You Are A Problem

All this is to say, if your present community sees your spiritual journey as a problem because you are wandering off their beach blanket, it may be time to find another community.  One should never do that impulsively.  But, if after a time you are sensing that you do not belong, that you are a problem to be corrected rather than a valued member of the community, maybe God is calling you elsewhere and to find for yourself that 'they' aren't so bad after all.

-- Peter Enns

As another year comes to a close, and I reflect back on the beginning of 2019, I couldn't anticipate what all would happen, especially when it included a very personal experience of the above.   But, the truth is, pain is often a kind of soil.  So, I am eager for what will grow out of it and am grateful that there are so many people, in many different kinds of community, who want to do the same.

While it is often true that hard things tend to dominate the scene, there were many significant things about 2019 that weren’t painful. We participated in so much goodness, experienced many joys, and were more alive than ever.

In other words, while we may have been ‘a problem’ for some, we know in fresh ways that we are more than that, too.  Thank God for his unending invitation to being more than we, or others, think we are.

In The Middle

I've noticed...that, as a 9 on the Enneagram, I have a constant low-grade scanner that is monitoring both threat and opportunity.  As a default, I am not too focused on either, but am aware of both.  I don't tend to obsess over possible threats, but I do watch for them, especially through a lens of threat to my perception of harmony.  On the other hand, when I am confronted by dis-harmony, I tend to look for opportunity.

In other words, the respective ends of my 'scanner' are 6 (on the threat end) and 3 (on the opportunity end).  And, I most often live in the middle, of the two.

I'm not claiming this is a great way to live...but, it is the one I seem most often familiar (comfortable?) with.

The Source of Our Separation

Too much of Christianity is built upon absolute certainty and not enough on divine mystery.

-- Mark Wingfield


The source of our disease and violence is separation from parts of ourselves, from each other, and from God. Mature religion is meant to re-ligio or re-ligament what our egos and survival instincts have put asunder, namely a fundamental wholeness at the heart of everything.

-- Robert A. Johnson

Tax-to-GDP Ratios

The US moved down because of recent tax cuts.  But, the budget deficit rose 26%, too!

What If: Calling

Why is it that we can often so much more easily see the beauty and courage in someone else, than we can ourselves?

What If...this is not as much a defect, as a calling?

Things We Can't See

What we see is what we know.

But, there comes a time when we know things that we can't see.

Christmas

'Poem for the week' -- "Christmas":

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

-- Sir John Betjeman, 1954

MERRY

Visual: Just Another Tree?

Visual - "Just Another Tree?":

...perhaps not:  Celebrating an Eternal Advent

Vastness

Ever noticed...that there is a spiritual quality in vastness?  The ocean, mountains, the skies...all intimate something beyond our grasp of it, and in such a beckoning way.

Perhaps this is some of the appeal we feel from many of the songs of Christmas, which reference the context of stars to announce God’s activity on earth.

Suffocates The Expansive

Fear suffocates the good news that God's grace is expansive.  Fear cannot tolerate that someone else's story is different than mine.  Fear nurtures a suspicion that others are not just different, but rejected, by God.  Such fear reeks of sin.  God's grace converts such fear into love.

-- Eric Barreto

Christian Doomsayers Have Lost It

Leading social indicators are trending their way, but somehow it is only Trump who stands between us and the apocalypse.

We are facing an existential moral crisis.

That at least is the view of many Christians who have given their full-throated support to President Trump. Some of them will privately admit that he is deeply corrupt, but the justification for their support of him goes something like this: Mr. Trump may be unethical, unscrupulous and morally dissolute, but he is by far the lesser of two evils.

After all, they insist, Mr. Trump may be personally immoral, but he is also a viciously effective street fighter for their cause. He is also the only person preventing a takeover of America by the Democratic Party and progressives — and that, they insist, would produce a moral calamity nearly unmatched in American history.

The view that Mr. Trump is all that stands between America and a moral cataclysm was encapsulated by Eric Metaxas, an influential evangelical author and radio talk-show host, who said...continue here.

-- Peter Wehner

I find this piece, at the very least, interesting (if not compelling).  Wherever we come down in our attempts to grasp the nature of what we are collectively experiencing, it is helpful to consider more than one perspective.  Because if it isn't, perhaps 'the end IS nigh'...and, that, would be one of our own choosing.

We Are The Cavalry

From Michiana Chronicles:

To our west, behind the white spot-lighted spire of the wide brick school building, an even wider sunset had concluded. For the passerby on the sidewalk, most everything about our house must have looked dark. The big maple in the front yard, the flower bed, the pale blue of the house’s front wall had all faded to shades of green-gray and blue-black. To one side of the dark red door, a square of window light, and in a small room bright with yellow walls, three people sat at a table talking. What was the conversation? The passerby, the late walker on the sidewalk, would never know. Inside, at that table, we talked politics and climate change, but we were all the while circling around the question of hope.

Was it too late for hope? Were people too tired to hope? In times like these, was hope naive or essential...?  Continue or listen here....

-- Ken Smith

Our Pain Is Never Wasted

Instagram: bobgoff

What brings us to tears, will lead us to grace.  Our pain is never wasted.

-- Bob Goff

I recently received an unexpected email from someone—reminding me how the above is true.

Ideas

Ideas catalyze action. Encounter catalyzes ideas.

When Inspired

A movement only exists when people are inspired to move, to do something, to make the cause their own.

-- Simon Sinek

It seems so obvious when this is happening...and when it isn't.

Encounter

I'm wondering...if what makes Truth true, at least to us, is when it is encountered.

Though part of it, encounter is more than the simple experience of something.  A unique element of encounter, perhaps, is that it requires something of you—it takes something from you and, in doing so, gives something to you.  More than information—encounter impacts you, it changes something in you, it leaves a mark.

Encounter makes you wonder...about things—about what is true, the nature of truth itself, how it relates your existence and, perhaps more importantly, how you relate to it.

Ask The Question

The only clear line I draw these days is this:  when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor...Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.

-- Barbara Brown Taylor

So, who is my neighbor?

Yes, that question can be used to avoid something.  But, it is actually a good question, if we mean it.  If I mean it.  Otherwise, it is just theoretical and doesn't impact much of anything—which can certainly be the case with things...like religion.

Will I choose my neighbor?  If so, I have to ask the question.

Introduction To Joy

How to be less cynical and more honest about the subversive truth that lurks just below the surface of pretty much everything.

-- Rob Bell


Joy is a right-now thing; it is about what is happening right now.  In other words, we can't really experience joy, if we're not in this moment—if we are preoccupied with the future or the past.

We so enjoyed Rob Bell's recent presentation, "Introduction To Joy".  He gets so much flak from certain religious people—you would think he is a demon or something.  I wonder if these people have ever really seen or heard him speak in person.  I find what he is doing so refreshing and powerful, especially in our continually emerging post-Christian culture.  He is propagating truth at profound levels.

It is interesting that one of our more famous seasonal hymns also positions joy as a function of the current moment.  In the words, of the hymn:

Joy To The World...

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

In this case, joy is broadcast to the world in celebration of the birth of Christ.  When we get fresh (and often surprising) realization that what we long for IS in fact still happening, our most unfettered response is often joy.  Joy in the moment.  Joy in the fresh encounter with possibility.  Joy from a renewed kind of wonder—that something we are hoping for...still IS—especially something like the refrain says...the wonders of God's love.

What if our ability to experience joy is linked to our ability to wonder about any given moment?

“I know it’s bad – but everyone’s doing it”

“I know it’s bad – but everyone’s doing it”

The optimists who got excited about the ‘everyone has a microphone’ promise of the Net 20 years ago overlooked two flaws in human nature:

First, given sufficient reward (money, attention, fame, notoriety) some people will show up and say and do things that they know are wrong.

Second, if enough people are in the first group of bottom fishers, many other people may decide that those behaviors aren’t as wrong as they thought they were. The internet ends up normalizing bad behavior, because bad behavior captures our attention and gets noticed. We multiply the outliers in our imagination and come to the erroneous conclusion that their behavior is common, when it actually isn’t.

There are two ways forward, and both are up to us: First, we can start paying more attention (rewarding) good behavior. And second, we can start modeling precisely the sort of discourse and contributions we hope to see from others.

The best antidote to a culture shifting to bad behavior is to re-normalize good behavior.

-- Seth Godin

No Longer Embedded

The free market consumer ideology has produced a social disorder; people are no longer embedded in a culture that serves the common wealth, the common good. 

-- Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, John McKnight


Though there remain counter-argument examples, this is also hard to deny on many fronts.

Narrative

Narrative is a big part of the structure of our lives; of my life, too.  It is comprised of the stories we tell ourselves; the version of things we want (need?) to maintain.  I have a narrative.  I keep it going.  I use it, in whichever direction I find useful.

Ironically, even though we appear to consciously repeat it to ourselves, narrative is often unconscious and self-perpetuating...and, interestingly enough, can function as a means of off-setting things in our lives that we are actually feeling.  It is interesting to consider how our narratives are subconsciously used to distance us from what our feelings are communicating to us about what we are experiencing, rather than lead us towards them.

To further distance ourselves, from ourselves, we now seem regularly embroiled in yet another iteration of the narrative-complex.  My narrative is submerged in the narrative of the group I am connected to.  In other words, I don't reflect nearly as much on my own narrative as the one that represents my group (nation, political party, community, church, family, etc.).  This is highly problematic.

And, to make matters worse, even the narrative of the group I associate myself with easily becomes largely a counter-narrative.  I am associated with 'us'.  And 'we' are not associated with 'them'—what they're doing or (perhaps even more) what they're saying.

This use of narrative has so perpetuated itself (rather than simply 'us', or, even 'me') that very few actually ever talk to someone outside of their own group to notice what is both true and untrue about what their narrative is saying.  When this happens, we also miss what is true and untrue about our own narrative, about my own narrative.

One of the greater ironies of this whole thing is that narrative, by definition, is a thing designed to tell a larger or whole story.  It is an attempt to connect things or events to make a larger point.

And, that, is mostly what it is no longer doing—pointing to a larger essence of what is true or, at the very least, one that is large enough for all.

In Little Matters

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters.

-- Colin Powell

Vulnerability

I've noticed...that few things open up and encourage relationship quite like vulnerability.

And, few things close or hinder it quite like its opposite.

Advent Creates People

Advent creates people, new people.

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Does it?  If so, why? How?

I think this is true—we are changed thru a posture of active waiting.

Full First?

When Giving Is All We Have

'Poem for the week' -- "When Giving Is All We Have":

                                              One river gives
                                              Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

-- Alberto Ríos

Embrace Uncertainty

Instagram: bobgoff

Embrace uncertainty. Some of the most beautiful chapters in our lives won't have a title until much later.

-- Bob Goff

Stretched

Sometimes you get stretched.

But, most of the time, it has to be your choice (willingness) to stretch yourself.

Unfortunately, too often it seems, only the first sentence is what actually happens.  And, perhaps, that is largely symptomatic of much of our society with our experience of things—ideas, people, etc—that are different from our own experience.


You have to cross the line into otherness, away from pulling on sameness.

-- Richard Rohr

The Question You Ask

The question you ask will determine the knowledge you acquire.

-- Joel Sutton

Hesitate

I've noticed...the more aware I am of need, the less I hesitate to pray.

Lack of Consciousness

Sin always proceeds from lack of consciousness.

-- Richard Rohr