"Under three things the earth trembles;
under four it cannot bear up:
a slave when he becomes king,
and a fool when glutted with food;
an unloved woman when she gets a husband,
and a maid when she succeeds her mistress."
~ Proverbs 30:21-23
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Apocatastasis
definition:
Apocatastasis - final reconcilation; the universal redemption of all souls after passing through a purgatorial fire, or direct entry into paradise.
Apocatastasis
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01599a.htm
(Greek, apokatastasis; Latin, restitutio in pristinum statum, restoration to the original condition).
The dogmatic relation of the Orthodox Church to the doctrine of Apocatastasis
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Apocatastasis
states restored by benefactors to normal conditions and stability
see Peter's words in Acts 3:21:
NET Acts 3:21 This one heaven must receive until the time all things are restored, which God declared from times long ago through his holy prophets.
NIV Acts 3:21 He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.
NKJV Acts 3:21 "whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.
NRSV Acts 3:19-26
19 Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out,
20 so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah appointed for you, that is, Jesus,
21 who must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through his holy prophets. ...
26 When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you, to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways."
YLT Acts 3:21 whom it behoveth heaven, indeed, to receive till times of a restitution of all things, of which God spake through the mouth of all His holy prophets from the age.
Apocatastasis - final reconcilation; the universal redemption of all souls after passing through a purgatorial fire, or direct entry into paradise.
Apocatastasis
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01599a.htm
(Greek, apokatastasis; Latin, restitutio in pristinum statum, restoration to the original condition).
"A name given in the history of theology to the doctrine which teaches that a time will come when all free creatures will share in the grace of salvation; in a special way, the devils and lost souls.This doctrine was explicitly taught by St. Gregory of Nyssa, and in more than one passage. It first occurs in his "De animâ et resurrectione" (P.G., XLVI, cols. 100, 101) where, in speaking of the punishment by fire assigned to souls after death, he compares it to the process whereby gold is refined in a furnace, through being separated from the dross with which it is alloyed. The punishment by fire is not, therefore, an end in itself, but is ameliorative; the very reason of its infliction is to separate the good from the evil in the soul. The process, moreover, is a painful one; the sharpness and duration of the pain are in proportion to the evil of which each soul is guilty; the flame lasts so long as there is any evil left to destroy. A time, then, will come, when all evil shall cease to be since it has no existence of its own apart from the free will, in which it inheres; when every free will shall be turned to God, shall be in God, and evil shall have no more wherein to exist. Thus, St. Gregory of Nyssa continues, shall the word of St. Paul be fulfilled: Deus erit omnia in omnibus (1 Corinthians 15:28), which means that evil shall, ultimately, have an end, since, if God be all in all, there is no longer any place for evil (cols. 104, 105; cf. col. 152).
etc.
The dogmatic relation of the Orthodox Church to the doctrine of Apocatastasis
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Apocatastasis
"First, Origin's doctrine of apocatastasis has been condemned in three local councils in the fifth century: an Alexandrian council, under the presidency of Patriarch Pheofilos, a Cyprian council, under presidency of St. Epifanios of Cyprus, and a Roman council, under the presidency of Pope Anastasius I. The decision of the Council (also Synod) of Constantinople in 453, confirmed by the Fifth Ecumenical Council's anathemas in 553: "If anyone shall say that all reasonable beings will one day be united in one,...moreover, that in this pretended apocatastasis, spirits only will continue to exist, as it was in the reigned pre-existence: let him be anathema."Greek, apokatastasis: the time for restoring everything to perfection,
states restored by benefactors to normal conditions and stability
see Peter's words in Acts 3:21:
NET Acts 3:21 This one heaven must receive until the time all things are restored, which God declared from times long ago through his holy prophets.
NIV Acts 3:21 He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.
NKJV Acts 3:21 "whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.
NRSV Acts 3:19-26
19 Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out,
20 so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah appointed for you, that is, Jesus,
21 who must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through his holy prophets. ...
26 When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you, to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways."
YLT Acts 3:21 whom it behoveth heaven, indeed, to receive till times of a restitution of all things, of which God spake through the mouth of all His holy prophets from the age.
Friday, March 28, 2008
What I Believe
dictated by Aldon P. Annis
April 17, 1992
"I believe in God, Who made the earth and everything in it. In fact, He made the Universe and everything in it. I believe His power is limitless. I believe His power is based on love. I believe that God's people at about the time of Jesus, had given up the idea of power being based on love. And that He was sent as the embodiment of love to get God's people straighten out. The event of the crucifixion and Jesus' acceptance of it was made to demonstrate to the people just how powerful love can be."
"There are some things that I don't believe and one of these is of a church that is designed to control people's minds in other ways than the acts of love. I think it's a pity that there are people who need to be led by people like Jim Baker, Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, and the rest of their ilk."
Note: Aldon requested that this be read at his memorial service word for word, as is.
April 17, 1992
"I believe in God, Who made the earth and everything in it. In fact, He made the Universe and everything in it. I believe His power is limitless. I believe His power is based on love. I believe that God's people at about the time of Jesus, had given up the idea of power being based on love. And that He was sent as the embodiment of love to get God's people straighten out. The event of the crucifixion and Jesus' acceptance of it was made to demonstrate to the people just how powerful love can be."
"There are some things that I don't believe and one of these is of a church that is designed to control people's minds in other ways than the acts of love. I think it's a pity that there are people who need to be led by people like Jim Baker, Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, and the rest of their ilk."
Note: Aldon requested that this be read at his memorial service word for word, as is.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
So I made a mistake
Hillary Clinton:
"So I made a mistake. That happens. It shows I'm human - which for some people is a revelation."
Times Online
March 26, 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/
us_and_americas/us_elections/article3622067.ece
"So I made a mistake. That happens. It shows I'm human - which for some people is a revelation."
Times Online
March 26, 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/
us_and_americas/us_elections/article3622067.ece
Monday, March 17, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Ten Senses
Humans have ten senses, according to Marilyn vos Savant:
vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell;
as well as receptors for pressure, temperature, pain, balance and motion
Parade, Feb. 24, 2008, p. 17
vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell;
as well as receptors for pressure, temperature, pain, balance and motion
Parade, Feb. 24, 2008, p. 17
serene, confident, elegant, at ease with herself and with the world
from "Transformation: Cate Blanchett"
from "Transformation: Cate Blanchett"
Walter McBride/Retna
MSN.com 3/16/2008
The much-lauded actress is more beautiful than ever. Says Giorgio Armani: "With her growing maturity, she has come to embody the ideal Armani woman: serene, confident, elegant, at ease with herself and with the world."
from "Transformation: Cate Blanchett"
Walter McBride/Retna
MSN.com 3/16/2008
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
They pay for women to go away
The other question that left many of us puzzled: Why pay [a prostitute] for it when a man like [New York Governor] Spitzer could probably get women for free?
"Men such as those in Spitzer's position do not so much pay for women to have sex with them; they pay for women to go away AFTER having sex with them," said evolutionary psychologist David Buss of the University of Texas. "It's one strategy some men use for minimizing the costs, although obviously it did not work for Spitzer."
Philadelphia Inquirer, March 12, 2008,
"Why powerful men take such obvious risks," p. A6.
http://www.philly.com
"Men such as those in Spitzer's position do not so much pay for women to have sex with them; they pay for women to go away AFTER having sex with them," said evolutionary psychologist David Buss of the University of Texas. "It's one strategy some men use for minimizing the costs, although obviously it did not work for Spitzer."
Philadelphia Inquirer, March 12, 2008,
"Why powerful men take such obvious risks," p. A6.
http://www.philly.com
Friday, March 07, 2008
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
C. S. Lewis Quotes
C. S. Lewis Quotes
English Author, November 29, 1898 - November 22, 1963
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/c_s_lewis.html
A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.
A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.
A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.
Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.
How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.
Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
I gave in, and admitted that God was God.
I sometimes wander whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.
If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.
Let's pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.
Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.
Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.
Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.
Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.
Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.
Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather for the devil.
The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.
The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way."
There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.
Thirty was so strange for me. I've really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.
This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.
We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.
We are what we believe we are.
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.
What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.
With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.
You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
English Author, November 29, 1898 - November 22, 1963
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/c_s_lewis.html
A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.
A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.
A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.
Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.
How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.
Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
I gave in, and admitted that God was God.
I sometimes wander whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.
If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.
Let's pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.
Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.
Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.
Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.
Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.
Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.
Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather for the devil.
The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.
The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way."
There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.
Thirty was so strange for me. I've really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.
This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.
We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.
We are what we believe we are.
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.
What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.
With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere.
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.
You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Esteem for the Elderly
from
Ask Marilyn
"In your opinion, what is the best barometer of a country's morality?"
~ Tom Zahn, S. Peter, Minn.
"The esteem in which society holds its elderly."
~ Marilyn vos Savant
Parade, March 2, 2008, p. 19
Ask Marilyn
"In your opinion, what is the best barometer of a country's morality?"
~ Tom Zahn, S. Peter, Minn.
"The esteem in which society holds its elderly."
~ Marilyn vos Savant
Parade, March 2, 2008, p. 19
Letting Go
"I think not having the power to control everything is where you will find the most opportunity. It demands that you let go."
And pay attention. . . .
Crow chose to feel her pain and fear without distraction, "so that I could fully experience it and then be done with it. And it rendered me very awake. Very fearless. It helped me to remember who I am."
~ Sheryl Crow
"I Want to Experience Life," by James Kaplan,
Parade, March 2, 2008, p. 5
And pay attention. . . .
Crow chose to feel her pain and fear without distraction, "so that I could fully experience it and then be done with it. And it rendered me very awake. Very fearless. It helped me to remember who I am."
~ Sheryl Crow
"I Want to Experience Life," by James Kaplan,
Parade, March 2, 2008, p. 5
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