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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 1 Comment

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune

Rebuke

Rebuke is not something that exists outside a good relationship, brought in only at crisis moments. Rebuke is not a radical moment of truth-telling, with a long list of stern indictments against a person who is significantly rebellious or who has tragically wandered away.

The Bible presents rebuke as a cord of ongoing honesty in an ongoing relationship, a normal part of loving your brother or sister daily. Rather than one big moment of scripted accusations, rebuke is many mini-moments of spontaneous, gentle confrontation.

Paul Tripp

Self Critique

Christianity has the internal tools and resources to think through new challenges, to engage in self-critique, and to bring itself to a more coherent and consensual account of its own faith. It is possible to integrate creeds, consequences, and contexts according to metrics given by the Lord Jesus.

As Augustine said:

“So anyone who thinks he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbour, has not yet succeeded in understanding them.”

Michael Bird

Power

Power is always tempted to reject reality. If you are on the margins of society, reality is pretty apparent.

Samuel Kimbriel

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

Lament

“The resurrection of the church begins with lament.” This is difficult for many Americans and others living in Western countries to grasp. Our culture teaches us to embrace a triumphalistic and success-oriented posture. Thus we avoid lament. Americans are prone to move quickly to try to fix things, and often we need to lament, mourn, and grieve first to fully experience and understand what has taken place. In cases of injustice and atrocities such as genocide, the only real response we can have at first is to lament. Scripture teaches us that we can’t move toward hope, peace, transformation, and reconciliation without going through sorrow, mourning, regret, and lament…. 

Lament is a demonstrative, strong, and corporate expression of deep grief, pain, sorrow, and regret. Lament and repentance deal with issues of the heart. They pave the way for outer change. Lament is a personal and corporate response to many things: evil, sin, death, harm, discrimination, inequality, racism, sexism, colonization, oppression, and injustice. It is about mourning the painful, shameful, or sorrowful situation, about confessing sin and complicity and sorrow, about calling God to intervene and to change the situation. Finally, lament is about offering thanksgiving and praise to God, knowing that God will intervene and bring change, hope, and restoration. 

Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill 

https://email.cac.org/t/d-e-eijhyg-tlkrtilrty-z

Right Worship

“right worship.” This is the very heart of our life. It is the true home and heart place of the Church’s teaching. The sublime institution of the Eucharist was a revelation of all that Christ had said and done, as well as its ultimate fulfillment on the Cross – all of it made manifest in what would become the central act of worship in the life of the Church. It is a dynamic presence of theosis (bread-become-God) set in our midst.

Fr Stephen Freeman

Grievance

We live in an era defined and overwhelmed by grievance — by too many Americans’ obsession with how they’ve been wronged and their insistence on wallowing in ire. This anger reflects a pessimism that previous generations didn’t feel. The ascent of identity politics and the influence of social media, it turned out, were better at inflaming us than uniting us. They promote a self-obsession at odds with community, civility, comity and compromise. It’s a problem of humility.

While grievance blows our concerns out of proportion, humility puts them in perspective. While grievance reduces the people with whom we disagree to caricature, humility acknowledges that they’re every bit as complex as we are — with as much of a stake in creating a more perfect union.

Frank Bruni NYT

View from the Front Porch

 Below is a letter I wrote to our Bible Study group in Louisville before we moved to Wilmore. Its message is a timely reminder.

As you probably know, I listen to a lot of sermons and lectures. I’m concerned that I may be a “cognitive behaviorist”. I ran across that term in a book that I just finished. I posted a comment on my blog about it. Here is what I posted:

Occasionally, I look at the mirror and get a glimpse of what I really look like and it isn’t always a pleasant experience. I would prefer to see myself in my mind’s eye. This morning as I was reading Scot McKnight’s “A Community Called Atonement”. As he addressed impediments to the atoning role scripture plays in the life of the church, I had a “glimpse in the mirror” experience. The subject was “cognitive behaviorist”.

“… cognitive behaviorists teach that if we get things right in our mind we will behave accordingly. With respect to spiritual formation … the theory goes like this: the more Bible we learn, the better Christian we should be; the more theology we grasp, the better we will live. … But we need to make this clear: knowing more Bible doesn’t necessarily make me a better Christian. I have hung around enough nasty Bible scholars and enough mean-spirited pastors to know that knowing the Bible does not inevitably create a better Christian. And I’ve known plenty of loving Christians who don’t know the difference Matthew and John, let alone the differences between Kings and Chronicles”

The cognitive behaviorist approach denies a biblical theory of the Eikon [that humans are created in the image of God]  We are made as Eikons, we cracked the Eikon (through our will), and the resolution of the problem of cracked Eikons is not simply through the mind. It is through the will, the heart, the mind and the soul – and the body, too. No matter how much Bible we know, we will not be changed until we give ourselves over to what Augustine called “faith seeking understanding”. The way of Jesus is personal, and it is relational, and it is through the door of loving God and loving others. The mind is a dimension of our love of God (heart, soul, mind, and strength), but it is not the only or even the first door to open.

I share that with you because I may have communicated in some way that knowing the Bible is all we need to be Christ followers. Knowing the Bible is important, but as stated above, it is not he only thing. Personally, I am trying to develop other dimensions of my relationship with Christ, my will, heart, soul, and body. Spiritual formation is not just about knowing the Bible. I would like to discuss this further when we get together.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 2 Comments

Advice

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Mary Schmich – ADVICE, LIKE YOUTH, PROBABLY JUST WASTED ON THE YOUNGChicago Tribune

Old Man thinking

I mowed the lawn today, and after doing so
I sat down and had a cold beer.
The day was really quite beautiful, and the drink facilitated some deep thinking.
My wife walked by and asked me what I was doing,
and I said, “Nothing.”
The reason I said “nothing” instead of saying “just thinking” is because she then would have asked, “About what?”
At that point I would have had to explain that men are deep thinkers about various topics, which would lead to other questions.
Finally I pondered an age old question: Is giving birth more painful than getting kicked in the nuts?
Women always maintain that giving birth is way more painful than a guy getting kicked in the nuts, but how could they know?
Well, after another beer, and some more heavy deductive thinking, I have come up with an answer to that question.
Getting kicked in the nuts is more painful than having a baby, and even though I obviously couldn’t really know, here is the reason for my conclusion:
A year or so after giving birth, a woman will often say, “It might be nice to have another child.”
But you never hear a guy say, “You know, I think I would like another kick in the nuts.”

I rest my case.
Time for another beer. Then maybe a nap.
Credit : Thewani Dewmi

Louisiana

Oh, Louisiana. You have so many more problems. According to U.S. News & World Report, you are one of the lowest-ranked states in the country:
RANKINGS SCORECARD

  • Crime & Corrections #50
  • Economy #49
  • Education #47
  • Fiscal Stability #41
  • Health Care #46
  • Infrastructure #49
  • Natural Environment #49
  • Opportunity #44

Be great for God

John Hannah of DTS. When I was a student there, Dr. Hannah would say, “You want to be great for God?” I would sit up in my chair and audible under my breath, “Yes!” He would then say, “Don’t quit, don’t fornicate, and you will be the only one left and you will be great.”

Losing

“Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. Defeat and losing clarify so much, or have the potential to do so. Embrace it. Don’t try to run away from it.” What he’s saying is that winning confirms what you already know, but losing reveals what you need to know. Like watching Jeopardy! reveals what you don’t know. The elite competitor cherishes that knowledge because it will push them to become better. Winning isn’t the ultimate goal. Better is.

Maurice Ashley – chess’s first Black American Grandmaster. via kareem Abdul Jabbar

Immigrants
there are 10.5 million (down from 12.2 million in 2007) illegal immigrants. According to the Migration Policy Institute, 62 percent have been here at least 10 years, 22 percent at least 20 years, 21 percent for less than five years. Twenty-eight percent own their homes.

The Contradiction

If God was once found among the condemned and cursed, how can we be so sure that this isn’t happening again right now as we speak? That is what I mean when I say that the cross stands as a “sign of contradiction” in the midst of history against any human presumption to know, with any finality, who is cursed and who is saved. We got it catastrophically wrong at Golgotha, and I don’t think anything has changed since.

Richard Beck

Path to peace

consider the words of the Chinese writer Lu Xun more than a century ago: “Hope is like a path in the countryside. Originally, there is nothing — but as people walk this way again and again, a path appears.”

Abide in Me

Jesus defines what abiding in him means by comparing it to the way he abides in the Father. “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (John 15:10). Jesus was clear that we abide in him by choosing to obey his commands. Simply put, abiding is an action, not an emotion.

Once we recognize how consumer spirituality focuses on our feelings, and how Jesus focuses on our behavior, the shortcomings of pop Christianity begin to make perfect sense. Many of our churches are not designed to help us actually do what Jesus commanded in the world, but to help us escape emotionally from the world—if only temporarily for a few hours on the weekend. We may leave church with a renewed sense of the divine, or we may even feel on fire for God, but few are bothered when these sentiments do not translate into any actual change in behavior. This is because consumer Christianity is designed to give us what we want rather than what we need. To paraphrase Roger Ailes’ credo, most people do not want to be righteous, they just want to feel righteous.

Skye Jethanti 

Pity

In my mind, pity isn’t even analogous to compassion.?Pity is just the paternalistic cousin of contempt. It allows us to see others as “those less fortunate than ourselves” (a term I loathe). Pity keeps the other person at a distance and me in a rarified state of satisfaction.… Compassion, on the other hand, draws us close. 

Nadia Bolz-Weber

I regularly receive emails from my Wisconsin friend that are part of an email chain of his friends. Usually they are mostly silly but humorous. Occasionally there is one that is too close to home and needs to shared.

Enjoy: Thoughts of a Confused Senior

So now cocaine is legal in Oregon, but straws aren’t. That must be frustrating.


Still trying to get my head around the fact that ‘Take Out’ can mean food, dating, or murder.


Dear paranoid people who check behind their shower curtains for murderers. 
If you do find one, what’s your plan?


The older I get, the more I understand why roosters just scream to start their day.

Being popular on Facebook is like sitting at the ‘cool table’ in the cafeteria of a mental hospital.


I too was once a male trapped in a female body…but then my mother gave birth.


If only vegetables smelled as good as bacon.


When I lost the fingers on my right hand in a freak accident, I asked the doctor if I would still be able to write with it. 
He said, “Probably, but I wouldn’t count on it.


I woke up this morning determined to drink less, eat right, and exercise. 
But that was four hours ago when I was younger and full of hope.


The biggest joke on mankind is that computers have begun asking humans to prove they aren’t a robot.


When a kid says “Daddy, I want Mommy” that’s the kid version of “I’d like to speak to your supervisor”.


It’s weird being the same age as old people.


Just once, I want a username and password prompt to say: “CLOSE ENOUGH”.

Last night the internet stopped working so I spent a few hours with my family. They seem like good people.


Some of my friends exercise every day. Meanwhile I am watching a show I don’t like because the remote fell on the floor.


I just got a present labelled, ‘From Mom and Dad’, and I know darn well Dad has no idea what’s inside.


Someone said, “Nothing rhymes with orange.”    I said, “No, it doesn’t.”


There’s a fine line between a numerator and a denominator.  Only a fraction of people will find this funny.


Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.


I have many hidden talents.  I just wish I could remember where I hid them.


Apparently, exercise helps you with decision-making.  It’s true. 

I went for a run this morning and decided I’m never going again.

STILL ON THE JOIRNEY

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

Borrow money from pessimists — they don’t expect it back. Steven Wright

the advantages of reading:

Reading transports us to worlds we would never see, introduces us to people we would never meet, and instills emotions we might never otherwise feel. It also provides an array of health benefits. Here are six scientific reasons you should be picking up more books.

  1. Reading reduces stress.
  2. Reading (especially reading books) may add years to your life.
  3. Reading improves your language skills and knowledge of the world.
  4. Reading enhances empathy.
  5. Reading boosts creativity and flexibility.
  6. Reading can help you transform as a person.

via Scot McKnight

Divine Love

Those who are self-sufficient remain outsiders to the mystery of divine love because they will always misuse it. Only the need of a beloved knows how to receive the need and gift of the lover, and only the need of a lover knows how to receive the need and gift of the beloved. 

Richard Rohr

Generosity

  • generosity starts by paying attention;
  • generosity demands that the gift be appropriate to the receiver;
  • a gift is not a gift unless it is released;
  • giving is reciprocal;
  • giving strengthens human relationships;
  • gifts change the people involved.

Michael Moynagh – https://amzn.to/3X9aCke

God doesn’t need us to accomplish his purposes.

Josh Graves

Protests

In the four years since mass protests broke out over the killing of George Floyd, cities across the US have settled more than 130 lawsuits involving police misconduct with payouts totaling nearly $150m to protesters, journalists, legal observers and bystanders, according to an analysis of the lawsuits published this week.

Mercy

The story comes to mind of the little fish swimming up to its mother, all in a panic: “Mama, Mama, what’s water? I gotta find water or I’ll die!” We live immersed in this water, and the reason we miss it is not that it is so far away but, paradoxically, so close: more intimate to us than our being itself.…  

[Mercy] is the water in which we swim. Mercy is the length and breadth and height and depth of what we know of God—and the light by which we know it.…  

The mercy of God does not come and go, granted to some and refused to others. Why? Because it is unconditional—always there, underlying everything. It is literally the force that holds everything in existence, the gravitational field in which we live and move and have our being. Just like that little fish swimming desperately in search of water, we, too—in the words of Psalm 103—“swim in mercy as in an endless sea.” Mercy is God’s innermost being turned outward to sustain the visible and created world in unbreakable love.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God

Religious Right

“Something was happening on the religious right, something more menacing and extreme than anything that preceded it. This was no longer about winning elections and preserving the culture. This was about destroying enemies and dominating the country by any means necessary. There was no rhetoric to appalling, no alliance too shady, no biblical application too sacrilegious. Letting go – aphiemi [Greek] – was not an option.”

Scot McKnight – The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

Modernity

…the problem that I want us to see is how Modernity works – and particularly how it works within us. We have internalized the myth of progress and utility. We not only believe that the world and the things around us can be better, but that it is our God-given task to make them so. We push this same cultural mandate into the Scriptures as well. We imagine the parable of the good stewards (those who invested their talents of money and made a profit) to be stories of how God praised and rewarded them for their productivity and usefulness. We fail to wonder what actually constitutes faithful stewardship in the Kingdom of God.

Fr Stephen Freeman

Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Susan Ertz, Anglo-American novelist (1887-1985)

Culture War Christians

“Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.”

…if we want to frank about it, culture war Christians are walking down a path that leads straight to hell. I don’t delight in that assessment, I’m just connecting the dots. I mean, Jesus is the guy who looked the moralism religious folk directly in the eye and said, “I assure you that the tax collectors and sex workers are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” I would not want to be a social media Pharisee wagging a finger at the world the day the Lord returns. I’d rather be sitting at a table being lambasted as the friend of sinners. Just sayin’…

And maybe this why, to return to the issue of mathematics, only “a few find it.” Because you can grow a church with the culture wars. A church fueled by resentment can become “mega.”  
I guess what I’m trying to say is this:
Size makes me suspicious. A wicked Christianity is a scalable Christianity. You can grow a rotten church.
Authentic Christianity is possible, but few find it. 
Richard Beck

View from the Front Porch

Misconceptions

misconceptions people have about the economy, including:

  • 55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the U.S. is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.
  • 49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.
  • 49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

 If you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.
Stephen Wright

Rich Food

The Rubyglow pineapple –— bred for its distinctive red exterior and its sweetness — costs $395.99 at Melissa’s Produce, a California-based seller of specialty fruit and veggies. It took Del Monte, a wholesaler which sells a variety of produce but specializes in pineapple, a decade and a half to develop the red-hued fruit. A limited crop was first available in China early this year. Recently, Del Monte decided to see how the item would fare in the United States, and Melissa’s starting selling it at the astronomical price.

via Scot McKnight

Something to take your mind off politics…

The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica — nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier” because its collapse could cause catastrophic sea level rise — is the world’s widest glacier and roughly the size of Florida. It’s also Antarctica’s most vulnerable and unstable glacier, in large part because the land on which it sits slopes downward, allowing ocean waters to eat away at its ice.
Thwaites, which already contributes 4% to global sea level rise, holds enough ice to raise sea levels by more than 2 feet. But because it also acts as a natural dam to the surrounding ice in West Antarctica, scientists have estimated its complete collapse could ultimately lead to around 10 feet of sea level rise — a catastrophe for the world’s coastal communities.
Many studies have pointed to the immense vulnerabilities of Thwaites. Global warming, driven by humans burning fossil fuels, has left it hanging on “by its fingernails,” according to a 2022 study.
This latest research adds a new and alarming factor into projections of its fate.

Hearing Loss

Our lives are filled with a barrage of sound from traffic, sirens, construction, noisy restaurants and concerts.

But one of the most insidious sources of noise exposure is our technology, namely earbuds and headphones. In 2023, over half a billion pairs of headphones were sold—according to Grand View Research—nearly double the number sold a decade ago. Many of us wear earbuds for hours at a time, sometimes all day long. And all that listening is taking a toll on our hearing.

According to the World Health Organization, over 1 billion young adults, ages 12 to 35, are at risk of permanent, avoidable hearing loss due to “unsafe listening practices.” By 2050, the WHO predicts that 1 in 10 of us will experience “disabling hearing loss.”

“This can sound alarming,” exposure scientist Rick Neitzel said in an interview with Manoush Zomorodi on NPR’s Body Electric. He said he has often been asked, “I don’t want to harm my hearing, is there anything I can do? The good news is, there is.”

[SMcK: No surprise here, but I say, Take ‘em out and listen for the birds. That’s all.]

Being known by God

“being known by God” meets a deep need so that when we share with each other the sharing, as is so often the case, is not desperate, needy, clingy, dependent, or attention-seeking. It’s simple honesty. We don’t spill our stuff for therapeutic catharsis. Church is not group therapy. It’s rather a place where honesty, transparency, and authenticity reign. Where new, bullshit-free patterns of social interaction are experimented with and practiced.

Richard Beck

a Divine Interruptability.

As followers of Jesus, we need to be interruptable. To be interruptable is to allow someone else’s concerns, agenda, and life to trump your own. To do this, we will also need to slow down to both allow for interruptions and to take the time to take up each other’s concerns. To allow space for, in the words of the New Testament, “taking up each others burdens.”

Mark Love 

Contract/Covenant

“A contract is about interests. A covenant is about identity. It is about you and me coming together to form an ‘us.’ That is why contracts benefit, but covenants transform.”

Rabbi Jonathan Sackst

Thy Kingdom Come

As we see in the life of Jesus, God’s kingdom does not come through coercion. It comes only by hearing and saying yes to Jesus’ invitation: Come follow me. In seeking coercive earthly power, the Church gives up her truest and most powerful culture-making tool: being a sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s world-healing love. When the Church tries to force the rule of God on a person or nation, we may temporarily get what we want, but we will no longer be the Church, the body of Christ. 

https://bishoptoddhunter.substack.com/p/a-christian-america-be-careful-what-86d

Temptation

When the Emperor wants to destroy you, it’s easy to remember who you are: you stand with Christ before Pontius Pilate. However, when the Emperor summons you to his side with words of flattery and approbation, and asks your advice for running the empire, we easily forget who we are.

Fr Stephen Freeman

Perspective

a 2016 poll found that more than 90 percent of Americans think that global poverty stayed the same or got worse over the previous 20 years. This is flat wrong: Arguably the most important trend in the world in our lifetime has been the enormous reduction in global poverty.

About one million fewer children will die this year than in 2016, and 2024 will probably set yet another record for the smallest share of children dying before the age of 5. When I was a child, a majority of adults were illiterate, and it had been that way forever; now we’re close to 90 percent adult literacy. Extreme poverty has plunged to just 8 percent of the world’s population.

Medical Care

Just 100 years ago, doctors could do nothing when President Calvin Coolidge’s 16-year-old son developed a blister on a toe while playing tennis on the White House court. It became infected, and without antibiotics the boy was dead within a week. Today the most impoverished child in the United States on Medicaid has access to better health care than the president’s son did a century ago.

Nicholas Kristof 

Heaven

I have no use for a heaven of clouds and streets of gold…I want to live where the dirt is good, the trees are full of fruit and all the beasts are my friends…and everyone knows who the King really is…

Phoenix Preacher

Infinitely Valuable

One Rabbi of the 19th Century said, “woe to the person who is unaware of their shortcomings, because they will not know what to work on. But even greater woe to a person who is unaware of their virtues, because they don’t even know what they have to work with.”

So, Held’s orientation for spiritual formation looks like this: “by virtue of the fact that we are created in the image of God, we are infinitely valuable, and we are loved. We do not need to earn our worth, and we do not need to earn God’s love. The spiritual life is a response to the fact that God loves us and we matter.”

Scot McKnight

View from the Front Porch

I recently came across this:

You will find a card in my bible dated Jan 4, 2003. What is recorded there is the product of an intensive personal search for God’s direction culminated by several days of retreat with Ann in the Smoky Mountains.  On one side you will find Psalms 37:3-8. 

It was from that passage God revealed to me instructions for the journey ahead.

  • Trust in the LORD and do good.
  • Delight yourself in the LORD.
  • Commit your way to the LORD
  • Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him 
  • Refrain from anger and turn from wrath 

I need to be reminded.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

I’m responsible for what I say, not for what you understand.

Lord Willing

…people often get triggered when the phrase “Lord willing” gets offered up as a petition. For example, we make travel plans and then append “Lord willing.” We say, “We’ll see you tomorrow. Lord willing.” As I’ve shared, a lot of ex-evangelical types get triggered by such expressions. The complaint is that if God “wills” for us to make the trip safely does that imply that God “wills” for others to die in car accidents? Is God providentially picking and choosing who dies in a car crash today?

In response to these complaints I’ve shared how “Lord willing” isn’t a theological argument about predestination but is, rather, a simple expression of humility. My life is not ultimately in my hands. I cannot control the future. I do not know what today holds for me. Expressions such as “Lord willing” bring my finitude into view, and keep me grounded in the moment I possess here and now. “Lord willing” isn’t a theological argument, it’s good mental and spiritual hygiene. 

Richard Beck

Contemplation

A phrase I used a lot back when I first started teaching contemplation was the idea associated with Albert Einstein that no problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it. It is so brilliant! It makes the case for contemplation almost better than anything.? 

I don’t believe I’m overstating it when I say that only the contemplative mind can help bring forward the new consciousness needed to awaken a more loving, just, and sustainable world. We need a practice that touches our unconscious conditioning where all our wounds and defense mechanisms lie. That’s the only way we can be changed at any significant or lasting level.

Because we’ve got to be honest — the dualistic, calculating, and judging mind is almost exclusively the way most of us Western people think. This gives us false superiority, false security, and false righteousness. Is it any wonder why our culture, politics, and religion are in the state that they are in?? 

Nevertheless, I still have hope. I always will. More and more people are discovering contemplation as a way of being, reconciling, and bridge-building guided by their inner experience of God. We’re not throwing out our rational mind, but rather we’re adding nondual, contemplative consciousness. When we have both, we’re able to see more deeply, wisely, and justly.?This creates humble people, loving people, and patient people.

Richard Rohr

Senior Citizens

The number of senior citizens is growing rapidly; individuals aged 65 and older increased from 39.6 million in 2009 to 54.1 million in 2019 (a 36% increase) and is projected to reach 94.7 million by 2060. This has come about as a result of advances in modern medicine and improved living conditions.

…over the last few years, reports not only in the U.S., but from around the world, have brought to light a major new pandemic that may reach deeply into the fabric and soul of our society: The usual respect and care of our aging population is decaying into a growing incidence of neglect and abuse. Increasing reports of horrific events that affect our aging population detailing prolonged suffering and premature death are now commonplace. 

Aging is already abusive enough, both physically and mentally. We lose control of our bodies, our minds start to fade in and out, and when we’re walking at a pace our bodies can manage, we’re treated like inconvenient speed bumps slowing down youthful traffic. We’re stereotyped as angry, impatient, technologically challenged, and sexless. Pretty much every TV show and movie shows the thought of seniors enjoying sex makes non-seniors cringe. Our only revenge is knowing that someday if they’re lucky, youth will have to endure the same demeaning attitudes.

The Growing Epidemic of Elderly Abuse

Scientific method

The scientific method is not foolproof. Mistakes can be made. That’s why scientists don’t accept studies until they can be consistently replicated. But the key is to base opinions on evidence, not desire. When a person holds an opinion and rejects all evidence that disputes it and can’t find legitimate proof to support it, that is not someone who should be a political leader. Or even a voter.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar

For Benedictine monk Augustin Belisle, simplicity provides a necessary self-emptying so we can dwell more fully in the presence of God.  

To live simply, simply to listen, to be simple in our response to persons and events, to speak with simplicity, to simplify our surroundings—simplicity helps to clear our vision. It dissipates the cloudiness which tends to fog our daily responses to God’s Word. Simplicity helps clear the confusion which can easily bombard us from so many directions…. It corrects the myopia we experience when we hold on to the possessive drive. This shortsighted obsession … adds to the burdens of others around us.… Simplicity works against our proclivities toward obsession—with self, guilt, weakness, and things. If we are not obsessed, we can be possessed by the sacred. If we know the emptiness which yearns to be filled—if we recognize the potential spiritual energy which lies within the heart—then we can feel at home with this emptiness. Our souls will be vibrated by it. To live the present in the presence of God is our aim.

don’t let the old man in.

Remember, the Old Man or Old Woman starts knocking around 50, encouraging you to be less patient, more sedentary, and more belligerent about your opinions being right. You start sentences with, “Kids today are too…” You can’t get rid of him—he’s camped out in your yard. But you can at least keep him out of your house.

There’s a lyric in Toby Keith’s song that makes me laugh: “Ask yourself how old you would be/If you didn’t know the day you were born.” Nice sentiment, but I would know my age without a calendar because my prostate would tell me. My joints would tell me. My wobbly memory would tell me. But that’s all part of the adventure, facing down the slings and arrows of aging and still finding joy in getting out of bed because you have things to look forward to. Keep the Old Man out, but don’t lock yourself in.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar

Fake Quote

In 2016, I discovered that this famous quote could not be found in any of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s works:

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

It is a popular quote and many people still attribute it to Bonhoeffer but there it can’t be found in any of his writings nor is there a record of it in his sermons or speeches.

Warren Throckmorton

Small church

A church must be small to be effective…because a real church is comprised of people who have met Jesus and in meeting Him have come to know who they really are…and have chosen to stop pretending they’re something else. In a small church we can see Jesus working in others and it gives us hope that we can be real and safe at the same time…

Phoenix Preacher

Infinitely Valuable

One Rabbi of the 19th Century said, “woe to the person who is unaware of their shortcomings, because they will not know what to work on. But even greater woe to a person who is unaware of their virtues, because they don’t even know what they have to work with.”

So, Held’s orientation for spiritual formation looks like this: “by virtue of the fact that we are created in the image of God, we are infinitely valuable, and we are loved. We do not need to earn our worth, and we do not need to earn God’s love. The spiritual life is a response to the fact that God loves us and we matter.”

Scot McKnight

View from the Front Porch

It is graduation season for the Crockett family. Ann and I are traveling this week to Tennessee and Mississippi and back to Lexington to attend graduations.

Grayson graduated with a Bachelors degree from Lipscomb University on 5/4. Meredith graduates with a her JD Law Degree from Ole Miss on 5/9. Jerod graduates with an MD from UK on 5/11. (Blake graduated from UK last year)

May concludes with grandson Tyler Gabehart’s marriage to Olivia Smith on 5/18.
We are proud grandparents.