My mind is like an internet browser. At least 18 open tabs, 3 of them are frozen, and I have no clue where the music is coming from.
Are you thinking like a golfer?
Bad shot? We tell ourselves it has to be the balls or the clubs, which is why we’ll purchase a dozen balls for $50 despite knowing we’re likely to lose at least two or three a round because we’re not as good as we think we are, or we’ll spend thousands on irons because we believe they will make our shots travel longer and straighter without the required practice time. Poor drive? Has to be the driver, which is why we’ll spend hundreds to replace the one we purchased the year before.
Jim Trotter
Self-preservation
When you prioritize self-preservation above all else, it pleases no one. If you try so hard to split the middle, you’ll have diluted any sign of genuine conviction or commitment.
Shadi Hamid
Divination
Jesus often uses the metaphor of a wedding to describe what God is doing—preparing and drawing us toward deeper intimacy, belonging, and union. The Eastern Fathers of the Church affirmed this belief; they called it the process of “divinization” (theosis). They saw it as the whole point of the incarnation and the very meaning of salvation. The much more practical and rational church in the West seldom used the word divinization. It was just too daring for us, despite the rather direct teachings from Peter (1 Peter 1:4–5; 2 Peter 1:4) and Jesus in John’s Gospel: “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me” (John 17:20–21).
Richard Rohr
Calendar
The calendar in the Hebrew Bible, the calendar Jesus lived by, told a Story. In fact the calendar preaches. It proclaims(ed) the mighty acts of grace by Yahweh. It is a God filled, grace saturated story of life under God. So we read about the festivals Sabbath, Passover, Tabernacles, Weeks, Purim and Hanukkah. The festivals tell the Story of God:
– God creates the world [Sabbath],
– God delivered by grace Israel [Sabbath and Passover],
– God walks with Israel in the wilderness [Tabernacles],
– God provides food and gives torah [Weeks/Pentecost],
– God protects from annihilation [Purim],
– God redeems his temple [Hanukkah].
Bobby Valentine
Where are 85 + year old people living?
…roughly half of the 5.9 million Americans age 85 and older are living with family, including spouses and adult children, while more than 40 percent live alone, including in independent living or assisted-living facilities. A quarter live in multigenerational households, with people of two or more generations under the same roof, and about 8 percent live in nursing homes or memory care facilities.
Christmas
Christmas isn’t about coming to Bethlehem and to find Jesus. Christmas is about a God who came to Bethlehem to find us. Christmas celebrates the outrageous gospel message that God has come into our world. This God we have been looking for has come to our world looking for us. Christ, in our world, looking for us. Christmas is about a God who pursues His children.
So, if God won’t stay where we put Him, do we have any idea where He might be?
You don’t know? We’ve been singing it for weeks now.
“And His name shall be called Emmanuel, which means, “God with us.”
Christmas isn’t about where Jesus was, but where He is. Immanuel. God with us. Merry Christmas.
Mike Glenn
Ifs
There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause: – through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence’s doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Technology
Technology is, by nature, mono-dimensional. It functions to advance efficiency and productivity. It optimizes. That is its reason for existence. When considering innovation, we implicitly ask, “Can technology do this better?” Increasingly, the answer is “yes.”
Kevin Brown
Awe
Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.
Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the … mystery beyond all things. It enables us … to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.
Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition; faith is attachment to transcendence, to the meaning beyond the mystery.
Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith.
Theologian Bruce Epperly
Concert as Worship
Can attending a Beyoncé concert be a religious experience? To that, his answer is a resounding yes — or perhaps a loud amen. It’s certainly true that the modern concert, which gathers like-minded acolytes in an enclosed physical space to, quite often, experience something close to spiritual rapture, has no more obvious analogue than a church service.
We might sometimes forget that “sanctuary” has at least two meanings in a religious context: a sacred, consecrated place, and also a place of safety and refuge. The conversation around this year’s big concert tours has largely focused on the difficulty of accessing them — the expensive admission, the elusive tickets. But as Dyson reminds us, once we make it to them, concerts can provide rare spaces that allow us to feel truly welcome as we are, and part of a community much larger than ourselves . NYT
Sharing beliefs
I have had to stand before crowds for years and describe what I thought I believed, and then I often had to ask myself, “Do I really believe that myself?” And in my attempt to communicate it, I usually found that I’d only scratched the surface of understanding. In sharing, in giving it away, you really own it for yourself and appreciate more fully its value, beyond what you ever imagined.
Richard Rohr
View from the lanai
Waiting
At the start of the spiritual journey waiting on God is experienced as frustrating and alienating. God seems uncaring, passive, and delaying. There are severe temptations here. Waiting can sour into disillusionment and disillusionment can curdle into unbelief.
But as you spiritually mature, waiting is transformed into deep soul work. You come to realize you’ve spent most of your time waiting on some good outcome to transpire. Waiting on God to “do something.” You slowly come to see that you’ve never really been waiting for God. You’ve been waiting for some favor or blessing, but not for God himself.
I’ve waited for this or that, but I haven’t waited for you.
Richard Beck
STILL ON THE JOURNEY