Times When I Can't See Well

It strikes me today that extended times of not seeing a way out of things that feel wrong, or even simply uncomfortable, present us with an interesting question - "what does faithfulness look like now?" ...when I can't avoid the lurking presence of impending danger or unresolved hope, what will I do? How will I act now? What will I believe now?  What does it look like, in the face of unlikely near-term change, to continue being faithful?

I face increasing debt, without sign of relief in the years ahead.  What does it mean for me to be faithful, without the prospect of the relief or control I so often seek?

Confirmation Bias

People tend to ignore information that does not fit with their beliefs while they weigh agreeable information more heavily. This is the Confirmation Bias, and it can cause a lot of trouble. Think of it is as the counterpart to the self-fulfilling prophecy. People can often make decisions that fit with their beliefs, and ignore important information or behavior that they just don’t want to see.

-- Darcy Jacobsen

This pattern of thinking is sometimes referred to as confirmation bias, or the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions. The official psychological term for this behavior is “motivated cognition” — a tendency to bias our interpretation of facts to fit a version of the world we wish to believe is true.

-- Pat Heffernan

Civilizations Should Be Judged

Civilizations should be judged not by how they treat people closest to power, but rather how they treat those furthest from power – whether in race, religion, gender, wealth, or class – as well as in time.

-- Larry Brilliant, President of the Skoll Global Threats Fund

Limiting God

So much worth thinking about here...if nothing else, start at 8:42 (1:35 to go). An amazingly succinct description of our addiction to externals, rather than internals.

The more you are preoccuped with forms, the externals, the less you've experienced the internal, the mystery of things; the less you can talk about matters of the heart, what's going on inside.

-- Richard Rohr

Click image to see video...

1st College Graduate

So proud of and happy for Drew, our 1st college graduate. We are mindful of the many who helped make this possible, an opportunity that not all have.

A couple of lines from a prayer offered at baccalaureate sum it up well:

Your eternal goodness
  Our unending gratitude

Why is Health Care Expensive?

I heard a story the other day that helped to frame a problem in the public debate on the cost of healthcare. As healthcare costs soar, there is a pervasive belief that the cost of healthcare is a result of profiteering companies or simply inflation. This belief goes counter to my personal experience in the highly competitive medical device supply business. Costs are and have been driven relentlessly down in all categories, so what is the disconnect? Perhaps we should get to the story...

The patient in question was female, age 93. The patient preconditions included obesity with hypertension, and diabetes. In addition to the significant complicating factors, the patient cannot walk from one side of her room to the other due to knee damage. A knee replacement is required to fully repair the damaged knee. What are our choices?

...he hospital chose to do the procedure. The patient ended up in ICU for a month after the procedure. Imagine the cost. A $25,000 knee replacement, plus a month in the ICU with significant rehab. Additionally, the patient came close to perishing in the effort. The final bill was undoubtedly more than $200,000, which allowed her to walk from one side of the room to the other. The adjustments caused by this new found freedom then stressed the other knee causing the same failure, and a return to the bed. In effect, medicare had just purchased the patient a house that she cannot live in.  Continue here....

-- Laurence Sampson

Day care costs more than college in 31 states

College costs loom large in the parental mind. According to a 2013 report by Sallie Mae, half of parents are putting away money for their kids' education. Those who aren't are fretting about it, saying that they feel "frustrated," "overwhelmed" and "annoyed" when they think about college savings. But most parents will deal with an even larger kid-related expense long before college, and it's a cost that very few of them are as prepared for. That expense is day care.

A report last fall by Child Care Aware America, a national organization of child-care resource and referral agencies, found that the annual cost of day care for an infant exceeds the average cost of in-state tuition and fees at public colleges in 31 states.  Continue here....

-- Christopher Ingraham

Produce Prices Pop

Grocery shoppers may soon need more green in their wallets to afford their next salad.  The cost of fresh produce is poised to jump in the coming months as a three-year drought in California shows few signs of abating, according to an Arizona State University study set to be released Wednesday.

The study found a head of lettuce could increase in price as much as 62 cents to $2.44; avocado prices could rise...continue here.

Earth Day 2014 - Food for Thought

It's Earth Day.

Paleoanthropologists suggest that some 50% of our Stone Age ancestors’ calories came from plants. Given that animal foods are generally much more energy dense than plant foods, a diet of 50% plant calories is, by volume, still a diet of mostly plants.

Human health is moot on an uninhabitable Earth. Living well requires a hospitable planet on which to do the living. If I do have a bias about healthful eating, it’s that our health cannot and should not be achieved at the expense of the Earth. Whatever the arguments for mostly meat-based diets, for instance, they start to fall apart rather quickly in a world of over 7 billion of us.

We all have common reason to do just that; namely, the common ground of our home planet. The environmental, ecological, and ethical costs of preferential meat consumption are all very high for a population of more than 7 billion. The water expenditure alone makes the practice dubious, if not disastrous, in an increasingly thirsty world.

-- David L. Katz, MD, MPH

Continue reading....

He's Alive - Con't

Easter Con't - He's Alive!

Easter: The Mercy of a Living Hope

I desire to please the Lord.

When I was younger, I spent more time consciously trying to do this...think of how I could please the Lord.  As I have grown older, I have realized that my capacity to displease Him is so much greater than my capacity to please to Him.  My demand for things 'to work' and my petulance of self-protection are so near the surface of my being, that I am amazed at how un-far I have come.  When I compare (an unhelpful thing to do, by the way) these incapable-of-overcomings against the suffering that the saints I read about have endured, I shrink back from even the possibility of pleasing the Lord.

I suppose I have stopped trying (at least in the same ways)...to please Him.  Why, though, do I want to?  If I'm honest, I think there is a deeper motive.  The deeper motive of me, even in my trying to please Him, is a desire to just be found in Him.  The scarcity of my ability to please Him leaves me with a daunting question; will I be found in Him at all?

Will I?

It depends.  It depends on whom I trust.  Me, or Him?  ...because it is right at this moment that I have either forgotten the heart of the gospel or am ready to re-discover it and receive it again.

I discover again this reminder; that my being found in Him, or pleasing Him, is not based on much of anything that has to do with me.  For, it is Christ, in His great mercy, who has re-birthed me to a new and living hope...not because of any  capacity I have to please Him.  I disgard mercy, when I don't see myself as Barabbas.  But, He was merciful to me before I even had a notion of pleasing Him.  He was merciful to me, while I was still hating Him, while still being lost in the pursuit of my own things.

This is why we come to the Lord's Table, why we come to Easter year after year.  To remember how things really worked; how they continue to work.  That it was and is His mercy that sets us free...not our striving.  We come to this table to see again the simplicity of we need to remain alive and to be found in Him.

I do desire to please the Lord.  But, not so that I can be found in Him.  He already took care of that...before I was even interested.  May all the earth rejoice at the hope we do have because of the mercy of our Great Lord.



Click here for the lyrics.

Dark...of our Striving

Lord, save us from the dark
  Of our striving

-- Fernando Ortega, "Come, Oh Redeemer, Come"

These words struck a cord with me this week as I breathed them in and out; there is something that seems very connected between darkness and our striving.  We need more freedom, than we do of effort.  Is it, in fact, our striving that keeps in the dark a lot of the time?

When I consider this day, in the sequence of 'passion' week years ago, I wonder how we are not like living on a Saturday...after something dashing, in terms of our hopes, and before the knowledge and wonder of Easter Sunday.  We often return to our own striving.  But, what would it have been like today, that Saturday, for the once followers of a crucified Christ.  No longer with hope, no longer with the prospect of peace.  Bewildered.  Disappointed.  Duped?  Crushed.  ...with no striving left within us.

Could we even have prayed such a prayer anymore, asking our Redeemer to come?  Our hopes were pinned to Jesus and now he was dead -- no light now at all, just darkness.  Are you yet saving us...from our striving?

Darkness Is Crucial

Everything incubates in darkness. And I knew that the darkness in which I found myself was a holy dark.

Whenever new life grows and emerges, darkness is crucial to the process.  Whether it's the caterpillar in the chrysalis, the seed in the ground, the child in the womb or the True Self in the soul, there’s always a time of waiting in the dark.    

-- Sue Monk Kidd

Seems fitting for a day like today..."Good Friday".

Loss of All Confidence

Just as the sinner's despair of any hope from himself is the first prerequisite of a sound conversion, so the loss of all confidence in himself as the first essential in the believers growth in grace.

-- A.W. Pink

Act On It...Internally

When a truth of God is brought home to your soul, never allow it to pass without acting on it internally in your will, not necessarily exteriorly in your physical life. Record it with ink and with blood. Work it into your life. The weakest saint who transacts business with Jesus Christ is liberated the second he acts and God's almighty power is available on his behalf.

-- Oswald Chambers

I really like how my friend, Dawn, puts this here.  The goal simply is not to transact with life on our own, or even to try to use God to make our lives work better.  The goal is to learn to live with God...internally.

I so need God, not just for my survival (though, I need that, too), but for the health of my very being.  I need to continue to learn to 'transact' with Him; to believe in Him; to walk with Him, to talk with Him, to give myself to Him...including the insignificant and petty details of my life.  This is my only path to living liberated and with power.

Tax Day - How Washington Spends Your Taxes

Broadly speaking, for every dollar you pay in federal income taxes, about half goes to military spending (27%) and spending on federal health programs (22.7%). The latter covers everything from Medicare and Medicaid to the Children's Health Insurance Program.

Continue reading here.

Hasty and Superficial

It is because of the hasty and superficial conversation with God that the sense of sin is so weak and that no motives have power to help you to hate and flee from sin as you should.

-- A.W. Tozer

We still don't like to talk about our sin, especially our own. Statements spoken, or just thought, like "Can't we just move on?" or "What can we really do much about anyway?" produce the hastiness referenced above. This particular week, passion week, I want to acknowledge more of what all the passion was for...serious problems with me. I am the problem; my sin is the problem. I have created and contributed to the mess of things.

Only resurrection power can solve for the problem of me.  But, my oh my, what power it is!

On Palm Sunday, Jesus Rides into the Perfect Storm

The crowd went wild as they got nearer. This was the moment they'd been waiting for. All the old songs came flooding back, and they were singing, chanting, cheering and laughing. At last, their dreams were going to come true. But in the middle of it all, their leader wasn't singing. He was in tears. Yes, their dreams were indeed coming true. But not in the way they had imagined.

He was not the king they expected...continue reading.

-- N.T. Wright

маленькая девочка дирижирует хором))

...speaking of the human spirit - how young doth it develop:

We Can Risk

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

-- E.E. Cummings

Greatest Killers

Fear and self-doubt are the greatest killers of personal genius.

-- Ziad K. Abdelnour

Things You Believe

Your attitudes came from actions that led to observations that led to explanations that led to beliefs. Your actions tend to chisel away at the raw marble of your persona, carving into being the self you experience from day to day. It doesn’t feel that way, though. To conscious experience, it feels as if you were the one holding the chisel, motivated by existing thoughts and beliefs. It feels as though the person wearing your pants performed actions consistent with your established character, yet there is plenty of research suggesting otherwise. The things you do often create the things you believe.

-- Maria Popova

Continue reading....

Grit

Grit is the disposition to pursue very long-term goals with passion and perseverance. And I want to emphasize the stamina quality of grit. Grit is sticking with things over the long term and then working very hard at it.

Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

So far, the best idea I’ve heard about building grit in kids is something called growth mindset. This idea is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed. That it can change with your effort. Research has shown that when kids read and learn about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they’re much more likely to persevere when they fail because they don’t believe that failure is a permanent condition.  

-- Angela Duckworth

Continue reading....

Change

People do not naturally resist change. They resist the pain of change. They resist the fear of the unknown. The brain is naturally going to seek, be curious, explore, and do new things. It’s how the brain thrives. But to do that, you have to feel safe. When you feel safe enough, then you go out and explore.

-- George Kohlrieser

Worry & Prayer

So it's searchable:

Worry just leaves your wheels spinning
It's prayer that puts your life into drive.

-- Ann Voskamp

Submit

"Lord, today I submit to you."

Some days, I feel more like saying, "I want to submit to you today", because I'm not really sure how committed I am to the first version.  It may be splitting hairs; but, it may not.

Either way, a thought drifted into my mind about 30 minutes later.  It had to do with how little others seem to care about me, proven by something I would desire from them, that rarely happens.  Deciding how far to 'run with' this thought, I was reminded of my earlier prayer.  "Lord, I want to submit to You today", was being afforded an opportunity.  Would I submit...right now?  Would I be willing to believe, that God will meet my needs, when others don't or can't?  Or, would I perpetuate the thought that I need something from others, that I deserve something from others, that I will pursue getting it from them, one way or another?

I need to submit such things to God.  If I don't, I end up reaching for the all-too-handy tools of violence (however masked that violence may be) to require others to give me what I need (want).

"Lord, today I submit to you."

Dualism & Identity

You can't be happy with a dualistic mind.

-- Richard Rohr

Click image to see video...

It's Not The Past

It isn't the past which holds us back, it's the future; and how we undermine it, today.

-- Viktor E. Frankl

Everything At Once

Time was invented so that you don’t have to do everything at once.

-- David Kelley, Chairman and founder of IDEO

World on the Move

Fascinating depiction of migration flows among regions of the world...click pic (or here) to rotate through 5-year patterns.

The Brain Cannot Be Bullied

Remember that the brain cannot be bullied into becoming effective. It must be respected and nurtured. Focus is important — yet you must also offer rest. Identify those activities that accomplish this, and build them into your day.

-- Dr. Marla Gottschalk