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Jonathan Hay wrote:
I may find it in Ueshiba's teaching, but I believe I'll find a better rendition in the teachings of Christ, the Creator of the World.
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Tending to ignore therefore the third person of the Trinity and His primary role in ongoing human inspiration. You are not wrong, just .. well ...too focussed. Open and soften your gaze, and you see more and sooner. As it is true in combat, it is true generally.
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Jonathan Hay wrote:
If by "we" you mean Christians, then I would say that it is a sad state of affairs when a Christian must seek the "awakening" you speak of through a martial art rather than in the way the Bible tells us God intended - through faith in His Son as Saviour and Lord.
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It is not about "awakening." Aikido is about a proper spiritual relationship to the problem of violence -- which is not dealt with by the pragmatic accumulation and magnifiaction of our power to do violence. It is the Christian West that ahs fallen into error in these terms. And we have lost practical arts in the exercise of a proper spiritual relationship to violence. That is only because we have, in our approach to violence, fallen into the mechanistic error of power, and therefore occasioned much sin from that failing.
It is the attribute of chivalric virtue which was our inheritance but is now lost to us -- by reason of the consequences of our mechanistic approach to the problem in the last century. And I say this as one who views our current conflicts as just in the commencement and generally speaking, just in the execution. To say that we have nothing to learn form a defeated enemy in our last great conflict, on the moral question of violence, is to occasion further sin out of mere pride and ignorance, instead of the honor and humility appropriate to the true warrior.
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Jonathan Hay wrote:
Thanks for a vigorous and engaging discussion!
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Likewise.