Hungry for God

A man may study because his brain is hungry for knowledge, even Bible knowledge. But he prays because his soul is hungry for God.

-- Leonard Ravenhill

ubuntu

Regarding 'ubuntu', Eze summarizes it this way:

​'A person is a person through other people' strikes an affirmation of one’s humanity through recognition of an ‘other’ in his or her uniqueness and difference. It is a demand for a creative intersubjective formation in which the ‘other’ becomes a mirror (but only a mirror) for my subjectivity. This idealism suggests to us that humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual; my humanity is co-substantively bestowed upon the other and me. Humanity is a quality we owe to each other. We create each other and need to sustain this otherness creation. And if we belong to each other, we participate in our creations: we are because you are, and since you are, definitely I am. The ‘I am’ is not a rigid subject, but a dynamic self-constitution dependent on this otherness creation of relation and distance.

-- Michael Onyebuchi Eze

The Fool’s Song

'Poem selection' for the week -- "The Fool’s Song":

I tried to put a bird in a cage.
                O fool that I am!
         For the bird was Truth.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
                 Truth in a cage!

And when I had the bird in the cage,
                 O fool that I am!
          Why, it broke my pretty cage.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
                  Truth in a cage!

And when the bird was flown from the cage,
                  O fool that I am!
            Why, I had nor bird nor cage.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
                   Truth in a cage!
             Heigh-ho! Truth in a cage.

-- William Carlos Williams

Risks

Change happens because ideas compel people to take risks.

-- Tom Goodwin

Instagram: bobgoff

Great love
leaves little doubt.

-- Bob Goff

Experientially

​I've noticed...that what I know the most, I know experientially.

I go for a run nearly every day. Because I do, I have come to know certain things about myself - about my mind, my emotions, my body - particularly as it relates to running.  In other words, some of the things I know in this way, I would not know about myself, if I didn't run.

I know some things (not enough) about photography.  But, while I know about them cognitively, I really don't understand how they work together.  I have found that mostly I just have to try things with my own camera before I can figure out how it works. Once I do this and how the concepts inter-relate with each other, then I start to know photography, not simply about it.  But, this doesn't really happen, at least at any deep level, until I spend time doing it.

If this is true, imagine what the implications are for other, perhaps more significant, domains of knowing something; like relationships or God. Some, for example, believe this is the only kind of knowing one can really have with God - an experiential knowing of him.

We most often know, what we know experientially.

Authentic Interest

The single greatest people skill is a highly developed and authentic interest in the other person.

-- Bob Burg

Who are we seeking to become?

Who are we seeking to become?

We get what we invest in. The time we spend comes back, with interest.

If you practice five minutes of new, difficult banjo music every day, you'll become a better banjo player. If you spend a little bit more time each day whining or feeling ashamed, that behavior will become part of you. The words you type, the people you hang with, the media you consume...

The difference between who you are now and who you were five years ago is largely due to how you've spent your time along the way.

The habits we groove become who we are, one minute at a time. A small thing, repeated, is not a small thing.

-- Seth Godin

Before

The sea enters the rivers before the rivers can run into the sea. In like manner, God comes to us before we go to Him; and heaven enters into our souls before we can enter into heaven.

-- Peter Drelincourt


Be sure to pray much, that is, to keep your inner eye focused on Jesus.

-- Henri Nouwen

How Great Thou Art

To Connect

The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

One Choice

More often than not,
it only takes one
simple
choice
to start things
heading
in the opposite
direction.

Each moment
provides us
with one
opportunity
to make one simple
choice.

Choices all together
do add up.
But, it's still
just one choice
each time;
the next one.

No Further

​As long as we’re filled with ourselves, we can go no further.

-- Cynthia Bourgeault

We must learn how to empty ourselves, particularly because we have learned to keep ourselves perpetually full.

Insignificant

​I've noticed...that I am surprised sometimes at the significance of the smallest of things. Someone recently asked about my brother and whether or not I would see him soon. I had, frankly, forgotten about our recent plans to visit each other. One small comment reminded me to do something that otherwise I might have just missed. This kind of thing seems to happen regularly. Too regularly.

The other day I noticed the slightest tinges of pink lacing the edges of what otherwise looks like just some white flowers on the shrubs in our front yard. Who would have thought of adding a dash of pink, especially if most wouldn't notice it anyway?  A friend recently wrote Tami a note about the care she had observed Tami giving a student in real need.  One perspective might be that she was just doing her job.  But this person noticed how much more it really was.  A small thing, but not really...for any of those involved.

I am grateful for such seemingly insignificant things and encouraged to pay attention to them. Small things are not insignificant -- insignificant things are rarely insignificant.

Diversity

Leaders...must believe that diversity is necessary for future innovation and growth. Only then will...an organization...be willing to take the unnatural steps needed to effect change. If there isn’t buy-in from the top, it is impossible...to drive a shift in culture or mindset.

-- Mallun Yen

Where To Look

​Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.

-- Jonas Salk

Lives In You

Our old history ends with the cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.

-- Watchman Nee

www.youversion.com

So it's searchable:

The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.

-- Romans 8:11

Healed

By His wounds we are healed.

-- Isaiah 53:5

www.youversion.com

...even on a long, hope-crushing Saturday like this one during the Holy Week. What else could have been felt after the dashing devastation of yesterday? Some thoughts here....

Not A Religion

Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is the proclamation of the end of religion, not of a new religion, or even of the best of all religions. If the cross is the sign of anything, it’s the sign that God has gone out of the religion business and solved all of the world’s problems without requiring a single human being to do a single religious thing. What the cross is actually a sign of is the fact that religion can’t do a thing about the world’s problems—that it never did work and it never will.

-- Robert F. Capon

A prayer on this Good Friday:

God of the cross, your power is hidden
in a weakness that quietly overcomes the world.
Open our eyes to see this power at work.  May we walk

in it as we live out your alternative vision
for the world.  Amen.

-- Walter Brueggeman, A Way Other Than Our Own

Aware

As I contemplate the significance of this day of Holy Week, relative to Lent and to the next 3 days, I find myself aware of several things:

• There has been something significant about 'doing' Lent this year - it seems related to having participated in this more collectively (with a group of guys), rather than just by myself
• I tend to want such times, like this weekend (consider this perspective), to feel more transformative than it does
• I have a sense of anticipation, which is going simultaneously in seemingly opposite directions - I have a slight expectation or desire for something to crescendo a bit AND I feel myself resisting that very desire...a pre-emptive move, perhaps, to avoid some kind of disappointment
• What I do, with regard to the import of Easter, is increasingly like a call to something - something with more implications for the poor and needy, something that has more to do with a collective effort than just an individual one (though I'm not sure how separable those really are)
• There is something wildly subversive about the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus - this feels more apparent to me as our culture continues its seeming rotation away from the socialization of the church and religion
• A significant part of this subversiveness goes well beyond the typical evangelical perspective of atonement regarding our status before God and deeply into the impact it should have on my daily life, particularly as it relates to our cultural anxieties and on how I see and function in my relationship to the world and all that inhabit it

What will the next 3 days add to the mix for me this year?

​
As we walk the walk from Palm Sunday to Easter through the Thursday arrest and the Friday execution and the long Saturday wait in the void, imagine all of us, in the wake of Jesus, changing our minds, renewing our minds, altering our opinions concerning self and neighbor and world. The clue to the new mind of Christ is emptying of our need to control and our anxious passion for security. And as our minds change, we come to new freedom.

-- Walter Brueggeman, A Way Other Than Our Own

Ransom

www.youversion.com

The son of man came not to be served, but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.

-- Matthew 20:28

Everything New

If we get attached to computers and other machines, we get far more attached to the traditional ways in which we have organized and run our lives. And though we all know that things could be better, we all hope that we can simply add the better bit on to the way we do things at the moment, so that we won't have to change too much, if at all. This is a challenge every generation has to face, but for Jesus and his contemporaries it was massive. They had lived for many centuries with a traditional way of life. They assumed, naturally enough, that if and when their God came back to rescue them he would support and vindicate that way. And Jesus was telling them that something new was happening. God was indeed doing what he'd always said, but the old machines they had been working with — the things they'd expected to happen — simply weren't adequate for this new moment.

In particular, he was replacing an overall mood of sadness and longing with an overall mood of celebration and hope. They used to fast regularly, to remember the times long ago when their nation had suffered awful disasters. Jesus was coming to do something that would always be remembered with celebration — so fasting wasn't appropriate! That was revolutionary. But it was appropriate.

We today fast during Lent, to remind ourselves of the sorrow and sin that still abounds in the world and in our own lives. But we do so as a people whose basic mode of life is celebration. God has brought the new world into being in and through Jesus. Don't try to put the new cloth on the old coat, or the new wine into old bottles. God is making everything new, and he's inviting us to the party.

-- N.T. Wright

Why Most People Judge

Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge.

-- Carl Jung

This seems like an appropriate criticism in general, but especially for this Holy Week.  ...along with the reminder to not be too quick to assume this is talking primarily about others.

An Unfolding

The apparent eclipse of Christian wisdom by history is an optical illusion, since history itself is an unfolding of the event of Christ.

-- Bruno Barnhart

Live Your Way

Some conceptual snapshots from the TRINITY Conference:

You don't think your way into a new way of living, you live your way into new way of thinking.

-- Richard Rohr

Wholeness is when the way of your being matches the truth of your being.

-- Wm. Paul Young

For God to be good, he must be one.  For God to be love, he must be two.  But for God to be joy, he must be three.

-- Richard of St. Victor

We are now co-creators of the revelation of  the 'divine heart' of love.

-- Cynthia Bourgeault

We so enjoyed the final evening called Agape Liturgy, which ended with "The Lord of the Dance", by the Dubliners:

'The Hospitality of Abraham' -- Andrei Rublev

This icon is displayed this week at the 'TRINITY: The Soul of Creation' conference in Albuquerque, NM.  Tami and I are enjoying the time here -- in body, mind, and spirit -- with many kinds of opportunities to contemplate what we have known, what we are knowing, and what we can yet know.

Senses

​I go to nature to be soothed and healed and have my senses put in order.

-- John Burroughs

...more pics here.

Leveraged By Food

​I've noticed...that many good conversations are often leveraged by food.

Environment

​Your environment always wins. If you hang out with nasty and sullen people, you will become nasty and sullen. If you work for a Machiavellian company, you will eventually operate in a Machiavellian manner.

-- Bruce Kasanoff

Perfectionism

​Pressure to do our best at everything can be paralyzing, and perfectionism is deadly to balanced living.

-- Sam Chase

Go And Live Your Life

Feed on Christ, and then go and live your life, and it is Christ in you that lives your life, that helps the poor, that tells the truth, that fights the battle, and that wins the crown.

-- Philips Brooks

Instagram: bobgoff

Every time we see someone as ordinary,
we turn the wine back into water.

-- Bob Goff

Perspective

Perspective is a giver. Comparison takes.

Perspective is generous. Comparison pares down the loveliness of your life until it appears a thin shred of its former glory.

Perspective carries us through life laughing. Comparison evokes cursing and frowns and grumbling.

Perspective says that I got eight years with the dearest little fairy a mama could hope for.  Comparison says I got ripped off.  

Continue here....

-- Kate Merrick