Category: Notes Anthology

“?‘Each of you must respect your mother and father, and you must observe my Sabbaths.
I am the LORD your God.
Lev. 19:3

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God. 
Micah 6:8

Those who kept the sabbath killed Jesus.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Matt 5:7-9

 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
Matt 7:38-42

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor  and hate your enemy.’
But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your Father in heaven.
He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good,
and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?
Are not even the tax collectors doing that?
And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others?
Do not even pagans do that?
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Matt 7:43-48

Those who follow Jesus…

Every Person is a person

Never forget that every person on earth is a person Jesus died for. No persons are “people,” as the media describes them and as we’ve begun to see them, or rather unsee them. Every person on earth is like the rest of us, more or less—they laugh like us, they cry like us, they worry and wonder and want like us, they fear like us, they hope like us, they lose hope like many of us are losing hope, and they need love like all of us need love. If what your hearing and thinking and doing is not increasing your capacity to love, turn down, tune it out, and stop it, because if you can’t see the humanity in others you have already become blind to your own.

J D Spainhour

Artificial Intelligence

It’s a societal problem. The use of AI when writing shortcuts critical cognitive processes that we also use for making moral decisions, engaging in political debate, reading the Bible and other texts, understanding others’ perspectives, articulating our perspectives, knowing ourselves and our beliefs, and so on. A risk of AI is an illiterate and convictionless society, one in which we no longer process our own thoughts, values, emotions, or beliefs and we are increasingly incapable of processing those of others. We offload that processing to a machine. If that sounds familiar, it should. Before the rise of AI we were already on this track. People were already reading fewer books and engaging in vapid civic engagement on social media. Already people were forming their “beliefs” based on trending topics and YouTube influencers. But AI accelerates this trend. So this issue isn’t just about teachers complaining that students aren’t writing their own papers. This is an issue about the future of civic society. And I think we can all agree that civic society ain’t looking so hot as it is.

O. Alan Noble

Power

If God be not a tyrant, how can any of us? If God refuses to exploit God’s power, how can any of us exploit one another?
Scot McKnight

Religious affiliation

…according to an average of all 2023 Gallup polling, 68% of Americans identify with a Christian religion, including 33% who are Protestant, 22% Catholic, and 13% who identify with another Christian religion or simply as a “Christian.” (Only 7% percent identify with a non-Christian religion, including 2% who are Jewish, 1% Muslim, and 1% Buddhist, among others. Another 22% said they have no religious preference, and 3% did not answer the question.)

Grief

…learning from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross that “grief is the only human emotion that [has to] have [a] community to shoulder it. It cannot be borne alone.”

It takes a great deal of involvement within a community for grief to be expressed freely. It is the presence of the community that validates the expression of grief. This means that a singular expression of grief is an incomplete expression of grief.
Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community by an African scholar, Malidoma Somé

Somé compares the grieving process with a baby crying heavily just before falling asleep, saying, “Grief takes us to the top of the hill and then lets us walk back down slowly, peacefully.” We need some kind of process like that, something that helps us lead the world into the way of peace. Perhaps it will begin with sackcloth and ashes. It will certainly begin with repentance.
https://open.substack.com/pub/toomanywords/p/weeping-with-those-who-weepeven-when?r=1vlmt&utm_medium=ios

A Closer look

The small flowers above abound in the grass in our area. They are sometimes described as Florida snow. Like a lot of things that are ordinary in our lives, a closer look reveals a loveliness often overlooked.

ARCHIE UPDATE

Look who moved up to a “big boy” bed! Hoping to extubate by the end of the week. Last weight was 3 pounds 7 ounces. 

So thankful. Keep up the prayers.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

Their Stuff/My stuff

it’s easy to see our partner’s crap, all the ways they drive us crazy. It’s much more difficult for me to look at my own stuff, my own reactivity, and my own childhood experiences which wired me to react in certain ways in given dynamics.

It’s hard, she says, “for me to study my own reactivity.” In the midst of being annoyed with one we love, it’s hard to ask ourselves, “What was it about me?”

Dr. Alexandra Solomon via NSE notebook 

When a person believes that he or she possesses eternal truth, there’s a temptation to believe that he or she is entitled to rule.

David French

“When you worship power, compassion and mercy will look like sins.”

Benjamin Cremer, a Wesleyan pastor 

Doing it right

We don’t come to God by doing it right. Please believe me on this. We come to God by doing it wrong. Any guide of souls knows this to be true. If we come to God by being perfect, no one is going to come to God. This absolutely levels the playing field. Our failures open our hearts of stone and move our rigid mind space toward understanding and patience. It’s in doing it wrong, making mistakes, being rejected, and experiencing pain that we are led to total reliance upon God. I wish it weren’t true, but all I know at this point in my journey is that?God has let me do just about everything wrong, so I could fully experience how God can do everything so utterly right. 

Richard Rohr

Shalom.

Of course it means peace.
But shalom is a word that overflows the boundaries of its own letters and irrigates other words.
Wellbeing. Harmony. Justice. Fruitfulness. Righteousness. Welcome. Union. And yes, Peace.
For all who, today as every day, long for shalom, in our heart, community, and world, this is a good prayer:

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Jim Gordon

Jesus’ tool box

..one of the best tools in the toolbox of Jesus. Tell ‘em a story, a riddle, invite curiosity and imagination, and let’s see what becomes of a world like that. If Jesus wanted to be crystal clear, he would have written a book of philosophy, like Aristotle. Instead, he told stories.

Scot McKnight

Gentle Parenting

In neglecting the dark corners of a child’s soul, gentle parenting does children a disservice. For the fact is that most children know that they’re sometimes bad, and that they sometimes do things out of malice, spite, and greed. Gentle parents are right: shame and guilt are negative feelings which may cause “trauma” for the child, as for the adult. No kidding. But the job of the parent is not to prevent any potential “trauma”, it is to love the child even when they are bad, and to punish them, and most importantly to forgive them. A child can’t understand the lightness of forgiveness without understanding first that one needs it. (I often wonder if the parents also want to avoid the “trauma” of guilt and shame, and so never acknowledge their own reasons for doing the things we do, such as becoming parenting “philosophy” consumers out of vanity, pride, or sloth. We may one day have good reason to ask forgiveness from our kids.)

https://unherd.com/2024/12/the-cruelty-of-gentle-parenting/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

ARCHIE UPDATE

Momma Gabby:
1 month (and some days) of Archie ? it’s been a big month for our tiny warrior! He graduated to a lesser vent which lets Kyle and I hold him and he is up to 2lbs and 8oz now! Please pray for continued growth, his care team, and for Kyle and I as we navigate this season of life. All Glory and Praise to our Father for this precious blessing!

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

Why do men relish control so much? There are a number of ways to answer this question, but certainly the sense of having agency in the world, of being able to have an impact on our surroundings, of being able to see that we make a difference in the world—all of these can help explain why we like and want control.

Perhaps the above explains my ill-advised attempt to create a Billy Bob Thornton persona … Unfortunately Ann doesn’t think much of Billy Bob Thornton.

Self Control 

Self-control is a Fruit of the Spirit, which means that we depend upon God’s grace to receive it, but we can’t be passive. Self-control is a discipline, too. It is a muscle we exercise or we don’t. We each have an obligation to mortify our flesh and resist sinful temptation in all forms. Given the powerful currents of our society, we must be intentional about practicing self-denial. Chastity is a virtue, even (especially?) in marriage. A beautiful marriage does not mean you will have all your sexual desires fulfilled. You won’t. You will have to practice self-control. Over and over again.

https://newsletter.oalannoble.com/p/self-control-and-scandals

Contemplation 

Contemplation waits for the moments, creates the moments, where all can be a silent prayer. It refuses the very distinction between action and stillness. Contemplation is essentially nondual consciousness that overcomes the gaps between me and God, outer and inner, either and or, me and you.  

The reason why the true contemplative-in-action is still somewhat rare is that most of us, even and most especially in religion, are experts in dualistic thinking. And then we try to use this limited thinking tool for prayer, problems, and relationships. It cannot get us very far. The irony of ego “consciousness” is that it always excludes and eliminates the unconscious—which means it is actually not conscious at all! Ego insists on knowing and being certain; it refuses all unknowing. Most people who think they are fully conscious (read, “smart”) have a leaden manhole cover over their unconscious. It gives them control but seldom compassion or wisdom.  

Richard Rohr

Celebrity

there is a mania loose in our society where so many people are pursuing celebrity rather than artistry. In other words, they want to be famous for doing nothing. Reality TV and social media have encouraged people to strive, not for greatness, but for recognition. They will even settle for notoriety, engaging in the most cruel, inhumane, and self-degrading behavior just to have people recognize them on the street. It doesn’t matter why they recognize them, only that they do.

There’s a difference between fame and accomplishment, between celebrity and artistry. For me, fame, celebrity, and recognition should be something earned through passion, hard work, practice, and commitment. I have no beef with reality shows or social media millionaires who unbox stuff—they can be very entertaining—but those people should never be equated with those who actually produce something worthwhile. 

The reason we are so quick to bestow celebrity onto so many people who do so little is that it keeps the hope alive in all people that anyone can become famous just by doing outrageous stuff that goes viral and gets clicks and followers. Everyone can’t write a Bob Dylan song or paint a Matisse or write a Maya Angelou poem—but they can rant about conspiracies or eat disgusting things. All with the sad subtext of: Please notice me! 

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Theological Differences

…the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) wanted to add the song “In Christ Alone” to their hymnal Glory to God. They asked the authors of the hymn if they could change the original lyric “Till on that cross as Jesus died / the wrath of God was satisfied” to “Till on that cross as Jesus died / the love of God was magnified.”

…we can see why evangelical and progressive Christians experience mutual incomprehension when they encounter each other. They come from very different theological worlds.

Ricard Beck

Bad Data and its Consequences.

One consequence of looking at the wrong data to understand the shape of a problem is that data always hints at the solution. 

For example, during the Vietnam War, U.S. military leaders measured “success” in the conflict using the same metric they used in World Wars I and II: body count—the number of enemy combatants killed. The assumption was that higher body counts equated to progress toward victory.

But the Vietnam War wasn’t a war of attrition. It was a war for public opinion. As a result, strategies were developed to maximize body counts, often at the expense of what truly mattered: winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese and beyond. Villages were bombed, civilians were displaced, and atrocities like the My Lai Massacre occurred. In the end, the focus on this narrow, incomplete metric contributed to widespread disillusionment, both domestically and abroad, and the eventual failure of U.S. efforts in Vietnam.

When Christian thought leaders look at the data available to them to understand the problems facing Christianity and to uncover solutions, they make a similar mistake. Here is the data set most leaders are using to make decisions:

67% of the U.S. population self-identifies as Christian, which equates to around 224 million people. This is down from 95% of Americans who identified as Christian in the 1950’s.

Source: GovInfo – Percentage of Christians in the U.S.

However, there is a catastrophic problem with this data.

Surveys that rely on self-reported faith and church attendance are notoriously unreliable as indicators of actual religious engagement. Recent studies have demonstrated that conventional surveys significantly overestimate both church attendance and religious adherence due to respondent bias.

Based on my own experience, when people find out I’m Catholic, due to knowing only Catholics in name only, they often expect me to fit this stereotype.

I consistently disappoint.

The idea behind this data is that church attendance and self-reported affiliation are considered the primary indicators of faithfulness. Thus, if you can win on these two metrics, you win the war. In other words, they think that Christianity is in a war of attrition with modernity. When someone gets baptized or says the salvation prayer, they think, “We got another one! Move them across the ledger!” This is precisely the wrong way to think about religious adherence, and its byproduct is a tremendous amount of time, effort, and energy wasted.

That’s because we misunderstand the war we’re fighting. We are not in a battle of attrition with modernity where individuals move across the “self-identification line” and are “on our team now.” Instead, We’re fighting a war of FORMATION with the modern culture. Each side forms its adherent’s behavior in this war to reflect its deeply held beliefs.

Admittedly, this is an oversimplification. However, to draw a clear contrast between Christianity and prevailing cultural trends, it helps to examine how belief systems manifest in measurable life outcomes. Two competing worldviews are at play here, each shaping behavior and priorities in radically different ways.

ARCHIE update

Wonderful news. He is making progress. Gabby is permitted to hold him. He has gained weight. Prayers continue. Still a long road ahead. Wait for him to wake up on the video.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY