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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

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Deception
The penalty of deception is to become a deception, with all sense of moral discrimination vitiated. A man who lies habitually becomes a lie, and it is increasingly impossible for him to know when he is lying and when he is not.” Howard Thurman

Spiritual Abuse
Spiritual abuse is a form of emotional and psychological abuse. It is characterized by a systematic pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour in a religious context Spiritual abuse can have a deeply damaging impact on those who experience it. This abuse may include: manipulation and exploitation, enforced accountability, censorship of decision making, requirements for secrecy and silence, coercion to conform, [inability to ask questions] control through the use of sacred texts or teaching, requirement of obedience to the abuser, the suggestion that the abuser has a ‘divine’ position, isolation as a means of punishment, and superiority and elitism.
Lisa Oakley and Justin Humphreys

Culture War
In America, we don’t discover who we are so much as we choose an identity from a set of prepackaged, audience-tested options. Since most Americans identify according to their political party first and foremost, pretty much everything else about us flows from that partisan selection. If you’re a Democrat, you’ve got a certain selection of causes, movies, public figures, musicians and organizations to root for. If you’re a Republican, you get an alternate set.

If all the opposing forces you’ve been commanded to take up arms against were to suddenly vanish, you would have little left: no actual opinions, no concrete strategy for building a better world, no idea what purpose you serve outside of owning the libs or the cons.

This is what life is like in the culture war, a draft which few Americans have successfully dodged. We are all soldiers now, and any part of our daily life can be construed as an attack. Why wouldn’t it be? This is a war. In a war, no action can be taken for granted. 

This is an extraordinarily bad way to be in the world, with our lives a cobbled together mess of memes, algorithms, partisan talking points and blinding hated of total strangers based on scant information. But it’s a very easy way to be in the world. You don’t have to form any actual opinions or think deeply about what you want to build. You can just run with the package of opinions that comes with whoever you vote for and leave it at that.
The important thing to realize is that there are no winners here. There can’t be. 

There is an alternative, but it’s not easy. It involves laying down arms in the culture war and taking up a fight against not each other, but the princes and principalities of this world. Instead of resisting each other, we must start resisting the forces and institutions pitting us against each other. Instead of fighting our fellow humans, we fight the ideologies that compel us towards fear and hatred.
https://relevantmagazine.com/current/nation/there-are-no-winners-in-a-culture-war/

Just to be clear. When Christians say “Jesus is Lord”, we are not celebrating love of power, but the power of love to redeem, transform and renew that which is lost, broken and hopeless.
Jim Gordon

Misconceptions
It is important to read and listen carefully. I found this commentary about New York City subway systems to be a good example.

New York City’s subway system has been in the news a lot lately, and not in a good way. There have been several cases of violent assault, including people being pushed onto the tracks, and the number of murders in the system has been far higher this year than in past years. This is even as the overall murder rate in New York City finally seems to be declining from its pandemic high. These incidents have been terrible, and officials are right to see them as a reason to step up police presence and video surveillance.

After reading that factual report, as an outsider, I would be very reluctant to use the subway in NYC. Reading further, I gained a much different perspective.

Attacks in subway cars or on subway platforms during rush hour are an extreme example. When I say that we’ve had a record number of murders this year, that number is nine so far, on a system that even postpandemic often carries more than 3.5 million passengers each workday. Overall, the subway remains far safer than other forms of transportation. Indeed, one reason New York City is much safer overall than small-town or even suburban America is that far fewer people die in traffic accidents.

It is true:
cases of violent assault, including people being pushed onto the tracks, and the number of murders in the system has been far higher this year than in past years.
But it’s not reality:
Yes there have been nine murders on NYC subways this year, a worthwhile concern, but reality is: riding the subway in NYC is safer than driving from Wilmore to Lexington.

If we obey Jesus only when the culture is neutral enough to allow us to do so and still win on our own terms, then Jesus is not Lord and we are not his disciples—he is our disciple and we are his lord. And if we must adopt anti-Christlike character to win Christian victories over a secular culture, then perhaps we should wonder what’s gone wrong. When the centurions start to look more valiant than the crucified, then maybe our culture wars have taken us away from the Cross and toward something else.
Russell Moore

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

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If you were based at Camp Lejeune between 1953 to 1987, for heavens sake PLEASE call 1-800-750-9511. Stop the madness.

Touchdown moments
There is nothing ordinary about the key claims of biblical faith. Indeed, there is almost nothing about biblical faith that can be understood according to our usual analytical, scientific, objective, or commonsense control of life. The Bible is, rather, organized around the explosive moments when the holiness of God touches down in our midst and changes everything. Such touchdown moments are not sweet and romantic. They are not pious and religious. Rather, they are moments of threat and risk, when our worlds are shattered and everything is changed (Collected Sermons, 65).
Walter Brueggemann

‘Tolerance does not mean the absence of debate and division, but the ability of people with differences to live side-by-side together without seeking to harm each other.” Michael Bird

Clichés
A glib “I have the answers” spirit makes us into protectors of clichés. Answers are wonderful when they are true and keep us on the human and spiritual path. But answers are not wonderful when they become something we hold as an ego possession, allowing us to be arrogant, falsely self-assured, and closed down individuals.  
Only those led by the Spirit into ever deeper seeing, hearing, and surrendering—spiritual seekers and self-questioners—will fall into the hands of the living God. This will always be “a narrow gate and a hard road” that “only a few will walk” (Matthew 7:14).  
Richard Rohr

Trust grows out of, and into, our relationship with God, forming bonds of love, trust, hopefulness and purpose. God’s mercy is not a guarantee against storms at sea, but of God’s presence in the boat. 
“Lord, have mercy. The sea is so vast, and my boat is so small.” 
Jim Gordon

How many of the world’s 1-year-old children today have been vaccinated against some disease?
A: 20 percent B: 50 percent C: 80 percent

I have tested a total of 12,596 people at 108 lectures over the last five years. This question gets the worst results.

Correct answer is 80%

You make this kind of false assumption when you have a “them” category in your head, into which you put the majority of humanity. What images are you using to imagine what life is like in this category? Are you perhaps recalling the most vivid and disturbing images from the news?

Rosling, Hans; Rönnlund, Anna Rosling; Rosling, Ola. Factfulness (pp. 148-149). Flatiron Books. Kindle Edition.

Prophesy
Christianity has given little energy to prophecy, which Paul identifies as the second most important charism for building the church (1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11). Too often, when Christians talk about prophecy, we think prophets make predictions about the future. In fact, prophets say exactly the opposite! They insist the future is highly contingent on the now. They always announce to the people of Israel that they have to make a decision now. You can go this way and the outcome of events will undo you or you can return to God, to love, and to the covenant. That’s not predicting the future as much as it’s naming the now, the way reality works. The prophet opens up human freedom by daring to tell the people of Israel that they can change history by changing themselves. That’s extraordinary, and it’s just as true for us today.
I’d like to put it this way: it is not that we go out preaching hard and difficult messages, and then people mistreat and marginalize us for being such prophets (although that might happen). Rather, when we go to the stories of the prophets and of Jesus himself, we discover the biblical pattern is just the opposite! When we find ourselves wounded and marginalized, and we allow that suffering to teach us, we can become prophets. When we repeatedly experience the faithfulness, the mercy, and the forgiveness of God, then our prophetic voice emerges. That’s the training school. That’s where we learn how to speak the truth.
Richard Rohr

Hypocrisy
Time and again, when our commitment to morality collides with our self-interest, then our self-interest wins. A religion of morality devolves to a religion of self. It’s powerless against our pride. But when a commitment to self collides with Jesus, then it’s our pride that’s powerless. We know exactly where our hope lies. David French
https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/frenchpress/how-hypocrisy-drives-unbelief/

View from the front porch
The recent news report about the rescue of 4,000 beagles revealed the troubling, heart-wrenching paradoxical nature of our culture.

On one hand, there was the horrendous for-profit dog breeding business:
Built in 1961, the breeding operation featured 27 long, low-slung metal buildings used for whelping and housing about 5,000 beagles in cages and cement runs. The campus had its own waste water treatment plant and incinerator, one full-time veterinarian and about 25 employees. It became the nation’s second-largest breeder of what the industry calls “purpose-bred canines.”
“Research on dogs has, and continues to lead to, life-preserving and enhancing treatments in the areas of diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, organ transplantation,” 
…more than a hundred federal and state officials, law enforcement officers, rescue volunteers and veterinarians arrived at Envigo with a search warrant. Over five days, they seized health records, computers, and 446 beagles — about 10 percent of the facility’s dogs — who were suffering life-threatening illnesses or injuries.

On the other hand, there was the response of concerned people:

The public fascination with the Envigo beagles was instantaneous. Thousands of people across the country wanted them.

In Milwaukee, the Wisconsin Humane Society set off a frenzy when it announced that it would put a litter of Envigo puppies up for adoption on a Tuesday morning in early August.

Identical twins from Southern California were the first in line.

The 31-year-old sisters had flown to Milwaukee and shown up at the shelter at 3 a.m., carrying a new tent that they couldn’t figure out how to set up.

“We have been stalking all the rescue groups,” explained Christine Fan, who — like her twin Chrisdo — worked as a real estate attorney in Irvine, Calif., about 15 minutes from Disneyland. “We booked a one-way red-eye flight here.”

All of the beagles have been placed in over 120 rescue facilities across the country.

http://www.georgeezell.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Envigos-4000-beagles-rescued-in-record-Humane-Society-animal-welfare-seizure-The-Washington-Post.pdf


So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

Fruit of the Spirit
The last “fruit” is “self-control” or engkrateia, something like an internal monitor or compass or control button, the ability to grasp oneself to do the right thing and not do what one might desire to do.

There are two systems in the mind: System 1 is “automatic, quick, and reactive.” System 2 “requires focused attention and effortful mental engagement.” Quick study vs. slow thinking. There’s a time and place for each. Life in System 1 is dangerous and reckless and impulsive. Self-control knows the difference and guides us to the right one. System 2 conquers impulsiveness.

Will power is not enough.

We need the Spirit. To pause long enough to invoke the Spirit, to turn to God, and to God’s ways. The pause is space for the Spirit to take over.
And a wise mind that knows the differences between important and urgent, important and not urgent, not important and urgent, and not important and not urgent (The Eisenhower Matrix).
Scot McKnight

View from the front porch:
Houston?, I’ve got a problem!
…when he reads…yawns plenty and easily falls into sleep. He rubs his eyes and stretches his arms. His eyes wander from the book. He stares at the wall and then goes back to his reading for a little. He then wastes his time hanging on to the end of words, counts the pages, ascertains how the book is made, finds fault with the writing and the design. Finally he just shuts it and uses it as a pillow. Then he falls into a sleep not too deep, because hunger wakes his soul up and he begins to concern himself with that.
Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life, Kathleen Norris (p. 5)
The greatest test of faith comes when we encounter circumstances beyond our control. These days are such times. With the pandemic, followed by a serious medical trauma I have found myself floundering, struggling; unable to manage life as previously (not to imply I was managing successfully, but at least I had the comfort of an illusion that I was). Despite the fact I had written about it in the past; I have failed to recognize my struggle is with my besetting sin— acedia. We all have besetting sins,

In the life of every individual, there is a “besetting” sin that can tower like a mountain between the individual and God.
A besetting sin is one to which on account of our constitution, or circumstance or both, we are peculiarly exposed, and into which we most easily and most frequently fall.

… for me it is acedia; for which my sin management tool box is insufficient.
This battle is not about salvation from eternal damnation, it is about overcoming sin that robs us of God’s presence and power that enables us to live as His people in His kingdom on earth now.  Acedia, one writer says, is best defined as the opposite of “spiritual joy”.

Acedia is to spiritual health something like what depression is to mental health.
https://jamesgray2.me/2015/10/15/acedia-or-the-last-but-not-least-of-deadly-sins/

It’s an ancient term signifying profound indifference and inability to care about things that matter, even to the extent that you no longer care that you can’t care.
I liken it to spiritual morphine: You know the pain is there but can’t rouse yourself to give a damn.
When I compared the classic descriptions of acedia with the plagues of contemporary society — a toxic, nearly unbearable mix of boredom and restlessness, frantic escapism (including that of workaholism), commitment-phobia and enervating despair — I found the ancient demon of acedia in modern dress. 
Kathleen Norris

Symptoms of acedia, lethargy, apathy, hopelessness reveal its sinful core. They demonstrate the erosion of our confidence, faith.. trust that God will keep his word. Acedia is not a momentary lapse, it is cancerous. We are inclined to ignore symptoms allowing it to grow and diminish our faith. 
I mostly think of sin as a discrete problem… an error in judgement …an unkind word or action which quickly produces regret and shame. Acedia is different, It does not produce guilt, regret or shame, rather self-pity and lament for being victimized by “it”or “them”.
… my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. Ps 73

I’ve got a lot to think about.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY