“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
…turbulence has long resisted detailed physical analysis, and the interactions within turbulence create a very complex phenomenon. Richard Feynman described turbulence as the most important unsolved problem in classical physics
Werner Heisenberg won the 1932 Nobel Prize for helping to found the field of quantum mechanics…the story goes that he once said that, if he were allowed to ask God two questions, they would be, “Why quantum mechanics? And why turbulence?” Supposedly, he was pretty sure God would be able to answer the first question.
Turbulence has been on my mind for several weeks. I was stimulated by a conversation with a good friend and scientist who challenged my thinking. Our conversation began with a question about climate change. His protracted response settled on the subject of turbulence, an important factor in establishing absolutes about climate change. He reiterated Freyman’s assertion “turbulence [is] the most important unsolved problem in classical physics“. A conclusion I was left with is… in the absence of a solution to turbulence, understanding and accurately predicting climate change will remain unresolved.
Google searches and definitions, not surprisingly, are dominated by references to aircraft turbulence. For this discussion, upheaval, i.e. disruption, is the way I am thinking about turbulence. Before recent conversations, I perceived turbulence as abnormal, a disruption of the normal state of things. To the contrary, scientist will tell you turbulence is a natural condition, thus the challenge is not preventing or eliminating turbulence but understanding and predicting its behavior.
Those who believe in science and those of us who believe in God share a common dilemma, turbulence. Scientist and, ironically, some God believers, rely on scientific methods for solutions; believing gathering enough information and crunching the data, mystery can be solved. In contrast God believers intuitively understand the inexplicableness of their existence and confess like Job: “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” Job 42:3 NIV
In this series of posts I am attempting to relate the physics problem of turbulence to the problem of turbulence of our lived experience. I believe they may be analogous in some important ways, hopefully understanding the dynamics of turbulence can help us navigate life. Scott M. Peck said: “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. Turbulence isn’t just a science problem, it is common to humanity—perhaps the most important unsolved problem of life.
Both scientist and theist grapple with the mystery of turbulence, but they view it through different lens. Their views can be compared the difference between an ophthalmologist and a lover looking into an eye, they see very different realities. The ophthalmologist sees a physical object, the lover sees a window into the soul of their beloved.
Part 2 will examine the the physics of turbulence. (Turbulence for Dummies)
Loneliness …mass loneliness is a perversity. If a bunch of people are lonely, why don’t they just hang out together? Maybe it’s because people approach potential social encounters with unrealistically anxious and negative expectations. Maybe if we understood this, we could alter our behavior. My general view is that the fate of America will be importantly determined by how we treat each other in the smallest acts of daily life. That means being a genius at the close at hand: greeting a stranger, detecting the anxiety in somebody’s voice and asking what’s wrong, knowing how to talk across difference. More lives are diminished by the slow and frigid death of social closedness than by the short and glowing risk of social openness. David Brooks https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/opinion/social-life-talk-strangers.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220826&instance_id=70280&nl=the-morning®i_id=98699252&segment_id=102419&te=1&user_id=979ff7ea8eb24fcd7abe710b579081f5
Celeberity …we need to shift from a culture formed by “success” to a culture formed by “character.” The word success has too often transformed churches and organizations and institutions and seminaries from formation locations into launching pads for entrepreneurial types who want to use the church’s platform to build their brand. Maybe everyone of these types needs to spend two months a year in a church in rural America and do what the majority of pastors are actually doing. Scot McKnight
Gospel The gospel proclaims the presence and power of God in our lives through the indwelling gift of the Holy Spirit. The actual spiritual union we experience with God in the Holy Spirit goes well beyond a declaration that God loves you. Again, love is an affection, a feeling. And while feelings are important, something more is available to us in the Holy Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit God is with us and empowers us. Presence and power. These gifts are available to all who believe the Good News. To be sure, Christians display a lot of diversity about what sort of “power” we have access to through the Spirit. But for this post, we can keep it simple and stick to what all Christians believe, that the Holy Spirit gives us a strength to carry the burdens of our lives that we would not otherwise possess on our own. The gospel is more than a message of God’s affection. The gospel is the offer to share in God’s very own life. Richard Beck http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-gospel-minus-x-equals-part-7.html
Contempt (https://amzn.https://amzn.to/3PN7ioB ) We are dwelling in an age of contempt. Contempt for others forms a death-dealing cancer in our culture, in our churches, and in our society – but also in ourselves, the ones contempting others (if that’s a verb). We dwell today in a world of hot hate and cool hate, and surely more in the cool hate than in the hot hate. Hot hate turns into road rage and sudden outbursts; cool hate seethes and foams and goes indirect and passive. It turns into snark and sarcasm and verbal putdowns. Kim cites John Gottman’s four horsemen of negative interaction – criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. He thinks contempt is the deepest problem. It creates a world of the superior and the inferior, a world of us vs. them. Contempt kills. Others and ourselves. What Kim knows is that this contempt has invaded the church in “motive attribution asymmetry” (we know we love others but others hate us). So we misunderstand and misattribute. Motive attribution asymmetry is made worse by “online disinhibition effect,” words Orwell would despise, but we can get by the stodgy words to the truth: when we get online it’s much easier to express hatred and contempt and to attribute motive to those we don’t even know. God has always had a very hard time giving away God: No one wants seems to want this gift. We’d rather have religion, and laws, and commandments, and obligations, and duties. I’m sure many of us attend church out of duty, but gathering with the Body of Christ is supposed to be a wedding feast. Do you know how many times in the four Gospels eternal life is described as a banquet, a feast, a party, a wedding, the marriage feast of the Lamb? There are fifteen different, direct allusions to eternal life being a great, big party. Richard Rohr
“It is not your business to succeed (no one can be sure of that) but to do right: when you have done so the rest lies with God,” C S Lewis
View From the front porch A bit of poetry:
From where does my praise come?
…from the bounty of my circumstances?
…from the strength of my health?
…from freedom and liberty?
…from my goodness and rightness?
Hallelujah!
So dear God, keep from me
…poverty
…sickness
…imprisonment
…failure and sinfulness
If not, where then would my praise come from?
ANNIVERSARY BOWL One year since my extended hospital stay.
Recently I perused some older posts and found several that seemed as relevant now as when I originally wrote them. This one from 2008 is a good example.
I am always trying to find ways to explain how I think and see the world differently than I did years ago.
As I sat waiting for an orientation class to begin, the television was tuned to an educational channel and the program was a GED preparation math class. The teacher was trying to explain math concepts. He explained that a number, for example the number 5, is more than just a 5. You could say that 5 is 5 and that what it is. But in reality 5 is infinitely more than just 5. Five is not only 5 it is 2.5×2 = 15/5 = 37-32 = 6-1 = 7.4389 – 2.4389 = ad infinitum . Yes, they are all 5 but 5 is more than just 5. I can’t explain all the math concepts in the illustration but for me it was a great way to illustrate how my thinking and ultimately my view of the world have changed. My former way of thinking was when I saw 5, it was 5 and that was what it was. Somewhere along the line I realized that not only is 5 … 5, it is 2.5×2 and 15/5 and much more. Things I viewed so narrowly, I now realize the endless possibilities that exist in in how they are seen and understood. Creation reflects the infinite nature of the Creator.
Buechner never stopped searching his own life for clues to the presence of God. This quest became one of his overarching themes: “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments and life itself is grace.”
“Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next.” Fredrick Buechner “Beyond Words.”
“We are our secrets,” Buechner once wrote. “They are the essence of what makes us ourselves. They are the rich loam out of which, for better or worse, grow the selves by which the world knows us. If we are ever to be free and whole, we must be free from their darkness and have their spell over us broken.”
‘If there was no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.’
“If more pastor-theologians were as brutally honest about their broken lives, as Fred Buechner was,” he wrote, “…I dare say the church would be a healthier place.”
He once said that faith for him was not like undergoing some version of “Christian plastic surgery” where all doubts are removed, but more like waking up every morning asking himself, “Can I believe it all again today?”
The digital revolution has generated massive increases in information, more modest increases in knowledge, and a huge deficit in wisdom. Jonah Goldberg
Laughter The trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis recalls a revealing backstage moment. “It was me, Willie, B.B. King, Ray Charles and Eric Clapton,” he says, all shooting the breeze — “and Willie said: ‘Well, gentlemen, I think I’m the only one here who actually picked cotton.’” Everyone burst into laughter.
Morality In the face of the moral complexity and difficulty of the true Christian moral call, we’ve created a hierarchy of values. It’s not that we absolutely reject kindness or humility or decency. It’s not that we’re going to condemn the fruit of the spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—it’s just that they’re “secondary values.” When push comes to shove, it’s our vision of justice that matters. Christian young people are often taught that they should be countercultural. The youth group version of that admonition goes something like this: When the world is profane, your speech is clean. When the world is drunk, you are sober. When the world is promiscuous, you are chaste. How do you know we’re Christian? We don’t cuss, drink, or have premarital sex. But the call to counterculture is much more comprehensive. When the world is greedy, you are generous. When the world is cruel, you are kind. When the world is fearful, you are faithful. When the world is proud, you are humble. How do you know we’re Christian, by our love. David French https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/christian-political-ethics-are-upside?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Faith Faith, as we see in the Hebrew Scriptures and Jesus’ usage of them, is much closer to our words “trust” or “confidence” than it is about believing doctrines to be true. Simply believing doctrines demands almost no ego-surrender or real change of the small self. Holding confidence that God is good, God can be trusted, and God is actively involved in my life is a much more powerful and effective practice. This is the practical power of biblical faith. Faith-filled people are, quite simply, usable for larger purposes because they live in and listen to a much Larger Self. Richard Rohr
Transparency Elijah is transparent and honest with God. His words are a livid accusation and agonizing lament. What I want us to appreciate is the quality of gut-level honesty. God can handle our honesty. In fact, I think it is one of the most fundamental things God wants and expects from us. He knows already. To the extent we are not fully disclosing ourselves to God we are withholding, and to that extent we are protecting God from our pain; which is another way of saying we are hiding from God. And when we protect God from our pain we will develop one of two broken responses: We will internalize it or exercise it on others. We can’t handle that. Neither can they. God can and will. J D Walt
Contemplation Father William McNamara’s definition of contemplation—“a long loving look at the real”—became transformative. The world, my own issues and hurts, all goals and desires gradually dissolved into proper perspective. God became obvious and everywhere. Contemplation is a way to hear with the Spirit and not just with the head. Contemplation is the search for a wide-open space, a space broad enough for the head, the heart, the feelings, the gut, the subconscious, our memories, our intuitions, our whole body. We need a holistic place for discerning wisdom. The effect of contemplation is authentic action; if contemplation doesn’t lead to genuine action, then it remains only navel-gazing and self-preoccupation. Richard Rohr
Joy One more observation about joy … To translate the beatitudes with the word “happy,” …short-changes the sense of the term makarios. Notice who is blessed and notice if we connect them to our senses of happiness: the poor, the persecuted, the mourners, the meek… etc.. No these are social groups without status and they are the ones upon whom Jesus says “God’s favor” rests, which is the theological theme at work in the term “blessed.” When we know God’s favor rests on us we can live in joy in spite of our circumstances (which does not mean we can’t work to change our circumstances). Joy is a term that pokes out of the ground when tension, persecution, and suffering are the topic of discussion. Scot McKnight on https://amzn.to/3PN7ioB
One of the reasons people feel distant from God is because their doctrine tells them that the faith is mainly about personal salvation….once you’ve attained that, there is nothing left to do. The truth is that “getting saved” is just one step in a long process of transformation and fellowship with God is found in working out that salvation ….you need His help to love your enemy and be happy about it… Phoenix Preacher
“The reward of the search is to go on searching. The soul’s desire is fulfilled by the very fact of its remaining unsatisfied; for really to see God is never to have had one’s fill of desiring Him” – Gregory of Nyassa
On Tuesday, Sugar, the Crockett’s 17 year old pet (our grand dog)was euthanized. Surrounded by family, she was mercifully relieved of her painful daily reality. As that reality vanished, another appeared, love for Sugar and memories that will assuage pain and grief in the days and years ahead.
My understanding of God has changed over the course of my life, one result of that change is how I view animals, pets, dogs and cats in particular. Thankful for a Creator who knows when a sparrow falls.
O Love, that will not let me go… Living Wittily / by Jim Gordon / August 13, 2022 at 04:03AM Yesterday in the supermarket, a dad with two children and a trolley.One child started to scream and shout in distress. It sounded like a tantrum – but only if we lack imagination, compassion and some understanding. The second child didn’t seem too bothered. Dad spoke firmly and took and held the hand of the distressed child, who refused to be calmed or comforted, and continued to be very upset. Dad held on to his hand. Then Dad stood in the queue with his trolley, speaking calmly to the child, ignoring the responses of some others around him, and eventually the lad settled and walked with his family out the doors.Sensory overload, heat exhaustion, familiar and safe routines interrupted, just too much to process by one highly sensitive mind – any combination of these or other causes. And a dad whose behaviour over the ten minutes or so of his son’s distress, was gentle, calm, firm and there, just there, the reassuring, patient presence that wouldn’t turn away, or let go.What that costs, day and daily, in the loving and caring for a child who feels and sees the world differently? Who knows. But in those ten minutes we watched a lived out parable of the love of God in the love of a father holding firmly the hand of his child.
A Prayer for the Irritated I bring to you Lord, my momentary irritation, that you might reveal the buried seed of it—not in the words or actions of another person, but in the withered and hypocritical expectations of my own small heart. Uproot from this impoverished soil all arrogance and insecurity that would prompt me to dismiss or distain others, judging them with a less generous measure that I reckon when judging myself. Prune away the tangled growth of my own unjustified irritations, Jesus, and graft to my heart instead your humility, your compassion, your patience, your kindness, That I might bear good fruit in keeping with your grace. Amen. Thérèse of Lisieux
Power of Dissent In a famous 1951 experiment, the psychologist Solomon Asch showed how easily humans can be manipulated by social pressure to conform. If everyone else in the room affirms even the most blatant falsehood, we will very often affirm it ourselves, even denying the clear evidence of our own eyes. But a variation of the Asch experiment gives hope. If only one other person in the room—a single reality ally—tells the truth, the pressure to conform drops sharply and we become much more willing to buck the lie. That is why authoritarian regimes work so furiously to stifle opposition voices, even seemingly weak ones. It is what the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was getting at when he said, “The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that [lie] come into the world, let it even reign supreme—only not through me.” https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-reality-ally-347 utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Suffering Suffering, of course, can lead us in either of two directions: (1) it can make us very bitter and cause us to shut down, or (2) it can make us wise, compassionate, and utterly open, because our hearts have been softened, or perhaps because we feel as though we have nothing more to lose. Suffering often takes us to the very edge of our inner resources where we “fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31), even when we aren’t sure we believe in God! We must all pray for the grace of this second path of softening and opening. My opinion is that this is the very meaning of the phrase “deliver us from evil” in the Our Father (Lord’s Prayer). In this statement, we aren’t asking to avoid suffering. It is as if we are praying, “When big trials come, God, hold on to me, and don’t let me turn bitter or blaming”—which is an evil that leads to so many other evils. Richard Rohr
Adolescence “I have no qualifications for speaking about adolescence with anything like authority except in one respect. I am sixty four years old. I have fathered children. I have written books. I have letters after my name and an ecclesiastical title before it. But to call me an adult or grown up is an oversimplification at best and a downright misnomer at worst. I am not a past participle but a present participle, even a dangling participle. I am not a having-grown up one but a growing-up on, a groping up one, not even sure much of the time just where my growing and groping are taking me or where they are supposed to be taking me. I am a verbal adjective in search of a noun to latch onto, a grower ins earch of a self to grow into…I speak about adolescence with authority because in many ways I am still in the throes of it. This is my only qualification for addressing myself to the subject here. I am a hybrid, an adult adolescent to whom neither term alone does full justice…” (The Clown in the Belfry, 84-5) Fredrick Beuchner
A political columnist one wrote this: Whenever A and B are in opposition to one another, anyone who attacks or criticizes A is accused of aiding and abetting B. And it is often true, objectively and on a short-term analysis, that he is making things easier for B. Therefore, say the supporters of A, shut up and don’t criticize: or at least criticize “constructively,” which in practice always means favourably. And from this it is only a short step to arguing that the suppression and distortion of known facts is the highest duty of a journalist. Scot McKnight
“we are not saved by information.” Matters of prayer, of pride, of shame, of love, of forgiveness, of generosity, and suffering, are much closer to that place where we live. The rest of the world (and theology) are true, but, like Quantum Mechanics, it’s not always what we need. It is said that Orthodox Christianity is a “way of life.” This is true, and means that it cannot really be read. It can be sung. It can be prayed. Mostly, it can be stumbled around in so that we learn what it means for it to be the way. Fr Stephen Freeman
View from the front porch My enchanted life...
Consider the following:
When I get up each morning a steaming cup of coffee appears at my side.
Mysteriously, our bed is made up every morning, with the sheets perfectly tucked and pillows flawlessly arranged.
I never run out of toothpaste.
I never run out of toilet paper.
Dirty clothes magically disappear, only to reappear neatly folded (underware) or hung in their proper place.
Dust and debris disappear without explanation.
Each day I find the window blinds raised.
The refrigerator and cupboard never seem to be wanting.
The cats are fed without fail.
My prescriptions get refilled without prompting.
Our vehicles are never left unlocked.
Misplaced articles magically appear in their proper place.
Unnecessary lights inexplicably turn off.
Family/friends birthday cards appear for my signature.
Somehow, meals appear most days at 5:00pm.
I never run out of cheerios.
Fingerprints on the storm door always temporary.
Our bed always has the proper amount of cover.
My distilled water never runs out.
Best of all, bruises, cuts, wounded feelings and unspoken needs are always treated with just the right medicine.
Indeed my life is enchanted. And to that I say: THANK YOU- Ann Watson Ezell
