There is no such thing as a grouchy old person. The truth is that once you get old, you stop being polite and start being honest.
Aging America
America may still think of itself as a young nation, but as a society, it is growing old. Thanks to falling birthrates, longer life expectancy and the graying of the baby boomer cohort, our society is being transformed. This is a demographic change that will affect every part of society. Already, in about half the country, there are more people dying than being born, even as more Americans are living into their 80s, 90s and beyond. In 2020 the share of people 65 or older reached 17 percent, according to the Census Bureau. By 2034, there will be more Americans past retirement age than there are children.
NYT
Departure – Why I left the Church
Most Christians don’t want their thinking challenged. They come to church to reinforce what they’ve believed their entire lives. From their perspective, the job of the pastor is not to push them to grow, but to reassure them that they are already on the right track. Any learning should support the party line and comfort them that their investment of resources in the church will result in a payoff somewhere down the line, particularly once they reach the afterlife.
Alexander Lang
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Communion
…sacraments, then, are not discrete actions of the Church designed to enhance our spiritual experience: they are revelations of the way of life. For in every case, the sacraments are the life of communion, whether Ordination or Eucharist, Baptism, Chrismation, Matrimony, etc. It is for this reason that we can observe that “the whole creation is a sacrament.
Communion is not a quality or an activity of life – it is the very essence of life – it’s sine qua non.
Fr Stephen Freeman
The questions have changed
Sam Allberry commented to Russell Moore regarding how questions people ask have changed in the past several decades. Referring to Jesus’ encounter with the a demon possessed man. “Thirty years ago, upon hearing Jesus had sent demons into a herd of pigs, people would ask, ‘Do you believe demons exist?’. Today the question would be ‘How could Jesus do that to those pigs?’
Religious History
My reading of American religious history is that religion always functions best from the margins of society and not in the councils of power. Once you identify the faith with a particular candidate or party or with the quest for political influence, ultimately it is the faith that suffers.
Randy Balmer
Curiosity
Curiosity cures: anxiety, ignorance, selfishness, extremism.
Curiosity creates: empathy, compassion, knowledge, growth.
Curiosity prevents: arrogance, judgment, stagnation.
Practice curiosity.
Mark Manson
Horizons
“The hard thing to do when you get old is to keep your horizons open,” the theologian and civil-rights hero Howard Thurman once wrote. “The first part of your life everything is in front of you, all your potential and promise. But over the years, you make decisions; you carve yourself into a given shape. Then the challenge is to keep discovering the green growing edge.”
Seeing
O my heavenly Mother, open Your eye in my soul, so that I may see what is what–so that I may see who is dwelling in my soul and what sort of fruits are growing in her.
Without Your eye I wander hopelessly through my soul like a wayfarer in the night, in the night’s indistinguishable gloom. And the wayfarer in the night falls and picks himself up, and what he encounters along the way he calls “events.”
You are the only event of my life, O lamp of my soul. When a child scurries to the arms of his mother, events do not exist for him. When a bride races to meet her bridegroom, she does not see the flowers in the meadow, nor does she hear the rumbling of the storm, nor does she smell the fragrance of the cypresses or sense the mood of the wild animals–she sees only the face of her bridegroom; she hears only the music from his lips; she smells only his soul. When love goes to meet love, no events befall it. Time and space make way for love.
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2023/08/24/love-has-no-history-2/
True or false
One must not be too quickly preoccupied with professing definitively what is true and what is false. Not that true and false do not matter. But if at every instant one wants to grasp the whole and perfect truth of a situation, particularly a concrete and limited situation in history or in politics, one only deceives and blinds himself. Such judgments are only rarely and fleetingly possible, and sometimes, when we think we see what is most significant, it has very little meaning at all.
Thomas Merton
View from the Front Porch
Labor Day brings the start of a new semester at Asbury Theological Seminary. I look forward to new people making their way to seminary along our street. There is opportunity to engage in conversation, perhaps friendships will be formed. Sacred experiences, Jesus is often revealed in unexpected ways through an earnest disciple.
If I had to describe my encounters in one word, it would be: communion.
I enjoyed reading your comments from the past days George. We all have so much to learn don’t we? I read a thought today that freedom flows out of our rootedness in beauty. That’s my thought to ponder for today.