2nd College Graduate

So proud of Conner, our second college graduate.  We are grateful for the opportunity of a solid education in a healthy environment and for those who supported him through his four years.

I so enjoyed this admonishment during baccalaureate:  We carry the imagination of the Creator, the resolve of the Redeemer, and breath of the Spirit to a world in need.

Close Listening

The secret to fostering great creativity is the same as conducting a great radio interview — close listening.

-- Brooke Gladstone


The confident ask questions to learn what will connect. The insecure just keep talking with the hope something will stick.

-- Simon Sinek

Bono & Peterson

There is something extraordinary about these two figures embracing each others' faith; I often find it fascinating when the old and young(er) have a serious conversation about things that really matter. It seems to me that there is some genuine listening going on between these two.

I often feel a surprising level of emotion hearing the U2 song, '40'.  I am grateful for the unanimous opinion here that faith requires real honesty (in part, by acknowledging a prevalent kind of dishonesty).  And, I'm mesmerized here by Peterson's eyes when he talks about violence.

I Used To Think: Entrust

​I used to think...that I was responsible to make things happen, now I know that I need to entrust even the smallest of things to God.

Tend to Flowers

Photo by Rujida Kreft

For me, it is important to tend to flowers. Why would that be?

Because it is important to work at something over which I have almost no power, especially something that involves beauty.

It reminds me of who I am, and of who I am not -- and that life and growth is not something that I provide.

...not to mention the glories of these Spring mornings.  With their explosive, vibrant voices, they take my breath away...especially the flowers.

Loaves and Fishes

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Loaves and Fishes":

This is not
the age of information.
This is NOT
the age of information.

Forget the news
and the radio
and the blurred screen.

This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.

-- David Whyte

...and here's a good 'Well ,Get Over It' story that came with it.

Have Hope

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.

-- Romans 15:4

Pastor Admits ‘Doing Life Together’ Just An Excuse To Do Whatever & A Second Chance

On the lighter side -- how about some satire:

Pastor Doug Gosport, 53, admitted that his recent forays into “doing life together” with people in his church and community were really just an excuse to do whatever he felt like doing, sources confirmed Monday.

““Frankly, it’s genius,” Gosport reportedly crowed to three of his friends during a weekend golf outing. “Normally, you get all sorts of flak from the family if you want to go grab something to eat and just watch the game, you know? But if I tell my wife I’ve got some guys I need to ‘do life with,’ she instantly approves...continue here.

This, though, is real -- everyone needs a second chance:

Truely Scared About

It is through risks that we leave the comfortable world of ego-protection and find what we’re truly scared about. And if we go even deeper, we’ll find what we truly desire.

-- Brady Toops

Never Too Late

It's never too late to start.  Everyone starts sometime.

You can't start before now anyway.

Feeling behind is irrelevant.  Now is relevant.

I've Noticed: Breadth

​I've noticed...that I seem more drawn towards breadth than depth, at least in terms of where my energy seems to most naturally flow. I long sometimes for the depth of narrowness, even though I tend to find depth in breadth.

Deeply Held

​Our deeply held views mature and grow when we talk about them with others, especially the ones we hold privately.

The Thing Is

'Poem selection' for the week -- "The Thing Is":

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

-- Ellen Bass

Most Of Our Theology

I’ve heard that most of our theology is autobiography.

-- Sarah Bessey

Thirst

“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.
“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.
“Then drink,” said the Lion.
“May I—could I—would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.

The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.

The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

“Will you promise not to—do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.
“I make no promise,” said the Lion.

Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.

“Do you eat girls?” she said.
“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”
“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.

It never occurred to Jill to disbelieve the Lion—no one who had seen his stern face could do that—and her mind suddenly made itself up. It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down, and began scooping up water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted. You didn’t need to drink much of it, for it quenched your thirst at once.

-- C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

Miserable

Before the truth sets you free, it tends to make you miserable.

-- Richard Rohr

Spring comes after winter.

Incidentally (perhaps), listen to today's edition of Michiana Chronicles on 'How To Make America Great', for a critical perspective on the importance of dialogue (not to mention how 'easy' violence is).

Light

​There was a sign on the door, but I couldn't see it, because it was dark.

Someone turned on an overhead light and I saw what was written on it.

The sign was there the whole time, whether I was able to see it or not.

I Used To Think: Confess

​I used to think...that I needed to right a wrong by trying harder or doing something good. Now I know that I simply need to confess a wrong and ask for forgiveness.

Attention, Will, and Character

To succeed in his studies, one must have qualities which depend on attention, will, and character.

-- Alfred Binet

Is Education Being Measured to Death?

Is education being measured to death?

...the thinking behind incessant testing is akin to treating a child suffering from hypothermia by repeatedly taking his or her temperature.

-- Jesse Hagopian

The latest obsession, for instance, is to develop and use new tests, not for assessing academic knowledge and skills, but to ascertain how well schools and teachers have developed children's character, such as their self control, reflection, and persistence. As social scientist Angela Duckwork recently noted with concern in her New York Times op-ed, nine California school districts are adding "measures of character into their accountability systems" this testing season.  Continue here....

-- Jeff Bryant

Home

Seems that God is looking more for ways to get us home than for ways to keep us out. I challenge you to find one soul who came to God seeking grace and did not find it.

-- Max Lucado

A Long Walk - Revisited

About a month ago, we took a 'long walk' as a family...a hike really.  Long walks give us a chance to think about things in a way that we often don't, in our normal fast-paced, bouncing, media-laden times.

A long walk is not unlike the prolongedness often involved in a healing process, which I could describe somewhat like this...each step leading to the next, often without much detectible precision in timing (except, perhaps, in retrospect):

• the first is a surgical slice - confession...acknowledgement, an entering in
• the second is something unexpected - forgiveness...rectifying the false reality
• then, a bandage - gratitude
• fourthly a reminder...a scar - obedience
• the fifth is a new lifestyle - freedom
• the sixth is using health for new purposes - sacrifice
• the seventh is true community - joy

...all on a path called 'healing'.

At the beginning, it feels unknowable...where are we going anyway?  We don't even know for sure.  During, it feels full of everything; awful, good, and lots in between.  In the end, it is fragrant with both a sense of a great distance traveled and arrival...a desirable destination, pre-anticipated or not.  And, we're better for it...like a long walk, when we've come to see things differently, new things.

Double View

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Double View Of The Adirondacks":

The mountains are at their theater again,
each ridge practicing an oration of scale and crest,
and the sails, performing glides across the lake, complain
for being out-shadowed despite their gracious
bows. Thirteen years in this state, what hasn’t occurred?
A cyclone in my spirit led to divorce, four books
gave darkness an echo of control, my slurred
hand finding steadiness by the prop of a page,
and God, my children whom I scarred! Pray they forgive.
My crimes felt mountainous, yet perspective
came with distance, and like those peaks, once keening
beneath biting ice, then felt resurrection in a vestige
of water, unfrozen, cascading and adding to the lake’s
depth, such have I come to gauge my own screaming.
The masts tip so far they appear to capsize, keeling
over where every father is a boat on water. The wakes
carry the memory of battles, and the Adirondacks
hold their measure. I am a tributary of something greater.

-- Major Jackson

This one also warrants listening to...here.  Sometimes, a word about or from the author is...just helpful.  In this case, a rather already compelling poem escalates its beauty with a word from the author:

“Fathering has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, and yet, like many fathers I have led an imperfect life that preceded redemption and grace. This might prove, in the end, to be my greatest gift to my children.”

The Trick Is

Organic:  Attention-to-detail vs micro-managing: the trick is knowing what details to focus on and why.

I Have Noticed: Focus

​I have noticed...that what I focus on tends to runs in patterns. I recognize things I focus on and so I focus on the things I recognize.  In other words, I see what I'm accustomed to seeing.

...and miss many other things.  Thinking often seems to work this way, too.  So, this means I'm missing a lot, including things or ideas I easily dismiss, not to mention people.

What and When

If knowledge is about what can be known, wisdom is about what and when what is known needs to be said or done.

...reminds me of this post on knowledge and wisdom, a few years ago.

Spotlight

We watched the movie, Spotlight, last night with some friends.  I was provoked....

After speaking in church yesterday about the topic of healing, I couldn't help but wonder how my descriptions of healing feel to victims of sexual abuse, like that exposed in this movie.  I felt like it was possible that I had significantly under-estimated the depth of healing needed in this life, as well as what Christ offers to this world through what He did on our behalf.

But, my ability to do justice to this idea is not really the point.  In fact, what Christ is offering us through the His resurrection is truly far greater than any of us really imagine -- both in terms of the degree of our need for healing, as well as the capacity and intention of God to do it.  I am reminded again of the significance of what God is saying:

...if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

-- 2 Chronicles 7:14

...we certainly need this level of healing -- personally, nationally, at the most basic and deepest levels of our existence.  I must keep humbling myself, praying, seeking and turning to God.  These are not rules from God, they are pathways to Him and to the healing of all that is so broken in our lives.  God desires to heal us, even of the most awful things we do to ourselves and others.  Our lives, personally and as a society, require a kind of healing that only God can provide because only he can heal us physically as well as our broken hearts, not to mention our waywardness.

...though difficult, I believe 'Spotlight' is an important movie for adults to see.  Our land is suffering from this sickness.

Glory

When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. For you must not think that I am putting forward any heathen fancy of being absorbed into Nature. Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects.

And in there, in beyond Nature, we shall eat of the tree of life. At present, if we are reborn in Christ, the spirit in us lives directly on God; but the mind and, still more, the body receives life from Him at a thousand removes—through our ancestors, through our food, through the elements. The faint, far-off results of those energies which God’s creative rapture implanted in matter when He made the worlds are what we now call physical pleasures; and even thus filtered, they are too much for our present management. What would it be to taste at the fountainhead that stream of which even these lower reaches prove so intoxicating? Yet that, I believe, is what lies before us. The whole man is to drink joy from the fountain of joy. As St. Augustine said, "the rapture of the saved soul will 'flow over' into the glorified body."

-- C.S. Lewis, from The Weight of Glory

"I Agree In Principle..."

"I agree in principle...but in practice, I'll need to be more hard-hearted, practical, selfish, mass-oriented, short-term, callous..." Principles, it seems, are for other people.

Because business is business.
Because my boss won't let me.
Because he'll never get elected.
Because we've never done it that way.
Because the buyer will never take it for the store.
Because it's too risky.
Because I'm under a lot of pressure.
Because I'm afraid.
Principle, of course, is for us, not only for other people. One of the great privileges of not living on the edge of disaster is that we have the ability to act on our principles.

The hard part is realizing that it's never the edge of disaster, and that the long run is always shorter than we imagine.

-- Seth Godin

Beauty Is Confession

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "Beauty is Confession":

Question the beauty of the earth,
the beauty of the sea,
the beauty of the wide air around you,
the beauty of the sky;
question the order of the stars,
the sun whose brightness lights the days,
the moon whose splendor softens the gloom of night;
question the living creatures that move in the waters,
that roam upon the earth,
that fly through the air;
the spirit that lies hidden,
the matter that is manifest;
the visible things that are ruled,
the invisible things that rule them;
question all these.

They will answer you:
"Behold and see, we are beautiful."

Their beauty is their confession of God.

-- St. Augustine

April is national poetry month. It seems fitting to take a while (month) to celebrate poetry; consistent with the very nature of it.