Always Right

The time is always right to do what is right.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

...seems especially appropriate right now, given the status of unrest in places like Baltimore.

But, the right thing does require some deeper consideration.  For example, there is something right that is needed in this moment...from the community, its citizens, its leadership, its police.  However, this isn't happening in a vacuum, so there is something right that needed to be considered before now, too.  What are the more significant contributing factors, that create the context for the situations we are now facing?

I heard a comment as a segment of a radio program was ending.  It went something like this: police cannot control society by themselves.  Society and police need to work together to control society.

It is time....

Breaking Things Down A Bit

There are many issues tangled up in the on-going discussion / debates about homosexuality and marriage.  We see the fabric of things, but also have to acknowledge that there are many threads to it.  Each thread is both significant and insignificant, at the same time.  But, nonetheless, we have a fabric.   Here are some of the threads, it seems to me:

• What is marriage?
• Who defines it...society, government, religion?
• How are 'rights' involved, from a civic perspective?
• Where has governance, based on definitions / assumptions on the first question(s), created the problems we see now in the last question (ex, if the societal rights / benefits target a narrow definition of marriage than society now wants, where does that leave us...morality aside?)
• What about sexuality?  Our perspectives on this have influenced our assumptions / definitions of marriage (as an institution...and, likely, otherwise).
• How dynamic is our sexuality (is it only hard-coded or are there other factors involved, too?)?
• How do we determine what we believe about what is constant and what isn't...from a religious, cultural, or societal perspective?

Click here for one summary of the Supreme Court discussion yesterday....

I get the feeling there are too many threads, than any one of us can keep good track of.  Life is both science and mystery.  Is the more significant / helpful question something like, how do we live (what is our disposition?) with things we don't fully (or even largely) understand?  What are we afraid of?  What do we turn to, in an effort to calm our fears?  

Why I Haven't Spoken Out on Gay Marriage--till Now

We can’t control our passions (our desires), but we do control our actions. Today we think of sexual desires as mandating behavior; we assume these desires must be obeyed. But for most of history people have thought that this desire should be directed and controlled. It’s not the case that heterosexuals can have unlimited sex, but gays aren’t allowed. Not every straight person gets married. Not everyone’s marriage works out. Some spouses become sick in mind or body, and sex is no longer a possibility. The celibate path, down through history, is much more crowded with straights than gays, simply because of their numbers in the general population. Advertising pushes sex at us so relentlessly that it’s hard to believe, but you actually can live without it.

Bob Dylan, of all people, put it forcefully in his March 2015 interview in AARP Magazine. He was talking about his new album of classic American love songs, and the interviewer asked if young listeners would find them “corny.” He said, “These songs are songs of great virtue. That’s what they are. People’s lives today are filled with vice and the trappings of it. … We don’t see the people that vice destroys. We just see the glamor of it.” We see the beautiful and enviable young people partying; we don’t see the 50 or 60 or 70-year-old whom no one wants anymore.

By the same token, the disintegration of community is hard on people who want to live by the old morality. These days, living without a romantic partner appears to be the same thing as living without love. But life without sex didn’t always mean life without love, for love used to come from many other sources. Families were less nuclear; leftover cousins and widows still had a place. Even if you didn’t have a romantic partner, you still had friends and family who felt you had a real claim on their help and love. Communities were closer. Neighbors kept an eye on each other. (That last was an early casualty of the sexual revolution, for we started to think neighbors should keep their eyes to themselves.)

Same-sex, non-sexual love is unlike romantic love in that it, obviously, doesn’t include a sexual component, but it can be every bit as strong. It is to our loss that the concept of nonsexual friendship love has largely vanished. Those bonds between men and men, and between women and women, run strong and deep, and are foundational to society. Under the traditional morality, it was never expected that people would live without love, or live all alone. Today, loneliness is epidemic. 

-- Frederica Mathewes-Green

A lot to consider; I would recommend reading the full post here...especially in light today's Supreme Court case(s).

Sexuality: Total Selves

We need to realize that sexuality involves our total selves – mind, body, emotions, and spirit. God created us that way, and sexuality is a powerful force in our lives for good or for evil.

--  Cecil Murphey, Not Quite Healed

CT: Our Bodies Were Made for You

It’s not easy to live as embodied creatures today (to say nothing of previous eras). All too often, human bodies are treated (by others, and even ourselves) as commodities or instruments of sexual satisfaction. They are bought and sold, mutilated by others, and hit with self-inflicted harms. Yet Moll reminds us how high a privilege it is to dwell in flesh. “Our bodies, the Bible says, are the temples of God—the place where God lives.”

The spiritual life can seem like an endless, futile attempt to overcome the very fact that we have bodies. But Moll is deeply reassuring. He encourages us to recognize, celebrate, and strengthen the body–soul connections that are part of God’s good design. Pain breaks us open, allowing us to become kinder and more generous toward others who suffer and preparing us to recognize God’s suffering in the person of Christ.

We can choose to discipline our lives, both body and spirit, with worship, prayer, and service. These practices put our bodies and souls on the same page, supplying “the routines necessary to train our bodies, and thus our minds as well, to follow after Jesus.”

In societies influenced by the artificial mind–body divide, spiritual pursuits might enliven the heart while seeming to leave the body untouched. The best the body can do, from this perspective, is to avoid sin. Its only job is to not interfere with the soul’s progression toward heaven. What Your Body Knows About God is just the right antidote to this platonic way of thinking.

“Spirit and flesh, it turns out, are intimately intertwined,” writes Moll. “And understanding how things work—how our bodies are designed to commune with God—can enhance our faith and give us a fuller picture of God’s work in the world and in our lives. As we connect with God and invite others to join this life of prayer, worship, community, and service,” writes Moll, “we align our biological and spiritual selves with the Creator of the universe and the most fundamental guide for life—loving God and loving others.”  Continue here....

-- Jenell Williams Paris, a review of Rob Moll's book, What Your Body Knows About God

B&W

I have often wondered what makes black & white photographs so compelling.  I'm not claiming to have figured it out, but I think B&W appeals more to our sense of imagination, than color does.  Color answers what we wonder about in B&W photographs; it removes the mystery of what it might really be.  B & W is real, but something has been removed...obviously, the color.  And this leaves us open a bit, to wonder more...about something.

Take, for example, the two photos above; which is more compelling to look at?  Perhaps the subtleties of photographic content bears the answer, but I wonder about the simple, intangible effects of B&W.  Somehow (that professionals could likely easily explain), there is something that draws you more in the B&W photo.

Or, these samples...from here:

Self-Coaching

I have become more interested in self-coaching lately.  There are things that I want to do and things I don't want to do.  I need to hear myself repeat these things...to coach myself accordingly.

Perhaps this feels helpful as a way of lifting certain things more into my focus...in a world where more and more information competes for my attention.

Where He Can't

All coaching is, is taking a player where he can’t take himself.

-- Bill McCartney

Reserves

You are usually judged by the team on the way you treat your reserves.

-- Lee Corso

Initiate

Is there a greater muscle to develop than the one it takes to learn to initiate?  

If there is, it may be the one required to learn to wait.  But, learning to initiate is crucial for our growth.

More Real

The more you engage with life, the more real it will become to you and the more real you will become.

To underscore the point, a counter-thought brings it into focus: the less engaged you are with life, the less real you will be.

Atheism

Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that is has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark.

-- C.S. Lewis

Moral and Spiritual Value

I propose to create a Civilian Conservation Corps to be used in simple work...More important, however, than the material gains will be the moral and spiritual value of such work.

-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

In less than 10 years, the Civilian Conservation Corps built more than 800 parks and planted nearly 3 billion trees nationwide. I, for one, am grateful for spaces like these...and the values they both represent and transfer.  More here....

UN-

We have to go through periods of UN.

Periods of  UN-clarity, UN-feeling-great, UN-clear, UN-able, UN-sure, etc. provide us with opportunity to understand that something is still going on, even when we don't have data to confirm that it is. As we get older and deplete our ability to 'make things happen', we have to increasingly believe this to be true (although, the sooner we learn this, the better...because if affects how we treat others).  We can only really believe this, though, through the experience of it...through the personal experience of UN- in our lives.

UN- is necessary.  Important even.

Real Thing

So it's searchable:

Character is like a tree
and reputation is like a shadow.
The shadow is what we think of it;
the tree is the real thing.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Pain and Disruption

We need pain and disruption.

We really do. They re-orient our perspectives.

Blocked

Perhaps what is needed most, when you can't get to where you're trying to go, is to stay where you are.

Maybe someone where you are needs you...to be present with them, rather than have you hurry on to your destination.  If you're blocked, stay a while.  Look around, and see who may be near you.

Poverty of Attention

Time starvation is both a function of how we perceive it and also founded in reality. People on average take in 5 times more information today than they did 15 or 20 years ago. And it takes time to absorb all this information. There was an observation made that information consumes attention. So, a wealth of information means a poverty of attention. That’s just the fact of life today.

That’s why I feel it’s so important for everyone—whether you’re a leader or not—to be strong about the boundaries of your attention. Do not become seduced by the wealth of information around you; get done now what you need to get done, and only pay attention to what’s relevant to that.  Continue...

-- Daniel Goleman

Lack of Faith

And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.

-- Matthew 13:58

When is this happening to me?

Does Sexual Orientation Equal Identity?

The Plight of Poor Phineas

A most remarkable story:

Phineas had earned his reputation as “the most efficient and capable foreman” in the company. The discipline and passion he brought to the site ensured projects were completed on time, and the social niceties he espoused made him a favorite with the men he supervised. A “shrewd, smart business man,” he walked his talk, avoided the alluring depravity of the local saloon, and got along famously with everyone he met.

The assistant failed to place sand in the hole and the scrape of Phineas’ iron against the rock perimeter of the crevice created a spark big enough to ignite the unprotected powder at the bottom. The raw force of the explosion launched Phineas’ tamping iron like a rocket. It pierced his face below his left eye and continued upward through the top of his head and beyond. The iron finally settled in the weeds 100 feet from the spot where Phineas stood.

Phineas’ loyal crew rushed to his side and looked into his eyes for any sign of life. They laughed anxiously as Phineas peered up at them and groaned, “I think I’m going to need to see Dr. Harlow.” His sense of humor still intact, Phineas’ men loaded him into an ox cart to take him to town.

"The effect of the injury appears to have been the destruction of the equilibrium between his intellectual faculties and the animal propensities. He was now capricious, fitful, irreverent, impatient of restraint, vacillating…His physical recovery was complete, but those who knew him as a shrewd, smart, energetic, persistent business man, recognized the change in mental character. The balance of his mind was gone."  Continue here....

-- Travis Bradberry

Scorn

Why is it from the church, that people seem to feel the most scorn?

Or, is the church, just a another place from which they feel it?

Ignoring

Ignoring is not the path to redeeming.

-- Wesley Hill by way of 'Jenna', Washed and Waiting

Sum Of The Five

They say that we are the sum of the five people we spend the most time with. I think that’s absolutely true. And that fact makes me all the more committed to friendship, to life together, to becoming the woman I want to be because these guides are showing me the way. The birthday girl, eight years younger than me, was a guide to me that morning. I want to be honest, passionate, and unwilling to begin another decade tangled up in anxiety and fear. The other faces around the table are guides to me: teaching me how to pray, how to forgive myself, how to practice Sabbath and dwell deeply with God through prayer.  Continue....

-- Shauna Niequist

The Fam - Easter '15

One of the joys of Easter!

Easter: Day of Days!

Easter is a day to put everything upside down and inside out.

...once more, they are told not to be afraid (v 5). What is there to be afraid of, if Easter has dealt with the greatest monster of all, death itself? Why should you be afraid of anything, if Jesus has been raised from the dead, if the old world has cracked open and a new world has been born?

Easter always looks outwards. From the very start, the news that Jesus is risen contains a command: 'Go!' Go, first to Galilee; go back to where it began, back to your roots to meet the risen Jesus there and watch him transform everything, including your oldest memories. And, as you obey the command of the angel, Jesus himself may perhaps meet you in person (v 9). Take hold of him. Worship him. This is his day, the Day of Days. Make it yours, too.

-- N.T. Wright, Matthew 28

We are being forever invited to something much more than the temptation surrounding us now...because HE IS ALIVE afterall!

Holy Saturday

Christians need to observe a Holy Saturday moment. On Holy Saturday, there is nothing you can do except wait.

We aren't sure why we've got to this place, why things aren't going as we wanted or planned, and the life seems to have drained out of it all. That's a Holy Saturday moment. Do what has to be done, and wait for God to act in his own way and his own time.

-- N.T. Wright

Good Friday

Overwhelmed with horror at what we are seeing, we join the crowds as they hurry along behind the soldiers with their prisoner. Forget the calm tableau of so many historic paintings of the scene, with Mary and John standing at a discreet distance from the foot of Jesus' cross. In the Middle East, then as now, there were always more people in the crowd than would fit into the small streets, always people pushing and shoving. The soldiers might keep people at arm's length, but not much more. There were probably fifty people within ten feet of Jesus, jostling, shouting, jeering, pointing, spitting. Some weeping.

You could tell the story a thousand different ways, and they'd all be true. Jesus' followers quickly came to tell it in such a way as to bring out what Jesus himself had been trying to say all along, and what Matthew has been trying to tell us through- out his gospel: this is the event through which Jesus became king. King of the Jews. King of the world.

To see how Matthew has done this, you have to imagine yourself, in that crowd, as someone who has prayed and sung the Psalms all your life. The Psalms turn the hard lumps of Israel's story and hopes into liquid poetry, flowing along like a great river, carrying you with it. And as you stand at the foot of the cross, you have a nightmarish sequence of flashbacks, of déjà vu moments, watching Israel's hopes and dreams come to life, or rather to death, in front of your eyes. Bits and pieces of the Psalms, acted out right there. Jesus is offered sour wine to drink. They cast lots for his clothes. They hail him as 'king of the Jews'. They mock him with his own words. And, after three hours of darkness, Jesus screams out the words that begin the Psalm (22) where some of those things happen: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' The fulfilment has come, and it is a moment of utter terror and hopelessness. It is as though the sun were to rise one day and it would be a black sun, bringing a darkness deeper than the night itself.

As you stand there in this strange, powerful mixture of recognition and horror, bring bit by bit into the picture the stories on which you have lived. Bring the hopes you had when you were young. Bring the bright vision of family life, of success in sport or work or art, the dreams of exciting adventures in far-off places. Bring the joy of seeing a new baby, full of promise and possibility. Bring the longings of your heart. They are all fulfilled here, though not in the way you imagined. This is the way God fulfilled the dreams of his people. This is how the coming king would overcome all his enemies.

Or bring the fears and sorrows you had when you were young. The terror of violence, perhaps at home. The shame of failure at school, of rejection by friends. The nasty comments that hurt you then and hurt you still. The terrible moment when you realized a wonderful relationship had come to an end. The sudden, meaningless death of someone you loved very much. They are all fulfilled here, too. God has taken them upon himself, in the person of his Son. This is the earthquake moment, the darkness-at-noon moment, the moment of terror and sudden faith, as even the hard-boiled Roman soldier blurts out at the end. (Don't forget that 'Son of God' was a regular title claimed by Caesar, his boss.)

But then bring the hopes and sorrows of the world. Bring the millions who are homeless because of flood or famine. Bring the children orphaned by AIDS or war. Bring the politicians who begin by longing for justice and end up hoping for bribes. Bring the beautiful and fragile earth on which we live. Think of God's dreams for his creation, and God's sorrow at its ruin.

As we stand there by the cross, let the shouting and pushing and the angry faces fade away for a moment, and look at the slumped head of Jesus. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in him, here on the cross. God chose Israel to be his way of rescuing the world. God sent Jesus to be his way of rescuing Israel. Jesus went to the cross to fulfil that double mission. His cross, planted in the middle of the jostling, uncomprehending, mocking world of his day and ours, stands as the symbol of a victory unlike any other. A love unlike any other. A God unlike any other.

-- N.T. Wright, on Matthew 27:33-56

Challenge

Can anyone grow, without challenge?

Exercise Makes You Smarter

"Exercise," she writes in this New York Times article, "...does more to bolster thinking than thinking does."

-- Gretchen Reynolds, The First 20 Minutes