Category: Notes Anthology

Hope for 2022
Compared to 2020, weekday prime-time viewership declined 38% at CNN this year, 34% at Fox and 25% at MSNBC, says Nielsen. The drop was 12% at ABC World News Tonight and CBS Evening News; and 14% at NBC Nightly News. 

As Jonah Goldberg recently quipped:
“That’s the thing about choosing the wrong path at a fork in the road—you usually have to walk a long way before you realize the error”. Hopefully, 2022 is long enough.

Gluttony
If you’re in a room where everyone is a greedy glutton hoarding all the food they can grab, gluttony becomes a matter of rational self-interest. Get yours as quickly as possible or you get nothing.
Jonah Goldberg

Wisdom
Maybe what we lack isn’t love but wisdom. It became clear to me that I should pray above all else for wisdom.
We all want to love, but as a rule we don’t know how to love rightly. How should we love so that life will really come from it? I believe that what we all need is wisdom. I’m very disappointed that we in the Church have passed on so little wisdom. Often the only thing we’ve taught people is to think that they’re right—or that they’re wrong. We’ve either mandated things or forbidden them. But we haven’t helped people to enter upon the narrow and dangerous path of true wisdom. On wisdom’s path we take the risk of making mistakes. On this path we take the risk of being wrong. That’s how wisdom is gained.
Richard Rohr

Insanity
? Many Americans have been vaccinated but continue to act as though they have not.
? Many other Americans have not been vaccinated but act as though they have.
? Many of those who got vaccinated hate Donald Trump, who considers the vaccines to be one of his greatest achievements.
? Many who refuse to get vaccinated love Donald Trump.
What do these facts tell us? They tell us that we, as a nation, are insane. But we knew that.
Dave Barry

“identity-protection cognition.” 
As humans in a tribe we conform to our tribe so as not to be alienated from our tribe. To alter our minds from our tribe means alienation and excommunication, and no one wants that kind of liminality.
Jonathan Haidt said this way: Our minds “unite us into teams, divide us against other teams, and blind us to the truth.”
Group think then can be blind and prevent us from finding truth but all the while we are convinced we are entirely reasonable and right. When this occurs the whole tribe “loses touch with reality” and truth. When this occurs cults form and we get “paranoid alternative realities.”
Scot McKnight

The smartest people
Our culture champions the mind. We think of ourselves as far more brilliant than those who lived in the past and certainly more aware and understanding of the processes and realities of the world around us. In short, we think we’re the smartest people who have ever lived. In point of fact, we have narrowed the focus of our attention and are probably among the least aware human beings to have ever lived.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Fruitcake
Two friends from Iowa have been exchanging the same fruitcake since the late 1950s. Even older is the fruitcake left behind in Antarctica by the explorer Robert Falcon Scott in 1910. But the honor for the oldest known existing fruitcake goes to one that was baked in 1878 when Rutherford B. Hayes was president of the United States.
What’s amazing about these old fruitcakes is that people have tasted them and lived, meaning they are still edible after all these years. The trifecta of sugar, low-moisture ingredients and some high-proof spirits make fruitcakes some of the longest-lasting foods in the world.
Scot McKnight

Psychics
Within a few blocks of the University of Washington in Seattle, there are not one but two establishments offering psychic services. At one or both, you can obtain palmistry, fortune-telling, aura cleansing, crystal readings, dream analysis, chakra balancing, psychic aura readings, past life regressions, and tarot card readings. Every American city has similar listings in Google Maps for professional psychics, including 20 in Philadelphia, 17 in Memphis, and 18 in St. Louis. The Pew Research Center reports that fully 41% of all Americans believe in psychics.
The same surveys indicate that 29% of Americans believe in astrology, and many of them seek astrological guidance for their lives. They can easily download the sophisticated apps promising personalized advice that have replaced the simple horoscopes earlier generations read in newspapers. Co-Star, one of the leading apps, says it “uses NASA data, coupled with the methods of professional astrologers, to algorithmically generate insights about your personality and your future.” According to a brand promotion company, the “mystical services market”—which includes but reaches well beyond astrology apps—totals $2.1 billionin the U.S.
This movement is heightened among young people. Many social trends gather steam initially in the young, and that is certainly true with respect to religion. Within Generation Z—generally defined as people born after the mid-to-late 1990s—the percentage who do not affiliate with a religion has reached an all-time high. Among those who do hold a religious identity, attendance at worship services has fallen off a cliff.
Young people are also disproportionately represented among the enthusiasts for astrology, Tarot cards, and various forms of New Age mysticism. They frequently pair their excursions into the paranormal with standard religious activities such as prayer. To put it simply, DIY religion has meant for young people a substantial retreat from religious participation in an organized community but no major withdrawal from religious and mystical belief.
Mark Allen Smith
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-rise-of-do-it-yourself-religion

“To see what is in front of one’s nose,” George Orwell said, “needs a constant struggle.” 

Still on the Journey

Progress ?
On October 22, 2020, the United States was averaging, per The New York Times, about 62,000 new COVID-19 cases, 45,700 hospitalizations, and 800 new COVID-19 deaths per day in what was the early stages of the country’s third wave that would go on to kill hundreds of thousands of people. One year later, all three of those figures are worse: 76,500, 57,700, and 1,500 as of Wednesday, respectively. 

What’s wrong with America? bottled water!
Susan McWilliams’ observation that 2006 marked a terrible turn in American civic life. That was the year when Americans started drinking bottled water more than beer. “Why is this important?” she asked. “It’s important because beer is a socially oriented beverage, and bottled water is a privately oriented one.” Beer commercials have happy fun people doing stuff together. Bottled water commercials, meanwhile, “tend to include lone individuals climbing things and running around by themselves, usually on a beach at sunrise—even though they are not being chased.”
Jonah Goldberg

Surrender
In A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson says, “Until your knees finally hit the floor, you’re just playing at life, and on some level you’re scared because you know you’re just playing. The moment of surrender is not when life is over. It’s when it begins.” [1] It is entirely cliché, but this was exactly my experience. The moment I finally let my knees hit the floor was when I finally stopped playing at life, and every bit of good that’s come to me since then stems from this reversal of opinion on surrender.
Surrender is the strongest, most subversive thing you can do in this world. It takes strength to admit you are weak, bravery to show you are vulnerable, courage to ask for help. It’s also not a one-time gig; you don’t just do it once and move on. It’s a way of existing, a balancing act. For me, it looks like this: I pick up the baton and I run as far as I can, and I hand it over when I’m out of breath. Or actually maybe it’s like: I’m running with the baton, but the Universe is holding on to the other half of it, and we have an agreement that I’ll figure out the parts I can and hand over the parts I can’t.
Holly Whitaker via Richard Rohr

How to see
At its best, Western Christianity is dynamic and outflowing. But the downside is that this entrepreneurial instinct may have caused it to be subsumed by culture instead of transforming culture at any deep level. In our arrogance and ignorance, we also totally trampled on the cultures we entered. We became a formal and efficient religion that felt that its job was to tell people what to see instead ofhow to see.
Richard Rohr

I can do nothing
I can recall years ago that in my very first confession as an Orthodox Christian, the priest told me to pray: “Apart from You, I can do nothing.” I did, but I misunderstood it for many years. My twist was quite subtle. When I prayed this I meant, “I can’t do anything without your help.” This is somehow not the same as “I can do nothing.” The first kept directing my attention to the “anything” I could do if God helped me. However, my attention needed to be on the “nothing.” It is our emptiness and failure that bring us face-to-face with our shame, and in that moment, face-to-face with the God who alone can truly cover our shame and comfort us.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Elderly
Earlier today, a friend posted on Facebook about an experience he’d just had on the Upper West Side of Manhattan: “I heard a guy who looked to be in his 20s say that it’s not a big deal cause the elderly are gonna die anyway. Then he and his friend laughed … Maybe I’m lucky that I had awesome grandparents and maybe this guy didn’t but what is wrong with people???”

What does it say about our society that people think of the elderly so dismissively—and moreover, that they feel no shame about expressing such thoughts publicly? I find myself wondering whether this colossal moral failure is exacerbated by the most troubled parts of our cultural and economic life. When people are measured and valued by their economic productivity, it is easy to treat people whose most economically productive days have passed as, well, worthless.

From a religious perspective, if there is one thing we ought to teach our children, it is that our worth as human beings does not depend on or derive from what we do or accomplish or produce; we are, each of us, infinitely valuable just because we are created in the image of God. We mattered before we were old enough to be economically productive, and we will go on mattering even after we cease to be economically productive.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/respect-old/607864/

Friendship precedes fellowship
…friendship precedes fellowship. Yes, they want fellowship but they have big doubts sitting in a nice chair on Sunday in silence (or some singing or saying words from the liturgy) can legitimately be called fellowship. And if it doesn’t start with friendship it can never be fellowship.
Scot McKnight

Kate Durie 1950-2021
Kate’s Christian faith was never based on already found answers. Her mind was too sharp, her mood more interrogative than declarative. She had grown beyond the various iterations of Christian faith too ready to settle for certainty, and too impatient of mystery, too worried about not knowing. In the theological sense Kate loved mystery, and refused steadfastly to reduce God to manageable proportions or propositions. She trusted the humanity of Jesus, his tears and his anger, his compassion and patience, the sheer gratuitous fun of turning water into the best ever wine. She could entrust herself to the Lord of all faith, whose strong hands were skilled at the plane and the lathe – Christ, the master carpenter, using those tools that shape and form us towards Christlikeness.
Jim Gordon

The problem with our lives is that we cannot solve them. We can only live them. 
Kate Bowler

Perhaps you noticed I have not written any blog posts recently. Without any warning the evening of July 29 I experienced excruciating pain in my chest and abdomen. A 911 call and subsequent trip to the emergency room was the beginning of a perilous journey that included a real possibly of not surviving, miraculous surgical intervention, multiple days in ICU on a ventilator. After ups and downs of recovery, discharge and re-admission, six days in rehab, I returned home on August 28, to continue my recovery.

What I am thinking about at this time is gratitude. Gratitude for God’s providential care. Except for inexplicable circumstances, I would not be alive. I am grateful for the enumerable prayers that were offered and answered. Ann’s constant presence and care sustained me. Though memories are scant, I was aware of the presence and voices of family encouraging and assisting.

This experience has given me much to think about, but I struggle to write. Hopefully, as recovery continues my motivation and thinking will improve. I’m not sure what what normal will be for me as I recover, but there is much to be grateful for.

Still on the journey.