Category: Notes Anthology

“Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind.”
Mary Schmich

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Two Worlds

There are always two worlds. The world as it operates is power; the world as it should be is love. The secret of kingdom life is how we can live in both—simultaneously. The world as it is will always be built on power, ego, and success. Yet we also must keep our eyes intently on the world as it should be—what Jesus calls the reign of God. 

Richard Rohr

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Forgetting God

The Russian writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, when asked about the terrible evils of the Soviet Gulag, and other nightmarish manifestations of modernity, offered a very simple explanation of all that had befallen our world: “We forgot God.” I would add to that the observation that every time we remember God, we allow ourselves to step into the truth of our existence. The secular delusion disappears.

Fr Stephen Freeman

Miracle

After lecturing learnedly on miracles, a great theologian was asked to give a specific example of one. “There is only one miracle,” he answered. “It is life.” 

Have you wept at anything during the past year? 
Has Your heart beat faster at the sight of young beauty? 
Have you thought seriously about the fact that someday You are going to die ? 
More often than not do You really listen when people are speaking to you instead of just waiting for your turn to speak?
Is there anybody You know in whose place, if one of you had to suffer great pain, You would volunteer yourself? 
If your answer to all or most of these questions is No, the chances are that You’re dead. 

Fredrick Buechner

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Readers

Earlier this week, a new Reading Agency survey, The State of the Nation’s Adult Reading, reported that half of U.K. adults do not regularly read and 15% have never read regularly for pleasure, while 35% used to read but have stopped. Attention is an issue overall, with 28% of U.K. adults saying they have difficulty focusing on reading for more than a few minutes.
Comparing this data with a study conducted in 2015, the Reading Agency’s research found that these figures mark not just a notable decrease in the number of U.K. adults reading regularly, but also a stark increase in the number of non-readers. With only 50% of the nation now saying they read regularly, down from 58% in 2015, the decline has gathered momentum in recent years, with 15% of the nation now saying they do not currently read for pleasure and have never done so regularly. That’s a rise of 88% since 2015, when just 8% of U.K. adults were non-readers.” 
The research also indicates a potential for this trend to continue growing, with younger adults being less likely to read than all other age groups. One-quarter of young people across the U.K. (aged 16-24) say they’ve never been regular readers, while an additional 44% already identify as “lapsed readers.” 
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=4776#m64565

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Sports (Olympics)

Sports, like other art forms, are potential channels of transcendence. It’s why we watch and admire athletes. It’s why athletes sometimes can’t tell you why they made some choice on the field or what they were thinking in the moment. They were so in the flow, so self-forgetful, so present to teammate and circumstance that they lost themselves. The beauty that results, for them and for us, is marvelous. Our breath catches in our throat. David Foster Wallace called watching Roger Federer “a religious experience.” In a sense, he wasn’t wrong.

Brad East

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Momento Mori –
These lyrics hit a lot harder at 60 [82] than they did at 16…..

And you run and you run
to catch up with the sun 
but it’s sinking…
Racing around 
to come up behind you again.
The Sun is the same,
in a relative way,
but you’re older…
Shorter of breath 
and one day closer to death.

—Pink Floyd

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Clocks

“Sometimes it really upsets me—
the way the clock’s hands keep moving,
even when I’m just sitting here
not doing anything at all,
not even thinking about anything 
except, right now, about that clock
and how it can’t keep its hands still.
Even in the dark I picture it, and all
its brother and sister clocks and watches,
even sundials, all those compulsive timepieces
whose only purpose seems to be
to hurry me out of this world.”

– Linda Pastan

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Consciousness 

Consciousness is not the seeing but that which sees me seeing. It is not the knower but that which knows that I am knowing. It is not the observer but that which underlies and observes me observing.We must step back from our compulsiveness, and our attachment to ourselves, to be truly conscious. 
… take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.  
Wisely, [this step] does not emphasize a moral inventory, which becomes too self-absorbed and self-critical, but speaks instead of a “personal inventory.” In other words, just watch yourself objectively, calmly, and compassionately. When we’re able to do this from a new viewing platform and perspective as a grounded child of God, “The Spirit will help us in our weakness” (Romans 8:26). From this most positive and dignified position, we canlet go of, and even easily admit, our wrongs. 

Richard Rohr

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Holiness

Someone taught me long ago that there’s a difference between “gifted” and “godly.” Ideally you need both, but godly is always better than gifted and a jerk.

• Holiness is both gift and demand. Something we are given and something we prosecute.
• Holiness is not moralizing, not separatism, nor self-deprecation.
• Holiness is the attempt to be consumed by God and to reflect Jesus to others.
• Christian leaders are held to a higher standard in terms of language, financial dealings, relational integrity, and scrutiny. One must be beyond reapproach.
• In effect, your walk must match your talk. You can’t have a private life without recourse to holiness.
• Now, importantly, holiness is not perfection or sinlessness. 
• Holiness always means dealing with the flaws in your character, mistakes of judgment, and seeking reconciliation when you are in the wrong.
  In fact, learning how to faithfully resolve your own mistakes rather than deny them or cover them up is a mark of holiness.
  
  Michael Bird

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Truly Human

While it is true that “God became man so that man could become God,” it is equally true that God became man so that man could become man – truly human. To be truly human we must sing and dance, create art and tell stories. We engage in commerce and build cities. All that is human life and existence is a gift from God and has a God-given purpose and direction.

Fr Stephen Freeman

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STILL ON THE JOURNEY

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Parent -Adult Children

…one of the best predictors of parents’ and adult children’s psychological well-being is the quality of their relationship. So many people in American society are stuck on the idea that too much closeness gets in the way of growth—when in fact closeness can help build a future. “If I develop my identity as a person simply by sort of rejecting my affiliation with family and other systems,” Goldsmith said, “I’m sort of developing myself in a vacuum. And that’s not actually desirable.”

Parents and kids who can count each other as family and friends are the luckiest of all. For decades, the parent-child relationship has been somewhat transactional: A parent keeps a child alive and healthy until adulthood, and eventually the grown kid comes back to take on the caregiver role. Under that model, the lives people lead in between—their silly exploits and daydreams, their minor grievances and pet peeves—happen largely out of each other’s sight. But why should all those everyday fragments be the province of only peers and partners? If people could stop worrying about whether the new parent-child closeness is a “crisis,” perhaps they’d come to see how beautiful it is for family members to ask—and receive—more from one another.

The Atlantic

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Between Is and Ought

In two decades of seminary teaching, I met many brilliant, theologically astute students who were incredibly immature in their everyday lives. There was often a vast gap between their confessional and functional theology.

Students who could articulate the sovereignty of God were paralyzed by worry. Students who could expound on the glory of God would dominate classroom discussions for the sake of their own egos.

I counseled students who could explain the biblical doctrine of progressive holiness while nurturing secret worlds of lust and sexual sin. Students who could explain the biblical teaching of God’s grace were harsh, judgmental legalists.

Many young men who were months away from ministry could preach brilliantly on the love of God yet had little love for the real people they were about to start pastoring.

Don’t be too quick to assume heart change has occurred just because acknowledgment or affirmation has been verbalized. Yes, we first need people to see, know, and understand, but we also need them to apply that insight to their daily lives.

For many people, it is much easier to know what is wrong than how to change it. A sister in the Lord may understand the major themes, truths, and promises of Scripture, but she may not know how to use them in certain situations, struggles, and relationships.

“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing” (James 1:22-25).

Paul Tripp

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A Good Life

The dominant narrative of modernity (constantly marketed to us) has been the promise of a better life (“the good life”) through progress, technology, and the acquisition of wealth. There have been remarkable discoveries (antibiotics, analgesics, surgeries, etc.) that frequently improve our medical well-being. However, the narrative itself tends to demonize suffering in a manner that while producing “the good life,” fails miserably at producing “a good life.” Modernity does not suffer well or virtuously.

The gospels and our faith describe a normal life, charged with glory but sifted in the suffering of our broken existence. God has entered into this very world, emptying Himself even to encompass the whole of our suffering in the fullness of the Cross. We learn to find Him there and discover that in that very emptiness He has given us His fullness. The normal life, lived fully, becomes the vehicle of our transformation.

Fr Stephen Freeman

Don’t ever tolerate disrespect because you want someone to like you. Not only will they not like you, but you will quickly stop liking yourself.

Mark Manson

Car Colors

When it comes to their cars, more consumers are going gray, and now, roads are half as colorful as they were twenty years ago.
Grayscale colors like white, black, gray and silver make up 80% of cars today, up from 60% in 2004, according to a recent analysis by iSeeCars.com.
Since 2004, colors like gold (-97%), green (-51%), red (-38%) and blue (-18%) have seen their market share drop. Meanwhile, gray (+82%), white (+77%) and black (+57%) cars have become significantly more popular.

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Cognitive Decline

Cotton Mather: “My usefulness was the last idol I was willing to give up; But now I thank the Lord, I can part with that also, and am content to be anything or nothing, so that His wise and holy will may be done!”

Cognitive decline isn’t something to mock, it’s something to mourn. And it’s something for us to reflect upon for ourselves. I’ve watched as that first realization of cognitive decline falls upon a person. It is scary to them, and to those who love them. And they want to hang onto usefulness to the very end—you likely will too.

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Love

Yet before you can love your neighbor—your brother or sister—as yourself, you must first love yourself. And to first love yourself, you must know that God loves you now and loves you always.

—Archbishop Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream 

There’s a fine line between a numerator and a denominator.  Only a fraction of people will find this funny.

Nap time

Ever woken up from a nap and felt more tired? Or so discombobulated you forgot which planet you were on?

There’s a term for that sleepy, almost-drunk feeling – it’s called sleep inertia, says Dr. Seema Khosla, a sleep medicine physician and the host of Talking Sleep, a podcast from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. It’s a sign you’re overshooting your napping mark. It can slow you down in the short term and potentially sabotage your nighttime sleep in the long run.

To avoid that, you’ll need to keep your naps “consistent, early and brief,” says Jade Wu, a sleep medicine specialist and the author of the book Hello Sleep.

Scot McKnight

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The Responsibility of Belief

In 1877 a British philosopher and mathematician named William Kingdon Clifford published an essay called “The Ethics of Belief.” In it he argued that if a shipowner ignored evidence that his craft had problems and sent the ship to sea having convinced himself it was safe, then of course we would blame him if the ship went down and all aboard were lost. To have a belief is to bear responsibility, and one thus has a moral responsibility to dig arduously into the evidence, avoid ideological thinking and take into account self-serving biases. “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence,” Clifford wrote. A belief, he continued, is a public possession. If too many people believe things without evidence, “the danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.”

David Brooks

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STILL ON THE JOURNEY