Surroundings

​We have a rather remarkable capacity to work on our surroundings, to make them more precise...and more comfortable. It can be a problem, however, when we are no longer able to see or interact with much of anything outside our surroundings and become so insulated that we are of no real use to anyone but ourselves...and our surroundings.

I Used To Think: Change Us

​I used to think...of difficult and painful things as things to just get away from. Now I know that they are designed to change us for the better...not to simply return us to the way we were.

More

Faster is not
always better,
Slower can be
deeper.
Just like
More is often
less
and Less
is actually more,
true satisfaction
does not end
with just wanting
more.
I receive more Less
when I give more
deeply,
patiently.

Costs Everything

Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people -- the one who is called, and the one who loves that one.

-- Oswald Chambers


For the joy set before him he endured the cross...

-- Hebrews 12:2

Easter: Joy & Love

Easter must be the most joyful of all joys, this side of Heaven.  Our hopes have not been dashed, they have been exceeded!

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die..."

-- John 11:25

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

-- Romans 8:31-39

Sacrifice & Liturgy

​

Photo by Rebecca Boyd

We are often caught wondering if sacrifice is worth it.  It was worth it to God...and it is for me, even if I know this only as feebly as I do.

Sacrifice is always about something more.

...this reading seems helpful to me today, especially these observations regarding violence and the role of liturgy in calling us to something different than what our culture so often offers:

This anti-liturgy is met in the true liturgy of the Eucharist, where the body of the victim makes possible the creation of a new body which lives by resurrection hope and loves by a power not of its own making.

As Lent moves toward its conclusion and its purpose, Christians journey toward resurrection where we will enact the liturgy of hope not fear, of embrace not exclusion. This liturgy is "political" in the truest sense of the word: the gathered community, the polis, enacting a counter-story to the world's politics.

If our deepest Easter metaphors have mostly to do with butterflies, we will miss this. The Easter proclamation, as Fleming Rutledge has noted, "is not a cheerful message about longer hours of sunshine. It is a world-overturning announcement about the reorientation of our entire existence."

-- Debra Dean Murphy

This is why sacrifice was worth it then and remains worth it now...because sacrifice is more about what is gained, than what is lost.

Violence

It seems appropriate to consider violence on Good Friday:

Violence is what happens when we don't know what else to do with our suffering.

This is a more profound statement than it at first appears....

But suffering, held in a supple heart, can break the heart open to compassion instead of breaking it down into cruelty. When we live with broken-open hearts, our suffering leads us to love life more, not less. Then we can become light-bearers and life-givers in a world of too much darkness and death. 

-- Parker Palmer

The miracle of Good Friday is that God was doing something about everything, even when we were still clueless...even hating.

Holy Week & Fascism

The context parallels of Holy Week and the ideals of fascism, then and now, are strikingly disturbing.  We think we need something, other than what we need, so we look in the wrong direction, to the wrong thing.  Lord, save us...save me from my own complicity.

The ultimate conversation-stopper is not the word “fascism” but fascism itself, which aims at shutting down the dialogue of differences that characterizes democracy at its creative best.

That base is aroused when would-be leaders appeal to those fearful, angry, and resentful parts in us — in all of us — that yearn for an authoritarian “fix” for our problems and a “strong man” to administer it. Lest we forget the hard-won lessons of bloody history, here are three traits of a fascist leader in the making...continue.

-- Parker Palmer

Maundy Thursday:

Here is the source of every sacrament,
The all-transforming presence of the Lord,
Replenishing our every element
Remaking us in his creative Word.
For here the earth herself gives bread and wine,
The air delights to bear his Spirit’s speech,
The fire dances where the candles shine,
The waters cleanse us with His gentle touch.
And here He shows the full extent of love
To us whose love is always incomplete,
In vain we search the heavens high above,
The God of love is kneeling at our feet.
Though we betray Him, though it is the night.
He meets us here and loves us into light.

-- Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons

I Have Noticed: More Critical

​I have noticed...that I tend to become more easily critical, when I'm less directly involved in the lives of others.

...more Graces of Lent.

Worse Than You Think

Because we live in a society that regularly peddles the notion that things are 'not that bad', it's worse than you think.

Be Human In An Inhuman Age

You are not big enough to accuse the whole age effectively, but let us say you are in dissent. You are in no position to issue commands, but you can speak words of hope. Shall this be the substance of your message? Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.

--Thomas Merton

Palm Sunday

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "Palm Sunday":

Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,
The seething holy city of my heart,
The saviour comes. But will I welcome him?
Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;
They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,
And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find
The challenge, the reversal he is bringing
Changes their tune. I know what lies behind
The surface flourish that so quickly fades;
Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,
The hardness of the heart, its barricades,
And at the core, the dreadful emptiness
Of a perverted temple. Jesus come
Break my resistance and make me your home.

-- Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons

...thanks, Jim, for passing this 'sonnet' along.

Miss Watson

Renewal, Wisdom, Wonder, and Giving

I wish I could go back and tell myself that not only is there no trade-off between living a well-rounded life and high performance, performance is actually improved when our lives include time for renewal, wisdom, wonder and giving. That would have saved me a lot of unnecessary stress, burnout and exhaustion.

-- Arianna Huffington

Decide

​You do have to decide how you want to be, as a person. And, recognize that our ability to do this is largely contingent on what we choose to believe.

I Used To Think: Farther

I used to think...that I could only go so far. Now I know that with desire, commitment and training, I can go much farther.

Unpleasantness

​We can carry the unpleasantness of each other as part of the way we help preserve the beauty of each other. After all, we are grateful when others do this for us.

Passage

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "Passage":

A dark sail,
Like a wild-goose wing,
Where the sunset was.
The moon soon will silver its sinewy flight
Thro the night watches,
And the far flight
Of those immortal migrants,
The ever-returning stars.

-- Cale Young Rice

...did we ever see the moon and stars last week!

Ask

You just have to be willing to ask.

God is always waiting for us, even inviting us...to ask.

Arizona Hiking, 2016 - Grand Canyon & Sedona

Grand Canyon (pics)...to the bottom and back up. Unparalleled beauty!

Sedona (pics)...Devil's Bridge.

...some 35+ miles altogether.  A delightful time in nature and with family.

Here are some of our reflections:

• I LOVE each of you very much and can't imagine these adventures and doing life without you. Grateful for all of the time God has given us as a family and that we (Ryan, Conner, Kenzie) have parents that sacrifice to make these amazing memories and trips happen.
• As I was hiking down, in between, and up I kept thanking God that, we are all able physically to do that kind of activity. When I got back I told my friends that I also was so grateful that this was the kind of trip my family wanted to take. #cactioverpalmtrees 
• I experience God in a really real way when I'm out in nature and traveling with you all. It breathes life into me. Even though it was an exhausting trip, it refreshed me. So thanks mum and dud for making this happen and for putting much thought into it. I also think about the idea of waiting. We've wanted to do this for three years and it made the time that much more sweet. 
• I'm grateful for Conner hiking up with me. I don't think I would've wanted to do that alone and I was grateful for the time just to be with him during that rough 5 hours too. 
• I loved being together....
• I was very grateful to see Dad standing at the top and to see him walk down and meet us. Reminded me of all the times he (and you too mom) have come alongside me during my life, met me where I am at, and walked with me.
• I was reminded that sometimes we are asked to just take one step at a time, even if we don't know what is ahead or how long  God is going to take to get us where we are going.  Each step is a courageous step towards something even if we don't know what that "thing" is. 
• I loved being together.  You are my favorite people.
• The idea that we all have our own pace/journey to walk.  Don't require/compare others to be on the same pace.
• Keep walking (just keeping on, moving long enough will get you a long way)
• We can do more than we think we can (walk farther / deeper)
• It is good to acknowledge fear (falling); it keep us focused

Keep Walking

If you want to get there, you have to keep walking.

...true in a number of respects -- physically and metaphorically.

Beauty Demands

Beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past — whether he admits it or not — can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.

-- Hans Urs von Balthasar

...a piercing description of the intimate relationship prayer and love have with beauty, a favorite of mine.

I Have Noticed: Do More

​I have noticed...that I can always do more.

...and, that it is good for me to ask these questions:

• Should I?
• Why?
• Whom am I serving?

Different Speeds

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds.

-- William James

The Answer

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "The Answer":

You have spoken the answer.
A child searches far sometimes
Into the red dust
                          On a dark rose leaf
And so you have gone far
                         For the answer is:
                                                 Silence.

   In the republic
Of the winking stars
                          and spent cataclysms
Sure we are it is off there the answer is hidden and folded over,
Sleeping in the sun, careless whether it is Sunday or any other day
       of the week,

Knowing silence will bring all one way or another.

Have we not seen
Purple of the pansy
                   out of the mulch
                   and mold
                   crawl
                   into a dusk
                   of velvet?
                   blur of yellow?
Almost we thought from nowhere but it was the silence,
                   the future,
                   working.

-- Carl Sandburg

Intention

​God has great intention to surprise us!

Steals Inward

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Never Exposed

Jim Sphorer, computer scientist at IBM's university partnerships, said that he likes to hire people from start-ups rather than right out of universities because they have experienced failure and learned from it.

Students rarely see good models of failure in their daily lives to emulate because parents and teachers often hide their mistakes. Students are never exposed, for instance, to the feedback process that is the hallmark of most jobs today.  Continue here....

-- Jeff Selingo

Too Close

Standing right next to a big building one night, I looked at the windows next to me to see if the lights were on. I couldn't tell, however, how many other windows had lights shining from them. They were at an angle from which I couldn't see; I was too close to the building.

From the middle of the park across the street, I could see all the windows, and the light coming from each of them. Distance helped me see what was really going on, when I was otherwise too close to tell.

I Used To Think: What I Do

I used to think...that what I do is important. Now I know this is perhaps not half as important as what I do after I've done it.

When I mess up, it's what I do next that probably makes the most difference.  When I do something really good, it's what I do next that is probably most significant.

In other words, it may be how I think about what I've done that most prepares me for what is next.  Am I proud?  A I humble? Am I wallowing in self-pity?  Do I get up again?  Do I understand why I do these things?

First Of All

I must see another person, first of all, as human...and all that being human really means.

Hazardous Attempt

For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding; it is the deepest part of autobiography.

-- Robert Penn Warren

​Poems can be a unique way of telling a story. At other times, they have a unique way of only inferring something, implying something or creating an impression of something. Something that more straightforward narrative or prose doesn't quite capture -- a part of something deep within us, profoundly personal...even risky, in the attempt to discover or in the exposure that may result.

February 29:
An extra day—

Like the painting’s fifth cow,
who looks out directly,
straight toward you,
from inside her black and white spots.

An extra day—

Accidental, surely:
the made calendar stumbling over the real
as a drunk trips over a threshold
too low to see.

An extra day—

With a second cup of black coffee.
A friendly but businesslike phone call.
A mailed-back package.
Some extra work, but not too much—
just one day’s worth, exactly.

An extra day—

Not unlike the space
between a door and its frame
when one room is lit and another is not,
and one changes into the other
as a woman exchanges a scarf.

An extra day—

Extraordinarily like any other.
And still
there is some generosity to it,
like a letter re-readable after its writer has died.

-- Jane Hirshfield

“Behind this poem, written February 29, 2012, was the death of a friend. I had, months before, brought her the present of a traditional bamboo-slat painted reproduction of a famous Chinese painting. She had commented, with her customary inhabitance of all things from the inside, how hard it is to paint a cow so well from the front. Her death was unexpected, and a letter from her I had not wanted to put away was still out on my kitchen table. My year’s extra day circled around it.”

Graces of Lent

There are graces all around us, many more than we know; even more available to us...if we would reflect, repent, refresh, and receive.  This week, I was struck by a Lenten reading from Ann Voskamp:

...and this version of Amazing Grace by The Blind Boys of Alabama.

Extremism

Extremism is rarely the thing we need.

Absolutes let us off the hook, because they demand not to be negotiated. But absolutes usually bump into special cases that are truly hard to ignore.  

The good middles, the difficult compromises that matter, that’s where we can build things that have long lasting impact.  

We need a compass and a place to go. But the road to that place is rarely straight and never absolute.

-- Seth Godin


More specifically, here is a helpful perspective (imho) on the Syrian Refugee Crisis, particularly as it relates to fear and ignorance.  "...we allow our fears to act as confirmation for themselves"...continue below:

Controlled by Fear, Controlled by Ignorance: America Keeps Getting the Syrian Refugee Crisis Wrong

Unexpected Tears

Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if you soul is to be saved, you should go next.

-- Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

Unexpected

Organic:  The efficacy of an unexpected complement is surprising.

I Have Noticed: Less Patient

I have noticed...​that the less patient I am with myself, the less patient I am with others. Patience with others often occurs more easily when I recognize how I am like them.

Both are clues.

I Would Have Writ

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "The Poem I Would Have Writ":

My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.

-- Henry David Thoreau

The first words are the hardest. Sound
surrounds you in the womb, grows louder
when you’re born. You listen. You know
the day will come when you must speak
words, too — that’s how we make our way
through this trackless landscape called
the world. But how? And what to say?
And what does saying do?

Later, words come easily. You learn
to speak the language of what you
want and need, to help you find a
pathway into and through your life,
to make it clear what you believe,
reach out to friends, find work to do,
heal your wounds, ease your fears,
get chance on chance to give love
and receive. Sometimes words leap
out of you in ways you soon regret —
or in ways so magical you silently
rehearse them, hoping never to forget
how these words came out of the blue,
begging to have life breathed into
them by you. You live a life of words.

Then you learn that first words aren’t
the hardest. The hardest are the last.

There’s so much you want to say,
but time keeps taking time and all your
words away. How to say — amid the
flood of grief and gratitude you feel —
“Thank you!”, or “How beautiful, how
grand!”, or “I’m so glad I survived…”,
or “I was changed forever the day
we two joined hands and lives.”

As you reach for your last words,
you realize, this is it — this ebbing tide
of language called your life, words
trailing into silence, this unfinished poem
you would have writ — had it not been
for the heartache and the gift of all
the years that you've been living it.

-- Parker Palmer

30

I am really amazed at this length of time.  As of today, Tami and I have been married now for 30 years.  This seems a bit like an odd combination of unreal, surreal, and...very real.

• I feel aware of some of the dangers we've endured over this period of time...times where we felt unsure of how we would make it through.
• I feel aware that God has been more than kind to each of us, and to us together, throughout these years together.  
• I feel aware of a deep gratitude; that we are still together, that we love each other the way we do, and for the community that God has used to shape our love.  
• And, I feel aware of this desire in me:  that I would be increasingly willing to love Tami with the love that God has loved me.

Ephesians 3 talks about this love.  The ESV describes a 'strength to comprehend'...this love.  The NIV describes it as a 'power to grasp'...this love.  I need this kind of strength and power to love...another 30 years.

Returning

As part of Lent this year, I am reading these verses out loud each day...

If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts,
  then rid yourselves of the foreign gods...
    and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve Him only,
and He will deliver you out...

-- 1 Samuel 7:3

...if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

-- 2 Chronicles 7:14

...anticipating how meaning from these apply to me these days.

Getting Old

Unrelated (I think), I am finding a beautiful reprieve on Saturday mornings from the typical, daily requirements of these early-50s days of my life.  The option to choose what to do and when to do it is...liberating, freeing, relieving of something that I now more normally live under.  I get just as much done, but the option to choose when and how is like fresh air or what you feel like after a good night's sleep.  I can even stop to jot down a thought I might have because of the spontaneity of these moments.

I think what I am grateful for is the space of these mornings...and for the kind of fast that it is from the others.  Of course, I may just be getting old.

Small Places

Many of us find ourselves in small places. And it is not because we can't get to the big places. It is because in small places people often are more open to listening, to hearing things, to being needy and because God has put us in small places; he wants us here. In the big places, few people are interested in what others have to say. They're primarily interested in advancing themselves, in getting bigger, for their own sake. They're not needy or don't recognize that they are. And, they're not listening.

We need to get more comfortable with small, the inconspicuous.

Ins and Outs

Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.

-- C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

I Used To Think: Not Enough

I used to think...that there was always something about me that wasn't enough. Now I know that this is completely true and that this misses the point.  I am never enough; God is always enough.

More Courage

It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield.

-- W. B. Yeats

Silence

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "Silence":

Within each of us there is a silence
—a silence as vast as a universe.
We are afraid of it…and we long for it.

When we experience that silence, we remember
who we are: creatures of the stars, created
from the cooling of this planet, created
from dust and gas, created
from the elements, created
from time and space…created
from silence.

In our present culture,
silence is something like an endangered species…
an endangered fundamental.

The experience of silence is now so rare
that we must cultivate it and treasure it.
This is especially true for shared silence.

Sharing silence is, in fact, a political act.
When we can stand aside from the usual and
perceive the fundamental, change begins to happen.
Our lives align with deeper values
and the lives of others are touched and influenced.

Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses,
to our selves. It locates us. Without that return
we can go so far away from our true natures
that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves.

We live blindly and act thoughtlessly.
We endanger the delicate balance which sustains
our lives, our communities, and our planet.

Each of us can make a difference.
Politicians and visionaries will not return us
to the sacredness of life.

That will be done by ordinary men and women
who together or alone can say,
"Remember to breathe, remember to feel,
remember to care,
let us do this for our children and ourselves
and our children's children.
Let us practice for life's sake."

-- Gunilla Norris

Tami and I commented again yesterday on the beautiful silence of snow.

Hardness of God

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him of whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

-- C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

Who’s Really Addicting You to Technology?

“Nearly everyone I know is addicted in some measure to the Internet,” wrote Tony Schwartz in a recent essay in The New York Times. It’s a common complaint these days. A steady stream of similar headlines accuse the Net and its offspring apps, social media sites and online games of addicting us to distraction.

There’s little doubt that nearly everyone who comes in contact with the Net has difficulty disconnecting. Just look around. People everywhere are glued to their devices. Many of us, like Schwartz, struggle to stay focused on tasks that require more concentration than it takes to post a status update. As one person ironically put it in the comments section of Schwartz’s online article, “As I was reading this very excellent article, I stopped at least half a dozen times to check my email.”

There’s something different about this technology: it is both pervasive and persuasive. But who’s at fault for its overuse? To find solutions, it’s important to understand what we’re dealing with. There are four parties conspiring to keep you connected and they may not be whom you’d expect.  Continue here....

-- Nir Eyal

From the article referenced above, I think this observation by Eyal is true:

...we should come to terms with the fact that it’s more than the technology itself that’s responsible for our habits.

Recognition and Resistance

[There’s] hardly a sin I can think of that isn’t somehow born of misperceived need, of haste and its accompanying inattentiveness, of some feverish variation once more of Hurry up and matter! Being true—ringing true—will have to involve a slow work of recognition and resistance to that mad and nervy, deluding spirit. To begin to be true is to try to choose—or risk choosing—presence over progress, really showing up, and taking the time to wonder what we’re really up to, what we’re doing and why.

-- David Dark, Life's Too Short To Pretend You're Not Religious

I am working on something different for Lent this year.

Sometimes I feel like I am a skimmer, a purveyor of variety and breadth,  Affection for variety and breadth may be one of my beauties or strengths.  But, with every strength, an inherent weakness is also often embedded therein.  At times, I feel shallow; without depth...because of all the range.  This may not necessarily be bad or good, but I do sense a desire to go more deeply into something; to experience the beauty and strength of...focus and depth.  I am watching for signals of what this might mean for me, in the next few weeks.  Where, for example, this may lead me.  In some way, whatever this is, it feels like David Dark is describing some of it for me.

Legitimate Suffering

Carl Jung said that so much unnecessary suffering comes into the world because people will not accept the “legitimate suffering” that comes from being human.  In fact, neurotic behavior is usually the result of refusing that legitimate suffering!  Ironically, this refusal of the necessary pain of being human brings to the person ten times more suffering in the long run.

-- Richard Rohr

I Have Noticed: Diminished

I have noticed...that, by the evening hours, both my willpower and my ability to physically see clearly are diminished.

I wonder if  (how) the emotional, the physical, and the spiritual are interrelated.  Ashes.

Communication -- The lllusion

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

-- George Bernard Shaw

The Gates of Hope

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "The Gates of Hope":

Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope—
Not the prudent gates of Optimism,
Which are somewhat narrower.
Not the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense;
Nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness,
Which creak on shrill and angry hinges
(People cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through)
Nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of
“Everything is gonna’ be all right.”
But a different, sometimes lonely place,
The place of truth-telling,
About your own soul first of all and its condition.
The place of resistance and defiance,
The piece of ground from which you see the world
Both as it is and as it could be
As it will be;
The place from which you glimpse not only struggle,
But the joy of the struggle.
And we stand there, beckoning and calling,
Telling people what we are seeing
Asking people what they see.

-- Victoria Safford

Voyage Into It

Christianity is not an explanation of mystery, but rather a voyage into it.

-- Alan Jones

The Lie

Discovered Blessing

Many Friday mornings now, I look forward to 3 things:

- a good coffee
- a cranberry scone
- a new edition of Michiana Chronicles

I'm not sure how each of the above influences the other, but I'm suspecting they do.  On Fridays, I have noticed that I am almost instinctively moving a bit more quickly through my morning routines to be ready by 7:45a...with my undetected motivation, the hearing of the latest edition of MC.

I wonder about how good writing works and how it is enhanced by the physical speaking of it.  It seems creative use of words to describe something both earthy and transcendent at the same time is powerful in its reach into us.  It helps me imagine things familiar to me, but not yet identified.  It blesses me with the real, and the possible.  I love the sense of internal attention it creates in me.  It allows me to wonder how I can be that for someone else that day.  I am enriched.  ...a discovered blessing.

Neuroplasticity

The idea of neuroplasticity is simply that the brain changes in response to experience. It changes in response to our actions. It changes in our response to our relationships. It changes in response to specific training. These activities will shape the brain, and we can take advantage of neuroplasticity and actually play a more intentional role in shaping our own brains in ways that may be health promoting, and ways that can cultivate well being.

-- Daniel Goleman

I Used To Think: Very Little

I used to think...that people's behaviors towards or reactions to me were because of something wrong in me. Now I know that most of the time, those have very little even to do with me.

Possibilities

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.

-- Shunryu Suzuki

This concept needs to soak a bit....

The more we think or do something, the more familiar we become with it,  The more familiar we become with something, the more we tend to start holding on to our notions of it -- what we think we are are seeing or have already seen.  I see this in the smallest areas of our lives up through what we accept at even a societal level.  More problematic, perhaps, is that when we're doing this, we also tend not to see other things  -- problems with what we are used to, new ideas, etc. -- because we're looking for evidence of things we've already become accustomed to.

As we age, maintaining a beginner's mind feels like it takes more and more effort.  Perhaps it does.  On the other hand, keeping such a mindset may be part of what can keep us open, excited, curious...younger.

Regular Exercise Changes The Brain To Improve Memory, Thinking Skills

There are plenty of good reasons to be physically active. Big ones include reducing the odds of developing heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Maybe you want to lose weight, lower your blood pressure, prevent depression, or just look better. Here’s another one, which especially applies to those of us (including me) experiencing the brain fog that comes with age: exercise changes the brain in ways that protect memory and thinking skills.  Continue here....

-- Heidi Godman

...I'm off to clear my 'fog'.

Blasphemous Assault

One reason why people are uncomfortable with tears and the sight of suffering is that it is a blasphemous assault on their precariously maintained American spirituality of the pursuit of happiness.  They want to avoid evidence that things are not right with the world as it is -- with Jesus, without love, without faith...It is a lot easier to keep the American faith if they don't have to look into the face of suffering....

So learning the language of lament is not only necessary to restore Christian dignity to suffering and repentance and death; it is necessary to provide a Christian witness to a world that has no language for and is therefore oblivious to the glories of wilderness and the cross.

-- Eugene Peterson

Makenzie's friend, Rylei, shared this with us after church last week...where we talking about the role of suffering in our lives.

The Anxieties of Impotence

The Republican establishment thinks the grass roots have the power but the grass roots think the reverse. The unions think the corporations have the power but the corporations think the start-ups do. Regulators think Wall Street has the power but Wall Street thinks the regulators do.  

In a different way, the American election has been perverted by feelings of powerlessness. 

Plagued by the anxiety of impotence many voters are drawn to leaders who pretend that our problems could be solved by defeating some villain. Donald Trump says stupid elites are the problem. Ted Cruz says it’s the Washington cartel. Bernie Sanders says it’s Wall Street.  Continue here...

-- David Brooks

As a society, we are beset by our nearly universal sense of powerlessness.  So, these days (by our politicians), we seem entranced by those who are trying to persuade us that they can do something about it.  But, we are distracted...by an incomplete, inaccurate sense of what real power is.  What will it take for us to rediscover real power?

Mutation

My 'Friday poem' selection for the week -- "Sonnet -- Mutation":

They talk of short-lived pleasure—be it so—
Pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain
Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go.
The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;
And after dreams of horror, comes again
The welcome morning with its rays of peace.
Oblivion, softly wiping out the stain,
Makes the strong secret pangs of shame to cease:
Remorse is virtue’s root; its fair increase
Are fruits of innocence and blessedness:
Thus joy, o’erborne and bound, doth still release
His young limbs from the chains that round him press.
Weep not that the world changes—did it keep
A stable changeless state, ’twere cause indeed to weep.

-- William Cullen Bryant

Is Right

Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right.

-- Ezra Taft Benson

I Have Noticed: What I Offer

I have noticed...that I temper what I offer of myself to others based on how I sense it will be received. I am still learning how to offer what I feel led to offer without a heavy filter of how it will be received.

Hatred of Being Alone

All men’s misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.

-- Jean de la Bruyere

Among other things, I'm pondering what the motivation of urgency is?

Discover Our Soul

It is through weakness and vulnerability that most of us learn empathy and compassion and discover our soul.

-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Older

Older, more experienced Christians often have greater troubles, temptations, and difficulties in the world. God has new work for them to do. He now plans that all the graces they have, be used in new and harder ways. They may not find their spiritual desires to be as strong as before or have such delight in spiritual duties as they had before. Because of this, they feel that grace has dried up in them. They do not know where they are or what they are.  But in spite of all this, the real work of sanctification is still thriving in them, and the Holy Spirit is still working effectively in them. God is faithful. Therefore, let us cling to our hope without wavering.

-- John Owen

My father faces heart surgery tomorrow. I wonder what he would say with regard to faith, in the face of the difficulties of aging.  My guess is, from what I have heard him say, that God is indeed faithful.  It strikes me that our sense of faith increases, as our weaknesses increase with age.

When I'm Gone

Nothing like the combination of a brilliant winter morning and a really good cry...the gripping story of a fight with cancer at This Life I Live.

Limitations

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week -- "Limitations":

The subtlest strain a great musician weaves,
Cannot attain in rhythmic harmony
To music in his soul. May it not be
Celestial lyres send hints to him? He grieves
That half the sweetness of the song, he leaves
Unheard in the transition. Thus do we
Yearn to translate the wondrous majesty
Of some rare mood, when the rapt soul receives
A vision exquisite. Yet who can match
The sunset’s iridescent hues? Who sing
The skylark’s ecstasy so seraph-fine?
We struggle vainly, still we fain would catch
Such rifts amid life’s shadows, for they bring
Glimpses ineffable of things divine.

-- Henrietta Cordelia Ray

Winter

I learned long ago that winter will drive you crazy until you get out into it — and I mean “winter” both literally and metaphorically.

-- Parker Palmer

I Used To Think: Self-Defense

I used to think...that I needed to defend myself.  Now I know that God will defend whatever really needs defended in me.

Silence

There can be such a sacred beauty to silence.

We sat for a few moments in church on Sunday in prayerful silence; a pondering of the soul with God.  It seemed like time stood still.  The normal lurking of awkwardness was arrested and I wished it could have gone on forever.

MLK Day: Charles Person

I have decided to stick with love, hate is too great a burden to bear.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are so grateful for the opportunity to hear and meet Freedom-Rider Charles Person today.  His sacrifice years ago is still making a difference.

It is easy to enjoy someone famous.  It is harder to be the kind of person that Charles was and continues to be.  What will I yet stand for?  How will I do so?

On Worry

A great many people do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, our jokes, and the birds’ song and the frosty sunrise.

-- C.S. Lewis, from The Collected Letters, Volume II, Compiled in Words to Live By

Interview With A Toddler

Rejection

Rejection has a powerful grip on us.
It so easily slays us.
It is unyielding in its pursuit of us.
Its threat is ever-present,
even if only in a lurking way.

We are so in need of acceptance.
We will demand it, if needed.
We, ourselves, will even reject the ungiver of it.
We will use the very thing
that hurts us so.

Stop Looking

Sometimes, in order to find something, you have to stop looking for it.

Do Not Handicap

So it's searchable:

Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.

-- Robert Heinlein

I Have Noticed: Relationships

I have noticed...that I need to put myself in and pursue relationships with people.

I seem to stop growing when I choose not to.

You're Right

Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.

-- Henry Ford

Comforters

God does not comfort us to make us comfortable only, but to make us comforters.

-- John Henry Jowett


Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

-- Luke 6:38

Angela Merkel

See story here....

What informs such character, such compassion?  I continue to wonder if one can only understand poverty, if one has experienced it.  Poverty takes on many forms, so it's not that our opportunities to embrace it are limited.

So it's searchable:

I'm surprised at how faint-hearted we sometimes are, and how quickly we lose courage.

-- Angela Merkel

Winter Leafage

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week -- "Winter Leafage":

Each year I mark one lone outstanding tree,
Clad in its robings of the summer past,
Dry, wan, and shivering in the wintry blast.
It will not pay the season’s rightful fee,—
It will not set its frost-burnt leafage free;
But like some palsied miser all aghast,
Who hoards his sordid treasure to the last,
It sighs, it moans, it sings in eldritch glee.
A foolish tree, to dote on summers gone;
A faithless tree, that never feels how spring
Creeps up the world to make a leafy dawn,
And recompense for all despoilment bring!
Oh, let me not, heyday and youth withdrawn,
With failing hands to their vain semblance cling!

-- Edith Matilda Thomas

I Used To Think: My Weakness

I used to think...that you needed to be strong to help carry things for people. Now I know that we often are able to help others the most by acknowledging our weaknesses.

Choices Reflect

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

-- Nelson Mandela

I Have Noticed: A Recoiling

I have noticed...that I tend to recoil when personalities get 'large'.

My withdrawal, veiled as it may be, perhaps is an attempt to avoid something -- an association?  A co-opting?  A sense of something even in myself that I disdain when I join that kind of competition for attention.

Weren't Actual Decisions

One paper published by a Duke University researcher in 2006 found that more than 40 percent of the actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits.

-- Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit

I'm thinking about my habits, and what I want them to be in a new year.  I going to go for one; one habit I want to change this year -- to stop doing something, to start doing something....

Slow Process

In a world addicted to 'fast', here's simple truth about 'slow':

TO KEITH MANSHIP: On the slow process of being more in Christ; and on doing one’s duty, especially the duty to enjoy.

You state the problem clearly, and the fact that you can do so really shows that you are very much on the right road. Many don’t even get so far.

The whole problem of our life was neatly expressed by John the Baptist when he said (John, chap 3, v. 30) ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’ This you have realised. But you are expecting it to happen suddenly: and also expecting that you should be clearly aware when it does. But neither of these is usual. We are doing well enough if the slow process of being more in Christ and less in ourselves has made a decent beginning in a long life (it will be completed only in the next world). Nor can we observe it happening. All our reports on ourselves are unbelievable, even in worldly matters (no one really hears his own voice as others do, or sees his own face). Much more in spiritual matters. God sees us, and we don’t see ourselves. And by trying too hard to do so, we only get the fidgets and become either too complacent or too much the other way.

Your question what to do is already answered. Go on (as you apparently are going on) doing all your duties. And, in all lawful ways, go on enjoying all that can be enjoyed—your friends, your music, your books. Remember we are told to ‘rejoice’ [Philippians 4:4]. Sometimes when you are wondering what God wants you to do, He really wants to give you something.

As to your spiritual state, try my plan. I pray ‘Lord, show me just so much (neither more nor less) about myself as I need for doing thy will now.’

-- C.S. Lewis, from The Collected Letters, Volume III, Compiled in Yours, Jack

A good reminder heading into a new year....

The Top 6 Good-News Stories of 2015

This is a tough time to feel optimistic about the future. With the notable exception of impressive global cooperation on climate change and energy, our papers and screens have been dominated for months by stories about terrorism and war. But this barrage of negative stories is obscuring the full picture of what’s happening around the world.  Continue here....

-- Bill Gates

What I Want In A New Year

Tami  and I have been talking about the new year -- what we would want in it, what it might bring to us, what to pursue, what to be willing to wait for.   Though sometimes cloaked, I think at the heart of resolutions is really our desires; things we hope will change, things we wish would happen, things we most deeply want in our lives and in the lives of those we love.

When I read good books I am really drawn to, I often end up, at one point or another, thinking I should be more like the person writing the book.  I have even tried to be like them a few times.  What we feel more drawn to heading into this year is what we should more uniquely become ourselves, rather than trying to be more like someone else.  I want to pursue more of what God is calling me to be, which could look like someone I've recently read about or, perhaps more likely, something that is uniquely related to how I am made or to what is (or gets put) right in front of me.  There are some 'doing' things I want to consider, as well as increasing opportunity for me to simply offer compassion to those around me.

We agreed to prayerfully watch for such opportunities as we begin a new year...which may be more like what I noted at the beginning of 2015 than anything else.

2015

Wow, what a year 2015 has been!  The last few, I have enjoyed reviewing Saturday Mornings entries throughout the year -- I am grateful for the reminder of some of the distances traveled, physically and in the heart. Here are some of my 2015 favorites:

December: Why I Like Taking Pictures I Wanted Peace Stop Chasing	June: The Speech Of The Sky One Father Week Of The Bride, Pt. 6
November: Gratitude: Thru the Imperfect Desperate Bravery	May: Not What's Really Important Unrequited Love You Think You Know
October: Space Readies Us Disappointment Liberates	April: UN- Does Sexual Orientation Equal Identity? Good Friday
September: Surrounded By Love Caine's Arcade No Real Substitute	March: Hatred And The Holocaust How We Lose Our Way Interior Stability
August: Perils Alone  Delight? Other Way Around	February: Chicago:  The Ribbon Begins To Die Neglecting Time
July: What Is Love? Largely Through What Happens Natural Response	January: Who We Really Are Silence:  Fear Of What It Has To Say Instead