The Main Sign

One of the most important reasons to develop aesthetic logic is so that we can read signs. If we can’t read, we can’t know, and therefore we can’t act. 

Imagine getting turned around driving because you can’t read the street sign (this happens to me often). “Where am I?” you ask. Out comes the GPS and the map. You look at secondary signs because the main sign was obscured. 

The problem is that we tend not to know which sign is the main one, or even that it is a sign. Which is the main sign? “Know thyself,” Socrates said. A faulty reading of ourselves as human persons is perhaps the worst sort of getting lost. Misreading ourselves, we then also misinterpret the secondary signs (science, nature, law, politics).

Jesus corrects this misreading of ourselves. We look to him as a human sign, a sign of what God stamped on us all: we have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge, in the image of its Creator. (Colossians 3:10) 

Have I read myself as a sign lately? Through the lens of Jesus, the main sign? How might that change my direction?

Renew my knowledge of myself, and guide me to the right road. Amen.

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ON SIGNS and secondary signs, see St. John of Damascus, "On the Divine Images."

SLOW DOWN and read the signs of self and identity, humor and redemption of brothers, as you travel the road by tractor with the intriguing and unusual main character of "The Straight Story."

The Golden Mean

Da Vinci saw it. The human body is a glorious manifestation of the divine. Even though it is physical, it expresses a non-physical geometric ideal. The Golden Mean, thought to be key to aesthetics, is a proportion found in nature, the universe, architecture, art, literature, mathematics, and so on. It can also be found at the location of the belly button! (Perhaps this is its true purpose!)

Think of your body. What does it signify to you? A collection of cells and DNA? An organism busily going about its tasks? Something extraordinary (or difficult) to take care of? A vehicle to experience, taste, touch, and smell the world? Beyond all of that functioning, and at its apex, your body represents you.

What is a human being that you are mindful of him, / a son of man that you care for him? (Psalm 8:4) This genuine, searching, philosophical question is not one we often stop to ask. If we would know the truth and see with clarity, we must start with ourselves. Beginning with our bodies, what can we learn about our souls?

God, help me to see myself as a pattern, image and sign of You. Amen. 

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Sacred Grove

Sacred Grove, oil on canvas, ⓒ 2008. Edward Obermueller 

On the mountain, near my home in Wyoming, snowshoeing. Through blue-crisp powder up to our waists, we—I and my brothers and our wives—stumble upon a scene that I can only describe as an outdoor cathedral. Light filters through tall pines like stained glass. The trees stand humbly, numinous under their hoarfrosted boughs, silently worshipping something larger, otherworldly. 

This is the season of the church year called Epiphany, celebrating the “aha” of God’s revelation. Can that come through nature?

This is also the season called “ordinary time.” It celebrates the epiphany of the ordinary! This time, this place, this earth, taken up by God and infused with His glory. Spirit revealed in nature; in the specific, particular, and concrete.

The whole earth is full of God’s glory. (Isaiah 6:3) Can God draw near to me through a place? In his bodily “thereness” Jesus takes us again to nature, time and space. Jesus heals the split between the material and the spiritual. He gives us a place, a sacred here 

and now.

Lord, Where is the sacred grove near me? Do I need to go there now? Amen.

ORDINARY TIME by Ann Applegarth 

I wake 

and pray,

break fast,

embrace the day,

then wash

and such,

do work —

but not too much.

I sing

and write.

I walk the dog

each night.

In all these homely tasks

I know

my God is near —

extraordinarily mine

in blessed ordinary time.

(From The Cresset magazine, Valparaiso University)

Images from another sacred grove, my wife's family cottage in Northern Wisconsin:

Sleep Well

How did you sleep? A question asked in our home frequently, especially if guests have stayed over. Was the room warm enough? Was the mattress OK? And so on.

We often fret over others’ comfort while forgetting that we ourselves have our sleep interrupted by many things: worry, pain, sorrow, or as one philosopher put it, “metaphysical terrors.” Perhaps the worst culprit: 
alarm clocks.

“To sleep is to dream.” Sleep is one of the greatest gifts of God, and we know it to be absolutely necessary in a physical sense, for our emotional restoration, brain function, and vital bodily health. But what about the metaphysical reasons for sleep? 

The psychologist Carl Jung said that we live at the boundary of the conscious and the subconscious; our dreams are therefore a key to the whole pattern of our lives. What patterns are there in your dreams? Are you conscious enough of that portion of your life to know?

For God does speak...In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls. 
(Job 33:14-15) If we cannot remember our dreams, we are not sleeping well. How open am I to allowing God to speak in this way?

Pass your hand over my sleep, O Lord, and give me vision from above. Amen.

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"Sleep, sleep tonight, and may your dreams be realized." In this song (honoring Martin Luther King), U2 draws an analogy between sleep, death and vision. Listen and see if your soul is not put into a peaceful state.

The Red Book is a recently discovered compendium of breathtaking artwork by Carl Jung based on his dreams. Includes a very good introduction to Jung's thought. For its size, quality, and image reproduction, a very good price.










On the metaphysical terrors that keep some of us up at night, see Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher. 


On the relationship of breathing to good sleep, and the damaging effects of interrupted sleep: