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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: Pew Note

Mystery

George 0 Comments

My favorite blogger Richard Beck wrote today on mystery in his faith journey. His words resonated deeply with my own experience and current understanding.

 

Mystery can be a ticklish business. I would say that, for most of my life, I always felt that an appeal to mystery was a cop-out, a way of ignoring the question and shutting down the conversation. The answer Quia–“Just because”–can be infuriating.

And yet, here on the other side of my middle age, I’m starting to appreciate mystery more and more. I think in my younger years I gave reason too much credit. There are things I know and believe about God that I simply cannot articulate. Words, literally, fail me. Poetry gets a little closer, but not much. My faith is growing more mystical as the years pass. And that has been a great grace.

Second Mountain People

George 0 Comments

In their book “Practical Wisdom,” Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe tell the story of a hospital janitor named Luke. In Luke’s hospital there was a young man who’d gotten into a fight and was now in a permanent coma. The young man’s father sat with him every day in silent vigil, and every day Luke cleaned the room. But one day the father was out for a smoke when Luke cleaned it.Later that afternoon, the father found Luke and snapped at him for not cleaning the room. The first-mountain response is to see your job as cleaning rooms. Luke could have snapped back: I did clean the room. You were out smoking. The second-mountain response is to see your job as serving patients and their families. In that case you’d go back in the room and clean it again, so that the father could have the comfort of seeing you do it. And that’s what Luke did.

The quote above is from a recent article by David Brooks entitled “The Moral Peril of Meritocracy” . Powerful and convicting, Brooks is a voice in the wilderness. Which mountain are we climbing?