“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
Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
Loving Enemies
Our enemies always carry our own shadow side, the things we don’t like about ourselves. We will never face our own shadow until we embrace those who threaten us (as Francis of Assisi embraced the leper in his conversion experience). The people who turn us off usually do so because they carry our own faults in some form.?
Chiasms are a kind of mirror-image parallelism, using repetition to trace an idea. They litter the Old Testament and the New; once you start seeing them, you can’t stop.
A modern example of a short chiasm would be If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Jesus makes a pithy chiastic statement in Mark 2:27: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
If we focus just on our abilities and responsibilities, we see only gains in the first half of the chiasm of life and only parallel losses in the second. In a culture that values youth and vigor, we risk losing sight of what we learn over the years: wisdom. The wisdom of aging means that even as our bodies increasingly fail us, our internal lives grow richer and steadier. Bodies decline, but people develop.
Parenting
Christopher Lasch: “The school, the helping professions, and the peer group have taken over most of the family’s functions, and many parents have cooperated with this invasion of the family in the hope of presenting themselves to their children strictly as older friends and companions.”
Parents have bought into the illusion that if they do not direct and guide their children, then their children will make free individual choices — and then, if things go wrong, at least they won’t be able to blame Mom and Dad.
Awe- inspiring
Something must have come over me, says Kohei Ohmori, reflecting on the 280 hours or roughly 5 months spent drawing a hyper realistic composition of a metallic bolt and nut using just pencils.
Salt
Salt doesn’t exist to preserve itself; it exists to preserve what is not itself…. Salt is meant to enhance, not dominate. Christian saltiness heals; it doesn’t wound. It purifies; it doesn’t desiccate. It softens; it doesn’t destroy….
One of the great tragedies of historic Christianity has been its failure to understand this distinction. Salt fails when it dominates. Instead of eliciting goodness, it destroys the rich potential all around it. Salt poured out without discretion leaves a burnt, bitter sensation in its wake. It ruins what it tries to enhance. It repels.
Debbie Thomas
Reading
According to the neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, so-called deep reading—sustained immersion in a text—stimulates a number of valuable mental habits, including critical thinking and self-reflection, in ways that skimming or reading in short bursts does not.
Tucker Carlson
“If running for office can encourage you to imagine millions of supporters [who don’t exist], hosting a show can entirely separate you from reality,” he observed. “If you’re not careful, you can permanently lose all critical distance from yourself. One morning you wake up, and you’re living in your own irony-free world.”
The Danger
“The danger,” the Jewish mystic Simone Weil wrote, “is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.”
Why do men relish control so much? There are a number of ways to answer this question, but certainly the sense of having agency in the world, of being able to have an impact on our surroundings, of being able to see that we make a difference in the world—all of these can help explain why we like and want control.
Perhaps the above explains my ill-advised attempt to create a Billy Bob Thornton persona … Unfortunately Ann doesn’t think much of Billy Bob Thornton.
Self Control
Self-control is a Fruit of the Spirit, which means that we depend upon God’s grace to receive it, but we can’t be passive. Self-control is a discipline, too. It is a muscle we exercise or we don’t. We each have an obligation to mortify our flesh and resist sinful temptation in all forms. Given the powerful currents of our society, we must be intentional about practicing self-denial. Chastity is a virtue, even (especially?) in marriage. A beautiful marriage does not mean you will have all your sexual desires fulfilled. You won’t. You will have to practice self-control. Over and over again.
Contemplation waits for the moments, creates the moments, where all can be a silent prayer. It refuses the very distinction between action and stillness. Contemplation is essentially nondual consciousness that overcomes the gaps between me and God, outer and inner, either and or, me and you.
The reason why the true contemplative-in-action is still somewhat rare is that most of us, even and most especially in religion, are experts in dualistic thinking. And then we try to use this limited thinking tool for prayer, problems, and relationships. It cannot get us very far. The irony of ego “consciousness” is that it always excludes and eliminates the unconscious—which means it is actually not conscious at all! Ego insists on knowing and being certain; it refuses all unknowing. Most people who think they are fully conscious (read, “smart”) have a leaden manhole cover over their unconscious. It gives them control but seldom compassion or wisdom.
Richard Rohr
Celebrity
there is a mania loose in our society where so many people are pursuing celebrity rather than artistry. In other words, they want to be famous for doing nothing. Reality TV and social media have encouraged people to strive, not for greatness, but for recognition. They will even settle for notoriety, engaging in the most cruel, inhumane, and self-degrading behavior just to have people recognize them on the street. It doesn’t matter why they recognize them, only that they do.
There’s a difference between fame and accomplishment, between celebrity and artistry. For me, fame, celebrity, and recognition should be something earned through passion, hard work, practice, and commitment. I have no beef with reality shows or social media millionaires who unbox stuff—they can be very entertaining—but those people should never be equated with those who actually produce something worthwhile.
The reason we are so quick to bestow celebrity onto so many people who do so little is that it keeps the hope alive in all people that anyone can become famous just by doing outrageous stuff that goes viral and gets clicks and followers. Everyone can’t write a Bob Dylan song or paint a Matisse or write a Maya Angelou poem—but they can rant about conspiracies or eat disgusting things. All with the sad subtext of: Please notice me!
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Theological Differences
…the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) wanted to add the song “In Christ Alone” to their hymnal Glory to God. They asked the authors of the hymn if they could change the original lyric “Till on that cross as Jesus died / the wrath of God was satisfied” to “Till on that cross as Jesus died / the love of God was magnified.”
…we can see why evangelical and progressive Christians experience mutual incomprehension when they encounter each other. They come from very different theological worlds.
One consequence of looking at the wrong data to understand the shape of a problem is that data always hints at the solution.
For example, during the Vietnam War, U.S. military leaders measured “success” in the conflict using the same metric they used in World Wars I and II: body count—the number of enemy combatants killed. The assumption was that higher body counts equated to progress toward victory.
But the Vietnam War wasn’t a war of attrition. It was a war for public opinion. As a result, strategies were developed to maximize body counts, often at the expense of what truly mattered: winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese and beyond. Villages were bombed, civilians were displaced, and atrocities like the My Lai Massacre occurred. In the end, the focus on this narrow, incomplete metric contributed to widespread disillusionment, both domestically and abroad, and the eventual failure of U.S. efforts in Vietnam.
When Christian thought leaders look at the data available to them to understand the problems facing Christianity and to uncover solutions, they make a similar mistake. Here is the data set most leaders are using to make decisions:
67% of the U.S. population self-identifies as Christian, which equates to around 224 million people. This is down from 95% of Americans who identified as Christian in the 1950’s.
However, there is a catastrophic problem with this data.
Surveys that rely on self-reported faith and church attendance are notoriously unreliable as indicators of actual religious engagement. Recent studies have demonstrated that conventional surveys significantly overestimate both church attendance and religious adherence due to respondent bias.
Based on my own experience, when people find out I’m Catholic, due to knowing only Catholics in name only, they often expect me to fit this stereotype.
I consistently disappoint.
The idea behind this data is that church attendance and self-reported affiliation are considered the primary indicators of faithfulness. Thus, if you can win on these two metrics, you win the war. In other words, they think that Christianity is in a war of attrition with modernity. When someone gets baptized or says the salvation prayer, they think, “We got another one! Move them across the ledger!” This is precisely the wrong way to think about religious adherence, and its byproduct is a tremendous amount of time, effort, and energy wasted.
That’s because we misunderstand the war we’re fighting. We are not in a battle of attrition with modernity where individuals move across the “self-identification line” and are “on our team now.” Instead, We’re fighting a war of FORMATION with the modern culture. Each side forms its adherent’s behavior in this war to reflect its deeply held beliefs.
Admittedly, this is an oversimplification. However, to draw a clear contrast between Christianity and prevailing cultural trends, it helps to examine how belief systems manifest in measurable life outcomes. Two competing worldviews are at play here, each shaping behavior and priorities in radically different ways.
ARCHIE update
Wonderful news. He is making progress. Gabby is permitted to hold him. He has gained weight. Prayers continue. Still a long road ahead. Wait for him to wake up on the video.
…the analytic mind bypasses a broad set of moral, spiritual, and philosophical questions about what it means to be a human, and merely dissects and corrects. However, what if we began with questions about what it means to die well? Kevin Brown
A question DR. Laura1…one of the most popular talk show hosts in radio history, Dr. Laura Schlessinger offers no-nonsense advice infused with a strong sense of ethics, accountability, and personal responsibility; she’s been doing it successfully for more than 30 years, reaching millions of listeners weekly. often asks her callers , “..what do you want your life to look like between now and dead?”
Answers to the question define for a responder what it means to die well. Consider a few responses to “How do you want to live the final 10 years of your life? from Quora:
…do whatever I damn well please.
…travel the whole world and meet new aquaintances
…try to be helpful and/or make someone’s day a bit better
…walk in nature every day for at least 2 hours. live in a beautiful village that has a fresh market two to three times a week. In the afternoon — around the hour of apero — I’ll have a drink and a cigarette. read, write and listen to music — A LOT. be very very slim — like I am now. do tai chi and stretching exercises in the morning sun. have a fireplace. host people on my property — whether it be friends or travellers.
…About the same way I’ve been doing it. I’m poor, so there is no travel, no vacations, no bucket list for me. I’d keep living my life, day to day, minute by minute. I’d spend time with my sister.
…I am very happy with the way my life is going, I don’t have anything on any “bucket list” to accomplish. I’m retired, living in a paid for home, have adequate retirement income, and I am debt free. 10 more years of what I am doing now would be enough to keep me happy.
…Attend Shows the impersonation of Elvis, Enjoy a beautiful sunset on the beach, accompanied by a Cold Beer, Brass wind music, Good seafood and the Mother of My Sons and Daugther. Thanking God for so many blessings received throughout my life.
…remaining life I want to live for other people who needs any sort of help, by free teaching, looking after who are patients, needy and poor people. To solve the problems by my life experience. Also all types of charity work. My aim is some one should get benefited from my soul.
“NOW” between now and death is the the occasion of an “existential slap”2“existential slap” —that moment when a [dying] person first comprehends, on a gut level, that death is close. For many, the realization comes suddenly: “The usual habit of allowing thoughts of death to remain in the background is now impossible,” . “Death can no longer be denied.”1 that awakens us to our mortality.
I propose that “existential slap” initiates “second half”3According to Father Richard Rohr, the second half of life is a time to discover the meaning of life and to live in the present moment. It’s a time to let go of the ego and to find a deeper sense of self. life.
Life’s second half is characterized by: … a time to discover the meaning of life … a time to let go of the ego and find a deeper sense of self …a time to live in the present moment without tension or judgment …a time to find a deeper purpose for life …a time to find a more spacious, vibrant sense of self 1
Dying well is a second half endeavor. Our concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have—right now.
We are a “first-half-of-life culture,” largely concerned about surviving successfully. : establishing an identity, a home, relationships, friends, community, security, and building a proper platform for our only life.
You cannot walk the second journey with first journey tools. You need a whole new tool kit. Understanding and applying those tools is the task of dying well.
Dying well is meeting death fully human.
Life is learning to die in order to be born again. The creature participates in using their death to become a human being. To be clear, this isn’t a stoical acceptance of death as the cessation and end of life, a materialistic, nihilistic vision of “dying well.” We are describing death as birth-pangs, as moving toward mystical union with God. Again, death is being used as a tool. The soul is perfected and purified as it moves through this world of contingency, full of suffering and tribulation. The soul experiences this life as a birthing, as labor pains in a process of sanctification. We die to arrive as human beings. Richard Beck
Answers to “..what do you want your life to look like between now and dead?” reveal how we intend to use of our dying. Do we double down on a materialistic, nihilistic vision like most of the Quora responses?; or, do we seek to be more fully human, moving toward mystical union with God?
Take time to ponder your answers. I have chosen to pursue the latter — but questions remain…
What are tools for second journey?
What does it mean to be fully human ?
Is seeking to be more fully human, moving toward mystical union with God consistent with prevailing concepts of discipleship? If so, how? If not, Why?
…one of the most popular talk show hosts in radio history, Dr. Laura Schlessinger offers no-nonsense advice infused with a strong sense of ethics, accountability, and personal responsibility; she’s been doing it successfully for more than 30 years, reaching millions of listeners weekly.
2
“existential slap” —that moment when a [dying] person first comprehends, on a gut level, that death is close. For many, the realization comes suddenly: “The usual habit of allowing thoughts of death to remain in the background is now impossible,” . “Death can no longer be denied.”1
3
According to Father Richard Rohr, the second half of life is a time to discover the meaning of life and to live in the present moment. It’s a time to let go of the ego and to find a deeper sense of self.
People don’t become better versions of themselves as they acquire intellectual information; they get better as they acquire emotional knowledge — the ability to be made indignant by injustice, outraged by cruelty, to know how to gracefully do things withpeople, not for people.
David Brooks
Antipodists
People who juggle with their feet
Killing CEOs
The murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4, 2024 ignited a furious and macabre debate: did he deserve it? According to a recent Emerson poll, young voters aged 18-29 are split, 40% saying the killing was acceptable and 40% saying it was not. The other 20% were evidently high at the time, thought the pollster was their DoorDasher, and responded, “I asked for Extra Ranch sauce.”
Shalom Auslander
Sacraments
in the sacraments, we are not asking God to make something to be other than it is but to reveal it to be what it truly is.
This “truth of all things” is the revelation of the world as sacrament. The waters and all that is in the world is a means of communion with God because of His Divine condescension. The world was not created to be a place of an “alternative” existence, one without God. It exists as the means and focal point of our communion. The sacraments revealed to us within the life of the Church do not exist as isolated instances of a divine encounter but as examples and revelations of what God is in the world. “Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory.”
…secularism is the great heresy of our age: it is the denial of the sacramental character of the world. Just as man is created in the image and likeness of God, and thus capable of bearing God’s image, so too, creation has a sacramental and iconic capability. The world is not an impregnable wall that hides us from God. It is the very means by which, and the place in which, God makes Himself known. We were created for communion with God. This takes place here and now, within this world.
Fr Stephen Freeman
The porch
In the eyes of the world, there is no payoff for sitting on the porch.
In the eyes of the true God, the porch is imperative—not every now and then but on a regular basis.
Barbara Taylor Brown
Notions of God
It follows that any notion of God that is static is—since it asserts singular knowledge of God and seeks to limit his being to that knowledge—blasphemous. “God’s truth is life,” as Patrick Kavanagh says, “even the grotesque shapes of its foulest fire.”
Christian Wiman
Organization Values
…espoused values are “the articulated, publicly announced principles and values that the group claims to be trying to achieve…”Mission, vision, and core values statements are examples of espoused values. What is crucial is whether these professed values align with the lived experience of people within the organization.
Edgar Schein
Life in the Church desert
The ironic detachment wears thin. Hold out for something better long enough and eventually that’s just what you are: a holdout. The view from above the fray turns out to be a view from nowhere. My bull sessions began to feel scripted, and the existentially loaded conversations always landed me back at the same spot and with the same question: What to do now? And the same answer was always: I don’t know.
“Bumper stickers used to actually say something about the person,” said Elizabeth Goodspeed, a graphic designer based in Rhode Island. Now, she said, “they don’t tell me anything about the person beyond that they are on the internet.”
I thought it would be fun to create my own bumper sticker for 2025. You are welcome to share your creation…
WORD for 2025 —
logorrhea
noun log·or·rhea
: excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness
New Year’s Resolution for 2025 —
Be less logorrheic..
2025 Refrigerator Magnet
“Spirituality is an emotion. Religion is an obligation. Spirituality soothes. Religion mobilizes. Spirituality is satisfied with itself. Religion is dissatisfied with the world.” Rabbi David Wolpe
Daily prayer for 2025
…when my prayer is finished, do not let me think that my worship is ended and spend the rest of the day forgetting You. Rather, from those quiet moments, let light and joy and power pour out and remain with me through every hour of every day,
adapted from “A Diary of Private Prayer – John Baille”
First Prayer of 2025 —
Kind and loving Father, Protect and bless Archie Scott Gabehart with life abundant. Be with Gabby and Kyle as they walk through this shadowy valley. In Jesus name…
