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“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

Category: Notes Anthology

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

Hard to believe I once had a phone attached to a wall, and when it rang, I picked it up without knowing who was calling.

THREE THINGS FOR YOU TO ASK YOURSELF

Have you been approaching your relationships transactionally? (i.e., “I’ll do this for you but only if you do this for me.”)

Have you been approaching your work transactionally? (i.e., “I’ll do this just so I’ll get money/status/prestige.”)

Have you been dealing with your family transactionally? (i.e., “I sacrificed for you so now you have to do this thing for me in return.”)

If so, how’s that going for ya?

Mark Manson

Get married, be happy

The common operating assumption seems to be that professional life is at the core of life and that marriage would be something nice to add on top sometime down the road. According to an analysis of recent survey data by the University of Virginia professor Brad Wilcox, 75 percent of adults ages 18 to 40 said that making a good living was crucial to fulfillment in life while only 32 percent thought that marriage was crucial to fulfillment. In a Pew Research Center survey, 88 percent of parents said it was “extremely or very” important for their kids to be financially independent, while only 21 percent said it was “extremely or very” important for their kids to marry.

There are mountains of evidence to show that intimate relationships, not career, are at the core of life, and those intimate relationships will have a downstream effect on everything else you do.

…the University of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman published a study in which he found that marriage was “the most important differentiator” between happy and unhappy people. Married people are 30 points happier than the unmarried. Income contributes to happiness, too, but not as much.

David Brooks

God as person

God expresses nothing less than God-ly feelings. David Lamb has recently written about seven of God’s emotions: yes, hatred and wrath, along with jealousy, sorrow, joy, compassion, and love. Each of these terms could be given various translations, but what needs to be seen is that God is not distant, emotion-less, unfeeling, calculating. God is a person, God has relations, God responds to us as we respond to God. That’s step one. Step two is this: We are made in God’s image. If Christ is the perfect image of God, and if Jesus is filled with empathies and compassions and tears and joys and love, then we too are emotional, feeling-shaped images of God. 

Scot McKnight

The Quest for Power

Scot McKnight

The quest for power reveals more about character and sin than any measure I know. Nothing comes closer to wanting to be God than a yearning for control, to be in charge, and to eliminate anything and anyone that gets in your way. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, as a famous line goes, and the more powerful a person becomes, or even desire to become, the less that person’s morality looks like Christ. Power distorts perception, especially self-perception, and it corrupts one’s following of Jesus. Even those opposing those questing for power can be seduced into the power trap. Narcissists cannot avoid competing for power, and neither can they avoid retaliating against those who check their power. They can’t stop themselves because their aim is power.

Justice

…the word for “justice” in the Bible is the same word as “righteousness.” This overlap shows that the central concern of biblical justice was not “getting what you deserve”; rather, it was making right what was done wrong, restoring what had been destroyed, healing the wounds of an offensive act. It was about bringing balance and wholeness back to the community, which is why you often see scales as an icon for justice. 

Shane Claiborne 

Sinners saved by grace

…it is common to think that Christians are merely sinners saved by grace – depraved worms ever deserving of the deity’s dumpster of destruction – who are graciously granted a share in eternal life, that should not be our conclusion. Instead, we should think of ourselves as saints who sometimes sin.[2] What defines us is not who were once were apart from Jesus, but who we are being conformed to the image of the Son (Rom 8:29) and who we shall be revealed to be as the glorious children of God (Rom 8:19). That is because we are no longer who we once were, nor will we ever be that person again. That old self is dead, crucified, buried, and raised into a new person. 

True, sin might nip at my heals, try draw me back to a life I left behind, but sin is no longer our true master, and sin is no longer the source of our true identity. Holiness is not simply about trying harder; yes, it takes effort, but it is more than that. It is about faith in God’s holy power, a power that makes the unclean clean, turns the profane into something sacred, calls and consecrates us into a Christ-shaped way of being human. Holiness happens when I draw myself nearer to a Holy God and God’s Spirit is drawn into my very fabric of my being. It is in communion with God that we are consecrated and committed to a holy pattern of existence that is set apart from the ways of this world.

Michael Bird

God’s presence

At the center of the prophets’ ministry is their awareness of the transcendent God who is above all things and yet within all things. God’s presence cuts across all boundaries of space and time, and there is never any place or event from which God is absent. 

Richard Rohr

Why is America so mean?

David Brooks

I was recently talking with a restaurant owner who said that he has to eject a customer from his restaurant for rude or cruel behavior once a week—something that never used to happen. A head nurse at a hospital told me that many on her staff are leaving the profession because patients have become so abusive. At the far extreme of meanness, hate crimes rose in 2020 to their highest level in 12 years. Murder rates have been surging, at least until recently. Same with gun sales. Social trust is plummeting. In 2000, two-thirds of American households gave to charity; in 2018, fewer than half did. The words that define our age reek of menace: conspiracy, polarization, mass shootings, trauma, safe spaces.

The most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude, I believe, is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration. Our society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein. The story I’m going to tell is about morals. In a healthy society, a web of institutions—families, schools, religious groups, community organizations, and workplaces—helps form people into kind and responsible citizens, the sort of people who show up for one another. We live in a society that’s terrible at moral formation.

View from the Front Porch

Good Neighbor?

I am a good neighbor. I love my neighbors.

Not so much, I do good things for my neighbors, but do I truly love them? 

Do you love your neighbors? Yes Lord! 

Then wash their feet.

Do you love your neighbors? Yes Lord!

Then bind their wounds.

Do you love your neighbors? Yes Lord!

Then love them as I have loved you.

Lord help me for I am broken.

G Ezell 5/16/2019

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

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. 

American Life

… how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Such a system leaves precious little time or energy for forms of community that don’t contribute to one’s own professional life or, as one ages, the professional prospects of one’s children. Workism reigns in America, and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.

Spiritual Transformation

The future is always the same as the present. That’s why we have to change the present.   

We have to begin within and allow ourselves to be transformed. Then the future can be different than the present. Otherwise, we have no evidence that we’re going to do anything different tomorrow, next week, or next year. 

Authentic spirituality is always on the first level about us—as individuals. It always is. We want it to be about our partners, our coworkers, or our pastors. We want to use spirituality to change other people, but true spirituality always changes us.  

Richard Rohr

Aging World

By 2050, people age 65 and older will make up nearly 40 percent of the population in some parts of East Asia and Europe. That’s almost twice the share of older adults in Florida, America’s retirement capital. Extraordinary numbers of retirees will be dependent on a shrinking number of working-age people to support them.

In all of recorded history, no country has ever been as old as these nations are expected to get.

As a result, experts predict, things many wealthier countries take for granted — like pensions, retirement ages and strict immigration policies — will need overhauls to be sustainable. And today’s wealthier countries will almost inevitably make up a smaller share of global G.D.P., economists say.

…the aging of the world is a triumph of development. People are living longer, healthier lives and having fewer children as they get richer.

The opportunity for many poorer countries is enormous. When birth rates fall, countries can reap a “demographic dividend,” when a growing share of workers and few dependents fuel economic growth. Adults with smaller families have more free time for education and investing in their children. More women tend to enter the work force, compounding the economic boost.

Front porch contemplation

The real gift of contemplative practice is to be happy and content, even while we are just sitting on the porch, looking at a rock; or when we are doing the “nothingness” of prayer or benevolently gazing at anything in its ordinariness; or when we can see, accept, and say that every single act of creation is “just this” and thus allow it to work its wonder on us.  

So go learn, enjoy, and rest in inner contentment and positivity—a full reservoir of fresh water, both before success and after failure. Then we have the treasure that no one can take from us or give to us. We will be ready to be captured by many moments of awe—and we will be capable of the surrender that brings both foundational union and joy.  

Richard Rohr

Awe

Abraham Joshua Heschel has argued, faith is an experience of “radical amazement.” Heschel observes:

Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, 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.

There is a mystical core at the heart of the religious life, a radical amazement, that catalyzes and sustains righteous moral action in the world. 

If you’re looking for God, let wonder and awe be your guide.

Richard Beck

Looking back

In 2020 Dr. Scott Atlas, argued that the virus was not dangerous to an overwhelming majority of Americans. Both he and Dr. Bhattacharya said the Covid death rate for everyone under 70 was very low. Dr. Atlas claimed that children had “virtually zero” risk of death. Neither man responded to requests for comment.

As of this summer, more than 345,000 Americans under 70 have died of the virus, and more than 3.5 million have been hospitalized with Covid. The disease has killed nearly 2,300 children and adolescents, and nearly 200,000 have been hospitalized.

Nostalgia 

C. S. Lewis noted that the one prayer that God almost never grants is “encore.” Lewis wrote that our nostalgia for the “golden moments in the past” can be nourishing and sustaining, as long as we see them for what they are—memories, not blueprints. “Properly bedded down in a past which we do not miserably try to conjure back, they will send up exquisite growths,”

Evangelicalism at its best

The insight of evangelical Christianity, at its best, is that any pilgrimage cannot start with a road map of certainty but must begin with the cry of faith that says, like the noble disciple Thomas wrongly labeled as a doubter, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (John 14:5).

Nostalgia—especially of the sort wielded by demagogues and authoritarians—cannot protect religious faith, because it uses religion as a tool for worldly ends, leaving a spiritual void. The Christian Church still needs an organic movement of people reminding the rest of us that there’s hope for personal transformation, for the kind of crisis that leads to grace.

Russell Moore

Saved by faith

When we proclaim, as Christians, that we are “saved by faith,” we all too easily mistake this for a proclamation about what we “think.” The simple fact is that, from day to day, what we “think” about God might waver, some days bordering or even lapsing into unbelief. The same can be said of a marriage. We love our spouse, though there might well be days that we wish we weren’t married. Faith (and love) are not words that indicate perfection or the lack of failure. “Faith,” in the Biblical sense, is 

perhaps better translated as “faithfulness.” Much the same can be said of love within a marriage. In both cases, it matters that we do not quit.

We cannot predict the future. The classical Western wedding vows acknowledge, “for better or worse, for richer for poorer, , in sickness and in health…” That is an honest take on life. The same is true of our life in Christ.

Modernity has nurtured the myth of progress. Whether we’re thinking of technology, our emotional well-being, or the spiritual life, we presume that general improvement is a sign of normalcy and that all things are doing well. This is odd, given the fact that aging inherently carries with it the gradual decline of health. Life is not a technological feat. It is unpredictable and surrounded by dangers – nothing about this has changed over the course of human history.

The hand of God is often “secret,” unseen both by us and by those who oppose us. The mystery of the Cross is easily the most prominent example of God’s secret hand. St. Paul said that the demonic powers had no idea that the Cross would accomplish their defeat. (1Cor. 2:7-8)

That same hand is at work in the life of every believer. Though we stumble, He remains faithful. We cling to Christ.

There is a Eucharistic promise that seems important here:

He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. (Jn. 6:56)

Abide with Him. His secret hand will bear us up.

Fr Stephen Freeman

View from the front porch

There is the new view of our front porch. Our daughter Melissa and her husband Byron graciously gifted us with a makeover. The craftsman style columns give a much improved appearance. They worked diligently for two days. The difficult part for me was watching while they worked. But, alas that seems to be the case more and more these days. Actually it is not that bad, just takes some getting used to.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

If you find yourself feeling useless, remember: it took 20 years, trillions of dollars, thousands of lives and four presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.

Chivalry 

I have long wondered, whether the solution to toxic masculinity is not unmasculine men, but finding a type of masculinity that is chivalrous rather than chauvanistic, virulent yet virtuous, protective without being patriarchal.

But what would that look like?

Michael Bird

Nominalism 

Nominalism rejects “inner meanings,” certainly as anything more than ideas in our heads. Things are simply things, and words nothing more than the names we call them. Straightforward moral examples and historical events, interpreted largely in their own historical context, became the preferred way of seeing the Scriptures. Prophetic statements began to be seen as flatly predictive rather than possessed of irony, allegory and paradox. Historical-critical studies that dismantled various historical claims of other Christians, would be unthinkable without the assumptions of Nominalism. 

Fr Stephen Freeman

Hurting people

In the middle of the speed and the noise of this life; in the dizzying parade that we defiantly strut through every day trying to fool people into believing that we’re all okay, it can be a challenge to remember that we’re all not okay. I hope that you will, though, because it will change the way you walk the rest of the journey.

Today,  find your place in this great congregation of flawed, wounded souls and feel right at home here.

John Pavlovitz 

Words for a young pastor

Legendary theologian Karl Barth was asked by a student what words he would give to a young pastor:

“And I would ask you, are you trained to visit not only yourself now, but a congregation with what you have learned out of the Bible and of church history and dogmatics and so on? Having to say something, having to say that thing.

And then the other question: are you willing now to deal with humanity as it is? Humanity in this twentieth century with all its passions, sufferings, errors, and so on? Do you like them, these people? Not only the good Christians, but do you like people as they are? People in their weaknesses? Do you like them, do you love them? And are you willing to tell them the message that God is not against them, but for them? That’s the one real thing in pastoral service and that is the question for you. If you go into ministry to do that work, pray earnestly. You’ll do difficult work but beautiful work.”

the living sacrament of marriage:

“Marriage is a journey of love. It is the creation of a new human being, a new person, for as the Gospel says, ‘the two will be as one flesh’. God unites two people, and makes them one. From this union of two people, who agree to synchronize their footsteps and harmonize the beating of their hearts, a new human being emerges. Through such profound and spontaneous love, the one becomes a presence, a living reality, in the heart of the other. ‘I am married’ means that I cannot live a single day, even a few moments, without the companion of my life. My husband, my wife, is part of my being, of my flesh, of my soul. He or she complements me. He or she is the thought of my mind. He or she is the reason for which my heart beats… in marriage, it seems that two people become together. However, it’s not two but three. The man marries the woman, and the woman marries the man, but the two together also marry Christ. So three take part in the mystery, and three remain together in life.”

Elder Aimilianos

Evangelism

The struggle for many of us is that we were schooled in an understanding of evangelism that equated faith sharing with preaching. Such an understanding assumes faith sharing is always one-way traffic — from the sharer to the seeker. But the New Testament uses a number of terms to describe evangelistic ministry. They include to persuade (peithos), describe (diegoeomai), reason with (dialegomia), confound (syncheo), prove (symbibazo), argue (syzeteo), talk (laleo), beseech (deomai), and encourage (parakaleo).

Faith sharing in the early church involved more conversations than lectures.

Michael Frost

Listening 

The English word “listen” comes from two Anglo-Saxon words. One means “hearing” and the other means “to wait in suspense.” Conversations might manifest greater love & attentiveness if we adopted an attitude of waiting in suspense to learn something from the other person’s words.

Brad Brisco 

Intelligence/ Wisdom

Intelligence is the ability to understand many ideas. Wisdom is the ability to identify the few ideas worth understanding.

Wisdom without intelligence can still lead to a good, simple life. Intelligence without wisdom is a special (and dangerous) form of stupidity.

Mark Manson

Eliminating Religion

If there is no God, no purpose in life, if the universe is utterly indifferent to our birth, life, and death, then what’s the point of it all? What does that mean for our instinctive hunger for justice? Is love just a bunch of chemicals squishing around in our brains? What is beauty and friendship beyond banal constructs of feeble minds attempting to rationalize a purpose for a purposeless existence? That is what atheism requires, but nobody can really live that way. We would be left to immerse ourselves in complete hedonism, drugs, sex, and pleasure to dull the numbing pain of an existence that is cruel because it is nakedly pointless.

And that’s the thing, even if you eliminate religion, you end up religionizing whatever you replace it with. If there is no God, Jesus, Allah, or Buddha, then people will make gods out of the things that give them pleasure and power. As I’ve argued, A Religionless Society Will Still Have Gods, because: “What replaces religion then is either the quest for power or the lust for pleasure, the clenched fist or a phallus, an M-16 or sex toys, Putin or Lady Gaga.” 

Michael Bird

Old and infirmed

Sometimes the old and the infirm, those who have been wounded by life and whose choices have been constrained, reveal what is most important in life. Sometimes those whose choices have been limited can demonstrate that, by focusing on others and not on oneself, life is defined not by the options available to us but by the strength of our commitments.

David Brooks

Distrust of Church

In 2009, 52% of U.S. adults said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the church as an institution. That was the last year most Americans held that belief. In 2018, confidence levels fell below 40% for the first time. They edged above that mark in 2020, only to drop back below in 2021 and even further in 2022. Despite the 1-point increase in 2023, the current 32% of Americans who have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the church marks the second-lowest percentage ever.

Some Americans are less likely than others to have trust in the church. Younger adults are more distrustful than those who are older. Americans 18-34 (24%) have lower levels of confidence than those 35-54 (32%) and 55 and older (35%).

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is a piece of cake!

Perfect

The demand for the perfect is the enemy of the possible good. Be peace and do justice, but let’s not expect perfection in ourselves or the world. Perfectionism contributes to intolerance and judgmentalism and makes ordinary love largely impossible. Jesus was an absolute realist, patient with the ordinary, the broken, the weak, and those who failed. Following him is not a “salvation scheme” or a means of creating some ideal social order as much as it is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world, and to love the way that God loves—which we cannot do by ourselves. 

Richard Rohr

Effective Alturism 

Imagine that you have $1. You’re planning to donate that dollar to charity and have narrowed your options down to two causes: your alma mater’s endowment fund, which awards scholarships for academically gifted students, and a non-profit that delivers life-saving vitamin supplements to children in extreme poverty.

To help make your decision, you might rely on a social movement and philosophy called effective altruism—or EA for short. Effective altruism is dedicated to using evidence and reason to do the most good in the world. Effective altruists try to accomplish this maximum good by supporting philanthropic causes that get the biggest return on investment. An effective altruist, then, would probably encourage you to donate your $1 to the organization that provides vitamin supplements over the university. 

https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-case-against-longtermism?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=61579&post_id=133461502&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

Decentered

Christianity loses its true center when it seeks to convince the world of its commitment to the modern project. At present, there is a growing collection of Christian Churches, hollowed out by their embrace of the modern, secular account of reality. In a drive for relevance, they became redundant.

Fr Stephen Freeman

Questions designed by a PhD psychologist to help develop close living relationships.

If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?

Age of the Selfie

Though we live in the age of the “selfie,” we are, nonetheless, an age that is distracted from the true knowledge of the self. The “selfie” has nothing to do with self-knowledge and everything to do with an objectification of the self – how I would like myself to look if I were someone else. What the selfie never shows is how we truly perceive ourselves.

Fr Stephen Freeman

Who’s going to church?

Religion, at it’s best, is a place where people from a variety of economic, social, racial and political backgrounds can find common ground around a shared faith. It’s a place to build bridges to folks who are different than you. Unfortunately, it looks like American religion is not at its best.

Instead, it’s become a hospital for the healthy, an echo chamber for folks who did everything “right,” which means that it’s seeming less and less inviting to those who did life another way. Do I think that houses of worship have done this on purpose? Generally speaking, no. But they also haven’t actively refuted this narrative.

I was always told that the job of a preacher is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Maybe we need a lot more of the latter going forward.

Old People

There’s a stereotype that older people are grumpy shut-ins—withering away inside while yelling at some kid to get off their lawn. That judgment is obviously sweeping and unfair, but perhaps it’s also emerged, in part, from some real tendencies—tendencies that might be better understood as justified reactions to a harsh and inaccessible world. America’s population is rapidly growing older, and life expectancy, except for a recent dip, has been getting longer. By 2040, about one in five Americans will be 65 or older; as recently as 2000, that number was one in eight. Perhaps we’d do well to consider what older people’s living conditions can push them to become.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/07/old-age-personality-brain-changes-psychology/674668/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20230712&utm_term=The%20Atlantic%20Daily

“Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble the football “…
– John Heisman, first football coach at Rice

View from the front porch

“schadenfreude”
experiencing satisfaction from someone else’s misfortune.

My encounter with schadenfreude is not overt but subtle. It has occurred in reflection on circumstances of those experiencing misfortune as a result of decisions contrary to my opinions/beliefs. In moments of honest introspection, I realize that I experience pleasant satisfaction of others’ misfortune. The fact that I am restrained from expressing my satisfaction publicly is encouraging, but the truth is plain, there’s within me an undeniable schadenfreude impulse. 

This realization is troubling. As a Christ follower, I believe “schadenfreude” is not a fruit of the Holy Spirit nor does it reflect the mind of Christ. Its presence reveals sin which thrives in the shadows of my soul. A sin which cannot be absolved by sin management i.e. restraint in speaking or acting out. Overcoming “schadenfreude” requires the transcendent power of God. 

Celebration of other’s misfortune is not unusual, in fact, for most of us it comes easily and is consistent with our highly competitive and individualistic culture. Opponents’ demise is the desired outcome. Victory, even if it comes as result of our opponents bad luck, is always occasion for celebration, a fulfillment of our wishes (or prayers?) that they— “get what they deserve” et al. The opportunity to be proved right and to say, or, at a minimum, think “I told you so” is delicious. Dramatic polarization in our society has elevated “schadenfreude” to normal.

The presence of Schadenfreude reveals sin that is deeper “than “missing the mark” —moral failure — a mistake. It isn’t a mistake. It is a power that can reign and rule my mind and body, forcing you me obey, having dominion over me; a false god to whom I give idolatrous allegiance. Defying sin management, schadenfreude’s antidote is found in Romans 6: “…present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” [Adapted from Richard Beck’s post ] 

If these thoughts haven’t caused you to rethink any impulse to celebrate the misfortune of others, and you are convinced that justice should prevail. then consider this passage from proverbs:

Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble do not let your heart rejoice, or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from them (Proverbs 24:17-18).

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

I haven’t gotten anything done today. I’ve been in the Produce Department trying to open this stupid plastic bag.

the naive algorithm 

…the naive algorithm is the “idea that good intentions, a good heart, a love for people, and faith in Jesus will invariably lead to ministry success.”

Carolyn Moore – When Women Lead

God knows us

That God knows us (we wrongly imagine) simply comes with the territory of being God. “God knows everything,” we say, and assume that He should therefore be able to manage everything and run the universe in a way that is pleasing to Him. This, I suspect, is what we ourselves would do were we to suddenly become a god.

The world is created in such a way that God Himself holds it in wonder and awe. He sees not only its goodness, but its very goodness. This is more than mere knowledge and utterly transcends knowledge-as-information. This is knowledge of the most intimate possible meaning.

The modern world suffers from a crisis of loneliness we are told. I believe that much of that crisis is simply the by-product of an information society. The economy (whatever that is) knows pretty much everything about us. It is carefully mined from every action we take in the electronic world. That data is mined, stored, and sold. This is not only true, it is more true every day. But all of that information is the opposite of intimacy. Whoever possesses that information does not know you – though they could easily use it to destroy you. The information is dangerous precisely because those who possess it do not love you.

God has no desire to gather information about us. I’m not certain that God knows anything in a manner that could be described as information. God knows us as He knew Simon Peter. He could predict Simon’s denials while reassuring him that he was being prayed for (and preserved). Perhaps those words of reassurance are the very thing that saved him in the end. God knows us as He knew the Woman at the Well (John 4). He Himself was thirsty, but He knew her thirst (living water).

Fr Stephen Freeman 

Crisis contemplation

When we’re in a crisis situation, the question becomes, “What’s the answer?” and “How does contemplation help, if it can?” No one is going to like the response because there isn’t a response in the ordinary ways. Everyone is going to want a clear process to resolve something. What do we do? How do we do it? What’s going to make us all feel better? There aren’t any answers like that. When there is nothing to do, some of the things that can be done are things we don’t want to do. Philosopher Bayo Akomolafe says it most clearly. He says the first thing you do is slow down:  

To ‘slow down’ … seems like the wrong thing to do when there’s fire on the mountain. But here’s the point: in ‘hurrying up’ all the time, we often lose sight of the abundance of resources that might help us meet today’s most challenging crises. We rush through the same patterns we are used to. Of course, there isn’t a single way to respond to a crisis; there is no universally correct way. However the call to slow down works to bring us face to face with the invisible, the hidden, the unremarked, the yet-to-be-resolved…. It is about staying in the places that are haunted. 

Barbara Holmes

Are You Bullsh*tting Yourself?

Sent on June 26, 2023

Two things for you to think about

Expertise makes something complex appear simple and intelligible. Bullshit makes something simple appear unnecessarily complex and unintelligible.

Expertise creates value for people who don’t know better. Bullshit extracts value from people who don’t know better.

Reflect: Then consider sharing this thought with others.

One thing for you to ask yourself

In what area(s) of your life are you bullshitting yourself? That is, what areas of your life are you over-complicating and making unnecessarily complex?

Recommended: Use these as journaling prompts for the week.

One thing for you to try this week

Stop bullshitting yourself. We often over-complicate problems as a way of emotionally coping with the problem. It feels hard, so we convince ourselves that it must be really hard.

If someone breaks our trust, we assume it must be for 27 different reasons and we have to approach the person like a chess match, when really, we’re just hiding from the painful fact that this person we care about broke our trust.

What’s one way you can stop bullshitting yourself this week?
Mark Manson

OFFER YOUR BODIES AS A LIVING SACRIFICE. 

There are at least two massive dilemmas here. If the Bible has a singular call to action it is contained in this phrase. For most of the years I read this, I read it like this: “offer your bodies as living sacrifices.” In fact, that’s the way my favorite bible translation translated it—the 1984 New International Version. They actually mistranslated the singular word “sacrifice” as the plural “sacrifices.” You’re seeing the issue, aren’t you? The text actually says, “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.” Bodies (plural). Sacrifice (singular). Many bodies—one sacrifice. The New Testament church, the one Jesus is building, is not a bunch of independent individuals running around trying to make Jesus famous. This is perhaps the greatest challenge of the church of our time—to become the body of Christ living the will of God rather than millions of individuated bodies doing their own thing in God’s name. 

J D Walt

  During a visit to my doctor, I asked him, “How do you determine whether or not an older person should be put in an old age home?”

  “Well,” she said, “we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the person to empty the bathtub.”

  “Oh, I understand,” I said. “A normal person would use the bucket because it is bigger than the spoon or the teacup..” 

  “No” she said. “A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?” 

Knocking holes in the buffered self

As Anne Lamott has written, our prayers gather around three words, Help, Thanks and Wow. Lorica prayers–“You, O Lord, are a shield around me”–are prayers of help, prayers of protection. 

Bishop Robert Barron, taking an insight from Charles Taylor, describes what he calls “knocking holes in the buffered self.” According to Charles Taylor, the modern self is “buffered,” closed off from external realities, especially spiritual realities. Consequently, the modern self feels itself to be autonomous and secure within itself, lacking the sharp sense of vulnerability intrinsic to finite, creaturely existence. To “knock holes” in the buffered self is to open it back up to larger realities. 

Lorica prayers, prayers of help and petitions for protection, are tools that can foster this recognition. Beginning your day with the prayer “You, O Lord, are a shield around me” knocks a hole in your buffered self and places you in a vulnerable posture.

Simply ask for help. Pray for aid and protection. Ask regularly. “You, O Lord, are shield around me.” Such prayers restructure your ego and knock holes in your buffered self.

Richard Beck

Humor

“Although it is often considered trivial, humor is a universal and essential part of human social life – hence the saying ‘Whenever two or more are gathered … there is a joke!’ Indeed, after crying, laughter is one of the first social vocalizations by human infants. Later in childhood, humor recognition and enjoyment are key indicators of healthy cognitive development. The erosion of the capacity for humor is an indicator of cognitive decline as we age. It has been shown that humor is a key social attribute in communities in which people live much longer-than-average lifespan than in other communities.”

“When he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker,
and I was daily his delight,
playing before him always,
playing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race” (Prov. 8:29-31).

Humor Us! Preaching and the Power of the Comic Spirit

Photo credit – Susan Clark
View from the Front Porch

Things this old man thinks about:
“There is no I in TEAM”
I am increasingly aware praise and worship experiences are dominated with “I” and “Me” references and seldom any “We and “Us”; in contrast to:
“…so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” or
“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

“I” and “Me” overshadow the prophets’ vision of shalom for God’s people.
Brueggemann says it well:

The most staggering expression of the vision [shalom] is that all persons are children of a single family, members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of single destiny, namely, the care and management of all of God's creation.

The origin and the destiny of God's people is to be on the road of shalom, which is to live out of joyous memories and toward greater shalom, which is to live out of joyous memories and toward greater anticipations. 

If there is to be well-being, it will not be just for isolated, insulated individuals; it is rather security and prosperity granted to a whole community-young and old, rich and poor, powerful and dependent. Always we are all in it together. Together we stand before God's blessings and together we receive the gift of life if we receive it at all. Shalom comes only to the inclusive, embracing community that excludes none. 

Walter Brueggemann- Living Toward a Vision

STILL ON THE JOURNEY