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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

Christians
Christians are not a special, better class of person. We’re normal people, but we’re normal people to whom God has delivered a high moral call. The Sermon on the Mount, for example, is one of the most profoundly challenging declarations of moral purpose ever uttered. Thank God for His remarkable grace, because I fail to achieve that standard every day. But the call still remains. 
David French

Inspiration
Inspiration is not about some disembodied ethereal voice dictating words or notes to a catatonic host. It’s a collaborative process, a holy give-and-take, a partnership between Creator and creator. . . . God is still breathing. The Bible is both inspired and inspiring. Our job is to ready the sails and gather the embers, to discuss and debate, and like the biblical character Jacob, to wrestle with the mystery until God gives us a blessing. 
Rachel Held Evans

The Other Epidemic
Something has been replicating in the American mind. It is not microbial. It cannot be detected by nasal swab. To treat an affliction, you must first identify it. But you can’t slide a whole country into an MRI machine
“There’s no diagnosis for this,” Fauci says. “I don’t know what is going on.”

Relationship
We could say that the original blueprint for everything that exists is relationship. John’s word for that was Logos (John 1:1). In other words, the first blueprint for reality was relationality. It is all of one piece. How we relate to God reveals how we eventually relate to everything else. And how we relate to the world is how we are actively relating to God, whether we know it or not (1 John 4:20). How we do anything is how we do everything!
Richard Rohr

The rate of U.S. traffic deaths is now lower than it was in 1921, back when less than 10% of the population had cars.

CHRISTIANS
“There are two kinds of Christians: list makers and storytellers.” And “List makers will talk about doctrines you must believe or commandments you must keep.” And “Storytellers … will say: ‘Let me tell you about my grandmother ….’ That’s when I lean in, because I find the art of Christian living far more compelling that a theological argument. It didn’t used to be that way, though. When I was a young man, I relished” the list making approach. “But these days, I’d rather hear about an embodied faith – a story that must be imagined to be believed.”
Rodney Reeves in his new book, Spirituality according to John. Scot McKnight

The Bible
If we want the Bible to be a constitution, it isn’t enough. It isn’t at all. Nor is it enough as a road map for successful living, as a set of blueprints for building a life, institution, or nation, or as an “owner’s manual” . . . . But as the portable library of an ongoing conversation about and with the living God, and as an entrée into that conversation so that we actually encounter and experience the living God—for that the Bible is more than enough. . . .
Richard Rohr

Journey with Jesus
Jesus’ call to “Come and follow me” doesn’t only occur at the beginning of our journey with him. I think we hear it again and again as we begin new phases of our life with him. In those moments, we have a choice either to stay where we are, content with what the journey has produced in us or to answer the call again. We begin something new again, accepting new risks and challenges.
Jason Zahariades

Fan or follower
They’d gathered outside the giant football stadium as early as 3 a.m. but didn’t seem to mind the cold. The frigid and faithful few had waited 18 months for this, what was a few more hours?
At promptly 8:59 a.m. Wednesday, the doors to the team store at FedEx Field swung open and some two dozen fans, most dressed in a custom burgundy and gold outfits, rushed inside to check out the new merchandise.
“Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” yelled one, as he weaved through racks of T-shirts.
Washington’s NFL team unveiled its new name — the Commanders 

View from the Lanai

Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn’t choose them, I don’t fault them, but it took time to reject them. Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don’t keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream. May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect.
Mary Oliver

Still on thr Journey

So Much To Think About

George 1 Comment

T G I F

HolocaustMemorial Day
“The degree to which one is sensitive to other people’s suffering, to other men’s humanity, is the index of one’s own humanity.”
“True love for man is clandestine love for God.” 
“There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done to other people…The prophets’ great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference.” 
Rabbi Abraham Herschel

Digital Guilt
the “spiral of expectations.” When communication technology makes a new thing (like responding on the go) possible, doing that thing can be a way for people to signal how dedicated they are as workers or family members—and, crucially, not doing that thing can suggest that they aren’t dedicated enough. Now when people feel they haven’t responded sufficiently quickly, they think they owe their correspondent an apology.
…with the mass adoption of email and smartphones, is that the “acceptable” window of response time has gotten much smaller. Someone could conceivably apologize for their delay when responding in the afternoon to an email sent that morning.
Scot McKnight

REMINDER WHEN FILING YOUR TAX RETURN
The Internal Revenue Service’s Publication 17, available on the agency’s website, contains a section on stolen property that may leave readers scratching their heads.
“If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless you return it to its rightful owner in the same year,” the guideline states.

If you sit and stare at a flowing creek for long, perhaps playing about its shallows with sticks and such it is possible to see how utterly connected the many currents and flows are with one another. An action in one spot can yield a reaction downstream, though the one downstream may know very little of what happened before. We individuals who inhabit this point in the stream of time fancy our decisions as though they were independent of so much that went before. 
Fr Stephen Freeman

Thinking…
[There] are those who prefer certainty to truth, those in church who put the purity of dogma ahead of the integrity of love. And what a distortion of the gospel it is to have limited sympathies and unlimited certainties, when the very reverse, to have limited certainties but unlimited sympathies, is not only more tolerant but far more Christian. For “who has known the mind of God?” [Romans 11:34] And didn’t Paul also insist that if we fail in love we fail in all other things? 
William Sloane Coffin

Cyber Shelters ?
More than 75 years after the invention of nuclear weapons, only nine countries appear to have a usable one. But dozens of countries already have cyberweapons. “Everybody seems to want them,” Mark told me, “and this gives enormous power to the countries who sell them and can use them for diplomatic advantage.”

Something to remember when filling your vehicle.
The unemployment rate is at 3.9 percent, lower than its been at any point since 1970 save April 2000 and mid-2018 through March 2020. Year-over-year wage growth is near its highest level since the metric began being tracked in the mid-2000s. Yesterday, we learned that real GDP grew at a 5.7 percent clip in 2021, its fastest rate since 1984. After a global pandemic led most countries around the world to more or less shut down commerce for several months, the U.S. economy is all of … 1 percent smallerthan it likely otherwise would have been. 

View from the Lanai

The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Still on the Journey

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

As mentioned in the last “So Much To Think About” post, I will be posting SMTTA on Fridays. Content will be briefer, focusing on things from the past week that have given me something to think about.

Going to hell
Contrary to popular Christian mythology…Jesus doesn’t want anyone to go to hell…and He went to great lengths to keep people out of it…Christians on the other hand…

I’m going to keep saying this until you get it…Jesus conquered all earthly powers through sacrificial love, suffering, and death…and any “victories” the church wins will come the same way…
Phoenix Preacher

Alabama- Georgia

Alabama v. Georgia National Championship Game: My Response
First I want to congratulate Georgia for the win. The last time they had a championship was 1980.  I do not like to lose but Kirby Smart is essentially a Bama guy.  So hats off to them.  
Second, I did not watch the game on Monday because I was on my mini-retreat at Steep Ravine.  If you listen to the talking heads on ESPN you would think Georgia clobbered Alabama. One said, “Kirby out coached Saban in every phase of the game.”  
So today, I watched the game on YouTube. I do not know what game he watched but from my perspective the game was in fact a basic tie down to the last 120 seconds of it.  So I did what any person should do, I looked up the stats for the game. Here they are according to ESPN. The stats confirm what I saw, an even game.  And Bama wins in most of the categories. Bama lost Jameson Williams to an injury in the game too.  
First downs: GA 20; Bama 22
Total Yards: GA 364; Bama 399
Penalties: GA 10-70; Bama 7-57
Turnovers: GA 1; Bama 2
Time of Poss: GA 28:29; Bama 31:31
As I see it the game came down to two plays.  Bennett’s long bomb for a TD and Young’s pick-six with 40 seconds left in the game. 
The score 33-18 does not even begin to show how close the game was.  I thought both teams defense showed up in spectacular ways.  Congrats to the Dogs but Bama has nothing to be ashamed about. 
Next year is coming. I do not think Georgia will repeat.  Bama will likely play them again in the SEC Championship Game and I doubt the Bulldogs will win.  
Rolllllllllll Tide
Thanks to Bobby Valentine

Virus
We are still battling Covid 19 and the next thing is already here.
The NILE Virus, type C
Virologists have identified a new Nile Virus – type C.
It appears to target those who were born between1940 and 1970.
Symptoms:
1. Causes you to send the same message twice.
2. Causes you to send a blank message.
3. Causes you to send a message to the wrong person.
4. Causes you to send it back to the person who sent it to you.
5. Causes you to forget to attach the attachment.
6. Causes you to hit SEND before you’re finished.
7. Causes you to hit DELETE instead of SEND.
8.Causes you to SEND when you should DELETE.
It is called the C-NILE virus!
Unkknown

Reactionary?
A reactionary is someone with extreme opposition to dramatic social or political change. Sometimes, of course, dramatic change is destructive, and opposition to it is often justified. What distinguishes the reactionary is that they end up making two key intellectual mistakes:Becoming so preoccupied with who or what they are against that the foundation of their politics is reflexive opposition rather than first principles or reason.
Vastly inflating the threat of whatever it is that they oppose, driving responses disproportionate to the scale of the harms they critique.
Do not let the illusions of social media trick you. 
Learn to recognize and avoid “us-vs-them” thinking. 
Be skeptical of convenient narratives. 
Avoid the “zeal of the convert.” 
Take seriously the possibility that you are wrong. 
Reactionary politics is an easy trap to fall into these days, given that so much of what is deemed progress is really the opposite. Ultimately, however, reactionaries do more harm than good. We do not need them, or the alarmism and hysteria in which they often indulge, to save us. Nuance, principles, and moderation will do just fine.
Seth Moskowitz

Presented without comment:

Still on the Journey

So Much to Think About

George 0 Comments

I use Apple Notes app religiously ( no pun intended). I save quotes, quips, etc from daily readings. I save them, hoping to eventually post about them or share in “So Much to Think About”. Many stay hidden. I’m currently up to 1,404 . There is no intended theme or thread, but they may give some insight into the drumbeat in my head. Going forward I intend to post “So Much to Think about” on Fridays. I’m letting you so you can mark your calendar :). BTW today is Friday, so enjoy this post.

Slowing down (traveling “off road”)
“I counted my years and found that I have less time to live from here on than I have lived up to now.
 I feel like that child who won a packet of sweets: he ate the first with pleasure, but when he realized that there were few left, he began to enjoy them intensely.
 I no longer have time for endless meetings where statutes, rules, procedures and internal regulations are discussed, knowing that nothing will be achieved.
 I no longer have time to support the absurd people who, despite their chronological age, haven’t grown up.
 My time is too short: I want the essence, my soul is in a hurry.  I don’t have many sweets in the package anymore.
 I want to live next to human people, very human, who know how to laugh at their mistakes and who are not inflated by their triumphs and who take on their responsibilities.  Thus human dignity is defended and we move towards truth and honesty.  It is the essential that makes life worth living.
I want to surround myself with people who know how to touch hearts, people who have been taught by the hard blows of life to grow with gentle touches of the soul.
 Yes, I’m in a hurry, I’m in a hurry to live with the intensity that only maturity can give.
 I don’t intend to waste any of the leftover sweets.  I am sure they will be delicious, much more than what I have eaten so far.
 My goal is to reach the end satisfied and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience.
 We have two lives and the second begins when you realize you only have one. “
 Mario de Andrade

Difficult subjects
… difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without [any]doubt, what is laid before him.

Mastery of Information
Our culture tends to have a focus on the mastery of information, the management of the facts. I recall a famous television evangelist who touted himself as having memorized the entire Bible. It made him a television evangelist, not a great soul or a deeply wise man. It can indeed be little more than a carnival trick.
The soul is ever so much more about who we are, and the character of who we are than what we are and what we know.
FR Stephen Freeman

Parable of topsoil and wheelbarrow
Having moved house, and a keen gardener, he had a large truck load of topsoil delivered, if I remember the story correctly, ten tons. The driver dumped all of it on his front driveway. The only way to move it to the back garden was shovel by shovel, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. And that, said the good Dr Taylor, was also how he wrote his commentary – over the years, word by word, verse by verse and chapter by chapter. 
Jim Gordon

Right Affections
I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment.
C S Lewis

Virtue as bravery
At root, all virtue is a form of bravery. But bravery is only heroic if there is an objective value at stake, a true good in question. Remove that value and you remove the distinction between virtue and vice, between heroic sacrifice and self-serving cowardice. 
Richard Beck

Fountain Pens
We once wrote with quills from real birds dipped (the quills, that is) in ink, then we wrote with crude hand-made quill pens that were also dipped in ink, then we wrote with fountain pens that had a hidden reservoir that sometimes leaked, and then Mr. Biro invented the discardable ball-point pen, and now you and I have colors and shapes and any kind of pen we want. They are cheap and they are easy. Some see this as clear evidence of progress and improvement. They are not because they are cosmic pollutants.
Unless you prefer a pen that stays with you for life, like a fountain pen. I know that using a ballpoint pen is easy and that it is the end of a line of technological progress, but there is something special and personal about a fountain pen (unless you are hard of heart). It becomes your friend after you’ve filled it for years — and I prefer piston fillers rather than the little plastic cartridges that also clog up the world.
Go ahead, pick up a fountain pen and feel a work of art — Bics are trash. They are cheap; the ink is fake; the pen has no balance; it makes one wonder how humans could do this to themselves. Try on a Pelikan or a Mont Blanc or a Conway Steward or a Waterman or a Schaeffer — I’ve got several and each is a friend.
Scot McKnight

Virtues for today
Fallibilism: we have to admit we may not be right all the time. Which means “No one gets the final say.”
We have to admit that at least some, if not most, of what we claim as knowledge could in some senses be wrong. Nothing is absolute knowledge for any human. A genuine sense that “I might be wrong” permits thinking with others who may help us reach a better position.
Empiricism: what you claim has to be discoverable by others using the same method. Which means “No one has personal authority.”
Jonathan Rausch

“When you have something to say, silence is a lie.” Jordon Peterson

View from the Lanai

I’ve been thinking a lot about this blog. I have been posting since 2006 and am up to nearly a 1000 posts, not counting about four years worth lost when my website crashed some years back.
My initial post:

A Personal Journal
Jan. 14th, 2006 | 09:11 pm
This is a personal journal of George Ezell. It has been created to be a repository of writings about my life and experiences. The information, although personal, is intended to be shared. Perhaps it will be of interest to family and/or friends, if not in the present, in the years to come. It is my belief this journal will be a useful tool in coming to a better self-understanding. It is also my hope that I will be able to provide a window into my life through which others may better understand just who I am. 

Some time ago I decided to distribute my posts more widely through email. The mailing list was comprised of family, friends and acquaintances I thought might be interested. Initially there was a total of 75. Today the number is 65. A few unsubscribed and a few have joined. It is interesting how much it hurts when someone unsubscribes. Just saying.

It is a great privilege and opportunity to have an audience of 65 people to read my posts. I realize there is responsibility that comes with that privilege. I feel a burden to be truthful and honest in what I write. My ambition is to contribute in a small way to a better world. Thank you for joining me on this journey.

If you’re riding’ ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there. Will Rogers

So Much to Think About

George 1 Comment

Hope for 2022
Compared to 2020, weekday prime-time viewership declined 38% at CNN this year, 34% at Fox and 25% at MSNBC, says Nielsen. The drop was 12% at ABC World News Tonight and CBS Evening News; and 14% at NBC Nightly News. 

As Jonah Goldberg recently quipped:
“That’s the thing about choosing the wrong path at a fork in the road—you usually have to walk a long way before you realize the error”. Hopefully, 2022 is long enough.

Gluttony
If you’re in a room where everyone is a greedy glutton hoarding all the food they can grab, gluttony becomes a matter of rational self-interest. Get yours as quickly as possible or you get nothing.
Jonah Goldberg

Wisdom
Maybe what we lack isn’t love but wisdom. It became clear to me that I should pray above all else for wisdom.
We all want to love, but as a rule we don’t know how to love rightly. How should we love so that life will really come from it? I believe that what we all need is wisdom. I’m very disappointed that we in the Church have passed on so little wisdom. Often the only thing we’ve taught people is to think that they’re right—or that they’re wrong. We’ve either mandated things or forbidden them. But we haven’t helped people to enter upon the narrow and dangerous path of true wisdom. On wisdom’s path we take the risk of making mistakes. On this path we take the risk of being wrong. That’s how wisdom is gained.
Richard Rohr

Insanity
? Many Americans have been vaccinated but continue to act as though they have not.
? Many other Americans have not been vaccinated but act as though they have.
? Many of those who got vaccinated hate Donald Trump, who considers the vaccines to be one of his greatest achievements.
? Many who refuse to get vaccinated love Donald Trump.
What do these facts tell us? They tell us that we, as a nation, are insane. But we knew that.
Dave Barry

“identity-protection cognition.” 
As humans in a tribe we conform to our tribe so as not to be alienated from our tribe. To alter our minds from our tribe means alienation and excommunication, and no one wants that kind of liminality.
Jonathan Haidt said this way: Our minds “unite us into teams, divide us against other teams, and blind us to the truth.”
Group think then can be blind and prevent us from finding truth but all the while we are convinced we are entirely reasonable and right. When this occurs the whole tribe “loses touch with reality” and truth. When this occurs cults form and we get “paranoid alternative realities.”
Scot McKnight

The smartest people
Our culture champions the mind. We think of ourselves as far more brilliant than those who lived in the past and certainly more aware and understanding of the processes and realities of the world around us. In short, we think we’re the smartest people who have ever lived. In point of fact, we have narrowed the focus of our attention and are probably among the least aware human beings to have ever lived.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Fruitcake
Two friends from Iowa have been exchanging the same fruitcake since the late 1950s. Even older is the fruitcake left behind in Antarctica by the explorer Robert Falcon Scott in 1910. But the honor for the oldest known existing fruitcake goes to one that was baked in 1878 when Rutherford B. Hayes was president of the United States.
What’s amazing about these old fruitcakes is that people have tasted them and lived, meaning they are still edible after all these years. The trifecta of sugar, low-moisture ingredients and some high-proof spirits make fruitcakes some of the longest-lasting foods in the world.
Scot McKnight

Psychics
Within a few blocks of the University of Washington in Seattle, there are not one but two establishments offering psychic services. At one or both, you can obtain palmistry, fortune-telling, aura cleansing, crystal readings, dream analysis, chakra balancing, psychic aura readings, past life regressions, and tarot card readings. Every American city has similar listings in Google Maps for professional psychics, including 20 in Philadelphia, 17 in Memphis, and 18 in St. Louis. The Pew Research Center reports that fully 41% of all Americans believe in psychics.
The same surveys indicate that 29% of Americans believe in astrology, and many of them seek astrological guidance for their lives. They can easily download the sophisticated apps promising personalized advice that have replaced the simple horoscopes earlier generations read in newspapers. Co-Star, one of the leading apps, says it “uses NASA data, coupled with the methods of professional astrologers, to algorithmically generate insights about your personality and your future.” According to a brand promotion company, the “mystical services market”—which includes but reaches well beyond astrology apps—totals $2.1 billionin the U.S.
This movement is heightened among young people. Many social trends gather steam initially in the young, and that is certainly true with respect to religion. Within Generation Z—generally defined as people born after the mid-to-late 1990s—the percentage who do not affiliate with a religion has reached an all-time high. Among those who do hold a religious identity, attendance at worship services has fallen off a cliff.
Young people are also disproportionately represented among the enthusiasts for astrology, Tarot cards, and various forms of New Age mysticism. They frequently pair their excursions into the paranormal with standard religious activities such as prayer. To put it simply, DIY religion has meant for young people a substantial retreat from religious participation in an organized community but no major withdrawal from religious and mystical belief.
Mark Allen Smith
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-rise-of-do-it-yourself-religion

“To see what is in front of one’s nose,” George Orwell said, “needs a constant struggle.” 

View from the Lanai
The view this morning is a metaphor for 2022. The sun is shinning but the future is foggy. With each passing year days ahead become increasingly tentative and more precious. Ann and I look forward to celebrating our 80th birthdays and 60th wedding anniversary. Memories of 2021 make us thankful for 2022 and the prospect of life’s joy.
Happy New Year is particularly meaningful this year.

May 2022 be filled with JOY for each of you and your families.

Still on the Journey