For the Joy of the Journey

I use Apple Notes app religiously ( no pun intended). I save quotes, quips, etc from daily readings. I save them, hoping to eventually post about them or share in “So Much to Think About”. Many stay hidden. I’m currently up to 1,404 . There is no intended theme or thread, but they may give some insight into the drumbeat in my head. Going forward I intend to post “So Much to Think about” on Fridays. I’m letting you so you can mark your calendar :). BTW today is Friday, so enjoy this post.

Slowing down (traveling “off road”)
“I counted my years and found that I have less time to live from here on than I have lived up to now.
 I feel like that child who won a packet of sweets: he ate the first with pleasure, but when he realized that there were few left, he began to enjoy them intensely.
 I no longer have time for endless meetings where statutes, rules, procedures and internal regulations are discussed, knowing that nothing will be achieved.
 I no longer have time to support the absurd people who, despite their chronological age, haven’t grown up.
 My time is too short: I want the essence, my soul is in a hurry.  I don’t have many sweets in the package anymore.
 I want to live next to human people, very human, who know how to laugh at their mistakes and who are not inflated by their triumphs and who take on their responsibilities.  Thus human dignity is defended and we move towards truth and honesty.  It is the essential that makes life worth living.
I want to surround myself with people who know how to touch hearts, people who have been taught by the hard blows of life to grow with gentle touches of the soul.
 Yes, I’m in a hurry, I’m in a hurry to live with the intensity that only maturity can give.
 I don’t intend to waste any of the leftover sweets.  I am sure they will be delicious, much more than what I have eaten so far.
 My goal is to reach the end satisfied and at peace with my loved ones and my conscience.
 We have two lives and the second begins when you realize you only have one. “
 Mario de Andrade

Difficult subjects
… difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without [any]doubt, what is laid before him.

Mastery of Information
Our culture tends to have a focus on the mastery of information, the management of the facts. I recall a famous television evangelist who touted himself as having memorized the entire Bible. It made him a television evangelist, not a great soul or a deeply wise man. It can indeed be little more than a carnival trick.
The soul is ever so much more about who we are, and the character of who we are than what we are and what we know.
FR Stephen Freeman

Parable of topsoil and wheelbarrow
Having moved house, and a keen gardener, he had a large truck load of topsoil delivered, if I remember the story correctly, ten tons. The driver dumped all of it on his front driveway. The only way to move it to the back garden was shovel by shovel, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. And that, said the good Dr Taylor, was also how he wrote his commentary – over the years, word by word, verse by verse and chapter by chapter. 
Jim Gordon

Right Affections
I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment.
C S Lewis

Virtue as bravery
At root, all virtue is a form of bravery. But bravery is only heroic if there is an objective value at stake, a true good in question. Remove that value and you remove the distinction between virtue and vice, between heroic sacrifice and self-serving cowardice. 
Richard Beck

Fountain Pens
We once wrote with quills from real birds dipped (the quills, that is) in ink, then we wrote with crude hand-made quill pens that were also dipped in ink, then we wrote with fountain pens that had a hidden reservoir that sometimes leaked, and then Mr. Biro invented the discardable ball-point pen, and now you and I have colors and shapes and any kind of pen we want. They are cheap and they are easy. Some see this as clear evidence of progress and improvement. They are not because they are cosmic pollutants.
Unless you prefer a pen that stays with you for life, like a fountain pen. I know that using a ballpoint pen is easy and that it is the end of a line of technological progress, but there is something special and personal about a fountain pen (unless you are hard of heart). It becomes your friend after you’ve filled it for years — and I prefer piston fillers rather than the little plastic cartridges that also clog up the world.
Go ahead, pick up a fountain pen and feel a work of art — Bics are trash. They are cheap; the ink is fake; the pen has no balance; it makes one wonder how humans could do this to themselves. Try on a Pelikan or a Mont Blanc or a Conway Steward or a Waterman or a Schaeffer — I’ve got several and each is a friend.
Scot McKnight

Virtues for today
Fallibilism: we have to admit we may not be right all the time. Which means “No one gets the final say.”
We have to admit that at least some, if not most, of what we claim as knowledge could in some senses be wrong. Nothing is absolute knowledge for any human. A genuine sense that “I might be wrong” permits thinking with others who may help us reach a better position.
Empiricism: what you claim has to be discoverable by others using the same method. Which means “No one has personal authority.”
Jonathan Rausch

“When you have something to say, silence is a lie.” Jordon Peterson

If you’re riding’ ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there. Will Rogers

Hope for 2022
Compared to 2020, weekday prime-time viewership declined 38% at CNN this year, 34% at Fox and 25% at MSNBC, says Nielsen. The drop was 12% at ABC World News Tonight and CBS Evening News; and 14% at NBC Nightly News. 

As Jonah Goldberg recently quipped:
“That’s the thing about choosing the wrong path at a fork in the road—you usually have to walk a long way before you realize the error”. Hopefully, 2022 is long enough.

Gluttony
If you’re in a room where everyone is a greedy glutton hoarding all the food they can grab, gluttony becomes a matter of rational self-interest. Get yours as quickly as possible or you get nothing.
Jonah Goldberg

Wisdom
Maybe what we lack isn’t love but wisdom. It became clear to me that I should pray above all else for wisdom.
We all want to love, but as a rule we don’t know how to love rightly. How should we love so that life will really come from it? I believe that what we all need is wisdom. I’m very disappointed that we in the Church have passed on so little wisdom. Often the only thing we’ve taught people is to think that they’re right—or that they’re wrong. We’ve either mandated things or forbidden them. But we haven’t helped people to enter upon the narrow and dangerous path of true wisdom. On wisdom’s path we take the risk of making mistakes. On this path we take the risk of being wrong. That’s how wisdom is gained.
Richard Rohr

Insanity
? Many Americans have been vaccinated but continue to act as though they have not.
? Many other Americans have not been vaccinated but act as though they have.
? Many of those who got vaccinated hate Donald Trump, who considers the vaccines to be one of his greatest achievements.
? Many who refuse to get vaccinated love Donald Trump.
What do these facts tell us? They tell us that we, as a nation, are insane. But we knew that.
Dave Barry

“identity-protection cognition.” 
As humans in a tribe we conform to our tribe so as not to be alienated from our tribe. To alter our minds from our tribe means alienation and excommunication, and no one wants that kind of liminality.
Jonathan Haidt said this way: Our minds “unite us into teams, divide us against other teams, and blind us to the truth.”
Group think then can be blind and prevent us from finding truth but all the while we are convinced we are entirely reasonable and right. When this occurs the whole tribe “loses touch with reality” and truth. When this occurs cults form and we get “paranoid alternative realities.”
Scot McKnight

The smartest people
Our culture champions the mind. We think of ourselves as far more brilliant than those who lived in the past and certainly more aware and understanding of the processes and realities of the world around us. In short, we think we’re the smartest people who have ever lived. In point of fact, we have narrowed the focus of our attention and are probably among the least aware human beings to have ever lived.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Fruitcake
Two friends from Iowa have been exchanging the same fruitcake since the late 1950s. Even older is the fruitcake left behind in Antarctica by the explorer Robert Falcon Scott in 1910. But the honor for the oldest known existing fruitcake goes to one that was baked in 1878 when Rutherford B. Hayes was president of the United States.
What’s amazing about these old fruitcakes is that people have tasted them and lived, meaning they are still edible after all these years. The trifecta of sugar, low-moisture ingredients and some high-proof spirits make fruitcakes some of the longest-lasting foods in the world.
Scot McKnight

Psychics
Within a few blocks of the University of Washington in Seattle, there are not one but two establishments offering psychic services. At one or both, you can obtain palmistry, fortune-telling, aura cleansing, crystal readings, dream analysis, chakra balancing, psychic aura readings, past life regressions, and tarot card readings. Every American city has similar listings in Google Maps for professional psychics, including 20 in Philadelphia, 17 in Memphis, and 18 in St. Louis. The Pew Research Center reports that fully 41% of all Americans believe in psychics.
The same surveys indicate that 29% of Americans believe in astrology, and many of them seek astrological guidance for their lives. They can easily download the sophisticated apps promising personalized advice that have replaced the simple horoscopes earlier generations read in newspapers. Co-Star, one of the leading apps, says it “uses NASA data, coupled with the methods of professional astrologers, to algorithmically generate insights about your personality and your future.” According to a brand promotion company, the “mystical services market”—which includes but reaches well beyond astrology apps—totals $2.1 billionin the U.S.
This movement is heightened among young people. Many social trends gather steam initially in the young, and that is certainly true with respect to religion. Within Generation Z—generally defined as people born after the mid-to-late 1990s—the percentage who do not affiliate with a religion has reached an all-time high. Among those who do hold a religious identity, attendance at worship services has fallen off a cliff.
Young people are also disproportionately represented among the enthusiasts for astrology, Tarot cards, and various forms of New Age mysticism. They frequently pair their excursions into the paranormal with standard religious activities such as prayer. To put it simply, DIY religion has meant for young people a substantial retreat from religious participation in an organized community but no major withdrawal from religious and mystical belief.
Mark Allen Smith
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-rise-of-do-it-yourself-religion

“To see what is in front of one’s nose,” George Orwell said, “needs a constant struggle.” 

Still on the Journey