In Defense of Man

Fran takes issue with feeble substitutions for the word 'man' when it is used to represent our collective humanity. She argues that this fixation on the literal, gendered meaning of the word is the result of a narrow reading. She asks that we invoke a higher perspective and thereby restore to 'man' its proper significance. -Editor

Man: noun

1. an adult male person, as distinguished from a boy or a woman.
2. a member of the species Homo Sapiens or all the members of this species collectively, without regard to sex: prehistoric man
3. the human individual as representing the species, without reference to sex; the human race; humankind: Man hopes for peace, but prepares for war.
4. a human being; person: to give a man a chance; When the audience smelled the smoke, it was every man for himself.
5. a husband

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Heart and Lungs Part 2

This is the second part of Brian's essay on what the church would do if it were aligned entirely with the correspondence of the heart and lungs. The first section can be found here. -Editor

In the first half of this article last week, I launched a discussion of the true meaning of the place of the church specific—meaning the church which has the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg—as the heart and lungs of what we call the Grand Man, the human form of society.

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Heart and Lungs

Brian explores what the essential actions of the church ought to be in light of what the heart and lungs correspond to in Swedenborg's writings. This essay is the first of two on this topic. The second part is found here. -Editor

About fifteen years ago I fell into a late-night New-Church-camp conversation with two cousins of mine—who were, like me, church-indoctrinated from birth—and Martie Johnson. Martie would go on to become a minister and Navy chaplain, but was at the time still a rather wide-eyed newcomer to Swedenborg and the concepts in his Writings, and was probing us for information.

At some point, one of us mentioned the Grand Man, and Martie stopped us.

“What’s that?” We explained how heaven is organized in the human form, with societies performing functions that correspond to the various parts of the body, and how that same human form is reflected in the earthly church, human society, nature, and creation itself.

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