Category: Notes Anthology

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Politics & Religion
Tony Campolo, always ready to offer a one-liner: “Putting religion and politics together is like mixing ice cream with horse manure. It doesn’t hurt the horse manure; it ruins the ice cream.”  

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Church
When the church becomes preoccupied with defending itself to the world, it eventually becomes incoherent. The only way to be a church is to speak the peculiar language of peace, of forgiveness, of repentance and resurrection.
christianitytoday

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Piety

Sometimes I observe people so diligently trying to orchestrate whatever state of prayer they’re in that they become peevish about it. They don’t dare to move or let their minds be stirred for fear of jeopardizing the slightest degree of devotion or delight. It makes me realize how little they understand of the path to union. They think the whole thing is about rapture.
But no, friends, no! What the Beloved wants from us is action. What he wants is that if one of your friends is sick, you take care of her. Don’t worry about interrupting your devotional practice. Have compassion. If she is in pain, you feel it, too. If necessary, you fast so that she can eat. This is not a matter of indulging an individual, you do it because you know it is your Beloved’s desire. This is true union with his will. What he wants is for you to be much happier hearing someone else praised than you would be to receive a compliment yourself. If you have humility, this is easy. It is a great thing to be glad when your friends’ virtues are celebrated. 
Teresa of Ávila, The Interior Castle

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Others
What you hate in others is usually what you hate most in yourself. The people who drive you crazy do so because they reflect back at you the worst aspects of yourself that you have either tried to deny or overcome.
Mark Manson

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Ambush
I wonder if the only way that conversion, enlightenment, and transformation ever happen is by a kind of divine ambush. We have to be caught off guard. As long as we are in control, we are going to keep trying to steer the ship by our previous experience of being in charge. The only way we will let ourselves be ambushed is by trusting the “Ambusher,” and learning to trust that the darkness of intimacy will lead to depth, safety, freedom, and love.
Richard Rohr

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Duty
Duty does not have to be dull. Love can make it beautiful and fill it with life. As long as we show lines of division between duty and pleasure in the world of the spirit, we will remain far from God and from His joy. 
ThomasMerton

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Death rate & Conversation 
In perhaps the most revealing of all the health-related studies, a group of subjects who had contracted malignant melanoma received traditional treatment and then were divided into two groups. One group met weekly for only six weeks; the other did not. Facilitators taught the first group of recovering patients specific communication skills. After meeting only six times and then dispersing for five years, the subjects who learned how to express themselves effectively had a higher survival rate—only 9 percent succumbed as opposed to almost 30 percent in the untrained group.3 Think about the implications of this study. Just a modest improvement in the ability to talk and connect with others corresponded to a two-thirds decrease in the death rate. This study is just one sample of how the way you talk or don’t talk can dramatically affect your health. Mountains of research suggest that the negative feelings we hold in and the emotional pain we suffer as we stumble our way through unhealthy conversations slowly eat away at our health. In some cases, the impact of failed conversations leads to minor problems. In others, it results in disaster. In all cases, failed conversations never make us happier, healthier, or better off.
Crucial Conversations

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.”

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.

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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

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STILL ON THE JOURNEY

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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….

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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

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STILL ON THE JOURNEY