Be assured that my words are not false; one who has perfect knowledge is with you. Job 36:4
Good News
Final words written by Michael Spencer
The are a lot of different kinds of Good News, but there is little good news in “My argument scored more points than you argument.” But the news that “Christ is risen!” really is Good News for one kind of person: The person who is dying.
If Christianity is not a dying word to dying men, it is not the message of the Bible that gives hope now.
Taking a Photograph
Taking a photograph is a way of disciplining the way we look on the world;
a moment of intentional appreciation;
an acknowledgement of our connectedness to that which is not us;
a knowing smile as we recognise the signature of the Creator;
a gentle defiance of a culture that thrives on noise, possession and the enthroned ego;
an aide memoire of an encounter that has nourished, provoked and summoned us;
an act of trust in the worthwhileness of the ordinary, the daily and the routine;
a form of prayer which merges the contemplative, the active and the imaginative.
Introversion
Introversion – along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness – is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living in the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.”
Susan Cain
Deafened Christianity
Perhaps the most deadening aspect of our Christianity . . . is that we live it with twenty-twenty hindsight. We know the story. We know how the plot comes out. We know who the winners are. . . . The Bible contains the complete and divinely authorized biography of Jesus and furnishes the complete guide to what [we] should do to become his disciple. Everything needed for [our] personal salvation is right there. . . .
When we approach the [Jesus] story with the attitude, “I’ve heard that already, I know what that means,” we fall asleep rather than allowing ourselves to be shocked awake. . . . For all such spiritual sleepwalking bypasses that crucial first step, that moment when the heart has to find its way not though external conditioning but through a raw immediacy of presence. Only there—in “the cave of the heart,” as the mystics are fond of calling it—does a person come in contact with his or her own direct knowingness. And only out of this direct knowingness is sovereignty born, one’s own inner authority.
Richard Rohr
Therapy Matters
…there’s more to life than mere stewardship, there is the abundant life found only in God. Beyond the therapeutic there is the grace and Life available to you in God. Sin isn’t just not taking proper care of yourself, sin is also turning away from the grace available to you in Christ through faith, hope, and love.
Therapy matters. And so does God.
Richard Beck
Blogs
Conversations on the blog are far less explosive. In the world of social media, a blog can be like a quiet meeting in a lecture hall, or seminar room, with questions, answers, and comments largely measured with self-control and thoughtfulness. Facebook is often like a shouting match in the town square.
Fr. Stephen Freeman
Truth
The love of truth is similar (and related) to the love of beauty. The truth is not found through suspicion, anger, hearsay, or such things. The truth ultimately is a gift from God and strengthens the heart. It is better, when we cannot arrive at the truth because of suspicion or such, to say, “I don’t know,” than to grasp at things we suspect or imagine.
The origin of conspiracy theories begins in a heart that cannot bear the shame of its own ignorance.
Fr Stephen Freeman
Story
Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes:
Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered. Story greases the hoists and pulleys, it causes adrenaline to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls, openings that lead to the dreamland, that lead to love and learning, that lead us back to our own real lives . . .
Belief echoes
I find that exposure to a piece of negative political information persists in shaping attitudes even after the information has been successfully discredited. A correction—even when it is fully believed—does not eliminate the effects of misinformation on attitudes. These lingering attitudinal effects, which I call “belief echoes,” are created even when the misinformation is corrected immediately, arguably the gold standard of journalistic fact-checking.
https://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3564225/
Lives without substance
Our lives, for all of their angst, are often without substance. And for all that, we still do not weep and repent. The passions never give substance to our lives. They are like parasites on the soul, giving rise to a false self. They do not give us peace. We cannot rest in them. They contain no beauty and never satisfy us. Oftentimes, they simply leave us empty, even when the object of our passions is obtained. None of the passions represents true eros, true desire. The soul desires beauty, truth, and goodness (all of which find their utter and complete fulfillment in God Himself).
Fr Stephen Freeman
a recipe for gladness
a recipe for gladness, especially when we don’t feel like it. We are glad God loves us and sees how hard life sometimes is; we are glad because all around us, if we look for it, is the beauty and fruitfulness of God’s creation; we are glad because, in a world as broken as ours, we affirm as a resurrection people who worship the God of Hope, the Lord reigns; we are glad because today, we are alive, this day is God’s gift, and God has work for us to do.
Jim Gordon
Admonitions for the immediate
Be an ordinary person, one of the human race.
Be polite with everyone, first of all, family members.
Be faithful in little things.
Do your work, then forget it.
Be simple, hidden, quiet, and small.
Think and talk about things no more than necessary.
Flee imagination, fantasy, analysis, figuring things out.
Don’t try to convince anyone of anything.
Have no expectations except to be fiercely tempted to your last breath.
Fr Thomas Hopko
LISTEN FOR THE WEEK
Still on the Journey