GREENSide Update
  • reflecting a bit
    • Easter 2019: Four ‘D’ Words of The Passion Week
    • Spring 2019: ‘Kingdom of God’ Reflections a Week After
    • Early Winter 2018: Taking a Closer Look at The Advents
    • Late summer 2018: Impressions from the Incapacitated
    • Summer 2018... Confronting Fears
    • Happy New Year 2018 Wishes
    • Christmas 2017 - Reconstructing the Christmas Story
    • Fall 2017... Returning, Rest, Quietness & Trust
    • Summer 2017... Reflecting Pools Matter
    • Spring 2017... The Singularity of God's Kingdom Purposes
    • Winter 4th qtr. 2016... One Foot, Two Feet, Three
    • Fall 2016... Personal Confessions of Mistaken Political Thinking
    • Summer, 2016... Waiting and Listening
    • Resurrection Sunday, 2016
    • Winter 1st qtr, 2016... The Marrakesh Declaration
    • Christmas 2015 Greeting
    • End of Year, 2015... Are We To Care?
    • Spring 2015... What are you and I doing about it?
    • New Year's Day 2015... New Mercies Never End!
    • Christmas/New Year 2014/15... Holiday, Holiday, What have you done?
    • Fall 2014... On Kingdoms... Past, Present and Ethereal
    • Spring 2014... Didascalicon: Man, God and Greatness
    • Christmas 2013... Even in the Air and Space
    • Winter 2013/14... Callings
    • Christmas 2012... 'Jumping Beans' in old age
    • Spring 2012... New Beginnings
    • Fall 2011... People of Promise
  • a look behind
    • Spring 2019: ...Off the Starting Blocks
    • Early Winter 2018: Sabbatical Results and First Furlough Leg
    • Summer 2018... "Come and See"
    • Summer 2017... Making Full Circle
    • Spring 2017... Completing Pre-furlough Commitments
    • Fall 2016, JJ's New California Home!
    • Summer 2016... Accomplishing Significant Milestones
    • End of year, 2015: Building God's Kingdom Among the Middle East Unengaged Muslims
    • Summer 2015... Building Deeply in Small Ways
    • Christmas 2013 photos
    • Winter 2013/14... Up and Running!
    • Winter 2012... 'Global Impact 29', first steps
    • Fall 2011... A great school; A promising alliance
  • a look ahead
    • Spring 2019: Finishing Touches to a Special Furlough
    • Early Winter 2018: Expanding to New Beginnings
    • Summer 2018... Winding Around the Country
    • Summer 2017... Three Decades and Counting
    • Spring 2017... My Upcoming Two Greatest Decades
    • Winter 4th qtr. 2016... Our Upcoming Furlough, Part Two
    • Summer 2016... Our Upcoming Furlough, Part One
    • Early Winter 2016
    • Summer 2015... Looking to Remember the Middle East
    • Winter 2013/14... The West heads East
    • Winter 2012... Coming out, going deeper
    • Fall 2011... Getting and Giving 'Perspectives'
  • prayer
    • Spring 2019
    • Early Winter 2018
    • Late summer 2018
    • Summer 2018
    • Fall 2017
    • Spring, 2017
    • Winter 4th qtr. 2016
    • Fall, 2016
    • End of year, 2015
    • Summer 2015
    • Why pray?
    • Winter 2013/14
    • Winter 2012
    • Fall 2011
  • finances
    • Spring 2019
    • Early Winter 2018
    • Summer 2018
    • Winter 4th qtr. 2016... Year-end giving
    • Fall, 2016
    • End of year, 2015
    • Summer 2015
    • Winter 2013/14
    • Winter 2012
    • Fall 2011
  • get involved
  • fun
  • more contemplation
  • in case you missed it
The Didascalicon
Hugh of Saint Victor (ca. 1096-1141)
“Meditation is sustained thought along planned lines…Meditation takes its start from reading but is bound by none of reading’s rules or precepts. For it delights to range along open ground, where it fixes its free gaze upon the contemplation of truth, drawing together now these, now those causes of things, or now penetrating into profundities, leaving nothing doubtful, nothing obscure. The start of learning, thus, lies in reading, but its consummation lies in meditation.”
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Spring 2014
On... Didascalicon: Man, God and Greatness
Augustine, Boethius, Cassiodorus, Isidore of Seville, Bede, Alcuin, Rhabanus Maurus and John the Scot. Have you heard of them? These are some of the great makers of Western history. Even before these were you might visit the writings of Cicero or Quintilian on the mechanics of the orator; maybe M. Terentius Varro on the arts; Vitruvius on architecture or Galen on medicine. You will at any rate, be stimulated, challenged and simply awed at the greatness of man and his achievements... so goes Hugh of St. Victor writing at the dawn of the Renaissance in the 1120's. Does such thinking hold any value for us in the twenty-first century? It does, and here's why...

If there is one thread that unites these writers down throughout the annals of history it's this... the idea that man's collective mind was immortal and could contain lofty mental heights, both visible and invisible. Such thinking emanated from this idea... "the dignity of his nature was given by the light of the divine Wisdom" (Hugh, p. 9). In a word, man was created in the image of God and this image is what has allowed him or her to have such incredible creative expression and lead exceptional lifestyle. Have you recently thought on how grand, how majestic is man and woman in light of all that is created? The Psalmist wrote, 

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? 
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field,  the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. 

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!  (Psalm 8)

Take a moment of pause to contemplate such lofty certainty... a God who creates man and woman in such fashion. Hugh of St. Victor invites us to such a journey.

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