Lifelong Learning

The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning.

-- M. Scott Peck

This is one of those that at first appears rather self-evident.  But, what struck me about it (other than the reference to learning and other thoughts posted this week on the 'the mind') is that I don't believe, for the better part of my life, I viewed it that way.  Spirituality, for me, had been more of a construct of principles of some sort. One either did or did not work their way through the pile of them, but they were available for acquisition, if one were so disciplined.

Now, however, I see the developmental nature of spirituality, perhaps because of the same nature I see more and more of in all realms of life.  In other words, to grow (in any respect), we must engage the process of learning.  And that is a whole-being exercise...that is never over.

Goal of Teaching

The goal of teaching is not to teach; it is to create learning.

The key to learning is engagement.

The key to engagement is creativity.

The key to creativity is effort.

So, teaching well requires a lot of effort aimed at learning.

If learning does not occur, then we are just sliding a bunch of information around...often over and over and over. Who needs more information?  Learning is a holistic experience.

Transformation

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

-- Romans 12:2

I am intrigued by this verse, especially in light of yesterday's post.

The Mind

The brain may be located in the cranium, but the mind is located throughout the body.

-- Candace Pert

What Is & What Ought To Be

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

-- William Hazlitt

Habit of Turning, Strength

Forming a habit of turning to God in our lives is like developing muscle.  It has to be worked, stretched, exercised regularly or it becomes weak at best.

Perhaps the greater of the habits of our lives can be 'living with' God in our everyday details...good and bad.  This is an availing ourselves to our true strength, for otherwise we are simply rather weak and self-absorbed. The story of my life, among other things, is a battle over the development of this muscle.  When I am regularly exercising spiritually, not unlike physically, I am simply stronger than when I'm not.  I'm not sure there is a greater habit we can form than the habit of turning to God.  Life will still 'happen', so doing such things will not prevent bad things from happening.  The issue has much more to do with how I face them, with what I face them, with Whom I face them.  This is the true strength we can develop, through the spiritual habit of turning to God in our lives.

God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

-- Psalm 73:26

The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. 

-- Psalm 28:7

In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength...

-- Isaiah 30:15

...but those who hope in the Lord

    will renew their strength.

-- Isaiah 40:31

We are shaped by our habits.

Rivalry Rebooted

 

POST GAME Review: What was true in Bo and Woody's time is still true today; you can't win Big Ten championships if you don't win key games on the road. And you can't win those games if you don't avoid turn-overs and big mistakes.

...true again today. And, seniors are the ones who need to lead the way.

Songs

Songs can help us take a few steps toward healing. Songs are safe containers for the best and worst that life has to offer.

-- Linford Detweiler

Thanks Giving

Thanksgiving: We all have so much for which to be thankful, especially when we don't confine our gratitude to possessions.

The dirt of our brokenness leads to a true experience of Grace. And gratitude is the flower that grows from her soil.

It is striking how illusive gratitude is when we're avoiding brokenness...and how overwhelming it is when we're not.

Happy Thanks Giving!

Power of Music at any Age

Brokenness

Our life is full of brokenness - broken relationships, broken promises, broken expectations. How can we live with that brokenness without becoming bitter and resentful except by returning again and again to God's faithful presence in our lives.

-- Henri Nouwen

Our diversions prevent us from such returning.

Diversion

How much of our busyness and our business has this - diversion - as its deepest root? It is not only when something terrible happens, like a death, that we seek diversion, but always. This indicates that there is a pervasive presence of death and despair in our lives that we are always seeking diversion from.

-- Peter Kreeft

Regarding Thanksgiving, one thing that siphons gratitude from me more than anything else is busyness...not taking the time to reflect on the actual state of things and, instead, racing on to the next set of things that need to get done. This disposition drains me and simultaneously arouses the addiction to diversion. Busyness is a thief.

Thanks, Kent, for sharing this one.

Faith Never Knows

Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.

-- Jim Elliot

This morning, with...
the night mysts still clinging to earthen valley,
the tickling of jack's frost on the end of my nose,
the splatter of sun across the banked ravine of a sea of fallen browns,
the fire-bush's burning reds between me and sunlight,
the rustle of leaves from the spooked white-tail,
the barkless sycamore's crisp white against the blue ocean above,
the honk of the flying V headed away from northering winter,
and the aroma of conifers reaching down to pull me up,

...all embed themselves into me like a series of endless surprises in about as a wonderful a manner as I can imagine. I may not know where such things are leading me, but I have come to recognize Who is.

Seems like a great way to start this Thanksgiving week.

UM vs Iowa

 

Another great day with friends at the Big House!  Click pic for more pics....

Culture

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

-- Peter Drucker

Teacher's Voice

The main reason we have dysfunctional education policies in this country is that the teacher’s voice is almost absent from public discourse about how to transform education.

-- Parker Palmer

What You Can't Handle

What you think you can’t handle — might actually be God handing you a gift.

-- Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

Continue Reading more from this post....

A friend shared with me a confession recently that felt a lot like this. We face the seemingly unfaceable. But, when we turn, see a face we've never seen as fully before, right beside us.

Be Strong...and Work

'Be strong, all you people of the land,’ declares the Lord, ‘and work. For I am with you,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt. And my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear.’

-- Haggai 2:4-5

Very interesting connections here between effort and fear. Do we not work at things because we are afraid to? The bridge is the real source of the strength needed to face our fears -- His Spirit. He is the strength we need and we have Him. We can work at things because we have Him right with us...in whatever we do.

...and this seems to apply to everyone (all the people of the land).

Will of God

It's harder to fall out of the will of God than you think...chew on that for a while.

-- Lorraine Green

Himself By Himself is Nothing

Humanity, potential with God, all great knowledge is this, for a man to know that he himself by himself is nothing; and that, whenever he is, he is from God and on account of God.

-- St. Augustine

Clings

To that which your heart clings is your god.

-- Martin Luther

Shining Through

We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time.

-- Thomas Merton

It's whether or not we recognize Him...reminds me of the contradiction of the lines from the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy:

        Though the eyes of sinful man
        Thy glories may not see

If Only We Would Listen

One characteristic of the recent elections is that there seemed to be very little listening going on.  We hear a lot about a divided country.  But what divides us?  ...do we care enough to find out?  Or, are we just increasingly committed to maintaining only what we think.  What keeps us from listening to each other?  Much of the subsequent 'discussion' regarding the election seems to be more about who 'won' than anything else.

This interview with Parker Palmer (by the way, thanks to Jerry McCoy for introducing me to Palmer years ago), therefore, seems relevant:

We need to change our calculus about what makes an action worth taking and get past our obsession with results. Being effective is important, of course. I write books because I want to have an impact. But if the only way we judge an action is by its effectiveness, we will take on smaller and smaller tasks, because they’re the only kind with which we are sure we can get results. I’m not giving up on effectiveness, but it has to be secondary.

If I cling to effectiveness, though, I’m going to die an unhappy man. I’m committed to educational goals more ambitious than getting kids to pass tests, and to political goals a lot bigger than getting people to “tolerate” each other. Teaching a kid to pass a test is a piece of cake compared to educating a child. And tolerating people is a long way from understanding how profoundly interdependent we are. As I say in the new book, the civility we need in politics will not come from watching our tongues but from valuing our differences. Somehow my heart doesn’t beat faster when someone says they’re willing to “tolerate” me!

But when I’m talking with people whose views I regard as wrong but not evil, I need to ask myself: Am I here to win this argument, or am I here to create a relationship? Research shows that when you throw facts at people to refute what they believe, it only hardens their convictions. But if you create a relational container that can hold an ongoing dialogue, it’s more likely that someone will change — and that someone may be you! Failing that, we usually just walk away and revert to talking to people who agree with us. What good is that?

-- Parker Palmer, If Only We Would Listen Interview

Continue Reading -- lots of good things to think about here.

Post-Election Day Prayer

You creator God

       who has ordered us

              in families and communities,

              in clans and tribes,

              in states and nations.

You creator God

       who enact your governance

              in ways overt and

              in ways hidden.

       You exercise your will for

              peace and for justice and for freedom.

We give you thanks for the peaceable order of

   our nation and for the chance of choosing--

      all the manipulative money notwithstanding.

We pray now for new governance

     that your will and purpose may prevail,

     that our leaders may have a sense

        of justice and goodness,

     that we as citizens may care about the

        public face of your purpose.

We pray in the name of Jesus who was executed

     by the authorities.

-- Walter Brueggeman, Prayer for a Privileged People

Election Day Communion

Let’s meet at the same table,
with the same host,
to remember the same things.

We’ll remember that real power in this world — the power to save, to transform, to change — ultimately rests not in political parties or presidents or protests but in the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus.

We’ll remember that, through the Holy Spirit, this power dwells within otherwise ordinary people who as one body continue the mission of Jesus: preaching good news to the poor, freeing the captives, giving sight to the blind, releasing the oppressed, and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:16-21).

We’ll remember that freedom — true freedom — is given by God and is indeed not free. It comes with a cost and it looks like a cross.

We’ll remember our sin and our need to repent.

We’ll remember that the only Christian nation in this world is the Church, a holy nation that crosses all human-made boundaries and borders.

We’ll remember that our passions are best placed within the passion of Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2).

We’ll remember that we do not conform to the patterns of this world, but we are transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2).

We’ll remember that God’s strength is made perfect in weakness.

And we’ll remember the body of Christ as the body of Christ, confessing the ways in which partisan politics has separated us from one another and from God.

-- from http://electiondaycommunion.org/ (thanks for sending and organizing, Jim)

A small gathering from our fellowship gathered for an Election Day Communion. We were grateful for the knowledge that other groups around the country were doing the same.

Phil Keaggy

Click pic to listen to Phil Keaggy!

Only Prayer

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is 'thank you', it will be enough.

-- Meister Eckhart

At one point in my life (well many perhaps) I would have argued that more was needed than this...just a simple 'thank you'. But now, I see the wisdom of this simplicity. A 'thank you' to God is a profound thing, given our more natural tendencies. It takes time for us to realize our true nature, that which was created in the image of God and which seeks His glory through our being.  When we are aligned in this way, gratitude permeates us.

When I awoke this morning, the skies were shrouded in gray. I was a bit disappointed, having awakened with my normal Sunday hope of the woods. But I headed out anyway. And, as I headed into the thick, I noticed an emerging ambiance of light. Above me, the clouds were rolling back like a blanket and sunlight was over-taking the world. I had to stop and admire it.

Spotting across the stream my favorite fire-bushes lining the path with their tiniest little bulbs of red, I continued. I was going a different direction, but turned back their way...I just had to run through them.

Blue sky now mirrored itself on the paralleling stream beside me. I rounded a corner and there...stunning me was the largest red-headed woodpecker I have ever seen. It had to be nearly 15" and the sun now shining behind it lit its red plume like fire. Its size portrayed the beauty of its coat of black and white, further accentuating its brilliant hat. I stopped again.... I recovered and continued and nearly ran into a batch of climbing yellow berries, so replete with the season of fall that no store could have come close to capturing the essence of its garland. As if that weren't enough, the next scene crashed into my sight...nearly two dozen scintillating silhouettes of white swanned effortlessly on a glassy lake before me. I couldn't quite take all this in. I couldn't quite breathe.

...I could only pray 'thank you'.

At First Wake

Faint the blow of wind on leaves
Warm the tang my old bed cover
Darkness quits like tip-toeing thieves
A day begins like any other.

Comes the world to me slowly;
Ears, then nose, eyes then touch:
Fumbling for a hint of holy
But finding forth so little much.
  
Lord, make this wake, this very morning,
Make this wake the Final One…
Turn today into a borning:
Let me sense the world won. 

-- Tim Koshnick

Why Parenting Is More Important Than Schools

A study published earlier this month by researchers at North Carolina State University, Brigham Young University and the University of California-Irvine, for example, finds that parental involvement — checking homework, attending school meetings and events, discussing school activities at home — has a more powerful influence on students’ academic performance than anything...

...research also reveals something else: that parents, of all backgrounds, don’t need to buy expensive educational toys or digital devices for their kids in order to give them an edge. They don’t need to chauffeur their offspring to enrichment classes or test-prep courses. What they need to do with their children is much simpler: talk.

Continue Reading

Habits

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.

-- John Dryden