For the Joy of the Journey

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Front Porch View

Hunting an invisible dragon ?
In a memorable thought experiment, the astrophysicist and writer Carl Sagan described taking a visitor to see a fire-breathing dragon in his garage. Upon entering, the visitor was surprised to find an empty space – but Sagan replied that he had simply forgotten to mention that the dragon was invisible. The visitor then decides to throw a bag of flour on the floor to trace its outline – only to find out that it will be of no use because the dragon hovers off the ground. When the visitor suggests using an infrared camera, he is told that the dragon’s flames are heatless. There is no way, in other words, to either prove or falsify its existence.

Hypocrisy 
Hypocrisy is bad, but it’s not nearly as bad as political combatants make it out to be. Let’s suppose I am a heroin addict who goes around telling people not to use drugs. Yes, I am a hypocrite. But I wouldn’t be a better person if I went around trying to convince everybody to chase the dragon. If I said, “Come on, kids, do it. It’ll make you cool,” I’d be less hypocritical, but a worse person.
Jonah Goldberg

Pulchritudinous

Evil
For evil is not an argument: It is a thing. And the answer to evil is not logic but the cross. …. And I live in the hope that the cross has laid the groundwork for that Day when evil is no more, and love is perfected. Not Logic, but Love

God’s Kingdom
…the whole story of Jesus — his birth, life, teaching, miracles, death and resurrection — tell us all we need to know about God’s kingdom.
It looks like love, justice, peace, joy, and hope.
It looks like the subversion of toxic religious leadership.
It looks like healing, wholeness and reconciliation.
It looks like freedom.
It looks like forgiveness and mercy.
It looks like preferential treatment for children, the poor and the disabled.
It looks like the end of all suffering.
Or as Tom Wright says, “It looks like Jesus weeping at the tomb of his friend. It looks like Jesus feasting with sinners. It looks like Jesus celebrating a last meal with his friends, and going off to the cross. That’s how God runs the world. It is a very different thing from being a ‘celestial CEO.’ In other words, God takes charge of the world by coming in person to the place where the world is in pain, and taking that pain upon himself.”
Michael Frost

Church Growth
China has 40 million Christians, 94 percent are evangelicals, six percent Catholic and the church is growing by leaps and bounds with no political protections, a police state with more technological monitoring than any country on earth, according to Rod Dreher in his new book “Live not by Lies.” Yet despite continued persecution, the Church grows.

Nones are on the rise and they are the fastest growing body of nonbelievers in America, far outpacing evangelicals and Catholics. The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public — and a third of adults under 30 — are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.

Evidence
In a post-rational world, people will believe everything under the sun on the thinnest shreds of personal experience alone, but when it comes to the Bible, they will demand proof worthy of the rules of evidence.
JD Walt

Survival of Church in America
If the church in America cannot survive and thrive within the umbrella of liberty it now possesses, then might I suggest that the fault lies not with our politics, but within the church itself.
David French

Icons
They were (and are) “windows into heaven.” The Fathers said of icons that they “make present that which they represent.” They are a means of communion. In the museum-world of modernity, what is contemplated is our own feelings and thoughts. Beauty becomes “art,” serving only our self-gratification.
Fr. Stephen Freeman

Beauty
…we perceive beauty because it is real and true, and discover in it, a gateway into the mystery of the universe, that which lies beneath and within. Beauty may be compared to the meaning in a text. The letters and words are the surface – our ability to perceive their meaning is something yet more. It is surprising that we tend not to be astonished by this fact.
Fr. Stephen Freeman

Worth repeating:

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Kindness
…practicing kindness requires, at minimum, a willingness to see the image of God in, and to find a point of honest connection with, every person—even, and especially, those I dislike.
Amy Peterson

Beauty
…what draws us to the good is that it is also eternal beauty. God himself is beauty, that is, and in the end, for Christians, we are joined to him in seeking the beautiful as he has taught us to recognize it in Christ, and in therefore seeking in every circumstance, however unanticipated, to express that beauty always anew, in ever more novel variations on that original “theme”—that unique and irresistibly attractive manner. At times, a sense of style really is everything.
David Bentley Hart

Noetic Perception
“Noetic perception” is a phrase that describes the ability of the human heart to perceive that which is Divine. As such, it is our capacity for communion with God and the whole of creation.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Prayer for Biden
…my simple prayer for President Biden: May God bless him and grant him the wisdom to know what’s just, the courage to do what’s just, and the stamina to withstand the rigors of the most difficult job in the world. May his virtuous plans prevail and may his unrighteous efforts fail. And may God protect him from all harm.
David French

Luck?
People break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance…deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they’re on their own. And that fills them with fear. Yeah, there are those people. But there’s a whole lot of people in group number one…they’re looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever’s going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope. See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? (unknown)

Pandemic
What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.

Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)

Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

 Lynn Ungar (3/11/20)

Love your neighbor
Karl Rahner wrote,
“There is no love of God that is not, in itself, already a love for the neighbor; and love for God only comes to its own identity through its fulfillment in a love for neighbor. Only one who loves his or her neighbor can know who God actually is. And only one who ultimately loves God … can manage unconditionally to abandon himself or herself to another person, and not make that person the means of his or her own self-assertion.”

Disenchanted Life
We are captivated by the “surface” of things, failing to see what lies beneath. It causes us to be anxious and driven by things of insignificance. If there is a constant temptation for us in our present time, it is to lose confidence that there is anything unseen or eternal, at least in the sense that such things impinge on our daily existence. Our disenchanted, secular world is a siren song that promises the power of control while robbing us of the reality of communion. We “manage” the world when we should be in love with it.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Apart from me you can do nothing.
These are not the words of a good to great life enhancement guru to upper-middle-class minivan and SUV drivers. This is the piercing clarity of the Word of God. Actually, we can do something apart from Jesus. We can do a lot. It will just amount to nothing.
J D Walt

Front Porch View

Listen For the Week

Beyond fixing
…perhaps we have the same problem with the word solution as we do with the word moral. It sounds so fixative, and maybe we have gone beyond fixing. Maybe all we can do is to make our remaining time here full of gentleness and good humor.
Anne

Facing opposition
While the Bible promises Christians that they’ll face challenges and sometimes-fierce opposition in their lives, it is vastly better to face opposition for the things you actually believe and the values you actually hold rather than being forced to align with an ideological and political “package” you do not want to purchase. 
David French

the rational mind
The rational mind doesn’t nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.
Anne Lamott

Reading Widely
Pat Moynihan was right when he said everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. But what that aphorism leaves out is that different groups can pay attention to different sets of facts. It’s not necessarily that one group has a “different truth” than another group (though that certainly happens)—it’s that each group emphasizes, includes, or excludes different information. Reading widely can simply help you discover facts that get lost in the narratives of your own side.
Jonah Goldberg

Hell
Hell is probably a social media site where everyone agrees with you…
Phoenix Preacher

Mustard
Mustard . . .  with its pungent taste and fiery effect is extremely beneficial for the health. It grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: but on the other hand when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once. 
via Richard Rohr

Meaning
Meaning depends on purpose. If the symphony has no sound to aspire to, then it hardly matters what notes the musicians play. If the game has no point, then no play can be called good or bad. We can only describe the action.
Daniel Jepson

Being non-political
There really is no such thing as being non-political. Everything we say or do either affirms or critiques the status quo. Even to say nothing is to say something. If we say nothing, we communicate that the status quo—even if it is massively unjust and deceitful—is apparently okay. This common “non-political” stance is an illusion, and the powerful have always been able to use it to manipulate people.
Richard Rohr

View from the Front Porch

I’ve run out of words.
Words are the tools we use to describe what we see, what we feel, what we fear, and what we believe.
I’ve used up all the words I have that fit those tasks and they are all inadequate for the moment we find ourselves in.
Phoenix Preacher

Still on the journey