Speak Today

The point isn't so much that something new has to be said; I' m not so sure there is that much that is really all that new (as the saying goes, "the more things change, the more they stay the same"). The point is, that it is being said, that it needs to be said...that someone in this time and place is saying it.  Speak today...with your life.  ...use words, if you have to.

Human

Great leaders don't see themselves as great; they see themselves as human.

-- Simon Sinek

CT: Lent -- An Emptying For Others

This is the wonderful exchange which, out of his measureless benevolence, he has made with us, that, by his descent to earth, he has prepared an ascent to heaven for us; that, by taking on our mortality, he has conferred his immortality upon us; that, accepting our weakness, he has strengthened us by his power; that, receiving our poverty unto himself, he has transferred his wealth to us; that, taking the weight of our iniquity upon himself (which oppressed us), he has clothed us with his righteousness.

-- John Calvin

That’s good news! Christ’s whole life was lived on behalf of others, a continuous pursuit of others’ wellbeing. And Christ’s fast in the wilderness is a crucial example of that reality. So if we want to imitate his life and his fast to the degree we can, then we should consider fasting on behalf of others—that is, for their benefit and blessing. This is exactly the type of fast Isaiah talks about:

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? 

-- Isaiah 58:6–7

Lent is not just about personal holiness. Nor is it about pursuing simplicity of life for its own sake. Lent also has a remarkable social dimension. As pastor and columnist Chuck B. Colson said, “Lent gives us the opportunity to move towards our neighbor in charity” because it “emphasizes simplicity for the sake of others.” It’s fine and good to give up sweets, alcohol, TV, or whatever you might abstain from. But what if our abstinence reflected our care for others more than our care for ourselves? What if, as Colson suggests, we allocated the savings from our fasting and gave them to the poor and marginalized?

-- Kevin P. Emmert

Hatred and the Holocaust

I heard a fascinating program on the radio this week on hatred and the Holocaust (click here to listen to the program...a segment about a 'skinhead' is particularly good).  Here are some initial comments from the program, which is really worth listening to:

The Holocaust  was not a tsunami, it was a man-made event.

It is far more comforting to imagine it an aberration, something separate from humanity.  What we must avoid, is to look at the Holocaust as some kind of supernatural event, in which we don't have to see it in the human terms of the people who committed it...to capture the horror of what all this means.

Once we treat the perpetrators as human beings, we are faced with the uncomfortable awareness -- are these people fundamentally different than I am?  What would I have done?

-- Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men

Doubt & Certainty

Doubt is an unsettling condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

-- Voltaire

I asked a young lady who she thinks she would rather be around, a 'doubtful' person or a 'certain' person. She said 'doubtful'. I asked her why. She said a doubtful person would probably understand her more.

Collectors

To varying degrees, there may be something within all of us that desires to collect things.  These can certainly be physical things, but they also can to inanimate things.  For example, in addition to collecting things we like, do we also 'collect' our fears?  Whatever it is that we collect, I wonder if the component they have in common has to do with control.  Good and bad things could apply here.

Either way, wouldn't the value of what we collect actually be in our opportunity to give them away?  After all, what good does it do to hold on to things, only for ourselves?

I can give away the goodness I have received, so that others can share in that wealth.  I can also give away my fears, rather than hoard them (as if that helped), not only for my sake, but also for the sake of someone else...who may become more able to let go of theirs.

Whatever we collect, collect to give away.

Holding On

Holding on is easier than letting go.

...depending on what we are holding on to.

Greatest Asset

The greatest asset in any negotiation is patience.

-- Simon Sinek

So, what creates patience? Perhaps more to the point, what creates impatience?

No Computers!

The moment of truth for me came in the spring 2013 semester. I looked out at my visual-communication class and saw a group of six students transfixed by the blue glow of a video on one of their computers, and decided I was done allowing laptops in my large lecture class. "Done" might be putting it mildly. Although I am an engaging lecturer, I could not compete with Facebook and YouTube, and I was tired of trying.

The next semester I told students they would have to take notes on paper. Period.

A study published last year in Psychological Science showed that students who write out notes longhand remember conceptual information better than those who take notes on a computer. "Whereas taking more notes can be beneficial," the article’s abstract reported, "laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning."  Continue....

-- Carol E. Holstead

Awake

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones. And when you have finished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.

-- Victor Hugo

Something We Do Without Thinking

Mens natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them.

-- Confucius

A habit is something we do without thinking. Anyone who’s learned to drive a car gets the impact of habit. You don’t have to stop and think about putting the car in gear after you put the key in the ignition. It’s a mindless action. “Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life, and a significant element of happiness,” says Gretchen Rubin.

A Duke researcher suggested in 2006 that more than 40 percent of our daily actions are performed by habit. When researchers at MIT began exploring the notion of habit in the early 1990s, they found that repeating an action makes it automatic and increases our skill — even as mental activity decreases. Our brains aren’t keen on expending energy. It’s the underlying reason we so often fail at resolutions no matter what time of year we make them. When something takes effort, eventually our motivation wanes and we stop doing it. But our brains excel at turning routines, no matter how complex and effortful (driving a car, for instance), into habits that are effortless.

Developing a habit involves three distinct elements: a cue, a routine and a reward. The cue tells your brain to shift to autopilot. See a stop sign and you automatically step on the brake. No thinking required. The routine is the set of actions or patterns of thinking that are set in motion by the cue. When you see a stop sign, you take your right foot off the gas pedal, shift it to the left and gently depress the brake pedal. The reward is any immediate response that tells your brain you just did a good thing that’s worth repeating. Anything that triggers the reward circuit upstairs reinforces to the brain that you want to repeat the action. We need the reward only while the habit is forming. In driver’s ed, you probably got praised for making a smooth stop. Once a smooth stop became habitual, you no longer needed the reinforcement.

In the beginning, creating a habit will feel like work — perhaps a lot of work. But once ingrained, the habit will require virtually no effort for the rest of your life. Unwanted and outdated habits don’t ever really go away. But they do go dormant when unused, just as a footpath grows over when it’s unused. You can wire new habits over the old ones. Habits are made up of a sequence of events in your brain — thoughts that follow a familiar pathway. Wiring over an old habit is like putting up a detour sign at the point where the cue occurs. You get in the elevator at work and automatically press 3. When you get promoted and move to the sixth floor, you still press 3. So you put up a mental detour sign and send your brain on a different route — you have to think about it a few times before you automatically begin pressing 6. But use a new mental pathway often enough and fairly quickly, it becomes your brain’s default. That’s the beauty of habit. It lets us stop thinking about it.

-- Molly Rose Teuke

How We Lose Our Way

Because we do not rest we lose our way…poisoned by the hypnotic belief that good things come only through unceasing determination and tireless effort, we can never truly rest. And for want of rest our lives are in danger.

-- Wayne Muller

Norms

Roughly 10 percent of the children born to college grads grow up in single-parent households. Nearly 70 percent of children born to high school grads do. In the 1960s or 1970s, college-educated and noncollege-educated families behaved roughly the same. But since then, behavior patterns have ever more sharply diverged. High-school-educated parents dine with their children less than college-educated parents, read to them less, talk to them less, take them to church less, encourage them less and spend less time engaging in developmental activity.

It’s increasingly clear that sympathy is not enough. It’s not only money and better policy that are missing in these circles; it’s norms. The health of society is primarily determined by the habits and virtues of its citizens. In many parts of America there are no minimally agreed upon standards for what it means to be a father. There are no basic codes and rules woven into daily life, which people can absorb unconsciously and follow automatically.  Continue...

-- David Brooks

Serving

Let everyone understand that the real love of God does not consist in tear-shedding...but in serving God by serving those around us, in justice, fortitude of soul, and humility.

-- St. Teresa of Avila

Not Consolation

Love is not consolation, it is light.

-- Simone Weil

Become Human

Our society will really become human as we discover that the strong need the weak, just as the weak need the strong.

-- Jean Vanier

$1.7 Million Templeton Prize Awarded to L’Arche Disability Ministry Founder, Jean Vanier

Can Do Nothing

The Christian life is what you do when you realize that you can do nothing.

-- Dallas Willard

And God is faithful to reveal this to us.

EIEIO!

Somebodies

It seems we all are trying to be somebodies.

...what would happen, if we recognized our commitment to this and acknowledged that we mostly aren't?

Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts

Our schools do amazing things with our children. And they are, in a way, teaching moral standards when they ask students to treat one another humanely and to do their schoolwork with academic integrity. But at the same time, the curriculum sets our children up for doublethink. They are told that there are no moral facts in one breath even as the next tells them how they ought to behave.

We can do better. Our children deserve a consistent intellectual foundation. Facts are things that are true. Opinions are things we believe. Some of our beliefs are true. Others are not. Some of our beliefs are backed by evidence. Others are not. Value claims are like any other claims: either true or false, evidenced or not. The hard work lies not in recognizing that at least some moral claims are true but in carefully thinking through our evidence for which of the many competing moral claims is correct. That’s a hard thing to do. But we can’t sidestep the responsibilities that come with being human just because it’s hard.

That would be wrong.  Continue here...it's worth it.

-- Justin McBrayer

Interior Stability

To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.

Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.

-- Henri Nouwen

Thanks, Veisa, for sharing this with me.

Both

We are both -- already and not yet.

If I Would

I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person.

-- Mark Zuckerberg

Greatly Reduce

In my experience, it is those with the least who are most desperate for God. In fact, having everything one needs can greatly reduce one’s constant dependence on God. I’m rarely tempted to abandon God in loss; I’m most often tempted to abandon God when I’ve everything I want in life.  Continued....

-- A.J. Swoboda

Stop Yelling

It seems increasingly true as a culture that we believe the only way we can be heard anymore is to yell.

The media is either creating some of this or, at the very least, fostering it.  I can hardly pass by a screen anymore where there isn't someone yelling at someone else about their rights.  This will take us to a logically undesirable end.

We must learn to talk again.  To talk to each other, to talk with each other...especially with people who aren't 'just like us'.  And, good talking requires listening...something very hard to do when you're yelling.

I was reminded last night at a local Oratorically Society presentation that there are other ways to effectively communicate, where talking and listening are both honored, simultaneously.  Voice and thought can still co-exist, if not harmoniously, then effectively.

We need to stop yelling, in order to be heard.  To re-learn how to just talk...and listen.

When We're Most Like Ourselves

"We're most like ourselves when we're laughing," said the doctor, "it's very easy to kids as the condition they have, instead of the person they are".  Interesting how laughter and healing are connected.  Worth watching this short video....

Didn't Have Words For

The piano became a safe place for me as a child to figure out stuff that I didn’t have words for.

-- Linford Detweiler

There are things we do, not just because we do them, but because they help us orient ourselves to things we otherwise don't know how to relate to or understand.  For there to be a place or a thing that can make us feel safe enough to do this kind of thing is truly a gift.  Perhaps it is out of such gifts that we become capable of giving to others.

...this certainly seems to be the case for Linford.

Present Circumstances

Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.

-- Nido Qubein

That We Start

It doesn't matter when we start, it doesn't matter where we start, all that matters is that we start.

-- Simon Sinek

Journey Without Maps

Faith is not being sure where you’re going, but going anyway. A journey without maps.

-- Frederick Buechner

CT: 5 Damaging Messages about God’s Presence

We need to be more honest about our spiritual experiences.  

The vast majority of people are not like Mollie. God’s tangibility, his “felt presence,” seems elusive to them.

The dissonance between our “unspoken theology” and our “declared creed” is the playground of spiritual disconnect and pain.

There was generation after generation that experienced God as silent.  Continue...

-- Tony Kriz