Greed moved to July 12 group Second Cut (more may be in the offing) Is greed not gluttony for possessions instead of food? If so, then deadly sins have to be seen for their objects as well as their sources and effects.

 

Surely this is an acutely American sin. relate advertising to greed.
Where is the drive behind the lure of possessions? Why does retail therapy work, even for a time?
Where is it anti-social? How does greed affect our natural environment?
What does it do to the emotions and the soul? (Include relationships)

How is greed related to hoarding?

Is there such a thing as societal greed? Is the American dream about anything other than more possessions than one's parents?

How does generosity start to counter greed? If greed emerges from a consideration of personal deficit, where does generosity emerge?

 

Capps puts greed with the play stage of say a four year old. It is connected with the building of a sense of initiative and a sense of purpose , and perhaps dedication. He links it to being ruthless. I must admit that I do not have a good handle on this linkage, so the following are guesses/conjectures.Somehow greed seeks to deal with guilt. Guilt is the sense of doing something wrong by transgressing a boundary, of doing something wrong, as opposed to shame, a more general sense of not measuring up, of being wrong oneself, than in being in the wrong. Greed tries to abolish limits by wanting it all, even when one has more than one needs. it becomes a compulsion for more but it limited to the symbolic realm of things possessed than taken in, gluttony, or lust, person as a thing. greed is the flip side of initiative in that the child's mind and body can work toward objectives, toward a purpose, a hsared one. Now a child can play together with others. guilt may impede those relationships. Gree insists that one should be the boss, the possessor of things acquired by this new-found initiative.  It does withdraw energy from relationships. We rarely think of misers as good with people. things try to replace people. Without an overarching deep meaning structure, without a project worthy of vocation, we substitute acquisition of things. (think of the rules of acquisition of Quark in Deep Space Nine). It hopes that one will be admired for one's possessions.

Greed moved to July 12 group Second Cut (more may be in the offing)

 

Surely this is an acutely American sin. relate advertising to greed.
Where is the drive behind the lure of possessions? Why does retail therapy work, even for a time?
Where is it anti-social? How does greed affect our natural environment?
What does it do to the emotions and the soul? (Include relationships)

How is greed related to hoarding?

Is there such a thing as societal greed? Is the American dream about anything other than more possessions than one's parents?

How does generosity start to counter greed? If greed emerges from a consideration of personal deficit, where does generosity emerge?

 

Capps puts greed with the play stage of say a four year old. 5t is connected with the building of a sense of initiative and a sense of purpose , and perhaps dedication. He links it to being ruthless.I must admit that I do not have a good handle on this linkage, so the following are guesses/conjectures.Somehow greed seeks ot deal with guilt. Guilt is the sense of doing something wrong by transgressing a boundary, of doing something wrong, as opposed ot shame, a more general sense of not measuring up, of being wrong oneself, than in being in the wrong. Greed tries to abolish limits by wanting it all, even when one has more than one needs. it becomes a compulsion for more but it limited to the symbolic realm of things possessed than taken in, gluttony, or lust, person as a thing. It does withdraw energy from relationships. We rarely think of misers as good with people. things try to replace people. Without an overarching deep meaning structure, without a project worthy of vocation, we substitute acquisition of things. (think of the rules of acquisition of Quark in Deep Space Nine). It hopes that one will be admired for one's possessions.

All families have their ups and downs. All families follow some predictable patterns. At times, families carry from one generation to the next some of those patterns.  

 

Here we are placed in the age old quandary of nature v. nurture. The issue of infertility affects this family, as well as Abraham and saran, and will continue to affect them. Isaac prays and is answered more quickly than his parents. Still, an answered prayer may create problems of its own-continuing problem of carrying the promise is not limited to fertility. Even in the womb, the twins seem to be at each other, so much so that Rebecca utters a prayer of desperation.

 How much is Isaac fooled. He is playing the fool or is he truly being fooled. In other words, he is playing Rebecca and Jacob for fools?  he is allowing them to be so terribly clever but knows what they want all the time?  Is he blind to their machinations. After ll, he was younger than Ishmael and he was the chosen favorite. Why not now? Does he secretly agree that Jacob should receive the blessing? What has happened to his marriage with Rebecca that she feels such secrets and machinations are in order? Why haven;t they talked this over? Have they grown so far apart Patterns can change. or be maintained. It is a good thing to be conscious of them. When they don;t promote the health of the system, then they should be changed. That will always meet with resistance. over the years? She is definitely the crafty Laban's sister after all. Her son will find out more about that sooner than she would like.
personal and national-why put it in a national narrative? Esau is depicted as a natural person, unreflective, living in the moment. Jacob is reflected as  crafty and conniving,

civilized is how I would translate tam in this instance, not physically adventurous.
youngest displacing the oldest Jacob is smooth of skin but a smooth talker as well. does he not lose the stolen birthright? In this story a type of karmic principle seems to be at play.

 

Part of this is a little harmless fun poking at its near neighbor Edom. it laughs at it s supposed ancestor as a brute. How much did they inherit his qualities? Remarkably, it pokes fun at itself as a cunning younger brother, younger twin. Jacob is cooking something up-describe types of people name means grabby stew story-mmm red stuff, play on his name linked to Edom is he too stupid to handle the birthright?

 

Families develop and fall into patterns, as do many organizations, including churches. Those patterns tend to persist, healthy or not. Family system and playing favorites. What does playing favorites do to a family? The standard line is that we love our children equally but then how is it that children identify the favorite so readily?We don;t learn from previous patterns. We bring ghosts into the room with us. Previous experiences have a way of punching buttons on us.  Replaying the past closes doors and options. (The story of how to cook a a ham.) 
 
God works through even human duplicity toward the truth. does he receive the blessing? Playing favorites damages the perception fo the favorite. it obviously causes resentment and self-doubt in the less favored children. In response to our anxieties, we look for allies. Instead of speaking directly with the person with whom we have an issue, we create a triangle of relationships. this fosters miscommunication and faulty assumptions more than resolution most times. Quite simply, it is wise to praise in public and complain personally and directly. We don;t talk abut people; we speak to them when possible.

The last of the Harry Potter movies will be coming out within a week. For a while, the overly sensitive launched  a campaign against the series, due to its reliance on the old tropes of wizards. they feared that the device meant that it was allied with dark forces. That seems to have simmered down, as new venom gets spewed over new targets.I'm grateful that the series put books into the hands of young people through of all agencies, Scholastic Publishing. I hope that Rowling's fans will be engaged enough to track down some her allusions to christian tradition and in so doing find some new depth in their own journey of faith, one often as perilous as Harry's.
 

For instance, Christians read of the communion of saints in the Apostles' Creed. The series offers a marvelous image for that connection of us all, living and dead. When harry is in battle with Voldemort, the spirits of the dead create a shield around the combatants and those spirits cheer Harry on.  Harry is told that those whom we love and love us never truly leave us. Hers is a bracing tonic against the American notion that salvation is about my, my individual ticket to heaven, alone. Harry , as all of humanity, is not made to be alone. He survives due to his relationships, especially the core group of his tow great and loyal friends, a boy and a girl. The depth of our connections shows itself in grief and the tears of loss. How many readers have been brought to tears by the death of Cedric, the heartbroken cries of his father, and the eulogy made by Dumbledore at the great banquet. On a tombstone she quotes Paul, "the last enemy to be destroyed is death."

Even as she plays games with a horcrux as a piece of a soul, Rowling grasps the importance of the material and the ordinary virtues of everyday life. Harry gets attached to an esired (desire spelled backward)  a device that can reveal inmost longings, so he gets to see his long-lost parents. He is warned "it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live." She places a Scripture quote on a tombstone:"where your heart is, there your treasure lies."

Above all, the series is a meditation, as is Lord of the Rings, on the power of love v. the love of power. For Rowling, power is allied with fear and is in the embrace of the force of death. the very name of Voldemort is linked ot death.  Love is allied with virtues such as courage and leads to the force of life. Voldemort's hideous version of a Communion ritual uses death as an instrument toward his renewed life. On the other hand, Dumbledore tells Harry "love is the one thing Voldemort does not understand. A love as deep as your mother's for you leaves a mark." it is that love that allows one to face death, to be self-sacrificial, to renounce power over others in making people mere objects.

What religious censors don;t grasp is the eye of faith. The eye of faith can read anything and make it sacramental and find analogies to God, the work of God, and that which opposes god's vision for the world. To try to deny children and adults of the rare opportunity to be greeted into an alternative world of imagining, one that casts light on our own experience, is a crime against the spirit of human, and yes, divine creativity. No matter the power in a wizard's arsenal, Rowling lifts up the virtues that muggles and wizards may share, ones found in the fruit and gifts of the Spirit, ones shared by all human beings at their best, no matter their station.

Gen. 25:19-34
1) Answered prayers don't promote perfection. Both Isaac and Rebekah pray about their children to be, but they fight even in the womb.
2) Surely at least some of this is a joking etiology story, to jest with brother Edom on its origin. On the other hand, waht do we learn aobut Israel to keep this in \its founding stories?
3) I glimpse some Gilgamesh motif here as well. Enkidu bears some resemblance to Esau, and Gilgamesh to Jacob.
3) Jacob's name means grabby,pushy, overtake, at the heel. Esau is related to being hairy se-ar, and to red, adom.
4) I find it remarkable that Israel would not whitewash its founding member but show him to be full of trickery.
5) The birthright must have been alarming in general for the firstborn to get a bigger share, but for twins, in must have stuck in the craw. .
6) so what does it say about God to overturn the rights of the firstborn, a theme in the bible, and to pick such a one as Jacob.
7) One could play the birthright story for comedy turning serious. think of Esau going, red stuff, yum. He throws away a different future for some stew. Was Jacob plotting, or did he react to a situation that presented itself?
8) An intriguing note; Jacob is  called tam, quiet, a homebody, but in Job it means integrity.
9) Notice the decided parental preference here. Isaac had not learned from his own life with Abraham. Why does Rebekah prefer Jacob? Does she see her brother Laban in him? Isaac shows a bit of Esau if his love could be had for some wild game.
10 What factors lead us to being manipulative with our cleverness?
11) This is also a story of nature v. nurutre. where do you come out on that specturm of possibility?

The words of the Declaration of Independence are well-known. We even confuse them with the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson wanted the Declaration of Independence to be clear to all, but he never claimed originality for it. Jefferson's Declaration was the product of a series of revolutions that streamed into the American revolution. Without the technical revolution of the printing press, it would not make sense to publish the causes of the separation to a candid (open-minded world. It thought itself a product of scientific revolutions that would allow us to discern patterns in the 'course of human events" as we discerned pattern in the natural world. His use of the word necessary is a scientific one, of having seen a predictable pattern, as clear as gravity. With its listing of truths, instead of Truth, it reflects the fundamental change of individualism applied to religious orthodoxy.

Jefferson's trinity of rights, but my no means the only ones were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness is sometimes thought to mean a vague, misty yearning. Jefferson uses it about government as well to effect our safety and happiness. For Jefferson, private happiness could find obstacles imposed by the government. Public happiness could be fostered with good government, as measured by social indicators such as educational levels, economic prosperity, and peaceful relations between nations. Notice tha tit is inalienable, one that we cannot give up and remain citizens, remain human.

"All men are created equal." For a slaveholder, the charge of  hypocrisy is obvious. Nonetheless the great phrase of equality would be the rhetorical death knell of slavery, just as Lincoln would show in his speeches. Even at his most prejudiced, he had said all. Notice that this is more than equality before the law; this is a fundamental equality that would and did find fruition in later history. His original draft had a long polemic against the slave trade, edited by congress. Jefferson suffered through the revisions, and for the rest of his life, kept his original to be able to show the changes Congress made in his draft.

The document has its few religious components. Jefferson's declaration had even fewer religious references than the final draft. By no means, can a religious doctrine be thought to be a central tenet of the declaration. It betrays no explicit Christian considerations, but certainly sounds like the removed "watchmaker" god of the deists.In natural rights thought, god the Creator also created the basis for human rights. they help constitute our humanity.  Put simply, the Declaration cannot be used a pretext for the radical right as an engine against the establishment clause of the First Amendment.Jefferson would write a Virginia law in 1777, enacted in 1786,  that would try to keep the state from involving itself in religious matters, and keep the church from using the state as an instrument of control. Still, Congress was modest enough to rely on divine Providence and saw the Supreme judge of the world as part of the audience of r its work. In other words, a higher power than human beings also animates the world.

Thomas Jefferson could have selected many offices and achievements on his tombstone. He skipped president, vice-president,Secretary of State,governor, but he did include the writing of the declaration of Independence. It doesn't take long to read. This July 4th, please consider reading his words again. They help form the political DNA of this country and people seeking freedom all over the globe.John Adams predicted that Independence Day would be one of fireworks and celebrations. Mat it also be one where we return to the very seedbed of American beliefs and measure our progress.

July 3 Sunday-Song of Solomon is the Bible's great response that the world of faith does not cherish romance out of fear or guilt. At ch.4, we are treated to a head to toe praise of the beloved. The effusiveness of the praise makes me think that these are young lovers. Of course, human sexuality creates all sorts of problems, but they are often a better set of problems than empty arms and hearts. The pull toward unison is a powerful one for these isolated bodies we have. The human body is not to be downplayed in the faith but treated with the same respect as the spiritual or emotional. What are your best features? What features do you find most beguiling in others?

July 4-Every year, I try to read at least the beginning and ending of the Declaration of Independence. For devotions, let's focus on some of the religious language of its author and of congress. "Endowed by their Creator' is a powerful statement of rights. Instead of a divine right of kings, Jefferson leans to a political priesthood of all believers where all of us, in the image and likeness of god, have rights, not only as possessions, but capacities in society. The basic rights were inalienable not because they cannot be abridged, but because we cannot give them up. They are part of being human, part of a divine inheritance.

Tuesday Loneliness can attack us in a packed party.It is an urge toward connection that makes loneliness push us to find relationship. So, it is a symptom more than a disease. Einstein said that solitude was prized as he grew older. Solitude is a decision as well as a physical reality. Sometimes, loneliness can be assuaged with prayer. There we are not alone, for God is there, listening as carefully as a therapist, s happy to hear from us as a parent when we call.

Wednesday Wordsworth said  "the wise mind regrets less what age takes away, but more what it leaves behind." In a youth-obsessed culture, we resent and resist the limitations that aging places on us. I suppose it could mean the accumulation of losses of relationships that lie in our past, or it could mean the legacies we leave behind, both positive and negative.

Thursday-When I was considering joining the Presbyterian church, the pastor showed me the confession of 1967. At the end, is says "the church does not identify limited progress with the kingdom of God on earth, nor does it despair in the face of disappointment and defeat." Day by day, bit by bit, the church does it work ot make the world a proper place for human beings to live, to make the world a bit more livable. i so admire the modesty of the confession here, where it does not arrogate itself the power to know god's will precisely. Instead, it keeps its eye on the prize, laboring toward that distant goal.

Friday-Scripts-"All the world's a stage." At times, we act out of lives with a script that has been foisted upon us. Something happens, and the words of someone else seem to jump out of our mouths. It can be a salutary spiritual exercise to write out the means and the ends to which you are drawn. That may well confirm your path, or it could ask for some course alteration. Where in your life do you need a rewrite of the script you have been following. Where does your script get you into trouble, and where does it provide you enjoyment?

Saturday Temperance-We ran out of time to speak much of temperance in our Tuesday morning class that has its current focus, the 7 deadly sins. It is definitely related to phrasing in Scripture on self-control, or perhaps a better translation, self-mastery. That permits us to enjoy in moderation, temperately. When we temper an egg, we moderate the temperature to mix a little hot liquid and then put it in the hot mixture. Just saying no does not always work. learning when to say yes and to say no is the essence of temperance, a more human approach than abstinence, I think.