So much to think about…
Thomas Merton wrote, “A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.”
I just say what everyone else is thinking.
There’s a reason people don’t always say what they’re thinking. Most of us have thoughts that scare even ourselves. We also often have initial intense and emotional reactions that we know aren’t how we will feel in a few minutes. And we have the capacity to be forgiving, given some time to think things through. Most importantly, we have the intelligence to know the gap between what we think and what we say is like knee cartilage that keeps the knee moving smoothly rather than bones grinding against each other. We think before we speak because we’re mature enough to understand consequences and humble enough to know our initial thoughts can be tainted by unflattering emotions.
When an uncomfortable truth needs to be told, we should convey it with compassion. The goal is to help people see the truth so they can change, not bully them so they retreat even further.
Kareem Abdul Jabbar
Categorical thinking
…categorical thinking makes it harder to see people as individuals. Better to see a person first as a unique individual, with their own distinctive way of observing and being in the world, and then to see them also as a member of historic groups, and then to understand the way they fit into existing status and social structures. To see a person well, you’ve got to see them in all three ways.
David Brooks
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
Comedian Larry Miller once observed, “If [women] knew what [men] were really thinking, they’d never stop slapping us.”
Overthinking
Somewhere between overthinking and underthinking is responsible and responsive thinking. As a Christian who tries to be a thinking Christian I’ve always taken seriously the discipleship of the intellect, the Christian mind, or as Anselm called it “faith seeking understanding.”
Christian faithfulness is the result of cumulative choices, some of them anguished and even conflicted. But gradually, choices become consistent, behaviour begins to reflect character, and character reveals the characteristics of the follower of Jesus. We inhabit the values and principles of the Kingdom of God. When that happens much of the thinking is done, and the decisions we make as Christians become habit. That’s not to say following Jesus becomes merely a habit; it is to say that as those called to participate in the life of Christ, through the transforming grace of Christ crucified and risen, enabled by the energising of love of God, we are drawn into the communion of the Holy Spirit and into participation in the mission of the Triune God of love.
So neither overthinking or underthinking, we are called to know and live in the mind of Christ, to offer ourselves as living sacrifices which is our reasonable worship, to love God with all our heart, and soul and body, and yes, our minds.
Jim Gordon
Nonduality thinking
nonduality: a way of thinking, acting, reconciling, boundary-crossing, and bridge-building based on inner experience of God and God’s Spirit moving in the world. We’re not throwing out our rational mind, but we’re adding nondual, mystical, contemplative consciousness. When we have both, we’re able to see more broadly, deeply, wisely, and lovingly. We can collaborate on creative solutions to today’s injustices.
…read the mystics with an attitude of simple mindfulness, the insights and practices they share can equip us with a deep and embracing peace, even in the presence of the many kinds of limitation and suffering that life offers us. From such contact with the deep rivers of grace, we can live our lives from a place of nonjudgment, forgiveness, love, and a quiet contentment with the ordinariness of our lives—knowing now that it is not ordinary at all!
Richard Rohr
Cognitive Overload
“Studies of cognitive overload suggest that the real problem is that people who are thinking about rules actually have diminished capacity to think about solving problems.”
Phillip K Smith
Thinking like a golfer
Bad shot? We tell ourselves it has to be the balls or the clubs, which is why we’ll purchase a dozen balls for $50 despite knowing we’re likely to lose at least two or three a round because we’re not as good as we think we are, or we’ll spend thousands on irons because we believe they will make our shots travel longer and straighter without the required practice time. Poor drive? Has to be the driver, which is why we’ll spend hundreds to replace the one we purchased the year before.
Jim Trotter
Fundamentalism is binary thinking.
Fundamentalism will continue to live in the body of those who are being healed from fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism is a pattern of thinking and relating; it is the belief that a certain person or group of people know the right way to think, act, talk, relate, believe, and engage with the world and that those who do not subscribe to this worldview are lesser than, dangerous, pitied, hard to relate to, or to be avoided.
The process of healing, which is not a moment in time, but a lifelong journey, entails the willingness to embrace choice. The choice to leave fundamentalism, to deconstruct one’s past, and to reconstruct one’s Christian faith “can feel all-consuming.” The journey is worth it.
Humility
Humility is not thinking lowly of yourself; it’s an accurate perception of yourself. It is the ability to cast aside illusions and vanities and see life as it really is.
David Brooks
Thinking in different ways
They are also learning to think in different ways. The psychologist Jerome Bruner argued that there are two modes of thinking: paradigmatic mode and narrative mode. Put simply, paradigmatic mode is making the case for something; narrative mode is telling stories.
Most of us spend our careers getting good at paradigmatic mode—making arguments, creating PowerPoint presentations, putting together strategy memos, writing legal briefs. But in plotting the next chapter of their lives, the fellows need to update their story, which requires going into narrative mode. They have to weave a tale of how they grew and changed, going back to childhood.
Thinking
Most of us think we are our thinking, yet almost all thinking is compulsive, repetitive, and habitual. We are forever writing our inner commentaries on everything, commentaries that always reach the same practiced conclusions. That is why all forms of meditation and contemplation teach a way of quieting this compulsively driven and unconsciously programmed mind.
Richard Rohr
Evolutionary Thinking
Evolutionary thinking is, for me, the very core concept of faith, where we trust that God alone steers this mysterious universe, where there is clearly much hidden from us and much still before us—and where “eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and the human heart has not conceived, what God has prepared for those who love God” (1 Corinthians 2:9).
Evolutionary thinking is contemplative thinking. It leaves the full field of the future in God’s hands and agrees to humbly hold the present with what it only tentatively knows for sure. Evolutionary thinking agrees to knowing and not knowing simultaneously. It sends us on a trajectory, where the ride is itself the destination, and the goal is never clearly in sight. To stay on the ride, to trust the trajectory, to know it is moving, and moving somewhere always better, is just another way to describe faith. We are all in evolution all the time, it seems to me.
Richard Rohr
Thinking
There are a lot of people who struggle with God simply because they are tenacious in following the theological thread to the logical and bitter end. A lot of us think our way into faith problems. It’s not that we think too much, just that we insist that people face up to the logical assumptions and consequences of their beliefs.
Richard Beck
Thinking about an infinite God
…if there is a God great enough to merit your anger over the suffering you witness or endure, then there is a God great enough to have reasons for allowing it that you can’t detect. It is not logical to believe in an infinite God and still be convinced that you can tally the sums of good and evil as he does, or to grow angry that he doesn’t always see things your way.
Timothy Keller
thinking about life as a journey
…reminds me to stop trying to set up camp and call it home. It allows me to see life as a process, with completion somewhere down the road. Thus I am freed from feeling like a failure when things are not finished, and hopeful that they will be as my journey comes to its end.I want adventure, and this reminds me that I am living in it. Life is not a problem to be solved, it is an adventure to be lived.
John Eldridge
Smart People
Thinking that people somewhere else are special because they do stuff that humans everywhere do is one of the weirder mistakes a lot of smart people make.
Jonah Goldberg
Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself. You simply cannot do that in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.
Just thinking..
Still on the Journey
