Category: Notes Anthology

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…poetic words from Neale Donald Walsch 
Yearning for a new way will not produce it. Only ending the old way can do that. You cannot hold onto the old all the while declaring that you want something new. The old will defy the new; the old will deny the new; the old will decry the new. There is only one way to bring in the new. You must make room for it.

“When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”
Flannery O’connor 

Biblical Interpretation
Hermeneutical Self-Awareness + Judgmental God = A Whole Lot of Anxiety

Biblical interpretation is so anxiety-inducing because it’s viewed as so high stakes. Your eternal destiny hangs in the balance, so you have to get it right. And yet, given the hermeneutical situation, you lack any firm guarantees you’ve made the right choice. The whole thing is a neurotic spiritual nightmare. In fact, it’s this nightmare that keeps many Christians from stepping into self-awareness to own and admit their own hermeneutics. It’s more comforting to remain oblivious and un-self-aware. 

So I told my students, You have to believe that God’s got your back, that, yes, you might make a mistake. But that mistake isn’t determinative or damning. Just be faithful and humble. You don’t have to have all the correct answers to be loved by your Father. Each of us will carry into heaven a raft of confusions, errors, and misinterpretations of Scripture. It’s unavoidable. We will not score 100% on the final exam. 
But don’t worry. Let your heart be at rest. God’s got your back.
Richard Beck

Freedom
Freedom is not the ability to do anything, to have no limits, but the ability to truly be who and what you are, which can only be known through the revelation of limits.
Fr Stephen Freeman 

Sabbath moments
The Sabbath moments of the soul are those brief glimpses we all have of unexpected wonder, unlooked for surprise, being ambushed by beauty. “Consider the lilies…” “Look at the birds of the air…” “He owns the cattle on a thousand hills…”

Even when life turns darker, and we know the deeper valleys where the sun is hard to see behind looming horizons, God is there, and blessing is to be found. Not the answers to all that we need or want; and not easy ways out of hard places. But those small signals of hope, those touches of goodness and unlooked for moments when kindness, comfort or laughter come as gifts.
JimGordon

The Gospel cure
Stating that “The Gospel” is the cure to any social ill is lazy and dishonest…it is the Gospel proclaimed and applied that transforms people and society…if we cannot agree on the application it is empty sloganeering to avoid dealing with the sin in question…
Phoenix Preacher

True and real
Somehow, myth is not just true, but real. The nature and character of the world cannot be described properly without reference to something more. That something more has a nature that gives shape to the stories labeled as myths. They are not just any story, a sub-genre of fiction. Indeed, even stories that would otherwise be labeled “true” and “real” (in the literal sense) have significance precisely in their mythic character.
Fr Stephen Freeman

What are we betting on for Christianity to succeed?
…it frustrates me that a fair number of my tribe — Christians who are theologically, morally, and politically conservative — are betting all their chips on the hope that the main fight is political, and can be won through politics. It’s just not true, and to say that does not mean that political engagement is useless. We have to stay engaged as long as we can. But it’s to say that the core problem is a loss of spiritual meaning — and that’s something that each of us has the ability, and indeed the duty, to address in our own lives.
Rod Dreher

One last thing I’m thinking about…

This report from Gallup has shaken the U.S. Christian community. It seems as though every church I have contact with is preaching on the church. This information maybe coincidental but it is relevant. Stimulated by my Covid experience, I have been rethinking church and intend to write a series of posts on the subject.

LISTEN OF THE WEEK

The sermon below is one of many but I found this one particularly helpful as I continue to rethink church.

CHURCH? WHY BOTHER?: WHY DO YOU BELIEVE IN THE LOCAL CHURCH?
Josh Graves 4/25/2021

Still on the Journey

Peter Kuzmic, a noted theologian from Croatia, is believed to have said, “Hope is the ability to hear the music of the future. Faith is having the courage to dance to it today.”
via JD Walt

Criticism 
firmly believe that institutions and individuals are more responsive to internal critique than external criticism, no matter how thoughtful or eloquent. 

Or, to put it another way, while thoughtful external criticism has its uses, at the end of the day, only the church can reform the church, only the right can reform the right, and only the left can reform the left. In fact, in a hyperpolarized time, critique of the right from the left (or the left from the right) often only serves to empower its targets. 
David French

Mockery
When you start mocking instead of persuading, you signal that you now view someone as an enemy to be defeated, rather than a person to be persuaded…the key to all sin against another is to first dehumanize them…then label them…you have to convince yourself that the other no longer possesses the image of God and God wants them gone as well…we’re all getting too good at this…
Phoenix Preacher

It is all about winning
At this point, at least in the United States, it appears that our cultural meaning has pretty much shrunk down to this: It is all about winning. Then, once we win, it becomes all about consuming. I can discern no other underlying philosophy in the practical order of American life today. Of itself, such a worldview cannot feed the soul very well or very long, much less provide meaning and encouragement, or engender love or community.
Richard Rohr

Tribal
Despite all the contrary rhetoric, contemporary Americans are not highly individualized: we are tribal, in the extreme. It is the group, however constructed, that gives identity, for the identity that is sought is one that covers us, that hides our vulnerability and gives us the safety of those who agree. A tell-tale sign of this dynamic is found in our culture’s anger. Anger is largely driven by shame and we can affirm our tribal protection only by shouting at the outsider. Everything outside the group threatens to unmask us. To an increasing extent, the group to which we belong is that set of people who share our anger.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Proud of America
A false narrative popular today states that Republicans are extremely proud of America and don’t see any faults, while Democrats are embarrassed by America and only see faults. Surveys show this is a gross overstatement. A majority of Democrats are still proud to be American, and majorities in both parties say that some things about America make them ashamed.
By and large, Democrats and Republicans are proud to be Americans, yet they are not blind to the country’s faults.
Allsides Blog. https://www.allsides.com/blog/surveys-show-democrats-not-just-republicans-are-proud-be-american

Love is a paradox
It often involves making a clear decision; but at its heart, it is not a matter of mind or willpower but a flow of energy willingly allowed and exchanged, without requiring payment in return. Divine love is, of course, the template and model for such human love, and yet human love is the necessary school for any encounter with divine love. If we’ve never experienced human love—to the point of sacrifice and forgiveness and generosity—it will be very hard for us to access, imagine, or even experience God’s kind of love. Conversely, if we have never let God love us in the deep and subtle ways that God does, we will not know how to love another human in the deepest ways of which we are capable.
Richard Rohr

Til death do us part…
I have had the pleasure of presiding at many weddings over the years. Three different times, as I prepared the couple to exchange their vows, the groom actually fainted and fell to the ground. But I have never seen the bride faint. To the well-protected and boundaried male ego, there are few greater threats than the words “till death do us part.” 
Richard Rohr

Lean in to painful honesty
We’ve all been in that situation where we want to say something that’s important but there’s also a good chance that we’ll upset someone if we say it. There’s that uncomfortable tension inside us as we go back and forth on whether we should say it or not.
Create a new rule for yourself: if there’s something uncomfortable that you believe is important to say, just say it. Don’t think about it. Just trust that in the long run, more times than not, you’ll be happy that you said it. In fact, chances are, in the long run, other people will be glad you said it.
Mark Manson

Nice Teachers
Some new research looks at how friendly teachers were with their students and compared that to the students’ academic performance in later years. What’s important to note here is that the researchers didn’t look at academic performance in the teacher’s class itself because—surprise, surprise—friendly teachers tend to give higher grades for shittier work. Instead, the researchers focused on how the students did the following academic years. 
Allow me to spoil the pool party and say that, basically, the nicer the teachers, the worse off the students were in the following years. Now, I’m not suggesting that we bring back corporal punishment or hire drill sergeants to teach multiplication tables. But once again, we find that the most important things in life (in this case, being highly educated and understanding a subject) require some unpleasant experiences. 
Mark Manson

The spirit of the age
The spirit of the age declares that if you get the “big” things correct (your political ideology, your complementarian or egalitarian theology) then cruelty and self-righteousness in the pursuit of those goals are either minor flaws (“bad manners”) or outright virtues (after all, didn’t Jesus drive the money-changers from the temple with a whip?)
David French

Listening to vinyl
…listening to music on vinyl is more like sitting down to a nice relaxed meal and listening to music using a streaming service is like fast food in your car while your driving somewhere you don’t really want to go.
Matt Redmond

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LISTEN FOR THE WEEK

Still working on my funeral playlist. Not sure the crowd can be replicated at the funeral but…

the bifurcation of attention
“the bifurcation of attention.” It goes like this. 
The 30-minute sitcom television show is dying. Meanwhile, 45-second Instagram videos and seven seasons of Game of Thrones are thriving.
The classic dramatic film is dying. Meanwhile, Youtube videos and the eighteen thousand sequels of the Marvel Universe are thriving.
Classic magazines and newspapers are dying. Meanwhile, Twitter and non-fiction books are thriving.
Taylor Pearson 

There is a vast gulf between believing in good things and doing good things. One is easy. The other is really, really hard. 
David French

Converted Life
The life-converting experience is not the discovery that I have choices to make that determine the way I live out my existence, but the awareness that my existence itself is not in the center. Once I “know” God, that is, once I experience God’s love as the love in which all my human experiences are anchored, I can desire only one thing: to be in that love.
Henri Nouwen 

Persuasion
…the necessary posture of persuasion is one of deep humility. We can take little credit for our virtues. We’re often imprisoned by vices we can barely comprehend.
True persuasion is much more challenging than winning a debate. Sweeping away a falsehood is of little use unless you can replace the lie with a meaningful and empowering truth. You cannot yank a person from their community and then leave them homeless. Do not pretend we can replace something—no matter how malignant—with nothing.
David French

The PhD
Suppose a superstar of knowledge moves into your house as a boarder. With three PhDs after his name, he sits at your supper table each evening dispensing information about nuclear physics, cyberspace, and psychoneuroimmunology, giving ultimate answers to every question you ask. He doesn’t lead you through his thinking process, however, or even involve you in it; he simply states the conclusions he has reached.
We might find his conclusions interesting and even helpful, but the way he relates to us will not set us free, empower us, or make us feel good about ourselves. His wisdom will not liberate us, it will not invite us to growth and life; indeed, it will in the end make us feel inferior and dependent. That’s exactly how we have treated Jesus. We have treated him like a person with three PhDs coming to tell us his conclusions.
Richard Rohr

True joy
know that true joy comes from letting God love me the way God wants, whether it is through illness or health, failure or success, poverty or wealth, rejection or praise. It is hard for me to say, “I shall gratefully accept everything, Lord, that pleases you. Let your will be done.” But I know that when I truly believe my Father is pure love, it will become increasingly possible to say these words from the heart.
Henri Nowen

Being a truth teller
If your role in another person’s life is (as you see it) the “teller of hard truths,” then you’re at an immense disadvantage when contending for a family member’s heart with the people who share the same lie, but also love them, accept them, and give them a sense of shared purpose. 
You? You just make them feel bad.

“When everyone around us is right, we deserve little credit for conforming. When everyone around us is wrong, we’re also likely to fail.” 
David French

Epitaph for Modernity: I came, I shopped, I died.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Social Media & Polarization
Jonathan Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell’s 2019 article that presented various reasons social media leads to polarization. They identified a Pew study showing Facebook posts with “indignant disagreement” received twice as much engagement as other kinds of posts. They specifically pointed out the dangers of Facebook’s algorithm based on engagement, which can keep any kind of post near the top of the News Feed regardless of its divisiveness or truthfulness.

A Christian culture that puts all the stress on belief, which cannot be seen, and has very little expectation of change in Christ-likeness this side of heaven, will inevitably create lots of Ravi Zachariases.
Matt Redmond

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
  who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
   “Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
   and bow their heads.   
Mary Oliver

The true purpose of all spiritual disciplines is to clear away whatever may block our awareness of that which is God in us. . . . 
Howard Thurman

Listen of the Week
I am putting together a playlist for my funeral. (Not expecting it to be needed soon, just thinking ahead.) Of course, the list is headed up with “Sweet Home Alabama” and, at this point, this song is next up:

Still on the Journey