Creature

I'm wondering...what comes to mind when we hear the term ‘creature’?

Come On, God!

Instagram: nakedpastor

3 Observations & A Question….

There are so many things that we do to ourselves that just aren’t...helpful. 

We eat (and drink) way more than we need to — which kind of means something that could be of use for us to recognize...like enjoyment in excess really starts to become about something else.

Maybe our only job is to just try to get a little better in some way every day — it could be that's all we can actually do anyway.

So, how is it, by the way, that we can have so many opinions about other people we’ve never even met?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Freeze

He began the GOP’s weekly leadership briefing by saying lawmakers were on a path to finishing a major defense budget bill this week. “We’ve had good bipartisan cooperation and a string of —.”

And then he stopped mid-sentence and remained silent for about 20 seconds — which in the media world of Washington feels like an eternity. He just stared straight ahead. When other members of GOP leadership finally asked whether he was okay, McConnell did not immediately respond.

...

Thirty-five years ago, I was giving a luncheon speech about the economy to members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

In the middle of my speech...continue here.

-- Robert Reich

I wish more of our public leadership could extend civility (if not an actual human hand) like Mr. Reich did here.  They used to represent more of a paradigm for it (well most did, anyway)....

We shouldn't wait for our leaders to be the way we should be anyway and lead by example ourselves.  Doing a good thing always comes down to us, not someone else, anyway.

Performance & Well-Being

There is no successful high performance without well-being.

There is no such thing as constant stability, or complete control; both notions are an illusion.  High performers thrive in dynamic environments by embracing flexibility and adaptability. Recognize that change is inevitable, and cultivate a mindset that welcomes challenges as opportunities for growth.    Continue here....

-- Chinazom Sunny Nwabueze

The Way Fear Makes You Move

Don't move the way fear makes you move.

-- Rumi

Doesn't Mean It Isn't Happening

Ever heard someone say, "I just don’t see it…."

The intention often seems to imply that a claim of truth being made isn't really true.

But, just because you don’t think you see something, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. 

I was working out recently and noticed several things on my rower-screen that I hadn't noticed before (some of it because I don't typically wear my glasses while rowing and I forgot to take them off this time — a whole other topic...).  All kinds of information was displayed, but up to that point, I had only been focusing on certain data points that I could see (or, perhaps better said, that I had been looking at).  Other data-points were there all along, I just hadn't taken the time to see them or understand what they were indicating.  I also noticed that I could change what was displayed — in other words, there were other things to see IF I wanted to.

There are reasons why we may not see things (including simply choosing not to).  But sometimes, simply the way we organize our lives allows us to only see certain things (and not other things).

Public discourse could be an example.  As with nearly any topic, it is helpful to acknowledge (if not actually know) that what we see, or understand, is often after all quite a selective function.  In some ways, we have to do this, as we just can't take the time to notice everything.  But, it takes a certain wisdom to recognize that we often are identifying the truth of reality thru a way we prefer it to be.

...which may not actually be what is true about it.  We seem quite capable of believing things that are simply untrue altogether (as our social-media friends so easy reveal), not to mention the ego-centricity of effectively claiming that any view we might have is normative for everyone else.

We have to acknowledge that we are influenced (often significantly) by the information set that we most expose ourselves to on a regular basis. Not many people think completely independent thoughts (does anyone?). Almost all of our thoughts are the result of a conflation of ideas that are circulating around us and the subset of those that we are choosing to pay attention to. 

This would have to mean, then, that a lot of what we even think is a function, in fact, of what we hear. And, we are often matching what we see with what we hear, too. It really is a combination of the data that we take in and effectively process that most influences how we think and, therefore, what we see...and believe is true.

This also means...continue here.

Paved

The path to wisdom is paved with humility.

-- Tim Fargo

An observation which seems to be quite applicable in both business and life.

Settings of Dialog

I've noticed...I'm better (more comfortable) in settings of dialog than in settings of monolog.

...helpful for me to keep in mind, as others are the opposite.  And, there are still others in yet different modalities of interaction.

Solidarity

Physicist Neil de Grasse Tyson reminds us that our solidarity is not a choice, it’s a reality. He says we’re all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, and to the rest of the universe atomically. Our solidarity is a scientific fact, as well as the salvific act of a loving Savior and a wise and guiding Holy Spirit. Even our call to solidarity is exemplified by the Divine…. Because Jesus has come, and truly overturned and overcome the systems of the world, he beckons us to do likewise.

-- Barbara Holmes

3 Observations & A Question….

Love drops reciprocity — especially over time.

Judging people is just too easy — it doesn’t require very much at all (of us).

Fault-finders are actually pretty boring — the real interesting work is in solutions.

Even when we get older in body, does that mean that we can’t get younger in spirit?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Inflation & New Business Applications

AXIOS

AXIOS

The Music of Beauty

'Poem for the week' -- "The Music of Beauty":

To me thy lips are mute, but when I gaze

Upon thee in thy perfect loveliness,—

No trait that should not be—no lineament

To jar with the exquisite harmony

Of Beauty’s music, breathing to the eyes,

I pity those who think they pity me;

Who drink the tide that gushes from thy lips

Unconscious of its sweets, as if they were

E’en as I am—and turn their marble eyes

Upon thy loveliness, without the thrill

That maddens me with joy’s delirium.

-- James Nack

Patience is Bitter, But...

 Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Proximity

Many problems are not resolved simply due to lack of proximity.  We often just can’t care as much...from a distance.

We have a car wash in our town that was recently purchased by an international organization that manages such businesses. Before the purchase, the car wash was kind of a crown-jewel in the area, for a variety of reasons. But, after the purchase, there is nearly unanimous opinion that 'things have changed' (and not for the better). It has gone downhill, as people say. Many of the same services still exist. But, the maintenance and care for the services seems spotty at best.  It smells of a kind of distance that those in charge have from the details.  In other words, it looks like the people who should care, don’t — because they don’t know about how the details are creating the problems that people are frustrated with. I asked one of the attendants how things were going with the new owner and he observed that he wishes the place was still the name of the old car wash (which they had to change). To prove the point, it isn’t just the market that is making observations about the changing value of the car wash. The very employees are as well (as they always are).

Banks are often another example. Across the nation, we have local banks as part of financial organizations, and we have national ones.  And, many times you’ll hear something similar to the report of the car wash attendant. That whatever the challenges are for the local people, the national concerns seem to prevail in terms of priority. And so people will laughing say something like "well, you get what you get I guess — it’s not people around here or making the decisions". 

This seems to play itself out in the current political divide in our country as well. And the dynamic again seems a little conspicuous, in the sense that what any one group thinks (especially about the other group) seems to be largely a result of very little constructive and human interaction between the two groups. We don’t see other people for who they are; we see our people.  We even gather with our people, because we’re not those people. There is something about an almost institutional dynamic that develops around itself. In order to continue the maintenance of "us", we have to be talking about “them". And this very easily gets sophisticated enough that it is quite obviously becomes an us-them scenario at all kinds of levels. 

A lot of this, it seems to me, has to do with proximity. A local radio station recently started a new initiative (One Small Step) where they try to find two people from different ideologies to sit down and talk to one another — not about politics, but about each other...as fellow human beings. Listening to another person, besides learning about what is important to them, is also an opportunity to learn about what is important to me and maybe a little bit about why.  And, if that is identified to some degree at all, it can obviously open up the possibility that there may be some legitimate reasons for why other things are important to other people. One of the latent psychological goals of this kind of organized encounter, I suspect, is to allow for the human connection that can occur when people are actually closer (in proximity) to each other.

When we lose our collective sensitivity to the dynamics and needs of other people (similar, or not) as human beings, we lose a lot more than...finish here.

Workers fall into two camps of competence and confidence

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

-- Bertrand Russell

Fast-forward to 1999, and psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger provided compelling scientific grounding to Russell’s observation. Through various experiments assessing people’s gap between their self-estimated and actual talents in reasoning, grammar, and humor tasks, they found that, to their and most people’s surprise, incompetent participants pranced about with unwarranted confidence, while the wise second-guessed their brilliance. In short, people are probably not as smart as they think, though this includes the (less common) possibility that they are actually smarter than that. 

Overconfident people make lousy business decisions, and overconfident entrepreneurs lead startups in to an early grave.  Or overconfident CEOs likely lead their companies’ stock price to crash. And outside of business, overconfident doctors often end up making erratic diagnoses. And let’s not forget the distress of surrounding oneself with overconfident folks, which can be as peaceful as attempting to meditate in the middle of a rock concert.

Excessive modesty can also be a liability. Habitually underestimating your performance can erode your self-confidence, hurt your future performance, and stress you out. The infamous imposter syndrome, characterized by chronic self-doubt, is especially common among high performers. Plus, if you are constantly underestimating yourself, you might miss out on chances to move up in your career. And that is just not fair not only for you but for your company.  Continue here....

-- Tomas Chamorro Premuzic and Sunny Lee

More Gentle

Ever noticed...that, in general, people who don't live in proximity to others tend to push a more hard-line ideology about how others should be treated?

While those who live closer to other people seem to manifest more of this disposition:

Never As Nervous

Instagram: bobgoff

God is never as nervous about our future, or as concerned about our past, as we are.

-- Bob Goff

I'm not sure how we could verify such an assertion, but it does ring true somehow. And, if it is, it would seem to change a lot of the dynamic of what we tend to focus on. In other words, it does seem like we spend an inordinate amount of time anticipating the future or regretting the past, at the expense of the present. And, if that is largely a waste of time (if not energy), then such understanding could provide much more space for the present…to more fully occupy it.

So much of such things seem to be viewed through a lens of something related to God. However we ended up with that particular overlay, we do seem to use it to justify the focus of our attention. But, as the observation points out, what if God is much less concerned with those two dimensions and much more interested in what we’re thinking and doing now.  The past, by in large, is forgiven. The future, more than anything else, is largely more unknowable than we are comfortable with. 

Besides a few obscure and ambiguous passages in the Bible, for example, the locus of the Bible’s description (and more limited prescription) is on the current moment — how we are treating our neighbors, our enemies, and the world at large…right now.

So, if in fact, God is not as interested in the past and future, as he is in the present, then maybe we can free ourselves of such preoccupations and more joyously be about the even sometimes difficult work of being constructive (light, salt, etc.) in our day today. 

3 Observations & A Question….

Anxiety is a response to not seeing a way to resolve what is happening with what we need (or desire), especially when it is being prevented.

It is never over…unless you say it is (even then, it still isn’t…).

It is often easy to confuse the purposes of description with the purposes of prescription — for example, we do this with the Bible all the time.

What does it look like to choose contentment in the middle of our circumstances?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

On the Lighter Side: I Wet My Plants

On the Lighter Side:

Clenched Fist

You can't shake hands with a clenched fist. 

-- Gandhi

So Fortunate

If we don’t realize how lucky (fortunate) some of us are in relation to certain things in our lives, we may not be capable of comprehending how unfortunate some things are in other peoples lives. 

This observation may not seem automatically self-reinforcing. The notion that so much of what is true and real and good being the function of a kind of benevolence, more than it is a kind of acquisition (or self-provision) is likely unpopular (especially to certain groups, as I suspect many would quickly dispute this claim).  But, when we realize how much of what is good is just given to us (again, as opposed to something we provided for ourselves), then our capacity for understanding towards others changes. 

There is a tendency among boot-strap advocates to believe (or, at least, suggest) that when others experience something unfortunate, it is primarily a consequence of their own poor choices.  Cause-and-effect dynamics certainly do exist, but if we are more honest with ourselves, we must recognize how much pure generosity and goodness are involved in any prosperity we enjoy.  When we allow ourselves to embrace this reality, our imagination for unfortunate experiences correspondingly expands, too.  It often takes our own experience of such things to expand such imagination for others.

This really makes me wonder about what goes on internally when I make poor choices. 

If I resort to the overall premise that what I have is primarily the result of what I have achieved, then all kinds of things are set in motion regarding how I view things.  Have I really provided everything I have for myself, by myself? Wouldn't it follow, then, that everything unfortunate that happens to me is also a function of my own doing?  I think we know intuitively that this is not true.  Some of it is, but not all of it.  And, yet, you might get the impression at times that we don't believe that, especially when we are projecting our views about others.

In contrast, if I acknowledge my agency is subordinate to an under-girding and over-arching sense of benevolence and goodness, then how does my disposition towards poor choices change?  In the former logic, I don’t see how to avoid the conclusion that something is damning about those choices. In the latter model, however, it seems that my choices are more easily disarmed from such condemnation (including more freedom to move away from whatever is harmful about them).  And, therefore, I am more enabled to move towards a recognition of and toward a simple re-joining of the more constructive work of personal growth, in the context of a more benevolent goodness about reality.

In other words, I have less reason to get stuck in self-pity and more to move forward with from the energy of gratitude.  

And, if I can orient myself with that kind of self-understanding, I become more open to extending the same possibility to others so that they can also imagine themselves in less condemning ways.

Some of us are so fortunate — What If...we put our energy towards perpetuating that towards the less fortunate as much as possible?

Happiness is not made by what we own.  It is what we share.

-- Jonathan Sacks

Offer Your Strengths

Offer your strengths to others and you will be amazed how many people offer their strengths to you.

-- Simon Sinek

Swing For The Fences

I'm wondering...if you feel like you have ever really “swung for the fences“? 

I’m not sure I have and I don’t know what all the implications are, but I feel a kind of working-sadness about it….

Sometimes it seems like it could be said that I am more comfortable evaluating the game than actually playing it.  That bothers me.

Both of these descriptions feel like they have a degree of accuracy to them.  On the other hand, comparatively speaking, some might feel a bit baffled by such an assessment.  So, what really is the genesis of such self-reflection?  Is it true?  Is it because with whom I am making a comparison?  

Or, is it both (feels somehow closer to the truth)?  What is the energy behind it needing to be one OR the other?  It beckons a kind of closure, when really it remaining open for further consideration is probably the more healthy course to take.  Where and how is it either one...or both?

Love & Criticism

The Hebrew prophets are in a category of their own. Within the canonical, sacred scriptures of other world religions we don’t find major texts that are largely critical of that religion. The Hebrew prophets were free to love their tradition and to criticize it at the same time, which is a very rare art form. One of the most common judgments I hear from other priests is, “You criticize the Church.” But criticizing the Church, as such, is just being faithful to the pattern set by the prophets and Jesus. That’s exactly what they did (see Matthew 23). The only question is whether one does it in a negative way or in a way that is faithful to God. I pray that I am doing the second. You pray too! 

The presumption for most people is that if we criticize something, then it means we don’t love it. Wise people like the prophets would say the opposite. The Church’s sanctification of the status quo reveals that we have not been formed by the prophets, who were radical precisely because they were traditionalists. Institutions always want loyalists and “company men”; we don’t want prophets. We don’t want people who point out our shadow side. It is no accident that the prophets and the priests are usually in opposition to one another (see Amos 5:21–6:7, 7:10–17). I think it is fair to say that the prophetic charism was repressed in almost all Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christianity. None of us have been known for criticizing ourselves. We only criticize one another, sinners, and heretics—who were always elsewhere! Yet Paul says the prophetic gift is the second most important charism for building up of the Gospel (1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11).

We have to experience the negative side of reality along with the positive. No wonder we split, avoid, and deny. No wonder we prefer abstract ideas, where we can dismiss the unacceptable material. But the Hebrew Scriptures amazingly incorporate the negative. Jesus does the same when he is “tempted by the devil for forty days” (Luke 4:2). The Jewish people, against all odds, kept their complaining and avoiding, and kept their arrogant and evil kings and their very critical public prophets inside of their Bible.

Of course, there is such a thing as negative criticism and positive criticism. I think we can feel the difference on the level of energy. When we read the spare, unfiltered texts of the prophets, some of them sound negative, as does Jesus, too. But my assumption is that this criticism comes from a primary positive encounter with Divine Reality. We see this in other parts of their lives and writings. The positive energy is the overriding experience.

-- Richard Rohr

3 Observations & A Question….

It is often actually quite difficult to determine what we mean by a better life — usually it just means getting more....

My sense of justice has expanded to include the quality of existence of all people, especially those who are oppressed by one kind of system or another.

Peace, pleasure, and prosperity, even in aggregate, don't ultimately lead to enough satisfaction without participation in something for the good of all (and everything).

Isn’t love the most unmitigated form of power?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Landlines Lost & 15% More Stored Gas

The Washington Post

Robinhood Snacks - Digestible Financial News

A Fourth of July Prayer -- True Freedom

'Poem for the week' -- "True Freedom":

As we celebrate our unique history – 

and, indeed, Your presence in that history (as in all histories) – 

may we resist a mythologization that obscures our actual past.

Give us eyes to see how violence, exploitation, and deceit 

are past and present realities  

as much (or more) than life, liberty and justice.

And then, as we strain to see fireworks above us,

may our lifted eyes be an embodied petition,

a corporate plea to see Your justice manifest in our midst.

Ultimately, may our singular allegiance be to Christ – 

whose life, death and resurrection 

are the means and model of true freedom –

and may we, through the power of the Spirit,

inhabit that freedom with diligent peacemaking, generosity and hospitality.

May Your Kingdom come.

Amen.

-- Emily Cash, Driftwood Prayers

Contain Our Salvation

The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.

-- Barbara Kingsolver

Privilege

If privilege is just too charged of a word, perhaps just thinking in terms of advantages would help.

Can you forgive an institution? Perhaps, in some sense, but more often than not, it seems like the crimes against humanity by institutions are driven by the people that run them. Yes, it is true that the people that run institutions are often influenced by larger systems, in history and society. But, that doesn’t seem to relieve the need for forgiveness for those who have perpetuated harm on people, especially groups of people (simply because they are a...group of people). 

I’ve never really been able to fully shake the impact of the stories of the destruction of the American Indian that I heard as a child. At the time, I thought this kind of unspeakable wrong against indigenous people was a function of a few bad actors. And, while that is certainly true, it really was much bigger than that.  Many of the institutions of our society were complicit and, therefore, was systematic. If we can’t be honest about that, then how can we be honest about where crimes are being perpetuated today?

There always is the opportunity for forgiveness.  But, that is difficult to do when it’s positioned in the context of something like an institution, because then we can too easily say something like, "Well, it was the institution that was bad." Yes, it was. But it took people to perpetuate those institutions — to develop them, to foster them, to perpetuate them. And, this is the great level of wrong that must be acknowledged, or we’re just burying our head in the sand (pretending that some other fantasy is true).  It’s not to say that there weren’t good and ideal things that went on right along side of these evils and other kinds of travesties, but we do ourselves (at a minimum) a disservice to claim that one eclipses the other, or renders the other non-existent. This is a classic move to avoid something uncomfortable.  

Crimes against humanity are often only possible (i.e. scalable) through the use of institutions to perpetuate them en masse. The impression on me, as a child, created a kind of sensitivity to how these same dynamics have been perpetuated against other groups of people.  For example, I am confident that we will never fully understand the impact of slavery on our African-American communities. For those who claim the truths of the Bible, I believe that we carry the sins of our fathers across multiple generations.  Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like if it were white people who were enslaved for generations and what the legacy impact of that would be. Would it be that much different than the legacy impact we can observe now in African-American communities? I really don’t know why it wouldn’t be.

Maybe privilege is an imprecise word, even if it is so charged that it’s hard to engage with it (for some). But, what I can't deny is that I have many advantages that other people don't have, particularly people of color, simply because of the position my race has in American history.  What I think about most days (and don't have to think about) are quite different because of this reality.

If we don't just plug our ears and run away, we may have to swallow hard over some of this reality.  But, being honest can be a gateway and perhaps the real opportunity is to consider what this changes, if we can accept these truths.

Even a child knows we should.

Some (US) History: Independence Day

Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness.

-- Louis D. Brandeis

On July 4, 1776 the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, declaring: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

...of course, there was some back-drop, which is helpful to know (or review):

On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress passed a “Resolution for Independence” declaring “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

Also known as the “Lee Resolution,” after Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee, who had proposed it, the resolution was the final break between the king and the thirteen colonies on the North American continent that would later become the United States of America. 

The path to independence had been neither obvious nor easy. 

In 1763, at the end of what was known in the colonies as the French and Indian War, there was little indication that the colonies were about to start their own nation. The war had brought an economic boom to the colonies, and with the French giving up control of land to the west, Euro-American colonists were giddy at the prospect of moving across the Appalachian Mountains. Impressed that the king had been willing to expend such effort to protect the colonies, they were proud of their identity as members of the British empire.

That enthusiasm soon waned. 

To guard against another expensive war between colonists and Indigenous Americans, the king’s ministers and Parliament prohibited colonists from crossing the Appalachians. Then, to replenish the treasury after the last war, they passed a number of revenue laws. In 1765 they enacted the Stamp Act, which placed a tax on printed material in the colonies, everything from legal documents and newspapers to playing cards. 

The Stamp Act shocked colonists, who saw in it a central political struggle that had been going on in England for more than a century: could the king be checked by the people? Colonists were not directly represented in Parliament and believed they were losing their fundamental liberty as Englishmen to have a say in their government. They responded to the Stamp Act with widespread protests. 

...

Events began to move faster and faster. In March 1770, British soldiers in Boston shot into a crowd of men and boys harassing them, killing five and wounding six others. Tensions calmed when Parliament in 1772 removed all but one of the new taxes—the tax on tea—but then, in May 1773, it tried to bail out the failing East India Company by giving it a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies. The result would be cheaper tea in the colonies, convincing people to buy it and thus establishing Parliament’s right to impose the tax.

Ships carrying the East India tea sailed for the colonies in fall 1773, but mass protests convinced the ships headed to every city but Boston to return to England. In Boston the royal governor was determined to land the cargo. On December 16, 1773, colonists dressed as Indigenous Americans boarded the Dartmouth, tied to a wharf in Boston Harbor, and tossed the tea overboard. Parliament promptly closed the port of Boston, strangling its economy.

In fall 1774, worried colonial delegates met as the First Continental Congress in Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia to figure out how to stand together against tyranny. In Massachusetts a provincial congress stockpiled weapons and supplies in Concord and called for towns to create companies of men who could be ready to fight on a minute’s notice.

...

In January 1776, a 47-page pamphlet, published in Philadelphia by newly-arrived immigrant Thomas Paine, provided the spark that inspired his new countrymen to make the leap from blaming the king’s ministers for their troubles to blaming the king himself. “In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense,” Paine wrote. 

Paine rejected the idea that any man could be born to rule others, and he ridiculed the idea that an island should try to govern a continent. “Where…is the King of America?” Paine asked in Common Sense. “I’ll tell you Friend…so far as we approve of monarchy…in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.

“A government of our own is our natural right: And when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance. If we omit it now, some [dictator] may hereafter arise, who laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect together the desperate and the discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers of government, may sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge.”

“We have it in our power,” Paine wrote, “to begin the world over again.” 

As Common Sense swept the colonies, people echoed Paine’s call for American independence. By April 1776, states were writing their own declarations of independence, and a Virginia convention asked the Second Continental Congress to consider declaring “the United Colonies free and independent States, absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence upon, the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain.” On June 7, Lee put the resolution forward. Four days later, the Congress appointed a committee to draft such a declaration.  

Congress left time for reluctant delegates to come around to the resolution, so it was not until July 2 that the measure passed. “The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America,” Massachusetts delegate John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, on July 3. While we celebrate the signing of the final form of the declaration two days later, the adoption of the Lee Resolution marked the delegates’ ultimate conviction that a nation should rest not on the arbitrary rule of a single man and his hand-picked advisors, but on the rule of law.

-- Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American

And, for a potentially lazy morning of reading (such as this one), there is not only what happened, but also what has been said about what happened:

Daniel Webster—then a student at Dartmouth College—speaks at an Independence Day celebration in Hanover, New Hampshire, July 4, 1800

Frederick Douglass’ Fiery Fourth Of July Speech to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, July 5, 1852

 Amy Julie Becker's Independence Day Calls Us to the Holy Work of Repair

Agency

I've noticed...one of the more persistent tensions I have in my life is over the amount of agency I have.  So often there is a 'should' connected to it.  But, even when I can get by that, my challenge (and opportunity) is when to direct it versus when to cooperate with it and go with the flow of it.

In other words, when to let it something happen versus when to try to make something happen — sometimes the answer is obvious, but most of the time it isn't (at least, for me).

We seem to have a level of discomfort with the nature of freedom we have.  It can be a healthy tension.  But, too often we would just rather have someone else tell us what we should do (at least, then, we have someone to blame besides ourselves).  Truth be told, though, we are far more free to simply choose than we realize and to carry the burden that brings with it (which may be sub-consciously what we are trying to avoid in the first place).

Being A Good Christian

Sometimes, being a good Christian meant being a bad Roman.  So before you accuse people of being unpatriotic, ask yourself which empire they're actually serving.

-- Stephen Mattson

4 Observations (from Others)

Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.

-- Haruki Murakami

I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere that I needed to be.

-- Douglas Adams

It is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have.

-- Cheryl Strayed

You don’t have to understand things for them to be. 

-- Madeleine L’Engle

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

The heat is just beginning

AXIOS