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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 1 Comment

Living to 100
Experts don’t mince words: as many as half of today’s five year olds in the U.S. will live to 100. Are we ready?

Vocation
It comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a person is called to by God. There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Super-ego, or Self-Interest. By and large a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. . . . The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
Fredrick Buchner 

From fame to honor
The remedy for shame is not becoming famous. It is not even being affirmed. It is being incorporated into a community with new, different, and better standards for honor. It’s a community where weakness is not excluded but valued; where honor-seeking and “boasting” of all kinds are repudiated; where servants are raised up to sit at the table with those they once served; where even the ultimate dishonor of the cross is transformed into glory, the ultimate participation in honor. To use the powerful biblical metaphor, the gospel offers adoption—a new status as “sons,” to use the intentionally gendered, high-status word of Romans 8—to both men and women, now members of the family of the firstborn Son.
Andy Crouch

Community and Intimacy with God
Dietrich Bonhoeffer—in his book on community, Life Together, suggested that sometimes the psychological energy from being with a group of people can displace true trust in God for many. He suggested that we must learn to be alone with God, which is different from loneliness, for us to become whole and to not confuse the energies of friendship and community with intimacy with God.
Who doesn’t want moral support? Who doesn’t need friends when the heart is most challenged to affirm our vocation, our calling, and to remind us who we are?
Jesus doesn’t want it, that’s who. Not at this moment. He knows it’s time to be in the solitary place, the wild, the alone.

Desert Experience

One does not have to move to the geographical location of the wilderness in order to find God. Yet, if you do not have to go to the desert, you do have to go through the desert…. The desert is a necessary stage on the spiritual journey. To avoid it would be harmful. To dress it up or conceal it may be tempting; but it also proves destructive in the spiritual path.
Ironically, you do not have to find the desert in your life; it normally catches up with you. Everyone does go through the desert…. It may be in the form of some suffering, or emptiness, or breakdown, or breakup, or divorce, or any kind of trauma that occurs in our life. Dressing this desert up through our addictions or attachments—to material goods, or money, or food, or drink, or success, or obsessions, or anything else we may care to turn toward or may find available to depend upon—will delay the utter loneliness and the inner fearfulness of the desert experience. If we go through this experience involuntarily, then it can be both overwhelming and crushing. If, however, we accept to undergo this experience voluntarily, then it can prove both constructive and liberating.
Richard Rohr

Virtue
In “The Sovereignty of Good,” the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch writes that “virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is.”

Searching Scripture
Rather than a vehicle for knowing God and fostering our communion with him, we search the Scriptures for applicable principles that we may employ to control our world.
..Jethani, Skye. With (p. 51).

“Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell; spirituality is for those who have been there.”
Rohr, Richard. Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps (p. 33).

View from the back deck
We had an uneventful return from Florida, arriving Thursday am. March in Kentucky is never dull. On Friday we experienced unprecedented weather (seems like that’s the only kind we have these days) with 80mph winds. The low pressure system set a record low barometric reading. Our back yard is filled with our neighbors tree. No damage other than the fence. I was able to secure our carriage house metal roof before it blew off. We lost power around 3:30 pm yesterday and it has still not been restored. Our daughter has power so we have a handy refuge.
After seeing the hurricane impact in Florida and hearing the difficulties people are still encountering, our situation is insignificant. The impact on Kentucky is significant, adding to last year’s tornados and flooding.
We are thankful for our good fortune.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

There ought to be a law…
..keep a close eye on Florida’s upcoming legislative session. If Democratic State Sen. Lauren Book’s proposed bill prohibiting dogs from extending their “head or any other body part outside a motor vehicle window” becomes law, we’re going to have some issues.

Solving America’a Drug Addiction Problem
Harm Reduction – a change in how all Americans view people who use drugs.
OnPoint, a local nonprofit that provides care for people who take drugs, are using an approach called harm reduction. Their focus is on minimizing the consequences of drug use rather than trying to eradicate it. This includes offering people clean needles to prevent disease as well as overdose reversal medications. For the past year the organization has been operating the country’s first official supervised consumption site, where people can use the drugs they bring under the oversight of trained staff.
As the Times editorial board argues today, “That means accepting that people who use drugs are still members of our communities and are still worthy of compassion and care. It also means acknowledging the needs and wishes of people who don’t use drugs, including streets free of syringe litter and neighborhoods free of drug-related crime. These goals are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they go hand in hand. NYT 2-22-2023

Congregational Size
“There is a lot to say about congregational size, but one fact is fundamental: most congregations are small, but most people are in large congregations,” according to a 2021 National Congregations Study report.1 “In 2018–19, the median congregation had only 70 regular participants, counting both adults and children, and an annual budget of $100,000. At the same time, the average attendee worshipped in a congregation with 360 regular participants and a budget of $450,000.” This consolidation of believers, according to Chaves, means that “half of the money, people and staff” can be found in about 9 percent of Protestant congregations. The top 1 percent of churches by themselves have about 20 percent of the people and resources.
Reorganized Church: The Reshaping of the American Church and Why it matters

Wonder
St. Gregory of Nyssa asserts, “Only wonder understands anything.” The role of wonder is (among other things) to slow us down, make us quiet, and help us pay attention. The “flat-landers” sail prosaically through life and miss most of what is true, drawing only the most obvious conclusions, even when what is obvious is incorrect. It is the things that are “out of place” that are easily ignored (they’re so bothersome!), while they are most often the clues that reveal the mystery.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Social trust
in the early 1970s half of Americans said that most people can be trusted; today that figure is less than one-third. And a recent Pew poll found that social trust declines sharply from generation to generation. In 2018, around 29% of Americans over 65 said that most people can’t be trusted, while 60% of Americans 18 to 29 agree. Recent research suggests that social trust levels harden with age, meaning that trust will continue to fall as trusting generations are replaced by mistrustful ones.

Bragging
Walter Brueggemann offers God’s message through Jeremiah to those bragging:

Let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me,
that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness
in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord….

Life on the Porch

On the first day, God created the dog and said, “Sit all day by the door of your house, and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. For this I will give you a life span of twenty years.”  

The dog said, “That’s a long time to be barking.  How about only ten years, and I’ll give you back the other ten?” 

 And God said that it was good. 

 On the second day, God created the monkey and said, “Entertain people, do tricks, and make them laugh. For this, I’ll give you a twenty-year life span.”   

The monkey said, “Monkey tricks for twenty years? That’s a pretty long time to perform. How about I give you back ten like the dog did?”  

 And God again said that it was good. 

On the third day, God created the cow and said, “You must go into the field with the farmer all day long, and suffer under the sun, have calves, and give milk to support the farmer’s family. For this, I will give you a life span of sixty years.” 

The cow said, “That’s kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. How about twenty, and I’ll give back the other forty?”  

And God agreed it was good. 

On the fourth day, God created humans and said, “Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. For this, I’ll give you twenty years.”  

But the human said, “Only twenty years? Could you possibly give me my twenty, the forty the cow gave back, the ten the monkey gave back, and the ten the dog gave back; that makes eighty, okay?  

 “Okay,” said God, “You asked for it.” 

So that is why for our first twenty years, we eat, sleep, play and enjoy ourselves. For the next forty years, we slave in the sun to support our family. For the next ten years, we do monkey tricks to entertain the grandchildren. And for the last ten years, we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone. 

Life has now been explained to you. 

There is no need to thank me for this valuable information. I’m doing it as a public service. If you are looking for me, I’ll be on the front porch.

Unknown

View from the Lanai
This is my final “view from the lanai” for this winter. We return to Wilmore on March 2. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and the front porch will be open soon.
As usual, warm weather is a highlight of our time here. We have not been disappointed.However, Red Tide has been present more than past years.
Getting to know neighbors around meals and conversation is especially enjoyable and helps stave off homesickness.
Hurricane Ian impacted a lot of people. Seeing the damage and hearing their stories and resilience has been encouraging.
As we get older, our window of opportunity to travel to Florida narrows. We are committed to return next year, beyond that is TBD. (truthfully, next year is TBD, like most everything else at this point.)

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

Unlearning
I’m learning to be grateful for unlearning. What misery it would be if we had to retain what we learn as certainty for our lifetimes! Unlearning is a part of learning. And this gives us freedom and humility, then, to explore who you are, Lord, and your world with your people.
Isn’t repentance also a form of unlearning? Dallas Willard paraphrases Jesus’ words in Matthew 4:17 like this: “‘Rethink your life in light of the fact that the kingdom of heaven is now open to all.’”[1] Because repentance is just that. It is a rethinking, seeing what’s real, turning towards it, shedding the counterfeit, and walking through the door. There’s an unlearning involved.
Aimee Byrd

Scott Erickson on Instagram:
“It’s painful to outgrow the form you’ve called your home for such a long time. We all go through some form of this. Hometown. Perspective. Even religious practice. And religious practice is hard because all religious practice is about identity and where we feel like we belong.
So when you feel the claustrophobia and the tightness… it’s overwhelming to think you don’t fit anymore and you need to change in some way.
But the wonder and the gift of transformation is this:
Awakening to the truth that your shell was never your home…
The ocean is.

Satisfaction and human flourishing
…satisfaction is central in how many contemporaries think of human flourishing. Satisfaction is a form of experience, and experiences are generally deemed to be matters of individual preference. Everyone is the best judge of her own experience of satisfaction. To examine whether a particular experience fits into a larger account of the world is already to risk relativizing its value as an experience.
Miroslav Volk

Better a Liar than a Bullshitter?
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may pertain to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose. (pp. 55-56) On Bullshit

The Importance of Sharing Wisdom
…one important feature of sharing wisdom: it is more like playing a musical piece for a
friend than treating her to a meal. When I serve a meal to a friend, what she eats I no longer have; in contrast, when I play music for her, she receives something that, in a sense, I continue to possess. When I share wisdom, I don’t part with what I give; to the contrary, I may come to possess it in a deeper way.
Miroslav Volk – A Public Faith- How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good

Aging
John Perry, the main character in the novel “Old Man’s War”, describes the aging process in a direct and little bit coarse way, which only a senior citizen can get away with: “The problem with aging is not that it’s one damn thing after another—it’s every damn thing, all at once, all the time.”

View from the Lanai
Asbury Revival
Social media, local and national news has been saturated with reports , pictures, video, articles, including a Tucker Carlson segment on Fox News regarding the revival that broke out on February 8th and continues today. An extraordinary event; revival is a work of God through the Holy Spirit; and defies rational explanation.

I am thankful that thousands of people are having an encounter that will echo in their hearts and minds for the rest of their lives. Undeniably personal and profound, the ultimate impact of those experiences remains to be seen. Without question, lives are being changed. That’s what happens when we meet God.

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

John Stuart Mill wrote  “he who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.”

Older cognitive bias
…empirical studies by psychologists John Protzko and Jonathan Schooler, whose 2019 essay in Science Advances was titled “Kids these days: Why the youth of today seem lacking.” Protzko and Schooler summarize their many studies showing that older people suffer from a variety of cognitive biases, such as that we each have biased and self-serving memories of what we were like at that age, and so we older people always find current younger people inferior and declining. 
Jonathan Haidt
https://www.persuasion.community/p/haidt-the-teen-mental-illness-epidemic?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=61579&post_id=101632411&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

Did I get it Right?
We ask, “Did I get it right?” which phrases the question with the emphasis on ourselves. Webecome the center of our attention – which misses the point. That point is better stated as, “Am I walking in the Light?” In this, the focus is on Christ who is the Light. If I fail, then I fail within the light. The point is not my failure (for, if I walk in the Light, then the blood of Jesus cleanses me from all sin) but the Light. Christ is everything.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Power of Evil over Good
Decades ago, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was asked whether evil is more powerful than good. His reply can help shape the terms of our challenge in this moment: “Evil is not more powerful than good,” Tutu replied, “but it is better organized!” 

Beauty
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Keats

Simplicity 
Just as all higher mathematics depends on learning basic arithmetic, and just as all more sophisticated music depends on mastering the basics of tempo, melody, and harmony, the spiritual life depends on learning well the essential lessons of this first season, Simplicity. If these lessons aren’t learned well, practitioners will struggle in later seasons. But if in due time this season doesn’t give way to the next, the spiritual life can grow stagnant and even toxic. Nearly all of us in this dynamic season of Simplicity tend to share a number of characteristics. We see the world in simple dualist terms: we are the good guys who follow the good authority figures and we have the right answers; they are the bad guys who consciously or unconsciously fight on the wrong side of the cosmic struggle between good and evil. We feel a deep sense of identity and belonging in our in-group…. This simple, dualist faith gives us great confidence.

This confidence, of course, has a danger, as the old Bob Dylan classic “With God on Our Side” makes clear: “You don’t count the dead when God’s on your side.”
Brian McClaren

Artificial Intelligence
This is what many of us notice about art or prose generated by A.I. It’s often bland and vague. It’s missing a humanistic core. It’s missing an individual person’s passion, pain, longings and a life of deeply felt personal experiences. It does not spring from a person’s imagination, bursts of insight, anxiety and joy that underlie any profound work of human creativity.
[for example] Empathy. Machine thinking is great for understanding the behavioral patterns across populations. It is not great for understanding the unique individual right in front of you. If you want to be able to do this, good humanities classes are really useful. By studying literature, drama, biography and history, you learn about what goes on in the minds of other people. If you can understand another person’s perspective, you have a more valuable skill than the skill possessed by some machine vacuuming up vast masses of data about no one in particular.
David Brooks

View from the Lanai
It may not be a light at the end of the tunnel but hopefully it is is reason for some optimism.

Senate Prayer Breakfast
Once a week, a bipartisan group of two dozen of us get together, pray together, sing together, and most importantly, listen to each other at something called the Senate Prayer Breakfast.

Read the full article: https://reflections.yale.edu/article/lets-talk-confronting-our-divisions/prayer-not-politics-wednesday-mornings-sen-chris-coons

I am encouraged.
When I first heard about it, my first reaction was skepticism, revealing prejudices deeper than my confidence in prayer.
Introspection is a good thing.

Presented without Comment

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

Simplicity 

Just as all higher mathematics depends on learning basic arithmetic, and just as all more sophisticated music depends on mastering the basics of tempo, melody, and harmony, the spiritual life depends on learning well the essential lessons of this first season, Simplicity. If these lessons aren’t learned well, practitioners will struggle in later seasons. But if in due time this season doesn’t give way to the next, the spiritual life can grow stagnant and even toxic. Nearly all of us in this dynamic season of Simplicity tend to share a number of characteristics. We see the world in simple dualist terms: we are the good guys who follow the good authority figures and we have the right answers; they are the bad guys who consciously or unconsciously fight on the wrong side of the cosmic struggle between good and evil. We feel a deep sense of identity and belonging in our in-group…. This simple, dualist faith gives us great confidence.

This confidence, of course, has a danger, as the old Bob Dylan classic “With God on Our Side” makes clear: “You don’t count the dead when God’s on your side.”

Brian McClaren

DEDICATED FAN

John Adams, Guardians drummer, provided the soundtrack to Cleveland baseball for nearly 50 years.

Adams died Monday morning at the age of 71. He had dealt with numerous health complications in recent years.

His drumbeat was the heartbeat of every Cleveland baseball season for the past half-century, year after year, through miserable slogs during chilly evenings on the lakefront to those magical moments that only October can deliver. That ballpark memory you clutch onto dearly? Adams’ steady beat was its soundtrack.

https://theathletic.com/4139219/2023/01/30/john-adams-cleveland-guardians-drummer-dies/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=The+FBI+Eyes+One+of+Its+Own&utm_campaign=The+FBI+Eyes+One+of+Its+Own

Hall of Fame /Shame

Hockey legend Bobby Hull died Monday…he was a Hall of Famer on the ice and (at times) a hall of shamer off it…we aren’t supposed to celebrate the gifts he gave us because of the latter…I don’t accept this way of thinking…it encapsulates us all in our worst moments without recognizing any good…it’s a nasty way to live…and die…

We should acknowledge the dark sides of those we admire…it prevents idolatry. Acknowledging only the dark side leads to nothing but shame and a false sense of holiness…

The time to give a full overview of someones life is not an hour after they died…

Phoenix Preacher

Four movements in the faith journey

There are four major movements in the overall journey. They are :

  • moving from forgiveness to acceptance, 
  • from taking in to giving away, 
  • from fear to inner peace, 
  • and from responsibility to simple response. 

They generally follow naturally as faith and trust deepen, as we can relinquish that which we cling to and release ourselves into God’s arms. 

The Critical Journey

Absence of God
“Once the creator was removed from the creation, divinity became only a remote abstraction, a social weapon in the hands of the religious institutions.”

Wendell Berry

RISK

The French poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1919)

“Come to the edge” he said.

“No” I said, “I’m afraid.”

“Come to the edge,” he said.

“No” I said, “I can’t. I will fall.”

“Come to the edge,” he said.

So I came. And He pushed me

And I flew.

 via Steve Elliott

Spiritual Mentorship
David Brooks in his book “Second Mountain” describes how he was mentored in his faith journey:
Anne [Snyder] answered each question as best she could. She never led me – She never intervened or tried to direct the process. She hung back. If I asked her  a question she would answer it, but she would never get out in front of me. She demonstrated faith by letting God be in charge. And this is a crucial lesson for anybody in the middle of any sort of intellectual or spiritual journey: Don’t try to lead or influence. Let them be led by that which is summoning them. 

View from the Lanai

So I am thinking about this woodpecker that shows up on the street lamp and bangs away on the aluminum cover. What ever is he thinking? Then I think maybe I’m a lot like him sometimes. Just making noise? So much to think about!

STILL ON THE JOURNEY