20.12.16
– PoS
casserole
– Is there a way to lock the screen of an Android mobile without turning off the display?
– Around a quarter of the trees in Chennai, approximately 1 lakh, have been felled by cyclone Vardah!
– Time for a Best of 2016:
Apps
Songs
Books
Movies
Events
Persons
Pictures
Quotes
Words
– Physical chemistry
Chemical physics?
– The opposite of contemplative is NOT active. It’s busy!
Contemplative:busy ~ 1:1
Work:leisure ~ 2.5:1
Leisure:indulgence ~ 2:1
– After every session of reading, write at least 3-5 lines of reflection.
– Distinguish:
Bloated
&
Full
When I fast, my stomach becomes so big!
– Know when, & learn how, to accept (present) defeat, so that you can (ultimately) win……
– When the divine spirit touches mud, GOD becomes irreversibly human!
And the mud becomes irretrievably divine when Man is born!
– Identify your main health problems and make changes in your everyday life accordingly (prevention & treatment).
– Holiness > health > happiness
– Material – more is less.
Spiritual – less is more
– Journaling Vs. Scripture
Meditation Vs. Prayer
Exercise Vs. Service
– Inherent aptitude + theoretical learning + practical experience = impact!
21.12.16
– My name is Gen. 39:2! 🙂
– Salud
– Eray Öntas
– முறைகேடு
– Apps – Clean Master, SD Maid, Greenify
– Android setting – Turn off data during sleep (1 – 7 am)
– Get these apps for your life (not just your mobile)
Antivirus, junk cleaner, memory booster, battery doctor
– My health conditions – Nephrolithiasis + borderline GFR, knee & shoulder ligament tear/strain, allergy + wheezing, depression, ?Alopecia Areata (beard)
– Android setup:
Clean Master (RAM booster, junk cleaner, Antivirus, close apps on lock screen, boost charge), Android device manager (find my phone), SD Maid, close data connection during night sleep
– Christmas is not a day, it’s a season (at least a week)! 🙂
GLORY
– Be unapologetic about who you are. Always!
– I am being Called, to become more than a free/unique individual – a liberating/subversive force!
But that requires a new birth/death-resurrection……
READY?
22.12.16
– DON’T erase calendar items even after they’re done.
Color-coding – mark as done
Blue-collar & white-collar
– KYC
SIP
A parallel platform; An alternative movement
Interim relief
Daily intelligence briefing
Draft law
Debt funds
Tax credits
VAT
Octroi – is that an English word?!
I don’t know the meaning of all these terms! 😉
– Guidelines:
Beliefs >> values >> principles >> rules
– I am more of a scientist than an artist. But I am unhappy about that! I can’t master human life, by being the way I am……
Right?
– Demonitisation – the miscommunication & tension between the FM (Finance Ministry) and the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) is causing great distress to the common man!
– Is Modi a sincere PM, or a sinister politician, or both, or neither??
23.12.16
– Mobile money
Fool’s gold
From concept to scale
Distinguish:
Set-off (tax)
&
Sell-out (ethics)
– Five kinds of activities (to balance):
Chores
Study
Ministry
Personal
Relational
– If life is a picture, you need to distinguish the frame and the contents. And that’s not easy!
– Do you love your self?
Do you love your life?
Do you love your world?
– Tansform/save the world
Vs.
Praise GOD/love others
– Stare into the mirror, daily!
– The Jews had built another temple in Elephantine (Egypt), during the post-exilic period!
Distinguish:
Synagogue
&
Temple
– Israel (a theocratic nation) seeking imperial permission (from Persia) for resolving internal religious matters…!
– Economics & politics
Vs.
Religion & morality
A no-contest?!
– Prosperity in exile!
Texts, canons & versions
Alexandrian culture
History, culture & identity
A new self-consciousness in a pluralistic milieu
Edifying entertainments – legendary/heroic tales
The Eastern (Seleucid) & Western (Ptolemaic) Jewish diaspora. A small religious-ethnic people torn between two (or more) mighty empires!
Political expediency, economic advantage & cultural prestige
Competitive corruption
Bribing the king
Baal Shamem ~ Zeus Olympius
“Religious persecution was virtually unknown in antiquity”!
The story of Daniel is fictional, but the Maccabean revolt is not…
Hasmonean
Vs.
Hassidim
Essenes
Vs.
Pharisees
Putting words into God’s mouth
Apocryphon (singular)
– 3 approaches to the Bible:
Devotional, theological & critical
– After a landmark traumatic event like the Exodus, can you imagine a syncretism of Jewish and Egyptian cultures?!
– sublimewe (Saras)
An experiential learning game
Clarity regarding one’s calling in life
Deeply connecting with oneself & others – a genuine mutual space
Social structures & self-responsibility
Distinguishing (real) needs from (faulty) strategies
The antidote to hypocrisy, corruption & violence
– Are the most powerful people in this world merely puppets in the hands of greater forces??
– GOD – the great swirling vortex that is present in the midst of wherever 2 or 3 are gathered as one in the Name (me-we-us)!
– Spirit ~ attitude/mindset/disposition/ habitus
GOD – the Spirit of all spirits!
Spirit/GOD NOT equal to ‘anti-flesh’, just as energy is NOT equal to non-matter.
(I need the symbol for “not equal to”)
– Trinity – why did GOD reveal himself to Moses as “I AM” instead of “WE ARE”?
Montheism still remains at the very heart of Christianity.
Even the Trinity is essentially a tri-unity!
– Pro. 24:21-22
Should the Colombian people/state try this approach with the FARC rebels?!
(Is this the reason for the Nobel Peace Prize?)
Sometimes, the only way to ultimately fulfill the need for justice, is through the immediate scandal of unconditional reconciliation……
– Who is Chiara Lubich?
And what is the Focolare Movement?
24.12.16
– Time to make merry with some Christmas music! 🎄
– Could poor leadership be one of the root causes of the crisis our world is in today?
What could be done about this problem?
– Let Christmas be the Christian Jubilee!
“…and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And do not lead us into temptation.”
Luke 11:4 NET
+
“If, however, he is not redeemed in these ways, he must go free in the jubilee year, he and his children with him, because the Israelites are my own servants; they are my servants whom I brought out from the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”
Leviticus 25:54-55 NET
Time to write off all the debts/sins between each other!
This Christmas season, I would like to extend an invitation for all of you, to be reconciled with all those people who’s relationship with you is strained or cut.
In the name of our newborn King,
AMEN.
– Double down
– Buckminster Fuller
Elisabeth Kubler Ross
Florence Scovel Shinn – “The Game of Life”
Spirituality of Unity
Nonviolent Communication (NVC)
– Why are you here, playing this game with these people?
What is this game all about?
How is it played?
The me-us-we
The fluffy, the trophy, the bell & the glass platform
Interjecting & reflecting
– The priest/pastor must also be fed the Elements by another!
Food (sacraments) ~ community (Communion) ~ gratitude (Eucharist)
Christmas is not meant to show that that baby alone was different/divine, but that every baby is the result of a Virgin birth!
Eating (food) without discerning the flesh & blood (of Christ) brings condemnation/judgment/death.
All societies/cultures are cannibalistic, this is revealed by Christianity, not as a criticism, but just as a reality to be faced & embraced…… Only those who have done this can be truly non-violent!
GOD shows us, through Christ, that we all live, by eating others and being eaten by others.
25.12.16
– Mahalo
J’adore
– Wish a very MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of you, friends! 🎄✨🍾🍷
Let us all remember today, to forget, and not forget to remember……
*ENJOY* 👏🏽
– Maybe the Crucifix has taken up too much of focus in Christian theology, and the crib needs to be restored to its rightful place.
– “My thought was pulled in two different directions by the blood of the innocent crying out to God and by the blood of God’s Lamb offered for the guilty. How does one remain loyal both to the demand of the oppressed for justice and to the gift of forgiveness that the Crucified offered to the perpetrators? I felt caught between two betrayals—the betrayal of the suffering, exploited, and excluded, and the betrayal of the very core of my faith. In a sense even more disturbingly, I felt that my very faith was at odds with itself, divided between the God who delivers the needy and the God who abandons the Crucified, between the demand to bring about justice for the victims and the call to embrace the perpetrator. I knew, of course, of easy ways to resolve this powerful tension. But I also knew that they were easy precisely because they were false.”
“…my desires, commitments, rebellions, resignations & uncertainties”
“Following the crucified One in a world of injustice, deception & violence…” – Miroslav Volf
26.12.16
– Capitalism & romance
– Know where to use “&” and where to use “and”
– Taking risks gives me a high!
– See the angel (the future YOU) in the marble (the present you), and carve (affirm & stretch) until you set her free, baby!
– Enslaved by my own (sharp/fixed) self-definitions! ;-(
– Synchronicity
Synergy
Aliveness
Trophy process
“Will you support me (as I seek to address my pain)?”
Tough love; Soft discipline
Receptivity & responsiveness
Innate knowledge & acquired ignorance
The compulsion to be free and the freedom to sacrifice
Self-liberation through identification with Christ
– Unlearning the garbage & remembering the truth
– Observing (attending, reflecting & empathizing), without reacting (interpreting, evaluating or judging).
Sounding board
Distinguishing thoughts & feelings
Articulating & tracking emotions
Emotive physicality
Breathing, heart-beat, temperature, paraesthesia, heaviness, restlessness
Recalling & expressing events, persons & situations
All your moods are welcome here!
Choice-making & Counseling
– Never apologize for (or hide) who you (really) are!
Stand your ground.
Stick to your guns.
Offence is the best form of defense.
28.12.16
– Mutual seduction of disciplines
Theological erotics
Political desires
Love – redefining desire & pleasure
“It engages risk at the point where the hope for salvation paradoxically endangers the safety of subjects—in particular, of theological subjects—by opening them to those transgressions of eros in which boundaries, once exceeded, become places of emerging possibility.
Is agape just sublimated eros?
Interrogating “given/self-evident truths”
The prior & unexpected Gift
Agape as giving love
Eros as possessing love
Faith as receptive love
Avoiding simple conflations
A relational construal of desire
Intersex
Erotic pieties
Premodern texts and their postmodern resonances
A discourse that is resistant to the hegemony of the normal
The androgynous/queer body of Christ
The Pauline corpus
Heterosexism and asexual theology
Startlingly rich & teasingly cloaked exchanges
Fascinatingly fluid subjectivities
Deification of the male monastic body
Errant
– Masculine violence – physical & verbal
Feminine violence – emotional & moral
– Self-violence – is there some form of masochism involved in any kind of behavior which seems altruistic?! If so, can it then be called ‘noble’??
– Holiness
Vs.
Health
Vs.
Happiness
1.1.17
– This culture makes people suffer, because it represses them.
I make people suffer, because I express them!
– Interior conviction + sheer abandon (Pope John Paul II) – my formula for 2017!
Theme song – “Rotten to the Core” by Sofia Carson, from the movie “The Descendants” (Referred by Zion Sridhar)
– New Year resolution – be punctual (never late). Prepare early and don’t rush.
– BBC – Big Stories 2016
CNN – Defining Moments 2016
– Choice-making & consequences
Curiosity & collaboration
Co-intelligence – the in-between GOD
Integrity, intimacy & intelligence
Appreciative inquiry
Unconditional acceptance
Empathic listening
Immersive communication
Panchakosha
Vipassana
Me/integrity/language,
Us/intimacy/sex,
We/intelligence/money
The interstitial/mutual space – tracing the aliveness of the inter- being from which the One-voice arises.
Negotiating the strings/matrices within & without.
Intra-, inter- & extra-
We ~ government + environment + commerce + culture + social relations
Me ~ consciousness + intellect + emotions + breath + body
Me + we = Sublime-us!
The birth of the Us-consciousness, intellect, emotions, breath & body
Integrating the Eastern & Western views of me & we in the process of the Sublime-us.
The theory emerging from the evolving practice/experience!
Introductory session:
1. Why am I here playing this game with these people?
2. What is this game?
3. How to play it?
– TATU
– Ferocity & tenacity
“My religion is conceptual clarity” – Saras
Players, participants & supporters
“Think global, act local”
Are we vibrating at the same frequency?
Worldview/wavelength
New Agey
“The Gospel According to Jesus” – Stephen Mitchell
“Ishmael” – Daniel Quinn
Limiting beliefs & beginner mindset
Fractals & scaling
Gross & subtle body
Navigate/negotiate
Preset intentions
3.1.17
– Silence – Scorsese is a Roman Catholic (who believes he is an) apostate!
– Savitribai Phule
4.1.17
– Co-created, co-owned & co-held
Assimilate, integrate & apply
Enact, embody, role-model
Neutral 3rd party
Threads/intentions
– “God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.” – Voltaire
(Referred by Ashok Daniel)
His presence is equally intense everywhere! No central & peripheral zones. And no limits, so nothing outside…
5.1.17
– Optimal strategy
6.1.17
– quorum
Justice of the peace
affidavit
Summary judgment
scalability
7.1.16
– Object-subject-agent
Pervert-transfigure
Actively courting submission
Postbiblical emplotment
Erotic transformation of the Cross
Prayerful fantasies and sadomasochistic disciplines
Subtle seduction & abusive tyranny
Justice/love & pleasure/freedom
“The dilemma is real: the desire for justice may seem at points to require the forcible constraint of the erotic, yet to foreclose on the inherent transgressiveness of eros is also to risk repressing the very potential for transformability that enables the emergence of new possibilities for justice, love, and pleasure within human community.”
Transgressiveness and transformability
Eroticism & creativity
Imagination & idealism
The false dichotomy of lust/flesh/pleroma & love/spirit/kenosis
Parabiblical figures
Productively disruptive potentiality
Divine becoming & human nature
Feminization of the deity
A fresh conceptualization of the transcendence encountered in the Other
Desexualize ~ antifeminine
The collapsing of pain/suffering & pleasure/ecstasy
Linear temporality
Vs.
Rhythmic sensuality
Salvific promise at the most intimate level of bodily passions
Subverting binaries
Eschatologically charged exegetical traditions
Engaging theology while refusing to be disciplined by it
Eroticizing the doctrine of GOD
Self-othering
– Sensory bombardment and spiritual bankruptcy
– GIF
– Kaddish
http://m.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/371110/jewish/Text-of-the-Mourners-Kaddish.htm
The mourner and the rabbi
8.1.17
– Words of the year 2016
Post-truth
Surreal
Dumpster fire
2016
Paranoia
Xenophobia
9.1.17
– Terms of endearment
Live-blogging
Heavenly eros, platonic love & physical sex
“the indeterminacies of truth and power inherent to the politics of democracy.”
“downplaying the radicality of asceticizing eroticism”
Ancient Greek philosophy and the genealogy of Christian sex
Asceticism/philosophy/celibacy
Vs.
Everyday/rhetoric/sex
The idees reçues of the ancient world and their conflictual dynamics
Platonic Christianity
Socratic eroticism
Counter-political eros and the urban economy
Corporal culture
Aspasia/Pericles vs. Diotima/Socrates
Holy ~ asexual
Rhetoric: Philosophical vs. Base
Erotics beyond pleasure, procreation, commerce & political power
Homology
Group theory
Reembodying the disembodied
11.1.17
– I am very surprised that among this (apparently dumb) Chennai crowd, there are so many enthusiasts for a film festival of world arthouse cinema!
– Use debit card only for ATM cash withdrawals. For all other purchases (online, mobile wallet or PoS), use credit card (for Payback/Reward points).
12.1.17
– Sexual intelligence
– Material, moral and technical support
Special screening
Invitation & trust, core aliveness, unasked offerings
Christian shaman
Gifting culture, non-hierarchical relationality, rotating leadership
– Chennai International Film Festival (CIFF) – films I watched:
“Clash” (2016, Egypt)
Melting walls & shifting lines
Constructive trauma
White tragedy
“Fire at Sea” (2016, Italy)
Juxtaposition of opposites brings out universality!
Fire at sea – the song & the war, both within the same film which is about neither.
In this world, can there be any neutral ground, or is it possible to take just one side over against many others (not just one polar opposite)??
“Son of Saul” (2015, Hungary)
The dead son ‘saves’ the ‘living’ father……!
Putting ideals above persons – heroism or folly?
The smile says it all! Salvation is the only thing that matters. Humanity restored.
“Things to Come” (2016, France)
Only for those who love philosophy (like me)…?
Seeing difference as complementarity instead of contradiction. From disappointment to celebration.
Polarity >> electricity!
Solid teaching/home-making as the seed-bed of revolution
“I am a teacher. I don’t do politics!” – vocation is not primarily a response, but an expression.
“The Salesman” (2016, Iran)
GOD, shake us all, & wake us up! Anything is better than this comatose mediocrity…
The slap brings out the pent up tears. I am a masochist, & I am so glad I know. 🙂
The We playing in the me and the us.
Compare with “Sila Samayangalil”
“Sila Samayangalil” (2016, India)
Not that good.
Choices & consequences. Who is to blame? Wrong question?
Where is ideology/capitalism in all of this?
How could GOD/faith/spirituality make a difference?
Redeeming chance. Living in/with chaos without going mad with (dis-)ordering…
Did she “kill” him?
“The Student” (2016, Russia)
WOW! Student vs. disciple = rebel/martyr/killer
Hmmm… I think the sinister & violent turn in his strategy/conduct spoils the realism and radicality of the religious challenge in the movie!
Where has theology gone?! When church, family & school have failed, what will the children do??
How do we use the Bible biblically?
Compare with “Ordet” & “Jimmy’s Hall”
“Joker” (2016, India)
Not that great. Does it deserve the first prize. What about “விசாரணை”?
Who are the insane and who are the sane? Or does it only matter whether one is well-adjusted to the context?
Is idealism possible, without sentimentality or violence?
The heroine looks just like the girl next door! 😉
“Load” (2016, Mexico)
Romantic! Gorgeous. But, that’s all. Unless it’s a true story…?
Christian faith vs. Pagan virtue
Did the medieval church really challenge the crown in the way it colonized the other?Dialogical evangelism!
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