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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

Front Porch View

Closing the front porch has magnified the impact of pandemic restrictions. Opportunities to engage people on and from the front porch provided much needed social interaction. My mental and emotional demeanor has suffered as a result. No sympathy, please. I am experiencing what most people have been dealing with for months. I am thankful for my front porch privilege and look forward to spring.

Peter Kuzmich once said, “Hope is the ability to hear the music of the future. Faith is having the courage to dance to that song today.”

Hunting an invisible dragon ?
In a memorable thought experiment, the astrophysicist and writer Carl Sagan described taking a visitor to see a fire-breathing dragon in his garage. Upon entering, the visitor was surprised to find an empty space – but Sagan replied that he had simply forgotten to mention that the dragon was invisible. The visitor then decides to throw a bag of flour on the floor to trace its outline – only to find out that it will be of no use because the dragon hovers off the ground. When the visitor suggests using an infrared camera, he is told that the dragon’s flames are heatless. There is no way, in other words, to either prove or falsify its existence.

Hypocrisy 
Hypocrisy is bad, but it’s not nearly as bad as political combatants make it out to be. Let’s suppose I am a heroin addict who goes around telling people not to use drugs. Yes, I am a hypocrite. But I wouldn’t be a better person if I went around trying to convince everybody to chase the dragon. If I said, “Come on, kids, do it. It’ll make you cool,” I’d be less hypocritical, but a worse person.
Jonah Goldberg

Pulchritudinous

Evil
For evil is not an argument: It is a thing. And the answer to evil is not logic but the cross. …. And I live in the hope that the cross has laid the groundwork for that Day when evil is no more, and love is perfected. Not Logic, but Love

God’s Kingdom
…the whole story of Jesus — his birth, life, teaching, miracles, death and resurrection — tell us all we need to know about God’s kingdom.
It looks like love, justice, peace, joy, and hope.
It looks like the subversion of toxic religious leadership.
It looks like healing, wholeness and reconciliation.
It looks like freedom.
It looks like forgiveness and mercy.
It looks like preferential treatment for children, the poor and the disabled.
It looks like the end of all suffering.
Or as Tom Wright says, “It looks like Jesus weeping at the tomb of his friend. It looks like Jesus feasting with sinners. It looks like Jesus celebrating a last meal with his friends, and going off to the cross. That’s how God runs the world. It is a very different thing from being a ‘celestial CEO.’ In other words, God takes charge of the world by coming in person to the place where the world is in pain, and taking that pain upon himself.”
Michael Frost

Church Growth
China has 40 million Christians, 94 percent are evangelicals, six percent Catholic and the church is growing by leaps and bounds with no political protections, a police state with more technological monitoring than any country on earth, according to Rod Dreher in his new book “Live not by Lies.” Yet despite continued persecution, the Church grows.

Nones are on the rise and they are the fastest growing body of nonbelievers in America, far outpacing evangelicals and Catholics. The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public — and a third of adults under 30 — are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.

Evidence
In a post-rational world, people will believe everything under the sun on the thinnest shreds of personal experience alone, but when it comes to the Bible, they will demand proof worthy of the rules of evidence.
JD Walt

Survival of Church in America
If the church in America cannot survive and thrive within the umbrella of liberty it now possesses, then might I suggest that the fault lies not with our politics, but within the church itself.
David French

Icons
They were (and are) “windows into heaven.” The Fathers said of icons that they “make present that which they represent.” They are a means of communion. In the museum-world of modernity, what is contemplated is our own feelings and thoughts. Beauty becomes “art,” serving only our self-gratification.
Fr. Stephen Freeman

Beauty
…we perceive beauty because it is real and true, and discover in it, a gateway into the mystery of the universe, that which lies beneath and within. Beauty may be compared to the meaning in a text. The letters and words are the surface – our ability to perceive their meaning is something yet more. It is surprising that we tend not to be astonished by this fact.
Fr. Stephen Freeman

Worth repeating:

So Much To Think About

George 1 Comment
I use the Notes app religiously ( no pun intended). Most often I save quotes, quips, etc from daily readings. I save them, hoping to eventually post about them or share later. Mostly they stay hidden on my iPhone. There is no intended theme or thread, but they may give some insight into the drumbeat in my head.

Kindness
…practicing kindness requires, at minimum, a willingness to see the image of God in, and to find a point of honest connection with, every person—even, and especially, those I dislike.
Amy Peterson

Beauty
…what draws us to the good is that it is also eternal beauty. God himself is beauty, that is, and in the end, for Christians, we are joined to him in seeking the beautiful as he has taught us to recognize it in Christ, and in therefore seeking in every circumstance, however unanticipated, to express that beauty always anew, in ever more novel variations on that original “theme”—that unique and irresistibly attractive manner. At times, a sense of style really is everything.
David Bentley Hart

Noetic Perception
“Noetic perception” is a phrase that describes the ability of the human heart to perceive that which is Divine. As such, it is our capacity for communion with God and the whole of creation.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Prayer for Biden
…my simple prayer for President Biden: May God bless him and grant him the wisdom to know what’s just, the courage to do what’s just, and the stamina to withstand the rigors of the most difficult job in the world. May his virtuous plans prevail and may his unrighteous efforts fail. And may God protect him from all harm.
David French

Luck?
People break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance…deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they’re on their own. And that fills them with fear. Yeah, there are those people. But there’s a whole lot of people in group number one…they’re looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever’s going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope. See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? (unknown)

Pandemic
What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.

Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)

Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

 Lynn Ungar (3/11/20)

Love your neighbor
Karl Rahner wrote,
“There is no love of God that is not, in itself, already a love for the neighbor; and love for God only comes to its own identity through its fulfillment in a love for neighbor. Only one who loves his or her neighbor can know who God actually is. And only one who ultimately loves God … can manage unconditionally to abandon himself or herself to another person, and not make that person the means of his or her own self-assertion.”

Disenchanted Life
We are captivated by the “surface” of things, failing to see what lies beneath. It causes us to be anxious and driven by things of insignificance. If there is a constant temptation for us in our present time, it is to lose confidence that there is anything unseen or eternal, at least in the sense that such things impinge on our daily existence. Our disenchanted, secular world is a siren song that promises the power of control while robbing us of the reality of communion. We “manage” the world when we should be in love with it.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Apart from me you can do nothing.
These are not the words of a good to great life enhancement guru to upper-middle-class minivan and SUV drivers. This is the piercing clarity of the Word of God. Actually, we can do something apart from Jesus. We can do a lot. It will just amount to nothing.
J D Walt

Front Porch View

The best kind of friend is the one you could sit on a porch with, never saying a word, and walk away feeling like that was the best conversation you’ve had.       

Make your front porch a part of your home, and it will make you a part of the world.   

The quotes above capture some of my thoughts as I conclude another front porch season. There is a special kind of sadness that comes with closing the front porch. I will miss greetings and conversations, reading and writing accompanied by wind chimes and birds…not so much the traffic noise. The front porch is a window into the world about me. I’m looking forward to spring. Of course the lanai in Florida is a nice alternative, but it’s not the front porch.

Listen For the Week

https://omny.fm/shows/tokens-podcast/truth-telling-anger-and-race-an-interview-with-vin/embed?style=artwork

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

I use the Notes app religiously ( no pun intended). Most often I save quotes, quips, etc from daily readings. I save them, hoping to eventually post about them or share later. Mostly they stay hidden on my iPhone. There is no intended theme or thread, but they may give some insight into the drumbeat in my head.

Beyond fixing
…perhaps we have the same problem with the word solution as we do with the word moral. It sounds so fixative, and maybe we have gone beyond fixing. Maybe all we can do is to make our remaining time here full of gentleness and good humor.
Anne

Facing opposition
While the Bible promises Christians that they’ll face challenges and sometimes-fierce opposition in their lives, it is vastly better to face opposition for the things you actually believe and the values you actually hold rather than being forced to align with an ideological and political “package” you do not want to purchase. 
David French

the rational mind
The rational mind doesn’t nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.
Anne Lamott

Reading Widely
Pat Moynihan was right when he said everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. But what that aphorism leaves out is that different groups can pay attention to different sets of facts. It’s not necessarily that one group has a “different truth” than another group (though that certainly happens)—it’s that each group emphasizes, includes, or excludes different information. Reading widely can simply help you discover facts that get lost in the narratives of your own side.
Jonah Goldberg

Hell
Hell is probably a social media site where everyone agrees with you…
Phoenix Preacher

Mustard
Mustard . . .  with its pungent taste and fiery effect is extremely beneficial for the health. It grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: but on the other hand when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once. 
via Richard Rohr

The beauty of autumn

The autumn trees shimmering and shining with color, as if their roots were drinking in rainbows…what does this beauty mean? Does it not mean that “earth’s crammed with heaven and every bush aflame with God”? Does it not mean that even the dying and decaying parts of creation have a beauty that puts Helen of Troy to shame? Does it not mean we can enjoy beauty and pleasure not only as a facts, but as a gifts? Gifts of love?
Daniel Jepson

Meaning
Meaning depends on purpose. If the symphony has no sound to aspire to, then it hardly matters what notes the musicians play. If the game has no point, then no play can be called good or bad. We can only describe the action.
Daniel Jepson

Being non-political
There really is no such thing as being non-political. Everything we say or do either affirms or critiques the status quo. Even to say nothing is to say something. If we say nothing, we communicate that the status quo—even if it is massively unjust and deceitful—is apparently okay. This common “non-political” stance is an illusion, and the powerful have always been able to use it to manipulate people.
Richard Rohr

View from the Front Porch

“You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world” (Matthew 5:8 MSG).

I’ve run out of words.
Words are the tools we use to describe what we see, what we feel, what we fear, and what we believe.
I’ve used up all the words I have that fit those tasks and they are all inadequate for the moment we find ourselves in.
Phoenix Preacher

Still on the journey

So Much to Think About

George 0 Comments
I use the Notes app religiously ( no pun intended). Most often I save quotes, quips, etc from daily readings. I save them, hoping to eventually post about them or share later. Mostly they stay hidden on my iPhone. There is no intended theme or thread, but they may give some insight into the drumbeat in my head.

Cell phone
Just what form the future telephone will take is, of course, pure speculation. Here is my prophecy:
In its final development, the telephone will be carried about by the individual, perhaps as we carry a watch today. It probably will require no dial or equivalent, and I think the users will be able to see each other, if they want, as they talk. Who knows but what it may actually translate from one language to another?
Mark Sullivan 1953

Free fallin’
We are, as author Jonathan Dodson writes, living in a “state of existential vertigo”; as the late, great Tom Petty put it, we’re free, free fallin’.

Moral life
If the moral life is like learning to play an instrument, creative artistry built upon a foundation of technical skill, your early lessons are going to be rote and rudimentary. It’s only later, with advancing skill, where you’ll be able to preform and create in beautiful ways
Richard Beck

Unseen
Merle Haggard says, country music is “about those things we believe in but can’t see, like dreams and songs”–
It’s telling us that there is in front of us a kind of rational world, in which one and one always equals two, but that the thing that compels us forward as human beings, is that we look for one and one equaling three. We find that in our faith. We find that in our art. We find that in our love of each other.
Ken Burns

Christianity
Christianity is not a religion that allows us to make ourselves acceptable to God. If we believe we have become acceptable to him, we have missed him. Instead, Christianity is a relationship with a God whose heart is drawn towards the sinful, the broken, the outcast and the excluded. God sides with sinners and eats with them, warning those of us who are religious that, by declaring ourselves well, we stand in danger of not hearing the voice of our Creator calling us to himself.
Michael Spencer 

Sin
Sin is more than making a mistake or “missing the mark.” Sin is a slavery that penetrates to the deepest recesses of our being. 
Richard Beck

Truth
Truth has a side. These days everybody wants to be on the right side of history. No one seems to care too much about being on the right side of the truth.
J D Walt

Cynicism
…cynicism is simply too easy and smirking is childish. Neither allow for the deeper truths of joy and beauty
Stephen Kamm

Encountering people
Do the people you encounter this day feel safe, seen, and loved by you? Not just and only our best friends during an intimate chat over coffee, but complete strangers whom we bump into the rough and tumble of the day in our hurry, distraction, and stress. Do those people, the mass of strangers, receive from you the beautiful gesture?
Richard Beck

Front Porch View
As the years have gone by, my front porch has been a window into the lives of neighbor and pedestrian. When we moved in 13 years ago our street was a dead end, walkers exceeded vehicle traffic. Development changed the street to a thoroughfare, a blessing and a curse. Thankful for more pedestrians, increased vehicle traffic has become a bane, speed and noise abound. A front porch provides opportunity to observe and understand rhythms of the neighborhood. Seminarians and residents of nearby apartments and locals walking past, have shared their stories. I watched as some shed pounds and others found them. Vehicles passing by, each with their unique voice, are hard evidence of economic inequality. Deprived of cloistered confines, I have a deeper love for neighbor and community.

Listen for the Week – Just Keep On Dancing

Still on the journey.

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments
I use the Notes app religiously ( no pun intended). Most often I save quotes, quips, etc from daily readings. I save them, hoping to eventually post about them or share later. Mostly they stay hidden on my iPhone. There is no intended theme or thread, but they may give some insight into the drumbeat in my head.

Zugzwang
zugzwang is a German chess term describing the “compulsion to move.” If you could just skip a turn and not move any of your pieces, you’d be in fine shape. But moving any piece will worsen your position. But here’s the hitch: In chess, you have to move when it’s your turn; in politics, you don’t. In politics, like war, not moving is a move.
Jonah Goldberg

When young, all I wanted was moral certainty. With age, I must accept complexity.
Greg Everett

William Jennings Bryan said, “The people of Nebraska are for free silver, so I am for free silver. I will look up the arguments later.”

childishness
…populism often manifests itself as childishness. “Childish” has a slightly different connotation than “childlike.” Childlike conveys sweetness and innocence. Childishness is defined by a refusal to accept the rules. Childish people are quick to take offense. They are the Veruca Salts of the world, who want it now. They don’t care about the rules, and they think manners are for other people. They are reluctant to listen and eager to shout. Childish pranks are their own reward, and consequences for their actions are always unfair. Grownups think about consequences. They remember mistakes and adjust for them.
Jonah Goldberg

Going with the flow
The Gulf Stream will flow through a straw provided the straw is aligned to the Gulf Stream, and not at cross purposes with it.”
Bird by Bird – Anne

People of faith
People of faith should embody moral and intellectual integrity.One would hope that people of faith would act differently from members of political interest groups—that followers of Jesus would passionately defend human dignity, champion justice, and create the conditions for human flourishing, without being co-opted by any political party or power structure. …
Peter Wehner

Lamentations is the product of those who still believe
Bobby Valentine

I’ve watched a surge of people I love walk away from Jesus in the last few years… Just about ZERO have been lured away by marxism, liberalism or atheism 
Almost all have “shipwrecked” over the politicizing of Christianity & their church’s apathy(hostility) re: injustice. (unknown)

Friends of Jesus
We cannot hope to become the friends of Jesus apart from becoming the friends of one another. It takes the context of real friendship to lay aside our need to know it all and to be right and to be someone other than who we really are. Only friends can make this admission to one another, “We don’t understand what he is saying.”
J D Walt

Who we truly are
The longer I live, the more I realize that we simply don’t know who we truly are until we’re tested. We can vocalize our beliefs all day long, but when living those beliefs is hard—when upholding our principles carries a cost—that’s when we learn what we truly value.
David French

FRONT PORCH VIEW

While sitting on the front porch, a vaguely familiar car stopped at the curb. A lady got out, came up on the sidewalk and said, “I need help”. She went on to explain her husband had just gotten home from the hospital after suffering a heart attack and stroke and she needed $35 for medicine. “Why did you stop here?”, I asked. Shrugging, she replied, “Something told me to stop here.” I invited her to come up and have seat, We got acquainted as my mind swirled ..scam?..$35?…should I?…What if? Deciding to give her the money and having only two $20 and one $10 bill, I scrounged up $5 in coins. She willingly accepted the bills and the inconvenient coins. “I will pay you back next week”, she said, thanking me profusely. “That won’t be necessary.” I said, all the while thinking, yeah…sure.

Sitting on the porch one week later, her car pulled up, she got out and brought me $35 in cash (no coins). Surprised but pleased, I refused to accept her payment, she thanked me and departed.

Anytime I am on the front porch and she drives past she always waves.
In retrospect, that encounter left me with some questions I am still pondering:
Why didn’t I give her two $20’s ?
Why was I so suspicious and doubtful?
Something…told her to stop?

Listen for the week

Still on the Journey