For the Joy of the Journey

T G I F

HolocaustMemorial Day
“The degree to which one is sensitive to other people’s suffering, to other men’s humanity, is the index of one’s own humanity.”
“True love for man is clandestine love for God.” 
“There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done to other people…The prophets’ great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference.” 
Rabbi Abraham Herschel

Digital Guilt
the “spiral of expectations.” When communication technology makes a new thing (like responding on the go) possible, doing that thing can be a way for people to signal how dedicated they are as workers or family members—and, crucially, not doing that thing can suggest that they aren’t dedicated enough. Now when people feel they haven’t responded sufficiently quickly, they think they owe their correspondent an apology.
…with the mass adoption of email and smartphones, is that the “acceptable” window of response time has gotten much smaller. Someone could conceivably apologize for their delay when responding in the afternoon to an email sent that morning.
Scot McKnight

REMINDER WHEN FILING YOUR TAX RETURN
The Internal Revenue Service’s Publication 17, available on the agency’s website, contains a section on stolen property that may leave readers scratching their heads.
“If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless you return it to its rightful owner in the same year,” the guideline states.

If you sit and stare at a flowing creek for long, perhaps playing about its shallows with sticks and such it is possible to see how utterly connected the many currents and flows are with one another. An action in one spot can yield a reaction downstream, though the one downstream may know very little of what happened before. We individuals who inhabit this point in the stream of time fancy our decisions as though they were independent of so much that went before. 
Fr Stephen Freeman

Thinking…
[There] are those who prefer certainty to truth, those in church who put the purity of dogma ahead of the integrity of love. And what a distortion of the gospel it is to have limited sympathies and unlimited certainties, when the very reverse, to have limited certainties but unlimited sympathies, is not only more tolerant but far more Christian. For “who has known the mind of God?” [Romans 11:34] And didn’t Paul also insist that if we fail in love we fail in all other things? 
William Sloane Coffin

Cyber Shelters ?
More than 75 years after the invention of nuclear weapons, only nine countries appear to have a usable one. But dozens of countries already have cyberweapons. “Everybody seems to want them,” Mark told me, “and this gives enormous power to the countries who sell them and can use them for diplomatic advantage.”

Something to remember when filling your vehicle.
The unemployment rate is at 3.9 percent, lower than its been at any point since 1970 save April 2000 and mid-2018 through March 2020. Year-over-year wage growth is near its highest level since the metric began being tracked in the mid-2000s. Yesterday, we learned that real GDP grew at a 5.7 percent clip in 2021, its fastest rate since 1984. After a global pandemic led most countries around the world to more or less shut down commerce for several months, the U.S. economy is all of … 1 percent smallerthan it likely otherwise would have been. 

View from the Lanai

The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Still on the Journey

As mentioned in the last “So Much To Think About” post, I will be posting SMTTA on Fridays. Content will be briefer, focusing on things from the past week that have given me something to think about.

Going to hell
Contrary to popular Christian mythology…Jesus doesn’t want anyone to go to hell…and He went to great lengths to keep people out of it…Christians on the other hand…

I’m going to keep saying this until you get it…Jesus conquered all earthly powers through sacrificial love, suffering, and death…and any “victories” the church wins will come the same way…
Phoenix Preacher

Alabama- Georgia

Alabama v. Georgia National Championship Game: My Response
First I want to congratulate Georgia for the win. The last time they had a championship was 1980.  I do not like to lose but Kirby Smart is essentially a Bama guy.  So hats off to them.  
Second, I did not watch the game on Monday because I was on my mini-retreat at Steep Ravine.  If you listen to the talking heads on ESPN you would think Georgia clobbered Alabama. One said, “Kirby out coached Saban in every phase of the game.”  
So today, I watched the game on YouTube. I do not know what game he watched but from my perspective the game was in fact a basic tie down to the last 120 seconds of it.  So I did what any person should do, I looked up the stats for the game. Here they are according to ESPN. The stats confirm what I saw, an even game.  And Bama wins in most of the categories. Bama lost Jameson Williams to an injury in the game too.  
First downs: GA 20; Bama 22
Total Yards: GA 364; Bama 399
Penalties: GA 10-70; Bama 7-57
Turnovers: GA 1; Bama 2
Time of Poss: GA 28:29; Bama 31:31
As I see it the game came down to two plays.  Bennett’s long bomb for a TD and Young’s pick-six with 40 seconds left in the game. 
The score 33-18 does not even begin to show how close the game was.  I thought both teams defense showed up in spectacular ways.  Congrats to the Dogs but Bama has nothing to be ashamed about. 
Next year is coming. I do not think Georgia will repeat.  Bama will likely play them again in the SEC Championship Game and I doubt the Bulldogs will win.  
Rolllllllllll Tide
Thanks to Bobby Valentine

Virus
We are still battling Covid 19 and the next thing is already here.
The NILE Virus, type C
Virologists have identified a new Nile Virus – type C.
It appears to target those who were born between1940 and 1970.
Symptoms:
1. Causes you to send the same message twice.
2. Causes you to send a blank message.
3. Causes you to send a message to the wrong person.
4. Causes you to send it back to the person who sent it to you.
5. Causes you to forget to attach the attachment.
6. Causes you to hit SEND before you’re finished.
7. Causes you to hit DELETE instead of SEND.
8.Causes you to SEND when you should DELETE.
It is called the C-NILE virus!
Unkknown

Reactionary?
A reactionary is someone with extreme opposition to dramatic social or political change. Sometimes, of course, dramatic change is destructive, and opposition to it is often justified. What distinguishes the reactionary is that they end up making two key intellectual mistakes:Becoming so preoccupied with who or what they are against that the foundation of their politics is reflexive opposition rather than first principles or reason.
Vastly inflating the threat of whatever it is that they oppose, driving responses disproportionate to the scale of the harms they critique.
Do not let the illusions of social media trick you. 
Learn to recognize and avoid “us-vs-them” thinking. 
Be skeptical of convenient narratives. 
Avoid the “zeal of the convert.” 
Take seriously the possibility that you are wrong. 
Reactionary politics is an easy trap to fall into these days, given that so much of what is deemed progress is really the opposite. Ultimately, however, reactionaries do more harm than good. We do not need them, or the alarmism and hysteria in which they often indulge, to save us. Nuance, principles, and moderation will do just fine.
Seth Moskowitz

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Still on the Journey