January 22, 2019

Selections from Fragments Within Time  – By Chapter

1. Meaning

We seek meaning. We make, use and misuse symbols. We seek a sense of order. We seek relationships and sensual experience. We seek transcendence and a relationship with that encounter.

2. Reality

Reality is a doorway to the present and may be too complex for us to grasp all at one time. Reality includes everything that is and has been. Reality changes. Our knowledge of reality is unique to us.   

3. God

Most true believers in God accept that there is a God, both transcendent and immanent, the Creator who brought the universe into existence and who has control over it. This position is affirmed by faith and can neither be verified nor falsified. The mystics speak of direct experience of God and note that God is beyond all human comprehension.

4. Religion

Religion offers a path to God through awareness and revelation. Religion provides structure and encourages relationship with Divinity. Each religion has its own themes, structure, and movement. Religion is social and personal.

5. History and Time

History relates to memory, time, and perception. History is a work in progress. History is not what happened, it is a story about what happened. History gives meaning and opens us to hope. History is a series of images, tales, geographies, figures, lessons. It is not only facts.

6. Imagination and Memory

The faculty of imagining is imagination. It is the ability to form mental images, sensations or concepts that are not perceived directly through the senses. Imagination is the creative faculty of the mind that allows us to change perception and transform consciousness.

7. Words

Words shape the reality they describe. It is difficult to describe the way things are without first making a choice of what vocabulary to use and to define the words we use.

8. Action and Experience

From our perspective, it seems we have free will to act. God acts both in reaction to our action, and at the same time as we act. We do not know how much God is acting in temporal time. God is always acting in eternal time.

9. Philosophy and Wisdom

Philosophy literally means "love of wisdom." It is the rational investigation of the fundamental nature of reality and meaning. Philosophy is also the study of truth in time.

10. Culture

Culture is a form of expression and includes patterns of human activity. Culture is a way of acting socially, symbolically, and selectively, through beliefs, values, and traditions. Culture includes the capacity to communicate and classify human experiences symbolically.