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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

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