Category: Notes Anthology

There was this guy pushing a peanut…
On Friday morning, 53-year-old Bob Salem became the fourth person to push a peanut to the top of Pikes Peak with his nose. It took seven days—mostly at night to avoid distracting questions and requests for selfies from passersby—and the peanut in question was actually about a dozen peanuts, as he lost and ate a few along the way.
There’s a lot we could say about this, but our first question is: fourth!?

So much for bingeing on Netflix…
…as media multiplies, so does competition for attention. And as competition for our attention multiplies, content is no longer optimized for beauty or art or even enjoyment—but rather for its addictive qualities. 
…we regularly mistake this addictive media for entertainment. There’s some psychological function deep in our brains that tells us, “Well, I just spent six hours watching this show, I must like it a lot.” When, no, its script is actually a mediocre piece of hot trash and you’re being manipulated by cliffhangers and bad writing for hours on end to keep watching. The same way you get hijacked into scrolling through social media way more than you’d actually like to, your brain gets hijacked to watch “just one more episode” to find out if so-and-so really died or not. 
When everything is measured in terms of engagement, content will be optimized for addictiveness. Not entertainment or artistic merit. Not intellectual substance or creativity. Pure, plain addictiveness. That means we, the consumers, get a higher quantity of more predictable, less innovative, less interesting art in our lives. 
Mark Manson

As Elie Wiesel said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” 

Saved by Pickleball?
Can pickleball save America? More than 1 million people picked up the sport—played with paddles and a Wiffle-like ball—during the pandemic, bringing the total number of pickleheads in the United States to 5 million. “Robert D. Putnam’s book ‘Bowling Alone,’ from 2000, mourns the loss of beloved community groups—a bridge club in Pennsylvania, an N.A.A.C.P. chapter in Roanoke, a sewing charity league in Dallas—which, for decades, fostered norms of reciprocity, trustworthiness, and general good will,” Sarah Larson writes in The New Yorker. “A craving for such feelings is a key part of pickleball’s popularity. At one tournament, a senior pro told me, ‘The most important thing about this sport is the friendships. I just lost my husband a week ago, and the only reason I’m here today is because of my pickleball community lifting me up.’ She got teary. ‘There’s no other sport like that. Tennis isn’t like that. You go to a tennis tournament, it’s them against you.’”
The Dispatch

Consent is not enough
Even when it goes well, sex is complicated. It involves our bodies, minds and emotions, our connections to each other and our deepest selves. Despite the (many, and popular) arguments that it’s only a physical act, it is clear to almost anyone who has had it that sex has vast consequences, some of which can last long after an encounter ends. Over the past several decades, our society has come to believe that consent—as a legal standard and a moral requirement—could somehow make our most unruly activity more manageable. But it was never going to be that easy. 
Christine Emba

A glimmer of hope
…in every single argument and controversy under the sun, reality gets a vote. Culture wars are ultimately won or lost not by online arguments but through their real-world consequences, and the position that leads to greater human misery tends to lose. 
I don’t mean to claim that cultural arguments have no effect. We shouldn’t simply stand by while bad ideas do their terrible work. Good faith engagement can both mitigate the damage when a misguided cultural trend is ascendant and provide a robust alternative moral framework when frustrated and alienated citizens seek a different path.
The key phrase above is “good faith.” When human beings turn from the broken path, they don’t want to be greeted by a taunting crowd that’s drinking their tears, but rather by a compassionate community that humbly recognizes its own mistakes. Peak woke should be replaced by tolerance and pluralism, consent culture by love and respect. 
David French

 “the noetic effects of sin.”
The word “noetic” comes from the Greek word noein, “to perceive.” The noetic effects of sin concern how sin affects our perception.
Most of us think of sin in moral terms. Sin is a moral failure, missing the moral mark, disobeying God’s law. But the Bible and the Christian tradition also describes sin as having perceptual consequences. Sin affects our vision. Phrased differently, sin has epistemological consequences, affecting our ability to know and how we envision the truth. 
Simply, the noetic effect of sin is perceptual damage. Blurred vision. A wounded mind. 
This changes how we might think about being “lost.” Growing up in a conservative Christian tradition, “lost” has generally meant for me “damned,” heading to hellfire. But from a noetic perspective, lost can simply mean lost. As in, you have no idea where you are or where you are going. Maybe because it is dark and you can’t see. Maybe because you lost your compass and map. The issue is perceptual and epistemological. 
This is a helpful shift of focus. When I describe the world as being “lost,” I don’t have to think of people as being particularly depraved or going to hell. I can, rather, simply see people as lost, noetically lost–rudderless, confused, wandering, and directionless.
Richard Beck

To live is to stand before an endless sea of possibilities, and it’s your responsibility to choose a defining commitment and enter the anxiety that lies between who you are and who you might become. 
Ryan Snider

The single most important actions in the life of this world,
on any given day, are found in the various places where the people of God have gathered and the Divine Liturgy is being offered “on behalf of all and for all.” Our modern sensibilities have oftentimes reduced the Liturgy to a “filling station,” providing us with energy and inspiration so that we can go out into the world and do “our real work.” These are two competing visions – and the first one – the ancient one – is increasingly ignored in its proper role.
If we understood the true nature of prayer – our communion with God – we would find every possible occasion to pray. When we enter into prayer in the presence of God, we take our place among the righteous. We become God’s salt and God’s light.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Zero SUM- NOT!
There is no scarcity. There is no shortage. No lack of love, 
of compassion, of joy in the world. There is enough.  
There is more than enough.  

Only fear and greed make us think otherwise. 

No one need starve. There is enough land and enough food.  
No one need die of thirst. There is enough water. No one  
need live without mercy. There is no end to grace. And we  
are all instruments of grace. The more we give it, the more  
we share it, the more we use it, the more God makes. There  
is no scarcity of love. There is plenty. And always more.
Rachel Harding recalls her mother’s vision

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

metanoia 
is the word translated as “repentance” in the Bible. The root concept of the word means “to turn,” associated with a “change” or “turn” of heart and mind. For Peterson, metanoia is a sign of humble fallibility–a willingness to admit error, to learn, to grow. That’s a really healthy posture when life hits you with some hard truths, especially truths about your own failings and limitations. Here’s Peterson:
The devil, traditional representation of evil, refuses recognition of imperfection, refuses to admit “I was in error, in my action, in my representation”; accepts as a consequence of unbending pride, eternal misery–refuses metanoia, confession and reconciliation…
Such refusal–the inability to say, “I was wrong, I am sorry, I should change,” means the death of hope, existence in the abyss…
The act of metanoia is adaptation itself: admission of error, founded on faith in ability to tolerate such admission and its consequences…
Richard Beck

A spiritual discipline is 
…a repeated practice that nourishes one’s soul and expands one’s sense of the grandeur of God and the connectedness of creation. Dallas Willard
Well done. Willard sometimes spoke of the disciplines as creating openness to God and to grace and to the Spirit.

Dissent
Inherent to all traditional religion is the peril of stagnation. What becomes settled and established may easily turn foul. Insight is replaced by clichés, elasticity by obstinacy, spontaneity by habit. Acts of dissent prove to be acts of renewal.  
It is therefore of vital importance for religious people to voice and to appreciate dissent. And dissent implies self-examination, critique, discontent.  Creative dissent comes out of love and faith, offering positive alternatives, a vision.
Self-criticism is quite rare in the history of religion, yet it is necessary to keep religion from its natural tendency toward arrogant self-assurance—and eventually idolatry, which is always the major sin for biblical Israel. We must also point out, however, that mere critique usually deteriorates into cynicism, skepticism, academic arrogance, and even post-modernistic nihilism. So be very careful and very prayerful before you own any self-image of professional critic or anointed prophet! Negativity will do you in.
Richard Rohr

Followers of Jesus are the light of the world…a city set on a hill…a lamp so that others may glorify God, unless you’re a really cool band of Christians, and then you can just sing about a vague spirituality of love which cannot be distinguished from any other positive way of thinking.
Matt Redmond

Living in Community
Until and unless Christ is experienced as a living relationship between people, the gospel remains largely an abstraction. Until Christ is passed on personally through faithfulness and forgiveness toward another, through concrete bonds of union, I doubt whether he is passed on by words, sermons, institutions, or ideas.  
Living in community means living in such a way that others can access me and influence my life. It means that I can get “out of myself” and serve the lives of others. Community is a world where kinship with each other is possible. By community I don’t mean primarily a special kind of structure, but a network of relationships. Sadly, on the whole, we live in a society that’s built on competition, not on community and cooperation.  
Richard Rohr

Modesty Phenomenon
David Brooks dives into the false modesty phenomenon, and why it’s found such a natural home online. “If you’ve spent any time on social media, and especially if you’re around the high-status world of the achievatrons, you are probably familiar with the basic rules of the form,” he writes. “The first rule is that you must never tweet about any event that could actually lead to humility. Never tweet: ‘I’m humbled that I went to a party, and nobody noticed me.’ Never tweet: ‘I’m humbled that I got fired for incompetence.’ The whole point of humility display is to signal that you are humbled by your own magnificent accomplishments. We can all be humbled by an awesome mountain or the infinitude of the night sky, but to be humbled by being in the presence of yourself—that is a sign of truly great humility.”

Gender Gap
Derek Thompson, writing in The Atlantic:
American colleges and universities now enroll roughly six women for every four men. This is the largest female-male gender gap in the history of higher education, and it’s getting wider. Last year, U.S. colleges enrolled 1.5 million fewer students than five years ago, The Wall Street Journal recently reported. Men accounted for more than 70 percent of the decline.
The statistics are stunning. But education experts and historians aren’t remotely surprised. Women in the United States have earned more bachelor’s degrees than men every year since the mid-1980s—every year, in other words, that I’ve been alive. This particular gender gap hasn’t been breaking news for about 40 years. But the imbalance reveals a genuine shift in how men participate in education, the economy, and society. The world has changed dramatically, but the ideology of masculinity isn’t changing fast enough to keep up. (Emphasis added.)

Reading
“Lest we approach our reading with a disposition of humility, hospitality, and receptivity, our reading will not of its own accord form us into ever-expanding, morally sharpened human beings we seek to become.”
…if you read a book to assert your superiority to the book you will do more damage to yourself than good. No one is wrong all the time, and if you think they are, don’t read them until you have acquired sufficient humility to receive their writing as a gift.
Scot McKnight

Reasoned Solutions
We could find reasoned solutions to many of the issues we face if we were willing to treat those who differ with dignity and grace and find solutions for the common good…but we would rather succumb in the fire and think we are noble in doing so…
Generally speaking…if you ask me a theological question, I’m going to refer you to sources to read so you can make your own conclusions…if you have no interest in doing the work…don’t ask the question…it’s obviously not that important to you, so don’t waste my time…
 I have never lived in a time when people were more intellectually lazy and more convinced of their knowledge…and we wonder why things are circling the drain…
Phoenix Preacher

The Body of Christ
During the apostle Paul’s lifetime, the church was not yet an institution or structural grouping of common practices and beliefs. The church was a living organism that communicated the gospel through relationships.  
Paul’s brilliant metaphor for this living, organic, concrete embodiment is the Body of Christ: “For as in one body we have many parts, and all the parts do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another. Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us exercise them” (Romans 12:4–6). At the heart of this body, providing the energy that enlivens the community is “the love of God that has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5).  
Richard Rohr

STILL ON THE JOURNEY