When the Church Joins Itself to the State

Instagram: nakedpastor

Randoms...?

Critique too often comes from a position of power, rather than vulnerability.

From infancy to adulthood, identity and personal sense of meaning are largely defined via our closest friendships.

The only thing that prevails over fundamentalism is community — community, however, is often formed (and maintained) with fundamentalism.

What do you really have, if you can’t give it away?

Prior Randoms...?

The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

Most people you meet in everyday life — at work, in the neighborhood — are decent and normal. Even nice. But hit Twitter or watch the news, and you'd think we were all nuts and nasty. 

Why it matters: The rising power and prominence of the nation's loudest, meanest voices obscures what most of us personally experience: Most people are sane and generous — and too busy to tweet. 

Reality check: It turns out, you're right. We dug into the data and found that, in fact, most Americans are friendly, donate time or money, and would help you shovel your snow. They are busy, normal and mostly silent.

These aren't the people with big Twitter followings or cable-news contracts — and they don't try to pick fights at school board meetings.

So the people who get the clicks and the coverage distort our true reality. 

Three stats we find reassuring:

• 75% of people in the U.S. never tweet.
• On an average weeknight in January, just 1% of U.S. adults watched primetime Fox News (2.2 million). 0.5% tuned into MSNBC (1.15 million).
• Nearly three times more Americans (56%) donated to charities during the pandemic than typically give money to politicians and parties (21%).

One chart worth sharing: As polarized as America seems, Independents — who are somewhere in the middle — would be the biggest party.  Continue here....

-- Erica Pandey, Mike Allen

Comfort & Convenience

In spite of all complain we about, there are so many things that we have that help us feel more comfortable and have more convenient lives.

Rollers for our clothes to remove lint.  

Gloves for nearly every temperature and level of moisture. 

Shirts and coats for the slightest differences in weather conditions.

Gas tanks in our cars that tell us how far we can drive based on the speed that we're going.

Sunglasses with different shades of inflections depending on whether there is snow or sand or grass or woods.

Heated seats in our cars.

Telephones that we can ask how far it is to a specific city and get results within seconds.

Garage doors that open automatically.

Thermostats that can change the temperature in our homes,  even when we are in another state.

Showers in our homes that can control temperature to nearly any degree we choose.

Toothpaste and dental floss in any flavor we want.

Candles that will turn themselves on automatically and off after any specific amount of time we desire.

Noise machines that we believe will help us sleep more easily.

The list could go on and on….

Finish here....

In Quietness

These are the times in life — when nothing happens — but in quietness the soul expands.

-- Rockwell Kent

Before You’ve Confirmed It

Ever noticed...how many things are true, before you've had a chance to confirm them with your own experience?

Take a statement like, "You won't know until you try...".  We know this has some real truth to it, even before we've got a personal story that seemingly validates it.

Establish A Community

The whole of Jesus’ ministry was to establish a community so convinced of their Belovedness to God that they proclaim the Belovedness of others. Belovedness is a massive act of owning and accepting your humanness as a gift from a God who deeply loves you. 

-- Osheta Moore

Randoms...?

At the moment, the closest (succinct) definition of spirituality that I can come up with is…awareness.

There may be kernels of truth embedded in the ideologies of fundamentalism, but for the most part (especially in terms of implementation), it seems like invariably fundamentalism ends up being more about control, than truth.

Everybody sees a portion of the truth (in other words, only part of it) — so, it is really important that we expose ourselves to the parts of truth that we don’t see…to engage thoughtful perspectives from points-of-view we don’t normally circulate in.

Is the purpose of education to have a better job or is a better job one of the potential by-products of education?

Prior Randoms...?

Time for digital detox

Deep down, you know the truth: You're hopelessly addicted to the phone or iPad or computer you’re reading this newsletter on.

It's like puffing three packs of cigarettes, in the car, windows up, kids jammed in back. You know it's not great for you — or them.

Why it matters: Time for digital detox, friends. You don't need to quit cold turkey — just dial it back.

The upside: a clearer mind, calmer nerves, happier friends and family.

First, the incentive: Our devices are shortening our attention spans, wrecking our ability to focus and even hindering us from empathizing with others.

A Baylor University study found screen time is ruining relationships, as one partner feels "phone-snubbed" by the other.  Continue here....

-- Erica Pandey

How could I have known I would need to remember your laughter?

'Poem for the week' -- "How could I have known I would need to remember your laughter?":

How could I have known I would need to remember your laughter,

the way it ricocheted—a boomerang flung 

from your throat, stilling the breathless air.

How you were luminous in it. Your smile. Your hair 

tossed back, flaming. Everyone around you aglow.

How I wanted to live in it those times it ignited us 

into giggles, doubling us over aching and unmoored

for precious minutes from our twin scars—

the thorned secrets our tongues learned too well

to carry. It is impossible to imagine you gone, 

dear one, your laugh lost to some silence I can’t breach,

from which you will not return.

-- Lauren K. Alleyne

Parts I Can't Change

Maybe satisfaction is only possible, not by getting exactly everything I imagine would bring me satisfaction, but by first accepting the parts of life I can't change.

-- Nadia Bolz-Weber

Dynamics of Prayer

Another lingering reflection, this time on a recent post on prayer:

There are dynamics involved with prayer.

It often takes a while to learn (practice) what those dynamics really are — especially against the backdrop that so many who have grown-up familiar with prayer often end up reporting they have to deal with.

I suspect that one of the primary crash-points has to do with the dynamic of leverage. There is a sense in which prayer has often been experienced primarily in the context of when something is needed. It also includes the dynamic of when something is wanted. And perhaps, because of that, it can end up for many being primarily about something like leverage. When this happens, it seems to become something that inevitably falls short of being self-sustaining.

Perhaps this is because it is perceived that we mostly pray when there is something that we want or need and don’t know how to make happen with just our own resources. We may pray, for example, for a health condition we or someone we love is struggling with. We really want the situation resolved, but we don't know how to make it happen — so, we pray. But, because we may be praying primarily out of self-interest, and particularly with the goal of leverage, we are also aware of something innately duplicitous about our 'prayer' efforts. We tend to pray when we need something...or just want something.

Against such a back-drop, we can find it difficult to sustain our prayers, when they feel largely ineffective.

What often challenges this dynamic is when there is pain or suffering of one kind another involved and what we want is more than just something that would make our lives easier or better. Something that relates to the quality of life we are not experiencing or that someone that we care about is dealing with. Here again we are prompted to pray when it’s more obvious that our resources cannot do much about relieving the pain or suffering involved in our situation — so we ask (even beg) for intervention or help of some kind. Even in these types of situations, we recognize that we're moderating our prayer based on the its perceived efficacy. So, if it doesn’t appear to be working or it has little perceivable effect, then we’re less inclined to pray (changing only when our sense of desperation does). 

I’m not suggesting efficacy or leverage or anything related to asking for help, assistance, or flat-out intervention, in the dynamics of prayer, is wrong...

...finish here.

No Person Is Your Friend Who

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

-- Alice Walker

Moving Something In Me

I'm wondering...if prayer is more about moving something in me, than it is moving something in God?

Doing For Us

Prayer is not primarily something we are doing to God, something we are giving to God, but what God is doing for us. And what God is doing for us is giving the divine Self in love. 

-- Ruth Burrows

Prayer is the longing of the human heart for God.  In and through prayer we discover our true selves, the self that God has created each of us to be.... 

-- Ilia Delio

The practice of the Prayer will initially take some serious self-discipline, but it gradually grows sweet, and then irresistible. The hope of protection from your own vicious or self-hating thoughts is alone a strong impetus to persevere. Day by day the healing advances, and continual immersion in Christ’s presence becomes your goal. One day you will find that the Prayer is starting up within you on its own, like a dearly loved melody.

“Prayer of the heart” occurs when the Prayer moves from merely mental repetition, forced along by your own effort, to an effortless and spontaneous self-repetition of the Prayer that emanates from the core of your being, your heart. 

-- Frederica Mathewes-Green

Randoms...?

It’s not good when our pleasures become isolated to just a few things.

What I see is a function of what I have experienced.

Knowing is one thing; implementing what you know is another — in other words, it’s not the same thing.

When is refusing to know more a problem (aren’t we seeing collective versions of this right now)?

Prior Randoms...?

When Normal America springs into action

Here's an encouraging dispatch from Normal America: Neighbors from across Highland Park, Ill., sprang into action to help save lives after the mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade.

Why it matters: Before emergency workers arrived, the real first responders were everyday citizens. Nearly a dozen people — including off-duty doctors, nurses and a football coach — were among the first to administer first aid.

Between the lines: Finish Line has been highlighting Normal America — your neighbors and coworkers who spend their free time volunteering and raising kids, not tweeting or watching cable news.

They get less attention than the loudmouths. But when you think through the circle of people you truly know well, you'll find there are more helpers than hotheads.  Continue here....

-- Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen

Let Him Look At The Stars

James Webb Space Telescope

Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? 

-- Job 38:4-7

Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. 

-- Abraham Heschel

But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Joy Enough

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

-- Emily Dickinson

Deviant

Usually when someone uses the word deviant, or the notion of deviance, there is often some kind of (or a version of) morality embedded in their use of it. 

But the reality is, there is deviance involved in nearly everything…and it has no moral quality.  

Sorry. 

Because deviance itself has an antecedent. 

In other words, it is an attempt to describe something that is considered abnormal (although, I prefer something closer to non-conforming better). And, though often times this descriptive language is actually used to qualify or impute value, it is much more simply about describing things as they are. 

What is normal anyway? Isn’t it primarily a description by the majority of what things look like or should look like? A norm is a common description of what most things look like. And, it is worth noting, the majority are often the ones that are describing that pattern, of what is (or, what should be). 

But, by implication, we know that nothing is perfectly conforming. There is variety everywhere. And we know for whatever description the majority describes, there is also deviation from that description — deviation simply exists. It isn’t after all really a question of whether it should exist or not, it just does. Perhaps it would be more helpful to think about it in terms of categories where that deviance is not attached to a moral quality. 

Plants might be a good example. Just take a walk and notice how many species of plants there are, how many plants seem to proliferate in any given area, how there are always some plants that don't seem to make it like the same ones right next to it do.  Consider how many plants, often referred to by the same name, are not exactly the same when they are grown in another part of the world — how some varieties survive in some areas, and not as well in others, often because of environmental conditions.

Once you introduce this idea in the context of all living things, it’s not hard at all to spot deviance from the norm in almost everything that lives. Yes, there are pervasive patterns, but those patterns are not all inclusive. There are also exceptions, versions, variations of all kinds of things. 

So, the question really starts to emerge, when and where do we attach value to the things that are not perfectly conforming? 

Finish here…..

LT: Strong Opinions & Weak Values

The world is full of leaders with strong opinions and weak values.

-- Adam Grant

Disappointment

I’ve noticed...I can’t handle your disappointment, especially if it is with me.

While not really true, sometimes I wonder if that’s what it feels like to others.

Compassion: Full Immersion in Being Human

Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless.  Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

-- Henri Nouwen

Randoms...?

From one perspective, there is no future — only the next NOW.

You shouldn't get to the point where you never question yourself — nor should get to the point where you always question yourself.

The funny thing about love; it is never reciprocal — always more.

What If...truth is not a tool or a weapon, but more like a dance partner?

Prior Randoms...?

Top Topics of Concern: Gun Violence

AXIOS

AXIOS

Worst Thing

 We are more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.

-- Bryan Stevenson

You can’t demonize people you know. 

-- Father Gregory Boyle

Deeper Man

To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered.

-- Oscar Wilde

Independence, Con't

Earlier this week, I posed the question — what is independence?

Our US history would answer the question rather quickly (even though the answer is not as perfectly straight-forward as we have tended to believe):  

Independence from England

We have our reasons that felt necessary enough to take on all the costs involved to achieve it —independence of religion, independence from taxation, independence of...all kinds of things.

What we think it means now, though, is primarily freedom — freedom is our mantra.  And, freedom is only partly related to independence.  But, what it means now (mostly) is we can do whatever we want.  

Literally....

And, freedom seems to mean something more and more like no one can tell us what to do…ever.

And, that’s where the rub comes in.

That’s not what it meant then and isn’t what it means now.  No society can really fully function on that premise.

We are not truly independent…ever.  And, whether we know it or not, we really don’t want the full consequence of that.  It isn’t really a true (or good) goal, as we are actually very dependent (inter-dependent) on many things…in order to have this description of freedom.

We want our freedom, but the ability to enjoy it requires a few things we also want (or need) — like to feel safe (from disease), protected (from mob-rule), basic services of assistance when we are in trouble, etc.

And, truth be told, freedom is really not as much the ability to do whatever we want as it is the freedom not to.

Freedom, after all, is the option to freely give to others out of our abundance based on what they need, knowing that, in so doing, we may need to be the recipients of the same.  

In other words, inter-dependence…or, as some have called it, love.

One of the benevolences of freedom for me, is the ability to enjoy the natural spaces our government has provided our society through our national park systems.

This week, we are again enjoying Glacier National Park:

Glacier National Park, MT

Perhaps independence can afford us some of the greater benefits of recognizing our inter-dependence, like those who had the vision for our national parks. A vision for the betterment of man through the common good.

This is what I’m celebrating about our country this week.

More pics here….

Experts & Geniuses

Experts are the ones who think they know everything.

Geniuses are the ones who know they don't.

-- Simon Sinek

Independence

I’m wondering about…independence, probably for obvious reasons on Independence Day here in the good ‘ole USA.

The term begs the question — what is independence?  

Independence from what?  

Aimed at our Deepest Problem

Prayer is more a way of being than an isolated act of doing.

Prayer is aimed at our deepest problem: our tendency to forget our liberating connectedness with God.

-- Tilden Edwards

I See You

Randoms...? (from Others)

Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.

-- Eckhart Tolle

Pay attention to what you pay attention to. -- Amy Krouse Rosenthal

If you are working on something that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.

-- Steve Jobs

The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.

-- Alfred Adle

...any thread?  Prior Randoms...? (from Others).

On the Lighter Side: Smoking Gun

On the Lighter Side:

Opinion: Smoking Gun