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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

Be assured that my words are not false; one who has perfect knowledge is with you. Job 36:4 

Good News
Final words written by Michael Spencer
The are a lot of different kinds of Good News, but there is little good news in “My argument scored more points than you argument.” But the news that “Christ is risen!” really is Good News for one kind of person: The person who is dying.
If Christianity is not a dying word to dying men, it is not the message of the Bible that gives hope now.

Taking a Photograph
Taking a photograph is a way of disciplining the way we look on the world;
a moment of intentional appreciation;
an acknowledgement of our connectedness to that which is not us;
a knowing smile as we recognise the signature of the Creator;
a gentle defiance of a culture that thrives on noise, possession and the enthroned ego;
an aide memoire of an encounter that has nourished, provoked and summoned us;
an act of trust in the worthwhileness of the ordinary, the daily and the routine;
a form of prayer which merges the contemplative, the active and the imaginative.

Introversion
Introversion – along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness – is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living in the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.”
Susan Cain 

Deafened Christianity
Perhaps the most deadening aspect of our Christianity . . . is that we live it with twenty-twenty hindsight. We know the story. We know how the plot comes out. We know who the winners are. . . . The Bible contains the complete and divinely authorized biography of Jesus and furnishes the complete guide to what [we] should do to become his disciple. Everything needed for [our] personal salvation is right there. . . .
When we approach the [Jesus] story with the attitude, “I’ve heard that already, I know what that means,” we fall asleep rather than allowing ourselves to be shocked awake. . . . For all such spiritual sleepwalking bypasses that crucial first step, that moment when the heart has to find its way not though external conditioning but through a raw immediacy of presence. Only there—in “the cave of the heart,” as the mystics are fond of calling it—does a person come in contact with his or her own direct knowingness. And only out of this direct knowingness is sovereignty born, one’s own inner authority.
Richard Rohr

Therapy Matters
…there’s more to life than mere stewardship, there is the abundant life found only in God. Beyond the therapeutic there is the grace and Life available to you in God. Sin isn’t just not taking proper care of yourself, sin is also turning away from the grace available to you in Christ through faith, hope, and love.
Therapy matters. And so does God.
Richard Beck

Blogs
Conversations on the blog are far less explosive. In the world of social media, a blog can be like a quiet meeting in a lecture hall, or seminar room, with questions, answers, and comments largely measured with self-control and thoughtfulness. Facebook is often like a shouting match in the town square.
Fr. Stephen Freeman

Truth
The love of truth is similar (and related) to the love of beauty. The truth is not found through suspicion, anger, hearsay, or such things. The truth ultimately is a gift from God and strengthens the heart. It is better, when we cannot arrive at the truth because of suspicion or such, to say, “I don’t know,” than to grasp at things we suspect or imagine.
The origin of conspiracy theories begins in a heart that cannot bear the shame of its own ignorance.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Story
Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes:
Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered. Story greases the hoists and pulleys, it causes adrenaline to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls, openings that lead to the dreamland, that lead to love and learning, that lead us back to our own real lives . . .  

Belief echoes
I find that exposure to a piece of negative political information persists in shaping attitudes even after the information has been successfully discredited. A correction—even when it is fully believed—does not eliminate the effects of misinformation on attitudes. These lingering attitudinal effects, which I call “belief echoes,” are created even when the misinformation is corrected immediately, arguably the gold standard of journalistic fact-checking.
https://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3564225/

Lives without substance
Our lives, for all of their angst, are often without substance. And for all that, we still do not weep and repent. The passions never give substance to our lives. They are like parasites on the soul, giving rise to a false self. They do not give us peace. We cannot rest in them. They contain no beauty and never satisfy us. Oftentimes, they simply leave us empty, even when the object of our passions is obtained. None of the passions represents true eros, true desire. The soul desires beauty, truth, and goodness (all of which find their utter and complete fulfillment in God Himself).
Fr Stephen Freeman

a recipe for gladness
 a recipe for gladness, especially when we don’t feel like it. We are glad God loves us and sees how hard life sometimes is; we are glad because all around us, if we look for it, is the beauty and fruitfulness of God’s creation; we are glad because, in a world as broken as ours, we affirm as a resurrection people who worship the God of Hope, the Lord reigns; we are glad because today, we are alive, this day is God’s gift, and God has work for us to do.
Jim Gordon

Admonitions for the immediate
Be an ordinary person, one of the human race.
Be polite with everyone, first of all, family members.
Be faithful in little things.
Do your work, then forget it.
Be simple, hidden, quiet, and small.
Think and talk about things no more than necessary.
Flee imagination, fantasy, analysis, figuring things out.
Don’t try to convince anyone of anything.
Have no expectations except to be fiercely tempted to your last breath.
Fr Thomas Hopko

LISTEN FOR THE WEEK

Still on the Journey

So Much to Think About

George 0 Comments

As much as possible, refrain from judging others. Assume that they are struggling secretly as well. Remember that our battle is with the passions.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Today is there is much to think about but unlike my usual ramblings, the focus is on the yesterday’s events. There is no shortage of opinions, observations, commentaries on one of the most disturbing experiences in my memory.

As I watched the scene, as expected, video captured the most vocal and extreme rioters, insurrectionists. But I also noticed footage of the margins of the crowd. Unlike those those leading the violent breech of the capital, people on margin, casually walking about, looked familiar. They looked like …friends, family, acquaintances … encountered over the past few years, and with whom in the course of conversations discovered our differences, resulting mostly in silence or avoidance of the subject.
I am struggling with the temptation to paint everyone in the crowd with same brush, or worse, all 70,000,000 sympathizers. No question there are some that should and, hopefully, will be prosecuted.
But people on the margin were familiar for another reason… they look like me. They, like myself, are struggling with their passions. My immediate challenge is to refrain from judging them. I believe the best restraint from judging others is a look in the mirror. I am not optimistic about my ability or willingness to see myself truthfully but, I was encouraged by a few members of congress yesterday.

The Message paraphrase of the “Do not judge..” passage in the Sermon on the Mount is helpful:
““Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.”
Matthew 7:1-5 MSG

A nagging question in all of this has been “how”. How could they …???
When that question arises I remind myself of my own experience which I have written about and shared a lot.

Some time around 1970, Ford Motor Company in Louisville, Ky initiated a program to hire hard core unemployable people to work as assembly operators. At that time I was a General Foreman in production assembly. Because of the dramatic challenges of integrating the hard core unemployable into the existing culture, a series of training sessions were conducted to better equip management employees. It was in one of those sessions that I encountered a life altering experience.

There were approximately 40-50 salaried employees participating in the training session. We were subjected to a variety of lectures and exercises designed to help us understand and deal with the cultural differences we would face as we managed what seemed to be unmanageable people.

The instructor told us we would be doing a problem solving exercise. We could not take notes but were to listen carefully to the problem and determine individually the correct answer. The problem was simple enough. It involved the sale of a mule between two farmers. There were three or four purchases and repurchases for different prices. The problem to be solved was who finally owned the mule and how much did the seller profit?

Given a few moments to think about our answers, the instructor asked us to share our answers. I thought that was unnecessary since it was such simple problem and I had determined the correct answer almost immediately. Expecting that everyone else would have the same answer, I was surprised that there were four or five different answers. At that point I was feeling some satisfaction in having the correct answer.

Next we were instructed to form groups based on our answers. Four or five groups emerged. The number of people in the groups varied from 10-12, 7-8, etc and my group with 4. Again, I was a bit surprised how few had gotten the answer correct. Once we were grouped, the instructor told us to discuss our answer within our group. Following that discussion, we were told that we could change groups if we so desired. The largest group gained some members, one of whom was
from my group.

The next step involved each group sending a representative to the other groups to convince them that their answer was correct. Following some passionate argument and pleas, once again we were given the opportunity to change our answer and join the agreeing group. I was pleased that none of my group departed but mystified that none joined us.

The final step involved each group sending a representative to work out their answer in writing on the white board. I represented our group and was pleased at how clearly I was able to illustrate the correct answer. Confident that people would finally realize how mistaken they were, I welcomed the final opportunity for people to change their minds and join my group. I watched with disappointment as another of my group departed for the largest group. No one
joined my group. There were now three groups. My group with myself and one other, a second group with 4-5 people and the large group with everyone else.

At this point, it is important to understand how invested I had become in the exercise. My mind was racing and my emotions were deepening. I was truly flabbergasted at the results of the exercise. It had become personal.

To conclude the exercise, the instructor chose two people to represent the farmers and provided money for the transaction. I should not have been surprised that he chose me to be one of the farmers. To assure that there would be no question about the outcome, we methodically acted out the transactions. Carefully we passed the money with each exchange. At the conclusion, I possessed the money and was asked to count it for everyone to see. Convinced I had calculated
the answer correctly, I gladly complied.

WRONG! I was wrong. There was no doubt.

The impact of that moment for me cannot be overstated. I was embarrassed and shamed. My arrogance and self-righteousness were exposed. How could I have been so deaf and blind? Any thought of humble acceptance escaped me. Thankfully the obvious outcome spared me the unfamiliar words: “I was wrong”. Almost immediately, the thought crossed my mind,

“If I was wrong about this, what else am I wrong about?

http://www.georgeezell.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Echo-Chambers.pdf

View from the lanai
Yes the sun did come up this morning and it was beautiful.

Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
Psalm 90:14 NIV

So Much to Think About

George 0 Comments

“Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

Whatever 
A new Marist poll found for the twelfth consecutive year that Americans consider “whatever” to be the most annoying word or phrase used in conversation. Everybody talks about whatever, but nobody does anything about it.

Lasting Legacy
DNA is extremely stable. It can last for tens of thousands of years. It is nowadays what enables scientists to work out the anthropology of the very distant past. Probably nothing you own right now—no letter or piece of jewelry or treasured heirloom—will still exist a thousand years from now, but your DNA will almost certainly still be around and recoverable, if only someone could be bothered to look for it.

Death
Death, the most obvious, reliable, inevitable, and predictable fact of our lives is increasingly experienced as something accidental, unexpected, and surprising. We used to joke that the only thing for certain in life is death and taxes. Today when people die we’re shocked.
…we’re increasingly reactive to death, emotionally speaking, increasingly disturbed, triggered, off-footed, shocked, troubled, and unsettled by death. So much so that death has become one of the biggest causes of modern faith crises. Someone dies–and again, everyone dies–and we lose faith in God. This is huge generational shift. 
In times past, we turned to God for consolation when we experienced bereavement. Nowadays we become atheists.
Richard Beck
http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2020/12/stoicism-faith-and-theodicy-part-1-our.html

Medicine as social science
In 1848, the Prussian government sent a young physician named Rudolf Virchow to investigate a typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia. Virchow didn’t know what caused the devastating disease, but he realized its spread was possible because of malnutrition, hazardous working conditions, crowded housing, poor sanitation, and the inattention of civil servants and aristocrats—problems that require social and political reforms. “Medicine is a social science,” Virchow said, “and politics is nothing but medicine in larger scale.”
This viewpoint fell by the wayside after germ theory became mainstream in the late 19th century. When scientists discovered the microbes responsible for tuberculosis, plague, cholera, dysentery, and syphilis, most fixated on these newly identified nemeses. Societal factors were seen as overly political distractions for researchers who sought to “be as ‘objective’ as possible,” says Elaine Hernandez, a medical sociologist at Indiana University. In the U.S., medicine fractured. 
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/science-covid-19-manhattan-project/617262/

Assumptions – By Scott Erickson
It’s assumed that Mary rode on a donkey, but the Bible doesn’t say she did. ?

It’s assumed there was an innkeeper, but it doesn’t mention one anywhere. ?

It’s assumed there were three Magi, but it doesn’t give a number of those who showed up. ?

It’s assumed there was a star overhead when Jesus was born, but it doesn’t say that either. ?

It’s assumed that Jesus was born in a stable, but all it says is that He was laid in a manger – and that could’ve been any number of places. ?

Christmas comes with many assumptions—some helpful, some not so much. ?

Spirituality also comes with many assumptions, and the ones that fail us are the ones we make about what it’s supposed to look like, who is worthy for it to happen to, and what kind of outcome it’s supposed to have for us. Assumptions like . . . ?

You should be more than you are now to be pleasing to God. ?

Your weaknesses are in the way of God’s plan for your life. ?

Your lack of religious excitement disqualifies you from divine participation.?

You’re probably not doing it right.?

Other spiritual people have something you don’t have.?

Our assumptions hinder our spiritual journey in all kinds of ways, and the antidote to assumption is surprise. The surprise of Christ’s incarnation is that it happened in Mary’s day as it is happening every day in your lack of resources, your overcrowded lodging, your unlit night sky, your humble surroundings. ?

It’s a surprise that life can come through barren places.?

Evil

For evil is not an argument: It is a thing. And the answer to evil is not logic but the cross. Alysha is an heir and a symbol of the One who took evil and suffering upon Himself, out of love for others. 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

Image of music &theology
The imagery of music, of a symphony, is quite apt when thinking about the whole of theology. There are many instruments in a symphony, each with varying shades of tonality and range of pitch. First, all instruments have to be “in tune,” so that what is “A-440” for one is the same for all. Second, comes the music itself. It is written in a single key (I’m sure that somebody has written a modern symphony with instruments playing in different keys – though, if it is taken far enough, we pass from music to pure noise). If you’re playing Beethoven’s 5th (which is written in C minor), and, fifteen measures into the performance the brass sections begin to play in E flat major, the result could be quite interesting, but less pleasant, and perhaps disastrous.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Grace and truth
The reality is grace and truth are not two things. They are one thing. They are, in fact, the love of God in Jesus Christ. They are not principles that can be learned or ideals to be held in tension. They will be lived and experienced in union or not at all; which is why they are only experienced in the living person of Jesus Christ and in a shared, loving union with him.
J D Walt

View from the Lanai
We arrived safely in Florida. As anticipated, the weather is refreshingly warm. It is a great privilege to spend our winter here.
Covid restrictions prompted us to come before Christmas since family interactions are limited. It is strange times. Wishing for a Merry Christmas is truly a wish this year.

Listen of the Week
https://open.spotify.com/track/6fuyG699aYnaHEYNwQNWP8?si=Kg1VbjiIROaVm9eqY7fPIg

Still on the Journey