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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.
Facebook, of course

Power
We who are powerful need to be patient with the weakness of those who don’t have power, and not please ourselves.
Romans 15:1 CEB

Much of what was is lost..
…he opening words of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy: “The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was, is lost.”

Differences
There is a vast difference between a friend who disagrees and an enemy who seeks to dominate. One vision sustains democracy. The other could destroy our republic. 
David French

Pretending
Thomas Beckingham wrote, “At some point, the two worlds of who we pretend to be and who we really are must collide. It is, however, better to let those two worlds collide rather than have everything snap under the tension of keeping them apart.”

You cannot serve God and Twitter
Alternative views, unpleasant facts, discomforting arguments, contextualizing statistics, are, with ever-greater efficiency, filtered out of what our eyes can see and our minds absorb. And what we therefore believe becomes more fixed, axiomatic, self-reinforcing, and self-affirming. We become siloed into two affective tribes, with dehumanization of each other deepening with every news cycle.
Andrew Sullivan via Richard Beck

a path to the knowledge of God
…a path for the knowledge of God: pay attention to your questions. The result of this path is that you become far more aware of what you don’t know than of the things you think you know. Mere information fades.
Fr. Stephen Freeman 

healthy life
To live a free, healthy life we need to discipline our appetites, to regularly deny our cravings, and to rest our tastebuds between magical moments of splendor and deliciousness in order that such moments can be experienced as grace.
Michael Frost

Ageism
Ageism reduces human beings’ capacity for caring too. Globally, people don’t value elderly lives as much as they do young people’s, research shows. When it comes to deciding who lives or dies, there’s a disregard for the elderly, even among the elderly.
The elderly themselves don’t care much about protecting the elderly because they typically don’t think of themselves as such, says Susan Fiske, a Princeton psychologist who has studied ageism and other prejudices. The “old” are always just a little bit older than ourselves.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/covid-death-toll-us-empathy-elderly/616379/

“elder” 
There is a reason why the word “elder” carries such weight in Orthodoxy: theology and wisdom are not the province of the young. I have met very brilliant young minds in theological settings, but they are generally minds that do not know what to do with what they know. One way of thinking about this has to do with questions. The same older priest who told me only to speak about what I knew, also told me not to answer questions people weren’t asking. And that advice continues to guide me.
Fr. Stephen Freeman

Prosperity Gospel
The real prosperity gospel isn’t the overt appeal to wealth. It is the more subtle appeal to God guaranteeing that we are going to be happy, and the accompanying pressure to be happy in ways that are acceptable and recognizable to the community of Christians we belong to. (Michael Spencer, from Sept, 2008)

Ethos of morality
The ethos of the morality of the modern world can be reduced to two basic ideas. First, maximize freedom. Second, do no harm. Basically, as long as you don’t hurt anyone you can do as you please. But in such a world we have no idea about how to live well. No clue about what flourishing should look like. So most of us just default to some form of benign or enlightened hedonism. We spend our lives watching Netflix. Trapped in either mindless or addictive routines. 
Richard Beck

The glory of God
The glory of God is the love of God, which we see in its fullest expression on divine display at the cross of Jesus—unfathomably full of grace and truth. While his entire life is the cross, Jesus’ finest hour comes on Good Friday. In the hour of his greatest glory, he wears human sovereignty as a crown of thorns. On the darkest day of human history, the Light of the World shines brightest. On the day when the Son of God is emptied of his life, grace and truth are poured out in their fullest measure. In the hour when all of the vitriolic hatred of the human race is unleashed on this sinless suffering servant, the love of God reveals itself as the very essence of divine sovereignty.
J D Walt

2020 political landscape

Still on the Journey, Have a great week!

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.

Modernity is married to violence and pleads that it is all in a good cause.
Fr. Stephen Freeman

On October 22, 1925, Mahatma Gandhi published a list of what he called “Seven Social Sins” in his weekly newspaper Young India. Gandhi’s social sins:
Politics without principles. 
Wealth without work. 
Pleasure without conscience. 
Knowledge without character. 
Commerce without morality. 
Science without humanity. 
Worship without sacrifice.

In this moment
“This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation.”
Marilynne  Robinson – Gilead

Victim
Whether someone is a ‘victim’ is a conclusion to be reached at the end of a fair process, not an assumption to be made at the beginning.
U.S. District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor 

the big problem with religion
…the big problem with religion. It’s not faith, but certainty. Certainty destroys faith by crushing anything that challenges it. In our fallen state we crave certainty because with it we can grasp at control. But truth will not be controlled. It can only be embraced. Faith embraces truth, while certainty tries to pin it down. Is not this the great irony—these bastions of religious certainty, the ones with a lock on the truth—would ultimately pin Jesus, the truth, down. . . to a cross.
J D Walt

Fight for Justice
Christians believe that we can fight for justice in the knowledge that eventually God will put all things right, but until then we can never expect to fully fix the world. Christianity is not utopian.
Timothy Keller

Christian Identity
The secure identity of Christians does not require shaming, othering, and denouncing (which is always a part of a highly performative identity). Also, the new Christian identity—that we are simultaneously sinful and infinitely loved—changes and heals former oppressors (by telling them they are just sinners) as well as former oppressed (by assuring them of their value). See James 1:9.
Timothy Keller

It is what it is
A saying among management experts today is, “Your system is perfectly designed to yield the result you are getting.” This is a profound though painful truth that must be respected by all who have an interest in Christian spiritual formation, whether for themselves as individuals or for groups or institutions.
Dallas Willard

Corporate sin
The reality of corporate sin does not swallow up individual moral responsibility, nor does individual responsibility disprove the reality of corporate evil. To deny (or largely deny) either is to adopt one of the secular views of justice rather than a biblical one.
Timothy Keller

For leaders
For leaders who need to be liked, they need to get a dog. Maybe two. They will always like you and are quick to forgive.
To all my friends in leadership of any kind, I have two pieces of advice. Number one, get a dog. I personally recommend a Teacup Poodle. My dog, Macy, jumps up to see me every time I come through the door. She does not grill me about masks. In fact, as far as I can tell, she has absolutely no opinion on masks. And she treats me the same, whether the sermon was the bomb or a bust.
—Chris Smith

Teaching
The two biggest lies about teaching are that one learns so much from one’s students and, so gratifying is it, one would do it for nothing. I had a number of bright and winning students, but if I learned anything from them, I seem long ago to have forgotten it. I always felt I was slightly overpaid as a teacher, but I wouldn’t have accepted a penny less. The one certain thing I learned about teaching is that you must never say or even think you are a good teacher. If you believe you are, like believing you are charming, you probably aren’t.
Joseph Epstein

Being a family 
….a line from the Italian-American novelist Don DeLillo: “Being a family is an art … and the dinner table is the place it finds expression.” 
What does your dinner table say about your family?
Michael Frost

Sign of the times
Some time ago, I was staying in the palatial home of a wealthy couple in California’s Orange County. They had all rushed off to work early that morning and left a note saying I could eat anything I wanted from their kitchen. I located the bread but I couldn’t find a toaster, so I thought I’d try grilling it. But when I opened the oven I found two or three expertly gift-wrapped presents in there.
I was a little taken aback and decided to cut my losses and buy breakfast out that day.
That evening I was talking to my host who asked whether I’d found everything okay, and I confessed that I’d been a little thrown by the gifts in the oven.|
“Oh, my gosh,” he erupted, “I totally forgot they were in there! I should have warned you.”
I reassured him I hadn’t cooked the presents, and he explained they were for his wife whose birthday was coming up.
“I hide them in there because we never use the oven,” he explained.

It turns out that never using the oven is becoming a more common thing for American families.
Up until Covid19 hit, Americans were spending more of their food budget on restaurants and food delivery services (50.3%) than they did on groceries (49.7%). It might be even higher since quarantines and lockdowns were instituted in various parts of the country.
For some perspective, back in 1970 only 26% of a family’s food budget was spent on eating out. In 2010 it was 41%.
In fact, the average American eats one in every five meals in her car; 25% of Americans eat at least one fast food meal every single day; and the majority of American families report eating a single meal together less than five days a week.
In fact, only 32% of American families typically have dinner together all seven nights per week.
Interestingly, when families do eat together the average dinnertime is 15 minutes. In the 1960, the average family dinnertime was 90 minutes.
Michael Frost 
http//mikefrost.net/being-a-family-is-an-art-and-the-dinner-table-is-the-place-it-finds-expression/

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

New ideas
There are very few new ideas and there are even fewer new good ideas. If you ever spent time around young people who suddenly get inspired by an idea they think is new, you know that the vast majority of the time it’s because they don’t know that the idea is in fact very, very old. 
Jonah Goldberg

Return to church
Many will not return after the pandemic. 
You can watch a performance more comfortably at home…
Phoenix Preacher

The Cause
…the Cause is very compelling, it’s a vision of the good that is really, really attractive. Evil results because you’re pursuing the true, the good, and the beautiful.
Richard Beck

Fixing Others
When we assume that people won’t change unless we fix them—as if we don’t ourselves need fixing—we show that our ultimate trust is in ourselves, not God.
When we don’t simply trust God to change others, we effectively claim that our ability to shame, intimidate, or otherwise manipulate people into change is greater than God’s transforming Spirit.
Greg Boyd – Repenting of Religion

the meaning of the Cross today:
”We kill one another. We killed our best. We killed God who came to save us. When we kill another, we kill the God who made them and loved them, who was in them and who came to save us. This is what I see these days when I look at the cross.”
David Gushee

Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced. —James Baldwin (1924–1987)

Restorative Justice
…sin and failure are an opportunity for the transformation of the person harmed, the person causing harm, and the community. Mere counting and ledger-keeping are not the way of the Gospel. Our best self wants to restore relationships, and not just blame or punish. This is the “economy of grace” and an operative idea of restorative justice.
Richard Rohr

Fixers
Some of the people struggling most during the pandemic are the “fixers”… remember that you’re only responsible to be faithful, not for outcomes…
Phoenix Preacher

Fire Insurance
If there is nothing distinctly Christian about how you approach politics, there’s probably nothing distinctly Christian about how you approach anything else…and your faith is basically fire insurance…
Phoenix Preacher

Leading people to love
We think fear, anger, divine intimidation, threat, and punishment are going to lead people to love. Show me where that has worked. You cannot lead people to the highest level of motivation by teaching them the lowest. God always and forever models the highest, and our task is merely to “imitate God” (Ephesians 5:1).
Richard Rohr

Fire Lighters
Isa 50:10-11
Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the word of his servant?
Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God.
But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze.

For those who enjoy discovery because they know a good God is moving through the chaos toward a wonderful conclusion, mystery poses no problem. It is welcomed. Explain what you can, and relax even when you can’t. But for those ruled by a passion to explain, for those who insist on feeling confident in their own plans, mystery is offensive. They want to know exactly what they must do to provide for their economic future, to restore harmony in their relationships, to succeed in their career or ministry. Confusion is an enemy. Certainty is a challenge to overcome. 
God’s words through Isaiah tell us one way we can know if we are living in the flesh or in the Spirit. When we bump into something we can’t explain, when we find ourselves in a dark tunnel and aren’t sure how to get out, is our stronger impulse to trust God or figure out what to do? Do we quickly reach for a flashlight to help us see the road ahead? Or do we firmly grasp the hand of the only one who can see in. the dark?
Where is our confidence—in God or in our ability to come up with a good plan? If we walk confidently in the light of our own torches, Isaiah informs us that we are not relying on God. The demand to walk a path with a predictable outcome is an urge of the flesh. It needs to die. 
Larry Crabb