Wonder
My faith is held together by wonder—by every defiant commitment to presence and paying attention. I cannot tell you with precision what makes the sun set, but I can tell you how those colors, blurred together, calm my head and change my breath. I will die knowing I lived a faith that changed my breathing. A faith that made me believe I could see air.
Richard Rohr
Self awareness
Albert Camus once said, “An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.”
In psychology, “meta-cognition” is a person’s ability to be aware of their own thoughts and emotions and have thoughts/emotions about those thoughts and emotions in real time.
Meta-cognition is more casually known as “self-awareness” and is tied to all sorts of positive outcomes, from better emotional regulation to more focus and discipline and overall happiness and well-being.
Self-awareness is at the root of all personal improvement. Until you’re aware of your problems, there is little you can do to improve them.
Mark Manson
The peril of humanity
What is at stake in the modern world is our humanity. The notion that we are self-authenticating individuals is simply false. We obviously do not bring ourselves in existence – it is a gift. And the larger part of what constitutes our lives is simply a given – a gift. It is not always a gift that someone is happy with – they would like themselves to be other than they are. But the myth of the modern world is that we, in fact, do create ourselves and our lives – our identities are imagined to be of our own making. We are only who we choose to be. It is a myth that is extremely well-suited for undergirding a culture built on consumption. Identity can be had at a price. The wealthy have a far greater range of identities available to them – the poor are largely stuck with being who they really are.
But the only truly authentic human life is the one we receive as a gift from God. The spirituality of choice and consumption under the guise of freedom is an emptiness. The identity we create is an ephemera, a product of imagination and the market. The habits of the marketplace serve to enslave us.
Fr Stephen Freeman
Seeing
Jesus says the only people who can recognize and be ready for what he’s talking about are the ones who come with the mind and heart of a child. It’s the same reality as the beginner’s mind. The older we get, the more we’ve been betrayed and hurt and disappointed, the more barriers we put up to the beginner’s mind. We move further away from the immediate delight and curiosity of small children. We must never presume that we see, and we must always be ready to see anew. But it’s so hard to go back, to be vulnerable, and to say to our soul that “I don’t know anything.”
Spirituality is about seeing. It’s not about earning or achieving. It’s about relationship rather than results or requirements. Once we see, the rest follows. We don’t need to push the river, because we’re in it. The life is lived within us, and we learn how to say yes to that life.
Richard Rohr
Poverty
The United States has a poverty problem.
A third of the country’s people live in households making less than $55,000. Many are not officially counted among the poor, but there is plenty of economic hardship above the poverty line. And plenty far below it as well. According to the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which accounts for government aid and living expenses, more than one in 25 people in America 65 or older lived in deep poverty in 2021, meaning that they’d have to, at minimum, double their incomes just to reach the poverty line.
Customer service
74% of Americans say they’ve had product or service problem in the past year, according to the 10th edition of the National Customer Rage Survey, which tracks satisfaction and incivility. The incidence of problems has more than doubled since 1976.
Repugnant cultural other
Susan harding coined the phrase “repugnant cultural other.” It is a neat and ugly description of that process of demonising the other, misrepresenting the argument, refusal to understand the person, and the evacuation of empathy and compassion the better to wound and reject those who think differently, live differently and are different, and therefore a threat to the way we want the world to be.
Culture war is a battle for the supremacy of one viewpoint over others, a refusal of tolerance, often accompanied by a self-righteous claim to truth and right. Tolerance is not weakness if it is holding to our own convictions while doing our best to listen, understand and respect the convictions of others. Intolerance is not always strength; most times it is insecurity with the volume turned up.
I for one can’t combine the mindset of the culture warrior with the mindset of the ambassador of Christ entrusted with a ministry of reconciliation.
Jim Gordon
Seaweed Apocolypse
A giant seaweed bloom – so large it can be seen from outer space – may be headed towards Florida’s Gulf Coast.
The sargassum bloom, at around 5,000 miles wide, is twice the width of the United States and is believed to be the largest in history.
Drifting between the Atlantic coast of Africa and the Gulf of Mexico, the thick mat of algae can provide a habitat for marine life and absorb carbon dioxide.
However, the giant bloom can have disastrous consequences as it gets closer to the shore. Coral, for instance, can be deprived of sunlight. As the seaweed decomposes it can release hydrogen sulfide, negatively impact the air and water and causing respiratory problems for people in the surrounding area.
Church
“The church as an alternative community in the world is not a ‘volunteer association’, and accident of human preference. The church as a wedge of newness, as a foretaste of what is coming, as a home for the odd ones, is the work of God’s sovereign mercy. For all its distortedness, the church peculiarly hosts God’s power for life.”
Walter Brueggemann
Aversion to reality
The whole tendency of equity language is to blur the contours of hard, often unpleasant facts. This aversion to reality is its main appeal. Once you acquire the vocabulary, it’s actually arouses no emotion. The second is rudely blunt and bitter, and it might make someone angry or sad. Imprecise language is less likely to offend. Good writing—vivid imagery, strong statements—will hurt, because it’s bound to convey painful truths.
THE MORAL CASE AGAINST EUPHEMISM
Banning words won’t make the world more just.
BY GEORGE PACKER
A wave of Americans has been reaching retirement age largely unprepared for the extraordinary costs of specialized care. These aging baby boomers — 73 million strong, the oldest of whom turn 77 this year — pose an unprecedented challenge to the U.S. economy, as individual families shoulder an increasingly ruinous financial burden with little help from stalemated policymakers in Washington.
The dilemma is particularly vexing for those in the economic middle. They can’t afford the high costs of care on their own, yet their resources are too high for them to qualify for federal safety-net insurance. An estimated 18 million middle-income boomers will require care for moderate to severe needs but be unable to pay for it, according to an analysis of the gap by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
Assisted-living facilities, the fastest-growing category of elderly care, provide an independent, homelike environment for seniors who need some help with day-to-day functions. Chandeliers, comfy sofas, wood paneling and plush carpets are standard in common areas. You can get your own apartment with your own bathroom. But it starts at $60,000 a year on average, according to the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC) — and costs go up as residents age and need more care. Locked units for dementia patients, which increasingly are being established within assisted-living facilities or as stand-alone facilities, run more than $80,000 a year on average.
Long-term care costs represent “the single largest financial risk” facing seniors and their families, the National Council on Aging and UMass Boston researchers said in a 2020 report.
Polls show the vast majority of people would prefer aging in place, in their own home. But median costs for 40 hours a week of assistance from a care aide in the home, for things like bathing, dressing, eating and toileting, run over $56,000 a year. A shortage of home care aides, moreover, was exacerbated by the pandemic.
Nursing homes provide the most intensive care for the most dependent seniors and function like medical facilities, averaging $120,000 a yearunless you qualify for Medicaid, the federal insurance program for the poor and elderly. Medicaid will kick in only once an elderly person’s resources are drained away.
Long-term care costs represent “the single largest financial risk” facing seniors and their families, the National Council on Aging and UMass Boston researchers said in a 2020 report.
STILL ON THE JOURNEY