Skinned Knees and Hurt Feelings Build Character

One of the things Chad does is raise children. Here he shares an anecdote of hiking up a mountain with his kids. Through analogy, and reference to the work Divine Providence, Chad explores ideas about the Divine perspective when caring for His Human children. This essay comes across as humorous and light hearted while conveying satisfyingly grounded philosophical conclusions. -Editor

Lately I have been thinking about the Lord as the Perfect Parent and Divine Providence as His consistent implementation of a flawless parenting philosophy based on the everlasting mercy of His Divine Love and Wisdom! I like this approach because it helps me think of Him in a more intimate way: He is the Person who has been in my life from the very beginning, making things work and loving me unconditionally—rather than my boss, or my coach, or my best buddy or some of the other perfectly acceptable ways of thinking about God. What I like best about this concept of the Lord is that, being a parent myself, it helps me: understand the limited nature of my own freedom; recognize some of the ways that the Lord is raising me toward heaven; and accept that I cannot grow up to be an angel unless the Lord lets me learn from my own mistakes and the mistakes of others.

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The Hidden Influence and Relevance of Swedenborg 1: Why We Are Alive

This week we introduce the first of three sections of an essay by Curtis Childs on the significance of Emanuel Swedenborg's work. Curtis begins here by looking, from a broad context, at the remarkable contribution Swedenborg made to teachings about the life after death. The following two sections are: Section 2: Egypt, Assyria, and Quantum Mechanics and Section 3: Swedenborg's Influence. - Editor.

< p>Richard Smoley, in his essay, “The Inner Journey of Emanuel Swedenborg,” introduces us to the Swedish visionary: “like most great figures in history, Emanuel Swedenborg both epitomizes his time and transcends it” (4). In 1688, when on January 29th, Swedenborg was born to Jesper Swedberg and Sara Behm, institutional Christianity ruled Sweden, as well as the rest of Europe. However, secular philosophy and scientific naturalism were also coming into their own, creating a dichotomy that few, other than Swedenborg, could satisfactorily bridge. Swedenborg was educated at the University of Uppsala. After several initial endeavors that met with little success, he began to publish many books in different scientific and philosophical fields. He served on Sweden’s Board of Mines, was given a seat in the House of Nobles, and lived the life of a “nobleman, bureaucrat, and author” (Kirven 31).

Sometime around the year 1736, Swedenborg began to undergo a change that “was to mark the turning point in his life, and it would lead him to the vocation for which he would be most remembered—that of spiritual visionary and sage” (Smoley 19). Swedenborg first began to receive contact from something beyond this world through his dreams, which he recorded as they began to grow more intense. He had several powerful experiences, but what may have been the trigger for the redirection of his studies for the rest of his life occurred at an inn in London in 1745.

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Practice

Normandy is a ceramic artist and she shares her love and insight found in working with clay. She delights in the spiritual discipline of committing to the task in her hands. She offers some photos as proof.

Clay is such a responsive material. Each choice and touch is in some way evident in the finished vessel, from its infancy as a mound of wet clay in my hand, to the finished vessel: glazed, fired, and functioning in the world. The process of making ceramic vessels by hand is rich in metaphors for ourselves and spiritual lives. Even the words potters use to describe a pot relates to our bodies: lip, foot, handle. The vessels of our lives are filled with our desires, relationships and beliefs as surely as the mug in my hand is filled with coffee. With all things, form follows function.

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There is No Such Thing as "Just Friends"

In this challenging essay, Jennica directly confronts the idea that there can be close, merely platonic friendship between men and women (outside of family relations). Jennica draws on the work of Dave Carder to make her case that infatuation needs to be seen for what it is in order to protect marriages from infidelity.

Just Friends

Jane and Ben spend a fair amount of time together. They hang out for coffee a couple times a month, speak on the phone every once in a while and message each other on Facebook. When asked if they are dating, they both insist they are “just friends.” This term is quite common in today's culture, so much that one might actually believe there is such a thing as a friendship between a man and a woman. In fact, I was a believer in such friendships until I reached a point in my life at which I began to look more closely at the friendships I have had with men, and also the friendships of people I know. It occurred to me that in every case what appeared to be a friendship was really infatuation. Thus developed my personal theory that there is no such thing as “just friends.”

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Land Ethic 6: New Church Arguments

  Faced with the huge, daunting ecological challenges our technological society has created, what is an appropriate Christian response?  More specifically, do the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg justify developing an intimate relationship with the land that supports us a la “The Land Ethic” so eloquently envisioned by Aldo Leopold? Is a land ethic compatible with New Church doctrine? The short answer is yes, but the reasons for acting, the motives one brings into play, must be different than those proposed by Leopold. Where Leopold saw humans as a product of evolution we should see God’s providence. Leopold would have us love nature because we are part of it, but as I read the Writings we should love nature for its uses and for the fact that God created it. Swedenborg writes that nature does not exist in its own right. “All this shows how sensually people are thinking when they say that nature exists in its own right, how reliant they are on their physical sense and their darkness in matters of spirit.” (DLW #46) The gentle determinism and view of man as ‘merely’ a citizen in a much bigger world is incompatible with the Writings of the New Church. Two numbers make this point quite clear,

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Land Ethic 5: Theological Arguments

There are three broad interpretations of the Bible accepted in Christian circles these days, dominion, stewardship, and citizenship ethics. The dominion ethic holds that people were created in the image of God and granted mastery over nature to do with it as we please, negative side-effects on exploited ecosystems are of no importance because only heaven matters. The stewardship ethic reads the Bible differently. It finds support for a belief that man is the reason for creation, but that must keep the world we have been entrusted a beautiful life sustaining gem, which we should use but not exploit. Lastly there is the citizen ethic that claims we are merely citizens in a natural world. All of God’s creation is equal in His eyes. Across these three schools of thought there is a gradation of spirit-body dualism from absolute in the dominion ethic to only the slightest trace of dualism in the citizenship ethic. The dualistic attitude toward nature inculcated in Genesis is often blamed for many of our environmental problems. If we are to have dominion over the world and subdue it, then we will do with it as we please, and the Hebrew word, ‘subdue’ has a harsh militaristic sense to it. Reading that passage literally we were enjoined by God to wage war on the surrounding environment, to wrest a living from it. (Black, 37) This is the dominion worldview that Lynn White Jr. attacked vigorously.

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