Lifelong Learning

The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning.

-- M. Scott Peck

This is one of those that at first appears rather self-evident.  But, what struck me about it (other than the reference to learning and other thoughts posted this week on the 'the mind') is that I don't believe, for the better part of my life, I viewed it that way.  Spirituality, for me, had been more of a construct of principles of some sort. One either did or did not work their way through the pile of them, but they were available for acquisition, if one were so disciplined.

Now, however, I see the developmental nature of spirituality, perhaps because of the same nature I see more and more of in all realms of life.  In other words, to grow (in any respect), we must engage the process of learning.  And that is a whole-being exercise...that is never over.

Goal of Teaching

The goal of teaching is not to teach; it is to create learning.

The key to learning is engagement.

The key to engagement is creativity.

The key to creativity is effort.

So, teaching well requires a lot of effort aimed at learning.

If learning does not occur, then we are just sliding a bunch of information around...often over and over and over. Who needs more information?  Learning is a holistic experience.

Transformation

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

-- Romans 12:2

I am intrigued by this verse, especially in light of yesterday's post.

The Mind

The brain may be located in the cranium, but the mind is located throughout the body.

-- Candace Pert

What Is & What Ought To Be

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

-- William Hazlitt

Habit of Turning, Strength

Forming a habit of turning to God in our lives is like developing muscle.  It has to be worked, stretched, exercised regularly or it becomes weak at best.

Perhaps the greater of the habits of our lives can be 'living with' God in our everyday details...good and bad.  This is an availing ourselves to our true strength, for otherwise we are simply rather weak and self-absorbed. The story of my life, among other things, is a battle over the development of this muscle.  When I am regularly exercising spiritually, not unlike physically, I am simply stronger than when I'm not.  I'm not sure there is a greater habit we can form than the habit of turning to God.  Life will still 'happen', so doing such things will not prevent bad things from happening.  The issue has much more to do with how I face them, with what I face them, with Whom I face them.  This is the true strength we can develop, through the spiritual habit of turning to God in our lives.

God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

-- Psalm 73:26

The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. 

-- Psalm 28:7

In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength...

-- Isaiah 30:15

...but those who hope in the Lord

    will renew their strength.

-- Isaiah 40:31

We are shaped by our habits.

Rivalry Rebooted

 

POST GAME Review: What was true in Bo and Woody's time is still true today; you can't win Big Ten championships if you don't win key games on the road. And you can't win those games if you don't avoid turn-overs and big mistakes.

...true again today. And, seniors are the ones who need to lead the way.

Songs

Songs can help us take a few steps toward healing. Songs are safe containers for the best and worst that life has to offer.

-- Linford Detweiler

Thanks Giving

Thanksgiving: We all have so much for which to be thankful, especially when we don't confine our gratitude to possessions.

The dirt of our brokenness leads to a true experience of Grace. And gratitude is the flower that grows from her soil.

It is striking how illusive gratitude is when we're avoiding brokenness...and how overwhelming it is when we're not.

Happy Thanks Giving!

Power of Music at any Age

Brokenness

Our life is full of brokenness - broken relationships, broken promises, broken expectations. How can we live with that brokenness without becoming bitter and resentful except by returning again and again to God's faithful presence in our lives.

-- Henri Nouwen

Our diversions prevent us from such returning.

Diversion

How much of our busyness and our business has this - diversion - as its deepest root? It is not only when something terrible happens, like a death, that we seek diversion, but always. This indicates that there is a pervasive presence of death and despair in our lives that we are always seeking diversion from.

-- Peter Kreeft

Regarding Thanksgiving, one thing that siphons gratitude from me more than anything else is busyness...not taking the time to reflect on the actual state of things and, instead, racing on to the next set of things that need to get done. This disposition drains me and simultaneously arouses the addiction to diversion. Busyness is a thief.

Thanks, Kent, for sharing this one.

Faith Never Knows

Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.

-- Jim Elliot

This morning, with...
the night mysts still clinging to earthen valley,
the tickling of jack's frost on the end of my nose,
the splatter of sun across the banked ravine of a sea of fallen browns,
the fire-bush's burning reds between me and sunlight,
the rustle of leaves from the spooked white-tail,
the barkless sycamore's crisp white against the blue ocean above,
the honk of the flying V headed away from northering winter,
and the aroma of conifers reaching down to pull me up,

...all embed themselves into me like a series of endless surprises in about as a wonderful a manner as I can imagine. I may not know where such things are leading me, but I have come to recognize Who is.

Seems like a great way to start this Thanksgiving week.

UM vs Iowa

 

Another great day with friends at the Big House!  Click pic for more pics....

Culture

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

-- Peter Drucker

Teacher's Voice

The main reason we have dysfunctional education policies in this country is that the teacher’s voice is almost absent from public discourse about how to transform education.

-- Parker Palmer

What You Can't Handle

What you think you can’t handle — might actually be God handing you a gift.

-- Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

Continue Reading more from this post....

A friend shared with me a confession recently that felt a lot like this. We face the seemingly unfaceable. But, when we turn, see a face we've never seen as fully before, right beside us.

Be Strong...and Work

'Be strong, all you people of the land,’ declares the Lord, ‘and work. For I am with you,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt. And my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear.’

-- Haggai 2:4-5

Very interesting connections here between effort and fear. Do we not work at things because we are afraid to? The bridge is the real source of the strength needed to face our fears -- His Spirit. He is the strength we need and we have Him. We can work at things because we have Him right with us...in whatever we do.

...and this seems to apply to everyone (all the people of the land).

Will of God

It's harder to fall out of the will of God than you think...chew on that for a while.

-- Lorraine Green

Himself By Himself is Nothing

Humanity, potential with God, all great knowledge is this, for a man to know that he himself by himself is nothing; and that, whenever he is, he is from God and on account of God.

-- St. Augustine

Clings

To that which your heart clings is your god.

-- Martin Luther

Shining Through

We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time.

-- Thomas Merton

It's whether or not we recognize Him...reminds me of the contradiction of the lines from the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy:

        Though the eyes of sinful man
        Thy glories may not see

If Only We Would Listen

One characteristic of the recent elections is that there seemed to be very little listening going on.  We hear a lot about a divided country.  But what divides us?  ...do we care enough to find out?  Or, are we just increasingly committed to maintaining only what we think.  What keeps us from listening to each other?  Much of the subsequent 'discussion' regarding the election seems to be more about who 'won' than anything else.

This interview with Parker Palmer (by the way, thanks to Jerry McCoy for introducing me to Palmer years ago), therefore, seems relevant:

We need to change our calculus about what makes an action worth taking and get past our obsession with results. Being effective is important, of course. I write books because I want to have an impact. But if the only way we judge an action is by its effectiveness, we will take on smaller and smaller tasks, because they’re the only kind with which we are sure we can get results. I’m not giving up on effectiveness, but it has to be secondary.

If I cling to effectiveness, though, I’m going to die an unhappy man. I’m committed to educational goals more ambitious than getting kids to pass tests, and to political goals a lot bigger than getting people to “tolerate” each other. Teaching a kid to pass a test is a piece of cake compared to educating a child. And tolerating people is a long way from understanding how profoundly interdependent we are. As I say in the new book, the civility we need in politics will not come from watching our tongues but from valuing our differences. Somehow my heart doesn’t beat faster when someone says they’re willing to “tolerate” me!

But when I’m talking with people whose views I regard as wrong but not evil, I need to ask myself: Am I here to win this argument, or am I here to create a relationship? Research shows that when you throw facts at people to refute what they believe, it only hardens their convictions. But if you create a relational container that can hold an ongoing dialogue, it’s more likely that someone will change — and that someone may be you! Failing that, we usually just walk away and revert to talking to people who agree with us. What good is that?

-- Parker Palmer, If Only We Would Listen Interview

Continue Reading -- lots of good things to think about here.

Post-Election Day Prayer

You creator God

       who has ordered us

              in families and communities,

              in clans and tribes,

              in states and nations.

You creator God

       who enact your governance

              in ways overt and

              in ways hidden.

       You exercise your will for

              peace and for justice and for freedom.

We give you thanks for the peaceable order of

   our nation and for the chance of choosing--

      all the manipulative money notwithstanding.

We pray now for new governance

     that your will and purpose may prevail,

     that our leaders may have a sense

        of justice and goodness,

     that we as citizens may care about the

        public face of your purpose.

We pray in the name of Jesus who was executed

     by the authorities.

-- Walter Brueggeman, Prayer for a Privileged People

Election Day Communion

Let’s meet at the same table,
with the same host,
to remember the same things.

We’ll remember that real power in this world — the power to save, to transform, to change — ultimately rests not in political parties or presidents or protests but in the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus.

We’ll remember that, through the Holy Spirit, this power dwells within otherwise ordinary people who as one body continue the mission of Jesus: preaching good news to the poor, freeing the captives, giving sight to the blind, releasing the oppressed, and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:16-21).

We’ll remember that freedom — true freedom — is given by God and is indeed not free. It comes with a cost and it looks like a cross.

We’ll remember our sin and our need to repent.

We’ll remember that the only Christian nation in this world is the Church, a holy nation that crosses all human-made boundaries and borders.

We’ll remember that our passions are best placed within the passion of Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2).

We’ll remember that we do not conform to the patterns of this world, but we are transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2).

We’ll remember that God’s strength is made perfect in weakness.

And we’ll remember the body of Christ as the body of Christ, confessing the ways in which partisan politics has separated us from one another and from God.

-- from http://electiondaycommunion.org/ (thanks for sending and organizing, Jim)

A small gathering from our fellowship gathered for an Election Day Communion. We were grateful for the knowledge that other groups around the country were doing the same.

Phil Keaggy

Click pic to listen to Phil Keaggy!

Only Prayer

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is 'thank you', it will be enough.

-- Meister Eckhart

At one point in my life (well many perhaps) I would have argued that more was needed than this...just a simple 'thank you'. But now, I see the wisdom of this simplicity. A 'thank you' to God is a profound thing, given our more natural tendencies. It takes time for us to realize our true nature, that which was created in the image of God and which seeks His glory through our being.  When we are aligned in this way, gratitude permeates us.

When I awoke this morning, the skies were shrouded in gray. I was a bit disappointed, having awakened with my normal Sunday hope of the woods. But I headed out anyway. And, as I headed into the thick, I noticed an emerging ambiance of light. Above me, the clouds were rolling back like a blanket and sunlight was over-taking the world. I had to stop and admire it.

Spotting across the stream my favorite fire-bushes lining the path with their tiniest little bulbs of red, I continued. I was going a different direction, but turned back their way...I just had to run through them.

Blue sky now mirrored itself on the paralleling stream beside me. I rounded a corner and there...stunning me was the largest red-headed woodpecker I have ever seen. It had to be nearly 15" and the sun now shining behind it lit its red plume like fire. Its size portrayed the beauty of its coat of black and white, further accentuating its brilliant hat. I stopped again.... I recovered and continued and nearly ran into a batch of climbing yellow berries, so replete with the season of fall that no store could have come close to capturing the essence of its garland. As if that weren't enough, the next scene crashed into my sight...nearly two dozen scintillating silhouettes of white swanned effortlessly on a glassy lake before me. I couldn't quite take all this in. I couldn't quite breathe.

...I could only pray 'thank you'.

At First Wake

Faint the blow of wind on leaves
Warm the tang my old bed cover
Darkness quits like tip-toeing thieves
A day begins like any other.

Comes the world to me slowly;
Ears, then nose, eyes then touch:
Fumbling for a hint of holy
But finding forth so little much.
  
Lord, make this wake, this very morning,
Make this wake the Final One…
Turn today into a borning:
Let me sense the world won. 

-- Tim Koshnick

Why Parenting Is More Important Than Schools

A study published earlier this month by researchers at North Carolina State University, Brigham Young University and the University of California-Irvine, for example, finds that parental involvement — checking homework, attending school meetings and events, discussing school activities at home — has a more powerful influence on students’ academic performance than anything...

...research also reveals something else: that parents, of all backgrounds, don’t need to buy expensive educational toys or digital devices for their kids in order to give them an edge. They don’t need to chauffeur their offspring to enrichment classes or test-prep courses. What they need to do with their children is much simpler: talk.

Continue Reading

Habits

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.

-- John Dryden

Hard Work

Motivation will beat raw intelligence almost every time.

The single most important trait that our schools, families and other institutions can ingrain in our students is the importance of character. Without a strong ethical compass a student in his or her lifetime can only harm the world -- and most likely themselves and those around them. Beyond that, I would emphasize the importance of hard work. That is certainly true of the process of learning. More and more evidence suggests that it takes long hours working on very demanding tasks for one to learn. This is a disconcerting observation given that the number of hours per week college students study today is about half what it was a few decades ago, at which time it was not terribly large to begin with. But one simply can't hope to understand...without hard work.

-- Norman Augustine

From a really good interview:  Continue Reading

Correction

Correction does much, but encouragement does more.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Courtesy and Egos

I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people's feelings by satisfying our own egos.

-- Kenneth Clark

Mornings

There is something a bit indescribable about mornings. The older I get, the more I recognize the wonder and beauty of them (like today's sunrise), the more I look east to see what might be coming.

Perhaps it is because I get up earlier these days, due to a variety of things...work, a busied mind, the purging of the night's dreams, the shifting of my internal clock, the call of my morning workouts (or, in today's case, my Sunday morning ritual of a dawn-run through the woods -- by the way, Nature's Christmas Lights are on again!). Nonetheless, I anticipate morning. And, perhaps not unlike the majesty of sunsets, I have discovered what many others before me have discovered that there is something powerful about mornings.

Saturday mornings (not the Saturday Mornings posts per se), in particular, hold the prospect of something less predictable, less pre-determined. I feel a sense of openness...to my choice of what to do; what to get done, what to leave undone. There is a freedom in it that I have come to relish.

But, even more than this, morning strikes something deeper within me. The prospect of starting a day with beauty, rather than duty. The possibility of a new start, even in something regular. A deeper sense of grace.

I used to not even miss mornings; 'nothing going on anyway' (or so I thought). But now, the chance to freely wonder from the day's earliest moments what a day may hold, energizes me, particularly when I am blessed to have such color and beauty cascading behind me.

West-ward then!

 

Effort

What is it about effort that so many are afraid of? ...that makes us too willing to let those who do it, do it? We love stories about the effort involved in over-coming. But, we don't really want to work any harder than we have to.  What do we believe, when we behave this way?

Perhaps, we should consider what drives effort?  More often than not, it seems to me, effort is driven by desire.  We want something.  It we want something bad enough, we will work for it.  At other times, desire is driven by need.  We need something, so we will work for it.  And, when the chips are really down, our need can be even more basic, like the need just to survive.

Maybe we don't put out too much effort because we really don't need to.  We already have the better part of what we want without having to work very hard for it.  But, under this reality, I suspect we are missing out on something good that was intended for us as humans, something that is a result or by-product of effort.

Are we simply caught up in the exceptions of cause-and-effect?  For example, sometimes the results of effort don't come just because of the effort.  But, just because that is true, it doesn't mean that most of the time results do actually come from effort; thus the common phrase, "you get out of it what you put into it".  The problem shows up when we require that they do, when we put forth effort because of the results, for the sole purpose of achieving the results we want.  When we get here, we get mad when we don't get what we want, especially when we've worked hard at something and it didn't yield the result we were hoping for.  When we are here, we find ourselves operating with a sense of entitlement -- I am owed the result just because of my effort.

We, however, were created differently, to act differently, to believe differently.  We were made to be care-takers in life, to preserve it, to offer it.  And, this requires effort, a working at it.  But, the real granting of life is a harmony with the Giver of life -- the One who can make things grow.  We can plant seeds, but we can't make them grow.  So, our effort isn't owed a result, but it does join in harmony with the results that can be given.  This is why we are free to work hard, in fact created to work hard, not because of what we will get out of it, but because of what is broadly given when we join something good that we were made to take care of.

Wrath

If God were to return and judge the world of evil, what would happen to us? Would we be able to inhabit a perfect world? What happens when we realize that we are part of the the problem, not just the ones longing for a solution?

When we imagine our place within the cosmic story of redemption, we come to realize we are more than passive victims of evil's consequences. We are evil insurrectionists, rebels against the good and loving authority of God our Creator. In the Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who suffered at the hands of the Soviet Communists, put it well: "Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart." We thirst for justice, but once we consider the fairness of God, we quickly discover that Christ's return can only be good news if we have found mercy in God's sight.

-- Trevin Wax, "Rejoicing In The Wrath" (CT - Global Gospel Project)

Yearns for Beauty

Beauty is something everybody longs for, needs, and tries to obtain in some way — whether through nature, or a man or a woman, or music, or whatever. The soul yearns for it.

-- James Hillman

Him vs Me

The first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was: "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But... the good Samaritan ...reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Plant Trees

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

-- Nelson Handerson

Thank You

 

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.

-- William Arthur Ward

Fuel

He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.

-- C.S. Lewis

Friendly Intercourse

After the city, where we had always lived, those country years were startling. . . . The surprise of animals . . . in and out, cats and dogs and a milk goat and chickens and guinea hens, all taken for granted, as if man was intended to live on terms of friendly intercourse with the rest of creation instead of huddling in isolation on the fourteenth floor of an apartment house in a city where animals occurred behind bars in the zoo.

-- Elizabeth Janeway

This reminded me of a one recent pre-dawn; the glint of Orion's sword flashed fabulously against its black velvet backdrop. It was mesmerizing. Not much later, the dense green of the forest was alight with a thousand tiny flames of yellow-leafed candles beckoning on the deeper autumn. The reds hadn't come yet, but the big browns were already crunchy under my feet. The air was thick with the moist and cool of the seasonal-adjustment now fully underway and the faintest whiffs of the evening-before burnings hung heavy in my nostrils. All conjuring up some kind of familiar, yet not fully known, ache for something both past and present. Quite a union on many levels. It was great to be alive. And still is....

There is a joy in beauty.

True Freedom

True freedom is not choice or lack of constraint, but being 
what you are meant to be.

-- St. Augustine

Fascination

God, help me to move more out of fascination with what you are doing in someone else, than out of interest in seeing change in someone else.

I don't see all that you see...or even how what is going in on is being used by you to do your good work in another way or in another person.  Such things are dimly lit waters, over which only you are the lighthouse.

Fascination would be born out of a deep trust in you, in your work.  And you are a much better beacon than I.

GO TIGERS II

Looks like they're going to make it all the way this year!  Ready for a sweep tonight!?

One God - Economics

I think we’re miserable partly because we have only one god, and that’s economics. Economics is a slave-driver. No one has free time; no one has any leisure. The whole culture is under terrible pressure and fraught with worry. It’s hard to get out of that box. That’s the dominant situation all over the world.

-- James Hillman

Our Political Environment of Election

We live now in, among other things, a market-driven society, where everything is marketed to us, whether we need it or not (even products designed to help with dysfunction are marketed to us whether we have dysfunction or not). And, yes, even Presidents are marketed to us in American Idol fashion (this link on that is worth your time to listen), borrowing heavily on both our deeper hopes and fears about life and the world.  But the government can't do everything we want, much less everything we need:

Governments can do lots of things, but there are a lot of things they cannot do. A government can pass good laws, but no law can change a human heart. Only God can do that. A government can provide good housing, but folks can have a house without having a home. We can keep people breathing with good health care, but they still may not really be alive. The work of community, love, reconciliation, restoration is the work we cannot leave up to politicians. This is the work we are all called to do. We can’t wait on politicians to change the world. We can’t wait on governments to legislate love. And we don’t let policies define how we treat people; how we treat people shapes our policies.

Continue Reading

I think this is another helpful read on some of what is going in an election environment like what we are experiencing these days:

If the Thought of Either Romney or Obama Getting Elected Makes You Fearful, Angry, or Depressed, You Have What we Call a Theological Problem

Joy

Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.

-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Nature

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

-- E.B. White

When you have a moment, for silence, choose to watch the video at the bottom this link:

http://www.michellederusha.com/2012/10/one-square-inch.html

Choices

It is our choices...that show what we truly are,
far more than our abilities.

-- J. K. Rowling

Beneath Our Feet

We spend our lives hurrying away from the real, as though it were deadly to us. “It must be somewhere up there on the horizon,” we think. And all the time it is in the soil, right beneath our feet.

-- William Bryant Logan


In hurrying for more happiness, you can hurry right past it.

-- Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

Prejudice, Pride, and Vanity

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.

-- Dale Carnegie

Education

...the best education is always self-inflicted.

-- Dr. Philip Riley

From: The Power of Small Moments

More often than not, we don't really learn until we want to...or need to.

Have Seen

All I have seen teaches me
to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yellow-Head Dance

I came around another dirt-beaten bend on a forested path and there they were, hundreds of them. Slender. Tall. Radiant yellow-headed flowers all facing skyward, as if looking for something. Or, praising Someone.

I was running...but not now. I was stopped, in wonder at what all might be going on...in this one sun-drenched spot in an otherwise dense woods. A slight breeze introduced its music to the mix, making the scene as close to a Nature Dance as I've ever seen.

After being transfixed, I continued my run...coming across 2s and 3s of more yellow-heads creeping along the trail.  It seemed as if they were headed somewhere...like to the gathering of them I had enjoyed just a few minutes before.

It struck me how not unlike them we are...as we gather together on days like today, to worship.  Looking for the Light to warm and fulfill our lives.  We take courage by the gathering, of others like and unlike us, and by those striving to get there at various points along their journey.

I wish I had a camera at the time; the radiance of the bright-yellowed scene rhythmically coming both from the earth and heaven at the same time was more than words can capture.

Sometimes we walk together, sometimes alone. But like the yellow-heads, whether we realize it or not, we are reaching upward for the Source of our life.

And, boy is it fun when the music's playin'!

Calling

 

You will never lighten any load until you feel the pressure in your own soul.

The ultimate imperative and the training of your character, the training of your own heart, is going to happen when you are alone.

-- Ravi Zacharias

Really enjoyed this thinking / challenge regarding our 'calling' in life from a recent address at Wheaton College.  Click image to watch the series.

What You Become

What you get by reaching your destination
is not nearly as important as what you will become
by reaching your destination.

-- Zig Ziglar

Enduring

Nothing great was ever done without much enduring.

-- St. Catherine of Siena

Total Effort

Always make a total effort,
even when the odds are against you.

-- Arnold Palmer

Disposition

I have learned that the greater part of
our misery or unhappiness is
determined not by our circumstance
but by our disposition.

-- Martha Washington

Some call this attitude. Some call this faith. Disposition puts it a bit uniquely; I like it. I especially resonate with the observation on 'our circumstances'.

Contemplative simplicity isn't a matter of circumstances; it's a matter of focus.

-- Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

Sunrise

 

At our annual church harvest holiday week, the sunrise does it again.

Click pic...for more pics. 'Wasting' time, eating, talking, playing, and dancing (some of the dancing pics are pretty fun to click through quickly)!  Quite the harmonies of 'being together'.

Fruit

The fruit of Silence is prayer. The fruit of Prayer is faith. The fruit of Faith is love. The fruit of Love is service. The fruit of Service is peace.

-- Mother Teresa

Obstacles

Most of our obstacles would melt away
if, instead of cowering before them,
we should make up our minds
to walk boldly through them.

-- Orison Swett Marden

I think this is true particularly in the context of our fears. Not favoring this as a form of self-determinism, but as a renewing of our minds, since it is often our fear that disables us.

Char-cool

Last night's dark punctured, with the sky's pin-prick leakings of light. The air chilled now with October's anticipation and the nose welcomed the smokey of still charring wood.

I have come to so love this conspiratorial deluge of the senses, what they arouse so deep within me. Welcome Char-cool!

...camping this weekend. I anticipate. The life of direct conversation with others, the escape from the dominance of our flat-screens, the surprise of the blend of the 3-dimensional world of nature and the unique interaction of souls it prompts.

Parenthood - Everything Is Not OK

 

I have plugged for this show before. This week's episode was another really good one - very family, very human. I was prompted to confess a bit of me I saw in Adam (one of the characters) to Tami.

Worth your while. Click pic to watch....

Spend on It

There's a very positive relationship
between people's ability to
accomplish any task and the time
they're willing to spend on it.

-- Joyce Brothers

Get that tongue out of your cheek, Joyce. Not many people (any?) can get good at what they do without really working at it.

But really, with the self-evident humor, why wouldn't this be a very natural response to Emerson's thought?

Within Us

What lies behind us, and what lies
before us are small matters
compared to what lies within us.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Partial Redemption

There is no such thing as partial redemption.

While it may be true at any given moment that it isn't complete yet, there is nothing 'barely' about redemption. God isn't just 'doing the best he can' with what He's been left to work with. No, His redemptive work is full, complete, and total.

That is the beauty of redemption, in the first place.

Forgiveness

The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.

-- William Blake

An odd juxtaposition of images -- glory, conquering, forgiveness -- but a not so subtle irony none-the-less. I remember a rather stunning thought from Blue Like Jazz that such 'conquering' is even more by asking for forgiveness than simply granting it.

Forgiveness carries a lot of assumptions. Things like the need to be honest, the willingness to seek out another person with my vulnerability, the reality that I need it as badly as any one else. And, of course, these are among nearly impossible tasks without having realized that I, myself, have been forgiven in very specific and personal ways. The act is a profound one, a deeply human one, a powerful one. One that truly dismantles (conquers) so many of the false constructs we have built in our lives.

When is the last time I forgave someone...or asked for forgiveness?

Your Story

We can't change the present or the future. We can only change the past, and we do it all the time.

-- Bob Dylan, Rolling Stone

We all know the line that says something to the effect that if we don't remember the past, we are condemned to repeat it. Donald Miller's latest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, is all about living our story now because the past has sure shaped it.

I really like these thoughts about story as well:

Grace is the backbone of every woman still standing.

-- Ann Voskamp's blog

God’s writing your story and He never leaves you alone in your story....

-- Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

That is a lot be thankful for. Continue reading Ann's thoughts about your story....

Two for the Road: Stolen & One

Two for the road today...

...much of our lives are spent trying to avoid conflict. Half the commercials on television are selling us something that will make life easier. Part of me wonders if our stories aren't being stolen by the easy life.

-- Donald Miller, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years


It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for … the masses.

-- Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary-General of the United Nations

Patience

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself.

-- St. Francis de Sales

Change

...we were designed to live through something rather than to attain something, and the thing we were meant to live through was designed to change us.

-- Donald Miller, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years

Nature Speaks

The heavens declare the glory of God;
   the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
   night after night they display knowledge.

Yet their message has gone throughout the earth,
   and their words to all the world.

-- Psalm 19:1-2, 4

Is God silent or is He talking?  What is His language?  Psalms 19 seems to answer this question.

His language of love is Nature.  He has spoken and continues to speak...day after day after day.  The glory of His Nature 'pours out speech'. Undeniably. Irretrievably. Unquenchingly. Overwhelmingly. If we listen, we are star-struck by it, stream-struck by it, mountain-struck by it, season-struck by it.  Its order, chaos, and timelessness all pronounce the transcendence of his love throughout our experience of tHIS life, in this world.

 ...and so many still seem able to hardly notice.

Blake and I were talking about his recently; what do you think?  What is God 'saying'?

Priesthood of All Believers

Anthropologists tell us that "religion" is a universal cultural reality. Every culture creates a religion. We find religion all around the world, in every culture.

The religions they create have at least two characteristics:

• people create religious rituals to ceremonialize their devotion
• people create a religious hierarchy to outsource their religious obligations

We don't want a priesthood and ministry of all believers. Instead, we want people to go to God for us and leaders to do the ministry to us...

Continue Reading

By Us & For Us

Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.

-- John Stott

CT: What Kind of Wife

Picture this: a bride and groom dashing out of the church, through the showers of birdseed and into the limo, all aglow with the light of love from the vows they've just taken. In the backseat of the car, en route to the reception, they embrace and kiss. Then the groom announces that he has something to say:

"Now you realize, my dear," he begins, "that, as far as I'm concerned, we can't really say we're married, because I don't know yet what kind of wife you'll turn out to be...."

This CT article is one of those 'must read' kind of things about grace and faith -- really worth your time:

Continue Reading!

Mistakes

The greatest mistake you can make in life
is to be continually fearing
you will make one.

-- Elbert Hubbard

...so, we can 'go for it' and give it our all and be thankful for any good that comes out of it and seek forgiveness for anything bad we've caused.

To Reveal

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.

-- Benjamin Disraeli

I'm not a huge fan of superlatives...like when people say things like, "I've always believed that..." or the 'est' in statements like the above. But, generally at least, they are used to emphasize a point and the one above is a good one, in my estimation. Especially when one thinks about what our true riches are.

Grateful Participants

We get robbed of the glory of life because we aren't capable of remembering how we got here.

...stunningly true, no?

When you are born, you wake slowly to everything. Your brain doesn't stop growing until you turn twenty-six, so from birth to twenty-six, God is slowly turning the light on, and you're groggy and pointing at things saying circle and blue and car and then sex and job and health care. The experience is so slow you could easily come to believe life isn't that big of a deal, that life isn't staggering. What I'm saying is I think life is staggering and we're just used to it. We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we're given -- it's just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral.

We are awakening to God, as we live, if we are willing.

I've wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgement.  We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage.  And if life isn't remarkable, then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims rather than grateful participants.

-- Donald Miller, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years

Gratitude goes a lot farther than the other reaction: busyness.

...by the way, I'm thoroughly enjoying this Donald Miller book.

Barrenness

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

-- Socrates

Meant to be Given

It is interesting how we gauge what we keep for ourselves. It seems that we often base this on what everyone else is keeping...I shouldn't have any less than everyone else, right?

But, when does that thinking take us somewhere that simply isn't right? See Ann Voskamp's thoughts on our problem with this here.

We don't own anything - everything we have is given to us.

Nothing given to us is meant to be kept. Everything given is meant to be given (to others).

Oh God, Our Help

O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
our shelter from the stormy blast,
and our eternal home.

Under the shadow of thy throne,
still may we dwell secure;
sufficient is thine arm alone,
and our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,
or earth received her frame,
from everlasting, thou art God,
to endless years the same.

A thousand ages, in thy sight,
are like an evening gone;
short as the watch that ends the night,
before the rising sun.

Time, like an ever rolling stream,
bears all who breathe away;
they fly forgotten, as a dream
dies at the opening day.

O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come;
be thou our guide while life shall last,
and our eternal home.

-- Isaac Watts

I attended a wedding recently where this song was sung. My how I've missed it over the years. What a vision to sing such a thing like this at a wedding. Pure vision.

And, perhaps, I recognized more of its sweep because of two other recent events, one another kind of beginning and another hinting at a possible ending. The former I referenced in yesterday's post regarding my son. The latter regarding the open-heart surgery of my 71 year-old mother. The juxtaposition of the two and all their possibilities laid right next to something like a wedding that wants to be built on this kind of God. What a wonder. What a mystery. What a stopping. What a worshiping.

Shadow of Me

Like that created by the setting sun, the older I get, the longer my shadow gets.  It takes up more space.

I arrived at this thought one day as I contemplated the leaving of my son for the first time at college (which we did last weekend).  It occurred to me that he needs to be out of my shadow.  I don't know of anything particularly wrong with my shadow (well, sure, there is plenty wrong with it....), it's just the order of Dad-ness.  He needs to be free of me, the shade of my shadow, for a while.  In order for him to grow, to identify the size and shape of his own shadow, he must move out away from mine.  He needs sunlight to grow...all things do, to develop fully, to mature, to become what they are intended to be.

You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.

-- OLD IRISH PROVERB

I can ascent to this intellectually.  But I must admit, something else is at work, too.  I wish I knew what he was up to, how he is doing.  Not too long ago, our lives were quite integrated.  Now they're not...or so it feels.  At least, they're not integrated by proximity.  And this, though bearing a sense of loss, is how it should be now, for his sake.  It is time for him to find himself, on his terms...and without my direct supervision, without the shadow of me directly over him.  This is healthy...for both of us.

...and, it forces something else good in me; to pray for him, to entrust him to God.  To trust God for him.  To trust that God is for Him and taking him more fully from here (not that He didn't have him fully until now).  This process of entrusting him to God frees him to grow up into the shape God has for him.  And, really, what more could I really want for him.  I don't want to over-shadow him.

I want him to find his own shadow, so that he can see what he really looks like...who he really is.

...and, if his experience is like mine and that of all sons, the Shadow of Me will likely be quite a part of his anyway.

Don't Worry About Size

Don't worry about the size of your platform or whether you'll have one -- you will. Instead, pay attention to the people around you and the opportunities in front of you, knowing that your chances to make a positive difference will come along in due time. Focus on the impact you have with the platform God gives you.

-- Tony Dungy, The Mentor Leader

Truth and Beauty

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

-- Albert Einstein

Beauty Simply Is

Beauty requires no justification, no explanation; it simply is and transcends.

I pay tribute to God by paying attention.

All beauty is only reflection.

-- Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

Something Else

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

How Well Do We See

Once upon a time there were two small boys who asked their fathers to take them to see the great parade that passed through the village every ten years. The fathers, remembering the parade from when they were boys, quickly agreed, and the next morning the four of them set out together.

Continue Reading, some good stuff, especially at the end.

I Will Instruct You

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.

-- Psalm 32:8

In the end, leaders lead...by example.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

-- 2 Corinthians 8:9

God’s not out to get you — He’s out to give to you.

And God’s blessings don’t pursue temporarily — but relentlessly. It’s right there in His Word: His goodness and mercy pursue me not just some days — but all the days of my life. When I’m in a wilderness, His mercy and goodness run after me. When I’m hurting, His grace hunts for me. When I’m plagued by problems, His goodness pursues me.

Surely Your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life…

-- Psalm 23:6

Your beauty and love chase after me …

-- Psalm 23:6

-- Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

Gateway into Fall

Must say I like this thought from OtRs latest newsletter regarding the season of Fall.  Joe Henry always thinks of September 1 as New Year’s Day:

The gateway into fall; marking the time to set aside distractions and truly engage in the soul's real work; to rededicate yourself to love and service, forgiveness and mystery.

-- Joe Henry

It is a most wonderful time of year, a welcomed rhythm of life.

Going to College

What is the purpose of 'college'?  We took our son to college today.  Anticipating the event, I asked myself what the purpose of doing this is.  In part to remind myself; in part to admonish him -- at the end of the day, what is this whole thing for?

I got it down this far:  Going to college is an opportunity.

An opportunity to:

• become a professional in some skill-set 
• develop more awareness -- of one's self, of others, of the world
• fit the 3 together from a deeper awareness of God

How would you describe it?  What do you see as the purpose of 'going to college'?