2024-10-06 A Meditation on Sage Mind

“14 As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. 2 One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. 3 Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. 4 Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 5 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. 10 Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; 11 for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” 12 So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.” (Rom 14:1-12 ESV)

Sage mindset, transgressions mixed with acts of dubious origin, these redeem to form a mindset alternative, a mindset unique, a mindset luscious to some measures and overly washed up to others. That is, we ask of the Church truly to be a higher power, an overarching meeting point, a wise parent and assessor of Man’s pockmarked, decrepit, arrival zone.

We arrive heartbroke times ten, times a hundred; we arrive wizened but not bred cynical; we arrive lubed or flexed via near-to-sin experiences (that is, where the potential to sin isn’t obsessed-over to the point of becoming its own fulfillment). We arrive, and something preserves a precious few, who are Redeemed and become Outward, become Entreaty, become Gregarious, become Nothing-To-Lose Bold.

That is, alien recognizes alien, but prior to that, Conversion—as a major road sign—fixes up some new recognitions, but leaves us still in that cohort we were designed in and raised up in: we recognize kindred spirits, though long absent from our lives, and we feel the inclination to mock or feel ill at ease around other spirits. Other spirits we know, but don’t feel quite warmed to. Other spirits we resist the urge to pre-judge. Other spirits we catch with a glare in our direction. Too fabulous? Rather, too redeemed.

That is, sage mindset makes focal points of each and every convert. Recalling that time-tested fact, that Law only tempts and falsely divides, we are products of a Grace that ceased to be perturbed by the proximity to a sinful—literally sinful, according to the wisest lines drawn in the sand and road signs—encounter, but allowed the embrace or rather the sense of Grace, i.e. that there is nothing wrong going on here; we didn’t need embrace to know there is no flashpoint of no-go-zone. Without that flashpoint, we ceased to feel guilty, and we thrived. With the platonic, and with the leaning against each other, not rubbing backs but simply one mind forged of the two or three, a New Creation out of a horror zone to the uninitiated.

Therefore to each religion comes a day for recruiting at large, knowing it will spell our own slight demotion: others are simply more aware of Grace, have oiled the joints a little more, are gladsome and heart-happy of equanimity in exchange; because those obtuse flashpoints of “Law” were gladly absent. The strange forged-in-the-field hang-ups are no more. These therefore are each and every one who wasn’t pent up. Who wasn’t reclusive by choice. To us, the recluse is a saint, because they didn’t warm to the religion’s popularity contest. And that recluse knew of a strange first date, when—though poor in words—they were laughed alongside and warmed and encouraged to thrive. With no fruit yet visible, they were sent then home merrily and with a promise for more; the social dynamics each of us obsess over and revisit and relive, these when they come are dynamics of Grace meeting Law. And by and large they are healthy, are mutual, are tempered by plain judgments as to the appropriate response. Do I call? Do I text? In all this, praise God for life no longer being a zero-sum game! All can win, by some accounts. All can retreat in the last, to their healthsome abode with the King. All can sense their peer’s juvenile or less educated place in life, and still pray their own words be “pan”, be meaningful to the youth and the inexperienced, can whisper a true word to souls longing for some Grace they might then emulate. Even without giving credit where credit is due. We are robbed of our spirit? No! We are sharing the Holy Spirit, and with it the surety borne in and known from experience, that precious are the hardships, but more precious is the authorial place, the wiser elder’s plateau, and our own role to teach.