For the Joy of the Journey

So Much To Think About

George April 21, 2022 Notes Anthology 1 Comment

Becoming “a People”
Persons don’t become a “people,” through buying more books and learning more information and trying harder to be a better version of their old self. We become a people by sharing deeply in one another’s lives, learning to love one another and be loved by one another into our true selves and our real lives. This is the chosen people, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, and God’s special possession. Indeed, this Church Jesus is building is God’s special possession in all the world, for this is how God saves the world.
J D Walt

Confirmation Bias
The most reliable cure for confirmation bias is interaction with people who don’t share your beliefs. They confront you with counterevidence and counterargument. John Stuart Mill said, “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that,” and he urged us to seek out conflicting views “from persons who actually believe them.” People who think differently and are willing to speak up if they disagree with you make you smarter, almost as if they are extensions of your own brain. People who try to silence or intimidate their critics make themselves stupider, almost as if they are shooting darts into their own brain.
Jonathan Haidt

apokatastasis
A number of Church Fathers during the first four centuries of Christianity believed in what’s called apokatastasis, or “universal restoration” (Acts 3:21). [1] They believed that the real meaning of Christ’s resurrection was that God’s love was so perfect and so victorious that it would finally triumph in every single person’s life. They were so sure about this that their thought partially gave rise to the idea of purgatory as a place. In the dying process or even after death, God’s infinite love can and will still get at us! They felt no soul could resist the revelation of such infinite love.
Could God’s love really be that great and that universal? I believe it is. Love is the lesson, and God’s love is so great that God will finally teach it to all of us. We’ll finally surrender, and God will win in the end. That will be God’s “justice,” which will swallow up our lesser versions. God—Love—does not lose!
Richard Rohr

Student Loan Forgiveness
About 43 million people in the U.S. have a combined total of $1.6 trillion in federal student loans, according to government estimates.
An analysis published by the left-leaning Brookings Institution found nearly a third of all student debt is owed by the richest 20 percent of households, compared to just 8 percent held by the poorest 20 percent of households.
Large-scale student debt forgiveness would represent a massive cash infusion to America’s wealthiest households, and a comparative dribble for the rest.
The average federal student loan debt balance last year was about $37,000. The most burdened borrowers are already eligible to be helped by certain income-based repayment programs, which cap monthly student debt payments at 10 percent of their discretionary incomes and eventually forgives the remaining balance, typically after 20 years. Since the debts can eventually be forgiven for these high-need borrowers, the benefits of even partial debt forgiveness would still go disproportionately to high-income borrowers.
According to a DataStream analysis of Labor Department data, the cost of a college education has increased 1,200 percent since 1980, compared to overall inflation of 236 percent.
The Dispatch

Religious Experience
Among the more pernicious ideas that inhabit our contemporary world is the notion that we are all isolated, independent, and alone. Even when we gather, we think of ourselves as but one among many. Among the most glaring exceptions to this form of thought, however, are sporting events. People attend a football game and declare when it is finished, “We won!” or “We lost!” We feel genuine joy at the first and sadness at the second. We do not say, “They won” (unless we mean the opposing side). This is not actually strange. Sport has, from its earliest beginnings, been a religious experience. That said, it is an experience that we fail to consider or understand. It is also a shallow, meaningless, religion.
The mystery of sport is that we have some sense not only watching, but participating in what takes place. The team’s victory is my victory. The emptiness of this mystery is that what is being “participated” in has no substance or true being. We feel robbed when a referee blows a call and the game ends with the wrong winner. At such a moment the emptiness of the game is revealed. It had no more meaning than a mistake.

This meditation on sport is a very vacuous way to get at the notion of true participation (of which it is but the least shadow).
Fr Stephen Freeman

Gospel
While the gospel is a message, it cannot be confined to messages. While the gospel is the truth, it cannot be captured by a series of propositional truths. Before the gospel is anything else, the gospel is God. Gospel means “good news,” and the good news is God. The good news is not that God loves us. The good news is that God is love. The good news is not that Jesus saves. It is that Jesus is himself salvation.

We think we truly comprehend God and the gospel because we have some comprehension of what God has done for us. This is good, as far as it goes, but it does not go anywhere near far enough. When our understanding of the gospel is limited to what God has done for us, our understanding of sharing the gospel will be limited to telling others what God has done for them.

To be sure, the gospel is the message of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, but in a far greater sense, the gospel is who Jesus Christ is to us and in us and through us for the world. The gospel is not a body of knowledge about who God is and what God has done. The gospel is actually knowing God. Jesus prayed, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

We have lived through a period of world history wherein the measure of mastery consisted in knowing about a subject. The Christian faith is not meant for this paradigm. Real Christianity can never be reduced to knowing about God. We must go on to knowing God. To think one can master the subject of God is the ultimate idolatry. Real Christianity is about understanding oneself as subject to God and becoming mastered by Jesus Christ.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not God’s solution to our sin problem. The gospel is that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting [our] sins against [us]” (2 Cor. 5:19). It is a reconciled relationship through which God lives in us and we in him. The gospel is not the knowledge but the knowing. The domain of knowledge is in a body of information. The domain of knowing is in the body of Jesus Christ. And none of this is meant to eschew or despise knowledge, but rather to say that knowledge is a penultimate understanding. Ultimate understanding means knowledge about God must give way to knowing God.
J D Walt

Artificial Intelligence
Acusensus’ technology can also be used to identify “hot spots,” helping determine where officials may need to improve enforcement, make changes to infrastructure or adopt new legislation. In recent months, the company conducted demonstrations and evaluations for a number of local law enforcement agencies and state transportation departments.
During an 18-hour assessment in August of a high-risk corridor in Missouri that was averaging three and a half crashes a day, more than 11,000 vehicles drove by. At least 60 percent of the drivers were speeding; an average of 6.5 percent were using mobile phones, more than twice the national average; and just under 5.5 percent were engaged in two concurrent risky driving behaviors.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/technology/ai-road-car-safety.html?referringSource=articleShare

Cremation
So many ashes to ashes, so much dust to dust. Cremation is now America’s leading form of final “disposition,” as the funeral industry calls it — a preference that shows no sign of abating.
In 2020, 56 percent of Americans who died were cremated, more than double the figure of 27 percent two decades earlier, according to the Cremation Association of North America (CANA). By 2040, 4 out of 5 Americans are projected to chose cremation over casket burial, according to both CANA and the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA).

Tolerance
“I don’t like the word tolerate. Who am I to tolerate you? I prefer the word respect. I must respect you even if I do not agree with you. In fact, my disagreement may be an expression of my respect for you. If I truly respect you, don’t I own you my honesty?” Elie Wiesel
To understand others we have to understand the complexities and contradictions in our own selves. In learning our own complexity we form the possibility of learning from others. If we think we are always right, we have nothing to learn. The mark of learning is listening.
In discussing others we bring to the surface our bias. Wiesel thought the most inhuman person was still a human and we are called to the struggle to understand that person. It requires courage.
The “real tragedies” in society are not between right and wrong but between two rights. We cannot collapse the gap between us; in that gap is the possibility of creating a new peace and reconciliation. Differences express the gap; the gap is where the peace can take root.
Scot McKnight

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

Regret

George April 16, 2022 Faith Challenges 0 Comments

When we feel the spear of regret, life is trying to tell us something. Pay attention. Wake up. Take notes.
Daniel Pink

This past Sunday, during a lunch conversation with friends, Ann shared her story from fifty plus years ago about coming to a faith of her own. It was a Sunday evening service. She and our three young boys had gone to church without me. Moved by the sermon, she was drawn to respond. Repentant, she asked for forgiveness and committed her life to following Jesus.

Listening, I had some vague remembrance, but no real recollection of what was obviously a very significant event in her spiritual life. After lunch, on our way home, I asked her about that evening.
Her remembrance is clear. She had gone to church with the boys. She asked me to go but I told her no. Coming home, I was sitting on the couch wearing a tee shirt smoking a cigarette. She told me what happened at church. My response was, “What’d you do that for?”

I was dumbfounded. “That’s all I said ?” “I didn’t offer encouragement or appreciation?” “I didn’t ask anything?”
“No.”
The image of me as young husband and father, I had refined over the past fifty years, did not comport with her story. In that moment, I was confronted with a truth about myself. I am not what I believed myself to be.
In that moment, I was filled with regret.
Regret for treating Ann badly.
Regret for missing an opportunity to be the husband and father I should have been.
Regret for being an insensitive jerk.

The regret I experienced in reaction to Ann’s story was painful and curious. There is no question I should regret my conduct, but 50+ years later? Learning I had never apologized, I gave Ann a belated apology.
In the days since regret has been on my mind. Having read Daniel Pink’s book “ThePower of Regret” while in Florida, the subject is somewhat fresh in my mind.
Numerous questions arose in the intervening days, stimulating me to write this post.

Why would regret be so real and fresh hearing Ann’s story?
Was an apology really necessary after 50 years?
Why isn’t regret a usual part of today’s vocabulary?
How is regret different, if at all, from sorrow, grief or lament?
If regret is an integral part of our human experience, why is there an absence of sermons or lectures on regret?
Should regret be a part of a Christian’s life?

Some beliefs operate quietly, like existential background music, Others become anthems for a way of living. And few credo blare more loudly than the doctrine that regret is foolish— a toxin in the bloodstream of happiness.
The Power of Regret

In a culture obsessed with happiness, it should come as no surprise that regret is in the penalty box with grief and lament and other negatives. “Why invite pain when we can avoid it?” “Why rue what we did yesterday when we dream of the limitless possibilities of tomorrow?”

No regrets they don’t work
No regrets they only hurt
Sing me a love song
Drop me a line
Suppose it’s just a point of view
But they tell me I’m doing fine.
No regrets by Robbie Williams

Since my recent encounter with regret, I’ve been thinking how regret differs from sorrow, grief or lament. All of those experiences are painful. Unlike the pain of sorrow, grief or lament, which is deep, protracted and chronic; pain of regret is is sharp and piercing, a wound demanding attention.

The thing about regret is that it hurts. And it hurts for a reason; it’s conveying a particularly strong signal. The fact that I feel a spear of negative feeling called regret makes it much more likely that I’m going to be awake to the possibility of learning from that mistake, if I treat it right.
Daniel Pink

The soul-depth of sorrow, grief and lament demands answers, a struggle that challenges our faith and can lead to despair. With regret the answer is unambiguous, we are responsible, in that moment we understand “We have met the enemy and he is us.” (P0go). There is no one to blame except ourselves. As Pink says, “It clarifies, It instructs.”

“No regrets”, a mantra in our culture and companion of the cult of happiness, has infiltrated western Christianity. Regret and lament are unwelcome intrusions into a “live happily ever after” delusion. Walter Brueggermann understood the costly loss of lament and there is a similar cost with the loss of regret.

Without regret we become —Eve, “the devil made me do it.” or worse — Adam, blaming God, “the woman you gave me…”

Where there is lament [regret], the believer is able to take initiative with God and so develop over against God the ego strength that is necessary for responsible faith. But where the capacity to initiate lament is absent, one is left only with praise and doxology.
A community of faith which negates laments [regrets] soon concludes that the hard issues of justice are improper questions to pose at the throne, because the throne seems to be only a place of praise.
The Costly Loss of Lament – Walter Brueggermann

Regret like suffering is an attribute of our humanity, and thus our Christian life. There is value in both, but their benefit is not enjoyed by dwelling on or seeking them. “No regrets” denies reality and robs us of opportunity for redemption and growth.

You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets.”
2 Corinthians? ?7:9-10? ?MSG

I have only skirted the edges of understanding regret and its power for good or ill. I highly recommend Daniel Pink’s “The Power of Regret” . I labored to write this post. A few days ago heading out for a walk and perusing my podcasts, I was pleasantly surprised to see a sermon by Josh Graves at Otter Creek Church of Christ entitled “No Regrets”. He had some helpful insights and for those of you who want to dig deeper you can listen HERE.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George April 14, 2022 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

New Normal
One of the worst things we’ve normalized is always being reachable: making people think they deserve an instant response to texts, emails, comments, and voicemails. We’ve conditioned other people (and ourselves) that our promptness is some kind of virtue, that the more quickly we respond, the more responsible we are. The expectation this places on each of us is unrealistic and it is not sustainable. We cannot be perpetually available and still be fully present.
We are inundated with requests and needs and news. Now, more than ever, we need to withdraw to silence and stillness and solitude and disappear for a bit. Doing so isn’t a betrayal of our work or the people in our path, but a way of preparing us to be fully present to it all. In those times when we pull away from the crowd (if we can) our minds are recalibrated and our reserves replenished, and when we return to the world we are better able to offer our undivided selves.
John Pavlovitz

…we should be careful of issuing judgments without knowing the facts. That mobs are poor diviners of truth. That institutions have a duty to transcend the passions of the moment.
https://www.thebulwark.com/the-oberlin-culture-war-of-2016-finally-comes-to-an-end/

“Disagreements can feel like a war in which the fighters dig trenches on either side of any issue and launch their beliefs back and forth like grenades. You wouldn’t blame anyone involved for feeling as if they’re under fire, and no one is likely to change their mind when they’re being attacked. These sorts of fights might give everyone involved some short-term satisfaction—they deserve it because I am right and they are evil!—but odds are that neither camp is having any effect on the other; on the contrary, the attacks make opponents dig in deeper. If you want a chance at changing minds, you need a new strategy: Stop using your values as a weapon, and start offering them as a gift.”
Arthur Brooks

“You are, on the one hand, the most complex thing in the entire universe, and on the other, someone who can’t even set the clock on your microwave. Don’t overestimate your self-knowledge.”
Dr. Jordon Peterson

…there’s obvious danger in freely expressing your thoughts. Most of us have deep knowledge about a narrow set of topics and shallow knowledge (at best) about most everything else. Speak constantly and you will expose your ignorance. It’s guaranteed.
David French

“Forgetfulness leads to exile, memory to redemption.” Morally deficient leaders want the past forgotten; the morally sensitive leaders want never to forget lest we end up there again.
Hasidic saying

In our world, disagreement is not about a difference of perspective, but a conflict between fundamental goodness and badness. With little room for forgiveness, it is easy to become narcissists of opinion. Our entire moral self-image becomes wrapped up in correctness, and anyone who disagrees with us must not only be wrong, but morally deficient. We so fiercely want to be “good” that even considering the perspective of another is itself a morally polluting act.
Emma Camp

Living in a fog
My retirement life has brought a metaphor from driving experiences into sharp focus. It’s noting the difference between life viewed “in the windshield” versus life viewed “in the rear-view mirror.” The first rushes towards you as you speed ahead, giving but a short vision of what’s to come. The second recedes slowly into the distance, accompanied by the memory of the long road that has gone before. Life in the windshield is, to my mind, particularly an experience of youth. The world and the future hurry towards them and seem to be, by far, the most important part of the road. The rear-view mirror is the world of the aging. What I remember (as I near 70) is far more important than what is yet to come – there’s so much more of it. In that light, the doctrine of divine providence often seems more obvious to the elderly than it does to the young. We stand at different points of observation.

There is, though, the problem of the “fog.” When driving into a heavy fog, both what is ahead and what is behind are obscurred. We drive at something approaching a state of blindness. I think there are moments in history (as well as our personal lives), when the fog encloses us and both the providence of the past as well as the way forward are hidden. …
Those concerns reveal the “modernity” in my own heart. Our deep habits, nurtured in so many ways, tend towards management. We imagine ourselves to be in charge of history’s outcomes. As such, we nurture within ourselves a “market” for information. News of the world, of events, and trends seem (to us) to be required reading and listening. We even think to ourselves, “How will I know how to pray if I don’t know what is going on?” The corrollary to that thought is, “How will God know what is going on if I don’t tell Him?”
Fr Stephen Freeman
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2022/04/13/life-in-the-fog-of-the-world/

View from the front porch
It has been disappointing to not have opened the front porch yet. The weather has not cooperated and I have sorely missed mornings on the porch. Perhaps opening the porch this weekend will change the weather. Looking forward to some much need inspiration.

Still on the Journey

So Much To Think About

George April 7, 2022 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

Christian Witness
There is a beautiful story from years ago about an interview Dan Rather did with Mother Teresa. He was asking her about prayer. Here’s how I remember it. Rather asked Mother, “When you pray, what do you say to God?” She replied, “I don’t say anything. I listen.” He then prodded further, “What then does God say?” She responded, “God doesn’t say anything. He listens.” Then she wryly added, “And if you don’t understand that, I can’t explain it.”

Listening to the Bible
…one of my big problems with both progressive and evangelical Christians is that neither group listens to the Bible as each already knows exactly what the Bible has to say. Why read the book when you already know all the answers? Both groups pin Jesus in the case as a specimen of their preferred politics. Neither group realizes that Jesus is their critic and crisis.
Richard Beck

Beauty and Wonder
Over the years, I have come to believe more deeply in the importance of regularly engaging with things that move us to awe and wonder. So much of our early adult years can be spent trying to nail things to the floor (theological, relational, philosophical, spiritual, or otherwise) that simply cannot be wrangled in that way. Engaging with beauty and wonder pries our grip off of our felt need to lock things in so we can control them. Russ Ramsey

Context
…what I mean by context is, “stuff you might want to know if you were going to have a compelling conversation about stuff going on,” or, “stuff people leave out of the conversations I see on TV.”
Jonah Goldberg

Christian ? Witness
A gentleman in this park invited us to join (after paying the cost of course) a group for Easter dinner outside over by the club house. This guy, I’m sure you’ve seen/maybe met, was in charge of this Lord’s Luncheon to break bread together and I’m sure he would lead us all in a lengthy Easter prayer. He proudly touts his christian faith. After asking me if I wanted tickets (following the cable/internet public meeting), I said I would speak to my bride and seek her opinion. I did mention we would be just getting back from Disney, as it is Barb’s birthday wish to go there for the 50 year anniversary. Before I could even finish, I was bashed and ridiculed as to why would anyone go to Disney! He stated, and I quote,” the place is full of gays and those LGBTQ people, I will never go there and I hope DeSantas closes the place down.”
We are not attending the Easter dinner, and we are going to Disney to support those folks.
We have to have a name for the masses of Christian wanna bees. Christian is not what they are.
A non- wannabe Christian friend

Rembrandt’s Transformation

Try to put well in practice what you already know; and in so doing, you will in good time, discover the hidden things which you now inquire about. Practice what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know.”
In his younger work, he flexed for the viewer, showing off his technical abilities, which were unmatched. To think a man in his mid-twenties painted The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple is hard to get my mind around. As impressive as it is, however, it’s not that intimate. But later, he paints the same scene again, only this time he is an old man, approaching death. He has suffered. He has lost a wife, three children, his fortune, and reputation. This version is intimate, warm, and simple. In his early painting, he wanted to show us what he could do, but in the later version, it’s as though all the old man wants to do is hold Jesus. Those two paintings come together to tell the story of one man, and how youthful self-assurance gives way humility and dependence—and often by way of suffering.

Capturing it all.
Some years back, my wife and I stood beside the Grand Canyon. I had bought a small camera for the trip and felt a deep frustration as I tried to take pictures. Every picture I took, no matter how I pointed the camera, no matter how I adjusted the lens, was a failure. Every picture was entirely accurate. However, no picture could capture what I saw and felt. The Grand Canyon, and the experience of standing on its edge, cannot fit in a standard camera (if any). I think that reason is somewhat like that. It can do an amazing job of expressing and understanding certain things. It cannot, however, do everything. If there is a “reason” that can comprehend the whole of things, then it is unknown to human beings.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Reenactment
This past week we traveled to Abilene, Texas for Ann’s brother and wife’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration. Ann and I met on our first day of college at Abilene Christian College. We had a great celebration and visit with family and friends. Walking around the campus of Abilene Christian University, we located the place where we had our first kiss. We reenacted the event. It was as good as the first one 62 years ago. Actually, it was better.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George March 31, 2022 Notes Anthology 1 Comment

Fear
Look beneath your fear and you will discover what it is you really care about. What you wish to protect: people, places, things, hopes, dreams. Aggression, shame, and disconnection—even as attempts at making a better life for me or a better world for all of us—don’t work. But as we expand our circle of caring to include all people, all places, all of creation, we discover that our fears are shared and that all our cares come from the same place. Come to understand your fear, and you may find that we’re all just trying to figure out how to love.
Gareth Higgins

If you don’t think you can learn from people who are wrong, you’ll have a hard time understanding why other people are right. Jonah Goldberg

The Gospel
The Gospel contains the seed of transformation that lead to solutions, but the seeds are too often killed by planting them in the ground of political gain and culture wars.
When the day comes when we desire transformation by the Gospel through the Spirit…then we may change the world. Phoenix Preacher

Going Home
I think most of you probably noticed the words “going home” on the inside of the casket lid.
It is somewhat ironic that I recently read a quote attributed to a dying character on a TV show in which he described what he thought dying is like.

“… death is like when you’re a child and you get sick and feverish. You go to bed at night sweating, shivering, feeling wretched enough to die. The next morning you awake, your fever is broken, and you are feeling much better. You feel secure, snug, and strong – and suddenly you realize why. You’re now in your parents’ bed. In the middle of the night some one came to get you to take you home.”

Those words could take our thoughts in several directions, but what I want you to understand is that my experiences with my Uncle Bill and Aunt Imogene … coming to their house, being a part of their lives; even though less seldom than I had hoped, always made me feel secure, snug, and strong. It was like awaking in the warmth and comfort of your parent’s bed.
From my Uncle Bill Page’s eulogy 2006

TODAY
Today, I will be incompetent. (I can do nothing alone, but only through God)

Today, I will be present to those in front of me, and to Go(To REALLY listen to people, giving them full attention, and not missing out on anything in my presence. Also, that I may spend the entire day in the presence of God, listening to everything He is trying to say)

Today, I will be the Christ.(Being Jesus to all those around me)

Today, I will see the Christ (Seeing Jesus in those around me, especially the pestilence. Recognizing that everyone is a son/daughter of God changes my perspective of them as a whole!)

Randy Harris 2006

Servant
Mar. 1st, 2006 | 05:47 am
I was challenged by a recent sermon which pointed out that many Christians are mostly about doing service when in fact they are called to be servants. It is good to do service but we can do service without being servants. In just doing service we maintain control. When we are servants we relinquish all control to our master. Jesus has called us to leave everything and follow him.
I believe that I must first become a servant and follow Jesus and he will lead me in whatever service is to be rendered. My focus has been to figure out what service I need to do more than surrendering to the lead of Jesus.

Self-sufficient people
All self-sufficient people remain outsiders to the mystery of divine love because they will always misuse it. Only the need of a beloved knows how to receive the need and gift of the lover, and only the need of a lover knows how to receive the need and gift of the beloved without misusing such love. It is a kind of deliberate “poverty” on both sides. A mutually admitted emptiness is the ultimate safety net for love.
Richard Rohr

Real Church
“One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes even our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans.”
Screwtape Letters

Enchantment (transcendence)
…the doggedly faithful will share stories about burning bush moments in their lives when they bumped into God, encountered a Love and Mystery beyond words and descriptions. These “strange sights” are not flights of fantasy or wishful thinking. They are the most reality-filled moments of our lives, the truest things we have ever experienced. These mystical encounters, as rare as they may be, are the foundations of faith.

Enchantment hasn’t been the supernatural vision but the surprising rush of joy and love—enjoying the gift of a sunrise, bearing witness to a small act of kindness, watching the breeze dancing in the branches of a tree, or seeing the person standing right in front you shining like the sun.
(unknown)

Pain of grief
Unlike people who tried to soothe my pain, part of the comfort God offered me was to never flinch or look away. God saw my pain and knew not to try to make me feel better, but to sit with me in the endless ache. God knows the only thing that can slightly lessen the pain of death is for it to be seen and known. So Jesus wept. And God does not forget, even for an instant, the stories of every single person who is gone.
Hannah Mitchell

Saved by grace
Sadly, much of Christianity has created an “extrinsic” view of our relationship with God and the path of salvation. In this, God is seen as exterior to our life, our relationship with Him being analogous to the individualized contractual relationships of modern culture. As such the Christian relationship with God is reduced to psychology and morality.
It is reduced to psychology in that the concern is shifted to God’s “attitude” towards us. The psychologized atonement concerns itself with God’s wrath. It is reduced to morality in that our behavior is no more than our private efforts to conform to an external set of rules and norms. We are considered “good” or “bad” based on our performance, but without regard to the nature of that performance. St. Paul says that “whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” Only our lives-lived-in-union-with-Christ have the nature of true salvation, true humanity. This is the proper meaning of being “saved by grace.”
Fr Stephen Freeman

STILL ON THE JOURNEY