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< Back Mark’s Diary – Notes for a Screenplay David Cowles “And so they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were filled with awe, while those who followed behind were afraid.” Narrator : (Quoting Isaiah) “Here is my messenger whom I send ahead, a voice crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare a way for the Lord; make straight his path’.” Direction : As the Narrator is reciting Isaiah, the words are captioned in white letters across a black screen. Scene #1: John is baptizing pilgrims in the waters of the River Jordan. Jesus approaches and is baptized. Chorus (of 3): “This is my beloved son on whom my favor rests.” Scene #2: Jesus is praying alone in the wilderness, wrestling with the temptations of Satan. Learning that John has been arrested, he enters Galilee, proclaiming the Good News to everyone, everywhere. Jesus : “The kingdom of God is at hand! Repent and believe the good news.” Scene #3: As he walks along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus recruits his first apostles, Simon (Peter), Andrew, James, and John, fishermen and merchants from the local bourgeoisie. Jesus : “Come, I will make you fishers of men.” Scene #4: On the Sabbath, Jesus enters the synagogue at Capernaum, the major city in the region, and teaches the rapt congregation with authority. (We don’t hear the specifics of the teaching.) As he is speaking, an obviously troubled man interrupts and exposes Jesus’ identity: Chorus : “I know who you are, holy one of God.” Jesus : “Silence! …Come out of him!” Direction : Jesus is piqued at the interruption and at the untimely disclosure and, knowing it to be the work of demons, Jesus cures the man just to silence him, but it’s too late. He’s created a stir! It’s early days but already, things are not going as smoothly as expected. Scene #5: Jesus takes refuge in Simon’s house where he heals Simon’s mother-in-law as well as others from the town. Before dawn, Jesus slips out, hoping to pray alone, but Simon et al. soon follow. Scene #6: Now Jesus and his tiny band roam the hills of Galilee, sticking mainly to byways and speaking only in rural villages. Along the way, Jesus meets and cures a leper, and swears him to silence. Jesus : “Show yourself only to the priest.” Narrator : “But the man went out and made the whole story public, until Jesus could no longer show himself in any town. He was forced to remain in deserted places, but the people continued to come.” Direction : The Gospel of Mark includes numerous instances of Jesus performing miracles, usually swearing his beneficiaries to silence that they often break. We have staged a few of these miracles but the Director should feel free to stage additional miracle stories from the Gospel as she sees fit. Scene #7: Jesus and his disciples are walking through a corn field; it happens to be the Sabbath. The scene suggests Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows . The apostles are picking, peeling and eating ears of corn. Chorus : “Why do they do what is forbidden on the Sabbath?” Jesus : “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Son of Man is sovereign, even over the Sabbath.” Narrator : “So the Pharisees began plotting against him with the partisans of King Herod to see how they could do away with him…Then Jesus went up into the hill country and called the men he wanted, and they joined him. In all, he appointed 12 to be his companions.” Scene #8: As Jesus and his followers continued on their way, Jesus takes the opportunity to teach: Jesus : “Nothing is hidden unless it is to be disclosed, the measure you give is the measure you will receive…and more besides. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed , the smallest of all seeds…Once sown, it grows taller than any other plant and forms branches so large that birds can settle in its shade.” Scene #9, Narrator : “Once more, a crowd has gathered around Jesus so that he’s had no chance to eat. His family set out to take charge of him for people were saying that Jesus was out of his mind. When his mother and his brothers arrive, they remain outside and send a message into Jesus.” Chorus : “Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you.” Direction : Jesus is mortified at being summoned home for supper as if he were a little child. Angry, he looks for an opportunity to regain lost dignity. Jesus : “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?... Whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, my mother.” Direction: But the damage has been done. Chorus : “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? Are not his sisters here with us? Narrator: “So he could no longer work miracles there…he was taken aback by their lack of faith.” Jesus : Let’s cross over to the other side of the lake. Direction : Here for the first time a map of the region appears on the screen. As the film continues, the map reappears and Jesus’ movements are tracked. Map : Jesus travels across the Sea of Galilee from Bethsaida on the northern shore to the Decapolis, a group of 10 Greek speaking towns on the Southeastern shore. Scene #10, Narrator : “As Jesus stepped ashore, a man possessed by demons, who cut himself with stones, came up to him.” Jesus : “Come out of this man!” Narrator : “Now there happened to be a large herd of pigs nearby. The demons went into the pigs and the herd rushed over the cliff, into the lake, and drowned, and the spectators begged Jesus to leave the area.” Scene #11, Narrator : “So Jesus crossed back over to Gailee. Upon his arrival, Jairus, the leader of a local synagogue, approached him.” Jarius : “My little daughter is at death’s door. I beg you, ‘Come, lay hands on her, cure her, save her life’.” Jesus sets out but midway, messengers arrive. Chorus : “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Rabbi further?” Jesus : “Do not be afraid. Only have faith.” Narrator : “He allowed only Peter, James and John to accompany him to the leader’s house where there was a great commotion with loud crying and wailing.” Jesus : “Why this wailing? The child is not dead, she is asleep.” (Chorus laughs derisively.) “Get up my child,” and she rises. Scene #12, Narrator : “They set off secretly by boat, searching for an isolated place. But when he came ashore, Jesus saw a great crowd.” Chorus : “This is a lonely place, and it is getting very late. Send the people off to the farms and villages to buy themselves something to eat.” Jesus : “Give them something to eat yourselves. How many loaves have you?” Chorus : “Five loaves, and two fish as well.” Narrator : “Jesus took the five loaves, looked up to heaven, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to the disciples to distribute. He also divided up the fish. Those who ate numbered 5,000 and they ate to their hearts’ content. 12 large baskets full of scraps were gathered up at the end. “Then Jesus left this place and went to the territory of Tyre.” Map : Jesus route to Lebanon (Tyre), 50 miles northeast, a 3 day journey at that time. “He found a house to stay in and would have liked to remain there unrecognized, but that was impossible. On his return, he went by way of Sidon and the Decapolis to the Sea of Galilee…” Map : Jesus’ route through Lebanon, Syria and Jordan is incredibly circuitous. He ends up back at the Sea of Galilee but now he is back on the Eastern Shore. Emphasis should be placed on how much distance Jesus keeps between himself and his native Galilee. Scene #13, Narrator : “…There Jesus fed another 4,000 pilgrims with 7 loaves and several fish; this time 7 baskets of scraps were collected.” Direction : The disciples are murmuring among themselves. They appear bewildered. Jesus : “Do you still not understand? Are your minds closed? When I broke the 5 loaves among the 5000, how many baskets full of scraps did you gather?” Chorus : “Twelve.” Direction : Here the map can morph or flip into a blackboard/whiteboard. As the Narrator speaks, the following image gradually appears on the screen: ‘5 loaves/5000 people →12 baskets’ Jesus : “And how many when I broke the 7 loaves among the 4,000? Chorus : “Seven.” ‘7 loaves/4000 people → 7 baskets’ Jesus (exasperated): “Do you still not understand?” Direction: Tensions are clearly on the rise. Jesus is testy, the disciples are squabbling among themselves, and everyone is growing restless. Chorus : “We have left everything to become your followers.” Jesus : “There is no one who has given up home, brothers or sisters, mother, father, children or land for my sake who will not receive 100 times as much… and eternal life.” Direction: But like Washington at Valley Forge, Jesus realizes he can wait no longer. He must act…or risk losing his followers. It’s now…or never! Jesus : “Now we are going to Jerusalem where the Son of Man will be given up to the chief priests and the doctors of the law. They will condemn him to death and hand him over to the occupiers. He will be mocked, spat upon, flogged and killed; but three days later, he will rise again!” Narrator: “And so they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were filled with awe, while those who followed behind were afraid.” Director’s Note: This scene should be staged to suggest Kerouac’s On the Road , Ken Kesey’s ‘Merry Pranksters’, etc. As they proceed, crosses may barely be seen punctuating the far distant skyline. Curtain David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com Return to Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back Revelation David Cowles “This is possibly the shortest ‘play’ in all of literature…and yet it is arguably more important than anything Shakespeare (or even Andrew Lloyd Weber) ever wrote! In its introduction to the Book of Revelation, the New American Bible (Revised Edition), the translation currently in use in the Roman Catholic Church, states: “The Apocalypse, or Revelation to John, the last book of the Bible, is one of the most difficult to understand…” An understatement, if ever there was one! Its layers of symbolism confound Biblical scholars, not to mention the casual reader. But this essay will not concern itself with any of that! You will not learn the exact date of the end of the world here. Sorry about that! But don’t go away mad! Can I tempt you with a totally transparent, 45-second synopsis of the entire book? Beats Cliffs Notes …and it’s free! Many things are going on in Revelation, but all of them occur in the context of an ongoing, cosmic dialog between the Lord (YHWH, the Father) and his Christ (Jesus, the Son). It’s short and sweet. Here’s the full script: Lord : “I am the Alpha and the Omega…the one who is and was and is to come, the almighty.” (1: 8) Christ : “I am the first and the last…the one who lives.” (1: 17b – 18a) Lord : “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” (21: 6) Christ : “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (22: 13) This is possibly the shortest ‘play’ in all of literature…and yet it is arguably more important than anything Shakespeare (or even Andrew Lloyd Weber) ever wrote! The entire dialog consists of just four divine epithets, cited by multiple actors in multiple contexts. Wait! Did you just say, “So what? What’s the difference? Aren’t these all just different ways of saying the same thing?” Don’t be shy. It’s a good question, and the answer is, “Yes and No.” We’ll spend some time on this later on. But first, R U satisfied with my synopsis ? Did you get your money’s worth ($0)? Will you come again? Tell your friends? Now back to your question: The author begins with a greeting: “…Grace to you and peace from him who is and was and is to come (the Lord )…and from Jesus Christ , the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and ruler of the kings of the earth.” This greeting introduces us to the two main characters in this drama, the Lord and his Christ , Jesus. As we shall see, the nature of God and his role for the world will be revealed through their dialog. He is ‘the firstborn of the dead.’ John, of course, is not speaking of Jesus’ historical birth c. 6 BCE; John is referring to Jesus’ eternal rebirth, his resurrection. He is ‘ruler of the kings of the earth’…curious considering that Jesus was hunted and persecuted by ‘kings’ for most of his 30-odd-year history. Once again, John is not commenting on first century politics. John is identifying Christ as the ultimate source of order ( Logos in the Gospel of John ) and therefore the arbiter of justice. There could be no civil power without the fundamental order established through Christ . Legitimate power exists solely to serve the interests of justice, and it is legitimate only so long as it is serving those interests. Ultimately, all political power, legitimate or otherwise, must bend to the demands of justice. On a quick read, one is reminded of an elementary school playground: “I’m the man…No I’m the man…” Both the Lord and the Christ seem to claim to be ‘the man,’ i.e. the Alpha and the Omega. But that’s not what’s going on here at all! We’re not hearing competing claims of divinity; we’re hearing complementary claims. This is not a rumble! This is a pep rally! Let’s focus on the epithets themselves: The Alpha and the Omega. The one who is and was and is to come, the almighty. The first and the last, the one who lives. The beginning and the end. The first two epithets are initially applied only to the Lord . Alpha and Omega are, of course, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, but combined this way, in the idiom of the day, they express the concept of ‘entirety,’ a fitting epithet for YHWH. And what of ‘the almighty?’ Often, that stands by itself as a divine epithet. Not here. Here, it is part of the Lord’s introductory ‘profile’ and it is meant to emphasize the Lord’s role as the source of pure potentiality. The third epithet is applied only to the Christ : “the first and the last, the one who lives.” The final epithet, “the beginning and the end,” is initially applied to the Lord . The boasts of an eight-year-old (“I’m stronger than you…faster than you…smarter than you”) pale in comparison. Our protagonists have upped the ante: “I am everything, so if you are not me (or part of me), you are nothing…quite literally!” Heady stuff for a schoolyard! But of course, this is a misreading of Revelation. The Lord and his Christ are not arguing at all; they are mutually affirming a basic metaphysical fact: both are the entirety, but in somewhat different ways. In the Trinitarian logic of Christianity, if A, ~ B; then A, so ~ B does not hold! Even though the Lord and the Christ are independent persons, each can claim ‘entirety’ without annihilating, diminishing or even contradicting the other. Alfred North Whitehead offered a similar model. His Primordial & Consequent Natures of God , distinct in themselves, both represent the ‘entirety,’ albeit in radically different ways. There are epithets that are applied strictly to one and never to the other. For example, ‘the one who is and was and is coming’ is reserved for the Lord alone. The Lord , ‘the one who is,’ is Being itself, the pure, infinite potentiality that underlies all existence. This is the Lord who said, “ I am who am ” in Exodus and “ Let there be light ” in Genesis. Therefore, the Lord , the one who is, is also the one who was. One and the same Lord is present - yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The world consists of nothing but ‘Actual Entities’ ( aka events). No two actual entities are the same and yet every one of them, past, present or future, rises in the same way from the same ground as God’s Consequent Nature. According to the logic of Christianity, A ≠ B but A = C and B = C. God is Being itself. Being is just Being. It is one, it is simple: it has no parts. God is not just Being. God is Good. As Good, God is also Beauty, Truth and Justice, the spatio-temporal manifestations of Good. These characterizations are denotatively synonymous but connotatively distinct. As the Good Ground of all that is, God must embody all the qualities that they adopt. In fact, God is those qualities or, even more to the point, God is Quality per se, i.e. the Good. Things that exist exhibit qualities in various combinations and with varying degrees of intensity. Like the mythical snowflake, their patterns are infinitely varied. But God is Quality and Quality, the Good, albeit variously manifested, never varies. To rephrase, the essence of Good is immutable while the manifestations of Good are, at least potentially, infinitely varied and always unique. Jesus of Nazareth was born sometime around 6 BCE and died roughly 30 years later. How then can the Christ possibly be called ‘the first’ or ‘the last’ or ‘the one who lives’? Christ is first because he precedes ontologically, not historically, every other actual entity. Later in this essay we’ll discover how this can be true. For now, it is sufficient to note that in Christian cosmology, space and time are not primary categories; they are subservient to the more important, more fundamental ordering of ontology. Christ is last because through him and in him every actual entity will ultimately participate in a harmonious synthesis of actual entities ( Parousia ). Literally, Eschaton means to hold all things together. That is Christ’s role as Prince of Peace. Finally, Christ is the one who lives because all life comes to be through him, runs its course with him, and ultimately resolves itself in him. We will return to this important epithet later in this essay. But there is still one final epithet for us to address: “the beginning ( arche ) and the end ( telos ).” Initially, this phrase is applied only to the Lord , seemingly in contrast to Christ being ‘the first and the last’; but in the final couplet, the dénouement of our great drama, the Christ brings both epithets together in a single statement of identity: “I am the Alpha and the Omega (of course), the first and the last (expectedly), the beginning and the end (surprisingly).” The migration of this last epithet from the Lord to the Christ is what this play is all about. It’s the plot…and a spine tingling one at that! Now at last we are ready to unpack the cosmic sea change that is Revelation. In his function as ‘the one who is and was and is coming,’ the Lord appears to be passive, even inert. Now, as ‘the beginning and the end,’ the Lord reveals himself to be the source of creative unrest in the world. The Lord is not only the ontological foundation ( arche ) on which all things depend for their existence, but he is the lure ( telos ) that calls these things to be. Nothing could come to be, were it not for the potentiality of Being which is its foundation ( arche ), but nothing would emerge from that potentiality into actuality without an end ( telos ). There can only be one ultimate end and that end can be nothing other than the Good which is God. The accidental details of that end are entirely unconditioned. This is the freedom, the ‘life,’ that is Christ . But the essence of that end, the Good, is totally determined. No entity would emerge from potentiality into actuality other than to answer the call of the Good. Obviously, entities lose their way, but the initial impulse to become is always an impulse toward the Good. Since Good is the essence of God, the initial impulse to become is always the lure of God’s goodness. Without foundation, no potentiality; without lure, no actuality! Initially, Revelation contrasts the Lord (foundation and lure) with the Christ (first and last). Christ , the Incarnation of God, exists within the world, both historically in the person of Jesus and cosmologically as the ‘first ( protos ) and last ( eschatos )’. As ‘first and last,’ Christ is essentially ‘foundation and lure’ turned inside out. Foundation and lure are eternal concepts, standing outside the universal flow of actual entities; so is ‘beginning and end’. First and last is a temporal concept, participating essentially in the flow of events. The eternal foundation becomes effective in the temporal world when it enters that world (ontologically, not historically) as its ‘first’ entity. Likewise, the eternal lure becomes effective in the world when it enters that world (ontologically, not historically) as its ‘last entity’. Incarnation is the phenomenon that inverts the cosmic order, that makes the eternal relevant to the temporal and the temporal relevant to the eternal. Incarnation is precisely the concept Parmenides was missing when, in his great ontological poem, On Nature , he contrasted the immutable ‘way of truth’ ( aletheia ) with the ever-changing ‘way of appearance’ ( doxa ). Parmenides left us no clue how to connect these two equally valid, but apparently contradictory, realities. 500 years later, the early Christians filled in the missing piece. Christ is ‘first’ because all entities emerging from the foundation of potentiality initially relate to the Christ. It is through Christ that the Good that is God enters the world as a specific actual entity. It is through Christ that these qualities are made available to emerging entities. The Lord is pure potential and pure appetition. Christ is an actual entity among actual entities. Responding to the lure of the Lord , entities emerge out of pure potentiality into actuality by appropriating for themselves various qualities made available to them through the Christ . The organic process of selecting and rejecting qualities, incorporating those qualities with various degrees of intensity, and harmonizing those qualities into a whole - this is what makes an entity actual ( Dasein ) and it is what constitutes each actual entity as what it is ( Wassein ). Just as actual entities incorporate qualities and harmonize them into a whole, so Christ incorporates all actual entities and harmonizes them in himself. The primal quest of every actual entity for God’s Goodness is ultimately satisfied by its inclusion in the harmonious community of actual entities that constitutes Christ . The fact that there is a universe of existing things at all requires even more than just the foundation and lure of the Lord. Standing outside of spacetime, arche and telos are necessary, but not sufficient by themselves, to give rise to an existentially free universe of existing things. Something else is required, and that something is “relatedness.” Philosophers from Anaximander to Martin Buber have agreed on this point: without relation, nothing! For what is an actual entity but a network of relationships? Scratch any entity, and you will find a web of relations that make it up. Actual entities derive their existence from arche and telos , the Lord, but they derive their essence from their network of relations with other entities, including God, and these relations manifest as qualities. From foundation and lure comes existence, what Martin Heidegger called ‘Dasein,’ that-it-is . From relatedness comes essence, which he called ‘Wassein,’ what-it-is. Dasein springs from the Lord , Wassein from the Christ . While the Lord , Being and Good, supplies the potentiality for existence, Christ , the Incarnation, supplies the potentiality for relatedness, essential for the emergence of an actual world like ours. The Lord , ‘the Alpha and the Omega,’ is the entirety. The Christ , Jesus, is a ‘quantum of being’ within that entirety. But that quantum is also the entirety , also ‘the Alpha and the Omega’…just inside out! Being , then, is the superposition of ‘inside out’ and ‘outside in’. Christ is the potentiality for all relation, and therefore ontologically prior to all relations. Every entity that comes to be, comes to be in primal relation with Christ. Christ is the destination of all relation, and therefore ontologically subsequent to all other entities. But every entity that comes to be gains its ultimate identity in Christ . Ultimately, all actual entities form a single harmonious web of relations, and that web is the Christ …the Logos . Logically speaking, Christ is the initial term in the series known as universe and also the one common element of each other term in the series. Likewise , Christ is the final term in the series known as universe and also the sum of all its other terms. This is the full meaning of the term ‘Eschaton’: all things hold together in Christ . Finally, Christ is ‘the one who lives’. Life is the process through which relations emerge and mutually modify one another until a coherent entity appears. Because all evolving (living) entities evolve (live) in Christ , Christ is the source of all life (John 1: 2) and therefore ‘the one who lives’. Fast-forward now to the final chapter, the so-called Epilogue! Jesus Christ speaks again (through John, of course) but now the vocabulary has shifted, “Behold I am coming soon…I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” But what exactly is it that is coming? Beginning at the end of Chapter 20, Revelation tells us: “Next I saw a large white throne and one who was sitting on it (the Lord). The earth and the sky fled from his presence and there was no place for them… Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God…I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people…the old order has passed away.’ The one who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’” The two realms, one of eternal being, the Lord , one of existing things, the world, are now one. The earth and the sky (spacetime) have fled; there is no place for them. The old order has passed away. The former heaven and earth have passed away, and even the sea ( kaos in Genesis ) is no more. Instead, a holy city, a new Jerusalem ( aka Kingdom of God) where God dwells with us ( Emmanuel )! What is coming? It is Jesus, the Christ, the Eschaton in which all things hold together. All things are saved in Jesus. All conflicts have been resolved into harmonies. Arche & telos = proton & Eschaton ! The Lord , who stands outside the world, and the Christ , who stands inside the world, act together “…so that God may be all in all.” (I Cor 15:28). David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Summer 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back The Human Predicament David Cowles Oct 13, 2025 “Consciousness is the experience of pre-existing contrasts (sensation) deriving meaning from a shared context.” Sensation may be more or less immediate, but experience is not. Conscious experience requires not only raw sensation but also internal contrast and external context. My senses only disclose the existence of ‘X’ if I can distinguish ‘X’ from ‘not-X’ and if I can locate both ‘X’ and ‘not-X’ in a shared context that makes the contrast relevant. Example : the contrast between red and blue is strongly relevant in the context of color while the contrast between the Gettysburg Address and a grain of sand in the Sinai is weakly relevant in the context of something like ‘ things that can be named’. Ducking the important issue of pre-natal consciousness, birth is Event Zero. It is the only time in our 80+ year long existence that we will encounter ‘novelty’ per se . Everything is brand new…by definition. To be clear, every one of our NLE’s c. 10^12 ‘experiences’ will be novel, but that novelty will consist of a specific contrast in a specific context; only at the moment of birth do we encounter naked novelty . Contrasts are immanent in experience! They are binary and linear. Specific contrasts constitute the essential substructure of any one experience. However, the semantic meaning of an experience, its defining superstructure , always transcends the experience itself. That meaning is derived from context which by definition is neither linear nor binary. A contrast has no meaning apart from a context and a context has no relevance apart from a contrast. It is through an immanent contrast that the transcendent context makes itself felt. The defining contrast(s) of an experience are an essential component of the experience itself. The semantic context of an experience is never part of the experience; it transcends it, i.e. it gives the experience its meaning . If ‘experience’ is a legitimate application of Gregory Bateson’s famous ‘difference that makes a difference’ criterion, then ‘context’ constitutes the limits of that differentiation. Given X and not-X, contrast is what distinguishes them and context (what they share) is what ‘unites’ them. In effect, contrast and context template each other on an axis perpendicular to ‘experience space’: contrast is the anti-context, context is the anti-contrast. Whatever is not contrast is context and vice versa. Example : Red and blue (above) reflect a contrast in the shared context of color. The concept of color transcends both red and blue but it becomes relevant only through such contrasts (e.g. the contrast of red and blue). Now all this sounds benign enough…but it isn’t! It’s deeply subversive, as Nietzsche was first to notice. Once we concede that an immanent contrast derives its significance from a shared context, we have opened the floodgates. Any context, transcending a contrast, can find itself in contrast with some other context, transcending a different contrast. Extending our example above, if red and blue contrast in the context of color, color can contrast with heat in the context of the electromagnetic spectrum. Electromagnetism in turn contrasts with gravity in the context of force fields, etc. You can see where this is headed! If we’re not careful, some wise-ass punk in the 3 rd row is likely to shout out the G-word and we can’t have that, can we? But not to worry, we’re not there…yet (but we are getting warmer). Nietzsche realized that once transcendence got its nose in the ontological tent, God would inevitably follow. To protect us from this catastrophic assault on our pride, he willingly sacrificed the concept of shared context. Nietzsche’s world is flat! Which is ok, as long as we understand that none of his contrasts have any meaning; they just are. “…One belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole… But nothing exists apart from the whole!” ( Twilight of the Idols ) Conscious experience consists of a contrast within a shared context. Any context can in turn contrast with another context in a shared meta-context. The process should continue indefinitely. But obviously, it can’t! There has to be an Ultimate Context (UC) regarding which at least one of the following statements must be true: (1) UC contrasts with nothing…by definition, it’s ultimate; (2) UC contrasts with itself, it’s ultimate; (3) UC contrasts with everything other than itself - again, ultimate. Note that this Ultimate Context is different from Aquinas’ First Cause. It is not intuitively obvious why there has to be an ‘uncaused cause’ but it is obvious that everything that is - God, Earth, my neighbor’s brat - shares a common context (Being per se ) that is only contrastable with nothing …which is ‘no thing’. But now suppose all three statements are true; then ‘UC’ is essentially synonymous with the Judeo-Christian concept of ‘God’. How so? First, God is incomparable (again by definition); nothing has anything in common with God. God is the ultimate Other (Buber, Tillich, et al.). Second, God contrasts with everything else (Creation) – the context is their mutual incompatibility. Fiat lux is the ultimate contrast; it contrasts Creation and Creator. It is also the primordial contrast: “Conscious experience consists of a contrast within a shared context. Then God separated the light from the darkness.” (Genesis 1: 3 – 4) It is a contrast per se ! (Everything else is just yada, yada, yada.) Third, God is Process (e.g. Love, History, the Burning Bush); therefore, God includes internal contrasts between personae (persons) and God provides the context from which those contrasts derive their meaning. Conscious experience, wherever it is found in the cosmos, is a hybrid phenomenon connecting immanent contrast(s) with transcendent context. The justly famous ‘human condition’ is a symptom of this dichotomy. To be clear, we are firmly rooted in the immanent world of contrasts. We are the product of 30 trillion independent living organisms (cells) acting in concert. However, our gaze is just as firmly fixed on the transcendent context. Consciousness is the experience of pre-existing contrasts (sensation) deriving meaning from shared context. *** Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow (1930) distills experience into its most essential contrasts—color and line, presence and absence, individuality and order. Through the disciplined arrangement of primary hues and perpendiculars, Mondrian seeks the universal within the particular, transforming visual tension into metaphysical harmony. The painting’s equilibrium between opposition and unity mirrors the human search for meaning within structure, where contrast becomes the very language of context, and simplicity opens onto transcendence. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back The Hard Problem Solved David Cowles Sep 20, 2026 “God’s unassuming manner gives us a model for human consciousness.” 1150 words, 5 minute read It is customary these days to refer to consciousness as ‘the Hard Problem’. Ok, I’ll grant you, it is tricky. How is it that I seem to be aware of myself acting apart from my awareness of my action itself? I am primarily aware that the sky is blue, but I am secondarily , but simultaneously, aware that I’m aware of it, i.e. I am aware of myself being aware. Spooky! Well, not that spooky. Turns out, the Hard Problem’s been solved …and it was solved 2500 years ago: “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered over waters. And God said , Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning— the first day .” (Genesis 1: 1(b) – 3) But even before that, we read: “ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Some creator! He observed, he spoke, he allowed, he evaluated, he sorted, and he labeled. God was more lab assistant than Nobel Laureat. But isn’t that exactly what ‘creation’ is? Remember, God created the heavens and the earth; he did not manufacture them. The act of creating imposes severe constraints on the creative process. The finished product must be ontologically independent of its creator; it must be free …or it’s merely a baby’s bobble. But God’s unassuming manner gives us a model for human consciousness. Contrary to popular (and by ‘popular’ I mean universal) opinion, we are not conscious authors of our actions. Rather, we oversee, we permit, we judge, we differentiate, we sort and we label. No wonder we read, “ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them…” (Genesis 1: 27) We’re chips off the ole block! And say what you will, Genesis doesn’t skimp! Just in case we’re dense, which of course we are, it repeats the same lesson, over and over again: “ And God said , ‘Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water’… and it was so. God called the vault ‘sky’… “ And God said , ‘ Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear’. And it was so. God called the dry ground ‘land’, and the gathered waters he called ‘seas’. And God saw that it was good. “ Then God said , ‘ Let the land produce vegetation’… and it was so… And God saw that it was good… “ And God said , ‘ Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night’. And it was so… and God saw that it was good. “ And God said , ‘ Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky’… And God saw that it was good… “ And God said , ‘ Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds… And it was so…and God saw that it was good. “ Then God said , ‘ Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness… So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them… God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” Get the point yet? Apparently not! Why else would we continue to refer to God as ‘almighty’ ( omnipotens ) rather than ‘all-might-be’ ( omnipotentia )? Like our template, God, we act and we are conscious of our actions… after the fact . Consciousness does not precede action, as we have supposed, but follows it (logically, not temporally). We are conscious of our actions, but we do not act consciously . Action is part of our primary awareness (above), consciousness is secondary. We consciously review, and condone or condemn, our actions (including our perceptions) and we project our valuations, along with the actions themselves, into the Actual Worlds of future events. Our conscious evaluation of our actions is no more inert than God’s. Just as light and land and sea and sky became permanent features of the World accompanied by God’s approbation, i.e. his positive prehension and favorable subjective form (Whitehead), so we tag our own actions with conscious judgment, and the objective future inherits both our physical actions themselves and our conceptual valuation of those actions. In another post on this site, Consciousness & Free Will , we explored in more detail our idea that actions may be voluntary, free, and value driven even if not preceded by conscious intent. None of this is meant to compromise our responsibility, or our accountability, in any way. We are responsible for the actions we undertake voluntarily, even if unconsciously, but we are especially responsible for the subjective form (valuation) we attach to those acts as we project them forward into future Actual Worlds. Imagine you are playing the role of Hamlet on Broadway. Wallace Shawn directing I hope. You act the part of the Danish prince from curtain to curtain. Then, instead of getting drunk with the rest of the cast, you head home to write a review of the play for the New York Times . You impact the future twice: once by the way you interpret and project Hamlet’s character on stage and then again by how you review your performance (and the rest of the production) for the Times ’ readers. The future of this production is impacted both by the quality of your acting (primary) and by the tone of your writing (secondary). Consciousness transforms action in the same way that quantum computing transforms data processing. Instead of a binary bit (+ or -), consciousness gives you qubits (+/+, +/-, -/+, or -/-): I act or I pass, I confirm or I condemn. Quantum computing power grows exponentially rather than arithmetically; consciousness gives a similar boost to the efficacy of my actions. Consciousness does not determine what I do; it amplifies (or dampens) it and ‘superjects’ the finished, evaluated product, as ‘raw material’ for future events. Genesis gives us a model of consciousness that avoids the usual pitfalls of mechanism, determinism, and dualism. It eliminates the problem of so-called ‘conscious agency’. Rather than emerging from a network of single celled organisms called neurons (seriously?), consciousness permeates physical process, observing, rationalizing, judging and projecting, while retaining its distinct ‘identity’ (ontological status). The action of consciousness is reaction…but it is that reaction (“it is good…or not”) that gives events their meaning and, along with the action itself, impacts the future. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Choices that Lead to Deception Magesh I often ponder over what drives individuals to opt for a deceitful path rather than a righteous one. Lately, I've been contemplating the divergent decisions people make in identical situations. I often ponder over what drives individuals to opt for a deceitful path rather than a righteous one. This article delves into the opportunities presented to me and those around me, focusing on how my faith guided me towards the right choices. As a musician, I've had the privilege of performing worldwide alongside multiple Grammy Award-winning artists. Throughout my years in the music industry, I've witnessed and encountered occurrences that some may only encounter through reading. While this industry teems with opportunities, it also harbors behaviors steeped in scandal. My steadfast relationship with God shielded me from the allure of drugs, alcohol, and other negative influences. In my earlier years as an up-and-coming musician, I received a call from a prominent nightclub owner, who owned the most sought-after spot in town. This establishment drew eager crowds every night to witness local and international bands. A sudden opportunity arose when the singer of a renowned band scheduled for a Sunday performance fell ill. They asked if my band could fill in for a 9 pm show the following night, offering us a generous fee of $700—an excellent start for a budding band. Upon arriving for the soundcheck, I was astonished to find a queue forming outside the club, hours before the show commenced. The club owner, as I set up my drums, remarked, 'I hope you're ready, kid!' The audience greeted us with cheers from the first note. They had come expecting the previously scheduled band but embraced our music, talent, and positive vibe. Perhaps our backstage group prayer played a role! At the night's end, when I approached the club owner for payment, I was met by his brother, as the owner had left due to illness. Reassuring me, he handed over a brown paper bag. Only upon reaching home did I realize it contained $5,000 instead of the agreed $700. A miscommunication had occurred—his assumption being that we were the established band. I immediately contacted my older bandmate, suggesting we return the excess. Recalling Corinthians 4:2, emphasizing faithfulness in entrusted matters, I recognized this as a test from God and resolved to pass. The following day, I returned to the club, acknowledging the mistake in payment. Astonished by my honesty, the owner not only corrected the error but also offered my band a regular spot every Tuesday for five years. Although keeping the money would have been easier, the long-term benefits of doing the right thing were immeasurable. Years later, I crossed paths with the bass player who initially suggested keeping the money. He confided in me that his dishonest actions had led to being 'blacklisted' by numerous recording studios and clubs. While he didn't elaborate, it was evident his dubious behavior had consequences. In 2005, while touring with a world-renowned pop star, our band encountered a scenario at a Sydney studio. We discovered a bag containing $7,000 left behind. Without hesitation, I declared that we must act honestly, quoting not only biblical teachings but also recognizing the value of integrity. One of the band members, a young man from the Middle East, commended my wisdom in prioritizing honesty. In jest, I attributed it to Corinthians 8:21, highlighting the significance of honesty in actions. Returning the money proved fortuitous as it belonged to an Italian immigrant, his life savings inadvertently left behind. My decisions to uphold honesty were profoundly influenced by the teachings I held dear. This integrity didn't just establish me as a talented musician but also as an upright individual. It fostered invaluable relationships with tour managers, club owners, and studio staff, underscoring that success in the music industry wasn't solely grounded in talent but also in honesty. Magesh has written for “Lessonface,” “Aeyons,” “The Modern Rogue,” “Euronews,” “The Roland corporation,” “Penlight,” and “Elite Music.” He writes several monthly publications on music education. In the past, Magesh has written for parenting, humor, mental health, and travel websites as well. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back I Am...You Are! David Cowles Apr 2, 2024 “Empathy is all well and good; nevertheless, your being burned at the stake, no matter how richly you deserve it, feels different to me than my being burned.” Stop me if you’ve heard this before! The observable universe, all we know and all we can ever know, is more than 14,000,000,000 years old; you are eight orders of magnitude younger. You are the product of prebiotic organic molecules that once upon a time formed a single DNA (or RNA) molecule. That molecule in turn went through about 3,500,000,000 years of mutation, replication, and selection until some descendant exhibited the coding we associate with homo sapiens . In turn, you are the product of two human haploid cells (sex cells) forming a single diploid cell. That cell divided and differentiated until, voilà , the you we know…and have come to love! It all looks very neat and orderly. It should. We crafted language, logic, and mathematics to make it look that way. You may be forgiven for being confused. You imagine that you are an epiphenomenal consequence of a single cell. What else could you think? You were thrown into an utterly alien world; you were given no training and no information other than a few scattered fragments of code in your genes. You were given no superpowers; on the contrary, you came into the world ignorant and defenseless. As a newborn, 60% of your caloric intake was directed toward building your brain and making neural connections. (In adults, those same activities consume only 2%.) In Judeo-Christian theology, God is usually considered to be omnipotent and omniscient by nature. You, on the other hand, are born with neither power nor knowledge. You are the ‘anti-God’…or so it seems. The words of the Psalmist (reprised by Jesus on the Cross) are apt: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22) Why indeed? We are all forsaken…at birth! You are a baby! You are lying on your back, limbs flailing, defecating in your diaper. You don’t need any additional lessons in humility (“As soon as you’re born, they make you feel small” – John Lennon) …but you’ll get those lessons anyway, every day, for as long as you live. The Intellectual History of the West is the story of Universe’s aggrandizement and your miniaturization. You were born ‘tiny’, and every day you learn just how tiny - that's the function of education! In 1500 CE, it was still possible to conceive of the Universe in the form of the human body: Adam Kadmon , Leonardo da Vinci. Now, “all we are is dust in the wind.” (Native American Poem) We are “like the morning mist, the early dew that disappears, chaff swirling up from the threshing floor, smoke escaping through a window.” (Hosea 13) Dire straits! But we do have one thing going for us, if only we’d notice it—first-person experience. Empathy is all well and good; nevertheless, your being burned at the stake, no matter how richly you deserve it, which feels different to me than my being burned. In Jerusalem, c. 33 CE, three men were crucified on a Jerusalem hilltop. Each one experienced his crucifixion personally. Those gathered at the foot of the crosses experienced crucifixion, but from the ‘luxury’ of box seats. Death is like that. As far as we can tell, everything that lives, dies. We say it’s the one sure thing. It isn’t! There’s only one sure thing, and it’s the opposite of what you think: you will never die; you may see death, but you will never taste death. Death is a third-person experience; it does not exist in the first-person world. People die, to you ; you die, to them ; but you never die to yourself . We all know this, even if we sometimes need to be reminded, but do we really know it? Hello! It’s a clue ! A big, fat, Greek wedding-style clue. How could we have missed it? We have convinced ourselves that we are a tiny hole in the fabric of the World. And so we are. But that hole turns out to be the whole . I am a sub-visible pinhole in the cosmic fabric, but one hole can unravel an entire garment. In 1900, Max Planck discovered a ‘hole’ in the EM spectrum; Physics unraveled. The World as we are taught to see it goes like this: Cosmos → Galaxy → Solar System → Planet → Me. And that’s third-person accurate, but so is its first person reverse: Me → Planet → Solar System → Galaxy → Cosmos. It is as true to say that I contain Cosmos (where else would it be?) as it is to say that Cosmos contains me (where else could I be?). In the third person, I am the expression of a single DNA molecule; in the first person, the universe is an expression of me. Why do we value one mode of experience over the other? We call third person experts, scientists ; we call first person experts, lunatics . But it’s all just third-person bias! I am not of this world…obviously. (My mother said, correctly, “You’re just not people!”) Consciousness, awareness of self and others may depend on a material substructure, but it will never be reduced to that substructure. Can Ho Chi Minh City be reduced to a popsicle wrapper? My physical dimensions are insignificant - less insignificant than yours, I’m sorry to say—but insignificant nonetheless. But what I’ve learned to call ‘me’, my body, is just the tip of a dimensionless funnel. We all agree on that . I am here; see my ‘tip’ (body), poke me, prod me; but it’s not about the tip, it’s about the funnel. Does my funnel open to the observable universe only to re-focus at a singularity? Or does it open to something much more wonderful? Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 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“Waiter, bring me one order of everything on the menu and when I’ve finished, I’ll pay for whichever dish I liked the best.” < Back Robert Frost was Wrong David Cowles Oct 15, 2024 “Waiter, bring me one order of everything on the menu and when I’ve finished, I’ll pay for whichever dish I liked the best.” Shortly after Niels Bohr produced his quantum model of the atom (1913), Robert Frost wrote (1916) his iconic poem, The Road Not Taken . Apparently a commentary on existential angst and the human condition, Frost’s poem can be read on an entirely different level. It raises questions that haunt the science of Quantum Mechanics (QM) to this day. Of course, that may not have been Frost’s intent; at that time the wide world was just beginning to learn about Relativity. But a poem is a poem is a poem. Once written, it transcends its author and even its milieu. We must meet the text head on, accept it on its own terms, regardless of the author’s subjective intent. A hundred plus years ago it was popular to think of the Universe as if it were a finely tuned Swiss timepiece, wound by God ‘in the beginning’ and left running mechanically ever since. Some 7 th Day: Gone fishin’! But by 1900, a series of observations and experiments had already made this view untenable and eventually led to the discovery of Quantum Mechanics. QM showed that there is no pre-determined course of events, that what happens is more a function of probability than causality, and that Universe at its most fundamental level is best understood as a perpetual series of ‘choices’ In the realm of philosophy, this insight popped up as the Existentialist doctrine of Freedom. Jean Paul Sartre, the high priest of Existentialism, divided Universe into en-soi , which was perfectly deterministic, and pour-soi , which was perfectly free. He skirted the problem of dualism by defining en-soi as etre (being) and pour-soi as neant (nothingness). Le neant functioned as the negation of l’etre and in this way diversity was reconciled with solidarity. Sartre understood that freedom, while absolute, could not be unbounded. For example, one is not ‘free’ to draw a square circle or fly to Mars just by flapping one’s arms. Facticity (the real world) imposes logical and physical limitations, but those limitations are external to the agent and do not in any way limit or qualify that agent’s perfect freedom . Limitations are part of en-soi , never pour-soi . In The Road Not Taken , Robert Frost confronts a simple choice between two options (0, 1). He has a destination to reach and there are two roads that will take him there. Facticity excludes any other option: he cannot fly, he cannot tunnel, he cannot crawl for miles on his hands and knees through underbrush. If he is to accomplish his ‘project’ (arrive home by end of day), he has only two choices: there are only two roads he can take. Frost’s preferred solution: travel both roads and still be one traveler. But with his imagination still bound by the limitations of classical physics, he rejects that notion as impossible. QM, however, suggests that such a strategy is possible. In fact, most current interpretations of QM assert that this is the only possibility. Given the existence of two equally attractive (i.e. equally probable) paths with identical start and stop points, Frost will travel both, whether he likes it, or is aware of it, or not. But how? One possibility, supported by the various “double slit” experiments that gave QM its start, suggests that a quantum follows two or more paths simultaneously but does not ‘decide’ which path will be its ‘real’ path until it is reaches its destination and is observed (measured) by an external agent: “Daddy’s home!” or “I shall be telling this with a sigh…” Mr. Frost can indeed “travel both and be one traveler”; there’s no other way to get where he’s going. But when he finally arrives at his destination, it will appear to all observers (including Frost himself who is now his own observer) that he has come by one path only. His arrival, once observed, collapses the Wave Function. According to this model, Frost can experience both walks and then, at the very end, he can ‘decide’ which walk was more satisfying, select that walk, and make that his actual experience, his history, his biography. We imagine that we live in a world where the past determines the future. Frost shows how wrong this is. It is at least as true to say that the future selects its own the past. This interpretation has massive real world implications. Imagine, for example, how this might play out in a restaurant. “Waiter, bring me one order of everything on the menu and when I’ve finished, I’ll pay for whichever dish I liked best.” Or what about a lifetime? You follow all courses open to you and then, at the end, you get to choose the one path that gets you the best result. How kool would that be! But this option is not all it’s cracked up to be either. First, it isn’t really ‘Frost’ who makes the final decision. That decision is made by the whole experimental apparatus, the whole Universe for that matter, and is as much a function of mathematics (probability) as aesthetics (taste). Second, Frost will have no memory whatsoever of ‘the road not taken’. Similarly, I will have no memory of the dishes I decided not to pay for in your restaurant, or how they tasted. In a bizarre turn, you only get what you pay for after all. Cruel justice! Hugh Everett’s “Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics” modified this picture. According to Everett, every time Universe confronts a choice it bifurcates, splits. In one Universe, Choice A is made; in a second Universe, a perfect copy of the first save for this one decision, Choice B. According to this view, Mr. Frost must “travel both”…but he is no longer “one traveler”. According to Everett’s theory, there are now two Frosts, entirely unaware of one another; sadly, according to Everett, they will never meet again. Everett’s theory allows Frost only one set of experiences, but he may (or may not) find consolation in the realization an alternate Frost is having the other set of experiences in an alternate universe. In any event, both Frosts arrive in the same town at the same time, but now it is really two different copies of the same town, each existing in its own Universe. What a waste! What is it about Nature that makes you think it might be that inefficient? Once arrived, the town is the same in both universes, as is ‘the Frost’. So why can’t they pick back-up where they were before the split? Suppose we modify Everett’s model to allow Frost’s many trajectories to intersect, to become entangled, perhaps to recombine, to merge, radically constraining the proliferation of universes that so bedevils Everett’s scheme. This model allows the Universe to grow but at something approximating its currently observed rate, not exponentially as with Everett. This model begins to resemble Richard Feynman’s Sum Over Histories . According to Feynman, Mr. Frost travels both paths; but this time he remains one traveler. The two experiences merge only when he reaches his destination, but the final product is not a choice between, but a mash-up of, the two experiences. It might be more accurate to say that a part of Frost travels one path and another part travels the other path. Feynman’s model does not double the amount of experience Frost enjoys but it does combine experience from both pathways into a single outcome. According to our restaurant metaphor (above), we get to taste all the items on the menu…but only as samples, never as full meals. Recently, a new interpretation has come along that builds on Feynman. In this thought experiment, known as the Cheshire Cat , quantum data is understood to show that certain properties (qualities) of the quantum follow one path while the particle itself (quiddity) follows the other. In Alice in Wonderland , the cat’s grin, a property, can appear separately from the cat itself. In the Cheshire Cat experiment, the particle’s spin can travel a different route from the rest of the quantum. In The Road Not Taken , perhaps Frost’s gait and affect travel one path while his body follows the other. Crazy, I know, but this is Quantum Mechanics! Convinced? Neither am I, but it’s one logical possibility. Bottom line : The Road Not Taken is beautiful and ground breaking…but ultimately and unavoidably wrong! You can “travel both (roads) and be one traveler;” in fact, you must . But no one could have known it at the time. That said, there is a non-thetic intuition that suffuses this masterpiece that prepares us for what might be coming down the road. Perhaps it is a defining function of art to prepare us psychologically for impending upheaval. In any event,100 years later, no one is loosening their seat belt! A hundred plus years ago it was popular to think of the Universe as if it were a finely tuned Swiss timepiece, wound by God ‘in the beginning’ and left running mechanically ever since. Some 7th Day: Gone fishin’! Image: “Observation of a Quantum Cheshire Cat in a Matter-Wave Interferometer Experiment,” by Tobias Denkmayr et al., in Nature Communications , Vol. 5, Article No. 4492; July 29, 2014 David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com . Return to Harvest 2024 Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Boethius “The ultimate pattern of events is determined, while the specific events that form that pattern are entirely undetermined.” David Cowles You know Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Kant and Hegel, but do you know Boethius? My mappa mundi of Western Civilization is maddeningly simplistic. I divide it into three great and, so far at least, symmetrical epochs: Classical, Medieval and Modern. I date the Classical era from the 5th century BCE: the rise of pre-Socratic philosophy, the golden age of Greek theater, and the dawn of Athenian democracy (Pericles); it ended in the 5th century CE, one millennium later. The Fall of Rome (476 CE) kick-starts the Middle Ages. Another millennium passes and now Machiavelli and the rest of his ‘Renaissance gang’ are busy bringing down the curtain on the greatest social ‘experiment’ of all time, call it ‘Christendom’ or ‘Feudalism’ as you will. So, the Modern era begins (c. 1500 CE); are we still in its grip today? Precedent says that we are only halfway through this third epoch. Hope and prayer say otherwise! Perhaps history is unfolding according to an inverse Fibonacci series (1, 1, 2, 3, 5…). This would preserve intact the first two 1,000 year eras; but it would mercifully shorten the so-called Modern epoch to just 500 years, followed by a succession of much shorter post-Modern epochs: 333 years (now), 200 years, 120 years, etc. Who knows? Could happen! The rate of change does seem to be accelerating. We should be so lucky! Have we seen the backside of the ‘Enlightenment’? Are we on the cusp of something new? Is this “the dawning of the Age of Aquarius” we heard so much about in the ‘60s? Ok, I’ll curb my enthusiasm! The 20th century borrowed liberally from the New Testament’s Apocalypse : two world wars, the holocaust, the atomic bomb, climate change… The grip of La Technique ( per Jacques Ellul) on our economy has never been tighter, while its first cousin once removed, propaganda, thoroughly dominates our intellectual, social, and political lives. Are there any promising counter indications (i.e., grounds for hope)? Well, in the art world, we celebrate the demise of representationalism and the return to the Gothic ideal in the work of Picasso, Kandinsky , et al. Now we are once again looking beneath the surface: we’re exploring what things are , not just how they look or how they work . In science, too, we have overthrown the tyranny of Newtonian spacetime. 20th century physics pulled off a spectacular trifecta: relativity (Einstein), quantum mechanics (Heisenberg et al.), and non-locality (John Bell). Finally, literature: Ulysses (Joyce) represents the rediscovery of syntagm (vs. system). Pound, Eliot, Stein, Becket, Robbe-Grillet, et al., joined Joyce in rotating the ‘world’ 90 degrees, from a horizontal orientation (sequence) to a vertical orientation (coincidence). The classical, medieval and modern epochs each produced a gaggle of philosophers, but out of that scrum, a man called Boethius unexpectedly emerges. He bestride the millennia like a Colossus - sorry Homer. Boethius was a Christian, but scholars are uncertain about the depth of his conviction. By the end of the 5th century, Christianity had become chic . It was the way forward for any aspiring philosopher. Jupiter and Juno were yesterday’s news ! Yet, his most famous work, The Consolation of Philosophy , though thoroughly monotheistic, makes no mention of Christianity or any of its differentiating doctrines. Instead, the work displays Boethius’ profound familiarity with Greco-Roman mythology and classical history. He was a prominent personal advisor to the Ostrogoth emperor Theodoric, an Arian (i.e., a heretic, at least by today’s standards). Yet, Boethius is venerated, with official sanction, as a Christian martyr in at least one region of Italy. Be that as it may, Boethius proposed solutions to mainstream philosophical problems, the like of which are not seen again until the late medieval/early modern period (1200 – 1950). Let’s explore: All events, to the extent that they are free, seek Good and shun evil. What else could events possibly do? By pursuing something, events automatically confer on it the moniker, ‘Good’. Emerging events assess the world as it is, evaluate that world according to criteria (i.e., values) we call ‘the Good’, and act to modify that world so that it more closely conforms to that ‘Good’. Not your cup of chai? No problem, Goodbye! Of course, in our spatio-temporal world, things don’t always turn out exactly as we intend. The best laid plans… and all that. “Everything that is good is so through participation in goodness.” “If there is something to which all things are inclined, it will be the sum of all good…” “Even things which are believed to be inanimate also desire, in a similar way, that which is their own… Furthermore, that which is suitable to each thing, they preserve, just as they destroy what is harmful.” It’s hard, even for Boethius, to describe Being from the perspective of a stone. Suffice to say, there is something about a stone that works to preserve its stoniness . Was Boethius, therefore, a proponent of panpsychism ? We don’t have enough evidence to make that call, but his ontology certainly does not rule it out. “… The end of all things is the good…namely God.” The final cause. “Mortal men travel by different paths, though all are striving to reach one and the same goal… It is the perfection of all good things and contains in itself all that is good.” “The chief point and reason, therefore, for seeking all things is goodness…all things are desired for the sake of the good in them… God is to be found in goodness itself and nowhere else.” Boethius demonstrates that Good, Being, Unity, Love and God are different names for a single concept. “When…objects differ (conflict) they are not good, but…it is through the acquisition of unity (harmony) that these things are good…” “Everything that is remains and subsists just so long as it is one, but perishes and dissolves immediately it ceases to be one.” To be is to be one; to cease being is to become ‘legion’. Think of your own body; it is made up of 35 trillion cells, but you experience those cells as one body. We use ‘the body is breaking down’ as a euphemism for death. “Men who give up the common goal (unity, harmony)…thereby cease to exist themselves.” We are only so long and to the extent that we keep our focus on the Good. 1500 years on from Boethius, we have memes of our own: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” (The Who) But this is not at all what Boethius had in mind: The more things change, the more they become one! Becoming one is just about the opposite of staying the same . “The world in constant change maintains a harmony… If Love relaxed the reins, all things that now keep peace would wage continual war.” “If you do away with perfection ( aka God), it is impossible to imagine how that which is held to be imperfect could exist…” Without some universal unifying force (e.g., God or the Good), the world would disintegrate into an ever-finer grained multiplicity, culminating in heat death. Imagine all the matter/energy in the universe, inert and spread out smoothly throughout the universe. Hmm, sounds a bit like Genesis before God’s creative act: “The world was without form or shape with darkness over the abyss and a wind sweeping across the waters, (1: 1-2)” aka the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background). “That which is the origin of all things is in its own substance supremely good.” An ‘origin’ qua origin can only be one . Once that unity is lost, so is the power of origination. “Evil is nothing, (so) it is clear that since they can only do evil, the wicked can do nothing.” Our choice is not merely between good and evil, it is between something and nothing. To be is to be good; not to be good is not to be. “We must see everything that exists as good…anything that turns away from the good ceases to exist.” Like all children, we initially understand freedom as ‘ freedom from’ – freedom from the ministrations of parents, teachers, and civil authorities. Later, we tack on ‘freedom to’ – freedom to speak, assemble, pursue happiness, etc. But there are even bigger fish to fry. External constraints can be annoying (ask any teenager), but internal constraints can be, and usually are, fatal. We are born free, not omnipotent, but free, free to be all that we can be. Anything that interferes with my ability to realize my full human potential is, in that instance at least, evil. Born free, most of us allow ourselves to be imprisoned, not by evil men (sic) but by our own attachments: “But if to care and want you’re prey, no king are you, but slave.” We are in prison, a prison of our own making; but incredibly, we know the way out of this prison. Exit signs abound and there are no locks on any doors, no gates are barred, and yet we huddle together in the prison yard, bemoaning the lot, calling out for a savior. We noted earlier that no one knowingly and freely chooses lesser good in preference to greater good; and yet we all do so, nearly all the time. Born free, we are no longer free. Each of us is in a prison of her own design. The wisdom of all cultures, east and west, is full of blueprints, maps and escape manuals. Arguably, these constitute the sum of all human reflection. Liberation is what the Buddha was all about; but perhaps the opening verse of the Book of Psalms says it best: “Happy is the man (sic) who does not follow the counsel of the wicked…the law of the Lord is his joy, and on his law, he meditates day and night.” We are ‘happy’ only to the extent that we participate in the Good, and participation in the Good is only possible in the context of Freedom. Luckily, we are free; we only just need to recognize that! “Submitting to His (God’s) governance and obeying his laws is freedom.” For Boethius, freedom and virtue are one and the same. Failure to act virtuously in a particular situation is testimony to the hold evil has over us. No one voluntarily does anything that is less than ‘good’; therefore, anyone who tries to do anything other than ‘good’ does so as a result of compulsion (imposed externally or internally). Compulsion is the manifestation of evil in the life of a human being (or any other entity endowed with free will). Boethius was a mere 1,400 years ahead of his time. Elsewhere in this issue of ATM, we looked at how Pope Leo XIII and Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre , both espoused similar views of freedom and compulsion. The popular Christian notions of Providence and Omniscience (foreknowledge) seem radically incompatible with this Freedom. Freedom suggests that we are the authors of our own acts. We might not control the outcome of events, but we are solely responsible for their initiation. We act! Providence , on the other hand, refers to God’s role in the unfolding of events (personal or cosmic). This is what Einstein meant when he asked if the universe ‘had a bias toward good’; it is also what the preacher means when she says that God has a ‘master plan’ for each of us and for the cosmos. It is under Providence that we’ll find the concepts of Divine Benevolence and Omnipotence. God acts! Omniscience refers to God’s foreknowledge of events. It assumes that God knows immediately and eternally every detail of cosmic history. This would appear to preclude all contingency and therefore eliminate any role for Freedom. We are presented with a ‘block universe’ in which everything that is to happen has ‘already happened’...in the mind of God. Nobody acts! Each of these concepts is vastly more nuanced than we have space to explore here. Each could consume volumes…and has. Still, based just on this thumbnail, it is hard to see how these three connotatively disparate concepts could apply jointly to a single reality. But perhaps that is the ‘consolation of philosophy’ – to see the synonym behind every antonym. The Consolation of Philosophy , Boethius’ masterwork, is divided into 5 books, each in turn further divided into chapters. The last chapter of the penultimate book and the entirety of the final book are devoted to one topic: “You are urging me to the greatest of all questions, a question that can never be exhausted…the oneness of providence, the course of fate, the haphazard nature of the random events of chance, divine knowledge and predestination, and the freedom of the will.” This area of inquiry remains a major focus, even today, of theological and religious speculation. In the end, if I understand him correctly, Boethius got it right, but his reasoning can be hard to follow. Rather than quote Boethius at length (as I did above), I think it would be more profitable for all concerned if I were to present an organized summary of his views on this topic. Boethius believed that Freedom, Providence, and Omniscience are, in fact, entirely compatible, but to see that we need to look at the world through fresh eyes: God is eternal ( aka timeless), God is good, God creates. The universe is real. It’s not a figment of God’s imagination, and because It is real , it is free. Real existence is only possible in the context of real freedom. To be is to be free. The created universe extends in both space and time. Even if that extension were infinite (Aristotle), that infinity would, in no way equal, or even resemble, eternity which is another name for God. ( See ATM’s Eternity vs. Immortality. ) From the perspective of the spatio-temporal universe (us), events may be sorted into past, present, and future . From the perspective of eternity (God), there is no past or future, just a single all-encompassing present. So, God ‘experiences’ all spatio-temporal events as happening immediately and simultaneously. From that perspective, events fit together perfectly. Each event makes a unique and irreplaceable contribution to the final pattern. Therefore, each event is ‘necessary’ in its relationship to other events and to the whole. There is no wiggle room here. On the other hand, a nexus of entirely different events could have generated the exact same pattern, in which case those events would each be ‘necessary’. The ultimate pattern harmonizes all events, regardless of their details, by resolving all conflicts into contrasts that perfectly instantiate God’s values. Therefore, we may say that the ultimate pattern of events is determined, while the specific events that form that pattern are entirely undetermined. Human beings (and perhaps other entities as well) are free to act (in the real pursuit of Good, i.e. God) or not (in the imaginary pursuit of ‘pleasure’, i.e. idols). Freedom acts in pursuit of God’s values; Providence harmonizes those acts into a pattern that perfectly instantiates those values; God has eternal knowledge of that pattern . From God’s perspective, it is the pattern that is ultimately real. The specific acts that form that pattern are the province of the created (i.e., free) world. Let us fall back on the old metaphor of an oriental rug. God prescribes the pattern and monitors ‘events’ to ensure that that pattern is emerging from the weave. We are the five-year-olds, working up to 16 hours each day, in dimly lit spaces, tying knots. We know nothing of patterns; our only concern is to tie a good knot. Ultimately, though, our efforts, however painful, are redeemed in the magnificence of the final design. Boethius offers us this consolation, only days before he is bludgeoned to death. Thank you, Mr. B! Image: Boethius woodcut. Holbein. 1537. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Previous Next

< Back No Kids and No Curiosity David Cowles Dec 5, 2025 “Worship the pre-teens in your life and spend time learning from them and enjoying their company…for as long that is as you can stand them.” 1000 words, 5 minute read No parent or grandparent fails to notice that their kids’ insatiable curiosity wanes with the onset of puberty. In a recent study ( Psychological Science ) Radhika Santhanagopalan, Ph.D., discovered that as children aged, the tendency to avoid information grows stronger. Though 5- and 6-year-olds still actively seek information for its own sake, 7- to 10-year-olds are much more likely avoid learning something if it elicits a negative emotion. We learn to filter the truth from a very early age and apparently we were doing so even before the onset of Century 21. Recent findings ( Nature Communications ) reveal that central nervous system hubs grow and reorganize on a timeline that doesn’t map neatly onto the milestones we typically celebrate (e.g. ages 6, 16, 21, etc.). For this study, scientists compared MRI diffusion scans of more than 3,800 people, ranging from newborns to 90-year-olds; they found that our brains ‘molt’, i.e. shed one skin for another, at 9, 32, 66, and 83. The human brain experiences five distinct eras as we age, and each is defined by changes in our neural architecture that influence how we process information. What this means, according to the researchers, is that our brain’s connections wire themselves in pretty much the same way from birth to nine years of age. Then our neural architecture starts to organize differently as we enter adolescence, continuing through age 32. At this point, the brain’s structural development appears to peak, according to the study. “What we find suggests that the journey from childlike brain development (through age 9) to this peak in the early 30s is distinct from other phases in the lifespan,” says Alexa Mousley, the study’s lead author and a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge. At age 32, the brain’s longest rewiring era begins, marking the opening of the adult years. It’s at this point that brain architecture starts to stabilize compared with the previous phases, and Mousley says this corresponds to past research that found that there is also a “plateau in intelligence and personality around this time.” By the time of our first ‘molt’, we have begun to understand some things about information: (1) Knowledge is power. (2) Information is a tool. (3) Tools (e.g. information) can be weaponized. Between a 50 year old and a 5 year old, I’d choose to spend time with a 5 year old any day…I would that is if I could keep up. I can hang with my 50 somethings for months on end and never hear a fresh idea; I’m sure they would say the same of the time they spend with me. We sub-out our thinking to academia and the media. After all, creative thinking is a lot of work, and we have lost confidence in our ability and in our results. We are more than happy to let those ‘more qualified’ think for us. On the other hand, I can’t spend an afternoon with a 5 year old and not hear at least 3 fresh ideas. Not all of them will turn out to be Nobel worthy; but they do make me think. They show me the world in a new way, and isn’t that the point of it all after all? Sidebar : I’ve watched videos of incredible adults interacting creatively with groups of children. They’re awesome! But tellingly, none lasts more than 20 minutes; adults cannot hold their own with kids for longer. We see the world as a collection of symbols; we confront nothing on its own terms, we see nothing as it is in itself. Everything we experience is carefully protected by its semantic packaging. Adults understand how things are used , where they fit in , but they have no idea what things are . Jean-Paul Sartre focused his most successful novel, Nausea , on this phenomenon. In one scene, his hero encounters the roots of a tree as they are, in and for themselves alone, for the first time. As adults we apply a complex ontological grid to our perception of the world. We impose our own Great Chain of Being: adults > kids > pets > other animals > plants > ‘ stuffies ’. Children are born Hasidim – they perceive the same divine spark at the core of everything they encounter (animate or otherwise). What we call playing , they’d call ‘releasing the Shekinah ’…if only they could pronounce it. Ludo = Laudo . Since Plato, Westerners have thought in terms of classes and their members. There is a class of objects known as ‘chairs’; they all serve a common function though no two of them are identical. Children know no classes. They learn how to ‘classify’ from adults. Initially, every object, every person is its own class. Ab initio , every noun is a proper noun. But as they ‘grow up’, they gradually internalize the Platonic categories of the adults around them. Children routinely nominalize adjectives. To the extent that we internalize Plato’s categorical scheme, we lose contact with ‘things in themselves’. Children have no role in society. They serve no function (unless ‘being cute’ qualifies). Each is an independent entity immersed in a sea of independent entities. The way our contemporary languages are structured, children must learn about classes in order to communicate. They must learn to identify ‘ a chair’ rather than just ‘ that chair’. Seniority offers us a chance to rediscover ourselves, but of course we no longer have any idea where to begin. Perhaps the best you can do is to worship the pre-teens in your life and spend time learning from them and enjoying their company…for as long that is as you can stand them. *** Norman Rockwell’s Grandpa Listening in on the Wireless (1920) shows a young boy demonstrating an early radio set while his grandfather, dressed formally, leans in with a mixture of amusement and genuine wonder. The grandfather’s tentative posture and wide-eyed expression reveal an older man momentarily returning to childlike curiosity as he engages with new technology. Rockwell uses this intimate, intergenerational moment to highlight how learning—and delight—can flow from child to adult just as naturally as the reverse. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Be Half There David Cowles “'Be Here Now,’ cried Baba Ram Dass in the ‘60s. But was that good advice?” Can you imagine what life would be like if we actually had to live it? Fortunately, we don’t! Ok, maybe we ‘half-live it’. At every juncture in life, you’re ‘half-there’. A part of you is always stuck in a remembered past while another part of you is already looking back from an imagined future. You see yourself not as you are, but as the peculiar complex of culturally defined roles you’ve adopted – i.e. your personae, your masks. You’re not a point, you’re not just ‘who you are, what you are, when you are’. Like an orbiting electron, you’re schmeared out over space and time. Just listen to yourself: “Next time…next time I’m in Maui, next time I come to this restaurant, next time I drive north in rush hour. “Last time…last time we visited Hawaii, last time we ate in this restaurant, last time I drove north in rush hour. “Back then…when I was Tweedledee…then when I become Tweedledum.” Whatever it is we’re doing, we’re simultaneously comparing it to something we did in the past, something we might have done in the present but didn’t, something we could yet do in the future. We’re also comparing our actions with culturally expected norms: “Big boys don’t cry,” and with the supposed actions of our icons: “WWJD?” Many spiritual teachers have observed these phenomena and railed against them. “Be Here Now,” cried Baba Ram Dass in the ‘60s. But was that good advice? To experience the present moment with no option to bury yourself in memories or hide yourself in fantasies or comfort yourself with counterfactuals or justify yourself via social norms (“just doing my job”) would be unbearable. We manage life by believing that we are redeeming the past and improving the future (whatever that might mean). We are ‘making a contribution’, certain as we are that ‘better days are coming’. We are leaving footprints in the sand, ripples on the surface. We are sustained by our memories (faith), we are energized by our visions (hope), and we are ever reliant on ‘the kindness of strangers’ (love). We do not act alone but as members of a community and we are proud of the socially defined roles we play within that community. “I am someone!” you say. ( Sidebar : when I was in my mid-20s, my mother once said to me, “You’re not people!” Later, I became ‘people’; thanks, Mom?) You are a student, spouse, parent, teacher, butcher, baker, candlestick maker…sequentially or all at once. You find your precious ‘identity’ by overlaying a stack of social filters. Can people change? Of course they can! Just change the filters. But can people really change? Of course they can’t! There’s nothing to change. We are relieved to know that some features of the past are done and gone, never to be repeated, but we are also comforted knowing that the present has inherited some familiar features from that same past. Believing we can make the future qualitatively different from the present gives our lives purpose. Solidarity with others gives us a sense of security. These dispensations allow us to relativize the horror of real life. But flash! Those dispensations can be taken away. Future courts may have the power (constitutional and technological) to sentence serious offenders to relive a year, or two, of their lives. In this state, you can’t modify your behavior and you can’t alter the course of events in any way. Pain cannot be averted; boredom cannot be relieved. You must simply relive it all, all alone, as it was, with full knowledge that there is no pony hidden beneath the pile of excrement. Essentially, you’ve become a character in an ‘anti-version’ of It’s a Wonderful Life . You are watching an unedited narrative of you , but you are watching it from the inside, from the perspective of a real character in the movie. Jimmy Stewart experienced the world as it would have been had he not lived in it; you get to experience the world as it is because you lived in it. You are fully engaged, emotionally and intellectually, feeling every slight, every bruise, as if you were feeling it for the first time…but knowing that you’ve experienced it all before and that you’ll go on experiencing the same until your sentence is up. How is such a thing possible? Actually, it’s pretty simple once the bot brain barrier has been breached. Carbon and silicon; they go together like peanut butter and bananas. Ads for You - the Movie tell it all: “Cringe as you watch yourself repeat the same mistakes. Blush as you relive those legendary awkward moments . Tremble in anticipation of reliving past pain; cry as you watch yourself hurt others.” Without its dispensations, life is unbearable. Defendants dread nothing more than hearing, “…And so I sentence you to be yourself for a term of one full year.” It is well known that convicts sentenced to play the lead role in You - the Movie invariably return to court after a month or two. Sentenced to ‘real life’ for one year, they ask the judge to ‘commute’ their sentence…to ‘death by lethal injection’. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. 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< Back A Simple Christmas Deidre Braley "There comes a time when our souls need more respite than even the traditions of Christmas can offer us." The last couple of years, I have begun advocating for ‘simple Christmas’ with my family. It comes from the purest intentions but always leaves me, at the last minute, feeling like a scrooge who was just too lazy to ‘do’ Christmas right. The result is that I spend way too much money in way too little time and that I jam-pack our remaining yuletide days with parties and people [and our bellies with so much sugar that we need to detox for the first quarter of the new year]. But I can’t shake the frustration of being carried along on the wave of the holidays. In the pursuit of Christmas cheer, I feel pulled ever farther from holy joy. The extra baubles, the extravagant gifts that I’ll just be vacuuming around for the next year, and the endless packing of our traveling circus caravan [that is, our family] - all of that ‘cheer’ leaves me gasping for air and dreaming of the middle of January when I can finally observe Christmas the way I want to: resting in the margins with a quietly expectant heart. And my heart can be neither quiet nor expectant when every marginal moment is filled with details and lists and talking and calculating. It takes time to prepare my heart for holy reverence. I cannot celebrate and commune with and rest in the glory of the Coming Lord while simultaneously watching The Christmas Prince on Netflix. I just can’t. The thing is, we are so tied up in Christmas as a culture that the notion of ‘simple Christmas’ seems simply impossible. Christmas has become something that we do, not that we observe, and by golly, we want to do it up right. That means leaving no Christmas movie unwatched, no cookie unbaked, no party unattended, and no gift ungifted. Don’t get me wrong - it’s not that I don’t like the traditions and festivities that come along with Christmas. In fact, I love them. I cry every year when I hang our ornaments on the Christmas tree, remembering the origins of each and listening to John Denver’s Rocky Mountain Christmas spin on the record player. I close my eyes and dream of my grandmother while I knead her special butterscotch rolls, praying they’ll turn out half as good as hers always were. And I always try to tune in to CBS for the Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman specials. What is it about these rituals that makes them matter on such a personal level? It’s that they make us feel connected to something timeless, even as time continues to strip away and change everything else in our worlds. When we tether ourselves to tradition, we express our deep desire to be grounded and anchored to something meaningful - something that will remain steadfast and dependable, year after year. But there comes a time when our souls need more respite than even the traditions of Christmas can offer us. I remember the first year that I realized I no longer had ‘the Christmas Spirit.’ I entered the season with eager anticipation of the cheer it would bring, but to my dismay, I found my soul wasn’t responding to all the Christmas goodness the way it once had. I wanted it to feel the same. I wanted that spark, that cheer! Where had it gone? I looked for it everywhere; I listened to more songs. I made more party plans. I put more presents under the tree. But it didn’t give me more holiday cheer. If anything, it just made it all the more elusive. In my journal that December, I wrestled with the change: Why do I feel Like Christmas Is something to be caught And caged Like a bird That must sing for me? Perhaps, as the years pass and the realness of this world settles heavily upon the magic we once cultivated from tradition, the answer is not more of the same, but less. I am not a minimalist, per se, but I am intrigued by the idea of stripping back all of the layers of our lives until we find only what’s essential resting there, waiting to be nurtured. So often, we get confused and end up nurturing not the thing that’s most essential, but rather what’s most visible. So, when we’re lacking cheer, we think that it must be because we need more lights on the tree or piles of cookies on the counter. So, we string. And we bake. And we feel perplexed and frustrated when it doesn’t work. See, when we lean in to more of what culture says will make us happy, we’re only adding more layers, and, in turn, we distance ourselves even further from what’s truly essential. The effect is that our minds, bodies, and spirits begin to dry out. We reach the end of Advent feeling completely malnourished. Our culture has nearly extracted the ‘holy’ right out of ‘holiday.’ It’s been quite effective at convincing us that we don’t need it - that holiness is outdated, archaic, and boring. As a result, any of us who actually want to try ‘simple Christmas’ this year might find it much harder than pulling off a regular ole cultural Christmas. It will go quite against the grain and, I imagine, be a little off-putting to some. But in the stripping back of what we think brings us cheer, might we be able to discover joy instead? What if we try it together? What if we make this thing - ‘simple Christmas’ - a movement? What if we agree to strip back all the layers of our holiday cheer this year so that we can discover the essential nature of holy-day joy, instead? What would that even look like? Surely, it would look different for everyone. For me, it might look like planning to purchase a single, intentional gift for each of my beloveds (rather than a whole slew of them), and to take pleasure in wrapping each one with love. It might feel like turning down an invitation from an acquaintance to drop by their Christmas party and instead spending that time playing outside with my children or sipping hot caramel tea with a book splayed across my lap. It might sound like instrumental hymns or silence in the place of Jingle Bell Rock. It might taste like a nourishing meal enjoyed with a few close friends, rather than a lavish spread of hors d'oeuvres that took days to prepare. Whatever it may look like on a practical level for each of us, we can all begin by viewing our holiday choices through these same lenses: Does this bring me closer to the rush, or closer to the holy? Does this settle my soul, or send it spinning? Does this prepare my heart to be able to commune intimately with the Lord? Am I rejoicing in the Lord and his goodness, or am I placing my hope of joy elsewhere? Does this feel like an obligation to meet, or a gift to savor? When we begin to examine our holiday practices and embrace only those which nourish (that is, the essentials), we strip back all the other things that distance us from what we really desire: a quietude in our hearts that allows us to commune, rest, and celebrate with our Savior. A holiness that transcends time and, behold! It makes even the simplest of moments tender with beauty and meaning. What might ‘simple Christmas’ look like for you this year? What are your essentials, and what can you release? What will it take in order for your soul to be able to exhale the chaos and inhale Christ? This season, let’s try it together. May we all enter into Advent with the assurance that holiness is not seasonal, joy won’t disappear with the Christmas decorations, and that deep restedness is only one humble yes away from Jesus’ invitation to just be with him. Deidre Braley is author and host of The Second Cup blog/podcast, where she loves to teach people that Jesus is for them, not against them. She has a monthly newsletter on Substack and her subscribers enjoy weekly content that focuses on communing with Jesus and others, creating beauty when it's hard, and celebrating this weird and wild life. She serves as editorial advisor on The Truly Co. Publication, and has been published in both The Truly Co. magazine and Joyful Life magazine. Deidre has also recently published her 2022 Advent Guide and invites you to follow along with her during this season of anticipation. Previous Next