and atheist Frenchman preferred persons in official capacity in his household to be Christians.  He found a Christian servant could be better trusted not to pilfer, not to violate his or her assignment than those who did not believe in God.  He recognized that Christians had a value system superior to the persons who had no deliberate guide for their lives.  Numerous sophisticates have echoed the same sentiment.  Humanists, accounting honestly for human conduct, have no place to go to find values except to their own accountings.  If scientifically oriented, humanists say that they believe that science will ultimately account for what is moral and right.  At the time of this writing the effort continues, but… Read more

Thinkliving

November 22, 2017
Year 2, Day 326 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

K. Chesterton made significant impact on a wide variety of persons during the twentieth century, and continues to be a force in thought processing, especially among Christians. He was a strong stimulus for C. S. Lewis, and the two men were able to both agree and disagree on ideas, literature, even Christianity. Chesterton was firmly Roman Catholic in his defense of Christianity – emotionally and intellectually at odds with the Protestant venture.  He was something of a curmudgeon when engaged in discussing the Protestant context.  However, when focusing on Scripture, Christ and history, he could provide rich fodder for the biblical apologist – for both human life and immortality for Catholics and/or Protestants. These Pages have repeated the importance of… Read more

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