Blue Sky Friday

Friday the Eleventh of Linda's birthweek, we're hoping to hear from the kitchen cabinet folks about scheduling installation, our POD includes two o'clock this afternoon meeting Kristen to visit Malinda at Pruitt. Malinda asked for donuts, so it'll be a donut birthday party.

Time 8:49 am, promise of rain as high clouds cast their dark shadows on the Bay, which has been gray and brown for a week and more. Not a problem, Life is Good, and Every Day Is A Beautiful Day. 

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Whilst (word overused by Australians and the British) I've never let a "theme" develop in my wandering nonsense on +Time, I'm thinking I want to add a word now and then, about my developing theology. First, though, recalling that the General Ordination Exam I took at Virginia Theological Seminary that January morning in 1983 asked the question, "Do you feel that your theology is settled or developing?" There may be preferences but there is no right or wrong honest answer to a question about how one feels, and for me the right answer, which I gave, was/is that my theology is developing.

It still is. Developing. Overbearingly again, developing, I'm a Stevejobian, refusing to be trapped in anyone's dogma, doctrine, creed; unendingly seeking the Truth, I do my own thinking. When you see that black plastic box of my ashes on the little stand in church up front, please go write on the side, "still seeking." I don't expect to find conclusive answers - - and being okay with that open-ended uncertainty while continuing lifelong to seek - - is a characteristic of Anglicanism that I value most highly.

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My vocational interest in Theology in general I'm taking into my amateur interest in Astronomy, with a "relational" approach. The stars at night are not actually in the positions and relationships with each other that we see from Earth; what we see is not "Truth" in any greater sense, it's just our perspective. The stars in Orion's Belt aren't actually lined up that way, it's just how we see them from our perspective. Nor does Orion's Belt point toward Sirius, the Dog Star, that's just the way it looks from Earth. Nor was the Buck Moon really orange as it rose above the horizon last evening, it's a visual effect caused by atmospheric and light conditions, our perspective from where we stand or sit for a few minutes until the moon rises higher; then the moon looks round and white, which it is not, it's gray, black colors, the brilliant white is how the moons looks to us with the sun's light shining on it. It's all perspective, how things seem to us from our point of view.

We humans develop religions and characterize our religious deities to settle our anxieties and fears about what we see as dangers, threats. Early humans conceived gods to answer their fears about the skies, and the seas, climatology, weather, why crops grow, why we die, what happens to us when we die; what sacrifices we decide our gods will be content with to treat us well or leave us alone. In Abram's day, every family had their own household god and gods to protect them. According to the story, Abram/Abraham's household God was named יְהוָה֙ YHWH (Genesis 12:1 " וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהוָה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם Now the Lord יְהוָה֙ said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.'" Abram went and, as we know, יְהוָה֙ reckoned his obedience unto him as righteousness. יְהוָה֙ was Abram's trusted and revered household God, whom Abram and Sarai took along with them on their travels. In the history of Israel, יְהוָה֙ became the God of Israel, of Abraham and his heirs forever and, in Time through Jesus Christ and the growth of Christianity - - those who have the faith of Jesus Christ - - the God of Christianity - - in its first four centuries evolving to perceive the Trinity. יְהוָה֙ (Jesus is not יְהוָה֙ ); Word, Logos incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth; and Holy Spirit, all incomprehensible and indefinable except from the point of view of the bishops and others whom Caesar Constantine assembled with the assignment to define Christianity in a God who could help Constantine unify the Roman Empire. Result: the faith symbol we call the Nicene Creed and still stand and say "We believe" two thousand years later.

What's my point? The Nicene Creed about Christianity's God is how Constantine and his bishops agreed to see God in the fourth century AD. My metaphor is the bright yellow golden Buck Moon rising last evening 

before it ascended higher and we could see that it actually is brilliant white - - which, of course, it is not, it's only as we see it from Earth with the sun shining on it. God is as seen from our perspective only, we do the best or worst that we can, and we settle in the concrete certainties of "faith" instead  considering and reconsidering and revising as more and more of Creation is Revealed to us and our perspective changes as we see from different points of view of greater knowledge.  

No installments in this my Seeking Series, just something out of the Blue now and then. 

Lightning, thunder, and heavy rain across the Bay on Shell "Island" as I sign off.

RSF&PTL

T89&c