JuxtapoTrainwreck

Well, that didn't take long. It is clear that attempting to come up with daily wisdom from combining wisdom sources did not survive contact with reality. Nevertheless, there are a number of findings which I can take out of the exercise.

 A Common Meditation for All Souls features posts cherry-picked from a large variety of sources. We only get the good stuff (at least in the judgment of Galen) with none of the froth. The common liturgy is structured to provide the entire contents of the 4 gospels over a 3 year cycle, and the bible is full of both wisdom and story. It's not always so easy to see what we're supposed to take away.

Sunday gospels (of which I have covered none) are dramatically longer than those for the rest of the week, because there is a base assumption that most people will only ever hear the ones that are read on Sunday. The most important parts, from a Christian perspective, are therefore placed there. This is a mixed bag; in some cases the most important parts are the parts that UU's would have the most trouble with, so I'm missing an opportunity to see just how thoroughly the traditions can be reconciled. On the other hand, it may be saving effort that would be wasted on trying to get wisdom out of what is actually doctrine, or even travelogue.

The gospels of Easter week are probably not the best place to start, because the problems listed last paragraph are just magnified during the most important liturgical week of the entire year.

Unless one is willing to uncritically accept whatever is in the bible as given, it's impossible to look at the gospels without also thinking about historical context. It also does some of the passages a disservice to show them dissociated from the surrounding content. I'm trying to glean wisdom and I don't want to do biblical criticism or defense. That almost inevitably means the passages from the Liturgy will be, at least part of the time, more rich with content than I'm willing to spend the effort to investigate. This probably isn't an effort that's worth doing part-way.

Extensive thought and analysis is incredibly time consuming so a number of the posts seemed pretty banal. Katy warned me.

I still think there's some value in doing something, but I haven't figured out yet how to try the next approach to it. But Juxtaposition is dead, dead, dead.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.(Reinhold Neibuhr)