This WeekThis week at praxis... Clothes horseHere is what we are reading and discussing the week of January 28, 2001As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. ----Colassians 3:12-17 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. ----I Corinthians 13: 1-7 Jacqueline Ferrar Leather Blazer (The Colassians text) appears as the second half of a series of injunctions marking the end of the old humanity and the inbreaking of the new. Using the imagery of undressing and dressing, the text first lists the negative features of life that are to be "stripped off", the old humanity with its practices. Then it turns to the positive characteristics of the new humanity with which the readers are told they are to "clothe" themselves. While the imagery no doubt derives from the baptismal experience of disrobing before going into the water and taking a new robe when coming out of the water, the various descriptions of the new life provide rich content for a Christian reflection on the life of a new year. ----Texts for Preaching
"character armor" A term used by Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) in his character-analytic approach. He and his followers held that the analyst's first task is to identify the patient's set of character patterns that serve as defenses against anxiety and stand in the way of attempts to penetrate to the deeper, unconscious levels of the personality. Examples of character armor are overaggressiveness, cynicism, passivity, and ingratiation. Every available clue -- gestures, facial or verbal expressions, posture -- were used to reveal these resistances and trace them to their origin. ----www.fgi.net/~freud/ptm126.htm Questions:
|