LOVE
Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up. If we love each other enough, we will bear with each other’s faults and burdens. If we love enough, we are going to light that fire in the hearts of others. And it is love that will burn out the sins and hatreds that sadden us. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other. No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much.
Dorothy Day

Cost Benefit Analysis
…life is about more than just the sum of the day-to-day pleasures and pains that follow from our choices. Adding up costs and benefits — what I call narrow utilitarianism — may seem like the height of rationality. But it can easily undervalue the most important but less obvious aspects of a life well lived. 
Human beings want purpose. We want meaning. We want to belong to something larger than ourselves. The decisions we make in the face of wild problems don’t just lead to good days and bad days. They define us. They determine who we are, who we might aspire to become, who we might come to be.
… decisions look irrational only until we remember that the future is veiled from us and that life is about more than simple pluses and minuses. …daily happiness is less important than how we thought we should live his life and who and what we wanted to become.
Russ Roberts
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/how-to-make-decisions.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20220723&instance_id=67246&nl=opinion-today&regi_id=98699252&segment_id=99384&te=1&user_id=979ff7ea8eb24fcd7abe710b579081f5

What kind of friend do you want?
“Jesus said, “Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. . . . As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.” —John 15:4–5, 9 

I want you to be honest: Would you rather have a friend who is always right or one who is in right relationship with you? I think I know the answer: We’d rather have someone who’s in right relationship with us. In fact, someone who’s right all the time can be pretty obnoxious. Would we rather have a friend who’s always correct or a friend to whom we’re always connected? Of course, we’d rather have the second.  
So why did we in the West seemingly change the rules for God? Many of us grew up thinking God wanted us to be right, to be correct, even to be perfect. What this passage in John’s Gospel is saying is that God wants people who are in right relationship, which means that we are open, and that we can listen to others with understanding and compassion. It means that we can admit when we’re wrong, which is almost every day for most of us. It certainly is for me.   
Richard Rohr

“the mind of Christ.”
The mind of Christ draws us to the power of God that shows up in weakness, great fear, and trembling. The mind of Christ doesn’t draw us to the top, but to the bottom. We know nothing except Christ and him crucified. That knowledge marks you as “spiritual.” 
By contrast, ambition and pride mark you as unspiritual, immature, lost and blind. And whenever you see Christians flying flags of support for various leaders–“I follow [insert name of leader].”–we are seeing “mere humans,” immature and worldly Christians, not the spiritually enlightened.
Richard Beck

It’s about sex
In the Old Testament, it is said that a man “knew his wife,” when making reference to their conjugal union. Modern thought tends to smile knowingly and think that what is being said is but a quaint metaphor for sex. But “sex” is itself the crude metaphor of an individualistic culture that has reduced “union” to a set of feelings. The Biblical phrase expresses the understanding that what is taking place between husband and wife transcends its physical expression. It is a true union in which the two “become one flesh.” Again, such a statement is treated as “mere metaphor” in our modern culture, when it is quite the opposite. It is an effort, in words, to give voice to an experience of knowing that is virtually inexpressible. The modern assumption is that the phrase, “knew his wife,” is an effort to avoid what is actually happening, when it is, in fact, an effort to actually express what is happening beyond direct observation.
Fr Stephen Freeman

In our cultural context, to use the word “love,” is to invite the entire world of sentimentality into a conversation where it does not belong. The contemporary world knows very little of love in its proper sense. For “love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (1John 4:7). 
Fr Stephen Freeman

Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you[?]
Paul does not say, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Look at your activity log over the last week and see if you did anything that would point to faith. Did you read your Bible or pray or love your neighbor or go to church or give money to a person in need?” This is the deep rut in which most Christians are stuck—the tired movement between aspiration and activation; between inspiration and application. It’s why the most common thing we hear people say when it comes to faith is something along the lines of, “I need to do better,” or “I need to try harder.” And there is no end to this cycle. In time, it leads to two equally soul-stunting outcomes: Easy believe-ism on the one hand and harsh legalism on the other; abdication or addiction. 
No, Paul is not looking for the presence or absence of activity as the mark of passing or failing the test. He is looking for a realized actuality:
Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you[?]
J D Walt

Deep listening …
is an act of surrender. We risk being changed by what we hear. When I really want to hear another person’s story, I try to leave my preconceptions at the door and draw close to their telling. I am always partially listening to the thoughts in my own head when others are speaking, so I consciously quiet my thoughts and begin to listen with my senses. . . . The most critical part of listening is asking what is at stake for the other person. I try to understand what matters to them, not what I think matters. Sometimes I start to lose myself in their story. As soon as I notice feeling unmoored, I try to pull myself back into my body, like returning home. As Hannah Arendt [1906–1975] says, “One trains one’s imagination to go visiting.” [1] When the story is done, we must return to our skin, our own worldview, and notice how we have been changed by our visit.  
Valarie Kaur 

View from the front porch
A post from the past:

I Can Identify with President Obama
JULY 30, 2009 
If not comforting, it is interesting that I have come to identify with President Obama in his efforts to single-handedly solve most of our country’s problems. Let me explain.
In the mid-seventies I returned from an educational leave to a new job in labor relations at Ford. As a labor relations representative my first significant assignment was to conduct absentee hearings. The assignment meant that each day I would go to an interview room in the plant and conduct  hearings for employees that had been absent or tardy the previous few days. Typically, dozens of employees would line up for their opportunity, accompanied by their union committeman, to face my stinging interrogation regarding their absence/tardiness. Without a reasonable explanation supported by appropriate documentation, I would administer discipline which could be as little as a verbal warning or as drastic as termination depending upon their attendance records. We employed a progressive discipline system which meant that each penalty was more severe that the last. Within certain limits, I had the latitude to exercise discretion in what the penalty would be. For example, I could give a person a three-day suspension without pay and then their next discipline would be a week suspension, and so on. I might, because of mitigating circumstances, administer the penalty but waive the time off. Theoretically, the employee having been given a gracious gift and facing a next penalty of one week (appropriately threatened with such at the time of the gift) would see the error of his ways and come to work from that point on.

You must be thinking, what does this have to do with President Obama?
When assigned to the absentee hearings, I inherited all the documented absentee records of every employee. Those who came the hearings were most often employees that had a history of habitual absence/tardiness. I looked at the terrible attendance records and talked with the employees and heard their pleadings and hard luck stories and tears et al. I began to believe, that despite the failed efforts of experienced labor relations representatives to correct their behavior, I possessed qualities and skills that would succeed where others had failed. As a result, I launched a personal campaign to single-handedly solve the plant’s desperate absentee problems. It was obvious to me that my predecessors had not explained clearly nor used the tools of persuasion as I was capable of doing to turn this around. To make a long story shorter, in a short time disciplinary actions decreased and absenteeism began to increase. This did not go unnoticed by my superiors. I was informed that if I didn’t get on track I would be fired. So rather than be fired, I fired. My delusions of grandeur were burst and I learned a valuable lesson. The lesson wasn’t that I didn’t have some special or unique skills and/or qualities that may have very well improved the process. I learned that I could not ignore the reality of history and experience and succeed by the force of my personality. What success I ultimately achieved in improving attendance came because I recognized the reality of the circumstances around me and then began to apply whatever special traits I possessed to those circumstances.
There is, I believe, a basic human trait that leads us to arrogantly believe that we individually possess knowledge and understanding that transcends all others and as well as lessons learned from the past.

It is comforting(?) to know President Obama is human.

STILL ON THE JORNEY

It’s not too late
We have news that eight-year-old you would have loved: Hasbro announced yesterday that, starting this fall, you’ll be able to put a 3D-printed version of your own head on any of the toy company’s signature action figures.
Only $59.99 (plus tax) to transform into the Red Ranger, G.I. Joe, or Princess Leia? Total steal.
The Dispatch

Modern Catechesis
 “People come to believe what they are most thoroughly and intensively catechized to believe, and that catechesis comes not from the churches but from the media they consume, or rather the media that consume them. The churches have barely better than a snowball’s chance in hell of shaping most people’s lives.” Alan Jacobs

Exposed
The Dobbs decision has revealed fault lines in American Christianity. These fault lines lay just below the surface for a long while, but are now clearly exposed. As long as abortion was legal by Supreme Court decree, it was possible to identify as pro-life but keep that commitment at the level of theory; one could hold pro-life views but not be perceived as a threat. All that has now changed. To identify as pro-life post-Dobbs is not simply to hold an opinion many regard as wrong; it is to be part of an act of political and social “oppression.” And predictably, many Christians are feeling the need to “nuance” their relationship to the overturning of Roe.
Carl Trueman

Funeral Sermons
Funeral sermons do need to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. They certainly can’t tell the whole truth. But they should do what I had intended—and failed—to do: acknowledge hurt, pain, and brokenness when appropriate, and with pastoral sensitivity.
God’s love can’t be reduced to free-floating aphorisms sewn into a blanket. It’s an active, redeeming love, its beauty most luminous in relationship to our flaws, shortcomings, and sins, which it forgives and heals. If that harder subject matter is off-limits in a funeral sermon, then so too is the deepest truth of the gospel.
Roger Owens

Fundamentalist
Here is one way I identify a fundamentalist church or individual. There are three types of Christian beliefs: essentials (dogmas), non-essentials (denominational doctrines), opinions (definitely non-essential even if interesting beliefs). Fundamentalists empty the “opinion” category and move everything they believe into the “essentials” category. (Some moderate fundamentalists will leave some non-essentials in the middle category.) Liberals, on the other hand, move everything into the “opinion” category, leaving the essentials category virtually empty. (I’m talking about doctrines here, not ethics.) Moderates are those who make serious, thoughtful effort to put the right beliefs in the right categories. We are very few.
Roger Olson

Following Jesus
I don’t mind people pointing to Jesus as an ideal moral exemplar. But problems come when we reduce Jesus to being a moral guru or an enlightened human being. We see Jesus standing at a summit of moral progress with a smooth road leading up to him. We climb, as heroes, toward that summit. We are on a journey of moral and spiritual self-actualization. But in the Christian story, this entire enterprise is radically called into question. We can’t climb. We can’t self-actualize. We’re stuck. And so Christ comes down to us and dies for the ungodly.
 Richard Beck

Prospective Converts
Tim Keller writes, “The United States is slowly running out of traditionally-minded Americans to be converted, and conservative Protestants on the whole are unwilling or unable to reach the highly secular and culturally different.”

Many of the things that you believe right now—in this very moment—are utterly wrong.
I can’t tell you precisely what those things are, of course, but I can say with near certainty that this statement is true. To understand this uncomfortable reality, all you need is some basic knowledge of history.
At various times throughout the history of humankind, our most brilliant scientists and philosophers believed many things most eight-year-olds now know to be false: the earth was flat, the sun revolved around the earth, smoking cigarettes was good for digestion, humans were not related to apes, the planet was 75,000 years old, or left-handed people were unclean.
Around 100 years ago, doctors still thought bloodletting (that is, using leeches or a lancet to address infections) was useful in curing a patient. Women were still fighting for the right to vote, deemed too emotional and uneducated to participate in democracy, while people with darker skin were widely considered subhuman. The idea that the universe was bigger than the Milky Way was unfathomable, and the fact the earth had tectonic plates that moved beneath our feet was yet to be discovered.
Issac Saul

Inflation Casualties
Nearly two-thirds of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. An estimated 41 percent — 135 million people — are considered either poor or low-income. Eighteen percent of households earn less than $25,000 a year. Even before the pandemic hit, one in four Black families had a net worth of zero.
Rachel Poser NYT

No short term solution
“The US hasn’t built a full-scale refinery since 1977. Designing and constructing the labyrinth of pipelines, tanks, and distillation columns would easily cost $10 billion and take as long as a decade,” they write. “During the pandemic, plants that distill crude into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel shut down around the world, and construction of new ones was postponed. The closures were especially acute in the US, where old facilities suffered irreparable damage from breakdowns and hurricanes while others were converted to produce renewable diesel. … ‘My personal view is there will never be another new refinery built’ in the US, [Chevron CEO Mike] Wirth said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in June. ‘You’re looking at committing capital 10 years out, that will need decades to offer a return for shareholders, in a policy environment where governments around the world are saying, ‘We don’t want these products.’”

View from the Front Porch

In a recent Sunday morning worship service. It occurred to me that in 1972 I would have been wearing a suit, maybe 3-piece, white dress shirt with a Countess Mara tie and polished dress shoes. My leather bound Bible, with index tabs to facilitate quick reference, at my side. Highlighters and a fountain pen to take notes. Today, my Sunday morning worship clothes are a casual collared shirt with slacks and casual shoes— no socks. Instead of a Bible i bring a journal to take notes. Of course my iPhone is handy with Bible apps and numerous translations.
I am pondering what is different about me today than 50 years ago. Hopefully more than appearances.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

Roe v Wade
I have a lot of thoughts and emotions on today and in time I will share them as I parse them out. I can assure you they are multi-faceted and complex. Abortion has been an issue close to my heart for more than two decades and Bethany served many years as a crisis pregnancy counselor for various local resource centers and went through the process of an unplanned pregnancy herself which helped shape a lot of her views and subsequently many of my own. So this just can’t be a passing issue of minor theoretical relevance to me (I also was recommended to be aborted as an unborn baby myself, of which I am personally glad did not happen–albeit, point taken that I would have never known). So yes, thoughts and emotions.
That said, I want to implore people to remember this: no matter where you stand on today, it is more than likely (and if you don’t, you’re likely living in your own echo chamber) that you have a good deal of friends and loved ones that stand on the stark opposite of you as it relates to abortion. People you love, appreciate, and even respect as thoughtful people with genuine experiences and honest hearts.
Be patient. Be kind. This is a felt justice issue at all sides and simply condemning one side as being bigoted or evil stops any conversation from moving forward as they are or could equally condemn you under the same descriptors.
Unfortunately, I know people that will hang up friendships on this issue alone. And they will feel justified in doing so. But that doesn’t allow any potential listening to occur and even if you feel action is necessary, one should always be in a state of listening. If not to the ideas and thoughts that shape the perspective, to the person behind those ideas and thoughts.
Randy Hardman

A thesaurus
—here it comes—is for increasing one’s aliveness to words. Nothing more and nothing less. By going into the buzzing and jostling hive of words around a word, we get a purer sense of the word itself: its coloration, its interior, its traces of meaning. I looked up the verb excite just now and found the word in its affective (touch, move) and mechanical (electrify, galvanize) aspects. Which gets at who we are, as humans, doesn’t it? Feelings and circuitry.
As for you, blessed Mr. Roget, they say you had OCD. Of course you did. You were hooked, hung up, haunted by the hidden life of words: their selves, their stories, as told by the words they are closest to. You gave us a great gift. May you rest eternally among your synonyms.
James Parker – Atlantic

Hoofprint
You’ve heard of the carbon footprint. Now there is a development on the carbon hoofprint.
New Zealand has announced a plan to tax livestock burps in an effort to curb the country’s gas emissions.
Methane emissions from animals is a well-known issue. Cows alone are responsible for about 40% of those planet-warming gases globally — mainly through their burps.
UC Davis scientist Ermias Kebreab is something of a cow whisperer who has spent two decades studying the greenhouse gas contributions of hoofed animals.
“If you tell me how much your animal is consuming, I can tell you pretty closely to the actual emissions using mathematical models,” he said.
“Most of the gas is formed in their stomach, so in their guts, particularly in the first chamber. And so they belch it out.”
He and other scientists have developed special diets and genetic predictions that could help reduce the methane formed in cow stomachs.
Now, New Zealand could become the first country to tax its way to fewer “four-legged” emissions. 
There are seven times more cows and sheep than people in New Zealand. And on Wednesday, the country’s government released a draft plan to have farmers pay for their animals’ emissions, starting in 2025.
The group recommended the government “introduce a farm-level split-gas levy on agricultural emissions with built-in incentives to reduce emissions and sequester carbon.”
Past measures to tax farmers have met strong resistance, but New Zealand’s climate change minister James Shaw thinks it is a good start.

Extremism
The prevailing operative worldview is shaped by by a view of the world seen in the extreme. Facilitated by media and technology we see the world magnified to the extreme, an equivalent of bacterial bed buddies.

Dead skin cells, sweat, saliva, and more can turn your comfy bed into a petri dish for germs to grow. For instance, lab tests found that swabs from pillowcases unwashed for a week harbored 17,000 times more colonies of bacteria than samples taken from a toilet seat.
Information that is true, when viewed in the extreme is unreal. Unreal in the sense that it does not reflect reality. It is true but not real. Reality is the sum of all parts. Bacterial bed buddies are true but they do not reflect reality. They are one minuscule part of a vast reality, which when understood in proper perspective will produce healthy outcomes… enjoying freshly washed bed linens and sleeping soundly. Magnified out of proportion they produce anxiety, fear and disproportionate responses. 
Rohr puts it this way:  People with a distorted image of self, world, or God will be largely incapable of experiencing what is really real in the world. They will see things through a narrow keyhole. They’ll see instead what they need reality to be, what they’re afraid it is, or what they’re angry about. They’ll see everything through their aggressiveness, their fear, or their agenda. In other words, they won’t see it at all.
Society’s (our) gross misbehavior, comes from viewing a world distorted by extremism. Ever present media depicts what is true, but seldom real. We are lost in the desert desperately pursuing a mirage, living in panic, fighting bacterial bed buddies. 
I have little optimism that secular society will embrace what is true and real. My hope lies in the transcendent reality of the Kingdom of God, where what is true and real dwells.

To that end, my prayer remains, 
“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
George Ezell

Prayer
A father has a young child whom he greatly loves.  
Even though the child has hardly learned to speak,  
           his father takes pleasure  
           in listening to the child’s words.
Your Word Is Fire: The Hasidic Masters on Contemplative Prayer

STILL ON THE JOURNEY