Category: Philosophy

I’ve found that I’m partial to authors who do a good job of providing an unbiased rendition of competing thoughts on the knot that’s formed from the confluence of the many esoteric/religious/mythological/philosophical/theosophical traditions and beliefs. Dylan Burns did a good job of keeping it clean and making it readable.

An interesting sentence in the text caught my eye, it reads: “Nonetheless, despite its lack of Gnostic myth, the Gospel of Thomas has been marketed and received as the most popular ‘Gnostic’ text recovered from Nag Hammadi, generating controversy and commentary amongst churchgoers, scholars, and even New Age exegetes alike, who ‘find’ in it what they ‘seek’.”

The last phrase struck me as odd because it implies that the ‘truths’ found in, or the ‘truth’ about it (or authenticity, or value), is dependent on what the reader/examiner seeks.

Beyond being an easy to read and solid survey of ‘Ancient Esoteric Traditions‘, its list of references is a chocked full of goodies for those delving into the history and conflict between the many traditions and the societies they formed in. Enjoy.

I see through my daily go-to sites that another good man appears to have passed.  The anxious posts over the last few days sorta set the stage for today’s news.  I was going to say ‘grim news’ or even ‘bad news’, but the years are piling up on me and there is (I suppose) a pandemic pacing the land, so I’ve chosen to look at death as an event that carries little less tragedy and a little more opportunity than in years past. 

While the passing of Ol’ Remus is tragic for those that knew him and counted as a loss for those who read his many poignant posts, for me not so much.  I absolutely do not intend to diminish the value of the feeling of loss or sadness others have and I know that those feelings and emotions are both healthy and healing.  But for me his passing, or the passing of anyone for that matter, leaves me more pensive than melancholy.  It causes me to reflect on life and explore my own faith.  This then is some great goodness that comes from the passing of a man I barely knew. How could such a benefit befall me if not by the guiding grace of God?

When we string together our explorations, blend in the memory of seemingly random events (occurring across many decades) and sprinkle in the absolutely exact amount of God’s love and grace, we have what will one day be called a life lived.  Ol’ Remus and billions of others have lived, died, and moved on.  They’ve left the rest of us to pace through this life doing the best we can.

I guess the simplest way to look at life (absent evocation of any deity) is to equate it to the game of golf.  That is to say that the game can never be beaten, only played.  It follows then that because no one can win and no one gets outa here alive, the only thing that matters is how you play the game.

God Speed ‘Remus’

I can’t help but think that the surgical strike last evening may have also delivered a much needed message to another of America’s antagonists.

An old (October 2017) article from Huffpuss shows that their outrage is not a new phenomenon. I feel sorry for all of the electrons that were harmed in producing this blather.