Lovell Richardson
Lovell Richardson, age 86, of Louisville, formerly of Hardyville, passed away
Thursday, August 4, 2022. He was a native of Hart County. He was a
member of the Okolona Church Of Christ. He retired after 42 years from
Ford Motor Company in Louisville, Ky. He so loved his wife and his girls; was
proud of his grandchildren and enjoyed his great-grands! He loved a tractor
pull and talking old tractors, cars, and UK basketball.
He is preceded in death by his wife of 62 years, Frances Walton Craddock
Richardson; his parents, Henry and Mary Richardson; one sister, Joyce
Pennington; two brothers-in-law, Jimmie Pennington and John Taylor.
He is survived by three children, Mary Suzanne Lehring (Doug) of Bowling
Green, Anita Carole Fuqua (Ron) of Louisville, and Leigh Ellen Vize (Patrick)
of Louisville; eight grandchildren, Erika Donahue (Chris), Jenna Malcolm
(Zac), Kent Lehring (Faith), Jacob Fuqua (Katie), Micah Rogers (Jonathan)
Hayley Palmer (CT), Trey Vize, Jackson Vize; five great-grandchildren,
Kyleigh and Kollyns Donahue, Barren and Harlow Malcolm, and Landen
Palmer; along with two more great-grandchildren due later this year, Avery
Lehring (due in October) and Henry Rogers (due in December); two
brothers-in-law, Bill Craddock (Mary Ellen) and Barry Craddock (Cathy);
and sister-in-law, Carole Faye Taylor.

We attended the funeral of our dearly loved good friend lovell on Tuesday. It was a beautiful tribute to a good man. He and his wife Frances along with Bob and Carla Dadisman were our traveling buddies and fellow Christians for many years.
We visited to say good bye at his home on the previous Friday. He was blessed in his final days to be at home and surrounded by family.

Innocence
We come to God not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong. And yet the great forgiveness is to forgive ourselves for doing it wrong. That’s probably the hardest forgiveness of all: that I’m not perfect, that I’m not unwounded, I’m not innocent. “One always learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.” If I want to maintain an image of myself as innocent, superior, righteous, or saved, I can only do that at the cost of truth. I have to reject the mysterious side, the shadow side, the broken side, the unconscious side of almost everything.  
Richard Rohr

God knows me
This is a God who knows my humanity inside and out. God has counted every hair on my head (Matthew 10:30) and bottled up every tear I have shed (Psalm 56:8). Not simply because the Word formed us (Genesis 1:27), knit us together in our mothers’ wombs (Psalm 139:13), was there from the very beginning . . . but because God wore our skin.
Kare Bowler

State of religion in America
Reports of religion’s decline in America have been exaggerated. You’ve heard the story: Churchgoers are dwindling in number while “Nones”—those who tell pollsters they have no religious affiliation—are multiplying as people abandon their faith and join the ranks of atheists and agnostics. Headlines declare that the U.S. is secularizing along the lines of Europe. From Britain’s Daily Mail in 2013: “Religion could disappear by 2041 because people will have replaced God with possessions, claims leading psychologist.”
These conclusions are based on analyses that are so flawed as to be close to worthless. In a new study with our colleagues Matt Bradshawand Rodney Stark, we seek to set the record straight.
Data from five recent U.S. population surveys point to the vibrancy, ubiquity and growth of religion in the U.S. Americans are becoming more religious, and religious institutions are thriving. Consistent with some previous studies but contrary to widely held assumptions, many people who report no religious affiliation—and even many self-identified atheists and agnostics—exhibit substantial levels of religious practice and belief.
The religious landscape in the U.S. is changing but not in the ways that draw headlines. Hundreds of new denominations have quietly appeared, as have thousands of church plants (new congregations) and numerous non-Christian religious imports. These more than make up for losses from mainline Protestant denominations, which are indeed in free fall and have been for decades. But the decline of established institutions is easier to track than the formation and growth of new ones.
Religion is constantly evolving, but it isn’t in decline in the U.S. More Americans attend and support more religious congregations than ever before. Social scientists can’t count them unless they know where to look.
WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/religion-is-dying-dont-believe-it-nones-others-surveys-faith-institutions-atheists-agnostics-practice-minority-11659017037

More than half of Americans between ages 16 and 74 read below the sixth-grade level. Video, however, requires only eyes on screens. But … passive media cannot communicate a civilization defined by ideas. Our creedal nation, Stirewalt says, “requires written words and a common culture in which to understand them.”

Take up your cross
Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.“Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”
I asked the class this question: “What would have this sounded like–this call to ‘take up you cross and follow me’–to the people standing there that day listening to Jesus?”
We’ve so moralized this text that I don’t think we appreciate what Jesus was asking. Crosses littered the landscape. People carrying crosses on the way to crucifixion were driven through city streets. The roads leading into cities were lined with bodies hanging on crosses.
The cross was a tool of Imperial terror and control. Its shadow of fear fell over every aspect of colonial life in the outposts of the Roman Empire. Crucifixion was was a bully demanding obedience and compliance.
And in the face of that threat and terror Jesus says, “take up your cross and follow me.” It was a call to radical fearlessness for a people living under the shadow of Imperial torture.
And yet, the day Jesus said these words no one knew about Easter Sunday. Without the resurrection the fearless call to “take up your cross and follow me” would have sounded suicidal. But with Jesus raised from the the dead the Imperial threat had lost its grip upon the political imagination of Jesus’ followers. They had been emancipated from fear. Just as Jesus had been in the face of Pilate’s threats. And the outcome of this liberation was twofold. First, no threat of violence could sway or deter the followers of Jesus. They had became fearless. They now existed outside the bounds of Imperial control. Without fear they had become unmanageable. Second, they had joy. In the face of beatings, torture and imprisonment the followers of Jesus would sing.
Richard Beck

celebrity
…is “social power without proximity.” … there’s a thinness of not being really known, constantly chased by adoring persons who think they know the person and want to know more, in celebrity.
Evangelicals have aped culture in its celebrity culture, celebrities who are produced by “visual appeal, slick marketing, and personal branding.” Celebrity then is a product formed intentionally on the basis of the tools that make someone into a celebrity. Branding is at work in celebrity-dom, branding that apes what happens with the genuinely famous.
Evangelicals have aped culture in its celebrity culture, celebrities who are produced by “visual appeal, slick marketing, and personal branding.” Celebrity then is a product formed intentionally on the basis of the tools that make someone into a celebrity. Branding is at work in celebrity-dom, branding that apes what happens with the genuinely famous.
Am I being seen?, is one of the celebrity’s preoccupations. Instead of simply doing the work and not being seen, the celebrity wants to be seen (as) doing the work.
Scoot McKnight/ Katelyn Beaty

View from the front porch
post from the past

One of the most enjoyable aspects of our current home is the front porch. It is where I spend as much time as reasonable, weather permitting. It is my thin place.
Thin places are places of energy. A place where the veil between this world and the eternal world is thin. A thin place is where one can walk in two worlds – the worlds are fused together, knitted loosely where the differences can be discerned or tightly where the two worlds become one.
It is a venue that encourages reading, reflection, relaxation and observation. Opportunities for interaction and engagement with neighbors and others abound.
Coincidental to our location, numerous people walk down our street just a few feet from the porch. Over the years, it has become my habit to greet everyone or at least attempt to do so. Those encounters have produced varying degrees of relationship, ranging from casual greetings to extended conversations and some friendships. The demographic of those who pass by … age, gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic and religion is amazingly varied. 
Additionally, our porch provides a wide view of our neighborhood. The coming and going, the routines and rhythms, traumas and joys are readily visible and, I might add, audible. As a result, I have a familiarity with my neighborhood that would not otherwise be possible. 
Beyond pedestrian traffic and neighborhood activity, there is also vehicular traffic. In recent years street patterns changed resulting in a significant increase in traffic. The demographic of vehicles is as broad as the people who walk by. Cars, trucks, vans, bicycles, strollers, skateboards, segways and handicap scooters. As with the neighborhood, observation of the vehicle traffic provides insight into the realities of people’s lives. (I would say that my ability/desire to develop relationships with people who drive by has been impeded by their propensity to ignore speed limits.) ?  The varied conditions of vehicles and their owners dramatically illustrates the existence of the increasing income gap in today’s society. From the vantage point of my porch I am able to see a microcosm of society in our community.  
Over the years, I have come to realize how important the front porch is to my spiritual health. I suspect, in the absence of the thin place of my front porch, my spiritual transformation would be significantly different, and not for the better. 
A front porch is not the answer, but it is a perpetual reminder of the reality of the world in which I live and the pressing need for hope and redemption.
Front porches provide questions. Questions so profound and perplexing, that I am humbled and forced to abandon self-sufficiency for submission. 

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

LOVE
Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up. If we love each other enough, we will bear with each other’s faults and burdens. If we love enough, we are going to light that fire in the hearts of others. And it is love that will burn out the sins and hatreds that sadden us. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other. No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much.
Dorothy Day

Cost Benefit Analysis
…life is about more than just the sum of the day-to-day pleasures and pains that follow from our choices. Adding up costs and benefits — what I call narrow utilitarianism — may seem like the height of rationality. But it can easily undervalue the most important but less obvious aspects of a life well lived. 
Human beings want purpose. We want meaning. We want to belong to something larger than ourselves. The decisions we make in the face of wild problems don’t just lead to good days and bad days. They define us. They determine who we are, who we might aspire to become, who we might come to be.
… decisions look irrational only until we remember that the future is veiled from us and that life is about more than simple pluses and minuses. …daily happiness is less important than how we thought we should live his life and who and what we wanted to become.
Russ Roberts
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/how-to-make-decisions.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20220723&instance_id=67246&nl=opinion-today&regi_id=98699252&segment_id=99384&te=1&user_id=979ff7ea8eb24fcd7abe710b579081f5

What kind of friend do you want?
“Jesus said, “Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. . . . As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.” —John 15:4–5, 9 

I want you to be honest: Would you rather have a friend who is always right or one who is in right relationship with you? I think I know the answer: We’d rather have someone who’s in right relationship with us. In fact, someone who’s right all the time can be pretty obnoxious. Would we rather have a friend who’s always correct or a friend to whom we’re always connected? Of course, we’d rather have the second.  
So why did we in the West seemingly change the rules for God? Many of us grew up thinking God wanted us to be right, to be correct, even to be perfect. What this passage in John’s Gospel is saying is that God wants people who are in right relationship, which means that we are open, and that we can listen to others with understanding and compassion. It means that we can admit when we’re wrong, which is almost every day for most of us. It certainly is for me.   
Richard Rohr

“the mind of Christ.”
The mind of Christ draws us to the power of God that shows up in weakness, great fear, and trembling. The mind of Christ doesn’t draw us to the top, but to the bottom. We know nothing except Christ and him crucified. That knowledge marks you as “spiritual.” 
By contrast, ambition and pride mark you as unspiritual, immature, lost and blind. And whenever you see Christians flying flags of support for various leaders–“I follow [insert name of leader].”–we are seeing “mere humans,” immature and worldly Christians, not the spiritually enlightened.
Richard Beck

It’s about sex
In the Old Testament, it is said that a man “knew his wife,” when making reference to their conjugal union. Modern thought tends to smile knowingly and think that what is being said is but a quaint metaphor for sex. But “sex” is itself the crude metaphor of an individualistic culture that has reduced “union” to a set of feelings. The Biblical phrase expresses the understanding that what is taking place between husband and wife transcends its physical expression. It is a true union in which the two “become one flesh.” Again, such a statement is treated as “mere metaphor” in our modern culture, when it is quite the opposite. It is an effort, in words, to give voice to an experience of knowing that is virtually inexpressible. The modern assumption is that the phrase, “knew his wife,” is an effort to avoid what is actually happening, when it is, in fact, an effort to actually express what is happening beyond direct observation.
Fr Stephen Freeman

In our cultural context, to use the word “love,” is to invite the entire world of sentimentality into a conversation where it does not belong. The contemporary world knows very little of love in its proper sense. For “love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (1John 4:7). 
Fr Stephen Freeman

Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you[?]
Paul does not say, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Look at your activity log over the last week and see if you did anything that would point to faith. Did you read your Bible or pray or love your neighbor or go to church or give money to a person in need?” This is the deep rut in which most Christians are stuck—the tired movement between aspiration and activation; between inspiration and application. It’s why the most common thing we hear people say when it comes to faith is something along the lines of, “I need to do better,” or “I need to try harder.” And there is no end to this cycle. In time, it leads to two equally soul-stunting outcomes: Easy believe-ism on the one hand and harsh legalism on the other; abdication or addiction. 
No, Paul is not looking for the presence or absence of activity as the mark of passing or failing the test. He is looking for a realized actuality:
Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you[?]
J D Walt

Deep listening …
is an act of surrender. We risk being changed by what we hear. When I really want to hear another person’s story, I try to leave my preconceptions at the door and draw close to their telling. I am always partially listening to the thoughts in my own head when others are speaking, so I consciously quiet my thoughts and begin to listen with my senses. . . . The most critical part of listening is asking what is at stake for the other person. I try to understand what matters to them, not what I think matters. Sometimes I start to lose myself in their story. As soon as I notice feeling unmoored, I try to pull myself back into my body, like returning home. As Hannah Arendt [1906–1975] says, “One trains one’s imagination to go visiting.” [1] When the story is done, we must return to our skin, our own worldview, and notice how we have been changed by our visit.  
Valarie Kaur 

View from the front porch
A post from the past:

I Can Identify with President Obama
JULY 30, 2009 
If not comforting, it is interesting that I have come to identify with President Obama in his efforts to single-handedly solve most of our country’s problems. Let me explain.
In the mid-seventies I returned from an educational leave to a new job in labor relations at Ford. As a labor relations representative my first significant assignment was to conduct absentee hearings. The assignment meant that each day I would go to an interview room in the plant and conduct  hearings for employees that had been absent or tardy the previous few days. Typically, dozens of employees would line up for their opportunity, accompanied by their union committeman, to face my stinging interrogation regarding their absence/tardiness. Without a reasonable explanation supported by appropriate documentation, I would administer discipline which could be as little as a verbal warning or as drastic as termination depending upon their attendance records. We employed a progressive discipline system which meant that each penalty was more severe that the last. Within certain limits, I had the latitude to exercise discretion in what the penalty would be. For example, I could give a person a three-day suspension without pay and then their next discipline would be a week suspension, and so on. I might, because of mitigating circumstances, administer the penalty but waive the time off. Theoretically, the employee having been given a gracious gift and facing a next penalty of one week (appropriately threatened with such at the time of the gift) would see the error of his ways and come to work from that point on.

You must be thinking, what does this have to do with President Obama?
When assigned to the absentee hearings, I inherited all the documented absentee records of every employee. Those who came the hearings were most often employees that had a history of habitual absence/tardiness. I looked at the terrible attendance records and talked with the employees and heard their pleadings and hard luck stories and tears et al. I began to believe, that despite the failed efforts of experienced labor relations representatives to correct their behavior, I possessed qualities and skills that would succeed where others had failed. As a result, I launched a personal campaign to single-handedly solve the plant’s desperate absentee problems. It was obvious to me that my predecessors had not explained clearly nor used the tools of persuasion as I was capable of doing to turn this around. To make a long story shorter, in a short time disciplinary actions decreased and absenteeism began to increase. This did not go unnoticed by my superiors. I was informed that if I didn’t get on track I would be fired. So rather than be fired, I fired. My delusions of grandeur were burst and I learned a valuable lesson. The lesson wasn’t that I didn’t have some special or unique skills and/or qualities that may have very well improved the process. I learned that I could not ignore the reality of history and experience and succeed by the force of my personality. What success I ultimately achieved in improving attendance came because I recognized the reality of the circumstances around me and then began to apply whatever special traits I possessed to those circumstances.
There is, I believe, a basic human trait that leads us to arrogantly believe that we individually possess knowledge and understanding that transcends all others and as well as lessons learned from the past.

It is comforting(?) to know President Obama is human.

STILL ON THE JORNEY

It’s not too late
We have news that eight-year-old you would have loved: Hasbro announced yesterday that, starting this fall, you’ll be able to put a 3D-printed version of your own head on any of the toy company’s signature action figures.
Only $59.99 (plus tax) to transform into the Red Ranger, G.I. Joe, or Princess Leia? Total steal.
The Dispatch

Modern Catechesis
 “People come to believe what they are most thoroughly and intensively catechized to believe, and that catechesis comes not from the churches but from the media they consume, or rather the media that consume them. The churches have barely better than a snowball’s chance in hell of shaping most people’s lives.” Alan Jacobs

Exposed
The Dobbs decision has revealed fault lines in American Christianity. These fault lines lay just below the surface for a long while, but are now clearly exposed. As long as abortion was legal by Supreme Court decree, it was possible to identify as pro-life but keep that commitment at the level of theory; one could hold pro-life views but not be perceived as a threat. All that has now changed. To identify as pro-life post-Dobbs is not simply to hold an opinion many regard as wrong; it is to be part of an act of political and social “oppression.” And predictably, many Christians are feeling the need to “nuance” their relationship to the overturning of Roe.
Carl Trueman

Funeral Sermons
Funeral sermons do need to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. They certainly can’t tell the whole truth. But they should do what I had intended—and failed—to do: acknowledge hurt, pain, and brokenness when appropriate, and with pastoral sensitivity.
God’s love can’t be reduced to free-floating aphorisms sewn into a blanket. It’s an active, redeeming love, its beauty most luminous in relationship to our flaws, shortcomings, and sins, which it forgives and heals. If that harder subject matter is off-limits in a funeral sermon, then so too is the deepest truth of the gospel.
Roger Owens

Fundamentalist
Here is one way I identify a fundamentalist church or individual. There are three types of Christian beliefs: essentials (dogmas), non-essentials (denominational doctrines), opinions (definitely non-essential even if interesting beliefs). Fundamentalists empty the “opinion” category and move everything they believe into the “essentials” category. (Some moderate fundamentalists will leave some non-essentials in the middle category.) Liberals, on the other hand, move everything into the “opinion” category, leaving the essentials category virtually empty. (I’m talking about doctrines here, not ethics.) Moderates are those who make serious, thoughtful effort to put the right beliefs in the right categories. We are very few.
Roger Olson

Following Jesus
I don’t mind people pointing to Jesus as an ideal moral exemplar. But problems come when we reduce Jesus to being a moral guru or an enlightened human being. We see Jesus standing at a summit of moral progress with a smooth road leading up to him. We climb, as heroes, toward that summit. We are on a journey of moral and spiritual self-actualization. But in the Christian story, this entire enterprise is radically called into question. We can’t climb. We can’t self-actualize. We’re stuck. And so Christ comes down to us and dies for the ungodly.
 Richard Beck

Prospective Converts
Tim Keller writes, “The United States is slowly running out of traditionally-minded Americans to be converted, and conservative Protestants on the whole are unwilling or unable to reach the highly secular and culturally different.”

Many of the things that you believe right now—in this very moment—are utterly wrong.
I can’t tell you precisely what those things are, of course, but I can say with near certainty that this statement is true. To understand this uncomfortable reality, all you need is some basic knowledge of history.
At various times throughout the history of humankind, our most brilliant scientists and philosophers believed many things most eight-year-olds now know to be false: the earth was flat, the sun revolved around the earth, smoking cigarettes was good for digestion, humans were not related to apes, the planet was 75,000 years old, or left-handed people were unclean.
Around 100 years ago, doctors still thought bloodletting (that is, using leeches or a lancet to address infections) was useful in curing a patient. Women were still fighting for the right to vote, deemed too emotional and uneducated to participate in democracy, while people with darker skin were widely considered subhuman. The idea that the universe was bigger than the Milky Way was unfathomable, and the fact the earth had tectonic plates that moved beneath our feet was yet to be discovered.
Issac Saul

Inflation Casualties
Nearly two-thirds of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. An estimated 41 percent — 135 million people — are considered either poor or low-income. Eighteen percent of households earn less than $25,000 a year. Even before the pandemic hit, one in four Black families had a net worth of zero.
Rachel Poser NYT

No short term solution
“The US hasn’t built a full-scale refinery since 1977. Designing and constructing the labyrinth of pipelines, tanks, and distillation columns would easily cost $10 billion and take as long as a decade,” they write. “During the pandemic, plants that distill crude into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel shut down around the world, and construction of new ones was postponed. The closures were especially acute in the US, where old facilities suffered irreparable damage from breakdowns and hurricanes while others were converted to produce renewable diesel. … ‘My personal view is there will never be another new refinery built’ in the US, [Chevron CEO Mike] Wirth said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in June. ‘You’re looking at committing capital 10 years out, that will need decades to offer a return for shareholders, in a policy environment where governments around the world are saying, ‘We don’t want these products.’”

View from the Front Porch

In a recent Sunday morning worship service. It occurred to me that in 1972 I would have been wearing a suit, maybe 3-piece, white dress shirt with a Countess Mara tie and polished dress shoes. My leather bound Bible, with index tabs to facilitate quick reference, at my side. Highlighters and a fountain pen to take notes. Today, my Sunday morning worship clothes are a casual collared shirt with slacks and casual shoes— no socks. Instead of a Bible i bring a journal to take notes. Of course my iPhone is handy with Bible apps and numerous translations.
I am pondering what is different about me today than 50 years ago. Hopefully more than appearances.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY