So Much To Think About

O Love, that will not let me go…
Living Wittily / by Jim Gordon / August 13, 2022 at 04:03AM
Yesterday in the supermarket, a dad with two children and a trolley.One child started to scream and shout in distress. It sounded like a tantrum – but only if we lack imagination, compassion and some understanding. The second child didn’t seem too bothered. Dad spoke firmly and took and held the hand of the distressed child, who refused to be calmed or comforted, and continued to be very upset. Dad held on to his hand. Then Dad stood in the queue with his trolley, speaking calmly to the child, ignoring the responses of some others around him, and eventually the lad settled and walked with his family out the doors.Sensory overload, heat exhaustion, familiar and safe routines interrupted, just too much to process by one highly sensitive mind – any combination of these or other causes. And a dad whose behaviour over the ten minutes or so of his son’s distress, was gentle, calm, firm and there, just there, the reassuring, patient presence that wouldn’t turn away, or let go.What that costs, day and daily, in the loving and caring for a child who feels and sees the world differently? Who knows.  But in those ten minutes we watched a lived out parable of the love of God in the love of a father holding firmly the hand of his child.

A Prayer for the Irritated
I bring to you Lord, my momentary irritation, 
that you might reveal the buried seed of it—not 
in the words or actions of another person, but
in the withered and hypocritical expectations 
of my own small heart. Uproot from this
impoverished soil all arrogance and insecurity that 
would prompt me to dismiss or distain others, 
judging them with a less generous measure that
I reckon when judging myself. 
Prune away the tangled growth
of my own unjustified irritations, Jesus,
and graft to my heart instead your humility, 
your compassion, 
your patience, 
your kindness, 
That I might bear good fruit in keeping 
with your grace.
Amen.
Thérèse of Lisieux

Power of Dissent
In a famous 1951 experiment, the psychologist Solomon Asch showed how easily humans can be manipulated by social pressure to conform. If everyone else in the room affirms even the most blatant falsehood, we will very often affirm it ourselves, even denying the clear evidence of our own eyes.
But a variation of the Asch experiment gives hope. If only one other person in the room—a single reality ally—tells the truth, the pressure to conform drops sharply and we become much more willing to buck the lie. That is why authoritarian regimes work so furiously to stifle opposition voices, even seemingly weak ones. It is what the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was getting at when he said, “The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that [lie] come into the world, let it even reign supreme—only not through me.”
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-reality-ally-347 utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Suffering
Suffering, of course, can lead us in either of two directions: (1) it can make us very bitter and cause us to shut down, or (2) it can make us wise, compassionate, and utterly open, because our hearts have been softened, or perhaps because we feel as though we have nothing more to lose. Suffering often takes us to the very edge of our inner resources where we “fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31), even when we aren’t sure we believe in God! We must all pray for the grace of this second path of softening and opening. My opinion is that this is the very meaning of the phrase “deliver us from evil” in the Our Father (Lord’s Prayer). In this statement, we aren’t asking to avoid suffering. It is as if we are praying, “When big trials come, God, hold on to me, and don’t let me turn bitter or blaming”—which is an evil that leads to so many other evils. 
Richard Rohr

Adolescence
“I have no qualifications for speaking about adolescence with anything like authority except in one respect. I am sixty four years old. I have fathered children. I have written books. I have letters after my name and an ecclesiastical title before it. But to call me an adult or grown up is an oversimplification at best and a downright misnomer at worst. I am not a past participle but a present participle, even a dangling participle. I am not a having-grown up one but a growing-up on, a groping up one, not even sure much of the time just where my  growing and groping are taking me or where they are supposed to be taking me. I am a verbal adjective in search of a noun to latch onto, a grower ins earch of  a self to grow into…I speak about adolescence with authority because in many ways I am still in the throes of it. This is my only qualification for addressing myself to the subject here. I am a hybrid, an adult adolescent to whom neither term alone does full justice…” (The Clown in the Belfry, 84-5) Fredrick Beuchner

A political columnist one wrote this:
Whenever A and B are in opposition to one another, anyone who attacks or criticizes A is accused of aiding and abetting B. And it is often true, objectively and on a short-term analysis, that he is making things easier for B. Therefore, say the supporters of A, shut up and don’t criticize: or at least criticize “constructively,” which in practice always means favourably. And from this it is only a short step to arguing that the suppression and distortion of known facts is the highest duty of a journalist.
Scot McKnight

 “we are not saved by information.”
Matters of prayer, of pride, of shame, of love, of forgiveness, of generosity, and suffering, are much closer to that place where we live. The rest of the world (and theology) are true, but, like Quantum Mechanics, it’s not always what we need. It is said that Orthodox Christianity is a “way of life.” This is true, and means that it cannot really be read. It can be sung. It can be prayed. Mostly, it can be stumbled around in so that we learn what it means for it to be the way.
Fr Stephen Freeman

STILL ON THE JOURNEY