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

Confrontations

September 12, 2017
Year 2, Day 255 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

Virtually all persons have confrontations in their lives, and may be able to measure their progress to maturity toward which those confrontations play a part.  Some of the confrontations are between persons, but I am thinking of events that may not seem to others as confrontations, but become so because of the effect they have on a life.  Some would identify events included here as merely personal experiences.  Very well, heightened experience is often self-confrontation.  It may be modest, but achieves life change.  It may be dramatic.  It becomes indelible for us, especially when repeated in some later experience.  For example, when I was a child of about five years of age, I was frightened by a large dog aggressively… Read more

Religion

September 11, 2017
Year 2, Day 254 | No Comments

Studies of religions interest me, and ought to interest all students of history and culture.  The story can never be satisfactorily told by the academy without an accounting of religion in the emerging narrative.  Religion like so many significant terms may be given various definitions, denotations and connotations.  Even so, it is not as elusive as we have found it in studies since 1900 AD in America.  It may be that historians have felt incompetent to treat the subject in depth.  Likely, the limited treatment belongs to disinterest in a subject so fraught with variety and emotion.  Some historians argue now that the matter of religion must not be left only to religious scholars.  The story has not been adequately… Read more

Adjectives

September 10, 2017
Year 2, Day 253 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

We become characterized by the adjectives our families and friends use to describe life.  We may not be those persons, in any reality sense, but we are so to them.  So one may be serene, or emotional, or testy, or religious, or intellectual, or lovable, or gossipy, or identified in scores of other symbols.  (We remember that written or oral words, even sounds not articulated, are symbols as a stop sign or a traffic light are symbols with meaning for a driver.)  There is complexity here in that the symbols are taken, or not taken, and even in this they have shades of meaning that make it easy or difficult for some persons to function whether alone or in some… Read more

Scholars And Geeks

September 9, 2017
Year 2, Day 252 | No Comments
Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

This Page date, in the Freshman series, is occupied with remarks about the Boswell/Johnson relationship, and Christian perception.  Today we are concerned with William Wilberforce, whose work may have had more to do with the decline of slavery, and its abolition in developed countries than the efforts of any other person of his time.  He prepared the way, and gained the first legislation in England’s House of Commons.  That work followed a line to the Emancipation by Abraham Lincoln long after the deaths of Wilberforce and John Newton.  Newton had much to do with the mentoring and efforts of Wilberforce.  History validates the contributions of the men to the end of slavery – slavery from a legal right to a… Read more

Celebrity

September 8, 2017
Year 2, Day 251 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

My travels and work during more than seventy years have incorporated experiences with persons who, at a particular period in time, were celebrities.  Some were serious persons of meaning, genuinely worthy of attention given to them.  The celebrities of youthful generations commonly relate to entertainment and/or sports personalities.  (Currently, professional sports are fitting more to entertainment than traditional sports/athletics.)  The negative factors in the pattern relate to celebrity arrogance, values distortions, shallowness, and like factors, even noise.  There are affirmative factors that ought to be acknowledged, especially in that many celebrities choose a meaningful social project, they often say, to give back some of the interest and wealth they have been afforded.  In my opinion, the most meaningful negative for… Read more

Self Testing

September 7, 2017
Year 2, Day 250 | No Comments
Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

We do well to determine what tests we are going to make for our lives – in lifestyle, occupation, family, recreation, beliefs, and all that pertains to life.   When we are satisfied with the tests, we must hold self to them.  The quality of the tests has something to do with the quality of our thoughts about life, and the application has something to say about the degree to which we apply ourselves to worthy values and objectives.  An analysis of life management tells us, and can tell others, something about who we are in creation, perhaps in eternity.  We may shoot too low.  Process is unique to human life.  No other creature can exercise such self-evaluation, with the added… Read more

God As God

September 6, 2017
Year 2, Day 249 | No Comments
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

Following his programs, a well-known commentator augments themes with observations of world beliefs and interests.  His weekly focus for final comment is on the accent of the half hour that precedes during which he asks relevant questions, usually to several guests, and continues with probing questions that might clear up further the points he is investigating, and sometimes to press an evasive guest to address the point.  He is noted for his honesty about searching for truth, principally in the political and governmental worlds, and sometimes the financial.  On this day his interest, evident in the program, was to find the meaning and practice of the separation of church and state.  He received several points of view, with an underlying… Read more

The Church Message

September 5, 2017
Year 2, Day 248 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

One way we evaluate ourselves is in acceptance of others – virtually all others.  The highest ethics hold a standard for all, and presume favorable response from all.  Not to accept others is to announce that we do not believe that God made persons and made them equal to each other.  Inequality is introduced when the standard is violated.  Equality as a fact of God to belief has a great deal to do with the way we see ourselves and others.   Violation of the ideal freedom (that is all are equal to the same life privileges and benefits in a context of society), would hold values as optional; that equity is of no regard; that there is no level playing… Read more

Transition

September 4, 2017
Year 2, Day 247 | No Comments

We are concerned here about our wilderness experiences.  We may not be found in the slavery of Egypt, but we are not yet in the Promised Land.  We always face transitions.  There is commonly a vestibule to the higher levels of our lives.  Many persons stall there – moving laterally not yet wilderness free.  Even institutions, including churches and denominations, colleges and governments, may stall there or moving, return to the wilderness.  (Perhaps, they backslide.)  The list of biblical characters is long for those who started the journey only to get stalled in the desert of the wilderness, or fall back to it.  The fall back may mean death.  Things seem, on occasion, not to be as good as they… Read more

Victimization

September 3, 2017
Year 2, Day 246 | No Comments
Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

I want to narrate one of my own experiences.  After my wife’s death, and well into my semi-retirement, a friend invited me to work with him.  His company was growing rapidly and he needed administration.  It was balm for me, in the absence of the person who meant more to me than my own life.  Business was good.  A large contract was signed with a major housing developer, listed on Wall Street, in the amount of eleven million dollars.  Our company completed it as cast, and on time.  Our company was indebted to the bank for the construction period.  The collapse of the building business in 2008 caused the main contractor to withdraw arbitrarily, ruining my friend’s business.  The retiring… Read more

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