< Back The Sacred Pause of Autumn Deborah Rutherford "In our spiritual rest, we draw near to God and bask in His presence in prayer, our Bibles, and His beautiful creation." Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace, be still!" And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. Mark 4:39 NKJV My husband and I were captivated by the first fall leaves that descended gracefully as the wind picked up. Like all storms, this one came and went, shaking the globe, and the leaves fell like snow in autumn. At that precise moment, I sensed a profound invitation from the Lord and all His creation to step out of the glass globe—our windowed house—and into the open. This invitation was not just to feel the cool air on our faces or pick up a leaf, but to experience a "sacred pause." This is where we can step back from the storms of life, whether brooding, gales, or on the horizon, with complete confidence that just as Jesus rebuked the wind and calmed the sea, He can do the same for us. This sacred pause is a moment where we take a break from the busyness and demands of life and instead relish quiet communion, drawing near to our Creator. It is a time to reflect, feel the Creator's touch and caress, and partake in the beauty of autumn. This intentional pause for deep connection and meditation with God strengthens and refreshes us. Autumn is the perfect season to pursue wonder. Did you know that God has been pausing since He first created the world? In Genesis 1:31, we read: "Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day" (NKJV). Yes, during God's six days of creation, He paused daily to look at His creation and delighted in it: • God paused. • God looked at His creation. • God delighted in His creation. God invites us to delight with Him in this sacred pause. Unsurprisingly, God's creations, including us, bring Him immense joy. This is how much God loves us. Isn't autumn a unique and perfect opportunity to slow down and partake in the sacred pause with God? To share in His delight and seek His wonder? God created us to have a relationship and fellowship with Him and to enjoy His creations. Our participation is welcomed and vital for revitalizing and refreshing our weary, storm-ridden souls. There will be times soon enough when we must step back into our daily routines, but in this interlude, we will be refreshed and strengthened for the ebbs and tides of life. In autumn, the Lord beckons us to draw near to Him and all of creation in a celebration. Are we not awestruck when we wake to vibrant hues painted on the sunrise? Every day, as we walk outside, a new leaf glimmers gold, followed by reds and oranges. The air is fragrant with fresh pine and foliage, while our kitchens simmer with spices and warming stews. The beauty of this lovely season is a testament to God's majesty and creation. We must pause with our Creator in autumn's celebration—how can we not! Here, we recognize that we are more than to-do lists, jobs, troubles, and schedules; we are, in fact, a part of creation itself. By pausing, we find we are in step with creation. I do not know about you, but I would rather be a part of the creation dance than apart from it. Our porch party lights are the stars twinkling in the sky. The feast is laid out in the fields, and the orchestra is the flocks of migrating birds going home. Oh, we belong too, and I find this so comforting and reassuring, don't you? We are part of our Creator's beautiful symphony. Autumn is the time of year when the Lord invites us to pause with Himself and creation. In this pause, we reconnect with our Creator and all of creation. As the warmth of summer fades and cooler temperatures arrive, all creation begins a transformation. This collaboration between the Creator and the created has been ongoing since the beginning of time, and we are an integral part of it. At this time of year, nature transforms to prepare to rest for winter; shouldn't we do the same? In Psalm 46:10, the psalmist writes, "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” (NKJV). Here again, God is inviting us to pause with Him. In this sacred pause, we experience God's presence and sovereignty in creation. When we draw near to God, He draws near to us. "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded" (James 4:8 NKJV). A pause may seem counterproductive with all the delights of the fall season or our day-to-day demands, but that is precisely why God asks us to be still, to draw near to Him—to pause. Here in this sacred pause, we savor God's goodness and delight in what He has prepared for us. There is a place for us at His bountiful table. In all this, God prepares and strengthens us for approaching situations, transformation, and new blooms. But just as nature needs a rest, so do we. In our spiritual rest, we draw near to God and bask in His presence in prayer, our Bibles, and His beautiful creation. But how do we pause with the Creator and embrace autumn's beauty? Here are some ways to pause, reflect, and connect with God and nature this autumn: • Pray and reflect as you read your Bible. Ask God questions like: Do I need to let go of anything? What is my growth and transformation in this season? Am I depleted from life's tempests, and how can I be strengthened and refreshed, Lord? • Step out into creation by going on a nearby hike, visiting a pumpkin patch, or attending a fair (I love seeing all the farm animals at our fair). • Rejoice in the fields' harvest and reflect on your own harvest. Taste the harvest foods, such as apples, pumpkins, and blackberries. • Listen to the music of the wind, the rustling leaves, bird songs, and the crackling of campfires. • Observe the stars at night and feel the universe singing a beautiful song. Immerse yourself in the beauty of autumn, and let it resonate within you. • Gather to celebrate and give thanks to the Lord. Open your home for long, lingering conversations, dinners, and candlelight. • Look for the unexpected blessings, and you will find them. Since the beginning of time, this sacred pause has coaxed the temperatures down and caused the trees to transform. The harvest is ready in the fields. All these blessings, abundance, goodness, and beauty bring joy to our hearts. In our sacred pause, let us rejoice in the Lord and dare ourselves to gather and prepare candlelit dinners and have those long conversations. Let us pursue God’s wonder! This sacred pause leads to the Holy Feasts, Advent hymns, and Holy Days. As we pause to celebrate the harvest, we also plant the seeds in anticipation of the coming Christmas season. The ebb and flow of creation's seasonal pause is God's masterpiece, the beauty of life. We were created to live in creation, not apart from it. There will always be storms on the horizon—some seen, some waited for, some just dumped—but with intentional drawing near in the presence of God, we will be strengthened for the days ahead. A Sacred Pause Prayer Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for creating me and all Your creations. How loving of You to pause, look at, and delight in me. I accept Your invitation to draw near as I read, pray, and linger in my Bible. I delight in Your creation this autumn and will pursue wonder. I yearn to be in Your Presence! Help me to slow down this season so I can rejoice in You. Help me to be still. Do not let a day pass where I do not step out into creation and delight in Your beauty and love. In this sacred pause, strengthen me, Lord, for the coming storms of life. I know You will always be with me. I rejoice in You, Lord, who brings hope in the breeze, transformation, and harvest as I gather to dwell, celebrate, and prepare my heart for You. In Jesus' name, Amen. Deborah Rutherford is a Christian wife who loves to write stories, devotionals, and poetry. She is also an award-winning makeup artist. Deborah shares her journey of faith, joy, and beauty on her blog at www.deborahrutherford.com and social media. She is a contributing writer for Aletheia Today Magazine , Kingdom Edge Magazine and Gracefully Truthful Ministries and has a devotional in the book “Shepherd on Duty: Promises of God you Can Trust ” (Arabelle Publishing) and the Calla Press, Literary Journal Spring 2023. Return to Harvest 2024 Previous Next

"That Christ ushered in this new era of life and liberation in the presence of women, and that he sent them out as the first witnesses of the complete gospel story, is perhaps the boldest, most overt affirmation of their equality in his kingdom that Jesus ever delivered." < Back Mary Magdalene, The Witness Rachel Held Evans Apr 15, 2023 "That Christ ushered in this new era of life and liberation in the presence of women, and that he sent them out as the first witnesses of the complete gospel story, is perhaps the boldest, most overt affirmation of their equality in his kingdom that Jesus ever delivered." Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news:“I have seen the Lord!”—John 20:18 The story of how Mary Magdalene became known as a prostitute is a complicated one. One of six Marys that followed Jesus as a disciple, she was distinguished from the others through identification with her hometown of Magdala, a fishing village off the coast of the sea of Galilee. According to the gospels of Mark and Luke, Jesus cleansed Mary of seven demons, (a backstory infinitely more complicated and mysterious than prostitution, if you ask me), after which Mary became a devoted disciple, mentioned by Luke in the same context as the twelve, who traveled with Jesus and helped finance his ministry. In 597 pope Gregory the Great delivered a homily on Luke’s gospel in which he combined Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany (Martha’s sister), suggesting that this Mary was the same woman who wept at Jesus’ feet in Luke 7, and that one of the seven demons Jesus excised from her was sexual immorality. The idea caught on and was perpetuated in medieval art and literature, which often portrayed Mary as a weeping, penitent prostitute. In fact, the English word maudlin, meaning “weak and sentimental,” finds its derivation in this distorted image of Mary Magdalene. In 1969, the Vatican formally restated the Gospels’ distinction between Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the sinful woman of Luke 7, although it seems Martin Scorsese, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Mel Gibson have yet to get the message. A cynic might suggest that this mistake and its subsequent popularity represent a deliberate attempt to typecast and discredit a woman whose role in the gospel story is so critical and so revolutionary that the eastern orthodox Church refers to Mary Magdalene as equal to the apostles. Although she appears to have been a critical part of Jesus’ early ministry, Mary Magdalene’s extraordinary faithfulness shines most brightly in the story of the passion. After Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, his male disciples abandoned him. Judas delivered him over to the authorities for a bribe. Peter denied him three times. And only John, described as “the apostle whom Jesus loved,” was present at the crucifixion. But Mary Magdalene and the band of women who followed Jesus and supported his ministry are described by all four gospel writers as being present during the savior’s darkest hours. Even after Jesus took his last breath, and all hope of redemption seemed lost, the women stayed by their teacher and their friend and prepared his body for burial. It is precisely because they were present, loyal even through failure, that the women who followed Jesus were the first to witness the event that would define Christianity: the resurrection. Gospel accounts vary, but all four identify Mary Magdalene as among the first witnesses of the empty tomb. According to the synoptic Gospels, she and a group of women rose early that fateful morning, three days after Jesus had died, to anoint the body with spices and per- fumes. When they arrived at the tomb, they were met by divine messengers guarding the entrance, who declared that Jesus had risen from the dead, just as he said he would. The women immediately left the tomb behind and, “with fear and great joy” (Matthew 28:8), ran to tell the other disciples. Luke notes that on their way, they remembered what Jesus had taught them about resurrection, confirmation of the fact that these women had been present for some of Christ’s most important and intimate revelations and that they took these teachings to heart. But when the breathless women arrived at the home where the disciples had gathered, the men did not believe them. Women were considered unreliable witnesses at the time (a fact that perhaps explains why the apostle Paul omitted the women from the resurrection account entirely in his letter to the Corinthian church), so their proclamation of the good news was dismissed by the men as an “idle tale,” the type of silly gossip typical of uneducated women. Perhaps the men invoked the widely held belief that, just like their sister Eve, women were easily duped. A few, however, were curious enough to take a look at the tomb, and so, according to John’s account, Mary returned with peter and another disciple to the place she had encountered the messengers. The men saw for them-selves an empty grave and a pile of linen wrappings folded neatly within it, and conceded to the women that the tomb was indeed empty. However, John 20:9 notes, “they still did not understand from scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” The men returned to report what they had seen to the rest of the disciples, leaving Mary behind. Perhaps disciples posited the theory that Jesus’ body had been stolen, for John wrote that Mary, once so full of breathless excitement and impassioned belief, now stood outside the tomb, crying. Angels appeared and asked her what was wrong. “They have taken my Lord away,” she told them, fully accepting the disciple’s dismissal of her “idle tale." The angels were then joined by a mysterious man, whom Mary assumed to be the gardener. He, too, asked why she was crying. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him,” she pleaded. Only when he called her by her name, did she recognize the man as Jesus. “Mary,” he said. “Rabboni!” she cried. “Do not hold on to me,” Jesus urged as she fell before his feet, “for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” And so again, Mary Magdalene ran to the house where the disciples were staying and told them she had seen the risen savior face-to-face. “I have seen the Lord!” she declared. But it was not until Jesus appeared to the men in person, allowing them to touch the wounds in his hands and side, that they finally believed. Far from being easily deceived, women were the first to make the connection between Christ’s teachings from scripture and his resurrection, and the first to believe these teachings when they mattered the most. For her valor in twice sharing the good news to the skeptical male disciples, the early church honored Mary Magdalene with the title of Apostle to the Apostles. That Christ ushered in this new era of life and liberation in the presence of women, and that he sent them out as the first witnesses of the complete gospel story, is perhaps the boldest, most overt affirmation of their equality in his kingdom that Jesus ever delivered. And yet too many Easter services begin with a man standing before a congregation of Christians and shouting, “he is risen!” to a chorused response of “he is risen indeed!” Were we to honor the symbolic details of the text, that distinction would always belong to a woman. *** This was an excerpt from A Year of Biblical Womanhood. This piece was republished with permission from rachelheldevans.com . *** Image: "Christ and St. Mary Magdalen at the Tomb." Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669). Royal Collection Trust. Rachel Held Evans was a New York Times best-selling author whose books include Faith Unraveled (2010), A Year of Biblical Womanhood (2012), Searching for Sunday (2015), Inspired (2018). Hailing from Dayton, Tennessee—home of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925— she wrote about faith, doubt and life in the Bible Belt. She was featured in The Washington Post , The Guardian , Christianity Today, Slate, The Huffington Post, The CNN Belief Blog, and on NPR, The BBC, The Today Show, and The View. She served on President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and kept a busy schedule speaking at churches, conferences, and colleges and universities around the country. Rachel and Dan welcomed their second child in 2018. Rachel passed away in 2019. Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? 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< Back Bakunin Nailed It “Writing at the same time as Kierkegaard, 10 years before Nietzsche, and 50 years before Heidegger and Sartre, Bakunin got it right.” David Cowles It’s Sunday night and I’m doing what every boy does on a Sunday night: I’m reading 19th century philosophy; tonight, it’s Mikhail Bakunin (1814 – 1876). Bakunin is not ordinarily grouped with the ‘Metaphysical GOATs’ (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel). At best he is relegated to the 2nd tier, the cloud of social philosophers. In fact, however, Bakunin can be thought of as the St. Paul of Anarchism. He didn’t invent anarchism, but he systematized it and popularized it as an alternative to the sterile socialism of Mark and Engels. But even this is to sell Bakunin short. Turns out, he was a Metaphysician - First Class after all. For example, he wrote: • “Man is able to project himself in his thought, examining and observing himself like a strange eternal object.” Check : This is precisely what Nietzsche said could not be done. • “By lifting himself in thought above himself, and above the material world around him, he reaches the representation of perfect abstraction, the absolute void.” Check : This is Kierkegaard’s Abyss . This is what John saw when he broke the seventh seal. • “And this absolute (void) is nothing less than his capacity for (perfect) abstraction, which disdains all that exists and finds its repose in attaining complete negation. This is the ultimate limit of the highest abstraction of mind; this absolute nothingness is God.” Check : “I am not what I am and I am what I am not.” ( Sartre ) Nailed it! Writing at the same time as Kierkegaard, 10 years before Nietzsche, and 50 years before Heidegger and Sartre, Bakunin got it right. How so? We find ourselves ‘thrown’ (Heidegger) onto the ‘beach of being’, ignorant, defenseless, thoroughly lost. Our one goal is to survive! Survive now ( praxis )… and develop a strategy to survive long term ( gnosis ). We are surrounded by entities other than ourselves. We quickly see that our survival depends on understanding these entities, and ultimately, on influencing them. Viewing those entities through the prism of Indo-European language, we label them things (nouns) or events ( verbs ). ‘Things’ and ‘events’ are somewhat imprecise labels we affix to phenomena . We classify a phenomenon as a ‘thing’ or as an ‘event’ depending on whether we wish to call attention to its endurance (Parmenides’ Truth) or its transience (Heraclitus’ Flux): “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide.” We are like the away team on a future starship, dispatched to the surface of exoplanet XS325W to map its terrain – except, we are not mapping an exoplanet; we are mapping Being itself. Life is like a game of Battleship . It begins with a completely unconditioned ‘guess’. We note the results, and we add their coordinates to our emerging world map . This is my one and only random move. Every future move will be ‘informed’ by the results of all the moves that came before it. Gradually, we move from absolute ignorance to something approaching certain knowledge. As we push the buttons and pull the levers that constitute ‘the world’, we are simultaneously mapping the terrain. We call this ‘science’. I’m hungry, I cry, I get fed. Now I associate crying with satiety, and I hypothesize a causal relationship between the two: post hoc ergo propter hoc . For the rest of my life, I will test and refine this hypothesis and look to extend it to other ordered pairs (of data) I uncover along the way. Needs multiply: feed me, change me, sooth me. My gestures (crying) modulate. Crying works for this but not for that . A certain ‘style of crying’ seems better correlated with a certain result. My map of the world is gaining definition. As I get older, my crying becomes more nuanced and less obvious, but make no mistake about it, I’m still crying, right up to the very end. Ah, the gift of life! Our survival is at stake from the moment of our birth (or conception). My first awareness is an awareness of discomfort, if not pain. In the language of the existentialists, we are the being whose being is always in doubt. Our being is inseparable from our mortality. I resort to a series of random gestures in hopes that something will make this pain go away; et voilà, something does! Or does it? Have I discovered causality (Laplace)…or coincidence (Hume)? I will need to test my proposed correlation until I am so sure of the causal link that I am willing to ‘bet my life on it’. Once satisfied, I can fill in my map with its first data point, an ordered pair (X = my behavior; Y = my comfort). Over the next 30,000 days or so, I’ll discover, test, and map many more such correlations. Primal awareness is strangely complex: I am aware of phenomena that I classify as ‘self’ and I am aware of phenomena that I classify as ‘not self’. From my perspective, this is the primal distinction (not darkness and light as in Genesis ); but by itself, it does not even come close to capturing the experience of being human. What’s missing? Me! I’m missing from this model. I am aware of the phenomena, ‘self’ and ‘not-self’, precisely because I am neither . If I were ‘self’, then there would be no need, or even function, for ‘not-self’. ‘Self’ would form a self-contained universe, and we could have no knowledge (or need) of anything outside it. If ‘I’ am an element of ‘self’, then I am perfectly redundant and therefore my very existence is a violation of Occam’s Razor: I am de trop . On the other hand, it is hard to ignore the intuition that there is something fundamentally different between observing and being observed. Objects are observed; subjects observe. Granting for the moment that there is nothing more to conscious awareness than the operation of a network of neurons and excluding the possible existence of some mysterious, spiritual anti substance, it is still difficult not to notice the difference between a subject’s awareness of an event and the objective event itself. “They’re not even the same sort of thing.” A world ‘with me’ and a world ‘without me’ would be exactly the same world; but ‘to be’ is not to be the same but to be different, novel, unique, to matter, to have consequences, to leave footprints in the sand. According to Gregory Bateson and Alfred North Whitehead, ‘to be’ is to be different and to make a difference. Were ‘I’ to be merely an element of ‘self’, I would not matter, I would make no difference, my being would have no consequences, and the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life , could have never been made. Quelle domage! Even so, I think it is safe to say that a majority of contemporary philosophers, scientists, etc. believe we live in just such a world – a world in which ‘I’ is an element of ‘self’. I say ‘believe’ because for many reductionists, mechanists, positivists and naïve realists, the proposition ‘I ɛ S’ is a matter of deep, almost religious, conviction: “It is this way because it has to be this way , even if it’s not!” We cling to our ‘enlightened’ secular model even though it predicts a universe that is frozen, lifeless, devoid of all novelty, a world in which Achilles loses a road race to a tortoise – in other words, a universe that has virtually nothing in common with our world. The human experience is dialectic: I am aware of ‘self’ ( thesis ), I am aware of ‘not-self’ ( antithesis) and I am aware of ‘being aware’ of self and not-self ( synthesis ). Neti, neti (Sanskrit): not this, not that, the keyword being ‘not’. I am by being-not and being-not is a form of abstraction. When I am ‘not this ball’, I am abstracting from the ball its location, momentum, and sensory appearance. ‘To be’ I must have something ‘not to be’. I cannot not-be ‘ball’ per se because ‘ball’ is a noumenon, a Platonic Idea, not a phenomenon. According to Kant, I ‘kan’t know’ a noumenon; I can only know its phenomenal aspect. Therefore, I cannot not be or not be ‘ball’ per se ; I can only ‘not be’ the ball’s various characteristics. To abstract is to de-concretize , and so “perfect abstraction” would result in an “absolute void”. I am the relentless spirit of restlessness at the heart of Being. As such, I “disdain all that exists”. I ‘negate it’ and it is only in such negation that I find any measure of “repose”. (Bakunin) “Eternal rest ( gnosis ) grant unto them, O Lord, and may the perpetual light shine upon them.” Rest in peace is not a final farewell. It is a battle cry: “Be Human!” 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 Judas Taught Me the Beatitudes E.C. Argus This nasty turn unnerved me, so I gathered myself together and drew a table with my comfortable beatitudes on one side and my uncomfortable ones on the other... Poor Judas! We click our tongues over you. You’re our object lesson in missing the point. I feel sorry for you, but come on, why couldn’t you get it? I’m glad I haven’t missed the point. Or Judas, could I be more like you than I’d like to admit? One day I was pondering the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12), and I was thinking about the people Jesus was looking at. I smiled, as I pictured Jesus gazing directly at me. “Blessed are you…yours is the kingdom.” What a nice, warm feeling; I was in His camp, on the right side. Ah. Yes. Suddenly, I was Judas. Jesus looked right into my eyes, and He said directly to me, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…the meek…the merciful…the peacemakers.” This did not feel good. I wasn’t sure whose camp I was in, whose side I was on. Uh. No. But Jesus, I like the other beatitudes better: “Blessed are you who mourn…who hunger and thirst for righteousness…the clean of heart…persecuted for the sake of righteousness.” These beatitudes comfort me. They are my badges of honor. You see, I am an expert in many things. I have all the answers . If I were the Queen of the World, everything would work . I have plans and agendas. I have ideas . Oh boy. This nasty turn unnerved me, so I gathered myself together and drew a table with my comfortable beatitudes on one side and my uncomfortable ones on the other: I did a little rearranging, and four new dyads emerged: Mourning Poor in Spirit Hungering and Thirsting for Righteousness Peacemakers Clean of Heart Merciful Persecuted Meek I saw each dyad as a two-sided coin or a double-edged sword, and I took a deeper look. [1] Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Someone like me, who has all the answers, mourns the broken state of the world. I have pet issues. My mourning tends to quickly morph into anger, rage, and aggrieved fury. I seek comfort by knowing I’m right, even if everyone around me doesn’t get it. I suspect this is how Judas might have felt. But Jesus didn’t just drop the mourning piece unaccompanied. He set us up with poverty of spirit . I have long grappled with this puzzling beatitude. But I think it means, “Blessed are you who know you don’t have all the answers. You know you depend on God to work many things out -- things that are too big for you to fully understand.” This beatitude requires real humility and self-acceptance. Could poverty of spirit re-inform my mourning? Could I mourn the losses I experience -- the frustration, the sorrow -- in the light of utter dependence on God? Could I find comfort, not in being told I’m right, but in the comforting arms of a father? Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. I’m sure Judas was attracted to Jesus because he hungered for, thirsted for, things to be put right. I do too. I talk about being on “the right side of history.” I also want to be right with God, to get that A. Outstanding. Superior. But what if being in a right relationship with God is about something much bigger than me? Much bigger than my pet issues, as worthy as they may be? Maybe making peace belongs on the path to righteousness. When I know there’s conflict, maybe it’s an opportunity to sow peace, to heal, to mend, to bind together. And here’s the kicker: maybe my blustering quest for righteousness kicks up too much dust, and human relationships choke in the wake. It’s hard to live with righteous people. I want to hunger and thirst for it, and I want to be a peacemaker. Could it be that each of these two beatitudes falls off track without the other? Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. I see this dyad as two sides of holiness, one side focused inward, the other side focused outward. Clean -- or pure, as we more commonly say -- hearts are swept free of sin. Clean hearts have no secrets; they live in the light, especially before God. Clean hearts don’t deceive themselves. Clean hearts desire only good. But clean hearts can also grow proud, and cold, and judgmental. Judas must have had a narrow definition of purity -- who’s in; who’s out. When I’m so focused on my own holiness, chasing after purity, that I look down on others as inferior, I’ve missed the mark. When I’m so focused on my own holiness that I despise parts of myself that stand in the way of that imagined pure destination, I’ve missed the mark. Maybe mercy is the antidote. Maybe mercy, regularly practiced, is the grounding, practical, earthy, humble, necessary counterpart to cleanness -- to purity. Mercy is messy. Mercy gets all over us; it’s not neat or clean. Mercy is gritty. Jesus must have delighted in people who had clean hearts and dirty hands. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. If there was ever a beatitude Judas might have treasured, it’s the persecution one. This is a self-appointed martyr’s dream. Persecution is great, because we get to shift the blame onto someone else. We are the victims. We are not responsible. God will avenge us. But hold on, what about meekness ? Jesus blessed those who, in the face of persecution, chose to be quiet, gentle, and easily imposed upon; submissive. [2] Maybe without this gentle tempering, the crown of persecution becomes a whitewashed sepulcher. After all this musing, I came up with this idea: I call the four beatitudes about mourning, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, cleanness of heart, and persecution the “Purity Beatitudes.” And the four beatitudes about poverty of spirit, peacemaking, mercy, and meekness are the “Unity Beatitudes.” The Purity Beatitudes are focused inward, toward private holiness. They fill us with an internal strength about what is right and supply us with righteous anger in the face of evil. This is good. But I see a danger here, if we spend too much energy in the Purity column, at the expense of the Unity column. We could easily drift into self-aggrandizement, pomposity, self-pity, snobbery, and isolated independence -- smirking critically outwards. The Unity Beatitudes are about self-abnegation, humility, vulnerability, and interdependence -- focused lovingly outwards. But without the astringent Purity Beatitudes, we could become flaccid Christians with weak boundaries around what is holy -- quick to forgive, but blind to sin and unwilling to name it. The Beatitudes are comforting and challenging at the same time. In the end, Judas missed the point. I’m sure it broke Jesus’s heart. May I not miss the point. Image: Judas ' Regret by Jose Ferraz de Almeida Júnior. Oil on Canvas. 1880. References [1] New American Bible RE, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops [2] Oxford Languages, languages.oup.com, Oxford University Press E.C. Argus is a Catholic Christian citizen of planet Earth, engaged in a life-long quest to understand reality as a player in God’s great rescue project. She hopes her small takes on the greatest story ever told might bring light to someone’s darkness or help to lift a burden from someone’s bowed shoulders. She spends a lot of time outside, in awe of the complexity and beauty of the natural world. She makes a living creating and teaching the performing arts. Previous Next

< Back Christ the King “Sir, you are quite simply insane. We know exactly what holds our universe together; it is electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong force…not Christ.” David Cowles Since 1970, the Roman Catholic Church has celebrated the Feast of Christ the King on the last Sunday of the liturgical year. It is a fitting close to a year that began with Old Testament prophesies of a coming Messiah, a Messiah who Christians believe is Jesus. The scripture readings (Cycle C) that the Church has chosen for this feast day introduce us to three distinct but related aspects of Christ’s kingship: First, a reading from 2 Samuel recalls the inauguration of the historical King David, chosen by God, anointed by Samuel, and ratified by the leaders of Israel’s twelve tribes: “All the tribes of Israel came to David in Hebron…and at Hebron King David made a covenant with them in the presence of the Lord; and they anointed David king over Israel.” Jesus, of course, is of the House of David and, therefore, has a valid hereditary claim to David’s throne. As David’s successor, Jesus represents the historical kingship of God. Yet, Jesus never suggests that he should have universal political authority. He did not come to depose Rome and inherit its empire so that ‘Rome’ could be reborn in Jerusalem. On the contrary, political power was the third and final temptation offered by Satan and rejected by Jesus during Jesus’ 40 days in the desert (Mt 4: 9). Instead, scripture and the Church teach that all political rulers, whether emperors, kings, presidents, or legislatures, derive their authority from God but maintain that authority only in so far as, and to the extent that, their policies are consistent with God’s laws. According to this model, God rules! But he rules through the agency of his priests, prophets, and kings . Christ the King is not Christ the Bureaucrat. God does not dictate the details of public policy but rather establishes guidelines and principles that all laws, if they are to be valid, must respect. There are many legitimate roads to Ecbatan , but no human law is binding if it conflicts with a law of God. So, Christ’s royal authority does extend to the historical realm, but it is exercised through secular rulers chosen according to the culture and tradition of each political entity (e.g., nation). The second reading is a reading we’ve encountered before in ATM ( Christology ) . F rom Paul’s Letter to the Colossians : “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and invisible…all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together… For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross, whether those on earth or those in heaven.” This is not Jesus, the historical successor to King David; this is Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, King of Creation, Ruler of the Universe. And what are the royal powers that Colossians claims on Christ’s behalf? 1. Since all things in Heaven and on Earth were created in him, through him and for him, his sovereignty is absolute. The Kingdom of God is not a democratic republic, nor is it even a constitutional monarchy…but it is a utopia. 2. All things hold together in him. Like any charismatic leader, he is the glue that binds society together as a single community with a common task and a common destiny. Because the Son of God is also fully human, we humans have ‘legal standing’ to enter into a binding contract (covenant) with YHWH. 3. He is the medium and the process through which all things in Heaven and on Earth are reconciled… for him . Through Christ, conflicts are resolved into contrasts and contrasts into harmonies. Today, most members of the cognoscenti believe that Universe came into being on its own. causa sui . Modernists that we are, we take it for granted that this is at least possible. But what if it isn’t? What if an independent, self-created universe is intrinsically unstable and, therefore, not possible after all? It is beyond the scope of this essay to resolve that question, but the question per se underscores the importance of Colossians for contemporary cosmology. Safe to say, Colossians presents a very different model of cosmogenesis than we are used to hearing. Imagine a visiting professor from Colossae addressing a classroom of eager graduate students in Cambridge (either Cambridge, MA or Cambridge, UK): “In order for a non-trivial universe to emerge, evolve and endure, a number of factors must come into play simultaneously. First, there must be a creative force that gives rise to novel entities (events); second, those entities must occur within some sort of defined ontological locus; third, all the events that make up Universe must be oriented toward a common end ( teleos ); and fourth, the creative force must not only bring novel entities into being, but it must also work ceaselessly to resolve conflicts among those entities. “Creation is as much about the ends of things as it is about their beginnings; it operates throughout the entire life of every entity. Ultimately, it is a process by which a multiplicity of simple things becomes a complex unity. It is that process that binds entity to entity in a way that constitutes Universe. “Otherwise, anything that might emerge randomly and spontaneously from the void would either be isolated and inert or cancelled out by conflicting ‘counter-events’. The net informational content of any such universe would always be approximately zero.” Now, one of our ‘sophomore’ cosmologists might be expected to interrupt vehemently at this juncture. Lacking the reverential deference characteristic of a by-gone era, our would-be Hawking might say, “Sir, you are quite simply insane. We know exactly what holds our universe together; it is electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong force…not Christ.” “Not so fast,” our Anatolian professor retorts. “Can you fully explain the nature of any of these forces? Can you explain how it is that each has the exact quantitative value it does? Do you understand that if any one of these apparently arbitrary values varied even slightly, Universe as we know it would be impossible? Is it not much more likely that these forces are simply the physical manifestations of something deeper in the structure of the cosmos? Something like Christ, for example?” “Isn’t this just Creationism repackaged?” “It’s more profound than that. I am equating Cosmology with Christology! And note: this is not the same as equating Christology with Cosmology. The math is not commutative.” The final reading, taken from the Gospel of Luke , tells the story of Jesus’ crucifixion: “The people stood by and watched; the rulers meanwhile sneered at him and said, ‘He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Messiah of God.’” Even the soldiers jeered at him…they called out, ‘If you are King of the Jews, save yourself.’ Above him there was an inscription that read, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’ Enigmatically, Pontius Pilate had ordered that placard nailed onto the cross above Jesus’ head. The Jewish leaders complained to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews’, write that he said he was the King of the Jews.” But Pilate answered with his own statement of proto faith, “What I have written, I have written.” “Now one of the criminals hanging there (Jesus was crucified between two ‘thieves’) reviled Jesus, saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.’ The other, however…said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He (Jesus) replied to him, ‘Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’” This is the first time that anyone (other than Jesus himself) has clearly acknowledged the other-worldly nature of Christ’s Kingdom. Before Pilate, Jesus says, “My Kingdom does not belong to this world…my kingdom is not here.” Before that, he has tried many times to educate his disciples on the eschatological nature of his reign – without any apparent success. But the so-called ‘good thief’ gets it…and just in the nick of time. The reading from Luke’s Gospel introduces us to yet a third aspect of Jesus’ Kingship. While his laws are normative on Earth, they are often ignored in practice; but in the Kingdom of Heaven, Christ is the supreme ruler. That is what we mean when we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” Looking for Heaven ( aka Paradise)? It’s located at the intersection of History and Eternity! It consists of historical entities but historical entities that have somehow been ‘glorified’ (i.e., reconciled and eternalized). So, on the Feast of Christ the King, we justly celebrate Christ as Sovereign of this world, Ruler of the Universe, and Heavenly King. But how are these aspects of Christ’s kingship related? The reconciliation of all things through Christ and for Christ can only occur based on the consistent application of specific values: beauty, truth, and justice, for example. How do we know which ‘values’ are necessary for reconciliation to occur? And which ‘anti-values’ are incompatible with reconciliation? Could reconciliation be successful if it was based on the absence of beauty, truth, justice, i.e., if it was based on ugliness, falsehood, injustice? Obviously not! On the contrary, such anti-values are the sources and symptoms of conflict in the first place. Ugliness is inherently unstable, as the urge to beautify is universal, even at the level of pre-conscious entities (e.g., molecules). Falsehood eliminates any objective basis for consensus. As for injustice, who has not chanted, “No justice, no peace!” at least once? Making such a list of values and their opposites quickly identifies the sources and styles of conflict in our world and points out the avenues that are available to us for the resolution of that conflict. These values, once identified, must guide all valid law making in the historical realm. Laws that explicitly and intentionally undermine beauty, truth, and justice, for example, are invalid on their face. Sidebar : we are not concerned here with legitimate differences of opinion. For example, well-meaning people may disagree about which laws would be most effective in promoting justice. It is the purview of secular governments to choose among such potential laws; any one of those choices would at least be valid, even if suboptimal . What would be invalid is any law that aims to undermine justice per se . There is a single thread that unites Christ’s historical, cosmological, and heavenly kingship. It is the set of values that form the basis for universal reconciliation, that are normative on earth and that are realized perfectly in Heaven. No better way to celebrate the end of the liturgical year! Image: Painting of Christ in Majesty from the Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck (AD 1427) 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 What’s the Matter with Archimedes? David Cowles May 8, 2025 “Without the Archimedean Property…the world takes on properties that would baffle even the most imaginative science fiction writers.” It’s his first day in his new middle school and already he’s in the nurse’s office complaining of vertigo. “I feel like I’m being sucked into a black hole,” he explains with his usual touch of melodrama. Turns out, our Archimedes is a bit OCD; specifically, he has ‘a thing’ about lines, straight lines: he’s not at home without them! His frustrated parents decided it was time to try some immersion therapy, so they sent him to a school where the word ‘straight’ was only used in the context of sexual orientation. Everything else was just ‘curved’ and space, once smooth, resembled Alpine Lace Swiss Cheese. Needless to say, things did not go well there for poor Archimedes. Years later when it came time to rename the experimental school, they decided to call it The non-Archimedean Academy…but not because Archimedes had (briefly) been an ‘unsuccessful’ student there! Yes, the local adventures of the ‘linear lad’, as they called him, were still fresh on everyone’s lips, but the real story behind the school’s naming is even more bizarre. Read on, McDuff: In another article on this site, Square Pegs in Round Holes , we used an analogy from solid geometry to demonstrate how much the fetish of linearity restricts and distorts our access to information about the world we live in. Reasoning from our model, we estimated that our refusal to color outside the ‘box’ (a straight edged cube) is blinding us to c. 63% of what we otherwise might know. Young Archimedes never had a chance at his new, ‘well rounded’ school. If he answered correctly every question he could answer (within the limits of linearity), he would still end up with an F (37%). In his defense, Archimedes pointed out, correctly, that Pythagoras (c. 500 BCE), Plato (c. 375 BCE), and Euclid (c. 300 BCE) suffered from the exact same Learning Disability; but to no avail. Probably as a response to this childhood trauma, Archimedes decided to devote himself to mathematics…turns out, this straight F student was brilliant at it! Who knew? (But then, Thomas Aquinas’ teachers called him a ‘dumb ox’.) Among his many claims to fame, the term ‘Archimedean’ came to define a property common to many, but not all, algebras and geometries; it has since been named for him: The Archimedean Property. The Archimedean Property links geometry to the set of Real Numbers (extended to include Complex Numbers). Systems that incorporate non-reals, like surreal and p-adic numbers, do not conform to The Archimedean Property. (Surreal numbers include infinite and infinitesimal quantities.) In Square Pegs (above), we explored important differences between Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries…but both are consistent with The Archimedean Property. We imagined a hypothetical hike from Boston to Detroit and we pointed out why you might want The Archimedean Property to apply: Why run the risk of suddenly rematerializing in another place, at another time, or even outside of spacetime altogether. The Archimedean Property ensured that your bee line from Boston to Detroit did not take you through Memphis…unless your GPS was on the fritz. Without The Archimedean Property, your journey might have been even more eventful and a pop-up appearance on Beale St. could not be ruled out…but the Peabody (hotel) ducks are the least of your problems. Without The Archimedean Property, geometry loses its intuitiveness. The world takes on properties that would baffle even the most imaginative science fiction writers, for example: ➢ All triangles are isosceles, and the two longest sides are always equal ➢ Every point in a sphere is its center ➢ Any two spheres are either disjoint or one is contained completely within the other: o There is no touching: you touch me, I eat you…or you eat me. Eat or be eaten…or keep your hands to yourself! ➢ If B and C are disjoint subsets of A, the volume of (B + C) can be greater than the volume of A. In fact… o The volume of either B or C may be greater than A o The volume of both B and C may be greater than A o (B + C) may be infinitely greater than A o B and C may have ‘real number’ volumes while A’s volume may be infinitesimal. If this is the first time you’ve encountered these strange propositions, you’re probably feeling like I did the morning I woke up on Europa, freezing, gasping for breath, and generally disoriented. You’ve entered a world in which ‘space & time, cause & effect’, backbones of our disenchanted, secular logos, simply do not apply. In such a world, all events are sui generis and causa sui. No event causes any other event…or impacts it…or even influences it. However, events can be embedded in other events in every imaginable configuration resulting in Gaudi worthy architecture, subject to the following ‘engineering’ limitation: If B and C are sets in a Universe U, then there is a Set A of which both B and C are subsets. B may be a subset of C or C may be a subset of B or B and C may be disjoint. It is this final scenario – B and C are disjoint subsets of A - that produces mind bogglingly unexpected consequences (above). The Axiom of Foundation (AF) from standard ZPC Set Theory does not apply to these sets. Bertrand Russell notwithstanding, any set can be an element of itself, in which case the relationship between ‘the set as whole’ and ‘the set as part’ is recursive. Whatever is done to the whole is done to the part and whatever is done to the part is done to the whole. In this scenario, Set A has 4 members: Set B, Set C, Set A itself, and ø. In addition, there may also be a region (X) of A that lies outside both B and C. It is not itself a set, but it has a quantitative value that influences how and how much A differs from (B + C). We are used to thinking of events in terms of a directional timeline running from Event Alpha to Event Omega, but here the Alpha event can also be the Omega event. The timeline is a curve, or better yet, a Mobius Strip. Every snake bites its own tail. The primordial event contains all other events including itself. A potentially infinite hierarchy of embedded sets replaces flat and finite spacetime as the organizational principle of the non-Archimedean universe. The author (John of Patmos) of the Book of Revelation (aka the Apocalypse) captured this relationship millennia earlier: “I am the Alpha and the Omega - says the Lord God - the one who is, and who was, and who is to come…the one who lives…the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Chapters 1 and 22, ‘the beginning and the end’) As noted above, every moment in history is ‘its center’, as is every point in space. You are the center of the World…as am I. So…a tip of the hat to Archimedes, a brilliant mathematician…but also a sigh of relief that we don’t live in his boring, straight-edged world. Image: René Magritte. The False Mirror. Paris 1929 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 Social Dynamics John O'Brien So, the thousands of people out there in America outside the herd are finding each other. “Egregious . Most people think that word means terrible or unheard of, or unforgivable. It has a much more interesting story than that to tell. It means outside the herd. Imagine that - thousands of people outside the herd .” Kurt Vonnegut Glancing at the crowd Dancing eyes keep their secrets No ticket for you. The year was 1969. I was going to the Woodstock Festival. Stopping at gas stations and convenience stores was a startling experience - talk about Social Dynamics! People “with hair down to their knees!“ This proved to be a more exciting experience than Jimi Hendrix walking out on stage at six in the morning. Freedom of expression in America, of all places ! Walking through the door of some other dimension with friendly smiling people was joyful. It may have been ‘69, but the herd was still quite buttoned up and obedient. I remember my brother-in-law asking me if I knew this guy he used to see when he had lunch in Harvard Square… cuz the guy had long hair. So, the thousands of people out there in America outside the herd are finding each other. Some of them for the most awful of reasons, with an underlying reality of the class system entrenched in the USA. But the emotions involved meeting like-minded people is a powerful motivator--see January 6 . (I don’t know if their emotional responses were similar to my joyful one in Woodstock, but emotions are involved.) Shared narratives are within their own groups. The Proud Boys don’t have shared narratives with Antifa. (Has anyone ever seen Antifa?) How could anyone be against an anti-fascist group? I mean, Hemingway would have joined, or at least, given money. Previous Next

< Back Karma and Healthcare Bots David Cowles Sep 11, 2025 “Anything we do that affects something outside us also affects us… Reciprocity is all around us, yet we are oblivious to it.” A recent NYT post (9/2/2025) caught my eye. I have repeatedly touted the value of aggressively integrating AI into our healthcare delivery systems, at both the primary care and specialist levels: My PCP Should Be a BOT | Aletheia Today My MD Should Be a Bot | Aletheia Today I am particularly keen on the prospect of AI enhanced diagnosis. No matter how skilled they may be in other areas, not all doctors are good diagnosticians. The skills required are very different from those associated with patient care. A study published in the Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology found that after just three months of using an A.I. tool, designed to help spot precancerous growths during colonoscopies, doctors were significantly worse at finding the growths on their own… “This is a two-way process,” said Dr. Omer Ahmad, a gastroenterologist at University College Hospital London who published an editorial alongside the study. “We give A.I. inputs that affect its output, but it also seems to affect our behavior as well.” Of course it does! What interests me is that Dr. Ahmad seems surprised, “This is a two-way process…” Of course it is, every event is, and this has nothing to do with AI. Anything we do that affects something outside us also affects us. This truism has no exceptions whatsoever. It is impossible for physical entities to act without experiencing a reaction. Borrowing a meme from Gregory Bateson, let’s agree that an event is “a difference that makes a difference.” What else could it be? To be an ‘event’, something has to be different from what came before it and impact what comes after it. If not, it would just be an unidentifiable stretch of the ontological continuum. It is a fundamental feature of the Universe, and yet we go through life rarely keeping it in mind: “Every action entails an equal and opposite reaction” (Newton). I fire a rifle; the recoil bruises my shoulder. “What goes around, comes around” (Hippie manual from the 1960s). “Cast your bread upon the waters…” ( Ecclesiastes ) “Karma.” ( Hair ) Reciprocity is all around us, yet we are oblivious to it. We’re like fish in water? “What’s water?” From pre-school on, we are taught two systems for understanding the World: language and arithmetic. Now some say, “If you can’t express it in words or numbers then it isn’t real;” others, “If you can’t measure it, it didn’t happen;” still others go further, “The world consists solely of propositions (sentences) and algorithms (equations).” Somehow, we’ve convinced ourselves that these representations are more important, more valuable, and even more real than the phenomena they represent. We are like tourists who experience as little of a new city as possible, preferring to hang out near the Visitors’ Center, heads buried in our ‘apps and maps’. Or like those who see every sight the city has to offer…but through the viewfinder of a camera. We understand travel as the documentation of experiences we never had, a collection of representations (photos, post cards, souvenirs) designed to help us remember things we didn’t experience. Sidebar : Would Remembrance of Things Past be possible today? If Proust had taken his Nikon, or his iPhone, with him to Venice, he might never have experienced the difference between two cobblestones that made it possible for him to telescope several decades into a single event, a quantum of experience. Jean-Luc Picard can’t hold a candle to Marcel Proust. Today, the map often trumps the territory; like children following the Pied Piper, we’ll obey our GPS, even when it leads us into an abyss. Seeing (or feeling) is no longer a valid criterion for believing. Downloading is! Where once we relied on reality to verify our ideas, now we rely on our ideas to validate reality. Then, if theory conflicted with observation, we modified the theory; now, if data contradicts our pre-conceptions, we question the data. Faced with a new problem or a new data set, we are first and foremost ideologues! “Don’t worry, we’ll find a way to work anything ‘new’ into the existing, and politically appropriate, Weltanschauung .” Of course, there’s nothing wrong with mathematics or linguistics; they lie at the heart of our experience of being human. But they are not themselves experiences of the World. Protestations of poets and geeks notwithstanding, you cannot smell rhymes or hear algorithms. But back to my MD and PCP Bots. I accept that reliance on AI can dampen native acuity, but there are workarounds. For example, in my model, MD Bot is simply added to a pre-existing diagnostic team. Carbon and silicon work side by side and the efficiency (accuracy) gains pay for the extra team member many times over. But even if it turns out that there are no acceptable workarounds, I’d still make the switch to MD Bot. Almost 1/3 rd of all the money spent in the US on healthcare is spent treating symptoms that have been misdiagnosed, and that’s one club, the ‘33’, that I do not want to join. So sorry Doc, I’d sooner put my life exclusively in the claws of MD Bot rather than accept a human substitute. But I also understand that my decision will have consequences for me as well as for you and I accept that responsibility as a price I must pay to be an independent, intentional agent. “I wish you well.” *** Sir Luke Fildes’ The Doctor (1891) depicts a quiet nighttime scene in which a physician attentively watches over a gravely ill child while her anxious parents look on in the shadows. Painted with rich detail and warm light, it honors the compassion, vigilance, and moral dedication of doctors, elevating the physician’s role to that of a steadfast guardian of life Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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< Back What Are My Values Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL. “We live under another emperor today. It is even more insidious than Constantine for it appears that this is all for our good.” As I study the early church, I find it amazing to see how rapidly and widely this new Christian Way spread. The earliest Christians had no power, no political base, no modern media, and little money. It had former fishermen and farmers spreading the word. It had the zeal of a Saint Paul who convinced people of their dignity as based in Jesus Christ. The new church spread to Rome and beyond. And then there followed periods of intense persecution as under the Emperor Diocletian (245-313). The age of the martyrs is filled with great faith and courage. We remember many of them in our liturgical calendar – Lucy, Stephen, Agatha, Agnes, Lawrence, Felicity and Perpetua. Some things changed when Constantine became Emperor in 313 and issued the Edict of Milan which granted religious freedom throughout the empire. He called the Council of Nicea in 325 to help settle disputes among the Christian people. It would be under a later Emperor, Theodosius (379-398) that Christianity would be declared the official religion of the empire. After the early centuries of struggle, many felt Christianity was now too respectable and easy to embrace. The Celts spoke of the need for continuing martyrdom, adding to red martyrdom (shedding of blood) now recognizing green martyrdom (life of penance) and white martyrdom (pilgrimage). The monastic movement flourished as many went to the desert and isolated places to live lives of penance, prayer and service. People wanted to live ascetical lives to be like Jesus. The centuries went by and many things happened, both good and bad. It is a miracle that the Church still exists. I hear some people at times decry that the church was never the same after Constantine. Issues of power, prestige, money became too important for the church leadership. That may be all true. But I would like to direct your thoughts to something happening today. We live under another emperor today. It is even more insidious than Constantine for it appears that this is all for our good. This new empire is unfettered capitalism with its uncritical confidence in market culture. This empire is hand in glove with the growth of our global empire and reliance on the arms race, and the denial of the earth’s climate crisis. Its religion is consumerism, which keeps on pressuring us on television, through social media, and many forms of advertising, telling us that we are what we possess. We are good, important, lovable if we have the latest cell phone and other up-to-date gadgets. I want to be clear that I really believe that most people are truly good. I see acts of goodness and kindness every day. But we live in a culture of fear of not having enough, of losing what we have, convinced that we live in a world of scarceness and no longer the abundance of God’s creation. The reality is we have been given this world for the sake of all, to be commonly shared. But the rich have been getting richer and the poor poorer. So people are afraid and, perhaps, they have become accustomed to some self-indulgence and affluence. We have abused the earth and its resources and the earth seems to be striking back but only the rich can stay comfortable. We always have room in our national budget for the military budget but not for health or education, especially not for the poor. I also believe our children are suffering from our misuse of God’s world. They sense our fears, our insecurities. They feel the pressure of keeping up with our way of living. We are grateful to the young for their sensitivity to the climate crisis, for their rejection of racism, for their acceptance of LGBTQ people and immigrants. They are also rejecting their elder’s structures and institutions, including the church. But they are suffering. The rates of youthful suicide, self-mutilation, depression and other mental problems have increased. God has been eliminated from the culture, and our young have nothing beyond themselves to cope with the realities of our world. TikTok holds up the “stealth wealth” and “quiet luxury” of TV’s “Succession.” The weekend with Taylor Swift, a great celebration for the young, also demonstrated the luxury style of many attending and the crush of the merchandise sales at the event. What can we do? First, we have to wake up to the realities of this world and the power of our culture to enslave us. We need a deeper interior life that knows our God is within us, and we have the inner strength to cope if we rely less on things and more on love and caring for each other. We have to be more in tune with nature and the wonder of it all. This may mean some counter-cultural adaptations. We may have to simplify our lives and depend less on gadgets, things, and possessions. We need our spiritual resources to deal with an overly materialistic world. We need to be our true selves who are filled with God’s Spirit. I am sorry if this is too harsh. Maybe I am overdoing it. But we do need to face some realities that are not pleasant. I offer you my opinions; forgive me if I am mistaken. I can be found at my desert monastery where I attempt, not always successfully, to live a counter-cultural life. I am at: joycet@glastonburyabbey.org : Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL. Please note that I do not speak on behalf of Glastonbury Abbey, the Archdiocese of Boston or the Catholic Church, though I hope my faith is in harmony with all these. Any error in judgment should be credited to me and not anyone else. Republished with minimal edits and permission rom glastonburyabbey.org. Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL continues his regular blog, “ Monastic Scribe ”, where he reflects on "what I may have learned from all these years and what I am still trying to learn." Fr. Timothy notes, “I do not speak on behalf of Glastonbury Abbey, the Archdiocese of Boston or the Catholic Church, though I hope my faith is in harmony with all these. Any error in judgment should be credited to me and not anyone else.” Return to our Beach Read 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back What Do You Know, Joe? David Cowles May 14, 2024 “...The less you ‘know’, the less certainly wrong you are. You approach truth by shedding error. What can I unlearn today?” My six-year-old grandchild confronted my daughter, “Tell me everything you know.” And it got me thinking…what do we know? How do we know it? And how confident are we that we’ve got it right? Riddle : How is knowledge like an onion? Answer : It makes us cry? Well, yes, that, but also, it presents as a series of concentric spheres: You peel it like sweet Vidalia! The outermost layer (‘Level One’) consists of practical, how-to knowledge: how to build a car, how to fly to the moon, how to repair a pothole (as if!). I don’t know about you, but I feel pretty secure about our knowledge at this level. Of course, we will learn to do stuff better, but I can’t foresee us concluding that a major part of this Level One knowledge is actually false . Level One Confidence : > 99%. When it comes to ‘what works’, we’ve a pretty extensive library. Most of what we know at Level One, we learned merely by trial and error. Just imagine how much we don’t have to know in order to know that rubbing two sticks together can generate a flame. Next level : Why does rubbing two sticks together, in the proper way under the proper conditions, make fire? Well, we’ve got a handle on that too…we think. We have a model of friction and kindling that accounts for the phenomenon of flame. It’s possible that it might get tweaked someday but it’s unlikely to be proven flat out wrong. Unlikely…but not inconceivable. Level Two Confidence : 99%. After ‘friction and kindling’ things get interesting. If you’re thinking of serving ‘hearts of onion’ at your next lawn party, you’ll want to begin here. If ‘friction and kindling’ can account for flame, what do we need to know to account for the fact that friction and kindling can generate fire? What questions do we need our next layer of onion to address? Well, we need a theory of stability and change, of material and metamorphosis. We have sticks, we have motion, but why is it that sticks + motion generate flame? Once again, we have an answer: matter + heat. We feel good about what we know but now we’re just a little bit less certain. Maybe some new model will come along that we’ll like better. Probably not, but maybe. Level Three Confidence : 95%. “Going down! Level Four, particles and forces,” intoned the elevator operator (c. 1960 CE). My favorite floor! Bosons, hadrons, and fermions, oh my! The so-called ‘Standard Model’ is like a Las Vegas buffet: “Three quarks for Muster Mark.” ( Finnegan’s Wake ) Now it is likely (but not certain) that this ‘Standard Model’ will have to be tweaked. Much of the information we’re working with will carry over, but new details are likely to emerge. Level Four Confidence : 50%. What’s next? What comes after Fundamental Particles and Forces? What’s more fundamental than ‘fundamental’? Surprisingly, this silly question has a serious answer; actually, it has a lot of serious answers: strings, n-dimensional spaces, topological twists, singularities, quantum gravity, branes, the multiverse…and that’s the problem: ‘a lot of serious answers’. Level Five Confidence : 10%. But believe it or not, we’re still not finished. The most important question of all remains: What’s it all about, Alfie ? (Don’t say ‘42’…or ‘a ripe banana’) We have arrived on the shore of the River Styx, the ‘turn’ as we say in Texas Hold ’em, the place where physics and metaphysics meet, where cosmology and theology merge. What lies ‘behind’ all this, if anything? Our search now must take us to other realms: to scripture, poetry, and philosophy. To mysticism and music. To art in all its forms. We are no longer in the realm of the empirical. Given that , what’s our confidence level? Sidebar : In the Divine Comedy , Dante and Virgil encounter Satan at the nadir of the Inferno; he is encased in a block of ice. As our travelers depart Hell for Purgatory, they look back and are surprised to see Satan hanging upside down. Dante and Virgil are traveling through non-orientable space. So are we! I would even go so far as to say we are ‘disoriented’, wouldn’t you? But it’s not just Dante, Virgil and us, dear reader. People have been disoriented for millennia. Like that time you took LSD in the ‘60s. Or the time Alice was turned around in Through the Lookingglass . Trying to walk to the top of a nearby hill, she kept finding herself further away. Precocious child, she decided to walk away from the hill…and soon she found herself at the summit. Now the math gets really interesting, because from here on, all values are negative : the ‘more we know’ the ‘less we know ’. Crazy? Crazy! But also true. For example, suppose you claim to know all Level Six information with 100% certainty. Congratulations! But what you know you know with a confidence level of -100% . You don’t just know nothing; much worse: what you do ‘know’ is certainly wrong. From here on, the less you ‘know’, the less certainly wrong you are. You approach truth by shedding error. What can I unlearn today? Teacher, unlearn me! If you manage to get to a point where you fully understand that you know absolutely nothing on this level…then perception and reality meet again. You know nothing and you know nothing with a confidence level of 0%. Why 0%, not 100%? Because to be sure you knew nothing would be a kind of knowledge…and I can’t grant you even that. Sorry, old bean. So now, just imagine the plight of the poor philosopher, working all her life just to get as close as she can to knowing nothing and then knowing nothing with no confidence. Well, that’s you! (…and me). Keep the conversation going. 1. 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< Back Harriet Tubman Joins Six Women of Courage in the Exodus Story--Passover Part Two Ayala Emmett "Let us follow these biblical women and Harriet Tubman’s unflinching courage. Let us be agents in our time in the political arena to support and stand with all who struggle for freedom here in America, in the Middle East, and around the world." In 2015, we added to our Seder Harriet Tubman, who joins the six women who shaped the history of the Exodus. The women belong at the Passover table because all seven emerge as consequential political catalysts. All are remarkably brave, amitzot , all are women who at great risk take bold actions in the political/religious arena of their time and speak directly to contemporary concerns of justice. Tubman joins six agentive women in the Exodus story who are connected across ethnic and class differences. Who are the biblical women and how do they influence the history of the Exodus? Two of the six are midwives, two are mother and daughter, and two are women of high rank, the daughter of Pharaoh, and the daughter of a Midianite Priest. The women inscribe courage as a dominant element in the Exodus story that begins in oppression, slavery and attempted genocide. Pharaoh orders the two midwives Shifrah and Puah to do the unthinkable, “when you deliver the Hebrew women look at the birthstool: if it is boy kill him” (1:16). Pharaoh invades the gendered domestic sphere of childbirth and the midwives without hesitation step into the dangerous political terrain. They are defiant, “the midwives who revere* God did not do as the king of Egypt told them.” The two midwives offer us the first biblical lesson in civil disobedience. The text is (deliberately?) unclear about the identity of Shifrah and Puah. Their ethnicity has been debated in rabbinic commentary; the majority of the rabbis, including Rashi the 12th century commentator identify the midwives as Hebrew women, while other sages view them as Egyptian. Their actions, however, are unambiguous, they defy Pharaoh’s edict to kill all Hebrew newborn boys. Commentators who believe that the midwives are Egyptians praise them for standing up for an oppressed minority. The midwives defiance, regardless of their ethnicity has become a symbol for standing up for the powerless and has been understood as reverence for God. The midwives defiance makes possible the upcoming events, which focus on the actions of the mother and daughter. The narrative states unequivocally that mother and daughter, whose names at first we don’t know, are Hebrew women of the tribe of Levi, “a certain man from the house of Levi went and married a woman a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son” (2:2). Her son was not killed because the midwives refused to comply with Pharaoh’s edict, which in turn enabled the Hebrew Levite mother to have a live baby boy. Yet, after three months the mother realizes that she can no longer hide her son. She makes the most heartbreaking decision, to send away her baby in the hope that he would be rescued. The Levite mother constructs a waterproof basket and places her son among the reeds on the Nile. The baby’s sister is watching from a distance as he becomes the first biblical child asylum seeker. Entering the scene is the fifth woman who immediately knows that this child is of the oppressed minority, “This must be a Hebrew child” (2:7) says Pharaoh’s daughter who without missing a beat decides to take the child. A women’s conspiracy follows, the baby’s sister offers to find a Hebrew woman who would nurse him, the princess agrees, and the boy, still nameless is returned to her weaned, becomes her son and she names him Moses. With few words, mother, sister and adoptive mother (Egyptian) are bonded in saving Moses’ life in defiance of Pharaoh’s violent decree. Moses, as the text tells us, grows up in Pharaoh’s house, kills an oppressive Egyptian task-master, escapes to Midian and marries Zipporah, (a Midianite of high rank), the sixth woman in the Exodus text. God tells Moses to go back to Egypt to “free my people.” A very reluctant Moses goes back to Egypt with Zipporah his wife and his sons and on the way God wants to kill him. The “him” that God seeks to kill is not named. The text is far from clear whether God wants to kill Moses or one of his sons, but whoever it is, Zipporah in that critical moment of facing God, acts quickly, she circumcises her son and for unexplained reason it works “and He lets him go.” (4:25). Zipporah closes the circle of the six women as she, like the others, saves a life by crossing into the religious sphere that could be dangerous if entered inappropriately. What is appropriate for women in the religious domain has been reinterpreted for generations and in our time we witness greater inclusion in ritual practices. While Miriam has been restored and given a place at the Seder symbolized by placing her cup next to Elijah’s it is time to follow rabbinic Midrashic tradition of honoring by naming, since it is the sages who named Pharaoh’s daughter Batya. We honor at our Seder tonight all six women, the midwives Shifrah and Puah, the mother and daughter Yochebed and Miriam, the princess Batyah and Moses’ wife Ziporah. They all are seminal leaders in the history of the Exodus and this year they are joined by Harriet Tubman. Harriet Tubman is a woman “who went on to run spy missions for the Union army in the South, including a gunboat expedition that freed more than 700 South Carolina slaves. Harriet Tubman will be the first African-American and the first woman to have her image cast on the front of a currency note.” Let us follow these biblical women and Harriet Tubman’s unflinching courage. Let us be agents in our time in the political arena to support and stand with all who struggle for freedom here in America, in the Middle East, and around the world. * The Hebrew “vatirena et HaElohim” (1:17) is an idiomatic expression that is best translated as revering God. This was republished with permission from T he Jewish Pluralist . It is first in the series Four Women’s Collected Essays on the Meaning of Passover . Click here for introduction to the series. Image: " Moses Found in the River ." Synagogue fresco from 244 CE. Ayala Emmett Ph.D. is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Rochester. You can read more about her accomplishments and writing credits by following this link . Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Previous Next

Philosophy, theology, and science merge in Aletheia Today, the magazine for people who believe in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together with western philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre. Deep dives into the meaning of the Old Testamant, the New Testament, and where the Bible fits into modern-day society. Is God real? Does Heaven exist? Find your answers to life's questions at Aletheia Today. Inside This Issue The Great Convergence Mommy Math Part One If counting is such a powerful tool, how is it that for the most part, we don’t count? Cosmic Crossroads You say, "Big Bang;" we say, "Genesis." You say, "Constantine;" we say, "Ascension." Theology Faith, Hope, Love This excerpt from the writings of St. Paul is among the best-known passages in Judeo-Christian scripture. But what does it really mean? What Did John See? The Bible doesn’t tell us what John saw, but it does tell us that the breaking of the seventh seal was followed by half an hour of total silence. Why? A Theory of Everything (TOE) Thirty years after the death of Jesus, St. Paul quoted an already ancient Christology…a TOE.” Bible Read Backwards What would happen if we read the Old Testament in reverse order? From back to front. What if we began with Malachi and ended with Genesis? Philosophy I Wasn't Anything Every day is Halloween…Every day I get to make the decision anew: who am I going to be today? Is This Really All There Is? The world in which we seem to live might not be the only world there is…or all there is to this world. Ectaban Ecbatan may share the seven-ringed pattern of the solar system, but Paradise shares the seven-ringed pattern of Ecbatan! Systematic Philosophy Some people's search takes them to Fatima or Lhasa or into Outer Space. Mine took me to the dentist. Culture & The Arts Pronouns Next time someone asks you for your ‘pronouns,’ try telling them, ‘you/you’…see what happens. Kandinsky: The Painter of Other Worlds The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. The Unexpected Sophistication of B Movies Pulling that off was more artistic in his opinion than any of the “new age” stuff out there pushing the envelope. Be a Bee Why ‘milk and honey?’ Why not ‘sour grapes and corn mash?’ Turns out, it’s all about the honey! Tweens, Teens, & Young Adults Prepare to be Shocked You may be thinking, “WHAAAT? That’s impossible! Who could live without numbers? If they don’t have them, then they must invent them, right?” But you would be wrong. Achilles & Tortoise If Zeno can defeat his teacher, the whole class wins! Zeno today, me tomorrow! Spirituality St. Paul's Lord's Prayer “But deliver us from evil,” this last verse is the key to entire prayer. Prayer for Forgiveness of Self in Difficult Times That Time You Saw Dead People--What's so scary about that? What scared me was that something I never thought was possible just might be. Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.