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Innocence
We come to God not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong. And yet the great forgiveness is to forgive ourselves for doing it wrong. That’s probably the hardest forgiveness of all: that I’m not perfect, that I’m not unwounded, I’m not innocent. “One always learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.” If I want to maintain an image of myself as innocent, superior, righteous, or saved, I can only do that at the cost of truth. I have to reject the mysterious side, the shadow side, the broken side, the unconscious side of almost everything.  
Richard Rohr

God knows me
This is a God who knows my humanity inside and out. God has counted every hair on my head (Matthew 10:30) and bottled up every tear I have shed (Psalm 56:8). Not simply because the Word formed us (Genesis 1:27), knit us together in our mothers’ wombs (Psalm 139:13), was there from the very beginning . . . but because God wore our skin.
Kare Bowler

State of religion in America
Reports of religion’s decline in America have been exaggerated. You’ve heard the story: Churchgoers are dwindling in number while “Nones”—those who tell pollsters they have no religious affiliation—are multiplying as people abandon their faith and join the ranks of atheists and agnostics. Headlines declare that the U.S. is secularizing along the lines of Europe. From Britain’s Daily Mail in 2013: “Religion could disappear by 2041 because people will have replaced God with possessions, claims leading psychologist.”
These conclusions are based on analyses that are so flawed as to be close to worthless. In a new study with our colleagues Matt Bradshawand Rodney Stark, we seek to set the record straight.
Data from five recent U.S. population surveys point to the vibrancy, ubiquity and growth of religion in the U.S. Americans are becoming more religious, and religious institutions are thriving. Consistent with some previous studies but contrary to widely held assumptions, many people who report no religious affiliation—and even many self-identified atheists and agnostics—exhibit substantial levels of religious practice and belief.
The religious landscape in the U.S. is changing but not in the ways that draw headlines. Hundreds of new denominations have quietly appeared, as have thousands of church plants (new congregations) and numerous non-Christian religious imports. These more than make up for losses from mainline Protestant denominations, which are indeed in free fall and have been for decades. But the decline of established institutions is easier to track than the formation and growth of new ones.
Religion is constantly evolving, but it isn’t in decline in the U.S. More Americans attend and support more religious congregations than ever before. Social scientists can’t count them unless they know where to look.
WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/religion-is-dying-dont-believe-it-nones-others-surveys-faith-institutions-atheists-agnostics-practice-minority-11659017037

More than half of Americans between ages 16 and 74 read below the sixth-grade level. Video, however, requires only eyes on screens. But … passive media cannot communicate a civilization defined by ideas. Our creedal nation, Stirewalt says, “requires written words and a common culture in which to understand them.”

Take up your cross
Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.“Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”
I asked the class this question: “What would have this sounded like–this call to ‘take up you cross and follow me’–to the people standing there that day listening to Jesus?”
We’ve so moralized this text that I don’t think we appreciate what Jesus was asking. Crosses littered the landscape. People carrying crosses on the way to crucifixion were driven through city streets. The roads leading into cities were lined with bodies hanging on crosses.
The cross was a tool of Imperial terror and control. Its shadow of fear fell over every aspect of colonial life in the outposts of the Roman Empire. Crucifixion was was a bully demanding obedience and compliance.
And in the face of that threat and terror Jesus says, “take up your cross and follow me.” It was a call to radical fearlessness for a people living under the shadow of Imperial torture.
And yet, the day Jesus said these words no one knew about Easter Sunday. Without the resurrection the fearless call to “take up your cross and follow me” would have sounded suicidal. But with Jesus raised from the the dead the Imperial threat had lost its grip upon the political imagination of Jesus’ followers. They had been emancipated from fear. Just as Jesus had been in the face of Pilate’s threats. And the outcome of this liberation was twofold. First, no threat of violence could sway or deter the followers of Jesus. They had became fearless. They now existed outside the bounds of Imperial control. Without fear they had become unmanageable. Second, they had joy. In the face of beatings, torture and imprisonment the followers of Jesus would sing.
Richard Beck

celebrity
…is “social power without proximity.” … there’s a thinness of not being really known, constantly chased by adoring persons who think they know the person and want to know more, in celebrity.
Evangelicals have aped culture in its celebrity culture, celebrities who are produced by “visual appeal, slick marketing, and personal branding.” Celebrity then is a product formed intentionally on the basis of the tools that make someone into a celebrity. Branding is at work in celebrity-dom, branding that apes what happens with the genuinely famous.
Evangelicals have aped culture in its celebrity culture, celebrities who are produced by “visual appeal, slick marketing, and personal branding.” Celebrity then is a product formed intentionally on the basis of the tools that make someone into a celebrity. Branding is at work in celebrity-dom, branding that apes what happens with the genuinely famous.
Am I being seen?, is one of the celebrity’s preoccupations. Instead of simply doing the work and not being seen, the celebrity wants to be seen (as) doing the work.
Scoot McKnight/ Katelyn Beaty

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

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