For the Joy of the Journey

So Much To Think About

George March 9, 2024 Notes Anthology 1 Comment

Most of us think we are our thinking, yet almost all thinking is compulsive, repetitive, and habitual. Rohr

Sunday Morning

Answer me quickly, Lord; my spirit fails
Do not hide your face from me
or I will be like those who go down to the pit.
Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
for to you I entrust my life.
Rescue me from my enemies, Lord,
for I hide myself in you.
Teach me to do your will,
for you are my God;
may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.
Psalm 143:7-10 NIV

Mental assent

Mental assent means intellectually accepting the Word of God as true – admiring it and agreeing with it-but not allowing it to have an impact on you, so that it doesn’t do any good in your life. In essence, mental assent agrees with God but does not believe in God.

Cherokee Parable

A grandfather is talking with his grandson. The grandfather says, “In life, there are two wolves inside of us which are always at battle. One is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery, and love. The other is a bad wolf which represents things like greed, hatred, and fear.”
The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”
The grandfather replies, “The one you feed.”

Kareem Abdul Jabbar

Lying

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

Frankfurt

Immigrants

“Our nation is a nation of immigrants. More than any other country, our strength comes from our own immigrant heritage and our capacity to welcome those from other lands.”

Ronald Regan

Lament

Opening ourselves to God when we’re in need says that we trust God and want God to accompany us, support us, and befriend us in every way.

We trust those we love most with our deepest fears, doubts, emptiness, and disillusionment. So we love God when we share those vulnerable aspects of our lives with God. Just as a little child in the middle of a temper tantrum can shout “I hate you, Mommy!” only because he knows his outburst will not end their relationship, we can express to God our deep doubts, anger, or frustrations only because we possess an even deeper trust in God’s love…. The fact that we share this pain with God rather than withhold it turns out to be an expression of love.

Brian McLaren

Eros

Modern usage has corrupted the meaning of “erotic” to only mean sexual desire – but it is a profound word, without substitute in the language of the Church.

By eros we mean the love that makes us forget ourselves entirely and run towards the other without any regard for ourselves. Allan Bloom described eros as “love’s mad self-forgetting.” (from Road to Emmaus, Vol. XV, No. 2, Spring, 2014).

Personal Impressions

…personal impressions are highly selective. I can only see the world out of my own eyes, but my view is bounded and limited by my experiences. My view is only the smallest of slices of what is going on in the world.

Richard Beck

Back from Florida

We returned from our annual 3 month snowbird retreat to Venice Florida on March 2. This year’s stay was exceptional in a couple of ways. The weather was most unusual as compared to previous visits. Temperatures over all were cooler, more wind and rain. It was not constant, so the warmer days were appreciated. Beach time was limited but Ann managed to get an appropriate tan. Any disappointment with the weather was resolved by looking at the weather in Wilmore.

Beyond the weather, we had wonderful visits, interactions, conversations and meals with friends and neighbors. The greatest attraction for us is community. We were able to experience community similar to our neighborhood in Wilmore. Without that we probably would not continue to spend 1/4 of our year in Florida.

We are committed to return next December…

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

A Word or Two

Steve Elliott February 25, 2024 A Word or Two 0 Comments

a guest post by Steve Elliott

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
Matthew 5:3-11 NIV

We have saying in our house: you don’t get the life you find, you get the life you build. And if you are a follower of Jesus, you are under construction to be built to resemble him, to respond like him, and to be in this world as He was: fully present to this world’s brokenness and neediness, offering this world His love and compassion. He is no longer here physically to do that but we are. And as His Kingdom people, we are meant to be Kingdom salt and Kingdom light to this world. And what that looks like is found in Matthew 5 and the Beatitudes.

But we need to aware that the Beatitudes are descriptive not legislative … they are be-attitudes not be-haviors. Our ethics come from who we really are not who we try to be. Jesus is saying this is what “gospelized or kingdomized” humanity looks like. So if you bump a Christian Matthew 5 is what spills out of them. These are eight qualities of the same person not eight different options on a divine menu.

So these are not the rules we keep. They are the colors a Christian bleeds if you cut them. And it’s not about being perfectly complete in each one … as if you scored 10 out of 10 on each one. Nor is this about your salvation being at risk if you are behind on #3 or #6. It’s about the direction your life is headed. It’s about making forward progress in our spiritual growth and formation … leaving us with the question: “are you and I growing forward in our Kingdom life, not being perfect, but moving in the direction of Christ-likeness?

So Much To Think About

George February 23, 2024 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?

Overthinking

Somewhere between overthinking and underthinking is responsible and responsive thinking. As a Christian who tries to be a thinking Christian I’ve always taken seriously the discipleship of the intellect, the Christian mind, or as Anselm called it “faith seeking understanding.”

Jim Gordon

Contemplation

It is impossible to shift priorities if we are in a constant, busy, frenetic lifestyle. There has to be that pause, that breath, that waiting, that willingness to be still until we know. Be still and know—but the stillness doesn’t immediately lead to knowing. At first, we have to be still, and then we have to be patient until the knowing comes about.

Barbara Holmes

Doubt

I’m not describing atheists, apostates, or “exvangelicals” here. This is how many ordinary Christians feel. Or at least, it’s the water they swim in, the intrusive thought in the back of the mind, the semi-conscious source of inertia they feel when the alarm blares on Sunday morning. American Christians face no Colosseum, but this emotional and intellectual pressure is very real. The doubts add up.

It doesn’t help that doubt is in vogue. Doubt is sexy, and not only in the wider culture. I cannot count the number of times I’ve been told by a pastor or Christian professor that doubt is a sign of spiritual maturity. That faith without doubt is superficial, a mere honeymoon period. That doubt is the flip side of faith, a kind of friend to fidelity. That the presence of doubt is a sign of a healthy theological mind, and its absence—well, you can fill in the rest.

The pro-doubt crowd gets two important things entirely right. First, they want space to ask honest questions. Second, they want to remove the stigma of doubt.

Brad East

Human Behavior

“Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”

Viktor Frankl

True Professional

Edward Said has called the true intellectua: one who pursues their craft not as a profession, working 9-5, but rather for the love of the thing itself.

A language

“You need a language with which to express things, which at a certain age you felt you could do yourself, and gradually, somehow, it’s like switching from pastel paint to heavy oils.”

Peter Brown

born to be happy

Solzhenitsyn observed, if “man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die.” And as he pointed out, if such a credo holds, “for the sake of what should one risk one’s precious life in defense of the common good?”

Survivors

Only those who have tried to breathe under water know how important breathing really is, and will never take it for granted again. They are the ones who do not take shipwreck or drowning lightly. They’re the ones who can name “healing” correctly, the ones who know what they have been saved from, and the only ones who develop the patience and humility to ask the right questions of God and of themselves.

Only the survivors know the full terror of the passage, the arms that held them through it all, and the power of the obstacles that were overcome. All they can do is thank God they made it through! For the rest of us it is mere speculation, salvation theories, and “theology.”

Richard Rohr

Believing in God

“To me it comes down to this question: do I choose to believe in a universe that is self created, whose laws are self created, where life is ordered out of nothing, or do I choose to believe in a universe that is an expression of the power, beauty, and will of a God whose origins I cannot explain? Both require a measure of faith. I choose to believe that there is a God whose handiwork is seen in the cosmos, who created the laws that order our universe, and who brought forth life on our planet.”

“I believe in God because I believe God is the best explanation for the universe we live in. I believe in God because I’ve experienced what I believe is God’s presence and my life has been positively affected by my faith. I believe in God because I’m drawn to Jesus, and Jesus believed in God. But I also believe in God because I see the impact faith in God has had on the lives of so many people, and through them, on the world.”

Adam Hamilton

extremes

The far left will always end up in failure because they reject the reality of sin…the far right will fail because they believe they are without it…

Phoenix Preacher

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George February 18, 2024 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

Living in the sunset is a challenge. The desire to grasp and absorb infinite nuances of color and contrast before darkness invades can be overwhelming. Only the assurance of a new day and another sunset, restrains despair. Exhilaration and frustration are constant companions. I hold no regrets for my life, but I can say with confidence, I have never felt more alive than now.
My blog posts are meager attempts to share sunset experiences. Certainly they will be inadequate. As we all know, the grandeur of sunset is beyond description.
Life in the Sunset – Jan 2020

Six Word Memoir

Some years ago I read Not Quite What I Was Planning. The book is a collection of six-word memoirs. It originated from a project by on-line magazine SMITH that solicited submission of peoples’ life memoir stated in six words. I recently shared that I am writing my memoir. After working on it some, I’m thinking I might settle for a six word memoir. Here are a few examples from the book:

Seventy years, few tears, hairy ears.

Born in the desert. Still thirsty.

Macular degeneration. Didn’t see that coming.

Kentucky trash heap yields unexpected flower.

Thought long and hard. Got migraine.

Thinking about my own memoir. Here is what I came up with:

I Knew. I Know. I didn’t’t

How about yours?

The Progeny Parable

The wedding was stunning in every way, the bride a fantasy princess, the groom Sir Galahad personified. Their only rival for attention were spectacular vistas framing the ceremony. Family and friends gathered to witness and celebrate. A spectacular honeymoon was almost anti-climactic.

Promising careers… white picket fences … beautiful people.. life is good, almost perfect … almost.
Months and years pass, life is good, almost perfect…almost.
Empty nursery, dreams of progeny unfulfilled. Doubts and questions, Why? Who?
God’s will? Surely not.
Google it. No stone unturned. Calendars, thermometers, timing is everything. Hurry home, now is the time. Doctors, meds. Try harder!
Surely it is God’s will.
Resignation. It is not to be.
Foster parenting. Hearts aching. Choice, not chance.
We’ve done it. Nursery songs ..diapers.. Mama…Dada
Life is almost perfect..almost. No matter. Thank you God.
Life is good.. love abounds. No calendars…no thermometers, no demands.

Could it be? Yes! How could it be?
Did we just get out of the way?
Surely it’s God’s will.

AUGUST 2019

Boring Christianity

No one tells you that Christianity is a 70 to 80 year grind in becoming more kind, more gentle, more giving, more joyful, more patient, more loving. You learn that God isn’t in the rocking praise band or the amped up worship experience. What you learn after college is that Holy Ground is standing patiently in a line. You learn that Holy Ground is learning to listen well to your child, wife or co-worker. Holy Ground is being a reliable and unselfish friend or family member and being a good nurse when someone is sick. Holy Ground is awkward and unlikely friendships. Holy Ground is often just showing up.

Richard Beck

Old age

It’s easy to issue forth proclamations from the Olympian heights of age when we are no longer at the mercy of rampant hormones, parental expectations, and peer pressure. Every generation embraces their own slang and music, while harshly dismissing the slang and music of the subsequent generations. The warm cocoon of nostalgia makes them forget the pettiness and drama that dominated their lives.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar

Meaning

Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.

For to believe as a Christian means in fact entrusting oneself to the meaning that upholds me and the world; taking it as the firm ground on which I can stand fearlessly…It means affirming that the meaning we do not make but can only receive is already granted to us, so that we have only to take it and entrust ourselves to it.

Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)

“apoplectic rigidity,”

an inability to see the world as it is, but rather only those nightmarish elements that justify the hatred and rage that is the source of your self-worth.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Self Improvement

“Self-improvement must not be confused with the pursuit of kingdom righteousness” (How Long, O Lord?

It can feel so Christian to take better care of ourselves, to improve ourselves in all the same ways the world coaches people to improve themselves — diet, exercise, sleep, even meditation, and probably prayer.

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/how-christian-is-self-improvement#:~:text=The%20Christianity%20we%20find%20in,(Luke%209%3A23).

Aging

In Rainer Maria Rilke’s novel “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge,” the protagonist notices that as he ages, he’s able to perceive life on a deeper level: “I am learning to see. I don’t know why it is, but everything penetrates more deeply into me and does not stop at the place where until now it always used to finish.”

Still on the Journey

The Presence of God (5)

George February 17, 2024 The Presence of God 0 Comments

The doctrine of the Fall is about the loss of the Presence of God.
(Marshall Davis)

And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis3:22-24

The previous post focused on “God is present everywhere all the time” and its essentiality to our faith. Today is an examination of conflicting realities, of the loss of the literal presence of God as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s disobedience and God’s punishment. i.e.”he drove the man out” and the truth that God is present everywhere, all the time.
Banishment from the Garden of Eden is basis for a “two storey universe” perspective. ¹ The story of God’s relationship with the people of Israel is mostly a “two storey” drama. So the dilemma is: is God present everywhere all the time or not?
At this point my answer is yes and no!
Yes, God is present everywhere, all the time! But, No we not perceive his presence everywhere, all the time. The issue is not God’s proximity but our ability to perceive his presence. We are like Job:
When he passes me, I cannot see him; when he goes by, I cannot perceive him. ²
With the fall, beyond proximity to God, humanity lost communion (nous) with God. nous is the God-given faculty of the soul whose purpose is the perception of God and divine things. Noetic perception was lost. ³
Deficiency of “noetic perception” is an underlying condition that makes Christians most vulnerable to secularism. Devoid of “noetic perception” and unable to perceive that which is divine, belief is shallow, lacking in meaning and purpose; as Freeman observed, we are unable to even know the truth about ourselves. Desiring God on our own terms, we consign him to “up there” until He is needed.

Practicing the presence of God happens in a One Storey Universe.⁴ Prerequisite to living in a One Storey Universe is restoration of nous, the God-given faculty of the soul whose purpose is the perception of God and divine things.

Here is my quandary:

I am convinced God is present everywhere, all the time.
Much of my life is reflective of living in a Two Storey Universe.
I am deficient in noetic perception.
Spiritual formation and discipleship are dependent on the presence of God.
GOD is: utterly beyond me, beyond the sweep of my imagination, beyond the comprehension of my mind His judgments are unsearchable and ways past finding out.

Maybe I need “The mind of Christ”? ⁵

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

1
“We live here on earth, the first floor, where things are simply things and everything operates according to normal, natural laws, while God lives in heaven, upstairs, and is largely removed from the story in which we live. To effect anything here, God must interrupt the laws of nature and perform a miracle.” For us to see or hear from God, God has to come downstairs to visit us. But most of the time, it’s just us alone on the first floor. God is absent, upstairs and minding his own business.
FR Stephen Freeman
2
Job 9:11
3
“Noetic perception” is a phrase that describes the ability of the human heart to perceive that which is Divine. As such, it is our capacity for communion with God and the whole of creation. … Without such a perception, we do not see the truth of things. By the same token, without such a perception, we cannot know the truth of our own selves.
Fr Stephen Freeman
4
A One-Storey Universe is the world in which the noetic faculty is restored to its proper place and role. We do not perceive the true nature of creation, for example, in order to control it. Rather, we perceive it in order to have communion with God through creation. And creation itself is only rightly seen when perceived in this manner. Things cease to be things-in-themselves: everything exists as a manifestation of the goodwill and providence of God.
Richard Beck
5
“..but we have the mind of Christ.” 1 For 2:16