Parkerville

In my post of October 21, "Seeing Through the Paradox" I shared why it is easy for me to prioritize my reason (and desires) over God's commands using the Parable of the Royal Wedding Feast as a text.  In this post, I'll come at it from the other direction, that our reason alone isn't reliable enough to be our sole source of wisdom for making life decisions.  Let's start with a quote from my favorite thinker: But one must not think ill of the paradox, for the paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow. But the ultimate potentiation of every passion is always to will its own downfall, and so it is also the ultimate passion of the understanding to will the collision, although in one way or another the collision must become its downfall. This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.   Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fr...

  central panel from Adoration of the Mystic Lamb , Jan van Eyck Revelation 5:11-14 (NABRE) "I looked again and heard the voices of many angels who surrounded the throne and the living creatures and the elders. They were countless in number, and they cried out in a loud voice: 'Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength, honor and glory and blessing.' Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, everything in the universe, cry out: 'To the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor, glory and might, forever and ever.' The four living creatures answered, 'Amen,' and the elders fell down and worshiped." What a vision from the final book of the Bible! There are many beautiful scriptures about praising God, but this one in particular captures the image of total, cosmic praise. I think that praise is the privileged way of calling down the Holy Spirit, and...