A Lot Less

Change before you have to.

-- Jack Welch


If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance a lot less.

-- General Eric K. Shinseki

Smallness

We are small and we should learn to be content with that.

...look around—take note of what it looks like when we aren't.

LT: Influence

Instagram: bobgoff

God didn't give you influence so you could lead people better; He wants you to love them more.

  -- Bob Goff

More Alive You Become

I've noticed...the more courageous you are, the more alive you become.

Great Silence

The prayer of the contemplative is, essentially, an attention to the omnipresence of God. God is omnipresent not as a theological doctrine, but as the great silence that is present in every moment—but from which we are usually distracted by an overactive mind that refuses to wait in a humble unknowing for a pure wisdom from above [James 3:17].

-- James P. Danaher

MacArthur VS Moore - Is This Really The Only Way?

For some time now, I’ve had a couple of somewhat independent thoughts rolling around in my head:

If it’s not leading you toward humility and compassion, it’s not leading you toward God.

We should be focusing just as much (even more?) on what we are for as we are on what we are against.


Love is powerful.  But, something (religious) often seems to too easily separate power from love and, in effect, creates priority—power first, love second (if at all).

This is why context is important; because, without it, it becomes (again too easily) too much ‘either / or’ and ‘us / them’—limiting our ability to hear the truth in other perspectives.  It seems to me, the way through such things is humility and dialog.

Here is a link to a helpful (imho) perspective on the recent John MacArthur dust-up about an issue for some groups of people (evangelicals, etc.):

John MacArthur tells Beth Moore to "go home" Drama: What should we think!

Though not in agreement with all the positions mentioned, I do find the approach and some of the observations helpful.

Here’s a couple more links to consider:

Max Lucado responds to John MacArthur's women preacher comments: 'Bride of Christ is sighing'

Empowering Women Leaders: An Interview with John Ortberg

At the very least, among other things, I am grateful for men who are speaking up about the way this is being handled. I certainly understand, and feel, some of what many women feel about the power-play they experience from certain men regarding these issues.  My own daughter pointed out how conspicuous the lack of grief is (instead of condescension and mocking) from the men, referenced in the first link above, over what they feel is so wrong.

Why is it that so many old white men seem only to be interested in what is wrong about what other people believe (Christians here don't seem very different than non-Christians)?  Why do they think they are the only ones who know anything?  The only ones holding out for—holding on to the truth.  Is us VS them really the only way?  Is this the only remaining way for them to feel powerful?

As I continue to age, I hope I don't end up only interested in being right.  I can't picture Jesus, as an old man, becoming increasingly frustrated with what was wrong with the world (didn't he already know that?  And, he came anyway?  To do what?  ...love).

They will know we are Christians by our love.

-- John 13:35

It doesn't say, 'They will know we are Christians...by our beliefs' (I'm not saying that beliefs don’t matter at all, but when they seem to supplant love, something else is going on). 

It is love that we should be for because love is where the real power is.

Have A Good Evening

I love the fact that there was a teenager working at a McDonald’s I recently visited who genuinely tells me to have a good evening as I drove away.  I think he meant it.

How counter-intuitive...and delightful.

Visual: Fall Tree Of The Day, 2019

Visual - "Fall Tree Of The Day, 2019"

Winona Lake, IN

The Seers

They live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them, whose love for the Lord of love has consumed every selfish desire and sense craving tormenting the heart. Not agitated by grief or hankering after pleasure, they live free from lust and fear and anger. Fettered no more by selfish attachments, they are not elated by good fortune nor depressed by bad. Such are the seers.

-- Sri Krishna

What Do You Want? You're Free

You have nearly complete freedom, outside the constraints of your tendency to work physical or social advantages in your favor, to do whatever you want...to be whoever you want.  You might actually hate that, if you really realized where that actually leaves you.

Nonetheless, in light of that, what do you want to do or be?  Stop thinking that you are constrained by someone else.  You're free.

Best Today

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

-- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

In other words, our job is to learn how to be as present as we can be and give our self as fully as we can to the current moment.  The future will take care of itself.

Under-Estimate

I've noticed...we often under-estimate our power, mostly because we seem afraid of it.

The Cause of Our Wonder

...it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery.  God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.

-- Kallistos Ware

I cannot express fully enough the affection I have for this disposition to God.

Another Look at the ‘Least Religious Generation’

Narratives of decline surround American evangelicalism and American religion more broadly. Within these narratives, a special sort of skepticism is reserved for twentysomethings. Much has been said about their flight from the pews, the rise of the “nones,” and the lack of institutional commitment among millennials. While we’ve been wringing our hands about the millennial generation, we must acknowledge that Generation Z snuck up on us. They are increasingly filling the ranks of the twentysomething cohort.

In their book, The Twentysomething Soul: Understanding the Religious and Secular Lives of American Young Adults, Clydesdale and Garces-Foley distill their work like this:

Contrary to popular opinion, the beliefs and practices of American twentysomethings reveal far more continuity than decline.  One in three twentysomethings attend worship regularly, but they cluster within young-adult friendly congregations.

The religiously unaffiliated are a diverse group, consisting of atheists, agnostics, and believers.

Today’s American twentysomethings adopt one of four approaches to faith: They prioritize it, they reject it, they sideline it, or they practice an “eclectic spirituality.”

Those American twentysomethings who prioritize religious and spiritual life are more likely to engage in a certain set of practices: marriage, parenthood, college graduation, employment, voting, community engagement, and social involvement.

American twentysomethings view institutions differently than their elders: As the authors explain, “Today’s twentysomethings experience the world less as sets of institutions prescribing standard life scripts and more as nodes on a network from which they can freely choose cultural symbols, strategies, and interpretations.”  Continue here....

-- Drew Moser

This strikes me as as highly consistent with how these groups experience all of life, not just religious life.  And, probably, how it always is—how we experience the dimensions of life is likely more consistent, than inconsistent.  So, I have to smile a bit over the notion that we can stop our hand-wringing—God isn't too freaked about it either.  He's got this—it’s life.

Song for Autumn

'Poem for the week' -- "Song for Autumn":

In the deep fall
  don't you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
  the earth instead of the 
nothingness of air and the endless
  freshets of wind? And don't you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
  warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep
  inside their bodies?  And don't you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
  the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow?  The pond
  vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly bring out
  its blue shadows.  And the wind pumps its
bellows.  And at evening especially,
  the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

-- Mary Oliver

To me, this feels like a bow on top of the gifts of this week's posts—hovering over them, rooted in the last poem for the week. You can just feel the annual turning of things.

Actualizes Essence

Love always brings an increase in being, and it does so by giving us the courage and power to live out who we truly are. . . . Love actualizes essence.

-- Cynthia Bourgeault


The density of this truth just needs to permeate us—I've read this multiple times now...and still going.

Make Something Better Today

Maybe the first step is to simply ask the question:

What could I do to make something better today (where can I make a difference)?

I can do more than just ask what I could do; what am I going to do...to make things better?

Or, I could just not ask AND not do anything either...but, that's a crappy way to think, to live, to be.

Make something better today.

LT: They Work For

A weak leader likes to tell us how many people work for them. A great leader is humbled to tell us how many people they work for. 

-- Simon Sinek

Feed On Controversy

Ever noticed...that there is something in the human dynamic that seems to feed on controversy?

Trust in the Slow

'Poem for the week' -- "Trust in the Slow Work of God":

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to
something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that is is made by passing through 
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue
haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

We Hardly Have Anything In Common Anymore

Instagram: nakedpastor

Because They Are Comfortable Here

Another rather powerful edition of Michiana Chronicles:

I like the everlasting symbol of the building itself: as a segregated public swimming pool, it was once a site of the most blatant kind of civic racism, but the building has been recaptured, its spirit renovated and turned toward better use. Getting there took a lot of work, over many years, yes. But the building reminds me that activism and social change are always real possibilities, if only we know how.

Not that the task is easy, or even encouraging, sometimes. When I ask myself, who is the average American these days, I picture someone demoralized or angry. A person who doesn’t often speak in public because it’s hard to believe it matters. A person who doesn’t know how to cut through the chaotic noise of news and political media. A person who feels ineffectual as a citizen and doesn’t know where to turn except to live a quiet private life. That’s my hunch about the average American these days.

But the film I saw recently at the Civil Rights Heritage Center had a practical insight that I can’t forget.  ...continue (or listen) here.

-- Ken Smith

Cannot Be Fixed

There is a love called bearing witness.  A hard love.  We prefer the kind of love that fixes things.  Some things cannot be fixed—and the only love then is to bear witness to what is being gone through.

-- Barbara Brown Taylor

Doubt - Just Something To Get Through?

So often, doubt is talked about as something to get through or leave behind, rather than something to sit with for awhile as it marinates in us and transforms us.

-- Traci Smith

Soul Work

People often asked Dr. Jung, “Will we make it?” referring to the cataclysm of our time. He always replied, “If enough people will do their inner work.” This soul work is the one thing that will pull us through any emergency.

-- Robert Johnson


One of the best things we can do to prevent causing pain to other is to begin to feel our own.

-- Hillary McBride

Expanded

I've noticed...that whenever I am filled up emotionally, I am expanded and I often end up trying to keep the space filled up emotionally, rather than the alternative.

Until

​Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us....

-- Richard Rohr


...pray for each other so that you may be healed.

-- James 5:16


I don't know if these observations are connected or not, but it seems to me they could be.  The healing, of what, may be the link.

UM vs IOWA, 2019

Another beautiful day in Ann Arbor...more pics here.

Not Responsive...To Shouting

How we are to listen to our lives is a question worth exploring. In our culture, we tend to gather information in ways that do not work very well when the source is the human soul: the soul is not responsive to subpoenas or cross-examinations. At best it will stand in the dock only long enough to plead the Fifth Amendment. At worst it will jump bail and never be heard from again. The soul speaks its truth only under quiet, inviting, and trustworthy conditions. The soul is like a wild animal—tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient, and yet exceedingly shy. If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is to go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out. But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit silently for an hour or two at the base of a tree, the creature we are waiting for may well emerge, and out of the corner of an eye we will catch a glimpse of the precious wildness we seek.

-- Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

Visual: Floweressive

Visual - "Floweressive":

Winona Lake, IN

What We Love

How we see is how we love, and what we love is what we become.

-- Ilia Delio

Maybe You Don't

Maybe you don’t because you can’t. Maybe you just don’t know how.

Maybe you don’t know how to be something (or someone) you’re not.

Maybe is OK.

LT: Sense of Belonging

The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.

-- Todd Whitaker


People who can tie their purpose to their organization’s purpose stay engaged and strive for success.

In fact, it’s hard to deny or disagree with the need for collaboration, cohesiveness, belonging, connection, and psychological safety in organizations.

The most successful organizations (business, civic group, church, etc.) give their members a sense of belonging...to purpose.