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“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

Category: Notes Anthology

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

Energizer Bunny
GILBERT, Ariz. (AP) — As Forrest Gump in the Oscar-winning 1994 film of the same name, lead actor Tom Hanks abruptly trots to a halt after more than three years of nonstop running and tells his followers: “I’m pretty tired — I think I’ll go home now.”
Jacky Hunt-Broersma can relate. On Thursday, the amputee athlete achieved her goal of running 102 marathons in as many days, setting an unofficial women’s world record.
And she can’t stop/won’t stop, saying she’ll run two more for good measure and wrap up her challenge on Saturday with 104. “I might as well end April with a marathon,” she told The Associated Press.

postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) –
cognitive problems associated with surgery that persist well after the effects of anaesthetics have worn off. “At the moment, estimates suggest that the overall incidence of POCD in older patients can be as high as 50-80% at discharge, 20-50% at six weeks and 10-30% at six months post-surgery. 

Bradford Pear competition
A stinky but handsome and widely popular landscape tree has become an aggressive invader.
Callery pear trees create dense thickets that overwhelm native plants and bear four-inch spikes that can flatten tractor tires. The stench wafting from their blossoms has been compared to rotting fish, chlorine or a cheese sandwich left in a car for a week.

White Huse Correspondents Dinner
President Biden
— “Look, I know this is a tough town. I came to office with an ambitious agenda and I expected it to face stiff opposition in the Senate. I just hoped it would be from Republicans.”
— “Republicans seem to support one fella: some guy named Brandon. He’s having a really good year.”

Thoughts about sin
The absence of sin isn’t the same thing as righteousness. Righteousness is a fullness and a presence. Sin itself is an emptiness and has the character of non-being. The spiritual life is fulfilled in righteousness – true rightness of being – living in the image of God.
Fr Stephen Freeman

The moral and ethical standards of the Early Church
…were not based upon a laundry list of the deficiencies of secular society, but on the example and teaching of Christ and how that was made real or incarnate in the life of the Church.  It was not a legislated morality.  It was a lived morality.  The measure was not an abstract view of society or the body politic of the empire.  The measure was the person of Christ.  For the Early Church the Christian cosmos was two-fold.  It extended far beyond the borders of empire to the furthest extent of creation, while at the same time the entirety of that Christian cosmos could be found in the smallest gathering of believers in the most insignificant village.  It was dependent not on power or influence.  It was dependent on presence… the presence of Christ.
Duane Arnold Phoenix Preacher

Self Aware
It’s in confronting the worst aspects of ourselves and being open about them that we find growth and help inspire growth in others.
Mark Manson

Spirituality
About 3 in 10 Americans claim no religious affiliation, according to data from the Pew Research Center, and a similar number say religion has little influence in their life. Only a third of Americans attend church regularly, according to Pew. But only 4% identify as atheists. And many unaffiliated Americans have spiritual beliefs, according to Pew, even if they eschew organized religion.

View from the Front Porch
Living on life support
Life support replaces or supports a failing bodily function. When patients have curable or treatable conditions, life support is used temporarily until the illness or disease can be stabilized and the body can resume normal functioning.

With the recent addition of a pacemaker, it occurred to me that I very much living on life support. At first that was a bit frightening. “He’s on life support.” is not something you want to hear. Probably not all that unusual for 80 but reality is there are probably a half-dozen meds, devices etc which removed would put my life in jeopardy.
I am finding it comforting to know I’m on life support.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

Celebrity
No, I’m not a celebrity, but I do experience the temptation to think and act like one.
I see the dangers for others and myself. I know that success is a dangerous basis for self-esteem and a poor source for identity. It is unhealthy to think that productivity and ministry are the same thing. It is selfish to invest more time in your platforms rather than in the people who need you.
In my own head, I’m a celebrity, so how do I get outta here? How do I think and act like Christ’s servant and not like a guy who is destined to end up on Preachers in Sneakers?
Mike Bird

Partisanship
…if you think that most-partisan cohort is seething with anger because they suffer from painful oppression, think again. The data is clear. As the More in Common project notes, the most polarized Americans are disproportionately white and college-educated on the left and disproportionately white and retired on the right. 
The people disproportionately driving polarization in the United States are not oppressed minorities, but rather some of the most powerful, most privileged, wealthiest people who’ve ever lived. They enjoy more freedom and opportunity than virtually any prior generation of humans, all while living under the protective umbrella of the most powerful military in the history of the planet.
It’s simply an astonishing level of discontent in the midst of astonishing wealth and power.
David French

Death and Resurrection
I believe that Christians make a serious mistake when we begin to speak first about God rather than first about Christ and His death on the Cross and resurrection from the dead. It is a mistake because it presumes we know something about God that is somehow “prior” to those events. We do not, or, if we think we do, we are mistaken. The death and resurrection of Christ are the alpha and the omega of God’s self-revelation to the world. Nothing in all of creation is extraneous or irrelevant to those events.
This is to say that unbelief and faith are equally a part of the death and resurrection of Christ. The death and resurrection of Christ contain the utter and complete emptiness of hell, the threat of non-being and meaninglessness, the absurdity of suffering and of injured innocence. They also contain the fullness of paradise, the complete joy of existence and the ecstasy of transcendent love. Everything is there.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Price control
“…dollar prices are like the news. They tell you about something; they aren’t the thing itself. If we don’t like what we read in the news, changing the words on the page to say something better is just propaganda. And because falsified news, like a price control, isn’t truthful, it leads people to make bad decisions, damaging to them and to others. Ultimately, the only way to change news we don’t like is to get at what is causing the unpleasantness in the first place. In the case of runaway inflation, that cause is irresponsible management of the money supply.”
For Law & Liberty, Catherine Ruth Pakaluk

Gospel
The gospel is complete in and of itself. It is the perfect offering of the love of God for us. Though it is complete, it must be extended, and it must be extended with the same character with which it was first given. I am becoming more and more convinced that we can tell people about Jesus all day long and still not extend the gospel. Why? Because the gospel is more than simply telling people about Jesus. The gospel is more than an explanation about Jesus. It is a demonstration of Jesus. In fact, if you have to make a choice between telling someone about Jesus and showing them Jesus, you should probably do the latter. Why? Because someone may not remember what you said, but he or she will never forget what you did.
We’ve all heard the apocryphal quote oft attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, “Preach the gospel everywhere. If necessary use words.” Can we be honest? People tend to like this because they would rather avoid the awkwardness of talking about Jesus. Permit me a moment of unvarnished keeping-it-real truth-telling. The nature and character of the gospel do not tend to come through the deeds of a person who does not want to talk about Jesus. (And because I know I will be hearing from my dad about my use of the term “apocryphal,” I’ll get out in front of that by saying apocryphal means Saint Francis didn’t say it. For crying out loud, Saint Francis preached the Gospel to animals—with words!)

In summary, to share the gospel is a fully embodied act of ordinary yet supernatural love for other people. It involves our words, our deeds, our dispositions, and our overall posture and bearing toward other people. It means “I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church” (Col. 1:24b NRSV).
When we truly share the gospel, it always comes at a cost to ourselves, and yet it always makes us more than we were before. This is the why the power of the gospel is found only in the way of the cross.
J D Walt

The Problem with Faith
Elie Wiesel once said, “If I had not had faith, my life would have been much easier.” Faith in God, “faith in a faith” as it were, complicates evil because it begs for explanation in a world created, sustained, and overseen by a God who is good.
“Perhaps you are not looking for answers. You are looking for responses to your questions, to your life, for ways to live rather than ideas to espouse. Answers close things down; responses do not.”  Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom.

College admission essays
 It’s not fair for us to ask teenagers to describe their personalities. Teenagers are endearing but ridiculous people who can barely heat up a cup of ramen noodles and whose brains won’t be fully formed for two more presidential terms. Any teenager who is asked to describe themselves and doesn’t say, “I am scared and confused and my hormones have sort of turned me into a werewolf,” is lying.
Obviously, parents are writing many of these essays. Incredibly, many applications include the pointless step of making students check a box to verify that the application contains their own work, which is a verification system so ineffective that it makes the “I am 18” buttons on adult websites seem like the security at a Swiss bank.
College essays are arbitrary—exactly what’s being measured or why is unclear. They’re gameable—much like a pinewood derby car, many of the best ones are made by parents. They seem to benefit the wealthy—not every family can shell out big money to punch up an essay through a concerted program of expert tutelage and not-so-subtle negging. Say what you will about the SAT: The kid has to actually fill in the bubbles. They can’t take the test home and get help from Mom, Dad, teachers, the internet, and a gaggle of advisors that would seem excessive for a medieval child monarch.  

From 0.01% to 0.o0000.1%

You’ve come a long way baby!
Girls are now outperforming boys at nearly every level of education. They earn 60 percent of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and comprise 70 percent of high school valedictorians. Women are also dominating many workplaces. Women today hold a majority of the nation’s jobs, including 51.4 percent of managerial and professional jobs—up from 26.1 percent in 1980. They make up 54 percent of all accountants and hold about half of all banking and insurance jobs. As for men, they are dropping out at alarming rates. More prime age males are out of the labor force today than during the Great Depression.
https://www.thebulwark.com/tucker-carlson-and-the-crisis-of-masculinity/

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 1 Comment

Becoming “a People”
Persons don’t become a “people,” through buying more books and learning more information and trying harder to be a better version of their old self. We become a people by sharing deeply in one another’s lives, learning to love one another and be loved by one another into our true selves and our real lives. This is the chosen people, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, and God’s special possession. Indeed, this Church Jesus is building is God’s special possession in all the world, for this is how God saves the world. 
J D Walt

Confirmation Bias
The most reliable cure for confirmation bias is interaction with people who don’t share your beliefs. They confront you with counterevidence and counterargument. John Stuart Mill said, “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that,” and he urged us to seek out conflicting views “from persons who actually believe them.” People who think differently and are willing to speak up if they disagree with you make you smarter, almost as if they are extensions of your own brain. People who try to silence or intimidate their critics make themselves stupider, almost as if they are shooting darts into their own brain.
Jonathan Haidt

apokatastasis
A number of Church Fathers during the first four centuries of Christianity believed in what’s called apokatastasis, or “universal restoration” (Acts 3:21). [1] They believed that the real meaning of Christ’s resurrection was that God’s love was so perfect and so victorious that it would finally triumph in every single person’s life. They were so sure about this that their thought partially gave rise to the idea of purgatory as a place. In the dying process or even after death, God’s infinite love can and will still get at us! They felt no soul could resist the revelation of such infinite love. 
Could God’s love really be that great and that universal? I believe it is. Love is the lesson, and God’s love is so great that God will finally teach it to all of us. We’ll finally surrender, and God will win in the end. That will be God’s “justice,” which will swallow up our lesser versions. God—Love—does not lose!
Richard Rohr

Student Loan Forgiveness
About 43 million people in the U.S. have a combined total of $1.6 trillion in federal student loans, according to government estimates. 
An analysis published by the left-leaning Brookings Institution found nearly a third of all student debt is owed by the richest 20 percent of households, compared to just 8 percent held by the poorest 20 percent of households. 
Large-scale student debt forgiveness would represent a massive cash infusion to America’s wealthiest households, and a comparative dribble for the rest.
The average federal student loan debt balance last year was about $37,000. The most burdened borrowers are already eligible to be helped by certain income-based repayment programs, which cap monthly student debt payments at 10 percent of their discretionary incomes and eventually forgives the remaining balance, typically after 20 years. Since the debts can eventually be forgiven for these high-need borrowers, the benefits of even partial debt forgiveness would still go disproportionately to high-income borrowers.
According to a DataStream analysis of Labor Department data, the cost of a college education has increased 1,200 percent since 1980, compared to overall inflation of 236 percent.
The Dispatch

Religious Experience
Among the more pernicious ideas that inhabit our contemporary world is the notion that we are all isolated, independent, and alone. Even when we gather, we think of ourselves as but one among many. Among the most glaring exceptions to this form of thought, however, are sporting events. People attend a football game and declare when it is finished, “We won!” or “We lost!” We feel genuine joy at the first and sadness at the second. We do not say, “They won” (unless we mean the opposing side). This is not actually strange. Sport has, from its earliest beginnings, been a religious experience. That said, it is an experience that we fail to consider or understand. It is also a shallow, meaningless, religion.
The mystery of sport is that we have some sense not only watching, but participating in what takes place. The team’s victory is my victory. The emptiness of this mystery is that what is being “participated” in has no substance or true being. We feel robbed when a referee blows a call and the game ends with the wrong winner. At such a moment the emptiness of the game is revealed. It had no more meaning than a mistake.

This meditation on sport is a very vacuous way to get at the notion of true participation (of which it is but the least shadow).
Fr Stephen Freeman

Gospel
While the gospel is a message, it cannot be confined to messages. While the gospel is the truth, it cannot be captured by a series of propositional truths. Before the gospel is anything else, the gospel is God. Gospel means “good news,” and the good news is God. The good news is not that God loves us. The good news is that God is love. The good news is not that Jesus saves. It is that Jesus is himself salvation.

We think we truly comprehend God and the gospel because we have some comprehension of what God has done for us. This is good, as far as it goes, but it does not go anywhere near far enough. When our understanding of the gospel is limited to what God has done for us, our understanding of sharing the gospel will be limited to telling others what God has done for them.

To be sure, the gospel is the message of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, but in a far greater sense, the gospel is who Jesus Christ is to us and in us and through us for the world. The gospel is not a body of knowledge about who God is and what God has done. The gospel is actually knowing God. Jesus prayed, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

We have lived through a period of world history wherein the measure of mastery consisted in knowing about a subject. The Christian faith is not meant for this paradigm. Real Christianity can never be reduced to knowing about God. We must go on to knowing God. To think one can master the subject of God is the ultimate idolatry. Real Christianity is about understanding oneself as subject to God and becoming mastered by Jesus Christ.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not God’s solution to our sin problem. The gospel is that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting [our] sins against [us]” (2 Cor. 5:19). It is a reconciled relationship through which God lives in us and we in him. The gospel is not the knowledge but the knowing. The domain of knowledge is in a body of information. The domain of knowing is in the body of Jesus Christ.  And none of this is meant to eschew or despise knowledge, but rather to say that knowledge is a penultimate understanding. Ultimate understanding means knowledge about God must give way to knowing God.
J D Walt

Artificial Intelligence
Acusensus’ technology can also be used to identify “hot spots,” helping determine where officials may need to improve enforcement, make changes to infrastructure or adopt new legislation. In recent months, the company conducted demonstrations and evaluations for a number of local law enforcement agencies and state transportation departments.
During an 18-hour assessment in August of a high-risk corridor in Missouri that was averaging three and a half crashes a day, more than 11,000 vehicles drove by. At least 60 percent of the drivers were speeding; an average of 6.5 percent were using mobile phones, more than twice the national average; and just under 5.5 percent were engaged in two concurrent risky driving behaviors.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/technology/ai-road-car-safety.html?referringSource=articleShare

Cremation
So many ashes to ashes, so much dust to dust. Cremation is now America’s leading form of final “disposition,” as the funeral industry calls it — a preference that shows no sign of abating.
In 2020, 56 percent of Americans who died were cremated, more than double the figure of 27 percent two decades earlier, according to the Cremation Association of North America (CANA). By 2040, 4 out of 5 Americans are projected to chose cremation over casket burial, according to both CANA and the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA).

Tolerance
“I don’t like the word tolerate. Who am I to tolerate you? I prefer the word respect. I must respect you even if I do not agree with you. In fact, my disagreement may be an expression of my respect for you. If I truly respect you, don’t I own you my honesty?” Elie Wiesel
To understand others we have to understand the complexities and contradictions in our own selves. In learning our own complexity we form the possibility of learning from others. If we think we are always right, we have nothing to learn. The mark of learning is listening.
In discussing others we bring to the surface our bias. Wiesel thought the most inhuman person was still a human and we are called to the struggle to understand that person. It requires courage.
The “real tragedies” in society are not between right and wrong but between two rights. We cannot collapse the gap between us; in that gap is the possibility of creating a new peace and reconciliation. Differences express the gap; the gap is where the peace can take root.
Scot McKnight

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

New Normal
One of the worst things we’ve normalized is always being reachable: making people think they deserve an instant response to texts, emails, comments, and voicemails. We’ve conditioned other people (and ourselves) that our promptness is some kind of virtue, that the more quickly we respond, the more responsible we are. The expectation this places on each of us is unrealistic and it is not sustainable. We cannot be perpetually available and still be fully present. 
We are inundated with requests and needs and news. Now, more than ever, we need to withdraw to silence and stillness and solitude and disappear for a bit. Doing so isn’t a betrayal of our work or the people in our path, but a way of preparing us to be fully present to it all. In those times when we pull away from the crowd (if we can) our minds are recalibrated and our reserves replenished, and when we return to the world we are better able to offer our undivided selves.
John Pavlovitz

…we should be careful of issuing judgments without knowing the facts. That mobs are poor diviners of truth. That institutions have a duty to transcend the passions of the moment.
https://www.thebulwark.com/the-oberlin-culture-war-of-2016-finally-comes-to-an-end/

“Disagreements can feel like a war in which the fighters dig trenches on either side of any issue and launch their beliefs back and forth like grenades. You wouldn’t blame anyone involved for feeling as if they’re under fire, and no one is likely to change their mind when they’re being attacked. These sorts of fights might give everyone involved some short-term satisfaction—they deserve it because I am right and they are evil!—but odds are that neither camp is having any effect on the other; on the contrary, the attacks make opponents dig in deeper. If you want a chance at changing minds, you need a new strategy: Stop using your values as a weapon, and start offering them as a gift.”
Arthur Brooks

“You are, on the one hand, the most complex thing in the entire universe, and on the other, someone who can’t even set the clock on your microwave. Don’t overestimate your self-knowledge.” 
Dr. Jordon Peterson

…there’s obvious danger in freely expressing your thoughts. Most of us have deep knowledge about a narrow set of topics and shallow knowledge (at best) about most everything else. Speak constantly and you will expose your ignorance. It’s guaranteed. 
David French

“Forgetfulness leads to exile, memory to redemption.” Morally deficient leaders want the past forgotten; the morally sensitive leaders want never to forget lest we end up there again.
Hasidic saying

In our world, disagreement is not about a difference of perspective, but a conflict between fundamental goodness and badness. With little room for forgiveness, it is easy to become narcissists of opinion. Our entire moral self-image becomes wrapped up in correctness, and anyone who disagrees with us must not only be wrong, but morally deficient. We so fiercely want to be “good” that even considering the perspective of another is itself a morally polluting act.
Emma Camp

Living in a fog
My retirement life has brought a metaphor from driving experiences into sharp focus. It’s noting the difference between life viewed “in the windshield” versus life viewed “in the rear-view mirror.” The first rushes towards you as you speed ahead, giving but a short vision of what’s to come. The second recedes slowly into the distance, accompanied by the memory of the long road that has gone before. Life in the windshield is, to my mind, particularly an experience of youth. The world and the future hurry towards them and seem to be, by far, the most important part of the road. The rear-view mirror is the world of the aging. What I remember (as I near 70) is far more important than what is yet to come – there’s so much more of it. In that light, the doctrine of divine providence often seems more obvious to the elderly than it does to the young. We stand at different points of observation.

There is, though, the problem of the “fog.” When driving into a heavy fog, both what is ahead and what is behind are obscurred. We drive at something approaching a state of blindness. I think there are moments in history (as well as our personal lives), when the fog encloses us and both the providence of the past as well as the way forward are hidden. …
Those concerns reveal the “modernity” in my own heart. Our deep habits, nurtured in so many ways, tend towards management. We imagine ourselves to be in charge of history’s outcomes. As such, we nurture within ourselves a “market” for information. News of the world, of events, and trends seem (to us) to be required reading and listening. We even think to ourselves, “How will I know how to pray if I don’t know what is going on?” The corrollary to that thought is, “How will God know what is going on if I don’t tell Him?”
Fr Stephen Freeman
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2022/04/13/life-in-the-fog-of-the-world/

View from the front porch
It has been disappointing to not have opened the front porch yet. The weather has not cooperated and I have sorely missed mornings on the porch. Perhaps opening the porch this weekend will change the weather. Looking forward to some much need inspiration.

Still on the Journey

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

Christian Witness
There is a beautiful story from years ago about an interview Dan Rather did with Mother Teresa. He was asking her about prayer. Here’s how I remember it. Rather asked Mother, “When you pray, what do you say to God?” She replied, “I don’t say anything. I listen.” He then prodded further, “What then does God say?” She responded, “God doesn’t say anything. He listens.” Then she wryly added, “And if you don’t understand that, I can’t explain it.” 

Listening to the Bible
…one of my big problems with both progressive and evangelical Christians is that neither group listens to the Bible as each already knows exactly what the Bible has to say. Why read the book when you already know all the answers? Both groups pin Jesus in the case as a specimen of their preferred politics. Neither group realizes that Jesus is their critic and crisis.
Richard Beck

Beauty and Wonder
Over the years, I have come to believe more deeply in the importance of regularly engaging with things that move us to awe and wonder. So much of our early adult years can be spent trying to nail things to the floor (theological, relational, philosophical, spiritual, or otherwise) that simply cannot be wrangled in that way. Engaging with beauty and wonder pries our grip off of our felt need to lock things in so we can control them. Russ Ramsey

Context
…what I mean by context is, “stuff you might want to know if you were going to have a compelling conversation about stuff going on,” or, “stuff people leave out of the conversations I see on TV.”
Jonah Goldberg

Christian ? Witness
A gentleman in this park invited us to join (after paying the cost of course) a group for Easter dinner outside over by the club house. This guy, I’m sure you’ve seen/maybe met, was in charge of this Lord’s Luncheon to break bread together and I’m sure he would lead us all in a lengthy Easter prayer. He proudly touts his christian faith. After asking me if I wanted tickets (following the cable/internet public meeting), I said I would speak to my bride and seek her opinion. I did mention we would be just getting back from Disney, as it is Barb’s birthday wish to go there for the 50 year  anniversary. Before I could even finish, I was bashed and ridiculed as to why would anyone go to Disney! He stated, and I quote,” the place is full of gays and those LGBTQ people, I will never go there and I hope DeSantas closes the place down.”
We are not attending the Easter dinner, and we are going to Disney to support those folks. 
We have to have a name for the masses of Christian wanna bees. Christian is not what they are.
A non- wannabe Christian friend

Rembrandt’s Transformation

Try to put well in practice what you already know; and in so doing, you will in good time, discover the hidden things which you now inquire about. Practice what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know.”
In his younger work, he flexed for the viewer, showing off his technical abilities, which were unmatched. To think a man in his mid-twenties painted The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple is hard to get my mind around. As impressive as it is, however, it’s not that intimate. But later, he paints the same scene again, only this time he is an old man, approaching death. He has suffered. He has lost a wife, three children, his fortune, and reputation. This version is intimate, warm, and simple. In his early painting, he wanted to show us what he could do, but in the later version, it’s as though all the old man wants to do is hold Jesus. Those two paintings come together to tell the story of one man, and how youthful self-assurance gives way humility and dependence—and often by way of suffering.

Capturing it all.
Some years back, my wife and I stood beside the Grand Canyon. I had bought a small camera for the trip and felt a deep frustration as I tried to take pictures. Every picture I took, no matter how I pointed the camera, no matter how I adjusted the lens, was a failure. Every picture was entirely accurate. However, no picture could capture what I saw and felt. The Grand Canyon, and the experience of standing on its edge, cannot fit in a standard camera (if any). I think that reason is somewhat like that. It can do an amazing job of expressing and understanding certain things. It cannot, however, do everything. If there is a “reason” that can comprehend the whole of things, then it is unknown to human beings.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Reenactment
This past week we traveled to Abilene, Texas for Ann’s brother and wife’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration. Ann and I met on our first day of college at Abilene Christian College. We had a great celebration and visit with family and friends. Walking around the campus of Abilene Christian University, we located the place where we had our first kiss. We reenacted the event. It was as good as the first one 62 years ago. Actually, it was better.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY