Sugar

I’ve noticed…the more sugar I eat, the more sugar I want to eat.

…literally, and metaphorically.

Your Perception of God

Is God present in our world today? 

Of course, this can't really be proven (especially with man-made instrumentation).  Like it or not, we're really down to our perception of God's presence then, aren't we?

So, what impacts your perception of God's presence in the world the most?

A recent experience mountain-top experience of the beauty and magnitude of nature?

An encounter somewhere along your journey with the devastation that humanity brings on itself and its surroundings?

Intimate relationships that perpetuate the ideals of love?

The damage you’ve seen or experienced from someone or something?

In other words, is it the height of your experience with beauty and joy or the depth of it with depravity and despair?

What would you add to the list…or to the question?

Don’t Match The Energy

3 Observations & A Question

All they need is enough, it doesn’t even have to be a majority — just enough. 

If you don’t want to say it now, it only gets harder to say it later.

It is far more effective to work on yourself, than on somebody else.

Do you know much you can take? — how do you know?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Authoritarianism, Con’t

Authoritarianism:

The law cracks down on protesters and librarians, but shields corrupt officials and violent allies.

Disagreeing with power is called betrayal.  But those who lie to protect it are promoted.

Distracts, distorts, and divides, so no one notices what people in power are actually doing.

-- Sharon McMahon

Mesmerized

We often seem mesmerized by the marvels of technology.

Perhaps, as a species, we always have been, which if so may signal that much of what is seemingly new isn't...all that much.

Something about man-made technology seems to pull us away from the technology of the natural world.

I was on a walk early one morning and heard the blast of a train horn off in the distance. I remember having a feeling about it. It was cool. Cool, because of what it represented and the technology involved with building a device that can carry large weights and quantities of things over great distances. Cool, also, probably because of something nostalgic about it that struck a cord in me.

Meanwhile, birds were tweeting. Bullfrogs were belching. The leaves of trees were rustling all around me. There was nearly constant sound, multiple simultaneous sounds, as the world was waking up.

I read something recently that promoted the notion that you really have to look at something for more than a minute or two to actually see something. In other words, it’s not just staring at something, it is receiving what you’re seeing in a way that allows you to truly see what the image represents. In our scrolling-laden age, we look at millions of things and don’t really see very much of anything. We’re not, I suppose, really looking; contemplating what we're seeing, taking in their significance.

Whether listening or seeing, we’re missing so much of what is all around us, as we mesmerize ourselves with the latest man-made technology, largely fascinating, but not very enlightening.

And this, perhaps, is as much a function of the information itself. Not all information is of equal value. Some of it, just because it exists, is meaningless. It’s just there. It may be entertaining, but offers very little to life (not everything is 'life-changing', nor should it be). We seem to take great pride in our ability to process information when, in fact, we’re not really processing much of it at all, not to mention what of it is actually of any value to us.

This is likely why, time and again, distancing ourselves from the bright-and-shiny of technology, and returning to the basic environments, systems, and beauty of the natural world often reveal (not only the distinction) something more valuable to the core of who we are as human-beings.

What is Juneteenth and Why Does it Matter: A Short History

In Yourself

You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.

-- John Steinbeck

LT: What You Do, How You Do It

Talk all you want, but leadership comes down to what you do and the way you do it.

Where The Shoots Through

Ever noticed…on a wooded trail, the majority of flowers seem to be positioned exactly where light shoots through?

Guardian Angel or…?

Do you believe in guardian angels?

Perhaps, the question really is, do I?  

It's hard not to notice when a more serious consideration of the question is in play — like when you're in some kind of trouble.

I recently did a 14-er with Tami, our daughter, son-in-law, and 1 yr old grandson in Colorado.  I was not prepared, in a variety of ways, because of the last minute nature of the decision to do it.  But, I thought if they were all doing it, I'd probably be fine.

It was a beautiful day.  But the higher we got, the windier and colder it got.  Not only did I not have the right shoes, but I also only had a wind-breaker.  We usually are quite prepared for these kinds of thing, but not this time...including my hydration level from the day before, not to mention the elevation issues at this altitude.  You may know where this story is headed....

As most 14-ers do, this one required some effort, especially against the cold and wind.  While our grandson did great, at some point the elements were too much and they turned back.  Tami and I forged ahead.  We could see the summit and find such things, like a final push, the kind of challenge we are invariably grateful for (at the top anyway).

The higher we went, though, the more ground I was losing physically (and, perhaps, psychologically as the impacts of the cold and increasing effort set in).  We made it to top (see here).  But, I was worn down in more than one way.  I was shaking from the cold and losing some mental capacity.

After a few pics (where I had to try to smile), we headed back down.  Here's where things really got interesting.  I only had tennis shoes and they, on the melting snow, were more like skies than anything else.  I started to slip and fall. 

...dozens of times.  I made very little progress and now was not only tired and cold, but also quite wet.

And, psychologically, rather than staying above it, I was starting to go...under.

Due to the melting, the snow path was less clear and increasingly I was sinking down to my knees in the depth of it.  My shoes were now soaked and I was having trouble pulling myself up.  In spite of Tami's active encouragement to keep going, Why am I doing this? was climbing over and sucking on my mind and I was sinking in more ways than one.  Looking back, I was probably in more trouble than I realized.

A couple of other hikers noticed my struggle and came over to offer assistance.  Slightly chagrinned, I accepted as they helped support my physical decline and guided me towards less challenging areas.  One in particular, Caden (see above), literally bent down to pick me up and hold me until I could go on.  He walked with us a ways further.  After we got past the tree line, he let me use his shoulder to take the big steps down the rocky trail.  He stepped into several muddy parts to provide more support for me.  In fact, he walked us (me) literally all the back to our car.

I marveled at his willingness to not do whatever he would have done if we weren't helping me.  We talked quite a bit (due to my slow, knee-pained pace) and learned a lot of his life-story (which was amazing in many ways...not unlike any of ours).  At one point, when I understood more of who he saw himself to be ("this is what I'm here for", he explained, "to help people"), I wondered about the timing of it all and how this circumstance could be much more than just a physical one (out of my sense of need, it felt like a spiritual one, too).  In describing the story to someone else, their response was that Cayden was a 'God-send'.

Though I have come to doubt such attributions more than I used to (a story for another day), I felt an accuracy about the attribution.  A guardian angel?  Maybe.

I have to admit I don't know much about the angelic realm — how often or how much it intervenes in ours.  But, I know that many people have believed in it across the spans of time.  And, I have never succeeded bifurcating the blend of both.  I have a latent degree of confidence that many unexplainable things are just that, unexplainable and that that does not eliminate the real possibility of multiple kinds of reality.

As time passes from the event, my rational mind imports more explanations.  Nonetheless, the circumstances point to something beyond where rationality seems to fall short, especially (and conspicuously) in times of need.

Do you believe in guardian angels?  When?  Why?

3 Observations & A Question

The more you do something, the more understand it.

We often pray for relief when, perhaps, what we should be praying more about is the contribution we’re making to our need of relief. 

It’s a shame if your perspective of the world is limited by your lack of experience of the world.

What keeps you on your toes?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

The Parade

-- Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American

We have no kings here, we have no queens here, we have no emperors, we have no dictators, we have no despots, and we have no serfs and no slaves and no subjects, and none of us is a subject to Donald Trump. None of us is a subject to Mike Johnson. We are all citizens, those of us who aspire and attain to public office are nothing but the servants of the people. And the minute that somebody in public office thinks that they're a king, they're a queen, they're an emperor, they're a dictator, that is time for the people to evict, eject, reject, impeach, try, convict, and start all over again, because the most important words of our Constitution are the three first words of the Constitution: ‘We the people.’

-- Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a constitutional scholar

Dad and Ron

From Michiana Chronicles: 

2025 has been a year of seismic shifts. The loss of two men I greatly loved, admired, and respected seemed to punctuate those changes for me. 

At the beginning of February, my childhood pastor, Ron Kennel, died. By the end of the month, my dad, Joe Krabill, was also gone. Ron was 81. Dad was 94, a little over two weeks away from celebrating his 95th birthday. When I was about two months old... continue here.

-- Tony Krabill

Another wonderful consideration on being a Dad: 

I'm taking piano lessons with my son

President of the United States: "Animals"?

Try as we may, we just can't avoid the escalating drama in our federal government.  This, in part, is due to what appears to be the intention — to create that drama.  Both by rhetoric and show of physical force, trying to ignore it is no longer an option.

Unbelievably, the President of the United States is making wholesale references to American citizens who protest as 'animals':

Trump calls L.A. protesters ‘animals,’ ‘foreign enemy’ in speech to recognize anniversary of the U.S. Army

The use of this term, in this context, is an overt attempt to pit those referred to against what would otherwise be the case. In other words, to describe human beings as animals is overtly dehumanizing.  Trump must think that doing so is effective – that it will garner something in the audience (as it has in the past by other leaders with a lust for power).

Further, and against that backdrop, it appears that anyone who protests (not just in LA) will be subject to "...very big force":

If there’s any protester wants to come out, they will be met with very big force…. For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force.

-- Donald Trump

We didn't seem to take him seriously the first time around; will we now (maybe, we finally are)?  ...more facts / less theatre (a parade?!?) here and here.

Democracy is under assault right before our eyes. This moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball…to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.

I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment.  Do not give in to him.

-- Gavin Newsom

The correct way to connect the authoritarian presence in LA and the Big Beautiful Bill is that the bill gives the government the resources to do this in dozens of cities at once. So if you don't like what's happening in LA, it's coming to your town if the bill passes.

-- David Dayen, The American Prospect

Reclaim Large Areas of Peace

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty; to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves.

-- Etty Hillesum

While enduring the horrors of a concentration camp in 1943, Dutch author Etty Hillesum wrote these profound words in her diary. As she ruminated on the vital importance of remaining present in each day and banishing the worries of tomorrow from her spirit, Hillesum realized that the only thing we have control over is our own minds. If we can find peace within, we can make a difference in the lives of those around us.

Narrative

If you want to understand someone, figure out the narrative they tell themselves about themself.

If you want to change your behavior, change your narrative.

If you want to change someone else’s behavior, offer them a more compelling narrative they can tell themselves.

-- Shane Parrish

Nature of Change

I’m wondering…about the real nature of change in the world.

It seems we tend to largely think about change through a technological lens.  Certainly, technology has introduced some significant changes over the course of human history.

But, when you think about the nature of real change throughout human history, it seems that technology is more like a participant in something more significant.  Real change seems to dwell in the hearts of human-beings collectively (and individually).

We Can Become

Be careful not to dehumanize those you disagree with. In our self-righteousness, we can become the very things we criticize others…and not even know it.

-- Eugene Cho

4 Observations (from Others)

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

-- Viktor Frankl

Comfort can be dangerous. Comfort provides a floor, but also a ceiling.

-- Trevor Noah

Action absorbs anxiety. Do Something.

-- Dan Harris 

The measure of a person is the congruence between their words and actions, their kindness, their confidence, and their decisiveness about who they are in the world and who they intend to remain. 

-- Peter Cundill

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

On The Lighter Side: Time To Retire?

 On the Lighter Side:

Awareness

How aware are we?

It doesn’t take much observation to recognize that there’s a lot going on in life and in the world that we know very little (or nothing) about.  And, this may or may not necessarily be an indictment. We are creatures of our surroundings and, by implication, that means that whatever we’re not surrounded by likely will not impose itself on us very deeply.

For example, this observation should terrify most people. It also seems quite clear that most Republicans right now would scoff at it. And, the most likely reason is that most of these same people do not feel any impact from it, because their surroundings are relatively untouched by it. But, for those are more than touched by it, there is a pervasive sense of fear about it that dominates their lives.

We are in Colorado today visiting one of our kids and her family, for their one-year old’s birthday. And, like we were at that point in our lives, they are immersed in the surroundings of young family life (as they should be), perhaps without a ton of awareness of the kinds of things referenced in the observation above (probably good for them right now anyway). A baby’s awareness is highly focused at the beginning of their lives and expands as they grow and mature.  Their surroundings impact it a lot.  It is quite fascinating to watch this process in our 5 grandkids, each at different ages, contexts, and temperaments, even as doing so causes us to reflect on that of our own kids.

It seems important to recognize that awareness development doesn’t (or shouldn’t) stop once we arrive at adulthood.  It needs to continue, in order to cope with the world in a healthy way.  When it doesn’t, we can easily see all around us the susceptibilities that leak into the mix (not to mention the consequences).

My wife and I are at a different points in our lives now than where we were when we were younger with our own young family.  Accordingly, we have different kinds of bandwidths, than what our kids do at the moment, which allows us to maintain awareness of things like the above.  Even with more bandwidth now for certain things, our awareness is still quite limited, mostly by what our means allow us to experience (and not).  Unlike some people, we don’t have certain fears because of our position and resources in life.  And, we don’t have certain burdens for the same reasons.

By general disposition (personality, etc.), people seem to be more aware of certain things and less on other things. I feel more aware certain things, because of my nature and what I work on in my life, than my wife. Likewise, She also has more awareness of certain things than I do.

But, at some point, our lack of awareness is an issue, both interpersonally and with regard to the systems that impact our lives.  For example, we all have a sense that America is changing.  The question is in what ways and for what reasons.  Just hoping for the good ole’ days, isn’t awareness (in many cases, it’s actually closer to naïveté).  There are forces of self-interest and power that are heavily in play right now (whether we are aware of them or not), which require other forces to countermand them or they will prevail to significant effect for everyone.  When that happens, we will become truly aware of what has changed and how it actually does impact the surroundings of our lives.

At whatever point we happen to be in the courses of our existence, awareness is a valuable means of understanding the nature of that existence — not only for ourselves, but also for those whose surroundings (experiences), at any given moment, are different than ours.  

To that end, we have both an opportunity and an obligation to become increasingly…aware.

Inside Out

Change — real change — come from the inside out.

-- Stephen Covey

Our Best Interest At Heart

Trust is a biological reaction to the belief that someone has our best interest at heart.

-- Simon Sinek

How I'm Doing

I’ve noticed…that I have to get out of bed in the morning to more accurately assess how I'm doing.

Private Evacuation Plan

For many today, God is seen—and used—as a partner in our private evacuation plan more than any love encountered that transforms mind or liberates heart. This is revealed in the little, if any, concern that many Christians show for justice, the earth, or the poor. The fruits of love are often not apparent in them, and not even of much interest to many of them. 

 -- Richard Rohr

3 Observations & A Question

Life seems to require persistence.

Just as there are often benefits, there are also limitations to nearly any system.

You can become so good (so focused, that is) at the way you see things that you no longer notice that other people are equally as good at the way that they see things.

When do you ask if this is good — when you do, do you also ask for whom?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Authoritarian Playbook

Instagram: drjessicaknurick

37 out 47 items from the Project 2025 playbook are actively underway....

More (if you need it):

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that 14 states can proceed with their lawsuit against billionaire Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency.” The administration had tried to dismiss the case, but Chutkan ruled the states had adequately supported their argument that “Musk and DOGE’s conduct is ‘unauthorized by any law.’”

The Constitution does not permit the Executive to commandeer the entire appointments power by unilaterally creating a federal agency…and insulating its principal officer from the Constitution as an ‘advisor’ in name only.

-- Tanya Chutkan, U.S. District Judge

Play With Me

Poem for the week' -- "Play With Me": 

“Play with me,” 

he asked, tears 

welling up in the 

deep recesses 

of his blue eyes, 

asking me to 

step back, 

to step in, 

to forget the 

world’s most 

delirious pains 

for just a moment 

to have a 

cup of tea that 

only exists in our 

imaginal world. 

Then we lay down 

and close our eyes, 

our breathing 

steadied alongside 

our hearts that 

have played 

and played 

and played, 

that have tried 

to remember that 

this magic 

cocoon will 

always be there 

when we need 

it most, when 

we are tired 

of constantly 

pushing against 

a world that has 

forgotten to play. 

 -- Kaitlin Curtice

The Earth and Goodness

The Earth and goodness are alike in many ways.

Perhaps, this is because they are kind of like personifications of each other.

Like many good things, the earth both persists and prevails over time. The rate and degree, however, can be significantly repressed, in the short-term. Usually, this happens by lack of understanding and wisdom, not to mention exploitation.

A world view that excludes reciprocity quickly leans into this lack of understanding (and its consequences). If we don’t recognize the Earth as a function of goodness, then we will tend to exploit tit through an extraction mentality. Capitalism is just one way this can so easily happen.

Harmony is a much broader concept than just two people getting along. It contains the totalities of our whole existence. We are all interconnected — and not just with each other, but with everything in our collectively shared environments.

Here are a couple of examples:

It was early January when Blake Shook realized the bees were in trouble. Shook, the CEO of a beekeeping outfit called Desert Creek, was coordinating California’s annual almond pollination, the largest such event in the world. The affair requires shipping nearly 2 million honeybee colonies from all across the country to California orchards. But this year, Shook’s contacts were coming up short. Their bees were all dead.  Continue here....

-- Joanna Thompson

Nonprofit restores prairie, bison grazing at Illinois' Nachusa Grasslands

Be Brave

You have to be brave with your life so that others can be brave with theirs.

-- Katherine Center

People Worthy of Your Commitment

Loyalty should never come at the expense of integrity.

Anyone who asks you to violate your values doesn’t deserve your allegiance. Respecting your boundaries is a foundation of trust.

The people worthy of commitment expect you to stand by your principles, not conform to theirs.

-- Adam Grant

Memorial Day

[O]n behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I'll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.

-- Donald Trump

Is this really the kind of thing our veterans fought and died for, for our highest leader to think of himself as a king who controls everything, including what people should pay for things they buy?

As our experience of the seemingly only growing weirdness of the above continues, perhaps on this Memorial Day we could consider the sanity and service of those in stories like this one about Beau Bryant (and the many like him).

Honor the Fallen, Live the Freedom They Gave Us -- Adam Kinzinger

Trust Your Experience

Trust your experiences, your God moments. They don’t work as intellectual arguments for God, but that’s exactly the point: Intellectual arguments are enough, and wanting  them to be so sooner or later leads to disappointment.

God speaks to us through our whole humanity, not just through part of it. God, it cannot be proven to anyone else, but that doesn’t make him second best. They are proof – of another kind.

-- Pete Enns

3 Observations & A Question

Where we're going is always impacted by where we've been.

A census is more interesting than we tend to think — it reflects what is deemed as worth counting (and what isn’t)...in other words, what we value.

The Bible is not nearly as much about history (particularly, in the modern understanding of the term), as it is about the story of history.

How long can we survive without considering what we mean by the common good?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

A Terrible Idea / The Erosion of Character In America

This would be a stunning restriction on the power of the federal courts...continue here.

-- Erwin Chemerinsky

The Hidden Provision in the Big Ugly Bill that makes Trump King.

See a summary of what all else in included in the Republican mega-bill...here, including a staggering 365% increase on an annual basis that would permit ICE to detain at least 100,000 people at a time.

Without character (in a leader or in the governed), a group of people are unable to be governed:

We better wake up to the end-game here....

Eternal Life

What does it really mean to have a eternal life?

I, likely, grew up with a somewhat fanciful vision of eternal life. That’s not to say that vision isn’t true (at least, any of it). But, like many things perceived as a child, there is surely more to the notion of what eternal life is. There appears to be something embedded in the human psyche that has a desire for something eternal. And, we tend to like the idea of that being related to life.

Perhaps, if the truth really were told, that is more of a function of our notions about death, than it is about life. Large swaths of American culture have a misunderstanding (if not aversion) of the role of death in life. This may, in fact, be where the real fantasy exists. The one that is infatuated with the notion that we could somehow live forever. Of course, when we imagine that idea, we are largely doing so in the frame of living in one, persistent, universal form — pretty much how we see ourselves at our best moments in our lives...forever.

Of course, there are virtually no domains of existence that conform to this particular fantasy. Everything is born, grows, and dies (including Jesus, by the way, if that's where you're coming from on the question of eternal things). In fact, the ability for that very process to be perpetual is the feature of both life and death...and there is something eternal about it. Life does, in fact, go on. What goes on about it simply changes. DNA structures, for example, demonstrate this truth. Parts of us, at the core of who we are, live on (almost always), just not in exactly the same form. We can even observe this, without too much sophistication, in both our offspring and in people groups at large. We can see this in animal kingdoms. We can see this in plant kingdoms. In living things of nearly every kind, in fact. Something about the universe itself lives on, endlessly perpetuating, in spite of death. Life and death are not mutually exclusive after all.

Against that back-drop, life is rather...eternal.  

Time (or, should I say, time-keeping), then, is mostly something like an accessory we came up with. We're rather fixated on it, again perhaps from our cultural affinity for desiring to live forever. But, eternity doesn't really work in that dimension. Time, in fact, from the viewpoint of nature is rather ambivalent about our point of view. We would likely do better to notice nature's perspectives on such things. It seems to prefer the measurements of things like day and night, celestial cycles, and seasons.

And then, from the Christian Bible,

...the one who believes has eternal life.

-- John 6:47

The most obvious question here would seem to be, 'believes' in what? Because that answer would likely infer what the meaning of eternal life really is. What one believes in is a function of what one understands. In the context here then, I would take it that what one believes is the key to eternal life. According to the plain language of the verse, it appears to be something (perhaps, somewhat surprisingly) that one already has. In other words, it is the current believing that is key to the thing that one already has — in this case, eternal life.

And, here might be the greater clue. We often think of eternal things in the frame of something ahead of us. But, note that the present tense is the focus of the concept of eternal life. The idea doesn’t seem to have as much to do with the future, as it does the present. If you believe, you have whatever is eternal about life. It is not primarily as much something about what you will have, as it is what you already have.

So, if what is eternal is something we have now, then what does that look like?

Most of what we think about the eternal is related to our understanding of life and, in that sense, it is likely assumed that that life has something good (after all, why would you want something eternal, if it was bad?). So, if life is a representation of something that is good and that goodness has a quality of the eternal about it, then it would seem to follow that whatever is eternal now is about whatever is good…now. In other words, whatever is good about life now is something eternal — something that we would like…to last forever.

Have you ever had moments where something felt so good — so rich, so satisfying, so peaceful, so inclusive and at harmony with all things — that you just wish it could...last forever? That is what we want both now and in the future.

Eternal life in original understandings seemed to have more to do with a state of being, than with how long we would live (exist in the future). When that state of being is the experience of what is truly good, it is...eternal.

When you have this understanding and you experience it, you have...eternal life.

Until They Become Clear

You live out the confusions until they become clear.

-- Anaïs Nin

Defeat Is Life's Way Of Nudging You

I believe that defeat is life’s way of nudging you and letting you know you’re off course. There’s always some sort of hidden opportunity or lesson in each episode—a chance to build your character.

-- Sara Blakely, on not letting a temporary defeat turn into a permanent loss

Often difficult to see clearly in the moment, but also often strikingly apparent in retrospect.

Half of Communication

Ever noticed…that only half of communication is actually about the subject?

Be The Reason

Be the reason someone believes in goodness.

— from a local church sign

One of the better and more succinct admonitions that can be made…to each of us (not to mention, the church).

3 Observations & A Question

Kindness is not as much about being nice as it is about anticipating the needs of others.

We all have desire to grow, get stronger, and care for others — fostering that desire is another thing.

The needs most in need of your attention and care are those of the ones right around you.

What do you feel proactive about in your life?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

We Do To Ourselves

What we do to the environment, ultimately we do to ourselves.

We are a part of nature, not apart from nature.

-- Elizabeth Wathuti

Most Modern Authoritarian Leaders Are Elected

Authoritarianism doesn’t start with laws. It starts when people stop paying attention. Continue here….

-- Sharon McMahon

On May 8, political scientists Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Daniel Ziblatt published an op-ed in the New York Times reminding readers that most modern authoritarian leaders are elected. They maintain their power by using the power of the government—arrests, tax audits, defamation suits, politically targeted investigations, and so on—to punish and silence their opponents. They either buy or bully the media and civil society until opposing voices cave to their power. Continue here.... 

-- Heather Cox Richardson

Authoritarianism is not merely a matter of state control, it is something that eats away at who you are. It makes you afraid, and fear can make you cruel. It compels you to conform and to comply and accept things that you would never accept, to do things you never thought you would do.

Authoritarian regimes...can take everything from you in material terms—your house, your job, your ability to speak and move freely. They cannot take away who you truly are. They can never truly know you, and that is your power. But to protect and wield this power, you need to know yourself—right now, before their methods permeate, before you accept the obscene and unthinkable as normal.   

We are heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned. Protect the vulnerable and encourage the afraid. If you are brave, stand up for others. If you cannot be brave—and it is often hard to be brave—be kind. But most of all, never lose sight of who you are and what you value.

-- Sarah Kendzior

Honoring Of Others

Love… Is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy.

-- Anne Truitt

LT: Getting Things Done

At the core, leadership is about getting a group of people to get things done — then, there is the question about what good leadership is…how things get done.

Purpose

I’m wondering…about purpose.  

As we age, we may become more observant about the 'why' of things.  Why do we do what we do?  Are we just going through some elaborate scheme of cultural activity?  To what end?

What is the purpose of our existence?

Permeate Our Being

Evangelical Christianity in the United States is often characterized by a deep desire to have “Christianity” pervade our culture but not permeate our being.

-- Rich Villodas

3 Observations & A Question

Complexity is often self-serving. 

We are impoverished when we lack exertion in our lives.

Facts will make a comeback — intimation and histrionics only last so long (people catch on…eventually). 

Why do you think we are advised by spiritual teachers  over and over, and over again, not to BE afraid?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Our Dogwood Has Spoken

A Beer Can

I saw a discarded beer can on the side of the road by a curb next to our local elementary school.

Fascinating? ...probably not.

Such a sighting is likely only one of millions across the span of our country. What was a little more interesting to me was my urge to pick it up and throw it away. My only real hesitation was there were no trash cans in sight. So, I would have to carry it, as I continued on my walk, for some distance.

I didn’t do it.

I realized, though, that I wanted to. But, why? What was prompting me?

As I continued my walk, I noticed a place where an old building had been, that had recently been taken down. It wasn’t in some far off abandoned place, but rather in the middle of a college campus. What really caught my eye was the fact that a rather large collection of glass clippings had been dumped where the building had been. It was pretty clear that the dumping was intentional. This got me thinking about the likelihood that someone was trying to use the decaying benefits to enhance the ground-soil in the area.

Somebody else was prompted by something they saw. And, they too wanted to do something about it.

I’m guessing part of the reason why I wanted to pick up the beer can was because of the unsightly nature of it and what that represented in the context of an elementary school in what is otherwise a beautiful little community. Perhaps, similar thoughts were going in the mind of the person who wanted to enhance the soil with grass clippings.

What is a community anyway? I’m sure there would be lots of different considerations in answering that question. At very least, it feels like something that a group of people desire to protect. That might be because it’s something that a group of people had previously desired to build. And when the results of that collective effort becomes something beautiful, it seems to naturally follow that it would be something a community would want to protect. It took effort. It was worth it. And the group doesn’t want to lose it.

It is Spring right now where I live and many people and organizations are cleaning and sprucing things up. Fresh mulch blankets the ground around freshly popped spring flowers. The early morning is filled with the sound of birds welcoming each other to the day. The air is cool and crisp and the eastern sky is draped in colorful hues announcing what looks to be a sunny, 70° day. Life feels alive. And, I was walking through the middle of it, taking it all in, allowing it to poke at the wonders of what it all means and where and how I fit in it.

I suspect that is the point. That I fit into something. Something larger than myself. Something beautiful. Something worth making a contribution to. Something worth preserving.

This Saturday morning, the annual farmers market and our little community will draw hundreds of people to fresh coffee, cinnamon rolls, pretzels, artwork, and fresh spring plants that many people will buy, plant, and do the best they can to remember to nurture. Some plants won’t grow because they aren't planted in a suitable spot. Some plants will be neglected, after their Spring-beauty wears off. But, some plants will also make it and will grow back the following year all by themselves; adding their contribution to the qualities of things like soil or food or visual beauty for passers-by to enjoy.

I’m still thinking about whether I should go back and get that beer can. I’m going to a T-ball game this evening. So, I’m guessing I’ll stop on my way to work and pick it up to dispose of it somewhere along the way. Nobody will likely notice. But, in its absence, just one person might say something like, "...this is a beautiful little community. I like it here".

As I finished up my walk, I passed the construction of a couple of new homes. Because of the focus on the building side of things, the grass and weeds were Spring-prolific all over the torn-up yards. Across the street, was a home that had been completed last summer. The grass in that yard was perfectly manicured and beautiful (no discarded beer cans in sight).

I’m not the only one, apparently, that wants to be a part of this community.