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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

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