First you forget names, then you forget faces. Then you forget to pull up your zipper. It’s even worse when you forget to pull it down.
Aging
…my great friend Father Terry Richey said, it’s not about trying harder; it’s about resisting less. This is right up aging’s alley. Some days are sweet, some are just too long.
Anne Lamott
SOME THINGS FOR YOU TO THINK ABOUT
Sometimes being hard on someone is the most helpful thing you can do for them. Sometimes being nice to someone is the most unhelpful thing you can do for them.
Nice is not always the same as good.
Choosing to be nice is strength. Feeling compelled to always be nice is weakness.
Choosing when to be disagreeable, when required, is strength. Always being disagreeable is weakness.
Mark Manson
Learning to see and love what is
…many people think religion has to do with ideas and concepts and formulas from books. That’s how clergy and theologians were trained for years. We went away, not into a world of nature and silence and primal relationships, but into a world of books. Well, that’s not biblical spirituality, and that’s not where religion begins. It begins in observing “what is.” Paul says, “Ever since the creation of the world, the invisible essence of God and God’s everlasting power have been clearly seen by the mind’s understanding of created things” (Romans 1:20). We know God through the things that God has made. The first foundation of any true religious seeing is, quite simply, learning how to see and love what is. Contemplation is meeting reality in its most simple and direct form unjudged, unexplained, and uncontrolled!
Richard Rohr
Magic
The magic we find is rarely the magic we expect, yet it exists more often than not, given our openness to its presence. Be there.
Eric Alan
Women in ministry
In Christian ministry, how do men and women partner in ministry, as co-pastors or part of a team, without falling into several traps.
By traps, I mean things like:
(a) Treating women as honorary men;
(b) Making token appointments of women to positions of junior leadership;
(c) Assuming that men need a warning sign, “May break into patriarchy at any moment,”
(d) Thinking that some gifts come in pink or blue; and
(e) Failing to recognize that gifts are exercised not despite gender but precisely through it, that is, as men and women who serve the churches.
(f) Putting women on a different pay scale.
Michael Bird
Christian
Too few Christians add value to the precious title of “Christian.” We take the Name, and by our choices, make the Name mean nothing.
Someone who bears the name has come to terms with their own brokenness and failures. A Christian is someone who recognizes they can’t fix what is broken within them nor repair the damage they’ve done in others. A Christ follower has realized that Jesus and Jesus alone understands the best way to live life and He alone, has the power, grace, mercy and love needed to make something new out of our wreckage.
Mike Glenn
The place of truth at funerals
But here’s the problem with blocking out the flaws of the person who died: Choosing to remember only the good provides a false sense of reality. Remembering the good only allows us to remember and think about the person in pieces. It doesn’t allow space for us to think about the person as a whole.”
https://experiencecamps.org/blog/why-we-need-to-remember-the-flaws-along-with-the-good-those-who-die#:~:text=Here%27s%20what%20she%20had%20to,and%20joyful%20experiences%20with%20them.
Competence
Competence is how good you are when there is something to gain. Character is how good you are when there is nothing to gain.
People will reward you for competence. But people will only love you for your character.
It’s hard enough to be competent. It’s even harder to have character. Do you believe you’re someone of character? Are you able to do the right thing or do something well when no one is looking or when there is nothing to gain?
Mark Manson
Decline of Religiosity
There is no doubt that the percentage of American adults who said they had no religion nearly doubled between 2007 and the early 2020s. What is the reason for this?
I think that the answer is that the people who are leaving Christianity are doing so primarily because they no longer find Christianity morally credible. They don’t think they need religion in order to be moral people, and they don’t think that the moral fabric of the country depends on a set of values sustained by religious faith. This is a new phenomenon, because for most of the nation’s history, large numbers of Americans did believe that the country’s moral values were inextricably tied to religion, just as George Washington suggested in his Farewell Address. But when people’s faith in the moral authority of Christianity disappears, they leave the church.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2023/10/american-secularization-hasnt-followed-the-script-that-secularization-theory-would-predict/
Fulfillment of Prophecy
this must be said, whether from the pulpit or not: every precise fulfillment of some Bible verse (understood as) prophetic prediction so far has been shown not to be a fulfillment. Put more bluntly, the predictors have all been wrong about every prediction so far. They need to stop. We need to stop. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Gorbachev, Putin, et al. – none were THE antichrist. None. WWI, WWII, the Six Day War, the oil crisis, you name it, each has been ramped up with apocalyptic expectations and every last one – name them all – has been wrongly connected to the end of history. The approach is entirely wrong.
Scot McKnight
Divine Providence
I have come to think that the doctrine of divine providence is more readily seen by the old than by the young. For the old, most of life is “in the rear-view mirror,” while, for the young, it rushes towards the windshield at ever-increasing speeds. In hindsight, the hand of God seems clear, and, mostly, unmistakable. It is a mysterious working, particularly when I see good come out of seeming evil.
Fr Stephen Freeman
View from the Front Porch
One of my current writing projects is a Faith Memoir. An anthology of blog posts and other writings over the past several decades that focuses is on my faith journey, sharing significant experiences, understandings and beliefs that have shaped my faith. it is intended to serve as an ethical will, a document that passes ethical values from one generation to the next. You can read about Ethical Wills HERE
Here is one entry:
The Journey
There is a temptation to think of one’s spiritual journey as individual. I do not believe that is true. I am one part of the pilgrimage of all of God’s people. We each have our own unique encounters, experiences, trials and detours but we do not travel alone. We must not, cannot proceed alone. We need the strength, companionship, encouragement, wisdom and experience of fellow sojourners. The journey is perilous and we may need to be rescued or to rescue. The journey brings us joyful experiences and beautiful vistas to which we enthusiastically direct our fellow travelers. Of course we could make better progress without the burden of others but its not just about the destination. It’s also about the experience of the journey. Too often our perspective is like the impatient child: “Are we there yet?”. We pay little attention to the wonderful experiences, opportunities for relationship and love and the beauty and wonder of the scenes passing the window. We are only concerned about the destination.
STILL ON THE JOURNEY