Blasphemous Assault

One reason why people are uncomfortable with tears and the sight of suffering is that it is a blasphemous assault on their precariously maintained American spirituality of the pursuit of happiness.  They want to avoid evidence that things are not right with the world as it is -- with Jesus, without love, without faith...It is a lot easier to keep the American faith if they don't have to look into the face of suffering....

So learning the language of lament is not only necessary to restore Christian dignity to suffering and repentance and death; it is necessary to provide a Christian witness to a world that has no language for and is therefore oblivious to the glories of wilderness and the cross.

-- Eugene Peterson

Makenzie's friend, Rylei, shared this with us after church last week...where we talking about the role of suffering in our lives.

The Anxieties of Impotence

The Republican establishment thinks the grass roots have the power but the grass roots think the reverse. The unions think the corporations have the power but the corporations think the start-ups do. Regulators think Wall Street has the power but Wall Street thinks the regulators do.  

In a different way, the American election has been perverted by feelings of powerlessness. 

Plagued by the anxiety of impotence many voters are drawn to leaders who pretend that our problems could be solved by defeating some villain. Donald Trump says stupid elites are the problem. Ted Cruz says it’s the Washington cartel. Bernie Sanders says it’s Wall Street.  Continue here...

-- David Brooks

As a society, we are beset by our nearly universal sense of powerlessness.  So, these days (by our politicians), we seem entranced by those who are trying to persuade us that they can do something about it.  But, we are distracted...by an incomplete, inaccurate sense of what real power is.  What will it take for us to rediscover real power?

Mutation

My 'Friday poem' selection for the week -- "Sonnet -- Mutation":

They talk of short-lived pleasure—be it so—
Pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain
Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go.
The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;
And after dreams of horror, comes again
The welcome morning with its rays of peace.
Oblivion, softly wiping out the stain,
Makes the strong secret pangs of shame to cease:
Remorse is virtue’s root; its fair increase
Are fruits of innocence and blessedness:
Thus joy, o’erborne and bound, doth still release
His young limbs from the chains that round him press.
Weep not that the world changes—did it keep
A stable changeless state, ’twere cause indeed to weep.

-- William Cullen Bryant

Is Right

Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right.

-- Ezra Taft Benson

I Have Noticed: What I Offer

I have noticed...that I temper what I offer of myself to others based on how I sense it will be received. I am still learning how to offer what I feel led to offer without a heavy filter of how it will be received.

Hatred of Being Alone

All men’s misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.

-- Jean de la Bruyere

Among other things, I'm pondering what the motivation of urgency is?

Discover Our Soul

It is through weakness and vulnerability that most of us learn empathy and compassion and discover our soul.

-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Older

Older, more experienced Christians often have greater troubles, temptations, and difficulties in the world. God has new work for them to do. He now plans that all the graces they have, be used in new and harder ways. They may not find their spiritual desires to be as strong as before or have such delight in spiritual duties as they had before. Because of this, they feel that grace has dried up in them. They do not know where they are or what they are.  But in spite of all this, the real work of sanctification is still thriving in them, and the Holy Spirit is still working effectively in them. God is faithful. Therefore, let us cling to our hope without wavering.

-- John Owen

My father faces heart surgery tomorrow. I wonder what he would say with regard to faith, in the face of the difficulties of aging.  My guess is, from what I have heard him say, that God is indeed faithful.  It strikes me that our sense of faith increases, as our weaknesses increase with age.

When I'm Gone

Nothing like the combination of a brilliant winter morning and a really good cry...the gripping story of a fight with cancer at This Life I Live.

Limitations

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week -- "Limitations":

The subtlest strain a great musician weaves,
Cannot attain in rhythmic harmony
To music in his soul. May it not be
Celestial lyres send hints to him? He grieves
That half the sweetness of the song, he leaves
Unheard in the transition. Thus do we
Yearn to translate the wondrous majesty
Of some rare mood, when the rapt soul receives
A vision exquisite. Yet who can match
The sunset’s iridescent hues? Who sing
The skylark’s ecstasy so seraph-fine?
We struggle vainly, still we fain would catch
Such rifts amid life’s shadows, for they bring
Glimpses ineffable of things divine.

-- Henrietta Cordelia Ray

Winter

I learned long ago that winter will drive you crazy until you get out into it — and I mean “winter” both literally and metaphorically.

-- Parker Palmer

I Used To Think: Self-Defense

I used to think...that I needed to defend myself.  Now I know that God will defend whatever really needs defended in me.

Silence

There can be such a sacred beauty to silence.

We sat for a few moments in church on Sunday in prayerful silence; a pondering of the soul with God.  It seemed like time stood still.  The normal lurking of awkwardness was arrested and I wished it could have gone on forever.

MLK Day: Charles Person

I have decided to stick with love, hate is too great a burden to bear.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are so grateful for the opportunity to hear and meet Freedom-Rider Charles Person today.  His sacrifice years ago is still making a difference.

It is easy to enjoy someone famous.  It is harder to be the kind of person that Charles was and continues to be.  What will I yet stand for?  How will I do so?

On Worry

A great many people do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, our jokes, and the birds’ song and the frosty sunrise.

-- C.S. Lewis, from The Collected Letters, Volume II, Compiled in Words to Live By

Interview With A Toddler

Rejection

Rejection has a powerful grip on us.
It so easily slays us.
It is unyielding in its pursuit of us.
Its threat is ever-present,
even if only in a lurking way.

We are so in need of acceptance.
We will demand it, if needed.
We, ourselves, will even reject the ungiver of it.
We will use the very thing
that hurts us so.

Stop Looking

Sometimes, in order to find something, you have to stop looking for it.

Do Not Handicap

So it's searchable:

Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.

-- Robert Heinlein

I Have Noticed: Relationships

I have noticed...that I need to put myself in and pursue relationships with people.

I seem to stop growing when I choose not to.

You're Right

Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.

-- Henry Ford

Comforters

God does not comfort us to make us comfortable only, but to make us comforters.

-- John Henry Jowett


Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

-- Luke 6:38

Angela Merkel

See story here....

What informs such character, such compassion?  I continue to wonder if one can only understand poverty, if one has experienced it.  Poverty takes on many forms, so it's not that our opportunities to embrace it are limited.

So it's searchable:

I'm surprised at how faint-hearted we sometimes are, and how quickly we lose courage.

-- Angela Merkel

Winter Leafage

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week -- "Winter Leafage":

Each year I mark one lone outstanding tree,
Clad in its robings of the summer past,
Dry, wan, and shivering in the wintry blast.
It will not pay the season’s rightful fee,—
It will not set its frost-burnt leafage free;
But like some palsied miser all aghast,
Who hoards his sordid treasure to the last,
It sighs, it moans, it sings in eldritch glee.
A foolish tree, to dote on summers gone;
A faithless tree, that never feels how spring
Creeps up the world to make a leafy dawn,
And recompense for all despoilment bring!
Oh, let me not, heyday and youth withdrawn,
With failing hands to their vain semblance cling!

-- Edith Matilda Thomas

I Used To Think: My Weakness

I used to think...that you needed to be strong to help carry things for people. Now I know that we often are able to help others the most by acknowledging our weaknesses.

Choices Reflect

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

-- Nelson Mandela

I Have Noticed: A Recoiling

I have noticed...that I tend to recoil when personalities get 'large'.

My withdrawal, veiled as it may be, perhaps is an attempt to avoid something -- an association?  A co-opting?  A sense of something even in myself that I disdain when I join that kind of competition for attention.

Weren't Actual Decisions

One paper published by a Duke University researcher in 2006 found that more than 40 percent of the actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits.

-- Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit

I'm thinking about my habits, and what I want them to be in a new year.  I going to go for one; one habit I want to change this year -- to stop doing something, to start doing something....

Slow Process

In a world addicted to 'fast', here's simple truth about 'slow':

TO KEITH MANSHIP: On the slow process of being more in Christ; and on doing one’s duty, especially the duty to enjoy.

You state the problem clearly, and the fact that you can do so really shows that you are very much on the right road. Many don’t even get so far.

The whole problem of our life was neatly expressed by John the Baptist when he said (John, chap 3, v. 30) ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’ This you have realised. But you are expecting it to happen suddenly: and also expecting that you should be clearly aware when it does. But neither of these is usual. We are doing well enough if the slow process of being more in Christ and less in ourselves has made a decent beginning in a long life (it will be completed only in the next world). Nor can we observe it happening. All our reports on ourselves are unbelievable, even in worldly matters (no one really hears his own voice as others do, or sees his own face). Much more in spiritual matters. God sees us, and we don’t see ourselves. And by trying too hard to do so, we only get the fidgets and become either too complacent or too much the other way.

Your question what to do is already answered. Go on (as you apparently are going on) doing all your duties. And, in all lawful ways, go on enjoying all that can be enjoyed—your friends, your music, your books. Remember we are told to ‘rejoice’ [Philippians 4:4]. Sometimes when you are wondering what God wants you to do, He really wants to give you something.

As to your spiritual state, try my plan. I pray ‘Lord, show me just so much (neither more nor less) about myself as I need for doing thy will now.’

-- C.S. Lewis, from The Collected Letters, Volume III, Compiled in Yours, Jack

A good reminder heading into a new year....

The Top 6 Good-News Stories of 2015

This is a tough time to feel optimistic about the future. With the notable exception of impressive global cooperation on climate change and energy, our papers and screens have been dominated for months by stories about terrorism and war. But this barrage of negative stories is obscuring the full picture of what’s happening around the world.  Continue here....

-- Bill Gates

What I Want In A New Year

Tami  and I have been talking about the new year -- what we would want in it, what it might bring to us, what to pursue, what to be willing to wait for.   Though sometimes cloaked, I think at the heart of resolutions is really our desires; things we hope will change, things we wish would happen, things we most deeply want in our lives and in the lives of those we love.

When I read good books I am really drawn to, I often end up, at one point or another, thinking I should be more like the person writing the book.  I have even tried to be like them a few times.  What we feel more drawn to heading into this year is what we should more uniquely become ourselves, rather than trying to be more like someone else.  I want to pursue more of what God is calling me to be, which could look like someone I've recently read about or, perhaps more likely, something that is uniquely related to how I am made or to what is (or gets put) right in front of me.  There are some 'doing' things I want to consider, as well as increasing opportunity for me to simply offer compassion to those around me.

We agreed to prayerfully watch for such opportunities as we begin a new year...which may be more like what I noted at the beginning of 2015 than anything else.