Spiritual Word

There are Spiritual words that humans have created that carry with them a certain fullness or clarifying reality that require meditation in order to become fully understood.  This understanding, like manna, has a certain length of freshness before it must be gathered up again in order to truly nourish us.  One such word; Redeemed!

"A House Divided"? Not So Much

It is obvious that America has become two peoples, two cultures, and two countries.  What is not so obvious is why.  But one great truth must be heeded, “…if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.” 

There may however be a different tale.  It seems to me that this division is mostly played out over the airways and ethersphere but not necessarily in the byways and neighborhoods of America.  It may be that this division is more a ploy to sell advertising than it is a recounting of fact.  Sure there is Meryl Streep and Rush Limbaugh, Andrea Mitchell and Dennis Miller, Whoopi and Ann Coulter.   But then there are my neighbors, two of which are politically opposite of me.  The difference is that we love and care for one another, would never place our politics between our homes and we are never on TV.  Maybe we should turn off our enemies and be with our neighbors.  Just a thought before we turn on Facebook or CNN.

PS:  The same Person who said the “house divided” quote also said the “neighbor” thing.  Maybe instead of turning off the media we should read The Book He wrote. 

We Should All Jump In The Mississippi River

“The more recollected a man is, and the more simple of heart he becomes, the easier he understands sublime things, for he receives the light of knowledge from above.”* 

I often wonder while watching America play out on the media’s stage, “How do these people develop their world view, what is animating them to be who they are and do what they do?”  It seems that America is recollecting itself from nothing but a hodgepodge of SNL, Facebook, Friends and Disney.  What would truly help Americans is to search out and see the sublime (the Mississippi River comes to mind) and then ask our self, why/Who?

But I must confess that Kempis has forced me to examine my own being as to what is animating me to be and do!  

*Kempis, The Imitation of Christ  

An Examined Life

Nothing is more enabling of living a sincere life than an adequate understanding of your limited abilities.  There are two ways in which to acquire this wisdom, God and/or old age.  I would much prefer The Former since He is genuinely and completely for me; over the later which leads me harshly to my every limitation all the while reminding me of my supreme limitation, that of keeping myself alive. 

Two other affects of this wisdom is to enable you to live in a perpetual state of gratefulness for The Lord’s ever present help and to live in peace with your fellowman because there but by the grace of God goes me. 

PS These are thoughts prompted by Thomas a Kempis' The Imitation of Christ, Chapter Two

Grandeur's Humility

“When we have intuited the universe and, looking back from that perspective upon our self, see how, in comparison with the universe, it disappears into infinite smallness, what can then be more appropriate for mortals than true unaffected humility?”

F.D.E. Schleiermacher, German Theologian, 1799

Quoted from Modern Art and the Life of a Culture

There is that moment when you look up and dawn has come again and you marvel at the great blessing of being.