Christmas
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The Light of the World
We have just passed Thanksgiving, a season of the year when we take the time to give thanks for all of our blessings. We thank God for an abundance of food, for the harvest time in the fall, and for the family and friends that we gather with to celebrate. If Christmas has a cultural theme for us here in North America, other than giving of course, I suppose it would be light. We light up our homes, we bring out the candles, and we even drag trees in from outdoors and light them up as a means of celebration. The Light of Christmas Culturally, the warmth and light of…
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Advent Musings Revisited
Christopher Columbus rattled the establishment. In 1492 he sailed west from Spain to discover a new trade route to the Far East, but instead he followed the stars to the Caribbean Basin. At the time, Nicolaus Copernicus was a nineteen-year-old astronomer working on a radical theory that placed the sun at the center of the solar system and not the earth. It was a revolutionary concept because it challenged Aristotle. Scientists and philosophers held true to Aristotle’s principle that the earth was the fixed center of the universe.
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Weight of Glory
While Canadian winters are known for their shortened days and darkness, what I love the most about a crisp winter's day is the quality of the sun's light when it does deign to shine. There is a blue, piercing quality to the light of winter that doesn't exist at any other time of the year. It is a purer, truer light that shines on a sunny December morning.
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Reducing Consciousness 1
In the classic Dickens story, A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge sees a ghost. Skeptic that he is, he does not believe what he sees. When the ghost asks him why he doubts his senses, he replies: "Because, a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato."
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The Word Became Flesh
A word is a separate thing from that which it describes. It is also linked by meaning to the thing it describes. Meaning unites the word and its object inseparably. A rose is a rose is a rose. The object gives meaning to the word and the word becomes inseparable from the object. One can no longer exist without the other. This is so true, that it is safe to say that no thing or concept can exist in our minds without us naming it.
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Advent Musings
Advent Season unfolds in the midst of carnival-like barkers vying for our attention. The halls are all being decked while marketing agents scheme to capture our imagination. Colorful brochures arrive daily; on television sixty-second episodes guarantee happiness or satisfaction if the product being hawked is purchased. Amid all the hoopla it is easy to slip into the commercialization trap.
