Thanks! I was just sharing with a friend about Barfield's view on the parable of the sower. "How then can you understand any parable." This seems to be a hint to a parable-like nature of the world in general. It's a riddle with hints and vague clues. I think it fits well with Barfield's idea of going from images to imagination. Piercing through the appearances to find a deeper meaning.
I've no doubt that's possible yes. Though maybe that's because Christianity has become so associated with doing/believing/living what's right. The promise is divine freedom, not escape from moral condemnation, with morality having nothing to do with it. It's gotta be good news!
@@PlatosPodcasts @Thom Bales Yes, imho, like a koan / gong'an, parables seem to be designed so that they can get around the ratiocinative mind to "baptize the imagination" as any of the Inklings might say. Even those persons unprepared (without ears to hear) may find some benefit in them if they do not wholly stopper their minds and petrify their being-ground. Mark, I always find it useful to listen to you and Malcolm Guite and Iain McGilchrist in parallel. I find that one of you always fills in the Lacunae of the others- as you did, for instance, in commenting on Iain's overemphasis on the Immanent when in conversation with Rowan William's slightly more nuanced and balanced position of Transcendence and Immanence in tension and harmony.
If our eyes and ears are trained to report only the world of guilted fear, we will not see love's with-ness though it be all around us. If a mis-taken inheritance persists its false fruits how can the Father's rush to meet you be recognised, accepted or welcomed? Yes the Kingdom of Heaven is within, but our minds are trained/adapted to look away to a projected external representation by which to defend against looking within, just as the tenant landlords kill the messengers of the Master. It is that we are flipped to a reversal of effect and cause that is normalised by sharing in its fruits, and internalised as a 'thought system' that operates a masking overlay of filters and rules - as through a glass darkly. Seeking help within the 'world' becomes a vehicle for a relationship that leads us from its dictate if we have eyes to see and appreciate truth in place of what we thought we wanted as a result of what we thought or made of our self and world. Attempting to bring the new wine into the old wine bottle paradigm, both devalues the gift, and sets in in service of the defences around a sense of separation, that wants 'saving' from reliving and thus from releasing trauma-patterns. A mistaken inheritance belies a true inherence. But by our reactions are we seeking escape from love feared to mask in distancing set as 'virtue credits'. Integrity of coherence and congruence of thought word and deed is not the law of Man, but the Law of Love.
@@PlatosPodcasts The Already Given is our creation as creators. That we are free to create a false nature does not have power over truth; but over our awareness, as perception in place of knowing. The undoing of a false restores awareness of a true that had been discarded or denied and substituted for my masking projections, instead of true extension, So we have a sense of fallen nature, split nature, separate nature, as a mortal realm, that is now simply a reductive model or a representation of reality into which we've been phished, in a sense to perceive and adapt to as external causation. So the undoing of the guilt-control that locks an identity out from its own love, will seem to perfect our nature, but really reveals a perfection of God's Nature that remains our truth - ie God never left or leaves us, though we are free to live the convictions that are in a sense deeply set by Separation trauma; abandonment, rejection, shame, lack or inadequacy, conflict, betrayal, treachery etc. Grace reveals these are unfounded by the presence revealing not merely to us but through us, such that where I thought to be, was revealed not as I think. This is a basis from which to grow from and in another purpose that is contra to that by which we learned our self & world. In this sense any moment can gift the grace of noticing, for the desire to know and love truth we do not manufacture. As a result of having wanted something ELSE we set up the conditions in which love is made unwelcome. Love does not oppose but waits on willingness, not on time and circumstance. Nothing I do can earn, achieve or buy grace or favour, but there is much I an choose not to do such as to let truth in, as in Blake's undoing of an error. But even here it is bringing error to truth that received healing, not setting the problem in the domain of something I must or should be able to do of myself. Else the ego feather's its cap as gain of function over what is already moving, but which it cannot see by definition. In this sense I use ego as Blake's 'Satan's cave' in terms of a usurping possession that grasps at shadow forms as self existing reflections to a sense of private possession and control, whose 'victory' in death as final defiance over a life that 'refused or denied' its image reality. But that is not the final judgement for "This Is My Son, Whom Is My Joy!" can be refused, but cannot be edited. Does then the Prodigal not run off with a copy? A mistaken inheritance in place of living Inherence? Is that not what taking the Name (Nature) of God in vain (vanity) warns against, less we fall in love with our own image without recognising our error, such as to seek to save it against the Messengers of the Master, and thus 'see' love and healing through a fear of dispossession or damnation?
Do you think Matthew Mark Luke John represent the Four Seasons, so hence the parables would teach us how best to live during eg, summer. Have you heard of this before Mark?
"...Since beasts, and plants doe grow, and live and move, Beasts are those men, that such a life approve: Hee onlye lives, that deadly is in love: The corn that in the grownd is sowen first dies And of on seed doe many ears arise: Love this world's corne, by dying multiplies..." I am so tempted to sow a little comma after the word"Love" in the last line. But there it is, that key that just doesn't quite fit thereby increasing the yield. Poem by Michael Drayton (who was a friend of William Shakespeare).
