Beauty

"Lust not after her beauty in thine heart;
neither let her take thee with her eyelids."
--Proverbs 6:25 (this from Solomon who had some 600 concubines and many hundred wives! I guess he should know!)

"Beauty is the gift of God."
--Aristotle, from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, V 18

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Rhodora


Beauty is a mystery. You can neither eat it nor make flannel out of it. . .
Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, is intuition.
--D. H. Lawrence, Sex Versus Loveliness

Thanks for 1988

With the loss to Notre Dame tonight, UK's win total stands at 1988, and many of those are memorable games for which we give thanks. The Lord willing and the creek don't rise, we'll start the countdown to the 2nd millennium in the fall of this year.

Boundaries

Make good choices everyday.
Respect the boundaries your parents and others determine for you: they're helping you to prevent weeds from crowding out the flowers of your life. Some pruning of the flowers also makes them more beautiful just as passing up all the distractions of life makes your life more fruitful.
---Dr. Adams

Thanks

Big Blue Nation can exhale now that UK defeated Creighton this evening.

Let me hear the sound of joy and gladness,
Turn away your face from my sins,
and wipe away all my guilt.
Psalm 51:8-9

Spiritual evolution

concept of religion as an evolved phenomenon

Imagine that with the advent of a larger brain which could sense and respond to spiritual realities there arose in the process of evolution on this earth simultaneously the reality of the spiritual such that when people died their "spirits" lived on as angels, and gods emerged. In a mysterious development, these evolved gods were able to exert some limited control over the physical properties of the "natural" world. It may be that some competition developed among these gods and angels, and different gods gathered to themselves human populations who would respond to their summons. Yahweh and the Christ called out to the Hebrews and Christians, Allah the muslims, Buddah the Chinese, etc. These gods are not the product of man's imagination, but rather distinct spiritual realities living in de Chardin's Noosphere. When Yahweh delivers the Ten commandments, it's a "real" being who communes with Moses, and he makes the case that he's to be the supreme god for the Hebrews and their descendants. Whether Yahweh and Allah are diffenent gods is unknown. It could be that rather than competing gods, we see a spiritual flux or variation from one form to another, so that Muhhamad's Allah is but one variation of the Hebrew Yahweh. It's a mystery. There may have been spiritual beings in the world long before man evolved sufficiently to appreciate them.

What we're about

Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.
Psalm 107:2

Jesus never needed evidence about anyone; he could tell what someone had in him.
John 2:25

We are God's work of art, created in Christ Jesus for the good works which God has already designated to make up our way of life.
Ephesians 2:10

Three Score and Ten

Regan's seventy today and I'm reminded of this Psalm 90:

1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place
throughout all generations.
2 Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You turn men back to dust,
saying, "Return to dust, O sons of men."
4 For a thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
5 You sweep men away in the sleep of death;
they are like the new grass of the morning-
6 though in the morning it springs up new,
by evening it is dry and withered.
7 We are consumed by your anger
and terrified by your indignation.
8 You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
9 All our days pass away under your wrath;
we finish our years with a moan.
10 The length of our days is seventy years—
or eighty, if we have the strength;
yet their span is but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
11 Who knows the power of your anger?
For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.
12 Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
13 Relent, O LORD! How long will it be?
Have compassion on your servants.
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
for as many years as we have seen trouble.
16 May your deeds be shown to your servants,
your splendor to their children.
17 May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us;
establish the work of our hands for us—
yes, establish the work of our hands.

---NIV