So Much To Think About

Borrow money from pessimists — they don’t expect it back. Steven Wright

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the advantages of reading:

Reading transports us to worlds we would never see, introduces us to people we would never meet, and instills emotions we might never otherwise feel. It also provides an array of health benefits. Here are six scientific reasons you should be picking up more books.

1. Reading reduces stress.
2. Reading (especially reading books) may add years to your life.
3. Reading improves your language skills and knowledge of the world.
4. Reading enhances empathy.
5. Reading boosts creativity and flexibility.
6. Reading can help you transform as a person.

via Scot McKnight

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Divine Love

Those who are self-sufficient remain outsiders to the mystery of divine love because they will always misuse it. Only the need of a beloved knows how to receive the need and gift of the lover, and only the need of a lover knows how to receive the need and gift of the beloved. 

Richard Rohr

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Generosity

• generosity starts by paying attention;
• generosity demands that the gift be appropriate to the receiver;
• a gift is not a gift unless it is released;
• giving is reciprocal;
• giving strengthens human relationships;
• gifts change the people involved.

Michael Moynagh – https://amzn.to/3X9aCke

God doesn’t need us to accomplish his purposes.

Josh Graves

Protests

In the four years since mass protests broke out over the killing of George Floyd, cities across the US have settled more than 130 lawsuits involving police misconduct with payouts totaling nearly $150m to protesters, journalists, legal observers and bystanders, according to an analysis of the lawsuits published this week.

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Mercy

The story comes to mind of the little fish swimming up to its mother, all in a panic: “Mama, Mama, what’s water? I gotta find water or I’ll die!” We live immersed in this water, and the reason we miss it is not that it is so far away but, paradoxically, so close: more intimate to us than our being itself.…  

[Mercy] is the water in which we swim. Mercy is the length and breadth and height and depth of what we know of God—and the light by which we know it.…  

The mercy of God does not come and go, granted to some and refused to others. Why? Because it is unconditional—always there, underlying everything. It is literally the force that holds everything in existence, the gravitational field in which we live and move and have our being. Just like that little fish swimming desperately in search of water, we, too—in the words of Psalm 103—“swim in mercy as in an endless sea.” Mercy is God’s innermost being turned outward to sustain the visible and created world in unbreakable love.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God

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Religious Right

“Something was happening on the religious right, something more menacing and extreme than anything that preceded it. This was no longer about winning elections and preserving the culture. This was about destroying enemies and dominating the country by any means necessary. There was no rhetoric to appalling, no alliance too shady, no biblical application too sacrilegious. Letting go – aphiemi [Greek] – was not an option.”

Scot McKnight – The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

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Modernity

…the problem that I want us to see is how Modernity works – and particularly how it works within us. We have internalized the myth of progress and utility. We not only believe that the world and the things around us can be better, but that it is our God-given task to make them so. We push this same cultural mandate into the Scriptures as well. We imagine the parable of the good stewards (those who invested their talents of money and made a profit) to be stories of how God praised and rewarded them for their productivity and usefulness. We fail to wonder what actually constitutes faithful stewardship in the Kingdom of God.

Fr Stephen Freeman

Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Susan Ertz, Anglo-American novelist (1887-1985)

Culture War Christians

“Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.”

…if we want to frank about it, culture war Christians are walking down a path that leads straight to hell. I don’t delight in that assessment, I’m just connecting the dots. I mean, Jesus is the guy who looked the moralism religious folk directly in the eye and said, “I assure you that the tax collectors and sex workers are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” I would not want to be a social media Pharisee wagging a finger at the world the day the Lord returns. I’d rather be sitting at a table being lambasted as the friend of sinners. Just sayin’…

And maybe this why, to return to the issue of mathematics, only “a few find it.” Because you can grow a church with the culture wars. A church fueled by resentment can become “mega.”  
I guess what I’m trying to say is this:
Size makes me suspicious. A wicked Christianity is a scalable Christianity. You can grow a rotten church.
Authentic Christianity is possible, but few find it. 
Richard Beck

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STILL ON THE JOURNEY