Greek Archives - Lisa Colón DeLay

On Earth as in Heaven [SSL150]

Today, I’m reading some intriguing work from Neil Douglas Klotz’s book Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus’s Words.

FIND MORE! Go to the patreon page for more related to this episode, Refection Questions, links, and news HERE.

(When you support this work at Patreon, you unlock hundreds of extras from many episodes and get news on Lisa’s upcoming book published with Broadleaf Books – patreon.com/sparkmymuse) SparkMyMuse.com contains over 340 audio episodes, an online store, and resources. Enjoy!

Listen now with the AUDIO PLAYER:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:50 — 24.3MB) | Embed

Supporters listen and help out with a pay-what-you-can partnership. Be a spark, too! PayPal.me/lisacolondelay

Listen to a recent episode:

• Spark My Muse can thrive when you help in these two ways:

1. Share the program with another person today. 2. Leave a Rating/ Write a Review on iTunes HERE.

AND! Don’t forget to pick a subscribe option that is best for you at (sparkmymuse.com) below:

Episode 5 – The god of Wine and re-thinking the nature of creative process

Two prizes for the Spark My Muse May Giveaway!

(Use the grey arrows in the box below to see them and enter!)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Shownotes

Episode 5 – The god of Wine and re-thinking the nature of creative process

dionysus

Today’s episode is about the Greek god of Wine and rethinking our ideas about the process of creation, and a better understanding the notion of “creative genius”:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:41 — 13.3MB) | Embed

The is show is brought to you by a resource called

Sparky’s Marketing Jump-Starter Kit.

• Click here to get it free when you use the promo code “spark“.

This kit is a quick way to understand the best free tools for digital marketing and make them work for you when you’re trying to promote your projects and creations.

(There’s only 100 available for this offer. So hurry to get yours.)

wine segment

What the Greeks thought about wine is reflected in the god of wine that they worshiped. (I don’t recommend worshiping the god of wine, or any god except the benevolent Creator.)

• Dionysus was the Greek god of wine and grape harvest

• The only god to have a mortal parent. Born from Zues’ thigh. That’s because his mother burnt to a crisp when Zues showed himself to her in his glory. Whoops.

Symposium means “drinking together”.

Additional note: These originally-small gatherings were for upper class men and with carefully imposed rules about consumption. They occured for leisure and thoughtful discussion.

• I will be offering a symposium-stlyle web-event where we will all have a glass of wine at the same time and discus a topic–possibly in July. Only patrons will get to come. This is your invitation. :)

If you want in, or you are curious about the rewards for being a sponsor of the show, go to Patreon.com/sparkmymuse

• Most of the great Greek plays were initially written to be performed at the Spring feast of Dionysus. . . .when the buds of grape leaves start to open. It was a most sacred festival.

• Dionysus was a patron of the arts!

For Greeks, Dionysus was credited with creating wine and spreading the art of viticulture (the horticulture of grapes).

• He had a dual nature; on one hand, he brought joy and divine ecstasy; or he would bring madness, brutal and blinding rage–a good depiction of the dual nature of wine.

• He was brought back to life…like grape vines that undergo brutal pruning and look dead, but then burst back to life.

• Blood and red wine are often linked for the ancients.

(Blood gives the body life, wine has powerful bodily effects.)

And now to spark your muse!

——

• Nikolai Berdyeav

“All the products of a man’s genius may be temporal and corruptible, but the creative fire itself is eternal, and everything temporal ought to be consumed in it. It is the tragedy of creativeness that it was eternity and the eternal, but produces the temporal, and builds up the culture which is in time and a part of history. The creative act is an escape from the power of time and ascent to the divine…”

Today we’re thinking of the creative process as re-imagined and being “divinely co-operative”.

We (commonly) think of genius as applied to us in a personal way like a characteristic. A natural capacity, but the Greeks seem to have a much healthier view of what the process of creation is truly like…

• For the Greeks …divinity is always present.

• A genius = an unseen guardian, or custodial and protecting spirit…who gives a human inspiration: For the Greek, we each have one. (It’s not us; but it will help us.)

Three reasons why depersonalizing our part in the creative process is helpful:

1. Failure is not personal

2. Success shouldn’t cause arrogance

3. Patience and giving up control (not forcing it) will reinvorgate your creativity

What do you think?

Is the creative process a “divine cooperation”?

In the next episode we will cover “the proper rites of friendship” and skinny on “wine spritzers”.

[powerpress_playlist]

Sarcasm is Useless…yeah, right!

I’m back.

Have you missed me?

I’m getting to the last half of the humor series I started a few weeks back! (see the bottom of the page for the other entires)!

Today I am exploring sarcasm.

(part 1)

This took a lot of research because I had so little understanding of sarcasm and I’ve heard it so infrequently.

That was like stretching before a jog.

You limber and ready? Let’s do this!

We take humorous sarcasm for granted because it’s so plentiful in the modern culture milieu. This is, in fact, a recent cultural development, and one the entertainment industry has much to be thankful for.

Sarcasm is actually a rather complex use of a language:

In using sarcasm we must convey the opposite of what we are saying.

This happens best by using enough vocal intonations, body language, and other hints to communicate true intent. (The less exaggeration done, the more of a butt hole you seem.)

Sidenote:
For those with language or cognitive impairments, like autism, sarcasm may be routinely misunderstood. My son’s–who has autism and learning disabilities–now has a budding understanding of sarcasm at age 14. My daughter caught on at age 3. By using more exaggeration to convey the real meaning in my use of sarcasm, I introduced him to a common use of communication. I know you’re thinking… “PARENT OF THE YEAR!”…but, yes, this was not without its problems.

His accomplishment was a milestone of development that will start to serve him well if he expects to be treated as a mainstreamed person. Nevertheless, the use of sarcastic comments in our home tends to be unnoticed by him and taken in lateral, face-value terms. We try to keep a reign on it in our home to avoid needless problems of miscommunication.

This was, at first, a bitter disappointment to me, having come from a caustic childhood environment where sarcastic mockery was more plentiful than supper leftovers. Alas, it was a call to greater maturity as well as development of alternative modes of mirth-making. For me, baby steps.

6 Things to note about the use of sarcasm:

1. Unlike many other expressions of humor, sarcasm always has a point and means to activate or thwart something. It also proves useless (or frustrating) if the hearer fails to understand the actual pointed meaning. Tip: That’s how to foil it. Just act oblivious. Easy-peasy.

2. Invariably, It is used to point out the supposed superiority of one person (or group) over another.
That’s, right…..Busted!

3. It is considered genuinely humorous only when one can duly side with the practitioner of it, and not be the object of the sarcasm/ridicule. The rare exception being when the practitioner has the master skills to appear convincingly benign to everyone involved–which few do convincingly. Groans, eye rolling, harbored resentment, passive aggression, or revenge plots indicate failure on this part.

4. The word sarcasm comes to us from the mid 16th century in the French word sarcasme. Isn’t it hard to believe that of all people and language groups on the planet that it would be the French at the source of the word?

I wonder what the source of the the word “snooty” is….

(Find out and let me know!)

Right now, I feel I should point out that “DeLay” is my married name.

The French word sarcasme was originally from late Latin, from late Greek sarkasmos. In Greek, it is sarkazein and means to ‘tear flesh,’ (lovely!). In late Greek it meant ‘gnash the teeth, speak bitterly’ (think: sneer). And like the languages from whence it came, sarcasm is often noted to be too little, too late and, of course, carnivorous.

5. The frequent use of sarcasm creates a negative, cynical, and often toxic atmosphere and state of mind. And it’s just plain old douchey (pardon my French).

6. In the classical (Greek) world, “humor” was primarily conducted as sarcasm and practiced by the upper class (who were few) to degrade and condescend the lower, poorer classes (who were many). I’m assuming that in contrast, the poorer classes, as is typical, found burping, farts, and shit jokes funny (pardon my French).

This class issue is why the use of humor was denounced by Plato and other early philosophers (who were–mind you–literate, educated, and upper class. They saw it as counter-productive and without virtue. The noble, high class aim is to be good. And of course, farting was not at all funny to Plato, ever. Not once.)

In the Republic (388e), Plato says that the guardians of the state should avoid laughter, “for ordinarily when one abandons himself to violent laughter, his condition provokes a violent reaction.”

I’m not sure if he meant riots or just getting punched in the eye.

And now, I will leave you with this story…

A linguists professor instructs his class saying,

“Sarcasm is a poor use of language, crass and unsophisticated, and serves absolutely no sensible point.”

To which a student in the back replies, “Yeah, right!”

Sarcasm is, most often, poison humor meant to somehow injure or to thwart.

It works like a kind of tool and inflicts a kind of violence. As with all weapons, prudence and moderation will be the best course…in case all of this is getting past you. ;)

It goes without saying that, sometimes, violence is the point, so then it boils down to determining what kind of person you want to be most of the time.

Your assignment is to write something sarcastic in the comments section to prove you understood this post, or instead… if your conscious is lashing you, count and report the number of times sarcasm was used in the post.

Sarcasm tends to be misunderstood in written form. This includes, letters, emails, texts, and sky writing. The internet is replete with sarcasm misunderstood….so in

PART 2 I’ll go over how the Secret Service is considering using software to detect sarcasm online. Crazy but true.

PREVIOUS ARTICLES IN THE SERIES:

1. The primacy of humor

2. Step 1: Tickle Rats (the science and study of humor)

3. It’s not just timing, it’s specific knowledge

4. On how subversive humor works

Thanks for sharing this article and website with others!

For the latest info on my humor related projects sign up here.

Faith = a Basket of Eggs: In Tribute to David A. Dorsey

So, a dear man died one week ago. Dave, to his students (because he preferred this), and Dr David Dorsey, PhD officially. On Tuesday the chapel was packed for his funeral as hundreds resolutely braved sub zero wind chill to pay respects, support his family, share memories and express their sadness at the loss. For us who remain in this world and knew him the hole of his absence hurts. It actually feels painful.

If I tried to tell you all the things that I loved about my former Old Testament Professor, or the countless benefits to me, or the simple and genuine ways he loved on me and others, I would be typing for days. Suffice it to say just about everyone on Tuesday was in tears and everyone felt the weight of the loss as we remembered his light in this world.

In the next few weeks I hope to share some of the insights I gleaned from this amazing scholar and human being.

For now, I’ll share with you something Dave taught us about faith. Granted, I won’t do it justice; and if you read this and heard differently from him, please add your own amend in the comments section.

So, here goes…
He said the faith of the patriarchs of Israel might not be the kind of faith we suppose it is. Hebrews 11 gives us a “Hall of Fame” of the faithful. We may think that these people trusted and relied on God. They did. But we get the pedigree of it all wrong. The practice of faith is much richer than we might suppose, especially at first glance reading the list of the faithful.

Instead, it’s something like this:

Faith is not about being hopeful about what lies beyond the bend in the future. It not really about a “blind” ascension to trust either. Those are good and important in their ways, but when we speak of the life of faith in terms of the Old Testament faithful, like Abraham leaving everything he knew for the wilderness for instance, we are really talking about a concept much like “putting all your eggs in one basket.”

That’s how Dave put it. The word picture stuck and it stuck good.

With the Life of Faith…
You are deeming God good, trustworthy, and loving and then you put it all on the line.

(So, it’s rarer than you think!)

You stop hedging your bets. You stop saving a little security for yourself. You stop holding something back that gives you a sense of control. You bet the whole thing. You leave nothing back. You. go. in. wholly.

Sometimes, I find eggs in my pockets, or around the house, or in places that I didn’t know they were, like a weird easter egg hunt. Not chicken eggs, of course, but the eggs of my worries. I may have thought I handed the basket over, and perhaps I really did, but life can make you lay a few eggs. Sometimes people throw them at you too.

Faith, Hope, Love. Those are what remain, yes?

Faith = a Basket of Eggs.

It’s a shocking level of vulnerability: the life of faith.

You can tell when you do it too. You get a mixture of feelings. Great relief that your job is over, your poor skills are not needed any longer, and someone more capable is now responsible and in charge. Whew! Then, you may get a twinge of terror at the power you gave up, but probably never really had anyway. You become all at once very hopeful and very dependent. It’s precarious.

There’s a rare beauty to it.

Sometimes we give up our baskets and sometimes they sort of get pried out of our hands.

Dave was gravely ill for over 3 decades. His was a life of faith. It had to be. And he handed over eggs.

It was a wrestle match, he would tell you. He didn’t always feel faithful. He made mistakes. His candor was humbling. But, through his honesty he became faithful all the more.

There’s something about growing to trust God for each breath, and believing that God revealed himself as a thoroughly good and gracious and generous Creator and Sustainer in the passages of the Old Testament that transformed this brilliant man into a true saint. Not sappy, but real. All at once very strong and stable and yet achingly weak.

Dave was not self-righteous but gracious. Not arrogant in any discernible manner, but loving and open to others. Concerned with others and their lives and largely uncomplaining. Free with his humor and goodwill.

Hear this: You don’t get the privilege to meet people like this very often. You don’t get to be a person like this often. It’s takes an amazing about of formation, re-formation, and transformation. It doesn’t happen by accident or by genetics.

A life of faith means that you hold nothing back. See the difference?

It’s not using power to feel better. It’s giving it over to be fully won over.

In a life of faith you love whole-heartedly. Not because it’s safe. It never is. But, because it is good. A life of faith means that you have a sharp, ongoing sense of your own weaknesses and dependence, and that goes overflowing into compassion for yourself and others.

A few days after Dave’s death I was praying in the car out loud as I do sometimes. (I take more comfort in doing this now. People talk on the phone hands-free all the time in their cars and look like they are talking to nobody. Now, I just look like I’m having an important conversation. In fact, I am, especially when I shut up.)

So, I was in the car and I was warring as I too often do with things in the distance. Shadows, possibilities, next steps. I was planning, wondering, and worrying–like I was holding a bunch of eggs and walking on a lake of ice.

And then I said, “No, this just won’t work. I see I’m holding too tightly. I think I have to go all in. I have to have faith. I have to put all my eggs in one basket. Your basket.”

And a song sung by Ella Fitzgerald came to mind. I’ve embedded the audio so you can hear it after you finish.

Then I simply burst into tears, because that’s what a godly and good legacy looks like. Literally, one leaves words to live by. Dave’s words of life and hope and faith were ringing true in my mind in everyday life, even after he’s gone. And I thought, “That’s an amazing man and I was given an amazing gift to know him.” I kept having to wipe away tears for awhile.

Spirit, you know, is “breath of life”. (The Hebrew and Greek words for breath carry this meaning.) God is Spirit. When you see goodness, when you see sacrificial love, when you see wrongs being made right, you see God. You see the Spirit of the unseen God. Those describers are just part of what and who is impossible to confine or describe fully.

God isn’t just Life Force, but God is that too. And I don’t think Dave lost his own spirit or the Spirit. I think God became greater. The Spirit got so great that it filled him, and his body of water and carbon gave out, finally. It birthed something new and better and unseen and lasting.

And this Spirit and the part of Dave that is Dave (his truest self–his soul) joined up in union with the Great Spirit, somewhere and everywhere, the One, True, Living God who defies reason, explanation, and the limits of us, and even of the universe.

But, Dave didn’t completely leave us. But, my does the sting smart, right now! From my experience I know it dulls in time; but the pain is, at first, ultimate.

Yet, the fragrance of his spirit remains. And it is sweet.

It’s around us when we remember him. The Spirit remains, and Dave’s flavor fused with that true Spirit carries on with us. We miss the more familiar everyday interaction with him so dearly, and always will, until the same happens to us and we are joined somehow together again.

To those who grieve him: his family and friends, I join you in your deep and powerful sorrow. I join you in your joy–that is bitter and sweet–that realizes the gift he was–having known him, been enriched by him, and been intimately connected to him. Your loss is not small.

May you feel the comfort, presence, shalom, and holy goodness of the Spirit of God.

Amen.

-Lisa

P.S.
Here is a brief local obituary posting of David A. Dorsey.

With these links you can enjoy two of his most well-known books:

(egg photo is a Creative Commons image.)

The Myth of Ordinary Time

Do you have time to read this?

That may depend on what language you speak.

Have you ever felt like when you’re creating or otherwise “in the zone” you pass into a strange pocket in the space-time continuum (or whatever) where the passage of time appears to almost be standing still. Then, when you’re jolted from your pocket, you find that time has actually moved along far faster than you would have guessed.

That is likely what it’s like (all the time) for someone living near the equator. More on that in a moment.

There’s something about relativity here and we’ll unpack it.

Consider too, the other side. Sometimes you are very conscious of time maybe because you’re in a bad meeting or you’d rather be somewhere else and the hands on the wall clock seem to barely move. That is because you are perceiving time in relation to other things and not experiencing is as it passes.

So, it seems experienced time works in an eerily timeless way (having no easily determinable passage of time), and referred to time (Ex. “That man spoke for 20 minutes.”) is a measurement or qualifier of time, but not at all a direct experience of time. It refers to only a memory of certain period, but one that was not recognized necessarily in the moments in which it truly happened. Time is marked outside of itself. So…

Time is never really ordinary.

Perception is powerful. Here’s some potent proof.

Time near the Equator:

Residents of places near the equator experience time completely differently than people who live in temperate climates. You already know this to be true.

Maybe you’ve heard of “island time”…

…if you’ve ever vacationed on a warm tropical island, things just mosey along. Maybe things will get done and maybe not. People get to things when they do, or whatever. “Hey, Relax Mon”. It can be a hassle when you’re not used to it. However, time is literally experienced differently.

It’s not the heat bringing a lack of motivation. They are used to the heat. It’s not a mere lack of a work ethic. It’s not simply enjoying the weather too much to be bothered with revving up to tackle hectic things.

It turns out that the passage of time is harder to discern because markers are missing.

Most often, for humans, change punctuates time in our awareness.

An event (accident, holiday, birth, death, full moon, dawn, solar eclipse, victory, loss, etc.), or a change in weather are the most common markers. With more changes–especially ones that involve rain and snow, brilliant leaf color changes, or a blast of Spring blooming–that means that our perception of time’s passage are further clarified. Our memories are literally shaped differently and therefore our brains are, at the cellular level, wired differently. Perception is relative. Variety, repetition, and influence change the brain’s capturing of data which determines the comprehending of time. It affects the awareness people have and the activities people undertake.

Seasons, and the things that are attached to them (growing of food, for one example) make the ability to plan more perceptible and pronounced. Need to buy wheat seed for Spring in a few months? Better save now. Plants grow all-year-round? Then, nevermind.

Residents of equatorial climates do not experience the massive change in seasons, plus they do not experience the great shortening of daylight either. For them, unless they’ve been influenced by outsiders, the passage of time happens in the present. Right now, or it’s not really real.

For pole-dwellers (people living in the northern and southern regions of the globe) time is usually experienced two ways:

1. through remembering past events

(A locked down thing that doesn’t truly exist except in the mind)

2. through planning (projecting to the future to a not yet real time and place).

Pole-dwellers spend far less time–“Zen-like”–in the here and now.

In fact, being “stayed in the present” can be discredited as somehow wasteful by those who like to plan. Interesting argument of which is wasteful, and why, right?

For pole-dwellers it’s an ironic thing too, because if your mind is not attached to the present, you essentially are not fully aware of living at all in real-time…Instead you are aware of life passing in relation to something else. Time perhaps is more like a point on a map–over there–more than an experience. Perhaps a counterfeit experience compared to the real thing or real-time? I’m not sure.

Or on the other side, near the equator, planning might seem pointless or amorphous. A sort of figment.

• Living solely in the present has disadvantages too. It comes packaged with a (undetectable) lack of impetus that can help us make all manner of changes or improvements possible. The checkpoints are missing. Our interaction with time movement is different. It passes like “being in the zone” or perhaps like standing midstream in an ever-changing flow of water. Motion. Life is in real-time and un-captured.

• Living in the future or past (as I have been trained to do) is like staring off at fixed but ultimately untouchable points. Triangulation.

I mainly live in the “trigonometry of time”. Do you?

Certain cultures actually have no form of future tense.

(Did you absorb that?)

For them, there is no language or solid way to truly express or encapsulate something ahead of this very moment.

BOOM. That’s crazy different.

Sicilian and ancient Hebrew are just two examples.

Now brace yourself. If you haven’t guessed already…

Yes, that means anytime you hear the words “shall” or “will” in Jewish/Christian scripture you are hearing the imposition of your own cultural and linguistic bias placed onto the original text and meaning.

(Thinking of the implications could just blow your mind, right? Now, go ahead, open your Bible and find a few misleading verses and re-understand them.)

Note: New Testament Scripture was written in (ancient) Greek and does contain a future tense. It was however based on beliefs and texts of people who did not have a native reference to an equivalent future tense option nor the applied meaning future tense indicates, necessarily or at all.

Binary vs. the not yet
Often in equatorial geographic regions, there literally is no way to really say “I will work.” Instead it’s “I work.” Binary. Sometimes inflection is used to draw a sort of distinction or a qualifier, like referring to a (future) month or day. That’s a watered down communicative incident compared to the full use of future tense we take for granted in English, and the closest language to English: German.

The language difference has even been studied scientifically to see if things like breaking habits (like smoking), or the activity of saving or spending money, or gaining weight are different because of language. Click the link to see the results.

What are some of your thoughts on the passage of time, future tense, or living right now?
Whew. Ice pack for my brain, please.

IF this post was interesting, please like or share it…now. (In real time.) :)