Fall Tree Of The Day, 2021

An annual series:  Fall Tree Of The Day:

Winona Lake, IN

  More Fall 2021 pics here....

Don't Be Such An Easy Mark

Roughly a half decade or so ago, I started noticing that everyone began to believe that their political opinions were the most interesting thing about them. Achieving equanimity isn’t just a natural state, but a choice. These days, it very much involves swimming against the tide. You nearly have to choose not to get riled by all the manufactured outrages, Kabuki-theater conflagrations, and faux-Twitter fights that are conducted by catty people, for catty people. The rage merchants abound, and are all too willing to make a buck from stoking your anger and wet-nursing your resentments over ‘issues’ you’d never even heard of five minutes prior. Don’t be such an easy mark.

...beware of the man who is too convinced of his own righteousness.

-- Matt Labash, Anger Fever

I recommend the whole Anger Fever piece from which this observation came.

Randoms...

Liberty and responsibility are two sides of one thing.

For most people, it’s hard to care about things (or people) they’re not close to.

There are few things as captivating as unvarnished human emotion.

What are the earmarks of someone whose primary interest is themselves?

Prior Randoms...

2021: US Will Burn 22% MORE Coal

Morning Brew

The Power of Hope Today

'Poem for the week' -- "The Power of Hope Today":

Today’s hope is a flickering candle that dwells in a snow-dusted window,

circulating the prayers of Christmas mornings.

Today’s hope is the crisp daffodil in colorless photos,

containing the soul of a small

child,

who only wishes and knows of

peace and love.

Today’s hope is the sparkling eyes that

truly believe in achieving

anything to reach unity.

Today’s hope is the palm to palm connection

bracing each other for the climb neither expected,

but couldn’t abandon.

Today’s hope is peering

beyond

the lingering barrier,

but still recognizing the diversity in ourselves.

Today’s hope has been dimmed and tossed recklessly,

but still generously stays with us,

for we cannot help but come back

like wide eyed children to candy.

We are said to be weak to rely on such strength,

but we are only believers.

That spark

That gives science a baffled case

And oceans an infinite plane,

is the eagle that dips

and soars

and fights,

which stands for

the hope of

today.

-- Gabrielle Marshall

Dads On Duty

I couldn't help but think of yesterday's post when I saw this:

 

Chiding

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

Chiding (oneself or others) is rarely an effective long-term strategy for change.  

If you want to be different, you really have to focus — on your habits and your use of energy.

Take habits; it's just so easy to continue doing something, isn't it?  Whatever it is — complaining, eating, thinking — it is surprising how much easier and easier it becomes to keep repeating patterns that you've ended up developing, consciously or unconsciously.  

Recently I've caught myself swearing under my breath, when the seemingly smallest of things don't work.  Is that really necessary (or, even warranted)?  No, but, I catch myself doing it, basically because I've let a habit of doing it form.  If I don't choose to un-habit it, I will likely just continue doing it.  

Negative self-talk can easily become habitual.  We can do it without thinking, simply because we've done it before.  It is easier and easier to just continue doing it.  Chiding ourselves works that way.  It tricks us into thinking we're doing something about things we don't like about ourselves.  But, are we really?  Or, are we just using negativity to keep ourselves asleep to how we are treating ourselves — never really intending to change or doing anything about it?

Which brings us to energy.  Chiding (like most negative energy) too easily becomes a kind of self-reinforcing consumption of energy that leaves us with less to work with in changing for the better.  Assuming that's true, what if we took the same amount of energy and directed it towards something constructive?  In this case, What If...I consciously re-directed the negative energy I use to chide myself for being less than I want to be and actually created positive energy towards identifying what I want to do or be?  Criticizing myself for things I don't do could be transformed into energy for working at what I do want to do.  

Energy creates energy — in both directions.

Our self-talk often influences our behaviors.  If I really want to change something, considering and energizing how I talk to myself might go a long way towards enabling that change.  How I talk to myself about it, changes the way I end up thinking about it (and myself).  How I think about something changes the way I behave regarding it.  

Chiding is a form of self-talk.  It consumes energy.  It is often habitual.  And, therefore, it inhibits my ability to change.

…not to mention that how I view myself ends up being how I view others (a topic for another day).

Contagious Commerce

Early adopters change the world.

While one person choosing not to eat meat will have a small impact on our climate, it will have a much bigger impact on the restaurants, groceries, and food suppliers who notice what you’re doing.

They’ll change what they offer, and that will lead to a multiplier effect of other people changing their habits.

Buying an electric car or installing solar before they’re the obvious economic choice has the same impact. Because once marketers and investors discover that there’s a significant group that likes to go first, they’re far more likely to invest the time and energy to improve what’s already there.

The same goes for philanthropy. When some people eagerly fund a non-profit with a solution that’s still in beta, it makes it easier (and more likely) that someone else will start one as well.

It also happens in the other direction. If we buy from a spamming telemarketer, abandon a trusted brand to save a buck or succumb to the hustle, the market notices.

Very few people have the leverage to change the world. But all of us have the chance to change the people around us, and those actions change what gets built, funded and launched.

-- Seth Godin, Contagious Commerce

Most Able

Ever noticed…where you tend to be most able to help someone else — is it not often related to things you have gone through?

Estrangement from American Christianity

I keep meeting fellow church leaders, artists, and other stakeholders who share a feeling of estrangement from some of the dominant expressions of American Christianity. We feel homeless for a few reasons.

While Evangelicalism is the theological and cultural tradition that formed many of us, and we're grateful for the gifts it gave us, we find its boundaries too narrow for our experience of God and its politics corrupted by an un-Christlike vision.

We believe that every person is made in the image of God, and sometimes naming each person's inherent worth has led to our own loss of belonging.

We want a more just and inclusive expression of faith, but we're also wary of the temptation to simply trade one exclusionary stance for another in the process.

We see the Spirit moving through new ideas and theological and liturgical visions, but we also embrace the depth and breadth of historical faith and worship.

We believe art and beauty are essential for vibrant spiritual community, but have also seen how highly-performative expressions of church can crowd out our authentic humanity.

We believe in the importance of deconstruction, but we also believe in rebuilding faith, and we're excited about inviting others into this way of life following Jesus.

We don't just want to take our cue from national church trends; we take our cue from our local contexts. We believe our churches should look and sound and taste more like the neighborhoods they serve than the latest church trends emerging from high profile places.

And we want faith to be a gateway to the Mystery, rather than a boundary around it.

-- Jason Miller

Randoms...

Sustained dysfunction often leads to authoritarianism. 

In love, while words have power, presence has more.

Curiosity is like muscle — it grows from use.

When we don’t know what to do or how to approach something — What If...we pulled back and tested our assumptions (sometimes, it’s actually our assumptions that have us in a bind)?

Prior Randoms...

It Is Not About Me

 

We each have a sacred responsibility to the people of the United States. It is not about me. It is about my ability to serve the people. 

The only way you get something done ... is to work with other people. 

-- Bill Cassidy

So Crucial Right Now

I cannot even begin to describe how resonant I am with the spirit of this (it is like describing the soul of my ‘Poem for the Week’ series):

This summer, on a lark, I took a course on poetry geared toward Christian leaders. Twelve of us met over Zoom to read poems and discuss the intersection of our faith, vocations and poetry.

We compared George Herbert’s “Prayer” to Christian Wiman’s “Prayer.” We discussed Langston Hughes’s “Island,” Countee Cullen’s “Yet Do I Marvel” and Scott Cairns’s “Musée” to examine suffering and the problem of evil. We read about Philip Larkin’s fear of death and what he sees as the failures of religious belief in his poem “Aubade.” It was my favorite part of the summer.

In our first class, we took turns sharing what drew us to spend time with poetry. I clumsily tried to explain my longing for verse: I hunger for a transcendent reality — the good, the true, the beautiful, those things which somehow lie beyond mere argument. Yet often, as a writer, a pastor and simply a person online, I find that my life is dominated by debate, controversy and near strangers in shouting matches about politics or church doctrine. This past year in particular was marked by vitriol and divisiveness. I am exhausted by the rancor.

In this weary and vulnerable place, poetry whispers of truths that cannot be confined to mere rationality or experience. In a seemingly wrecked world, I’m drawn to Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Autumn” and recall that “there is One who holds this falling/Infinitely softly in His hands.” When the scriptures feel stale, James Weldon Johnson preaches through “The Prodigal Son” and I hear the old parable anew. On tired Sundays, I collapse into Wendell Berry’s Sabbath poems and find rest.

I’m not alone in my interest in this ancient art form. Poetry seems to be making a comeback. According to a 2018 survey by the National Endowment for the Arts, the number of adults who read poetry nearly doubled in five years, marking the highest number on record for the last 15 years. The poet Amanda Gorman stole the show at this year’s presidential inauguration, and her collection “The Hill We Climb” topped Amazon’s best-seller list.

There is not a simple or singular reason for this resurgence. But I think a particular gift of poetry for our moment is that good poems reclaim the power and grace of words.

Words seem ubiquitous now. We carry a world of words with us every moment in our smartphones. We interact with our family and friends through the written word in emails, texts and Facebook posts. But with our newfound ability to broadcast any words we want, at any moment, we can cheapen them.

“Like any other life-sustaining resource,” Marilyn Chandler McEntyre writes in her book Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, “language can be depleted, polluted, contaminated, eroded and filled with artificial stimulants.” She argues that language needs to be rescued and restored, and points us to the practice of reading and writing poetry as one way of doing so. Poems, she says, “train and exercise the imagination” to “wage peace” because “the love of beauty is deeply related to the love of peace.”

Indeed, in our age of social media, words are often used as weapons. Poetry instead treats words with care. They are slowly fashioned into lanterns — things that can illuminate and guide. Debate certainly matters. Arguments matter. But when the urgent controversies of the day seem like all there is to say about life and death or love or God, poetry reminds me of those mysterious truths that can’t be reduced solely to linear thought.

Poetry itself can engage in smart debate, of course. Yet even didactic poetry — poetry that makes an argument — does so in a more creative, meticulous and compelling way than we usually see in our heated public discourse.

Another reason that I think we are drawn to poetry: Poems slow us down. My summer poetry class teacher, Abram Van Engen, an English professor at Washington University in St. Louis, reminded me that poetry is the “art of paying attention.” In an age when our attention is commodified, when corporations make money from capturing our gaze and holding it for as long as possible, many of us feel overwhelmed by the notifications, busyness and loudness of our lives. Poetry calls us back to notice and attend to the embodied world around us and to our internal lives.

In this way, poetry is like prayer, a comparison many have made. Both poetry and prayer remind us that there is more to say about reality than can be said in words though, in both, we use words to try to glimpse what is beyond words. And they both make space to name our deepest longings, lamentations, and loves. Perhaps this is why the poetry of the Psalms became the first prayer book of the church.

I am trying to take up more poetry reading in my daily life. Reading new poems can be intimidating, but I figure that the only way to get poetry really wrong is to avoid it altogether. It helps that poetry is often short and quick to read so I fit it into the corners of my day — a few minutes in bed at night or in the lull of a Saturday afternoon.

During the past school year, with my kids home because of Covid precautions, we would pile books of poetry on our table once a week (Shel Silverstein, Shakespeare, Nikki Grimes, Emily Dickinson), eat cookies, and read poetry aloud. I now try to always keep some books of verse around.

In one of my very favorite poems, “Pied Beauty,” Gerard Manley Hopkins writes of a beauty that is “past change.” In this world where our political, technological and societal landscape shifts at breakneck speed, many of us still quietly yearn for a beauty beyond change. Poetry stands then as a kind of collective cry beckoning us beyond that which even our best words can say.

-- Tish Harrison Warren, NY Times Newsletters

Wiser

The heart is wiser than the intellect.

-- Josiah Gilbert Hollan

Enough?

Below all the chatter, noise, and bluster of our time; I hear a persistent question — it seems like people are essentially asking, will there be enough? 

At a fundamental level, people seem to know that our personal and collective consumption is disproportionate to our need. 

This seems to leave us in a posture of scarcity, and the fear that results from it. 

The irony is that the more I consume, the more I am subconsciously aware that if everyone were consuming at that same rate, there wouldn’t be enough and, thereby, a sense that I have to get, keep, and protect everything I can.

One consequence of this is a view of the world and, thereby, others that we are not in this together and are instead competing with one another.  The world, then, increasingly becomes a place of threat...and hostility (sound familiar?).

Which perpetuates the question — will there be enough (for me)?

The answer is, yes.  But, that answer comes with some strings attached.  There will be enough only if we recognize what Wm Paul Young said (here) about the significance of each day as it is.

It is important, too, to recognize that we often think or feel about this subject in highly monetized terms (a function of our economic / market based culture).  But, of course, our sense of enough is way bigger than our financial concerns.  After all, our financial concerns are simply our collective way of overcoming what we fear in our persistent question.  

Because below our surface version of the question is the prevailing concern about whether we are enough.  It is fascinating to observe that we actually believe that if we have enough, we won't really have the question of whether we are enough.  It is almost as if we say, in effect, if I have enough I don't have to care about the rest.  But, the rest is where is real answer is — we are not enough on our own.  With ourselves, with others, with the earth, with God.

It is, after all, with God that the answers we seek come.  God has no scarcity.  God created everything.  God created us.  God created me.  Our sense of scarcity is a result of our lack of recognition of what true abundance is and where it comes from.

We have more than enough.

But, we can destroy a lot of it...

...if we don't recognize that and live accordingly with everyone and everything else in less fearful, consumptive, and hoarding ways.

Ocean of Truth

Tweeted by William Shatner during his flight last week into space:

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, diverting myself in now & then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

-- Isaac Newton

I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don't want to lose it. ...It has to do with the enormity and the quickness and the suddenness of life and death. Oh my god, it’s unbelievable.

The moment you see the vulnerability of everything; it’s so small. This air, which is keeping us alive, is thinner than your skin.

Everybody in the world needs to do this. Everybody in the world needs to see.

-- William Shatner

I'm no space-geek, but I was impressed by the impact the different perspective about our existence had on Shatner.  Knowing about something (like playing a role about it on TV), is not the same thing as experiencing it.

Product of Narrative

I’m wondering…about what the mainline religion Origin Stories would look like from the perspective of a woman?

I wouldn't have considered it very much had I not read a poem by a black woman (I am a white man) that got me wondering....

You might say (or just think), why would that be important?  Why it wouldn't be may be more telling....

We are so often a product of the narrative of the time and space in which we are immersed.

Space for God

To empty the self is not an act of denial, but of fulfillment, for it creates space for God to fill one’s being.

-- Sallie McFague

Randoms...

Being...patient is an active (engaged) kind of waiting.

One way to get better at something is to actually do it.

Winning isn't the only metric of success; in fact, in our culture now, it may be necessary to more seriously embrace alternative measures of success.

Don't we know by now what lack of regulation (personal and collective), more often than not, seems to appeal to?

Prior Randoms...

Teens are Cheugy

Morning Brew

On The Road He Took

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it. 

-- Jean de La Fontaine

Disguised

New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.

-- Lao Tzu

To nod in recognition, you have to go through this a couple of times....

Give of Yourself

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

When you give of yourself, it tends to cost you something.  

I'm guessing most people are either consciously or sub-consciously aware of this, which often fosters an impulse to a question like — do I want, then, to give of myself?

Perhaps this tendency accumulates over time (prior experience influencing the present one).

Cost, though (depending on the severity of the situation), becomes a way to truncate something that (not only isn't necessary) limits the dynamics involved in giving.  Because giving is a reality that plays not as much in loss as it does in expansion.

You have probably heard people say, when you give, you also receive.

And what is received is often in a different dimension (than what is given), which makes the equation-format for evaluating giving-at-a-cost pretty arbitrary.

In the end, we don't sustain a spirit of giving by maintaining cost-benefit analysis.  That is not why we give.  More often we give because of need — it is for the good of someone else.  And, when need isn't a primary driver, we find ourselves giving because of the good that doing so enhances.

Giving of ourselves extends something we have for the good of something or someone else.

We don't, in the end, give because of what we receive.  We give of ourselves...because whatever the cost may be, it is good for us (both givers and receivers) to do so...and that kind of giving both extends and expands the goodness of it.

LT: Not A Role

One doesn’t lead because he or she is a leader. One leads because they...lead.

Leading is often confused by perceptions about the role of leadership. The role of leading is not really what leading is about — too many people aspire to the role more than they do to actual leading.

Obscurity

I’ve noticed…that I don’t do as well with obscurity as I would have guessed.

Image of God

Your image of God creates you.

-- Richard Rohr

Why You Need to Protect Your Sense of Wonder — Especially Now

We may be slowly returning to our offices (more or less), but the strains of the pandemic are hardly over. As we enter a transitional stage after a year of trauma and strain, more than ever we need ways to refresh our energies, calm our anxieties, and nurse our well-being. One potentially powerful intervention is rarely talked about in the workplace: The cultivation of experiences of awe. Like gratitude and curiosity, awe can leave us feeling inspired and energized. It’s another tool in your toolkit and it’s now attracting increased attention due to more rigorous research.

University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross defines awe as “the wonder we feel when we encounter something powerful that we can’t easily explain.” Often the things which bring us awe have an element of vastness and complexity. Think of a starry night sky, an act of great kindness, or the beauty of something small and intricate. During your workday the colors of the leaves outside your office or an act of sacrifice by a colleague could prompt a similar feeling — especially if you are attuned to it. In the United States and China especially, experiences of awe are frequently related to the virtuous behavior of others: an act of dedication, skill, or courage.

Cultivating experiences of awe is especially important and helpful now...continue here.

-- David P. Fessell and Karen Reivich

Starfish

'Poem for the week' -- "Starfish":

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to 
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a 
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have 
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman 
down beside you at the counter who say, Last night, 
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological 
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old 
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it 
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the 
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you 
were born at a good time. Because you were able 
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And 
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland, 
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel, 
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

-- Eleanor Lerman

Widespread AND Lucrative Focus on the Apocalyptic

What distinguishes the present age is the widespread and lucrative focus on the apocalyptic: the magnification of threats and minimizing of opportunities; the exaggeration of differences; the desire to see things as worse than they are. If you feel, as so many do today, that these are some of America’s worst days, if you fear for the future of this democratic republic, then your duty is to master the fear and refuse to be governed by it. If the voice on TV is trying to scare you, turn it off. If your social media leave you anxious, shut them down. Let the worst of times bring out the best of you, for a light shines brightest in the dark.

-- David Von Drehle

Reining In Our Paranoia: People get so addicted to their own narratives...

Which brings me to the bizarre and thoroughly ridiculous reaction to a picture of a Customs and Border Patrol agent riding a horse.

I get that the picture looked bad: White guy chasing a black guy with what looked like a whip. But it wasn’t a whip and there was no whipping of any Haitian migrants. The whipping motion of the reins is a standard practice for maneuvering the horse, not rounding up humans.

This was clear very early in the development of this story, but not early enough. Vice News still has this tweet up:

"Border Patrol agents are whipping Haitian migrants at the US-Mexica border in Texas."

Continue here...

-- Jonah Goldberg

The 'story' referenced here seems like just another example of my recent Rumination on the role of belief in our current lives.  Goldberg makes some observations worth considering.

Risk to Trust

If we are unwilling to take the risk to trust others, then others will be unwilling to take the risk to trust us.

-- Simon Sinek

More than just a clever twist of words, trust seems to be such a hard thing to give away.

Pleasure

Ever noticed...how momentary pleasure is?

In fact, that may be one of its purposes — immersion in the moment.

But, it doesn’t (can’t?) last, and that doesn’t make it bad.  There is just a new opportunity to enjoy something pleasurable or to be present to when it happens.

Conspiring

While many conspire for greed, and many conspire for power, and many conspire for supremacy and domination, may your spirit fill us, Holy One, to follow the way of Jesus, joining in a creative and liberating conspiracy for your peace, your shalom, your ubuntu, for all. Amen.

-- Brian McLaren

Randoms...from Others

Once you have a gun, why bother to learn to read and write.

-- Robert Kaplan, Imperial Grunts

The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves — in their separate, and individual capacities. 

-- Abraham Lincoln

The first wealth is health.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive.

-- Maya Angelou

...find the thread?  (Prior Randoms...from Others).

Firearm Incidents

AXIOS

Think, Feel, Imagine

What you think, you become.

What you feel, you attract.

What you imagine, you create.

-- Buddha