Ever noticed...that many people are just trying to get something they want (usually, for the perceived benefits that would come with it) and that, then, they spend the rest of their time trying not to lose it.
What they don’t realize is what a small and insular way to live this is.
The way of faith is not a way of certitude.
Certitude is a way of knowledge.
We are all called to a way of faith. At each step God asks us to trust, to say yes, to put our lives in God’s hands.
-- Richard Rohr
It seems like pain is required to keep our attention.
Coerced behavior is almost always short-lived — you may get the behavior, but not the heart behind it.
Put yourself in the best position you can — and recognize that you don't hold all the cards (or, even many of them).
Is there anything more significant than a present and patient father?
Prior 3 Observations & A Question…
Yeah right…isn't controversy his whole gig?
This kind of white-washing and lying has to stop here, too:
What has been happening here since 2010 is something that Goebbels or the North Korean leadership would admire. Not a single true word being spoken. This cannot continue.
-- Péter Magyar, newly elected Prime Minister of Hungary
Another lingering reflection, on a recent I'm Wondering...:
I'm wondering...about how we orient ourselves to face the future.
For one thing, how am I thinking about the future relative to how I thought about it in my 20s seems quite different. Obviously, the time-table has changed and that seems to affect things. When I was younger, my sense of 'my whole life in front of me' would often take the pressure off something. As I age, I would describe that pressure as shifting. I'm increasingly focused on a shorter term (like a window is closing — which relieves things in some ways, but adds things in other ways).
Another feature of how we orient to the future seems to be related to fear. I've noticed that fear in older people seems to increasingly dominate their perspective about the future. I've said I won't let that happen to me. But, I suspect I am a bit naive (if not arrogant) about that assertion (even if I don't watch FOX News).
And, then, there's the nexus of my own personal, little world and that of the larger collective that continues to evolve over time. How does what my grandparents remember about 'when they grew up' assimilate with what we're experiencing now in terms of things like social and environmental issues, politics, technology, and our sense of meaning in life? How does what my grandparents faced as children and what my grandchildren will face affect how I view things today?
Like it or not, a lot of the time, how I view things today is psychologically impacted by my sense of the future. Are we progressing or are we retreating? Gaining ground or losing it? Is the future bright with possibility and betterment or beset by the inevitability of dystopia?
So, in all of this, what do I turn to for a sense of my bearings? What gives me healthy perspective about the future? How does my perspective of the future inform what I focus on today (or, is it the other way around)?
Is the future just an abyss waiting for all of us to just fall into? Or, does it largely resemble the present evolution of the past (even as it is changing)? Is what I am really grasping at whether or not anything (or anyone) has control of the future…of where things are headed?
As much as things change, they also stay (largely) the same. Or, at least, the basics do. The sun rises every day. Gravity is always there. Air to breath is a given. Most days, we get up and do our thing — eat (by the way, a helpful way to do that...here), work, clean, etc. Sure we have nicer clothes, indoor plumbing and climate controlled temperature, the ability to communicate and entertain ourselves at unprecedented levels, to fly nearly anywhere in the world now (whereas before, many people never traveled out of their own community), not to mention outer-space. But how much has that capability altered the essential nature of my existence — of what matters most in any given moment?
In other words, what will be is more like what it has always been. If that is true, then most of my future is related to today — to what I do today. If nothing else, the past demonstrates that. And, that is a significant part of how I can face the future...today.
...not to mention the wisdom and faith I benefit from every day from those who have gone before me (both recently and long ago).
Besides the profound implications, in addition to the overall backlash (not to mention his pathetic back-pedaling or, perhaps even worse, the audacity of his VP's subsequent attempt to school the Pope), how do you reconcile this with:
You really can't and it may be catching up with him:
More...here.
This reminds me of something I've mentioned before:
Expose the good, in addition to the bad — using one to cancel the other isn’t in our best interest.
Human interaction is important to our well-being — notice what happens without it.
Not unlike your overall well-being, you have to work at your health — it helps to habitualize it.
What is it that I most want to solve for in my life? — If I don’t know, am I just on auto-pilot (or in a trance)?
Prior 3 Observations & A Question…
'Poem for the week' -- "Persuasion":
Man’s life is like a Sparrow, mighty King!
That—while at banquet with your Chiefs you sit
Housed near a blazing fire—is seen to flit
Safe from the wintry tempest. Fluttering,
Here did it enter; there, on hasty wing,
Flies out, and passes on from cold to cold;
But whence it came we know not, nor behold
Whither it goes. Even such, that transient Thing,
The human Soul; not utterly unknown
While in the Body lodged, her warm abode;
But from what world She came, what woe or weal
On her departure waits, no tongue hath shown;
This mystery if the Stranger can reveal,
His be a welcome cordially bestowed!
-- William Wordsworth
If this doesn't make you mad, then what would?
Chevron's CEO made $104 million while America bombed Iran
This?
Or, this?
This administration has been fleecing the system (you and me) in so many ways from the get-go, largely under the banner of conservatism (if not Christianity). It's hardly conservative (or Christian), especially on the financial front — look up the numbers. Any 'greatness' coming from it is certainly not for you and me.
Are we really going to let these guys take us all down?
The Speech That History Will Remember as the Breakpoint in the Trump-Epstein-Russia Scandal
Put blinders on to those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head.
-- Meryl Streep
I’ve noticed…adjustments I need to be willing to make in my life.
I know I'm getting older. My compensation for that has been my failing assumption that I can still keep everything going IF I adapt — just find ways to do things differently.
But, there is more evidence that this isn't working. My body is telling me this, in a variety of ways. I suspect I'm not listening enough because, perhaps, I'm not accepting the reality of my increasing limitations.
Maybe what I need to adjust is more than I've thought....
No foolin'.
But, in some ways today, I wish I was.
In a week or so, I will be holding another grand-baby. So, I was sprucing up a bit at the barber today (for the inevitable pics). We got talking about how little humor there is these days, not to mention the fun we used to have playing April Fools jokes on people. "Everyone is so uptight right now...", he said.
Unfortunately, that seems a bit too true.
But, I'm not, right? Well, I did recently acquire (is that the way to say it?) shingles....
There is SO much not to laugh about right now. So much hanging in the balance. So much to not ignore. So many people suffering at the hands of systemic power (not to mention our own).
It feels like there's just not much mental or emotional space left for a little light-heartedness. We're worn out.
But, when we get to the point we are no longer able to laugh at anything, perhaps we should pause and reconsider a few things.
In these kinds of moments, we tend to become even more binary. It gets harder to hold more than one thing at a time — it's either all bad or all good. The reality is, though, that it's not. It's really both. It always has been both. We have to continue to learn how to be honest and hold...both.
Life can be terrible. And, it can be wonderful. And, if truth be told, often at nearly the same time. This is hard for us to reconcile, especially in our minds. And, that may provide the clue we need.
What we know and what we experience are not always in the same medium. But, both sources are kinds of intelligence and legitimate. Perhaps, our highly rational habits (even though they're really not as rational as we think) are often misleading, especially in terms of all that truly informs the quality of our existence. Too often, we are guilty of using one to cancel the other. But, that is mostly due to our general discomfort with duality. Something about one-or-the-other thinking is highly appealing, but it also truncates something in us. We have to hold bad and good simultaneously.
A joke, somehow, might be a part of doing that.
So, maybe we should April Fool someone today...and let them April Fool us.
We may need that more than we...think.
