So Much To Think About

The Unknown
We have been granted the capacity for constant transcendence, as an antidote, but frequently reject that capacity, because using it means voluntarily exposing ourselves to the unknown. We run away because we are afraid of the unknown…
Jordon Peterson

“When psalmist or prophet calls Israel to lift their eyes to the hills, or behold how the heavens declare the glory of God, or to listen to that unspoken tradition which day passes to day and night to night, of the knowledge of the Creator, it is not proofs to doubting minds which he offers; it is spiritual nourishment to hungry souls. These are not arguments—they are sacraments.”
Sir George Adam Smith

Some might need to hug a cow:
You may have heard of goat yoga, but cow hugging?
It’s one of the more popular activities at The Gentle Barn and involves just that, hugging a cow.
The Gentle Barn is a nonprofit that provides sanctuary for abused animals, which in turn play a role in therapy sessions for humans going through tough times.
Ellie Laks, who founded The Gentle Barn in 1999, discussed the organization’s unique approach to healing during an appearance on “Morning in America”.
“Sometimes humans are going through hard times where they don’t want to talk,” Laks said. “They don’t want to be vulnerable. They don’t want to be open. Or sometimes there are just are no words because you’re in too much pain.”

Voting Reform
Rep. Don Young’s death after nearly five decades in Congress has sparked perhaps the strangest congressional race in America, the Washington Post’s Dan Zak reports from Alaska. Recent voting reforms in the state mean that Alaskans are set to cast “four votes, using two methods, over three time periods, in two races, for the same seat” — 

Wrong about Something
If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that everything and everyone will, at some point, be wrong about something very significant. It doesn’t matter where your politics are, what your country is, what your personal beliefs or risk tolerances are—at some point in the last three years, you and I were wrong about something. And, in many cases, horribly wrong. Therefore, it’s safe to assume that you and I will be horribly wrong about something again. 
You would think this would humble people a little bit and encourage them to withhold judgment about things. But it appears to have done the opposite instead. 

Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.”  But I’d like to add to Hanlon’s Razor something I’ll call Manson’s Addendum: “…and pretty much everything you see or read is some degree of stupidity.” 
But as the world becomes highly polarized and angrier and disinformation spreads in every direction, I think the ability to reserve moral judgment and be slow to draw conclusions may become the next critical new skill necessary to survive in the Twitter-driven world. 
Mark Manson

JOY
Tonight I sit by a campfire with my husband. The JOY of the evening is the opportunity to spend a little time away from life. As always, the veil of sadness is present as the realization that the last time I went camping all of my children were not only alive; they were all with us.
Upon arrival, my mind instinctively felt the need to holler out to the kids to go gather firewood. In a fraction of a second I remembered our children are not with us; those days are gone. So, off I went to complete the task previously done by my children.
I walked through the woods gathering firewood; leaves crunching and twigs snapping with every step. In the silence of nature my mind could literally hear, with great clarity, the voices of my children as they sounded when we were last together; together as a complete family. “Hey, Mom! I found a good one!” “Mooooommmm! He took my stick!”
Beautiful memories representing the dichotomy of JOY and grief. Do I choose to focus on the JOY or or do i choose to focus on the grief? The answer is both. I cling to both for one without the other leaves a void. Grief without JOY is devastating. JOY without grief hollow. A healthy mix of the two affords a broken heart the opportunity to live a beautiful life despite the pain.
Tonight I sit by the fire; I choose to savor the past AND the present. Me, my husband, grief, and JOY. The four of us sitting by a campfire, drinking wine from Solo cups, hanging out, loving life, reminiscing, and making new memories every chance we get.
Melissa Gabehart

Spirit of the Age
…the spirit of the age works through highly functional impatient activism with the attitude, “Don’t just stand there, do something!” In contrast, the Spirit of Jesus works through deeply submitted atunement with the adage, “Don’t just do something, stand there.” It so often takes the posture of standing there, or kneeling there, to even begin to comprehend the transcendent interpolation taking place, and what it might mean. Let’s remember on the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter wanted to hurry and build three tabernacles. Meanwhile, the voice of God said simply and incisively, “This is my son, whom I love. Listen to him!” 
J D Walt

Now I know what the problem is…
“Pretty soon it will be women preachers, social justice, then racism, then [critical race theory], then victimization because the world is a ball and chain, and when you’re hooked, it will take you to the bottom. They hate the truth,” John MacArthur

In case you didn’t know…
a New York court ruled on Tuesday that elephants are not people. At issue was whether Happy, in captivity at the Bronx Zoo for more than four decades, could be released to a sanctuary through a habeas corpus proceeding. “Because the writ of habeas corpus is intended to protect the liberty right of human beings to be free of unlawful confinement,” Chief Judge Janet DiFiore wrote for the majority, “it has no applicability to … a nonhuman animal who is not a ‘person’ subjected to illegal detention.” 

Once upon a time, our problem was guilt:
the feeling that you have made a mistake, with reference to something forbidden. This was felt as a stain on one’s character…[Today] the dichotomy of the forbidden and the allowed has been replaced with an axis of the possible and the impossible. The question that hovers over your character is no longer that of how good you are, but of how capable you are, where capacity is measured in something like Kilowatt hours–the raw capacity to make things happen. With this shift comes a new pathology. The affliction of guilt has given way to weariness–weariness with the vague and unending project of having to become one’s fullest self. We call this depression.
Matthew Crawford

Who’s Leaving the Church the Most?
Single evangelical women, according to the sources used by Katie Gaddini, book, The Struggle to Stay: Why Single Evangelical Women are Leaving the Church (Columbia UP, 2022). Single evangelical women are leaving the white church more than any demographic.
If women make up 55-60% of the evangelical church, what does their leaving of the church say about the future of the church?
Scot McKnight

Worship & Lament
As I reflected on the way my church worshipped, its emphasis, its tone, its expectations, its expressed hopes, I suddenly understood clearly that there was no room in our liturgy and worship for sadness, brokenness and questioning. We had much space for love, joy, praise, and supplica- tion, but it seemed that we viewed acknowledgement of sadness and the tragic brokenness of our world as almost tantamount to faithlessness. As a result, when tragedy hit: either directly at home or at a slight distance as in the Omagh bombing, we had no idea what to do with it or how to formulate our concerns… It was clear that we had few resources to enable us to resist the evil caused by such outrageous suffering as was inflicted on the people of Omagh on that terrible day. So we closed our eyes and worshipped God, or at least those aspects of God that brought us more comfort and relief.
Swinton, Raging with Compassion, pp. 92-93.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY