Push Us Into The Truth

When fear is dominating the dynamic and nothing else feels capable of working, it seems to me the church is uniquely positioned to demonstrate what it means to be human and to lead work on human issues...like racism.

But, will it?

The church will not be a leading example in racial healing until we feel the weight of communal guilt and shame and then allow it to push us into the truth.

-- Latasha Morrison

God’s followers are asked to model a community of mutuality and solidarity.

Centuries of [New Testament] interpretation have attempted to spiritualize or minimize this good news for the poor, hiding the reality that the Bible is a book by, about, and for poor and marginalized people. It not only says that God blesses and loves the poor, but also that the poor are God’s agents and leaders in rejecting and dismantling kingdoms built upon oppression and inequality. . . . It is the vision of society the early Christians sought to create on earth, and that we who follow Jesus today are commanded to strive for as well.

-- Richard Rohr

Language of the Unheard

A riot is the language of the unheard.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Will we let that sink in...and listen to what is being said?

Affects Our Ability

In any needed conversation, including the one referenced yesterday:

Fear affects our ability to be present in a conversation, to connect with other people, to be able to trust.

-- Mary Shores


...stop making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures, and risk an act of love.

-- Paulo Freire

Until A Pattern Is Broken

What do you think about this observation?

If I added this, what about now? 

Which image above pricks us the most?  Why?  

Doesn't it seem a little too convenient to react to the method, and not respond to the message?

Does the right to free speech include the right to not listen to any perspectives other than our own?  If so, it appears that what we continue to see from both sides is the only alternative and an ineffectual one at that.   

How about some real personal reflection? And then some real collective dialogue, starting with whichever image provokes us the most and work together from there? 

Reflection, discussion...things that need to lead to action or the pattern will just continue.

Though it shouldn't matter whether George Floyd was a 'good person' or not (aren't all people made in the image of God?), here is link to some information about his life and the kind of person he chose to be.

Cuts & Resonates

Sometimes it is the crispness of a truth that cuts to the chase.

Other times, it is the illustration of truth that enables it to resonate.

Pre-Conceived Notions

Ever noticed...how many times people are asking questions only to confirm their pre-conceived notions?  ...not because they are really interested or curious.

LT: Refusing To Quit

Ambition is refusing to quit on ourselves. Leadership is refusing to quit on others.

-- Simon Sinek

It seems there are many contexts for the truth of this observation. 

Whether it is memorializing what others have sacrificed for us in the context of our nation; how we treat others in the workplace, support those in our society, love our families; or how God relates to us -- all are opportunities to reflect what not quitting can look like.

Evolving Faith

The very nature of faith assumes that it changes, grows, and evolves.  I think this is by design and is consistent with all forms of life.

Obviously, there are constants.  The beauty is that those constants continue  to develop—personally, collectively, historically.

Thankfully, some things we've thought about God (in each of the dimensions mentioned above) are NOT true and other things we’ve never imagined ARE.

Being Good

Instagram: hillaryliannamcbride

I don't think 'being good' is anything other than being.

-- Hillary McBride

Let everything happen to you

A poetic version of the below? -- "Let everything happen to you":

Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Cannot Hold On, Con't

...you cannot hold on to the past (con't).

It's not that the past doesn't (didn't), in some sense, exist.  But, you have to let go of the form it took, so that which does live (did in the past, does in the present, will in the future) can be re-born.

Getting that (the living part) confused and holding onto the past prevents growth in the present—the re-generation of that life in the current time.  In fact, not releasing the past kills the living part of it that remains.

This is why it has been said, to have eternal life, you must be born again.

I think this is true at all levels—from the personal to the collective.

...you cannot hold on to the past.

Cannot Hold On

You cannot hold on to the past.

The more you try to do so, the more you inhibit the present, which is the doorway to the future.

Harder To Hate

I've learned that it's harder to hate up close.

-- Michelle Obama, Becoming

Most Human

I've noticed...that I am most human when my imagination is the greatest.

And, yes, I think the opposite is true as well.

Social Program of Jesus

The total social program that Jesus advocated was based on communion, friendship, distribution, and partnership. This contrasts with a social organization based on domination, exploitation, accumulation, and force.

-- Beatrice Bruteau


Holy Wisdom, Mother God, you hold my time in your hands. Your providence guides the stars and my cells. Your compassion opens my heart to healing in the midst of pain. Help me rest in you, trusting the future in your care and giving comfort to those who mourn, hurt, and face personal challenge. In Christ’s name. Amen.

-- Prayer of Awareness and Transformation

This Pandemic Hits Americans Where We’re Spiritually Weak

In a video chat last night, a friend admitted, “I’ve been crying a lot, and I’m not sure why.” COVID-19 has given us many reasons to weep. We’re out of our routines, the stock market has plunged, and we imagine millions dying. This virus and economic crisis punch us squarely where our spiritual armor is weakest: mortality, money, and our fear of missing out.

In 2 Corinthians 7, Paul distinguishes between two kinds of sorrow—a sorrow that “leads to death,” and a “godly sorrow.” The latter “brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret” (v. 10). Godly sorrow, he writes, produces “earnestness,” eagerness to repent, and a “longing” and “readiness to see justice done” (v. 11). The question the church faces now is which kind of sorrow COVID-19 will bring.

We are in the midst of the most widespread societal upheaval that many people alive today have ever experienced. Already our institutions, habits, relationships, and culture are shifting before our eyes. Frank M. Snowden, author of Epidemics and Society, shared with the New Yorker, “Epidemics are a category of disease that seem to hold up the mirror to human beings as to who we really are.” The question we are facing is not whether we will experience sorrow and change; the question is how. As biblical prophets walked with people through catastrophes, their advice was never to just endure until it ends. Instead they focused on proactively changing relationships with each other and with God.  Continue here....

-- Christine Jeske

If I were Donald Trump's speechwriter...

There’s a moment near the end of most sports movies when the coach gives a heartfelt pep talk right before the crucial game. The coach will use words like “heart,” “honor,” and “teamwork”. Everything that happens on the court or field after that is a bit of a letdown because victory – whether on the scoreboard or of the spirit – seems inevitable after the speech. To movie audiences, these moments may seem corny, but in real life, when someone you admire and respect speaks, their words can have a great impact. I certainly listened when coaches I respected, such as John Wooden, spoke at crucial points during my career. Inspiring people to be their best is what great coaches – and great politicians – do. It’s one of the qualities that makes them great.

One thing we could use right now is a passionate rallying speech from our president that inspires us all to do the right thing, not just for ourselves, but for our country. It is the speech Trump should deliver, not because he wants to be reelected, but because it would address the country’s major concerns, end the political squabbling, provide a reasonable plan going forward, and give Americans confidence that their government is working to protect their health and economic concerns. It needs to be the speech of a statesman not a, well, Trump. If I were Trump’s speechwriter, using the lessons I learned from great talks I heard in my basketball career, this is what I would give him to deliver...continue here.

-- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Visual: Framed

Visual - "Framed":

Painful Emotions

After years of being taught that the way to deal with painful emotions is to get rid of them, it can take a lot of reschooling to learn to sit with them instead.

-- Barbara Brown Taylor

(Personal) Effectiveness

What makes someone effective, in personal ways? 

Obviously, there are a few things to unpack around such a question.  What, in fact, are we really talking about?

In general, we occasionally recognize someone who is just plain effective—at getting things done, at what they do, at who they are.  We might say, they have a way about them.  They move things forward, as a function of their resources (personality, organization, inter-personal style, instinct, etc.).  The net result often is that we feel drawn to them—their authenticity, their integrity, their winsomeness, whatever it is about them that we appreciate.

One of the things that I've been wondering about is, how much of this effectiveness is secured or leveraged by the person's sense of the parts of themselves that make them ineffective?  Is it all just pure instinctualness?  Or, is it also a function of what they have learned...about themselves, that frees up more of who they are naturally?  People who have healthy awareness of these kinds of things seem, at least in part, more effective because they don't create as many distractions for themselves (and others), as a function of their self-knowledge, self-regulation, self-development.

Results & Consequences

The problem is that results often occur before consequences.

Take business, for example; sometimes, you can make money faster than you can see some of the consequences of making that money.  When money is involved, one is generally not motivated to consider the consequences as much (or before) as the desired results.

As An Imperfection

Ever noticed...how often anger is viewed as an imperfection (if not a sin)?

The Motherly Love of a Wrathful God

What if, instead of ignoring the great theme of motherly compassion because we see some wrathful, vengeful, Old Covenant deity who is somehow not the same God revealed in Christ Jesus, our churches took a yearlong walking tour of these 150 occurrences and motherly compassion became a part of our steady nourishment from Scripture?

...our churches would become even more the places of welcome to broken humanity that God intends them to be. When we see every place in the Old Testament where God expresses motherly compassion—and the people of Israel follow suit—wouldn’t we be moved to get past our too-easy self-righteousness and past our too-easy denigration of enemies and to open our communities to all God’s children in compassionate welcome? Wouldn’t we be moved to protect the lives threatened by death in our cities and communities?

Maybe we would realize that we let first impressions mislead us and that the God of the Old Testament is more complex and vibrant and, well, motherly, than we knew. Maybe we would quit saying “God of the Old Testament” and simply say “our God.”  Continue here....

-- Robert Foster

Re-Opening from COVID-19

COVID-19 're-opening’ is happening—the question is, to what?

In the midst of the social distancing necessitated by this pandemic, people have nevertheless come together in creative and loving ways. Some have called this virus a massive “trigger event” with the potential to change everything. As individuals and communities, we can respond with justice and compassion, or we can double down on the pursuit of accumulation and power, with no more than a return to business as usual.

-- Richard Rohr

Alone

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Alone":

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

-- Maya Angelou

Deepened

Wisdom is knowledge deepened by love.

-- IIia Delio

Sneaky Time

This is a sneaky time.

In other words, things are happening inside us that we don't recognize until they sometimes show up unannounced—these can be surprisingly bad or good.  An opportunity, either way.

Despair

Despair is the belief that tomorrow will be just like today.

-- Rob Bell

Understood

I've noticed...that I hardly ever feel understood, at least completely.

This doesn't feel to me like a complaint, as much as an observation.  It is more likely that it just isn't possible; even unreasonable...to expect of someone else.

This doesn't mean that no one understands me.  What is to be understood about us, is simply not the function of just one other person.

I believe I am well understood.  What stands out to me is how often I feel I am not.

More Accurate Reflection

One of the more confusing things about God are the people who say they believe in him:

Instagram: nakedpastor

Instagram: bobgoff

Our problem following Jesus is we're trying to be a better version of us, rather than a more accurate reflection of Him.

-- Bob Goff

Calm Also Has A Coefficient

Panic loves company.

And yet calm is our practical, efficient, rational alternative.

If you’re on a crowded plane and one person is freaking out about turbulence, the panic will eventually peter out. If, on the other hand, six people are freaking out, it’s entirely possible that it will spread and overtake the rest of the plane. Panic needs multiple nodes to spread.

The same is true with a cabin of 10-year-olds at summer camp. One homesick kid usually comes around and ends up enjoying the summer, because being surrounded by others who are okay makes us okay. But three or four homesick kids can change the entire dynamic.

While calm is a damping agent, it’s not nearly as effective at spreading itself as panic is.

The library is usually a quiet place because the dominant cultural narrative in the library is to be quiet. Because it’s dominant, the coefficient of its spread is sufficient to keep it that way. We have to expend effort to create environments of calm, because calm has a coefficient that can’t compete with panic when it comes to spreading.

And Twitter? Twitter has been engineered to maximize panic. Calm is penalized, panic is amplified. And if you are hanging out in real life with people who spend a lot of time on social media and news sites, you’ve invited all of those people into your circle as well.

We can find lots of reasons why fifty years of watching just three dominant TV networks wasn’t ideal. But the combination of oligopoly and the FCC meant that none of them spread panic. They weren’t built for it. When cable “news” showed up, they discovered that panic was a great way to make a profit. Not to make things better, simply to spread anger and fear.

If panic is helpful, of course you should bring it on. But it rarely is.

Instead:

Curate your incoming.

Stay off Twitter.

Do the work instead. Whatever needs doing most is better than panic.

Being up-to-date on the news is a trap and a scam. Five minutes a day is all you need.

-- Seth Godin, Calm also has a coefficient

For the Interim Time

There is a beauty in disruption—one that we often behold more in hindsight than in the moment, unless we can learn to see it differently:

Instagram: aaronieq

'Poem selection' for the week -- "For the Interim Time":

When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,
No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.
In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.
You are in the time of the imterim
Where everything seems withheld.
The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.
"The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to b born." You
cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.
Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know yo have to make you own way
through.
As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.
What is being transfigured here in your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.

-- John O'Donohue


It seems that it is only when what we are used to is taken away from us that we awaken to new possibilities, even if they were available all along.

-- Richard Rohr