Everywhere

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

-- Albert Einstein

Still Don't Work

I've noticed...my anger is more existent (often even instantly) about things that still don't work, even after I've made specific, conscious effort.

Not A Constant High

The Christian life is not a constant high. I have my moments of deep discouragement. I have to go to God in prayer with tears in my eyes, and say, 'O God, forgive me,' or 'Help me.'

-- Billy Graham

What a relief; despite the oft slant-eyed-ness from our culture towards anything less than 'high' — nothing incompatible at all about highs and lows...all are part of the fabric of the human experience of life.

 

Randoms...

There are certain chairs I like to sit in — some because of how they make my lower back feel, others because of the view of the morning light coming through a tree. 

We often seem to imagine that lives lived before us we’re not as developed, interesting, or fun.

The assembly of humans who are manifesting desire for God can be a powerful thing (honoring of one another by trusting in the presence of God).

We believe what we believe primarily because of what we have experienced (how we grew up, life-altering events, etc.) — what does it mean when we encounter people with a different experience?

Prior Randoms...

Visual: Busy

 Visual - "Busy":

Winona Lake, IN

Icy Hot

When my wife Anne and I turned 40, we decided to run a marathon to celebrate reaching middle age.

Unfortunately, three months into race training, I pulled a hamstring. But rather than rest for a few days, I applied a generous layer of Icy Hot--(a mentholated ointment that heats up and soothes sore muscles) to my thigh and went out for a run.

Unbeknownst to me, however, as I was pulling up my running tights, a gob of Icy Hot came loose from my thigh and smeared itself all over the inner lining of my shorts.

Yes, this would end in tears.

Three miles into my run, I felt a sharp, burning pain in a highly sensitive region of my body. It felt like someone had dropped napalm into my shorts!

I started panicking! I had no way to wipe off the Icy Hot, and so I turned around, hit the hyperdrive switch, and started sprinting toward home.

Now, if I had read the product description on the jar, I would have known this was a huge mistake. The effects of Icy Hot only intensify as your body temperature rises! Soon, I was in blinding pain so, what did I do? I ran even faster, which, of course, only increased my suffering. I wouldn't wish this experience on my worst enemy!

That said, my Icy Hot story taught me an important lesson. It’s a metaphor illustrating how all of us deal with problems in our lives.

When we experience emotional or psychological pain, we often double down on our personality type's old childhood strategies to make the suffering disappear.

But the strategies we used as kids to protect ourselves and cope with our pain backfire on us in adulthood. We try to outrun them, and it only makes the situation worse!

Here's the deal, friends: we can't outrun our difficulties and expect things to improve. On the contrary, they will only increase.

The real solution is to stop running and face them. To see the truth of what's happening in the moment and do the hard work of disentangling ourselves from our personality's unhelpful behavior patterns.

Notice and question your personality type's antiquated strategies for dealing with life's problems, and see if you can't find new ones. Then, stop running and ask whether your behavior is helpful or rooted in the shadow aspects of your personality. This is how we use the Enneagram to realize freedom and become the best expression of ourselves.

-- Ian Morgan Cron

Backwards / Forwards

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

-- Søren Kierkegaar

Not Win or Lose

Our character isn't defined by the battles we win or lose, but those we dare to fight.

-- Robert Beatty

So, what determines what is worth fighting for?  

Is it character?

What is character anyway?  Is it content?  Is it agency?  Some combination of both?

Character addresses what is needed.  What is needed may be for the good that enriches life or the things that are wrong that need to be resisted.  Character strikes me as the substance within us that a) informs, and b) enables what is needed.  It may be represented by the disposition that is consistent with what is good.  It may be a response demanded by the moment.  It may be strategic; it may be an impulse.  

Either way, things seem to require both vision and fortitude to work for or against something that is needed; in other words, these things benefit from something we might call character — something that includes content, constitution, and courage.

Without such elements, we can often confuse things like the means with the end.  We can become focused on things like the result (winning & losing), rather than what is needed.  Character, on the other hand, will inform and enable something different.  

It is, after all, what distinguishes what should be fought for and what shouldn't.

Two Train Illusion

If you’re at the station, sitting on a train about to leave, you might notice that the train next to you is moving.

But, perhaps, that train is sitting still and you’re moving. It’s hard to tell. Without the lurch of sudden acceleration, the only clue we have is that our relative position is changing.

For most of us, it’s disconcerting – we know something is moving, but we’re not sure exactly what’s happening.

Do we stay where we are… does anyone?

Whether or not we commit to movement, the world never stays precisely as it was. Insisting that it does is simply a waste of time and a source of frustration.

-- Seth Godin, the two train illusion

Where Are The Insects?

Ever noticed...where all the insects have gone?

25 years ago, an after-dark drive in the summer would result in the front end of your car being covered in bugs. Not so much these days....

Pesticides have depleted all kinds of insect populations.

Some people may not mind (including myself at times — after all, who enjoys mosquitoes or scrubbing bug guts off your bumper?).

But, insects are a vital part of our ecosystems.

...another thing we seem to be too willing to the roll the convenience-dice on.

Reimagines and Expands

Jesus does not replace. Jesus reimagines and expands, inviting an alternative and often innovative reading of Jewish tradition. 

-- Diana Butler Bass

So, IF Jesus were here today (but, he is, isn't he?), what would this mean for those who are trying so hard to hold on to the old?

Bass' observation is so freeing; not disregarding, but expanding...something that takes imagination— even to see something timeless (and, therefore, both new and old at the same time).

There is, after all, nothing to fear with what appears to be new, especially with the perspective that Jesus had (which His whole imagery around wineskins reveals)..

A Peace of Steam

...the title says it all.

Randoms...

Avoiding something doesn’t make it go away, particularly emotions.

Not everything that can be (or needs to be) received, can be received all at once — in other words, time is an important element regarding what can be received.

Most political discussions are completely one-sided — which kind of makes them NOT discussions.

In the end, what is the primary function of belief?

Prior Randoms...

Be Kind

It Goes On

In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.

-- Robert Frost

2020 Census

AXIOS

Reporting dynamics aside, you can try to keep things from changing, but they do anyway. 

It is the nature of things, of reality.

Best of Yourself

You get the best out of others when you give the best of yourself.

-- Harvey S. Firestone

Endless Routines

I'm wondering...about another lingering reflection, from a recent Randoms...:

Do you ever feel like your life is just a combination of endless routines?

As we perfect all the little ways we go about things (even sub-consciously), sometimes it's not hard to describe it that way.

But, our routines are not the endgame.

While we need them, we also need the disruption of their being broken:

Living in a transitional age such as ours is scary: things are falling apart, the future is unknowable, so much doesn’t cohere or make sense. We can’t seem to put order to it. This is the postmodern panic. It lies beneath most of our cynicism, our anxiety, and our aggression. Yet, there is little in the biblical revelation that ever promised us an ordered universe. The whole Bible is about meeting God in the actual, in the incarnate moment, in the scandal of particularity. It is rather amazing that we ever tried to codify and control the whole thing.

Chaos often precedes great creativity, and faith precedes great leaps into new knowledge. The pattern of transformation begins in order, but it very quickly yields to disorder and—if we stay with it long enough in love—eventual reordering. Our uncertainty is the doorway into mystery, the doorway into surrender, the path to God that Jesus called “faith.” In her work on “crisis contemplation,” CAC teacher Barbara Holmes confirms what we and others have long suspected—that great suffering and great love are the two universal paths of transformation. Both are the ultimate crises for the human ego. Continue here....

-- Richard Rohr

 There's always more going on than meets the eye....

No Longer Opportunity For Faith

Where there is no longer any opportunity for doubt, there is no longer any opportunity for faith either.

-- Paul Tournier

My Benediction to the Beloved Storyteller, Walter Wangerin Jr.

This sounds like a guy I'd like to know (or be).

  

Last week, Walter Wangerin Jr. passed away, and a unique voice fell silent. His wife Thanne (short for Ruth Anne), his family, and a few close friends from Valparaiso University were with him when he died.

I first encountered Walter as a speaker at a conference in which we both participated. A slender man with a handsome, angular face and a shock of dark hair, he stalked the stage like a Shakespearean actor. I thought of the accounts of Charles Dickens sitting onstage in the great halls of England, reading his stories to a mesmerized audience.

Yet Wangerin was neither reading nor sitting. He was performing in the purest sense of the word, weaving stories and concepts together in erudite prose, directing our minds and emotions much as a conductor directs an orchestra’s sounds—now meditative and melodic, now electrifying and bombastic.  Continue here....

-- Philip Yancey

While the intellect must be addressed in communicating Christian truth, it will not be truth for the hearer until the hearer is also touched deep within himself or herself.

-- Walter Wangerin Jr.

Randoms...

People who talk for a living and truth are not mutually inclusive.

Certainty can be a kind of false comfort.

At the very least, observe yourself….

Why does so much of our lives seem to be comprised of trying to just get through the moment, rather than being in it?

Prior Randoms...

3 great untruths to stop telling kids—and ourselves

Goal of Education

The true goal of education is to make people able to do good.

-- Richard Mitchell

As another school year begins, I'm digesting the observation above...and the more I contemplate it, the more dense and rich it becomes.

Life

 'Poem for the week' -- "Life":

              1

A moment of pleasure,

    An hour of pain,

A day of sunshine,

    A week of rain,

A fortnight of peace,

  A month of strife,

These taken together

  Make up life. 

              2

One real friend

    To a dozen foes,

Two open gates,

  ’Gainst twenty that’s closed,

Prosperity’s chair,

    Then adversity’s knife;

These my friends

    Make up life.

              3

At daybreak a blossom,

    At noontime a rose,

At twilight ’tis withered,

    At evening ’tis closed.

The din of confusion,

    The strain of the fife,

These with other things

    Make up life.

              4

A smile, then a tear,

    Like a mystic pearl,

A pause, then a rush

    Into the mad whirl,

A kiss, then a stab

  From a traitor’s knife;

I think that you’ll agree with me, 

    That this life.

-- Carrie Law Morgan Figgs

Receiving & Rejecting

It seems like we are always now in a mode of receiving or rejecting information — maybe we have been doing that all the way along. 

What makes us capable of receiving new information?  Why do we reject what we do?

When we consider what information someone else needs, perhaps we should consider when and how we received information and why we were able to receive it (or reject it). 

Was it a function of age, development, circumstance, disruption?  

Was it a result of something within us?  Outside of us?

Was it because of thought?  Or, something that engaged our thinking in a different way?

Contemplation of such may serve us well, as we participate in the information we pass along to others; by the way we engage with it in our own lives.

What is good for the other person right now?  ...may be a good place to start.

Excitement vs ...

Excitement comes from the achievement. Fulfillment comes from the journey that gets us there.

-- Simon Sinek

Cry More Often

I've noticed…that I cry more often over beauty than sadness.

Child of God, Awareness

The awareness of being a child of God tends to stabilize the ego and results in a new courage, fearlessness, and power. I have seen it happen again and again. 

-- Howard Thurman

TOP 10 - Glacier Nat’l Park, 2021

Polebridge, MT

We had a wonderful time again this year hiking in Montana — an amazing and visually stimulating week in Glacier National Park.  Here are my TOP 10 - Glacier Nat’l Park, 2021 pics.

...or, if you're bored, the rest here….

Randoms...

Teaching is planting seeds in the human heart.

We are all swimming in the truth everywhere — maybe we should spend less time consuming it (or selling it) and more time discovering it.

Too many churches effectively use good to try to cancel bad — it isn’t an equation.

Is half of what we do for other people what we would like them to do for us?

Prior Randoms...

Mystery of Joy

Joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, anytime, even under the most unpromising circumstances, even in the midst of suffering, with tears in its eyes....

-- Frederick Buechner

Truth Doesn't Struggle

Truth doesn’t struggle against anything. It exists, and it knows. 

-- Deepak Chopra™ MD

Best Advice

LinkedIn asked its more than a million followers for the best advice they'd give their 20-year-old selves in order to inject a little of the experience of gray hairs into the Energizer-Bunny-like stamina of workplace newbies. 

The resulting thread was a goldmine of useful advice. Some of the tips were quirky and personal -- get tested for ADHD earlier, beware "reply all," eat less pizza. Others, like "believe in yourself!" and "don't procrastinate," were more inspirational than actionable. But among all this advice, one particular bit of wisdom kept coming up again and again. 

Action beats deliberation.  Continue here....

-- Jessica Stillman

What If: The Body

Another lingering reflection, from a recent Randoms...:

What actually most informs us, our mind or our body?

What If...it is the action of the body that most informs us (as opposed to just the mind)?  

What if activity creates more wholistic engagement than anything else?

What if the mind is not our primary informer after all and that remaining primarily in that way (rational) of knowing and being, we are under-serving ourselves and others?

Rather Than Before It

Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.

-- Madeleine L'Engle

Recognition

Ever noticed...how your recognition of something increases the more you experience it?

Fire & Ice

In the millennia since Christ walked with us on this Earth, we’ve often tried to box up the “wind” [of the Spirit] in manageable doctrines. We’ve exchanged the fire of the Spirit for the ice of religious pride. We’ve turned the wine back into water, and then let the water go stagnant and lukewarm. We’ve traded the gentle dove of peace for the predatory hawk or eagle of empire. When we have done so, we have ended up with just another religious system, as problematic as any other: too often petty, argumentative, judgmental, cold, hostile, bureaucratic, self-seeking, an enemy of aliveness.

In a world full of big challenges, in a time like ours, we can’t settle for a heavy and fixed religion. We can’t try to contain the Spirit in a box. We need to experience the mighty rushing wind of Pentecost. We need our hearts to be made incandescent by the Spirit’s fire.

-- Brian McLaren