Hyper-Individualized Piety

My journey toward freedom from slaveholder religion has been one of unlearning a hyper-individualized piety.

-- Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

In my view, this is a significant part of what we are awakening to as our shared, cultural problems:

Love and Justice are not two. Without inner change, there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters.

-- Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Sensei

Fathers Day

I don't know many kids who actually talk that way...at least in the moment.  

Now years later, yes—I've heard something like that over and over.  As I look back at my own childhood, I've thought it many times; so glad my folks did 'outside' things with me (especially when I wasn't talking like the kids above, 😇).

"Using Bible as a Prop"

Do you see a connection between today’s posts?



"...the madder they are, the more fearful they are, the more money they're going to send you.  We need more fear and more anger."

-- Robert Schenck

Thanks, Randy, for passing this along.

Mark Twain's Modest Proposal For Ending Lynching In The American South

After attending church on Aug. 19, 1901, 23-year-old Caseila Wild set off alone on the long walk back to her country home. Later that day, Wild’s twin brother found her body in a culvert by the road, her throat slit. The gruesome murder of the young white woman in Pierce City, Missouri, shocked the community, and ignited a far more deadly tragedy.

What followed after the discovery of Wild’s body was a 15-hour rampage in which Pierce City’s white citizens, using more than 50 rifles and 600 rounds of ammunition stolen from a nearby state militia arsenal, engaged in a brutal purge of the town’s 300 Black residents, driving them from their homes in pursuit of Wild’s killer, reportedly — backed up by no proof whatsoever — a Black male. Three Black suspects were lynched or killed on the spot — one was hanged from the porch of a local hotel, another burned to death in his own home.

The rampage appalled many in America, and it also stuck in the craw of perhaps the one man in Missouri with the influence and intellectual wherewithal to do something about it: Mark Twain, the state’s favorite son, and arguably the most beloved writer in America at the time. In response to the events in Pierce City, Twain penned a devastating indictment of his fellow citizens...continue here.

-- Sean Braswell

After a Reading of “Darkwater”

'Poem selection' for the week -- "After a Reading of “Darkwater”":

I did not think... I did not know... 
    What pale excuse is this I make
In answer to my brother’s woe, 
Age-long, for deep injustice sake!

Across his mute and patient soul, 
   While I have gone my heedless way,
The shadows of a fate might roll
   That deepened night and darkened day.

But I have read a burning page,
  That glowed with white and soul-wrung fire,
And now no more I may engage
    My conscience with a feeble hire. 

For all the wrong I did not heed, 
   Chance-born in happier paths to live,
I cry unto my brother’s need
  One word of love and shame... forgive!

-- Elizabeth Curtis Holman

As the author speaks about herself, I think she speaks about me, too.

True Strength

True strength is the courage to admit weakness.

-- Simon Sinek


If it's not obvious, this week I'm working with the relationship between things like strength and peace thru the consideration, if not use, of our perception of concepts like gentleness and weakness.

I bet this would go a long way towards peace, especially these days.

Gentleness

Gentleness can be a kind of strength that bears with another's weakness.

Keep The Peace

First keep the peace within yourself, then you can bring peace to others.

-- Thomas à Kempis

Surrender

I've noticed...so much of love is learning how to surrender—how to let go.

If the old saying is still true, you really are limited in your ability to love other people by your ability to love your self.

Then, it is only through letting go of the things I am holding on on to that allows me to truly love myself and therefore others.

Jesus taught us, grasping at what one has (trying to be God—being in control, etc) is something to let go of.

An unwillingness to surrender is the opposite of love and only leads to violence, rather than peace.

Justice vs Status Quo

Instagram: nakedpastor

Instagram: austinchanning

You can't choose justice and the status quo.

-- Austin Channing Brown

What Is Privilege?

Booze, Exercise, and Screen Time

Americans don’t typically sleep well. One large survey showed that people get a full, uninterrupted night of sleep on only about one out of four nights. During this anxious time, you might think the problem would get worse. But data from sleep-tracking apps and wearables suggests something different. Many people are actually getting more, better-quality sleep during our new stay-at-home lives.

Even with the drinking, screen time, and exercise factors seemingly working against us, the numbers show that we’re still sleeping okay. It may be that sleep is something more than a way to physically recharge. Sleeping, and dreaming vividly, may be part of our natural way of making it through hard times.  Continue here....

-- Mark Sullivan

The attention crisis is real

It’s all happening at once, and we have to choose.

What to read, listen to, answer?

A spam from a scammer

An @ mention on Slack

A voice mail from the boss

An email from a customer

A DM on Slack

A last-minute sale email from a store you’ve never visited

A year-old blog post

A new blog post

A new podcast

A …

[sorry, got distracted.]

The idea that we can strip mine attention, wasting what we don’t need, is long gone. Like oysters and oil before it, attention is a scarce resource, and we need to use it wisely. Too often, it feels cheaper to simply take what we can get, but when we overreach, the cost in trust is real.

And each of us gets the same amount of attention to spend each day. It’s a competitive advantage to figure out how to focus it to get something done.

-- Seth Godin, The attention crisis is real

Passion and Certainty

We live in a culture that fetishizes passion and certainty.

-- Elizabeth Gilbert

"Better get out in front of it!"

Better get out in front of it!

Is anybody willing to admit how exhausted they are trying to do this everywhere it seems to be required?

Are we so worried about heading things off that we are nearly incapable of just being present to the current moment?

This strikes me as a form of collective sleep-walking; a way (in spite of the perceivable hyper-activity involved) that we are not truly awake to what is actually going on around us.  Perhaps, even worse, to what is happening within us.

Is this partly why we are still SO surprised that things like racism can exist...even within ourselves (funny - actually sad - how everyone claims that they're not racist...well who is it, then, that is)?  Perhaps, this just underscores the point.

What If...the method we need to get a hold of is not so much running around trying to keep certain things from happening, as it is to re-deploy the energy we do have to the matters within ourselves, with each other, that we need to deal with.

"Better get out in front of it" doesn't sound right.

Rather Than In Judgment

It would seem that, quite possibly, the ultimate measure of health in any community might well reside in our ability to stand in awe at what folks have to carry rather than in judgment at how they carry it.

-- Father Gregory Boyle


...we’ve just forgotten that we belong to each other.

-- Mother Teresa

Progress

Ever noticed...that progress is rarely like a straight line?

Rethinking the Virus and the Future

An unbrief Saturday Morning consideration (good for a full cup of coffee):

It is very rare that human beings have a chance to rethink our place in Nature. The modern world is the fruit of a worldview that has placed Homo sapiens reigning supreme over all other life forms. This worldview seems only right and proper to the vast majority of people. In the course of just a few weeks, however, over seven billion people’s lives changed for the worse. Economies were halted, global transportation and supply chains were shut down to a crawl, and hundreds of millions of jobs were lost. More money has been lost globally than in any other moment in history. Amid the shock and panic, the catastrophe of COVID-19 has prompted some radical rethinking. Can a new and better world emerge? Not unless our worldview changes, because in many ways the virus isn’t a mindless primitive life form ravaging us, “the most superior life form on the planet”. Nor did Nature strike back to punish us. Something deeper is going on. To see what it is, we need to consider a worldview based not on humans-as-supreme, but on life-as-supreme.

We must realize that our superiority complex has quite literally put us in opposition to life on earth. Climate change can be laid at our doorstep. The prediction of the Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more than plausible, and 50% of biodiversity in plants and animals has been eliminated in mere decades, while hundreds of indigenous cultures have been virtually wiped out. The destructive human machine has been inexorable so far. The collective voices of Richard Attenborough and one million non-profits and NGOs have proved inadequate agents of change. There was no global pause.

Then, in January the world caught news of a virus, a new variant of a coronavirus, a family of viruses that has been with us for well over a thousand years. At no point did any science suggest, nor any public official report, that this virus would poison our ecosystems and threaten the survival of humans and much other life on the planet in the coming years. Instead, we were told that the virus would contribute to the passing of the millions of people that die of a myriad of respiratory illnesses every year. The death toll from the virus (even at its most hyperbolic predictions) would be a fraction of the deaths from chronic diseases that result each year from our polluted and depleted soil, water, air, and food systems. Nonetheless, this new threat was suddenly enough. We paused. 

If we needed more evidence that we are a shortsighted and self-interested species, it is here, but there is no time for self-condemnation. While the world’s leaders struggle to sort out the true implications of this virus, we have an opportunity to finally learn from our mistakes. The lesson is being taught by the humblest of messengers, a microscopic speck of genetic material. The virus is not our enemy—if we let it, it will be our greatest teacher.

First, we need to learn that the emergence of this coronavirus adaptation was predictable, and from Nature’s viewpoint, which oversees all living things, it was even necessary. As the stress levels of an organism increase, the speed of adaptation has to increase if it is to find a solution and survive. Since the beginning of life, the most significant biologic adaptations have been achieved through the viral communication network. Every form of DNA is constantly in touch with every other form. From bacteria in soils and water systems to the cells in our bodies, rapid transmission of new genetic updates can save a species from a new threat. 

If you adopt the perspective of life itself, earth is dominated by the genes of bacteria, fungi, and protozoa which hugely outnumber any other life forms. This vast microbial genome is the foundation of life on the planet, and its aim, as with all life forms, is to adapt, survive, and foster diversity. To the life force that is in the 1030 bacteria in existence, a major threat—we would argue that it is the major threat—is coming from the widespread, indiscriminate use of antibiotics in agriculture via animal feed and the management of poultry, swine, and cattle. 

As the collective bacterial stress levels increases, DNA “misspelling” (i.e., mistakes in reproduction) creates billions of trial-and error genetic variations. When a survival advantage is discovered (such as antibiotic resistance in a strain of bacteria), that beneficial gene can be transferred in various ways across many species, but for maximum impact over great distances, viral transfer is the vehicle of choice. Thus, millions of species of microorganisms work toward one goal, which isn’t to harm us, but to maintain a stable biodiverse ecosystem everywhere on earth.

The upshot is the change of worldview mentioned at the outset. A viable, balanced, dynamic, healthy microbiome (the sum total of all micro-organisms) benefits human beings far more than our self-centered, shortsighted focus on money, power, war, nationalism, endless consumerism chained to massive pollution, and the chemical degradation of our air, food, and water.

Viruses have long dispersed their vital genetic information throughout the planet via air and water currents.  The messages they carry are picked up by many species, including us., Each individual takes up a viral load on the basis of its own stress levels. For many people there are no clinical signs or symptoms of acute illness as cells of various organ systems integrate or reject the new genetic data, while for others the viral stress signal can call up an immune response from cell populations. Life adapts, and we humans are made more resilient by the encounter. That is how viral communication has worked for billions of years, and the latest findings have revealed that our own genome was built by genetic data from bacteria, fungi and other multicellular species. In concert they created the profound complexity and resilience of human biology.

But we have changed the playing field for the critical balance of viral communication, and COVID-19, when seen on a global scale, represents the continued effort of the four-billion-year-old microbiome seeking to put things right. In the old worldview, this is irrelevant. The only measure has been an either-or choice: Either things are good for human prosperity or bad for it. In the new worldview, there is no either-or. What is good for the global microbiome is good for the planet and for us. As self-aware creatures, we can support life or diminish its chance for survival. In short, a new world, if it emerges in the coming decade, will make choices that benefit the microbiome and us at the same time. 

It will take a shift in worldview for that to transpire. The separate elements for global healing are already present and known to everyone. But humans can be perverse as well as shortsighted. Achieving the abolition of global pesticides, herbicides, indiscriminate antibiotics, and carbon emissions is essential, and only our irrational resistance to reality, bound up with an outmoded, self-destructive worldview, keeps us on the downward path. The pleas for life-enhancing choices has proved ineffectual so far. In the name of healing and the salvation of life on Earth, no one can alter the course of destruction except us.

-- Zach Bush MD and Deepak Chopra™ MD


DEEPAK CHOPRA™ MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a modern-day health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is the author of over 89 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His 90th book, Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential, unlocks the secrets to moving beyond our present limitations to access a field of infinite possibilities. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as “one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.”

ZACH BUSH, MD is an internationally recognized educator and thought leader on the microbiome as it relates to ecology, human health, and consciousness. Board certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism, and Hospice Care, his published biomedical research ranges from chemotherapy development to the role of the microbiome and agricultural toxins in human health and disease. He is founder and CEO of Seraphic Group, Inc., an IP development firm committed to developing root-cause solutions to bring balance to the biome of our planet. His non-profit, Farmer’s Footprint, is raising awareness of the synonymous nature of human and soil health, and working to create a roadmap to end chemical food production and ecologic destruction through the universal adoption of regenerative agriculture.

The Case Against Riots

One recent-history perspective on the use of riots:

In the origin myth of post-1960s liberalism, all the defeats that the Democratic Party suffered in the years of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were owed to the party’s heroic support for civil rights, which rectified a great injustice but opened the way for the Republicans to build majorities on racial backlash.

The riots of the ’60s, from Watts to Washington, D.C., were only part of this story; the wider surge of murder, battery and theft probably mattered as much to realignment. But there is a striking pattern of evidence, teased out in the research of the Princeton political scientist Omar Wasow, showing how peaceful civil rights protests helped Democrats win white votes, and then violence pushed white voters toward Republicans.  Continue here....

-- Ross Douthat

Photo Op - Really?

In the Year of Permutations

'Poem selection' for the week -- "In the Year of Permutations":

Go live with yourself after what you didn’t do.

Go and be left behind. Pre-package
                 your defense, tell yourself

                                you were doing
      your oath, guarding the futility of
            
         your corrupted good,

      discerning the currency of some.

                   As if them over all else.
                        Over us.
                     Above God and Spirit.
                                        
                 You over me, you think.

This is no shelter in justice not sheltering with
enclosure of soft iron a sheltering of injustices
into an inferno flooding of your crimes committed
and sheltered by most culprit of them all.

            These nesting days come
outward springs of truth,

            dismantle the old structures,

their impulse for colony—I am done
                             with it, the likes of you.

To perpetrate.
To perpetrate lack of closure, smolders of unrest.
To perpetrate long days alone, centuries gone deprived.

                 To be complicit in adding to the
      perpetration of power on a neck,
                 there and shamed,

                   court of ancestors to disgrace
    you, seeing and to have done nothing.

Think you can be like them.

Work like them.
Talk like them.

Never truly to be accepted,
                        always a pawn.

-- Mai Der Vang


From the author:

“I wrote this poem while sheltering-in and also feeling deeply outraged by the recent murder of George Floyd by the police, including the Hmong officer who stood by and did nothing. I am incensed by the long history of institutional violence and the harboring of inherent racist ideologies carried out by the criminal justice system and law enforcement. To watch and do nothing will not dismantle these structures put in place by the colonizer. Our liberation is bound together.”

The System

Instagram: brenebrown

The system is not broken.
It was built this way.

-- Brené Brown

To change it, we are going to have to un-build it in order to re-build it.

In Yoda-ese:  effort in specific forms, it will take.

What We Actually Do

Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

-- George Bernard Shaw


People will figure out what we really believe, by seeing what we actually do.

-- Bob Goff

Black Lives Matter

Resistance

I've noticed...that I sometimes resist things, because of ways I've felt resisted by others.  Not something I'm particularly proud of, but good for me to be aware of.

In other words, resistance isn’t something confined just to other people—it is in me as well.

I wonder how far my resistance would go, if pressed hard enough—if I felt desperate enough.

And, if I was that desperate, would I resist the same way I had been resisted?

In other words, if I (or someone I loved) had been the victim of specific and systemic violence, would my method of resistance not be the use of specific and systemic violence?  If you use power over me, what else would I resort to than to try to use power...to stop your power.  If you try to destroy me and what I love, would I not instinctively try to destroy you to stop you from continuing?

I can't really say in good faith, can I, that I really just don't understand...how people can react with violence?  That seems like a kind of denial; an avoidance of the truth; even a convenient dishonesty.  I'm afraid I would do the same thing, at least instinctively.


...unless we are shown another way to resist—to be more human in it.  We are the ones who must show what it means to be truly human...as a means of resistance.  But it requires action, especially now, to show this alternative way...in order to be it.

Push Us Into The Truth

When fear is dominating the dynamic and nothing else feels capable of working, it seems to me the church is uniquely positioned to demonstrate what it means to be human and to lead work on human issues...like racism.

But, will it?

The church will not be a leading example in racial healing until we feel the weight of communal guilt and shame and then allow it to push us into the truth.

-- Latasha Morrison

God’s followers are asked to model a community of mutuality and solidarity.

Centuries of [New Testament] interpretation have attempted to spiritualize or minimize this good news for the poor, hiding the reality that the Bible is a book by, about, and for poor and marginalized people. It not only says that God blesses and loves the poor, but also that the poor are God’s agents and leaders in rejecting and dismantling kingdoms built upon oppression and inequality. . . . It is the vision of society the early Christians sought to create on earth, and that we who follow Jesus today are commanded to strive for as well.

-- Richard Rohr

Language of the Unheard

A riot is the language of the unheard.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Will we let that sink in...and listen to what is being said?

Affects Our Ability

In any needed conversation, including the one referenced yesterday:

Fear affects our ability to be present in a conversation, to connect with other people, to be able to trust.

-- Mary Shores


...stop making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures, and risk an act of love.

-- Paulo Freire

Until A Pattern Is Broken

What do you think about this observation?

If I added this, what about now? 

Which image above pricks us the most?  Why?  

Doesn't it seem a little too convenient to react to the method, and not respond to the message?

Does the right to free speech include the right to not listen to any perspectives other than our own?  If so, it appears that what we continue to see from both sides is the only alternative and an ineffectual one at that.   

How about some real personal reflection? And then some real collective dialogue, starting with whichever image provokes us the most and work together from there? 

Reflection, discussion...things that need to lead to action or the pattern will just continue.

Though it shouldn't matter whether George Floyd was a 'good person' or not (aren't all people made in the image of God?), here is link to some information about his life and the kind of person he chose to be.

Cuts & Resonates

Sometimes it is the crispness of a truth that cuts to the chase.

Other times, it is the illustration of truth that enables it to resonate.

Pre-Conceived Notions

Ever noticed...how many times people are asking questions only to confirm their pre-conceived notions?  ...not because they are really interested or curious.

LT: Refusing To Quit

Ambition is refusing to quit on ourselves. Leadership is refusing to quit on others.

-- Simon Sinek

It seems there are many contexts for the truth of this observation. 

Whether it is memorializing what others have sacrificed for us in the context of our nation; how we treat others in the workplace, support those in our society, love our families; or how God relates to us -- all are opportunities to reflect what not quitting can look like.

Evolving Faith

The very nature of faith assumes that it changes, grows, and evolves.  I think this is by design and is consistent with all forms of life.

Obviously, there are constants.  The beauty is that those constants continue  to develop—personally, collectively, historically.

Thankfully, some things we've thought about God (in each of the dimensions mentioned above) are NOT true and other things we’ve never imagined ARE.

Being Good

Instagram: hillaryliannamcbride

I don't think 'being good' is anything other than being.

-- Hillary McBride

Let everything happen to you

A poetic version of the below? -- "Let everything happen to you":

Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Cannot Hold On, Con't

...you cannot hold on to the past (con't).

It's not that the past doesn't (didn't), in some sense, exist.  But, you have to let go of the form it took, so that which does live (did in the past, does in the present, will in the future) can be re-born.

Getting that (the living part) confused and holding onto the past prevents growth in the present—the re-generation of that life in the current time.  In fact, not releasing the past kills the living part of it that remains.

This is why it has been said, to have eternal life, you must be born again.

I think this is true at all levels—from the personal to the collective.

...you cannot hold on to the past.

Cannot Hold On

You cannot hold on to the past.

The more you try to do so, the more you inhibit the present, which is the doorway to the future.

Harder To Hate

I've learned that it's harder to hate up close.

-- Michelle Obama, Becoming

Most Human

I've noticed...that I am most human when my imagination is the greatest.

And, yes, I think the opposite is true as well.

Social Program of Jesus

The total social program that Jesus advocated was based on communion, friendship, distribution, and partnership. This contrasts with a social organization based on domination, exploitation, accumulation, and force.

-- Beatrice Bruteau


Holy Wisdom, Mother God, you hold my time in your hands. Your providence guides the stars and my cells. Your compassion opens my heart to healing in the midst of pain. Help me rest in you, trusting the future in your care and giving comfort to those who mourn, hurt, and face personal challenge. In Christ’s name. Amen.

-- Prayer of Awareness and Transformation

This Pandemic Hits Americans Where We’re Spiritually Weak

In a video chat last night, a friend admitted, “I’ve been crying a lot, and I’m not sure why.” COVID-19 has given us many reasons to weep. We’re out of our routines, the stock market has plunged, and we imagine millions dying. This virus and economic crisis punch us squarely where our spiritual armor is weakest: mortality, money, and our fear of missing out.

In 2 Corinthians 7, Paul distinguishes between two kinds of sorrow—a sorrow that “leads to death,” and a “godly sorrow.” The latter “brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret” (v. 10). Godly sorrow, he writes, produces “earnestness,” eagerness to repent, and a “longing” and “readiness to see justice done” (v. 11). The question the church faces now is which kind of sorrow COVID-19 will bring.

We are in the midst of the most widespread societal upheaval that many people alive today have ever experienced. Already our institutions, habits, relationships, and culture are shifting before our eyes. Frank M. Snowden, author of Epidemics and Society, shared with the New Yorker, “Epidemics are a category of disease that seem to hold up the mirror to human beings as to who we really are.” The question we are facing is not whether we will experience sorrow and change; the question is how. As biblical prophets walked with people through catastrophes, their advice was never to just endure until it ends. Instead they focused on proactively changing relationships with each other and with God.  Continue here....

-- Christine Jeske

If I were Donald Trump's speechwriter...

There’s a moment near the end of most sports movies when the coach gives a heartfelt pep talk right before the crucial game. The coach will use words like “heart,” “honor,” and “teamwork”. Everything that happens on the court or field after that is a bit of a letdown because victory – whether on the scoreboard or of the spirit – seems inevitable after the speech. To movie audiences, these moments may seem corny, but in real life, when someone you admire and respect speaks, their words can have a great impact. I certainly listened when coaches I respected, such as John Wooden, spoke at crucial points during my career. Inspiring people to be their best is what great coaches – and great politicians – do. It’s one of the qualities that makes them great.

One thing we could use right now is a passionate rallying speech from our president that inspires us all to do the right thing, not just for ourselves, but for our country. It is the speech Trump should deliver, not because he wants to be reelected, but because it would address the country’s major concerns, end the political squabbling, provide a reasonable plan going forward, and give Americans confidence that their government is working to protect their health and economic concerns. It needs to be the speech of a statesman not a, well, Trump. If I were Trump’s speechwriter, using the lessons I learned from great talks I heard in my basketball career, this is what I would give him to deliver...continue here.

-- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Visual: Framed

Visual - "Framed":

Painful Emotions

After years of being taught that the way to deal with painful emotions is to get rid of them, it can take a lot of reschooling to learn to sit with them instead.

-- Barbara Brown Taylor

(Personal) Effectiveness

What makes someone effective, in personal ways? 

Obviously, there are a few things to unpack around such a question.  What, in fact, are we really talking about?

In general, we occasionally recognize someone who is just plain effective—at getting things done, at what they do, at who they are.  We might say, they have a way about them.  They move things forward, as a function of their resources (personality, organization, inter-personal style, instinct, etc.).  The net result often is that we feel drawn to them—their authenticity, their integrity, their winsomeness, whatever it is about them that we appreciate.

One of the things that I've been wondering about is, how much of this effectiveness is secured or leveraged by the person's sense of the parts of themselves that make them ineffective?  Is it all just pure instinctualness?  Or, is it also a function of what they have learned...about themselves, that frees up more of who they are naturally?  People who have healthy awareness of these kinds of things seem, at least in part, more effective because they don't create as many distractions for themselves (and others), as a function of their self-knowledge, self-regulation, self-development.

Results & Consequences

The problem is that results often occur before consequences.

Take business, for example; sometimes, you can make money faster than you can see some of the consequences of making that money.  When money is involved, one is generally not motivated to consider the consequences as much (or before) as the desired results.

As An Imperfection

Ever noticed...how often anger is viewed as an imperfection (if not a sin)?

The Motherly Love of a Wrathful God

What if, instead of ignoring the great theme of motherly compassion because we see some wrathful, vengeful, Old Covenant deity who is somehow not the same God revealed in Christ Jesus, our churches took a yearlong walking tour of these 150 occurrences and motherly compassion became a part of our steady nourishment from Scripture?

...our churches would become even more the places of welcome to broken humanity that God intends them to be. When we see every place in the Old Testament where God expresses motherly compassion—and the people of Israel follow suit—wouldn’t we be moved to get past our too-easy self-righteousness and past our too-easy denigration of enemies and to open our communities to all God’s children in compassionate welcome? Wouldn’t we be moved to protect the lives threatened by death in our cities and communities?

Maybe we would realize that we let first impressions mislead us and that the God of the Old Testament is more complex and vibrant and, well, motherly, than we knew. Maybe we would quit saying “God of the Old Testament” and simply say “our God.”  Continue here....

-- Robert Foster

Re-Opening from COVID-19

COVID-19 're-opening’ is happening—the question is, to what?

In the midst of the social distancing necessitated by this pandemic, people have nevertheless come together in creative and loving ways. Some have called this virus a massive “trigger event” with the potential to change everything. As individuals and communities, we can respond with justice and compassion, or we can double down on the pursuit of accumulation and power, with no more than a return to business as usual.

-- Richard Rohr

Alone

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Alone":

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

-- Maya Angelou

Deepened

Wisdom is knowledge deepened by love.

-- IIia Delio

Sneaky Time

This is a sneaky time.

In other words, things are happening inside us that we don't recognize until they sometimes show up unannounced—these can be surprisingly bad or good.  An opportunity, either way.

Despair

Despair is the belief that tomorrow will be just like today.

-- Rob Bell

Understood

I've noticed...that I hardly ever feel understood, at least completely.

This doesn't feel to me like a complaint, as much as an observation.  It is more likely that it just isn't possible; even unreasonable...to expect of someone else.

This doesn't mean that no one understands me.  What is to be understood about us, is simply not the function of just one other person.

I believe I am well understood.  What stands out to me is how often I feel I am not.

More Accurate Reflection

One of the more confusing things about God are the people who say they believe in him:

Instagram: nakedpastor

Instagram: bobgoff

Our problem following Jesus is we're trying to be a better version of us, rather than a more accurate reflection of Him.

-- Bob Goff

Calm Also Has A Coefficient

Panic loves company.

And yet calm is our practical, efficient, rational alternative.

If you’re on a crowded plane and one person is freaking out about turbulence, the panic will eventually peter out. If, on the other hand, six people are freaking out, it’s entirely possible that it will spread and overtake the rest of the plane. Panic needs multiple nodes to spread.

The same is true with a cabin of 10-year-olds at summer camp. One homesick kid usually comes around and ends up enjoying the summer, because being surrounded by others who are okay makes us okay. But three or four homesick kids can change the entire dynamic.

While calm is a damping agent, it’s not nearly as effective at spreading itself as panic is.

The library is usually a quiet place because the dominant cultural narrative in the library is to be quiet. Because it’s dominant, the coefficient of its spread is sufficient to keep it that way. We have to expend effort to create environments of calm, because calm has a coefficient that can’t compete with panic when it comes to spreading.

And Twitter? Twitter has been engineered to maximize panic. Calm is penalized, panic is amplified. And if you are hanging out in real life with people who spend a lot of time on social media and news sites, you’ve invited all of those people into your circle as well.

We can find lots of reasons why fifty years of watching just three dominant TV networks wasn’t ideal. But the combination of oligopoly and the FCC meant that none of them spread panic. They weren’t built for it. When cable “news” showed up, they discovered that panic was a great way to make a profit. Not to make things better, simply to spread anger and fear.

If panic is helpful, of course you should bring it on. But it rarely is.

Instead:

Curate your incoming.

Stay off Twitter.

Do the work instead. Whatever needs doing most is better than panic.

Being up-to-date on the news is a trap and a scam. Five minutes a day is all you need.

-- Seth Godin, Calm also has a coefficient

For the Interim Time

There is a beauty in disruption—one that we often behold more in hindsight than in the moment, unless we can learn to see it differently:

Instagram: aaronieq

'Poem selection' for the week -- "For the Interim Time":

When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,
No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.
In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.
You are in the time of the imterim
Where everything seems withheld.
The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.
"The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to b born." You
cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.
Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know yo have to make you own way
through.
As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.
What is being transfigured here in your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.

-- John O'Donohue


It seems that it is only when what we are used to is taken away from us that we awaken to new possibilities, even if they were available all along.

-- Richard Rohr