Notes Anthology Archives - Page 12 of 83 - For the Joy of the Journey

So Much To Think About

George July 22, 2023 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

If you find yourself feeling useless, remember: it took 20 years, trillions of dollars, thousands of lives and four presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.

Chivalry

I have long wondered, whether the solution to toxic masculinity is not unmasculine men, but finding a type of masculinity that is chivalrous rather than chauvanistic, virulent yet virtuous, protective without being patriarchal.

But what would that look like?

Michael Bird

Nominalism

Nominalism rejects “inner meanings,” certainly as anything more than ideas in our heads. Things are simply things, and words nothing more than the names we call them. Straightforward moral examples and historical events, interpreted largely in their own historical context, became the preferred way of seeing the Scriptures. Prophetic statements began to be seen as flatly predictive rather than possessed of irony, allegory and paradox. Historical-critical studies that dismantled various historical claims of other Christians, would be unthinkable without the assumptions of Nominalism.

Fr Stephen Freeman

Hurting people

In the middle of the speed and the noise of this life; in the dizzying parade that we defiantly strut through every day trying to fool people into believing that we’re all okay, it can be a challenge to remember that we’re all not okay. I hope that you will, though, because it will change the way you walk the rest of the journey.

Today, find your place in this great congregation of flawed, wounded souls and feel right at home here.

John Pavlovitz

Words for a young pastor

Legendary theologian Karl Barth was asked by a student what words he would give to a young pastor:

“And I would ask you, are you trained to visit not only yourself now, but a congregation with what you have learned out of the Bible and of church history and dogmatics and so on? Having to say something, having to say that thing.

And then the other question: are you willing now to deal with humanity as it is? Humanity in this twentieth century with all its passions, sufferings, errors, and so on? Do you like them, these people? Not only the good Christians, but do you like people as they are? People in their weaknesses? Do you like them, do you love them? And are you willing to tell them the message that God is not against them, but for them? That’s the one real thing in pastoral service and that is the question for you. If you go into ministry to do that work, pray earnestly. You’ll do difficult work but beautiful work.”

the living sacrament of marriage:

“Marriage is a journey of love. It is the creation of a new human being, a new person, for as the Gospel says, ‘the two will be as one flesh’. God unites two people, and makes them one. From this union of two people, who agree to synchronize their footsteps and harmonize the beating of their hearts, a new human being emerges. Through such profound and spontaneous love, the one becomes a presence, a living reality, in the heart of the other. ‘I am married’ means that I cannot live a single day, even a few moments, without the companion of my life. My husband, my wife, is part of my being, of my flesh, of my soul. He or she complements me. He or she is the thought of my mind. He or she is the reason for which my heart beats… in marriage, it seems that two people become together. However, it’s not two but three. The man marries the woman, and the woman marries the man, but the two together also marry Christ. So three take part in the mystery, and three remain together in life.”

Elder Aimilianos

Evangelism

The struggle for many of us is that we were schooled in an understanding of evangelism that equated faith sharing with preaching. Such an understanding assumes faith sharing is always one-way traffic — from the sharer to the seeker. But the New Testament uses a number of terms to describe evangelistic ministry. They include to persuade (peithos), describe (diegoeomai), reason with (dialegomia), confound (syncheo), prove (symbibazo), argue (syzeteo), talk (laleo), beseech (deomai), and encourage (parakaleo).

Faith sharing in the early church involved more conversations than lectures.

Michael Frost

Listening

The English word “listen” comes from two Anglo-Saxon words. One means “hearing” and the other means “to wait in suspense.” Conversations might manifest greater love & attentiveness if we adopted an attitude of waiting in suspense to learn something from the other person’s words.

Brad Brisco

Intelligence/ Wisdom

Intelligence is the ability to understand many ideas. Wisdom is the ability to identify the few ideas worth understanding.

Wisdom without intelligence can still lead to a good, simple life. Intelligence without wisdom is a special (and dangerous) form of stupidity.

Mark Manson

Eliminating Religion

If there is no God, no purpose in life, if the universe is utterly indifferent to our birth, life, and death, then what’s the point of it all? What does that mean for our instinctive hunger for justice? Is love just a bunch of chemicals squishing around in our brains? What is beauty and friendship beyond banal constructs of feeble minds attempting to rationalize a purpose for a purposeless existence? That is what atheism requires, but nobody can really live that way. We would be left to immerse ourselves in complete hedonism, drugs, sex, and pleasure to dull the numbing pain of an existence that is cruel because it is nakedly pointless.

And that’s the thing, even if you eliminate religion, you end up religionizing whatever you replace it with. If there is no God, Jesus, Allah, or Buddha, then people will make gods out of the things that give them pleasure and power. As I’ve argued, A Religionless Society Will Still Have Gods, because: “What replaces religion then is either the quest for power or the lust for pleasure, the clenched fist or a phallus, an M-16 or sex toys, Putin or Lady Gaga.”

Michael Bird

Old and infirmed

Sometimes the old and the infirm, those who have been wounded by life and whose choices have been constrained, reveal what is most important in life. Sometimes those whose choices have been limited can demonstrate that, by focusing on others and not on oneself, life is defined not by the options available to us but by the strength of our commitments.

David Brooks

Distrust of Church

In 2009, 52% of U.S. adults said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the church as an institution. That was the last year most Americans held that belief. In 2018, confidence levels fell below 40% for the first time. They edged above that mark in 2020, only to drop back below in 2021 and even further in 2022. Despite the 1-point increase in 2023, the current 32% of Americans who have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the church marks the second-lowest percentage ever.

Some Americans are less likely than others to have trust in the church. Younger adults are more distrustful than those who are older. Americans 18-34 (24%) have lower levels of confidence than those 35-54 (32%) and 55 and older (35%).

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George July 13, 2023 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is a piece of cake!

Perfect

The demand for the perfect is the enemy of the possible good. Be peace and do justice, but let’s not expect perfection in ourselves or the world. Perfectionism contributes to intolerance and judgmentalism and makes ordinary love largely impossible. Jesus was an absolute realist, patient with the ordinary, the broken, the weak, and those who failed. Following him is not a “salvation scheme” or a means of creating some ideal social order as much as it is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world, and to love the way that God loves—which we cannot do by ourselves.

Richard Rohr

Effective Alturism

Imagine that you have $1. You’re planning to donate that dollar to charity and have narrowed your options down to two causes: your alma mater’s endowment fund, which awards scholarships for academically gifted students, and a non-profit that delivers life-saving vitamin supplements to children in extreme poverty.

To help make your decision, you might rely on a social movement and philosophy called effective altruism—or EA for short. Effective altruism is dedicated to using evidence and reason to do the most good in the world. Effective altruists try to accomplish this maximum good by supporting philanthropic causes that get the biggest return on investment. An effective altruist, then, would probably encourage you to donate your $1 to the organization that provides vitamin supplements over the university.

https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-case-against-longtermism?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=61579&post_id=133461502&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

Decentered

Christianity loses its true center when it seeks to convince the world of its commitment to the modern project. At present, there is a growing collection of Christian Churches, hollowed out by their embrace of the modern, secular account of reality. In a drive for relevance, they became redundant.

Fr Stephen Freeman

Questions designed by a PhD psychologist to help develop close living relationships.

If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?

Age of the Selfie

Though we live in the age of the “selfie,” we are, nonetheless, an age that is distracted from the true knowledge of the self. The “selfie” has nothing to do with self-knowledge and everything to do with an objectification of the self – how I would like myself to look if I were someone else. What the selfie never shows is how we truly perceive ourselves.

Fr Stephen Freeman

Who’s going to church?

Religion, at it’s best, is a place where people from a variety of economic, social, racial and political backgrounds can find common ground around a shared faith. It’s a place to build bridges to folks who are different than you. Unfortunately, it looks like American religion is not at its best.

Instead, it’s become a hospital for the healthy, an echo chamber for folks who did everything “right,” which means that it’s seeming less and less inviting to those who did life another way. Do I think that houses of worship have done this on purpose? Generally speaking, no. But they also haven’t actively refuted this narrative.

I was always told that the job of a preacher is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Maybe we need a lot more of the latter going forward.

Old People

There’s a stereotype that older people are grumpy shut-ins—withering away inside while yelling at some kid to get off their lawn. That judgment is obviously sweeping and unfair, but perhaps it’s also emerged, in part, from some real tendencies—tendencies that might be better understood as justified reactions to a harsh and inaccessible world. America’s population is rapidly growing older, and life expectancy, except for a recent dip, has been getting longer. By 2040, about one in five Americans will be 65 or older; as recently as 2000, that number was one in eight. Perhaps we’d do well to consider what older people’s living conditions can push them to become.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/07/old-age-personality-brain-changes-psychology/674668/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20230712&utm_term=The%20Atlantic%20Daily

“Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble the football “…
– John Heisman, first football coach at Rice

View from the front porch

“schadenfreude”
experiencing satisfaction from someone else’s misfortune.

My encounter with schadenfreude is not overt but subtle. It has occurred in reflection on circumstances of those experiencing misfortune as a result of decisions contrary to my opinions/beliefs. In moments of honest introspection, I realize that I experience pleasant satisfaction of others’ misfortune. The fact that I am restrained from expressing my satisfaction publicly is encouraging, but the truth is plain, there’s within me an undeniable schadenfreude impulse.

This realization is troubling. As a Christ follower, I believe “schadenfreude” is not a fruit of the Holy Spirit nor does it reflect the mind of Christ. Its presence reveals sin which thrives in the shadows of my soul. A sin which cannot be absolved by sin management i.e. restraint in speaking or acting out. Overcoming “schadenfreude” requires the transcendent power of God.

Celebration of other’s misfortune is not unusual, in fact, for most of us it comes easily and is consistent with our highly competitive and individualistic culture. Opponents’ demise is the desired outcome. Victory, even if it comes as result of our opponents bad luck, is always occasion for celebration, a fulfillment of our wishes (or prayers?) that they— “get what they deserve” et al. The opportunity to be proved right and to say, or, at a minimum, think “I told you so” is delicious. Dramatic polarization in our society has elevated “schadenfreude” to normal.

The presence of Schadenfreude reveals sin that is deeper “than “missing the mark” —moral failure — a mistake. It isn’t a mistake. It is a power that can reign and rule my mind and body, forcing you me obey, having dominion over me; a false god to whom I give idolatrous allegiance. Defying sin management, schadenfreude’s antidote is found in Romans 6: “…present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” [Adapted from Richard Beck’s post ]

If these thoughts haven’t caused you to rethink any impulse to celebrate the misfortune of others, and you are convinced that justice should prevail. then consider this passage from proverbs:

Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble do not let your heart rejoice, or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from them (Proverbs 24:17-18).

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George July 3, 2023 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

I haven’t gotten anything done today. I’ve been in the Produce Department trying to open this stupid plastic bag.

the naive algorithm

…the naive algorithm is the “idea that good intentions, a good heart, a love for people, and faith in Jesus will invariably lead to ministry success.”

Carolyn Moore – When Women Lead

God knows us

That God knows us (we wrongly imagine) simply comes with the territory of being God. “God knows everything,” we say, and assume that He should therefore be able to manage everything and run the universe in a way that is pleasing to Him. This, I suspect, is what we ourselves would do were we to suddenly become a god.

The world is created in such a way that God Himself holds it in wonder and awe. He sees not only its goodness, but its very goodness. This is more than mere knowledge and utterly transcends knowledge-as-information. This is knowledge of the most intimate possible meaning.

The modern world suffers from a crisis of loneliness we are told. I believe that much of that crisis is simply the by-product of an information society. The economy (whatever that is) knows pretty much everything about us. It is carefully mined from every action we take in the electronic world. That data is mined, stored, and sold. This is not only true, it is more true every day. But all of that information is the opposite of intimacy. Whoever possesses that information does not know you – though they could easily use it to destroy you. The information is dangerous precisely because those who possess it do not love you.

God has no desire to gather information about us. I’m not certain that God knows anything in a manner that could be described as information. God knows us as He knew Simon Peter. He could predict Simon’s denials while reassuring him that he was being prayed for (and preserved). Perhaps those words of reassurance are the very thing that saved him in the end. God knows us as He knew the Woman at the Well (John 4). He Himself was thirsty, but He knew her thirst (living water).

Fr Stephen Freeman

Crisis contemplation

When we’re in a crisis situation, the question becomes, “What’s the answer?” and “How does contemplation help, if it can?” No one is going to like the response because there isn’t a response in the ordinary ways. Everyone is going to want a clear process to resolve something. What do we do? How do we do it? What’s going to make us all feel better? There aren’t any answers like that. When there is nothing to do, some of the things that can be done are things we don’t want to do. Philosopher Bayo Akomolafe says it most clearly. He says the first thing you do is slow down:

To ‘slow down’ … seems like the wrong thing to do when there’s fire on the mountain. But here’s the point: in ‘hurrying up’ all the time, we often lose sight of the abundance of resources that might help us meet today’s most challenging crises. We rush through the same patterns we are used to. Of course, there isn’t a single way to respond to a crisis; there is no universally correct way. However the call to slow down works to bring us face to face with the invisible, the hidden, the unremarked, the yet-to-be-resolved…. It is about staying in the places that are haunted.

Barbara Holmes

Are You Bullsh*tting Yourself?

Sent on June 26, 2023

Two things for you to think about

Expertise makes something complex appear simple and intelligible. Bullshit makes something simple appear unnecessarily complex and unintelligible.

Expertise creates value for people who don’t know better. Bullshit extracts value from people who don’t know better.

Reflect: Then consider sharing this thought with others.

One thing for you to ask yourself

In what area(s) of your life are you bullshitting yourself? That is, what areas of your life are you over-complicating and making unnecessarily complex?

Recommended: Use these as journaling prompts for the week.

One thing for you to try this week

Stop bullshitting yourself. We often over-complicate problems as a way of emotionally coping with the problem. It feels hard, so we convince ourselves that it must be really hard.

If someone breaks our trust, we assume it must be for 27 different reasons and we have to approach the person like a chess match, when really, we’re just hiding from the painful fact that this person we care about broke our trust.

What’s one way you can stop bullshitting yourself this week?
Mark Manson

OFFER YOUR BODIES AS A LIVING SACRIFICE.

There are at least two massive dilemmas here. If the Bible has a singular call to action it is contained in this phrase. For most of the years I read this, I read it like this: “offer your bodies as living sacrifices.” In fact, that’s the way my favorite bible translation translated it—the 1984 New International Version. They actually mistranslated the singular word “sacrifice” as the plural “sacrifices.” You’re seeing the issue, aren’t you? The text actually says, “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.” Bodies (plural). Sacrifice (singular). Many bodies—one sacrifice. The New Testament church, the one Jesus is building, is not a bunch of independent individuals running around trying to make Jesus famous. This is perhaps the greatest challenge of the church of our time—to become the body of Christ living the will of God rather than millions of individuated bodies doing their own thing in God’s name.

J D Walt

During a visit to my doctor, I asked him, “How do you determine whether or not an older person should be put in an old age home?”

“Well,” she said, “we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the person to empty the bathtub.”

“Oh, I understand,” I said. “A normal person would use the bucket because it is bigger than the spoon or the teacup..”

“No” she said. “A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?”

Knocking holes in the buffered self

As Anne Lamott has written, our prayers gather around three words, Help, Thanks and Wow. Lorica prayers–“You, O Lord, are a shield around me”–are prayers of help, prayers of protection.

Bishop Robert Barron, taking an insight from Charles Taylor, describes what he calls “knocking holes in the buffered self.” According to Charles Taylor, the modern self is “buffered,” closed off from external realities, especially spiritual realities. Consequently, the modern self feels itself to be autonomous and secure within itself, lacking the sharp sense of vulnerability intrinsic to finite, creaturely existence. To “knock holes” in the buffered self is to open it back up to larger realities.

Lorica prayers, prayers of help and petitions for protection, are tools that can foster this recognition. Beginning your day with the prayer “You, O Lord, are a shield around me” knocks a hole in your buffered self and places you in a vulnerable posture.

Simply ask for help. Pray for aid and protection. Ask regularly. “You, O Lord, are shield around me.” Such prayers restructure your ego and knock holes in your buffered self.

Richard Beck

Humor

“Although it is often considered trivial, humor is a universal and essential part of human social life – hence the saying ‘Whenever two or more are gathered … there is a joke!’ Indeed, after crying, laughter is one of the first social vocalizations by human infants. Later in childhood, humor recognition and enjoyment are key indicators of healthy cognitive development. The erosion of the capacity for humor is an indicator of cognitive decline as we age. It has been shown that humor is a key social attribute in communities in which people live much longer-than-average lifespan than in other communities.”

“When he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker,
and I was daily his delight,
playing before him always,
playing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race” (Prov. 8:29-31).

Humor Us! Preaching and the Power of the Comic Spirit

Photo credit – Susan Clark
View from the Front Porch

Things this old man thinks about:
“There is no I in TEAM”
I am increasingly aware praise and worship experiences are dominated with “I” and “Me” references and seldom any “We and “Us”; in contrast to:
“…so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” or
“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

“I” and “Me” overshadow the prophets’ vision of shalom for God’s people.
Brueggemann says it well:

The most staggering expression of the vision [shalom] is that all persons are children of a single family, members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of single destiny, namely, the care and management of all of God's creation.

The origin and the destiny of God's people is to be on the road of shalom, which is to live out of joyous memories and toward greater shalom, which is to live out of joyous memories and toward greater anticipations. 

If there is to be well-being, it will not be just for isolated, insulated individuals; it is rather security and prosperity granted to a whole community-young and old, rich and poor, powerful and dependent. Always we are all in it together. Together we stand before God's blessings and together we receive the gift of life if we receive it at all. Shalom comes only to the inclusive, embracing community that excludes none. 

Walter Brueggemann- Living Toward a Vision

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George June 19, 2023 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

Enchantment

… enchantment is “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them.” Enchantment isn’t “escaping” the “real world” into a “fantasy world.” Enchantment is seeing a better world and then returning with a prophetic rebuke. Reconciling oneself to the “real world”–refusing to visit the land of Faërie–is tantamount to the prisoner refusing to escape his cell.

To borrow the phrase of Walter Brueggemann, enchantment is a “prophetic imagination.” Faërie is the vision of the New Heavens and the New Earth, the world set free from the consequences of the Fall.

Richard Beck

Closeness

…we long for closeness that is deeper than getting everything right all the time. “Getting it right” never meets our deep need to relax into the arms of a loved one. because the real way we keep closeness is not by performing but by expressing our needs and receiving a caring response” We all need someone who races toward us and embraces us before we even have the chance to explain ourselves.
Attachment to God

Right Answers
If we’ve dealt with suffering we see in the world by coming up with cause-and-effect systems of theology, then we will cling to those systems to avoid the more difficult questions, for instance, we may think those experiencing heartbreaking poverty are simply experiencing the consequences of their actions. When we believe everyone’s quality of life is the result only of their own choices, it’s easier to turn a blind eye to suffering.
We’ve quelled our anxiety by having all the right answers, so we have to hold a rigid way of approaching the world and our faith. The moment our “right answers” come under scrutiny, our anxiety rises-and then often anger comes. Maybe you’ve been a part of a religious community like this, where asking questions is experienced as a threat, evoking fear and anxiety followed by anger and suppression.
Attachment to God

Theology that prevents lament:
In a sermon, [Billy]Graham said the gospel is like this: a father asked his son to fetch some wood from the shed for their stove. The son, whose nose was in a book, didn’t respond. The father then became enraged, giving an ultimatum that his son could either obey or leave the house, The son chose the latter, slamming the door on his way out. A fortnight later, the son returned, pleading to be forgiven. The father “softened for a moment. Then he grew stern and, pointing to the woodshed, said, ‘Son, that same stick is in the woodshed. Get it, bring it in, put it on the fire, and you can come in.’
This is drastically different from the father who decides to gift his estate, even when the son is impudent. In Jesus’s story be father never asks the son to leave.
Attachment to God

Yearning
There has been a yearning in me that I’m only just beginning to to understand: a craving for transcendent experience, for depth, for meaning – making. It’s not just that the world needs to change-l need to change, too. I need to soften, to let go of my tight empirical boundaries, to find a greater fluidity in my being. I’m seeking what the poet John Keats called negative capability, that intuitive mode of thought that allows us to reside in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason. The subtle magic of the world offers comfort, but I don’t know how to receive it.
Enchantment

The Everyday Person
It was a long time before it occurred to me that the whole system might just have been designed for men — the kind who had their meals cooked for them and their children quietly removed from their company so that they could pursue their lofty spiritual goals. I thought back to my training and remembered our teacher telling us how he’d left his wife and children to go to India to study with the Maharishi. He learned a lot about himself there, he said. He sat alone in a cave for months and wrestled with hisoul. It was hard, but ultimately worth it. He could never have made such breakthroughs without giving meditation is full commitment. Next to me, a woman raised her hand.
“How did your wife manage?” she asked. “Well, I’m sure it was tough for her,” he said. “Buthe knew it was important to me.’
I’m ashamed now that I didn’t see it: the patriarchal way that we frame spiritual development, the way that men get enlightenment and women get to look after them as they do so, all the while getting mocked for the compromised practices they create in the scraps of time that remain.
I appreciate the value of the monastic tradition, and I understand that some insights can come only from true solitude but I also see very clearly how it prizes masculine knowledge over feminine, diminishing the wisdom of those of us who by necessity are anchored to the everyday.
Enchantment

Fire
We have not understood this earth’s full potency until we have recognised fire. Too often, we have allowed ourselves to believe that we can live whole lives in the absence of suffering. We are told that uniform happiness is the only desirable experience. But this in itself is a disenchantment. Fire brings us back into contact with the cycle of life, with the limits of our control, and with the full spectrum of human feeling. It teaches us hard lessons and burns through our fragile illusions. Without it, we are living only a surface existence, a shallow terrain. We must assimilate fire to become whole again.
Enchantment

Play
play is absolute. play is the complete absorption in something that doesn’t matter to the external world, but which matters completely to you. It’s an immersion in your own interests that becomes a feeling in itself, a potent emotion, play is a disappearance into a space of our choosing, invisible to those outside the game, It is the pursuit of pure flow, a sandbox mind in which we can test new thoughts, new selves. It’s a form of symbolic a way to transpose one reality onto another and living, a way to transpose mine it for meaning, play is a form of enchantment.
Enchantment

Community life
“…community life – care for one another-is built on friction, on sticky and inefficient relationships. Community is also under assault because we’ve outsourced care. As Peter Block and John McKnight argue in their book, The Abundant Community, a lot of the roles that used to be done in community have migrated to the marketplace or the state. Mental well-being is now job of the therapist. Physical health is now the Job of the hospital. Education is the job of the school system.
The problem with systems, Block and McKnight argue, is that everything has to be standardized. Everything has to follow rules. “The purpose of management is to create a world that is repeatable, “they write. But people are never the same.
When there is a loss of care, a neighborhood becomes fragile and so do the people in it. The people are still there but the fluid of trust in which they were suspended has been drained away. If things go bad they have fewer people to turn to. They yearn for a sense of belonging.
Care has been replaced by distance and distrust.
The Second Mountain

View from the front porch

On the journey
Occasionally I encounter someone’s writing that so resonates with me that I am almost overcome with an urge to claim it as my own. Resisting the temptation to plagiarize, I am sharing excerpts from Chaplin Mike’s post at Internet Monk. I don’t know him personally but I feel a deep kinship, he spoke my heart.

I stand on top of a rise in the road. Before me, a valley stretches, still shrouded in fog. Behind me, the sun has burned its way clear and I can see the ways I’ve come. I can make out a few of the sharper turns, various forks and crossroads where I chose this way or that for one reason or another, spots along the way where the road disappeared into a dark wood, then emerged on scenery wholly new. Well past halfway on my journey, I’ve forgotten more than I remember, and some of what I recall I don’t trust. In some ways I’m more sure of my path, in other ways I’ve never been less able to plot my course.

…at this point in the journey, I’m not sure I know what wisdom is. I have some hindsight, for sure, and plenty of experience. Maybe that qualifies. I have a deeper trust in the sovereignty of God than ever before, but it is not the kind of trust that can be expressed in “answers.” The thought of God’s sovereignty is like the fog in the valley ahead of me — a mystery that envelops the world but obscures my view. To think that I would appeal to such a concept as comfort for myself or others seems kind of crazy, to tell the truth. People don’t generally expect the guy down in the mail room to be able to delineate the intricate decisions of the CEO. About all I can say is, “I have no idea how to explain it, but I guess he knows what he’s doing.”

The world is broken, and I don’t have a lot of wisdom to offer. I won’t pretend to tell you what God is doing. But I know that love is real. I’m here to be your friend today, and I want to encourage you to be friends to each other. That’s how Jesus showed his love to us — by befriending us and laying down his life for us. We’re here to do the same for one another.

It’s foggy ahead, and the way is not clear.
Take a hand and let’s enter the fog together.

Posted 9/30/2020

So Much To Think About

George June 3, 2023 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

We’ve treated our sinfulness as the most true thing about us as humans, rather than our identity as created and loved by God
God Attachment pg 110

Empathy

if you are always dodging your emotions, you will avoid your own experience, as well as avoiding the experience of others. If you always ignore your own emotional suffering, you’ll likely take the same approach to the suffering of others.
There’s always risk when stepping into someone else’s shoes: we might feel a little bit of what they are feeling, which akc touches on a little bit of what we are feeling. As Brené Brown says, “Empathy is a vulnerable choice because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with something within. that knows that feeling.’
God Attachment https://www.amazon.com/God-Attachment-Believe-Feel-About/dp/1501108131

What Christian Leaders Should Be Like
In my early 20s, I attended an event where Tim Keller, an orthodox, evangelical Presbyterian pastor, was having a public debate with a secular humanist. In the nearly 20 years that have passed since the event, I still recall one moment distinctly. The secular humanist struggled with a point he was making and was unclear, something that happens often enough in public speaking. Keller could have chosen to go in for the kill rhetorically and make his opponent look foolish. Instead, he paused and asked, “Is this what you mean?” Keller then restated the secular argument in a clearer, better way, arguing against his own point of view. The other speaker agreed that was what he had meant, and Keller continued, countering the (now much stronger) point.
This generosity and understanding toward those with whom we disagree helped shape the way I now see the world. It had more of an impact on me, as a Christian, than any argument could. Keller refused the easier route of debate, insisting on finding the best argument of others, even if it meant strengthening his opponent’s case. He was in pursuit of truth and kindness, not point-scoring. That night I saw what Christian leaders should be like
Trish Harrison Warren

Lament

If we lock our emotions in the basement in an attempt to keep God close, something else happens: we end up feeling distant. Intimacy happens in the emotional interactions of a relationship and when we hide our emotions from God, we never get the closeness we long for. Bonding is built on responsiveness, feeling that others understand our emotional experiences and that they care. It’s how we know we matter to others. But if we don’t ever share our emotions with God, true bonding never happens.

Suppressing our emotions also cripples our ability to engage in true community with others. When we can’t share our emotions, or respond to the emotions of others, we never experience the belonging we were built for, We might feel like teammates or co-workers but never the family that the apostle Paul describes in his letters to the church. We show up with our bodies but have trouble connecting heart-to-heart, Our Life of faith ends up feeling lonely.
God Attachment https://www.amazon.com/God-Attachment-Believe-Feel-About/dp/1501108131

Waiting

“The church is the community that believes it is not the star of its own story.”

When we refuse to wait we become the star of our own story; when we wait we become supporting actors to Jesus, who is the star.

“With our attention on the anxiety to survive and the rush to do something, God is inevitably replaced as the star of the church’s story. It becomes so easy, particularly in our secular age, for God to be just a subplot of our congregational life.”

When Church Stops Working – Andrew Root and Blair D. Bertrand

Evil in disguise

…it is almost impossible for any social grouping to be corporately or consistently selfless.
It has to maintain and promote itself first at virtually any cost—sacrificing even its own stated ethics and morality. If we cannot see this, it might reveal the depth of the disguise of institutionalized evil.

Evil finds its almost perfect camouflage in the silent agreements of the group when it appears personally advantageous. Such unconscious “deadness” will continue to show itself in every age, I believe. This is why I can’t throw the word “sin” out entirely. If we do not see the true shape of evil or recognize how we are fully complicit in it, it will fully control us, while not looking the least like sin. Would “agreed-upon delusion” be a better description? We cannot recognize it or overcome it as isolated individuals, mostly because it is held together by the group consensus.

Richard Rohr

Social media

Krista Boan: We hear from families that technology is the No. 1 battleground in their homes. Qustodio, a leader in online safety, recently released its annual report and found that 70 percent of parents assert that screens and technology are now a distraction from family time and device use causes weekly or daily arguments in nearly 50 percent of households. A big new study from Cambridge University, in which researchers looked at 84,000 people of all ages, found that social media use was strongly associated with worse mental health during certain sensitive life periods, including for girls ages 11 to 13. Compared with their counterparts in the 2000s, today’s teens are less likely to go out with their friends, get their driver’s licenses or play youth sports.

Consciousness

… until we move to self-reflective, self-critical thinking, we don’t move to any deep level of consciousness at all. In fact, we largely remain unconscious, falsely innocent, and unaware. Thus, most people choose to remain in that first stage of consciousness, secure and consoled. It’s great to think we’re the best and the center of the world. It even passes for holiness, but it isn’t holy at all.

Richard Rohr

Viktor Frankl discovered that while the body grows according to what it consumes, the soul grows by the measure of love it pours out.

… consider the possibility that a creature of infinite love has made a promise to us. Consider the possibility that we are the ones committed to, the objects of an infinite commitment and that the commitment is to redeem us and bring us home. That is why religion is hope. I am a wandering Jew and a very confused Christian, but how quick is my pace, how open are my possibilities, and how vast are my hopes
David Brooks The Second Mountain Page 270

View from the Front Porch
Bait & Switch Christianity – Richard Beck

To start, a story.
A few years ago a female student wanted to visit with me about some difficulties she was having, mainly with her family life. As is my practice, we walked around campus as we talked.

After talking for some time about her family situation we turned to other areas of her life. When she reached spiritual matters we had the following exchange:

“I need to spend more time working on my relationship with God.”

I responded, “Why would you want to do that?”

Startled she says, “What do you mean?”

“Well, why would you want to spend any time at all on working on your relationship with God?”

“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”

“Let me answer by asking you a question. Can you think of anyone, right now, to whom you need to apologize? Anyone you’ve wronged?”

She thinks and answers, “Yes.”

“Well, why don’t you give them a call today and ask for their forgiveness. That might be a better use of your time than working on your relationship with God.”

Obviously, I was being a bit provocative with the student. And I did go on to clarify. But I was trying to push back on a strain of Christianity I see in both my students and the larger Christian culture. Specifically, when the student said “I need to work on my relationship with God” I knew exactly what she meant. It meant praying more, getting up early to study the bible, to start going back to church. Things along those lines. The goal of these activities is to get “closer” to God. To “waste time with Jesus.” Of course, please hear me on this point, nothing is wrong with those activities. Personal acts of piety and devotion are vital to a vibrant spiritual life and continued spiritual formation. But all too often “working on my relationship with God” has almost nothing to do with trying to become a more decent human being.

The trouble with contemporary Christianity is that a massive bait and switch is going on. “Christianity” has essentially become a mechanism for allowing millions of people to replace being a decent human being with something else, an endorsed “spiritual” substitute. For example, rather than being a decent human being the following is a list of some commonly acceptable substitutes:

Going to church

Worship

Praying

Spiritual disciplines (e.g., fasting)

Bible study

Voting Republican

Going on spiritual retreats

Reading religious books

Arguing with evolutionists

Sending your child to a Christian school or providing education at home

Using religious language

Avoiding R-rated movies

Not reading Harry Potter.

The point is that one can fill a life full of spiritual activities without ever, actually, trying to become a more decent human being. Much of this activity can actually distract one from becoming a more decent human being. In fact, some of these activities make you worse, interpersonally speaking. Many churches are jerk factories.

… contemporary Christianity has lost its way. Christians don’t wake up every morning thinking about how to become a more decent human being. Instead, they wake up trying to “work on their relationship with God” which very often has nothing to do with treating people better.

I need to be a more decent human being…

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

Category: Notes Anthology

So Much To Think About

If you find yourself feeling useless, remember: it took 20 years, trillions of dollars, thousands of lives and four presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.

So Much To Think About

As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is a piece of cake!

So Much To Think About

I haven’t gotten anything done today. I’ve been in the Produce Department trying to open this stupid plastic bag.

So Much To Think About

So Much To Think About

We’ve treated our sinfulness as the most true thing about us as humans, rather than our identity as created and loved by God

Grandkids