For the Joy of the Journey

Labor Day – No Justice, No Peace

George September 8, 2020 Faith Challenges 0 Comments

Labor Day has always been an odd sort of holiday. Perhaps an after thought to the Fourth of July; one last grasp at summer before we return to “normal”. For many it marks the beginning of off-season and lower rates at the beach, reason enough for celebration Always a welcome day off, it just doesn’t have the depth and meaning of Fourth of July, Memorial Day or Christmas, Thanksgiving, MLK Birthday, et al.
Labor Day this year was particularly mundane, for a couple of reasons. The pandemic dampened activities and as a retired old man it was just another day.

I did come across some reflections on the origin of Labor Day:

On May 11, 1894, workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company, a railroad car manufacturer near Chicago, went on strike to protest their low wages and 16-hour workdays. On June 22, members of the powerful American Railway Union joined their struggle by refusing to move Pullman’s cars from one train to another, thus crippling rail traffic across the country.
On July 3, President Cleveland ordered federal troops to Chicago to end the boycott. Strikers rioted and on July 7, national guardsmen fired into a mob and killed as many as 30 people.
In an attempt to appease the strikers and their supporters, the Senate had passed a bill designating Labor Day a public holiday. The bill was signed by President Cleveland June 28, 1894. It didn’t stop the violence, but the Labor Day commemoration, which had been languishing in Washington, finally became a day of rest to honor workers.
via Internet Monk

How ironic is the celebration of Labor Day in the current environment of protest and violence, often led by chants of “No justice, no peace”? Essentially, Labor Day honors a movement against injustice employing protest and ultimately violence to achieve their goals.

The anthem “No justice, No peace” is interesting. For some it is a pejorative expression of anarchist. Thinking about Labor Day origins and its kinship to today’s upheaval, it occurred to me how ubiquitous the mantra of “No justice, No Peace” is in our ordinary lives. It begins very early, the toddler screaming for a toy she has been unfairly deprived of is declaring,” No justice, No Peace”. In every interpersonal conflict the offended party is declaring in some way, “No Justice, No Peace”. All to often, anger and/or violence results.

Our goal is peace, but how do we achieve it? Demanding justice hasn’t proved to be effective. Christ-followers are called to be peace-makers, but Christianity seems to be filled with conflict.
Isn’t justice a legitimate goal.
Once again there’s a lot to think about. To reject “No justice, No Peace” ignores our own very human desire for justice and peace.
We cannot tweet this away, it requires us to wrestle with profound questions about our faith and humanity.
As a Christ follower, I am somewhat befuddled by what it means to be a peacemaker. I interned to pursue better understanding about that. Hopefully, you will join me in that quest.

If you would like to read some stimulating thoughts on “No Justice, No Peace”, here is a recent series of articles I found to helpful.

No Justice, No Peace?

Whose Justice? Which Peace?

Know Justice, Know Peace

Suicide Prevention Month

George September 5, 2020 Family 1 Comment

Some of you may be aware we lost our grandson Ryan to suicide two years ago this coming December. With her permission, his mother’s Facebook post entitled “Life After Suicide” follows.

September is Suicide Awareness Month. I feel a need to speak out. Not really sure why or even what to say. Obviously, I know nothing about how to prevent a suicide and I couldn’t possibly be more “aware” of the impact that suicide can have on those left behind. I regularly hear, “I just can’t imagine” so I thought I would take a moment during Suicide Awareness Month to share some of my insights and experiences from this side of suicide.

1. There is an entire world of people out there on the same path as me. —– Y’All! There are so many people that have lost loved ones (specifically children) to suicide. I was naively unaware of the vast number of people that live with this pain. My therapist recommended that I seek out a group of moms like me. I did that through Facebook. So, so many groups. It’s heart wrenching. I still haven’t found my tribe. To date, the groups I have found seem to focus on the pain of the loss rather than how to experience joy WHILE processing the pain. I mean absolutely no judgment about how others process their loss. That’s just not the path I have chosen. I will find the right tribe for me soon enough. That brings me to the next insight…..

2. Recovery from suicide is lonely. —– I believe grief from losing anyone for any reason is lonely in the sense that each person’s journey is unique not necessarily that grieving is done alone. It’s a simple fact that there is not another person on the planet that has experienced EXACTLY the same thing as me. Not even Byron. Yes, we are both Ryan’s parents, but I grieve as a mother and he grieves as a father. Different perspectives. Unique journeys.

3. There is nothing anyone can do to help. —– I am not saying attempts at helping are not appreciated. Oh my goodness, are they ever!! The reality is that nothing can soothe the pain of this broken heart. I loved every single act of kindness that was thrown our way because each was a reminder of how much we are loved even though it didn’t lessen the pain. Definitely keep spreading love through hot, cheesy casseroles!!

4. There are a lot of things people can NOT do to help. —– Do not judge. If you think you know anything about the situation, just assume you are wrong and keep your thoughts to yourself. So many people thought they knew how to handle our private business better than we did. We were attacked in person and online with one of my children being told by many complete strangers that is was our fault. Would you believe that I had people private message me to ask me how Ryan committed suicide? Yeah, don’t do any of those things. If you do not know every single detail of a private situation, you don’t even have a right to an opinion. The only thing anyone has a right to do is offer nonjudgmental support.

5. It feels really good to hear Ryan’s name. —– Never be afraid to say the name of the person who has passed. You won’t “remind” the loved one that their special person is gone. Trust me, it can’t be forgotten. When I hear Ryan’s name, it reminds me you haven’t forgotten that he lived.

6. Life goes on. —– The world as we knew it did pause for a while. Thankfully, life didn’t stop the day Ryan died. I can’t imagine being stuck in the intensity of that day for the remainder of my life. Even with the pain, the sun came out again, laughter returned, and a new life sprouted from the darkness. It hasn’t been easy. It has been a choice to be wrestled with daily.

7. It’s okay for life to be good. —– I decided early on that my love for Ryan would not be measured by the depth and/or length of my grief. The grief isn’t going anywhere. It’s tattooed on my heart. I suspect I will process it for the rest of my life. With the understanding that the pain will never fully go away, I decided it’s okay to live a great life in spite of the pain. I refuse to give grief the joys I have left in life through my experiences of being a wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, and friend.

This side of suicide is a rough road. For me it has been a path paved with focused, purposeful, intentions geared towards healing. Grief has been taken head on and not suppressed. The result of that decision has been experiencing anguish previously unimaginable. Another result is that a really good life has come between the waves of pain. If you are lost in grief, you too can have a really good life! Don’t believe the lie that you should feel guilty for experiencing joy again.

For Suicide Awareness Month, I am asking anyone that needs help to please reach out to someone. If that someone doesn’t listen, keep reaching out. Call me if needed. Please face your pain so that your loved ones don’t have to do it without you. Face it together. There is strength in numbers.

Peace, love, and joy to all!

Melissa Gabehart

SO MUCH TO THINK ABOUT

George September 2, 2020 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

pointillistic: composed of many discrete details or parts

It’s a Lie
Mark Twain said, “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” And you want to know the hell of it?? MARK TWAIN DIDN’T EVEN SAY THAT!!!

Moral Principles
Moral principles are absolute, but only love submitted to the will of God can direct us on how they apply in a particular situation.
Greg Boyd – Repenting of Religion

Misdirected love
..we need guidance to make sure that the things we love are ordered beneath our ultimate love of God. Christians have often described sin as misdirected love — loving the wrong things or loving the right things in the wrong way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/opinion/jerry-falwell-liberty.html

Clutter and mess
clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground—you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip.
Anne Lamott

Tidiness
Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it’s going to get. Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move.
Anne Lamott

Perfectionism
I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.
Anne Lamont

peace-monger.
By that I mean a highly anxious risk-avoider, someone who is more concerned with good feelings than with progress, someone whose life revolves around the axis of consensus, a “middler,” someone who is so incapable of taking well-defined stands that his “disability” seems to be genetic, someone who functions as if she had been filleted of her backbone, someone who treats conflict or anxiety like mustard gas– one whiff, on goes the emotional gas mask, and he flits. Such leaders are often “nice,” if not charming.” Edwin Friedman
A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, pg. 13-14

Can We be Good Without God?
The most compelling read this past week. Long but worthwhile. Here are several excerpts:
American Nationalism
…virtuous heroes kill bandits and lawless Indians.
This common model of life’s meaning is drastically irreligious, because it places reliance on good human beings and not on God. It has no room for the double insight that the evil are not beyond the reach of divine mercy nor the good beyond the need for it. It is thus antithetical to Christianity which maintains that human beings are justified by God alone, and that all are sacred and none are good.
Exalted Individual
If the concept of the exalted individual defines the highest value under God, the concept of the fallen individual defines the situation in which that value must be sought and defended.
Sin
Sin is ironic. Its intention is self-exaltation, its result is self debasement. In trying to ascend, we fall. The reason for this is not hard to understand. We are exalted by God; in declaring our independence from God, we cast ourselves down.
Original sin is the quiet determination, deep in everyone, to stay inside the world. Every sinful act is a violation of the personal being that continually, in freedom, vision, and love, threatens the world. The archetype of sin is the reduction of a person to the thing we call a corpse.
Destiny
Destiny is not the same as fate. The word refers not to anything terrible or even to anything inevitable, in the usual sense of the word, but to the temporal and free unfoldment of a person’s essential being. A destiny is a spiritual drama.
A destiny is never completely fulfilled in time, in the Christian vision, but leads onto the plane of eternity. It must be worked out in time, however, and everything that happens to a person in time enters into eternal selfhood and is there given meaning and justification. My destiny is what has often been referred to as my soul.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1989/12/can-we-be-good-without-god/306721/

Endangered species sighting this morning:

Hijacked !

George August 29, 2020 Faith Challenges 0 Comments

A recent and regretfully not unusual experience continues to plague me. I’m getting weary of apologizing and asking for forgiveness. I’m pretty sure Ann is just as weary of being subjected to my idiocy and then bearing the burden of forgiving me without confidence it will not happen again.

Here’s the typical scenario:
Some triggering experience (legitimate or trivial) produces a strong emotional response, often anger, which overwhelms rationality. Reflexively, inappropriate words are hurled at my unsuspecting victim. Their venomous intent confirmed by an angry countenance and a voice that is threatening and loud. The aftermath is filled with regret and remorse. ” I can’t believe I did that. What was I thinking?”

What the heck is that all about? As I have related before and some of you have attested to, I’m a good person. I’d even go so far as to say I’m a Christ follower. Such behavior is contrary to goodness, much less Christ likeness.

I recently discovered an answer to my question. … I am being hijacked!
Specifically, I’m experiencing an “amygdala hijack”. Here is a summary of amygdala hijack:

The amygdala hijack is an immediate, overwhelming emotional response with a later realization that the response was inappropriately strong given the trigger. Daniel Goleman coined the term based on the work of neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, which demonstrated that some emotional information travels directly from the thalamus to the amygdala without engaging the neocortex, or higher brain regions. This causes a strong emotional response that precedes more rational thought.
Huh, what does that mean?
The amygdala hijack basically equates to “freaking out” or seriously overreacting to an event in your life.
https://gostrengths.com/what-is-an-amygdala-hijack/

Any strong emotion, anxiety, anger, joy, or betrayal trips off the amygdala and impairs the prefrontal cortex’s working memory. The power of emotions overwhelms rationality. That is why when we are emotionally upset or stressed we can’t think straight.
No one can make you do something against your better judgment, but the amygdala always can.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/51483/handling-the-hijack.pdf

What a relief! That’s exactly what going on. Now I understand why. Ann will be glad to know I’m experiencing amygdala hijack. No guilt, remorse or need for apology, it’s my amygdala. Surely that’s better than “The devil made me do it.”
On second thought it’s not better. Knowing it is an amygdala hijack is not an excuse, it is a reason. Cursory research reveals amygdala hijack is an important and essential part of our brain functions. There are circumstances that necessitate the amygdala’s override of rationality for the sake of survival.
We are not, however, slaves to our amygdala. Our emotional system can be trained.

“Once your emotional system learns something, it seems you never let it go. What therapy does is teach you how to control it—it teaches your neocortex how to inhibit your amygdala. The propensity to act is suppressed, while your basic emotion about it remains in a subdued form.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/51483/handling-the-hijack.pdf

Looking for an explanation or excuse for my behavior, amygdala hijack offers little relief. Though I now understand what is happening, I also understand why… I am not exercising self-control. My research indicates therapy is helpful. Practical advice for managing amygdala hijacks abound.. Breathe… Focus on your body… Ty saying a mantra… Acknowledge and label your feelings… Take a break. I am confident such counsel can be helpful. In the final analysis, it comes down to self-control. Even knowing my lack of success at self-control, awareness and understanding will help me in the future.

Once again again I am confronted with how much I must be grieving the Holy Spirit by resisting her gift of self-control.

There is a better teacher than therapy.

The Christian Value – Agape

George August 27, 2020 Christian Values 0 Comments

This post concludes my Christian Values series. I am certain I have not exhausted the subject, but I am frazzled. What began as musings about public dissonance of “Christian Values”, produced an unanticipated examination of my own values. That exercise produced some troubling conclusions which continue to plague me and will, hopefully, prove to be transformative.
I am thankful for my coincidental (?) encounter with Greg Boyd’s book “Repenting of Religion – Turning from Judgement to the Love of God”. He introduced perspectives that were challenging and convicting.

A brief summary of my understandings and thoughts.

Definition –
“Christian” values are what you believe. They determine the way you live and work. They determine your priorities, they’re the measures you use to tell if your life is Christian. When the things you do and the way you behave don’t align with your values, you are not being Christian.
[adapted from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_85. ]

To no one’s surprise , arguments Christians’ make for the validity and credibility of their positions are based on”Christian Values”. “Christian Values” are the water we swim in, unfortunately, the water is murky. There is little consensus among Christians on a definition of “Christian Values”. I often find myself at odds with other Christians about values.
Absent clarity regarding “Christian Values”, opponents use that ambiguity to prove their case , for example, intolerance and bigotry are alleged to be “Christian Values”.

Source
Values are derived, When values conflict, they inherently indicate different origins. When “Christian Values” conflict their source is open to question and they become illegitimate and counter-productive.
As indicated in an earlier post, I believe “Christian Values”, as generally espoused today, are increasingly derived from within. Accepting Satan’s lies and consuming the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, we believe we are god and able to determine what’s best without God. Self-delusion keeps us from recognizing any incompatibility of self-derived values with God-derived values. By definition, there is only one source of values for Christians..Christ.
The solution is obvious… just follow Christ. Fortunately, Christ was unambiguous about following him:
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:36-40 NIV
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
Matthew 16:24 NIV
The apostle Paul was equally unambiguous about values of Christ followers:
“I may be able to speak the languages of human beings and even of angels, but if I have no love, my speech is no more than a noisy gong or a clanging bell. I may have the gift of inspired preaching; I may have all knowledge and understand all secrets; I may have all the faith needed to move mountains—but if I have no love, I am nothing. I may give away everything I have, and even give up my body to be burned —but if I have no love, this does me no good.”
“Meanwhile these three remain: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love.”
1 Corinthians13:1-3, 13b GNT
“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”
Galatians 5:6b NIV
Love is the sovereign Christian value. It’s source is God…God is love. It’s meaning and manifestation for humanity are demonstrated in Jesus, God come in flesh. Love is fruit of the Spirit.
Whatever is declared as “Christian Values”, to be authentic, must be derived from love as revealed and demonstrated by God. There is no other source for “Christian Values”.

Love as Christians understand it is distinctly different from what most people think of as love.
When John wrote that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son,” he illuminated the sacrificial character of divine love. This is the mark of agape. It is entirely selfless. If one could love others without judging them, asking anything of them, or thinking of one’s own needs, one would meet the Christian standard. Obviously, no one can. Many of us can meet the requirements of friendship or erotic love, but agape is beyond us all. It is not a love toward which we are naturally inclined or for which we have natural capacities. Yet it is not something exclusively divine, like omnipotence, which human beings would be presumptuous to emulate. In fact, it is demanded of us. Agape is the core of Christian morality.
Can We Be Good Without God? On the political meaning of Christianity
GLENN TINDER
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1989/12/can-we-be-good-without-god/306721/

Nourished from consuming fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and perceiving myself to be God, I have confidently chosen good values. Values which confirm my goodness and validate my judgement of others. Going my own way, separated from God I am unable to eat the fruit of the the Tree of Life.
Any goodness is empty and meaningless and subject to evil without agape. As Tinder noted above, agape is beyond us all.

This excursion into “Christian Values” has exposed me to how deeply I grieve the Holy Spirit, choosing goodness on my own instead of receiving her gift of love.

Being praised as a good person is no longer a source of pride, but an occasion for self-examination.
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.
Mark 10:18