Remedy For Love

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

-- Henry David Thoreau

Forces of Goodness

I trust the forces of goodness. That they're taking care of the universe. And I believe it. It restores my faith and restores a feeling of well-being.

I focus on and have faith in the goodness around. And I think eventually, it will prevail. 

-- Urvashi Sahni

Flags-In

American troops' service and sacrifice, and that of their families, echoes far beyond those silent stones out there.

-- Joe Biden

So why does freedom for the many seem to require the sacrifice of a few?  I’m guessing the reasons are a little sobering, if not indicting.  

Which moves the question a little closer to home — what sacrifices am I willing to make for the benefit of the many…especially if not confined exclusively to the context of war?

AXIOS

For the history buffs...(where, by the way, would we be without honest history?).

When Something Falls Apart

Transitions can only take place if we are willing to let go of what we have known, the worlds we have created, and our assumptions about “how things are.” To let go is the precursor to being reborn. 

-- Barbara A. Holmes

The word change normally refers to new beginnings. But the mystery of transformation more often happens not when something new begins, but when something old falls apart. The pain and chaos of something old falling apart invite the soul to listen at a deeper level, and sometimes force the soul to go to a new place. Most of us would never go to new places in any other way. The mystics use many words to describe this chaos: fire, dark night, death, emptiness, abandonment, trial, the Evil One. Whatever it is called, it does not feel good, and it does not feel like God. 

We will normally do anything to keep the old thing from falling apart, yet this is when we need patience and guidance, and the freedom to let go instead of tightening our controls and certitudes. Perhaps Jesus is describing just this phenomenon when he says, “It is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:14). Not accidentally, he mentions this narrow gate and hard road right after teaching the Golden Rule. He knows how much “letting go” it takes to “treat others as you would like them to treat you” (Matthew 7:12). 

Spiritual transformation always includes a disconcerting reorientation. It can either help people to find new meaning or it can cause people to close down and slowly turn bitter. The difference is determined precisely by the quality of our inner life, our practices, and our spirituality. Change happens, but transformation is always a process of letting go, and living in the confusing, shadowy, transitional space for a while. Eventually, we are spit up on a new and unexpected shore. We can see why Jonah in the belly of the whale is such an important figure for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. 

In moments of insecurity and crisis, shoulds and oughts don’t really help. They just increase the shame, guilt, pressure, and likelihood of backsliding into unhealthy patterns. It’s the deep yeses that carry us through to the other side. It’s those deeper values we strongly support—such as equality and dignity for all—that allow us to wait it out. Or it’s someone in whom we absolutely believe and to whom we commit. In plain language, love wins out over guilt any day.

It is sad that we settle for the short-term effectiveness of shaming people and shutting them down, instead of the long-term life benefits of true transformation. But then, we are a culture of productivity and efficiency, not terribly patient or even open to growth. God is clearly much more patient—and, finally, much more effective, patiently supporting our inner transformation through all of life’s transitions.

-- Richard Rohr

3 Observations & A Question

If nothing else, discovery is often predicated on effort.

There is the story you’ve lived and then there is the story you've developed around that story.

It can help when you realize that you need to be pushed and, even more, how (what works best overall for you) — this is like acknowledging both a strength and weakness at the same time...and is a kindness to yourself.

What If...it's easier to work from growing awareness of what we have than it is from what we don't have?

Prior  3 Observations & A Question….

What Americans say is the current greatest threat to U.S. public health

AXIOS

AXIOS

Speak to us of Children

'Poem for the week' -- "Speak to us of Children":

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

     And he said:

     Your children are not your children.

     They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

     They come through you but not from you,

     And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

     You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

     For they have their own thoughts.

     You may house their bodies but not their souls,

     For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

     You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

     For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

     You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

     The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

     Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

     For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

-- Kahlil Gibran

Never Put Off

In the context of yesterday's post:

 

Never surrender to the flow of time.  Never put off what you have decided to do.

-- Simone Weil

What I Want vs What I Need

The whole thing seems to fairly routinely rotate back toward identifying what is possible when energized by what I want.

Wait, what?

Did I miss something — like part of the conversation somehow?

Well, yeah, probably.

You see, I've had this rolling discussion with myself for years now.  It comes and goes, often returning to a familiar theme — can we really just do what we want to do?

I'll often catch myself saying things like, "If I could, I would love to...".  Which will inevitably be followed by something like, "Yeah, but how then will this other thing work?"  Practically speaking, I often don't know how to make 'what I want' happen or I can't afford what I would lose in order to get there.  So, really, I want more than one thing.  And, truth be told, I need more than just one thing.

Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.

-- Abraham Lincoln

In the end, I actually have needs that supersede just what I might want.  But, I do have to admit what I want, too, or other problems emerge. Where things seem to meet up then is the nexus between what I want and what I need — each informing the other.  

The most significant factor, though, that seems to frame navigating the question still IS what I want because even what I need is largely filtered through what I want anyway. Too often, I don’t even know what is needed without the energy that comes from what I want pushing up against it. In other words, if I don’t want it, or even know that I want it, then I often don’t even detect what is needed.

For example, if I’ve grown up in the suburbs (which I did), I likely have not imagined much about the wonder and beauty and values that exist from living on a farm. I may easily assume, based on what it looks like from a neighborhood, that farms are just a lot of work. But there’s also a lot in that kind of assumption-making that is missing. Or, to back it up one step further, if I were to grow up in the city, I may not have much imagination for what it would be like to live in the suburbs, especially if I’ve never seen them. 

To beg the logic of this a bit further, this might apply to many dimensions of our particular experiences with reality.  We know what we know.  And, we are limited by that knowing, especially when it comes to things we actually need.

So, the case I think I'm making here (to myself) is that it is more what I do with the healthy tension between my idealism and my pragmatism that matters.  I can acknowledge both...and need to.  Practically speaking, either / or (as in so many cases) is not realistic anyway (nor, for that matter, all that helpful).

What we want is an important kind of energy, as is acknowledgement of appropriate constraints. Energy is a source of so many things in our lives, especially in the tensions between them.  It can be quite useful, in a variety of ways, to help us more fully engage these realities we face.  

So, what DO I really want to do?

You are unique and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost.

-- Martha Graham

Not A Sign of Credibility

We pay too much attention to the most confident voices — and too little attention to the most thoughtful ones.

Certainty is not a sign of credibility. Speaking assertively is not a substitute for thinking clearly.

It's better to learn from complex thinkers than smooth talkers.

-- Adam Grant

Value of Something

I'm wondering...about how often we assess the value of something that is changing primarily through a frame of relativity to what is or has been.

Makes sense — pretty normal way of going about things.  But, what does it leave out when we don't exercise imagination for what could be?

A Prayer for When God Seems Absent

A Prayer for When God Seems Absent:

Oh God, comfortable would we be if You gave us formulas and answered prayers and realized hope. But You call us beyond comfort. 

But God, life upends us. We face divorce or miscarriages, financial struggles or job insecurity, and the people we love are tossed about by disease or loneliness or homelessness or addiction. 

We are afraid. We don’t have adequate answers. And sometimes we can’t find You. 

Or, we can’t find the person we hoped You would be. 

May we learn to trust that You aren’t asleep on the job. That You haven’t forgotten us. That You are as near to us as our very breath. Give us the courage to press on. To suffer with hope that You have overcome the world. 

May again and again we be awed by Your presence. That even when we feel like we’ve hit rock bottom, may we recognize we have fallen into Your arms because there is no place so deep or so dark or so scary that Your presence cannot reach. 

In the name of the One who can still the seas with mere words, amen.

-- Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie

In God, We Trust

AXIOS

3 Observations & A Question

In many cases, the best time to do something is...now.

One of the key features of participating in goodness seems to be the willingness to wait for it.

Not everything that needs to be understood is understood at the same time or at the same pace by everyone — all of us are working with pieces and parts of reality that we understand, at any given point.

Humility is one thing; humiliation another — but, doesn't it seem the first often has to follow the second?

Prior  3 Observations & A Question….

Water

Teresa of Ávila's favorite nature image was water. She speaks lavishly of flowing springs, pools, wells, and fountains, rivers, waves, and the sea, urging us to irrigate our hearts with the waters of Life. When instead we clog our lives with triviality and endless distraction, she sees us bogged down in a swamp, struggling to get muddy water out of a puddle.

-- Tessa Bielecki

The Freedom of Others

To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

-- Nelson Mandela

It's the living in a way which makes manifest how Mandela saw a path to see such things change — solidarity is the goal.

Where I Fit

As I was getting ready for work today, I noticed the waves of nearly effervescent green in the Spring leaves outside my window.  A slight breeze was making a flutter through them and as I looked beyond the specific tree I was observing, the whole world seems to be moving in a graceful little dance.  

Its beauty grabbed my attention which then drifted to the notion that there are so many dimensions in which our existence is alive — always growing, dying, and starting again.  Over and over and over, throughout all time.  It made me think about where I fit into this broad and deep dynamic of living things, all co-existing to one degree or another.

I thought about how adaptable things are, especially humans.  We conform to our surroundings, especially over time.  And we, because of that very adaptability, also become quite conditioned by them.  This certainly happens to us physically.  We build all kinds of things to help us manage that.  And, then, we become dependent on those things.  And the stasis we subconsciously are seeking (and, to some extent, achieving) affects how we view things, all the way from the basic dependencies we inadvertently foster up through the disposition we develop about what our lives should be about.

There seems to be be great flexibility in this dynamic.  But, we also are becoming more aware of some of the ways that elasticity is not infinite.  The slow slide of use to ever-increasing consumption, even just for the sake of doing so sometimes, is (has been) having some consequences.  Collectively, we are more aware of some of those than ever.  Environmental, social, financial, spiritual impacts abound, not to mention mental, emotional, and psychological ones in which we are now seeing all kinds of cracks.

It is becoming increasingly obvious how inter-related everything is.  There really are no isolated or independent parts.  Everything we do impacts something else.  We can even appear a bit irritated by that simple reality, as if we're somehow owed our mutual independence.  But, by design, nothing was created that way.  And, despite our attempts to force the issue, it simply can't be done.  In the end, our individual 'rights' never supersede our collective needs.  And, just because we can create (and perpetuate) the illusion that we operating independently (minding our own business), the whole world is impacted by our choices in aggregate.  My survival is, actually, subordinate to our survival.  ...as is my prosperity.

The glimpses I have this particularly beautiful morning offer a kind of peace that nothing is inanimate — everything is alive, in its own way.

And while this dream-state is disrupted by on-going news of events where this peace is being destroyed in other parts of our global existence, I am startled by the severity of both and the reality that I need to live consciously in ways that reinforce the collective good, especially where that is not happening.

We Hold Toward Them

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

-- Elbert Hubbard

Relax and Enjoy More

I’ve noticed...that sometimes I think IF I knew more about my future, I could relax and enjoy more.

But since that's an impossibility....

Devalues and Dehumanizes

To dehumanize another human is to work in direct opposition to the incarnation (en-flesh-ment) of God in Christ.  Be wary of anyone who claims to follow Christ, but devalues and dehumanizes others.

3 Observations & A Question

It has become important for me to acknowledge each day one thing that I don’t know about — this helps keep me from concluding that I know way more than I actually do.

It often gets complicated when you’re trying to make something happen at the same time that you’re trying to keep something else from happening.

Nearly everything that expands seems to include pain — but when it is viewed as growth, we learn to accept it...partly because of the joy growth presumes.

Are we the most adaptable in areas of our lives that pain us — if so, would it follow that we are also the most rigid where we are the most comfortable?

 

Prior  3 Observations & A Question….

How do you stay optimistic in spite of it all?

Do the woes of the world get you down? Are daily headlines capsizing your ship? Does it seem like it's taking too long for the deluge of April showers to clear the way for all those promised and proverbial May flowers?

Well, we've got just the pick-me-up for you. Last week, the Skoll World Forum was bustling with innovators and entrepreneurs engaged in the work of "transformational social change" — that is, making the world a better place. We drew lessons in optimism from six individuals in attendance, who shared what gives them cause to be hopeful — why they find themselves smiling in spite of everything...continue here.

-- Ari Daniel

Why not one more:

I’m a 102-year-old doctor. Here’s the No. 1 thing the healthiest and happiest people I know never do.

What It Will Reveal

You are more open when walking, more receptive, more enmeshed in the landscape through which you pass…walk out your door every day with an open heart and a real, watchful reverence. You will be absolutely amazed at what it will reveal to you.

-- John O’Donohue

60

In anticipation of turning 60 (today), I recently queried some people I respect about their experience with awareness, particularly as they get older.  As you might expect, there was a variety of responses, which probably reinforces the point here.  Which is this — one of the greater opportunities we have as we age is the increasing capacity we have for awareness.  For one thing, it is obviously evident that the longer you live, the more you've likely experienced.  

One might assume, as a result, that experience would translate to more understanding, which in turn would increase overall awareness.  The problem is, however, it doesn't always seem to work that way.  And, from certain points-of-view, it might look more and more like it rarely does.  I guess it depends on who you hang around with.  For example, it's not hard to notice that many older people seem to become more narrow, less able to tolerate difference or change, more in favor of something they thought they once knew than of things that are now less familiar.

But, as we age and certain aspects of our existence wane, other things seem like they accumulate, if nothing more than the simple function of more time and exposure to life.  What seems more conspicuous, though, is what we do with this opportunity (of accumulating experience).  Does it provide something beyond knowledge and understanding?  Does wisdom emerge?  For the healthy, it seems to or, at least, it can.  Mitigating factors aside, we have an opportunity, both individually and collectively, to expand our imagination for all is going on as we age.  Whether or not we take the opportunity is another thing.  And, we could think about why we do (or don't)...become more wise about life and reality.

As I mentioned above, and like many other things, it would appear that a lot about awareness is related to social factors.  Values of groups of people obviously impact not only awareness in general, but also what people in a particular group are sensitive to.  And, people who isolate themselves may not have as much awareness as those who don't.  

I feel much more aware of many things than when I was younger. Besides the obvious, this also seems like a choice. In other words, I chose to become more aware (rather than do the opposite). Of course, not all of this was a direct choice on my part. In many cases, I was forced to choose this. Some of it was self-protection (don't want to go through that again, etc.). And, some of it was due to the attraction I had to certain people, a way about them that seemed consistent with the more beautiful parts of the world.

I'm not claiming to have arrived anywhere on some kind of awareness scale. I'm just aware that so much of the way I relate to things is a function of what I do with my surroundings and my experiences. They inform me. Awareness can enable me to relate to them in increasingly constructive ways. As I head into the age of decline in many ways, I also enter into something else that has an opportunity to only grow — imagination for what is actually happening (despite what the populist version seems to describe), especially the good.

Many people seem to define their existence in terms of loss...finish here.

Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free.

-- Eckhart Tolle

If You Want To Change

If you want to change your behavior, you can do it. But the best way to do it is not willpower, and it is not discipline.

Instead, you design good habits into your life and you design bad habits out of your life.

-- BJ Fogg

Separate vs Connect

Ever noticed...the things that separate you from yourself (vs the things that connect you to yourself)?

Answers That Can't Be Questioned

When it comes to my faith (and all of my life), I would rather have questions that can't be answered, than answers that can't be questioned.

4 Observations (from Others)

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

-- Maya Angelou

Anxiety is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you very far.

-- Jodi Picoult

Don’t believe every worried thought you have. Worried thoughts are notoriously inaccurate.

-- Robert Eliot

Many of us feel stressed and overwhelmed not because we're taking on too much, but too little of what strengthens us.

-- Marcus Buckingham

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

On the Lighter Side: But I Still Love Her

On the Lighter Side:

Spring Morning

'Poem for the week' -- "Spring Morning":

O day—if I could cup my hands and drink of you,

And make this shining wonder be

A part of me!

O day! O day!

You lift and sway your colors on the sky

Till I am crushed with beauty. Why is there

More of reeling sunlit air

Than I can breathe? Why is there sound

In silence? Why is a singing wound

About each hour?

And perfume when there is no flower?

O day! O Day! How may I press

Nearer to loveliness?

-- Marion Strobel

Not To Feed Them

Even the most positive people have negative thoughts, the secret is not to feed them.

Time, Con't

More about…time.

How much, for example, of the past is really characterized or is actually as described to us? There’s often such a filter that has been applied to nearly any portrayal of the past. Not to say that it is all inaccurate, but often it is used to serve other purposes. We must be aware of that.

And, then, there’s the future — how much of it will actually unfold in the way we anticipate, especially when it often seems to be more about fear and control than it about wonder and possibility?

Our sense of time is so influenced by these two dimensions of time — past and future as we imagine them to be. But what seems conspicuous, as well, is how much these two dimensions dominate our present experience; our availability to the present and to the dynamics that are happening now.

Obviously, there is a continuum of some kind involved. We have had prior present moments and those do collectively inform us. The trailing effect of these collective experiences creates a lens through which we try to anticipate the future. This seems both pretty observable and normal — almost like we can’t avoid it (and maybe we shouldn’t). But, what seems strikingly left out, too much of the time, is the impact that our perception of those dimensions has on what is happening right now and how we both think about and engage with it.

As we transition again during this Spring time of year, it’s hard not to notice there is something old and something new that is happening simultaneously. The cycles of life inform our perceptions about what our experience with these time-based sensitivities are like. It seems conspicuous that the vibrancy of the colors of Spring are designed, among other things, to get our attention, particularly to the newness of the current moment. Even though Spring happens every year, there is something about each Spring that renews a part of our imagination for the nature of our existence. Each season, in fact, does this in its own unique way. And, so, I am really wondering if part of the purpose of these even predictable changes is to help us more fully engage with the present-ness of each season and, thereby, each moment.

It’s not really like we should forget the past by pretending that it didn’t exist. It was, and is, a part of our experience. Similarly, it shouldn’t be that just because the future isn’t “here", we should pretend that there is nothing that we can do to affect it. The present is critical to both our understanding of the past and to our anticipation and opportunity to experience the future. What this really means is that the current moment is quite significant to this continuum that we describe with these notions of time.

Perhaps it is because of our past that the present moment is so full of opportunity to impact the future. We are, in fact, moving through something. Time is one way to comprehend some of what that is. And, while time can help us with our need to use some kind of calibration to understand the nature of this existence, it can also almost unilaterally help us miss it altogether. Especially, if we can’t see how...finish here.

A Mentor Is

A mentor is not someone who walks ahead of us and tells us how they did it.

A mentor is someone who walks alongside us to guide us on what we can do.

-- Simon Sinek

Time

I'm wondering...about time.  Beyond its utility, what really is it?