I've Noticed: Shift

I've noticed...that when I don't feel connected to people, my sense of self starts to shift.

Pull

I feel the pull to be what seems to 'work' for others. At the same time, I feel a resistance to it. I am coming to believe more and more that the important thing is to live attentively to what God has called me to be, whether that matches up with the expectations of others or not.

Rise Up Rooted Like Trees

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Rise Up Rooted Like Trees":

How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing—
each stone, blossom, child—
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left [God].
This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Vandalism

​Sin is the vandalism of peace.

SM Brunch 6: Memory, Fragility, Poverty, and Unbelieving

​More Saturday Mornings Brunch:

We don't have good memory, which is why we need good history.

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Humanity’s particular beauty is only possible because of its fragility.  Your beauty is not in your formidableness, but in your fragility.

-- Ann Voskamp

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​Poverty...can have an unexpected way of breeding generosity.

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​Sometimes we have to unbelieve something in order to keep believing it.

Let Them Look

Must we always teach our children with books?  Let them look at the mountains and the stars up above.  Let them look at the beauty of the waters and the trees and flowers on earth.  They will then begin to think, and to think is the beginning of a real education.

-- David Polis

A Lie

A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.

-- Edgar J. Mohn

I Used To Think: Fear & Trust

I used to think...that there was much to fear inside of us.  Now I know that there is more to trust inside of us, than there is to fear.

Waiting

​Strength and waiting are connected muscles. It takes strength to wait and the blood of courage because waiting requires patience and trust. You have to be strong in your bones to trust...to wait.

...especially on behalf of someone you love.

Altitude

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

I wonder
how it would be here with you,
where the wind
that has shaken off its dust in low valleys
touches one cleanly,
as with a new-washed hand,
and pain
is as the remote hunger of droning things,
and anger
but a little silence
sinking into the great silence.

-- Lola Ridge

Compassion

​I want to error on the side of compassion (and a strong kind at that).

If we offer anything of God correctly to the world, it just might largely be compassion.

Can we understand and embrace compassion without having personally experienced our own need for it? Our own receipt of it? Anyone who has genuinely received compassion, knows what it means to offer it to someone else. Someone who lacks it for others, likely has never experienced it from someone else.

I can listen with compassion because I believe that the very hard thing the other is going through is deepening their own capacity for compassion...what others need from all of us.

SM Brunch 5: Open Air, Worry, and Thirst

More Saturday Mornings Brunch:

If you can't get out of it, get into it!

-- Outward Bound motto

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Now I see the secret of making the best persons, it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

-- Walt Whitman

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99% of the things we think will happen, never happen. We all worry about so many things and almost all of those things we stress about, we worry about, we have anxiety about, are just wasted thoughts.

-- Turney Duff

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​​Most of the time when I think I'm hungry, I'm really just thirsty.

Must Exceed

​Your deepest desire must exceed your deepest fear.

Awareness

We lack social awareness because we’re so focused on what we’re going to say next—and how what other people are saying affects us—that we completely lose sight of other people.

-- Travis Bradberry

I've Noticed: Willpower

I've noticed...​my willpower to resist goes down proportionately to the degree to which I 'give in' and then it spreads from one area of my life to another. When I give in, for example to sugar, I want more sugar. When I give in again there, I tend to become more willing to compromise in other areas.  I then notice a kind of defensiveness creeping over me. When I become more defensive, I doubt myself more and then more. It works like a series of falling dominoes.

In my experience, the opposite is also true. When I don't give in, depletion of my willpower seems to slow.

Half Of It

​The truth is the truth, but we only really believe half of it...the half we've experienced.  What I am excited about is that truth always seems to be inviting us to more...to experiencing more of it.

The Seven of Pentacles

'Poem selection' for the week -- "The Seven of Pentacles":

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the lady bugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
      the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

-- Marge Piercy

Service, Not Status

​Strength is for service, not status.

-- Rom 15:1 (MSG)

SM Brunch 4: Truth, Like Us, Rawness, and Pride

More Saturday Mornings Brunch:

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth. 

-- Buddha

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​It is so disappointing when we realize that almost everybody we want to be with, we like because we imagine that they like us.  Don't believe me? Go ahead and think of people you don't enjoy being with and consider if they aren't people that you're not sure like you very much.

We are addicted to ourselves and the things others do for us.​

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We often don't recognize our underlying sadness until we see the forms that cover it in their own rawness.

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The hidden cost of pride:  Isolation

-- Bob Goff

Not To Be Reduced

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

-- Maya Angelou

Grumpy

Grumpy and bitter isn't a place we begin. It's a place we end up.

People don't become selfish, hateful and afraid all at once. They do it gradually.

We are always becoming, and we can always make the choice to start becoming something else, if we care.

-- Seth Godin

I Used To Think: Wounds

​I used to think...that wounds only weakened us.  Now I know that from our deepest wounds come our best gifts to others.

Real Mistake

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

-- Henry Ford

Mysteries, Yes

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Mysteries, Yes":

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

-- Mary Oliver

Wholeness vs Perfection

Spare me perfection. Give me instead the wholeness that comes from embracing the full reality of who I am, just as I am. Paradoxically, it is this whole self that is most perfect. As it turns out, wholeness, not perfection, is the route to the actualization of our deepest humanity.

Inconsistencies, imperfections, and failures to live up to ideals are all part of what it means to be human. What seems to distinguish those who are most deeply and wholly human is not their perfection, but their courage in accepting their imperfections. Accepting themselves as they are, they then become able to accept others as they are.

The richness of being human lies precisely in our lack of perfection. This is the source of so much of our longing, and out of that longing emerges so much creativity, beauty, and goodness. With appropriate openness and humility, it is the cracks that let in the light.

-- David Benner

SM Brunch 3: Play, Patience, Discover, Could Go, and Do Understand

More Saturday Mornings Brunch:

We are not meant to be “perpetually solemn”, we must play.

-- C.S. Lewis

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Do I need to be more patient with others...or with God?

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Do not always rush the nature of truth with the words of truth. Some things need to be discovered.

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I mostly know how far I can go because of how far I have gone.  ...makes me wonder how far I could go.

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Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those that I do understand.

-- Mark Twain

Sharing More

My neighborhood is a bit odd, in that a few dozen houses share one swimming pool. This is because fifty years ago, one large property was subdivided and the developer left the existing pool intact. He specified that all houses would jointly share in its usage and upkeep.

Very few people aspire to share a pool with a few dozen neighbors. Instead, people want their own pool.

After fifteen years of sharing, I can tell you that sharing is much, much better. You pay less for upkeep, yet enjoy a bigger pool. But that's not even close to the best benefit.

Having the pool created a culture of sharing in our neighborhood. When my kids were younger, our neighbors approached us with a proposal. Our swing set was getting pretty shaky, and our kids had mostly outgrown it. So our neighbors offered to buy a much nicer new one that we would share, but - because they didn't have a flat spot in their yard - they asked to put it in ours. We agreed.

Then another neighbor bought a trampoline, that everyone shares. Another bought a soccer net. Same deal. Today, the swing set is long gone but we share a garden with our neighbors.

I'd like to think that this is where we are headed as a society: sharing more.

You don't need a venture capitalist and a programming team to start sharing. You just need to adopt a sharing mindset. Once you do, don't be surprised if you discover that sharing is contagious.

-- Bruce Kasanoff

Weapon Against Stress

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

-- William James

I've Noticed: Normal

​I've noticed...that what I think should be normal is heavily influenced by my experience.  And, when I don't acknowledge this, I seem to have less capacity for understanding differences, for what is normal to others.

Release

​Mercy is a release from the confines of the self.

-- Joe Chaney

Poem in July

'Poem selection' as we exit mid-summer one more time -- "Poem In July":

I felt perfected along the rectangle
By its ragged side

Fences trees and mist dropping
Some space for the flowers

I set an image in my head where
Bushes in their out of focus

Made a green dearth about the door
I wanted to do a book on

Pages left in the heat or rain
But my desire seemingly disappeared

Picked up by a car in the middle of
A pack of cigarettes

This trip into the forest
The trees trading with memory to

Frame the various breaks
The pleasures of small laws cut

Behind the mower with my eyes
Running the grass blades

We don’t really get any older
I can see what that means

-- Samuel Amadon

Big Love

We can't seem to know the good news that we are God's beloveds on our own. It has to be mirrored to us. We're essentially social beings. Another has to tell us we are beloved and good. Within contemplative prayer, we present ourselves for the ultimate gaze, the ultimate mirroring. Before this gaze of Love, we gradually disrobe and allow ourselves to be seen, to be known in every nook and cranny, nothing hidden, nothing denied, nothing disguised. It's like lovemaking. The wonderful thing is, after a while, we feel so safe that we know we don't have to pretend or disguise any more. We don't have to put on any kind of costume.

Letting your naked self be known by God is always to recognize your need for mercy and your own utter inadequacy and littleness. You realize that even the best things you've done have often been for mixed and selfish motives, not really for love. The saints often weep in the middle of prayer because they recognize how tiny they are in the presence of such Infinity. Your need for mercy draws you close to God. It's a wonderful and humiliating experience. Within contemplation, you stand under an immense waterfall of mercy, compassion, and forgiveness.

Knowing your need for mercy opens you to receiving mercy. Knowing your intimate need for mercy is in great part what it means to know, need, or fall in love with God, because God is mercy itself and must be experienced as such! If you live like the Pharisee in Jesus' parable (Luke 18:9-14), where you do everything perfectly and you are never in need of mercy, then you will never know God! So don't be too good, even in your own eyes. Make sure you always and happily stand on the receiving end of God, just like the Three Persons of the Trinity do to one another, where self-emptying always precedes any new outpouring.

Frankly, it all comes down to this: God doesn't love you because you are good. God loves you because God is good!

-- Richard Rohr

The Church at Its Racial Turning Point

In this moment, American churches face the challenge and opportunity of addressing what some consider America’s “original sin.” A 2012 survey found that most evangelicals believe “one of the most effective ways to improve race relations is to stop talking about race.” More and more Christians realize that in order to do something, we cannot avoid these discussions or remain silent as society around us grapples with such an embedded issue.  Continue here....

Time

In a 'yes to everything' culture, there is something powerful and respectful about saying, 'No'.

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What I choose to spend time on is what is important to me.

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​We spend most of our time affecting over things that we think we know. And yet there is so much more that we don't know, than we do know. So, what are the implications of this on the way we spend so much of our time?

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​Will personal drive always be at odds with contentment? Is peace the enemy of ambition?
 
-- Nathaniel Bellows

Greatest Problem

​My greatest problem is, in fact, not the other person….

I Used To Think: Evidence

I used to think...that I needed to dig for evidence.  Now I know that it is better to let compassion surface.

No Bigger Enemy

​I can’t think of a bigger enemy to courage than comfort. 

-- Matt Wertz

Advice to a Blue-Bird

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Advice to a Blue-Bird":

Who can make a delicate adventure
Of walking on the ground?
Who can make grass-blades
Arcades for pertly careless straying?
You alone, who skim against these leaves,
Turning all desire into light whips
Moulded by your deep blue wing-tips,
You who shrill your unconcern
Into the sternly antique sky.
You to whom all things
Hold an equal kiss of touch.

Mincing, wanton blue-bird,
Grimace at the hoofs of passing men.
You alone can lose yourself
Within a sky, and rob it of its blue!

-- Maxwell Bodenheim

Unbreakable Pledge

If Jesus Christ is, as we believe him to be, none other than God himself incarnate among us at work for us and for our salvation, then Jesus Christ, who is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, is God’s unbreakable pledge that he will save and renew his creation, finally making all things new. If in Jesus Christ God has taken up our creaturely humanity into union with himself once and for all, then God can no more let us go to ruin and destruction than he can undo the Incarnation, go back upon His Word enacted in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ or contradict the Love which God himself eternally is, and which he has irreversibly incarnated in our human existence and destiny in Jesus Christ. That is the crucial point upon which Jesus Christ insisted when he declared that there is an identity of Word and Act between himself and God the Father, and went on to tell us that God has put everything into his hands, and no one can snatch us out of his grasp. That is surely a mighty Word of Christ to us today, when we seem to see human life and existence fragmenting and disintegrating all round us, and we quail in our innermost beings at the thought of fearful things that may overtake the life and destiny of mankind on earth. Let us put in the centre of all that the Word of Christ which cannot fail or pass away, for it is the Word of God eternal. Christ will bring about what he has promised, for his Word cannot pass away.

-- Thomas Torrance

My friend, Rujida, shared this with me...a fitting reminder for me tonight.

Desire

With finally a period of undictated moments, I sat alone in my larger-than-needed house, without many of the discomforts that so many endure, reading.  'Keeping Faith', chapter 3 of the book, The Wounds of God, by Penelope Wilcock; my wife said I would love this book and she is right.

I am swollen with the tears of emotion over the love described in the lead character, the Abbot.  So full, in part, I suspect because of the lack of such love, such strength, in me.  Or, at the very least, the lack of recognition of it.  It could, in fact, be there.  But, what seems lacking, is a confidence that it is.  Perhaps, that is not a necessary thing to have.  Though, without it, I can be plagued at times by the insecurity of it.

Do others, in fact, possess something I simply do not?  ...that certainly seems plausible.  There are many things others have that I do not.  What, then, is the point of the question?  Would it not be something more akin to, is the something they have, something I, too, can acquire?  If so, what is needed in me, to acquire it?  And, is the answer to this question not nearly fully described in this very chapter?

We are all being given the opportunity to acquire something significant.  What is it, then, that inhibits our acquisition?  We might tend to think it is a matter of the will, or of the discipline needed.  And, that may very well be true...Lord knows how weak our feigned attempts are.  Is it endurance?  Also, perhaps.  But, I wonder more at what it is that fuels things like endurance, discipline, or will, which seem like important methods, but not inherent drivers.

Is it not the case that it is our desire which compels through things that inhibit us?  What it is that we want, more than anything else, that moves us through or keeps us able to remain for something, even when all else simply seems to impede our ability to persist.

Desire, in fact, is what God uses, arouses even, in us to reveal to us who we really are.  This alone is what changes us from being and pursuing a version of ourselves that is far less than we've imagined to be.  The only thing, in the end, that can give us the ability to retain our sense of being, what we want and don't want, especially when the severity of circumstances abate or the natural comfort of things cause us to forget, is our truest desire.

Civilizations Begin To Die...

Every observer of the grand sweep of history, from the prophets of Israel to the Islamic sage Ibn Khaldun, from Giambattista Vico to John Stuart Mill, and Bertrand Russell to Will Durant, has said essentially the same thing: that civilizations begin to die when they lose the moral passion that brought them into being in the first place. It happened to Greece and Rome, and it can happen to the West. The sure signs are these: a falling birthrate, moral decay, growing inequalities, a loss of trust in social institutions, self-indulgence on the part of the rich, hopelessness on the part of the poor, unintegrated minorities, a failure to make sacrifices in the present for the sake of the future, a loss of faith in old beliefs and no new vision to take their place. These are the danger signals and they are flashing now.

The alternative?

To become inner-directed again. This means recovering the moral dimension that links our welfare to the welfare of others, making us collectively responsible for the common good. It means recovering the spiritual dimension that helps us tell the difference between the value of things and their price. We are more than consumers and voters; our dignity transcends what we earn and own. It means remembering that what's important is not just satisfying our desires but also knowing which desires to satisfy. It means restraining ourselves in the present so that our children may have a viable future. It means reclaiming collective memory and identity so that society becomes less of a hotel and more of a home.  Continue here....

-- Lord Jonathan Sacks

No One Is Unreasonable

​No one says, "I'm going to be unfair to this person today, brutal in fact, even though they don't deserve it or it's not helpful."

Few people say, "I know that this person signed the contract and did what they promised, but I'm going to rip them off, just because I can."

And it's quite rare to have someone say, "I'm a selfish narcissist, and everyone should revolve around me merely because I said so."

In fact, all of us have a narrative. It's the story we tell ourselves about how we got here, what we're building, what our urgencies are.

And within that narrative, we act in a way that seems reasonable.

To be clear, the narrative isn't true. It's merely our version, our self-talk about what's going on. It's the excuses, perceptions and history we've woven together to get through the world. It's our grievances and our perception of privilege, our grudges and our loves. 

No one is unreasonable. Or to be more accurate, no one thinks that they are being unreasonable.

That's why we almost never respond well when someone points out how unreasonable we're being. We don't see it, because our narrative of the world around us won't allow us to. Our worldview makes it really difficult to be empathetic, because seeing the world through the eyes of someone else takes so much effort.

It's certainly possible to change someone's narrative, but it takes time and patience and leverage. Teaching a new narrative is hard work, essential work, but something that is difficult to do at scale.

In the short run, our ability to treat different people differently means that we can seek out people who have a narrative that causes them to engage with us in reasonable ways. When we open the door for these folks, we're far more likely to create the impact that we seek. No one thinks they're unreasonable, but you certainly don't have to work with the people who are.

And, if you're someone who finds that your narrative isn't helping you make the impact you seek, best to look hard at your narrative, the way you justify your unreasonableness, not the world outside. 

-- Seth Godin

I've Noticed: Out Loud

​I've noticed...that when I say things out loud, what I'm thinking about gets clarified. In other words, sometimes I need to hear it , to know more what I'm thinking. And, often times, by saying it aloud, the parts that don't 'ring true' are identified.

Than To Explain

It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't.

-- Martin Van Buren

"When I Am Asked"

'Poem selection' for the week -- "When I Am Asked":

When I am asked
how I began writing poems,
I talk about the indifference of nature.

It was soon after my mother died,
a brilliant June day,
everything blooming.

I sat on a gray stone bench
in a lovingly planted garden,
but the day lilies were as deaf
as the ears of drunken sleepers,
and the roses curved inward.
Nothing was black or broken
and not a leaf fell
and the sun blared endless commercials
for summer holidays.

I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with the ingenue faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.

-- Lisel Mueller

So Strongly

...you can let go of and even easily "admit your wrongs." You are being held so strongly and so deeply that you can stop holding onto or defending yourself. God forever sees and loves Christ in you; it is only we who doubt our divine identity as children of God.

Yet the vast majority of Christians still believe in a punitive God and a pathetic notion of retributive justice, which is totally unworthy of God. This false and toxic image of God normally only recedes if we have an inner life of prayer.

What hope and joy a God of Infinite Love gives us all! Among many other things, it takes away all fear of admitting our wrongs to God, to ourselves, and to others.

-- Richard Rohr

SM Brunch 2: Share It, Face Alone, Be There, and Flat Screens

More 'Saturday Mornings Brunch':

​Half (the better half) of something good is the ability to share it will someone else.

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You cannot face your fear alone.

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We can offer no solutions, no easy answers, to other people's tragedies.  We can only be there.

-- Penelope Wilcock, The Wounds of God

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Flat screens can be a bane to our souls.

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FILL THE MALL - 7/16/16

After another night of even more tragedy, we seem to have burdens everywhere to lay down.

Might we join FILL THE MALL tomorrow by praying for our world, our own country, our neighbors? For ourselves?


It will be interesting to see whether or how the media covers this event, because as this article points out, the media has a significant role in all that is going on.

Compatibility

I read an article recently about marriage and the idea of finding the 'right' person as a spouse.  This observation struck me:

The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn't exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently—, the person who is good at disagreement. Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate differences with generosity that is the true marker of the "not overly wrong" person (as opposed the "right person" we otherwise are taught to look for). Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition.

-- Alain de Botton

I Used To Think: The Answer

​​I used to think...that what I needed was 'the answer', now I know that what I really need is 'the source'.

It is not getting beyond (past) something or even to something that is the most significant thing; it is what or who we learn to rely on that is...the significant thing.  Life is life.  It's not going to change that much. I, however, can change; becoming transformed, in how I relate to life.

Against

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

-- Henry Ford

litany

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

I wish I knew how
It would feel to be free
I wish I could break
All the chains holding me
— Nina Simone

today i am a black woman in america
& i am singing a melody ridden lullaby
it sounds like:
              the gentrification of a brooklyn stoop
              the rent raised three times my wages
              the bodega and laundromat burned down on the corner
              the people on the corner
                            each lock & key of their chromosomes
                            a note of ash & inquiry on their tongues

today i am a black woman in a hopeless state
i will apply for financial aid and food stamps
           with the same mouth i spit poems from
i will ask the angels of a creative god to lessen
           the blows
& i will beg for forgiveness when i curse
           the rising sun

today, i am a black woman in a body of coal
i am always burning and no one knows my name
i am a nameless fury, i am a blues scratched from
the throat of ms. nina—i am always angry
i am always a bumble hive of hello
i love like this too loudly, my neighbors
think i am an unforgiving bitter
             sometimes, i think my neighbors are right
             most times i think my neighbors are nosey

today, i am a cold country, a storm
brewing, a heat wave of a woman wearing
red pumps to the funeral of my ex-lover’s

today, i am a woman, a brown and black &
brew woman dreaming of freedom

today, i am a mother, & my country is burning
             and i forgot how to flee
from such a flamboyant backdraft
                        —i’m too in awe of how beautiful i look
            on fire

-- Mahogany L. Browne

From the author:

“‘litany’ was written after the anniversary of ‘I Wish I Knew How It Felt to Be Free,’ made famous by Nina Simone. And I sat with what that meant, years later—when I am still wishing for a certain type of freedom. To think of the time passing but of senseless deaths of black and brown bodies remaining. The poem was a mulling of all that has changed and all that has not. Injustice has not changed. Poverty has not changed. The idea that I am writing from poem to check to mouth/house is no coincidence. And the building on my corner was most certainly burned to the ground, leaving folks homeless. Within two weeks there was talk of building condos. And my neighbors and I, free to watch, stood on the opposite corner of the destroyed building as contractors stomped in and out of the remains. Someone smiled loudly about the ‘new multimillion-dollar building plans.’ And it didn’t feel like freedom at all.”

Worry and Prayer

Pray, and let God worry.

-- William Law

It seems we often don't pray because we don't believe...that it will really leverage anything.  Of course, this perspective nearly wholly misses the purpose of prayer, it is not primarily just to get something, it is to abide in something.

Saturday Mornings Brunch

Let's Breathe

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Our inadequacy is not our problem; our fear is.

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We are prone to the method of self-chastisement -- why?

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In spite of what our culture says, we are not primarily sexual beings.

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Never underestimate the power of God's Spirit to reach someone; He is waiting for us, even until we reach the end of ourselves.

****

...the severity of restraint and respect.

Preparation in Gentleness

There is one thing I must do here at my woodshed hermitage... and that is to prepare for my death. But that means a preparation in gentleness... 

-- Thomas Merton

What a great leap — from death to gentleness! So different from Dylan Thomas’s famous advice:

“Do not go gentle into that good night...Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

When I was 35, raging seemed right. But at 77, it’s Thomas Merton, not Dylan Thomas, who speaks to me.

The prospect of death — heightened by winter’s dark and cold, by solitude, silence, and age — makes it clear that my calling is to be gentle with the many expressions of life, old and new, that must be handled with care if they are to survive and thrive.

Sometimes, of course, that means becoming fierce in confronting the enemies of gentleness. If that’s a contradiction, so be it! As Merton said in The Sign of Jonas:

I find myself traveling toward my destiny in the belly of a paradox.

-- Parker Palmer

Most Lost

​It is often from when we felt most lost that we ended up finding our way.

I've Noticed: Over-emphasis

I've noticed...that, in me, over-emphasis creates resistance.

Kindness

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

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

-- Naomi Shihab Nye

4th of July

...speaking of fireworks, the Saturday night sky was unmatchable:

...see the progression here.

Without Preaching

One filled with joy preaches without preaching.

-- Mother Teresa

Impulse: Compare & Compete

The impulse to compare and compete does not always come from arrogance. Sometimes it comes from a frightened, lonely, shame-filled place where the only instinct is survival—like minnows swimming among sharks.  No matter how athletic, slim, handsome or pretty, intelligent, well-read, respected, connected, funny, wealthy, or religious we are, if we anchor our worth in these things instead of in the smile of God over us, these things will eventually wreck us.

Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown it.  Aim at earth and you get neither.

-- C.S. Lewis

The quest for self-esteem is, deep down, an attempt to silence negative verdicts that assault us from the outside and from within.

The only esteem that won’t abandon us is the esteem given to us by Jesus. Why? Because only in Jesus are we fully known and always loved, thoroughly exposed yet never rejected. Only Jesus will repeatedly forgive us when we fail him. Only Jesus will declare his affection for us when we are at our very worst as well as at our very best. Only in Jesus can we return to that blessed Edenic state of being naked and without shame...continue here.

-- Scott Sauls

For vs Against

Fight against something and we focus on the thing we hate. Fight for something and we focus on the thing we love.

-- Simon Sinek

Will Compel You

​It is what you want that will compel you to grow.

Deepest Agony

It is often from our deepest agony that our truest love emerges.

Miss A Lot

​You can miss a lot if you're always looking down.

Listening to What They Write

Good writers of prose must be part poet, always listening to what they write.

-- William Zinsser

Deciding

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

One mine the Indians worked had
gold so good they left it there
for God to keep.

At night sometimes you think
your way that far, that deep,
or almost.

You hold all things or not, depending
not on greed but whether they suit what
life begins to mean.

Like those workers you study what moves,
what stays. You bow, and then, like them,
you know —

What's God, what's world, what's gold.

-- William Stafford

Summer Sunset in Winona Lake

The Gift of Disillusionment

Only that community which enters into the experience of this great disillusionment with all its unpleasant and evil appearances begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it.

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

This comes from an article, referenced here, called "The Gift of Disillionment":

Peter’s problem is not that he can’t see Jesus clearly. His problem is that he can’t see himself. He is too humble to let himself be washed, but too proud to do the washing. He hasn’t washed his own feet. He won’t wash the other disciples’ feet. And despite his conviction that Jesus is greater, he doesn’t even offer to wash Jesus’ feet. Peter’s objection looks like humility. It sounds like devotion. But it is really just narcissism and pride attempting to disguise itself in the rags of false humility. It may be pride in a different form, but it is still pride and just as deadly.  Continue....

-- John Koessler

Will Svitek Cares

What Have I Done?

​A wise man will ask, what have I done to contribute to this problem?

Create The Context

​It is not enough just to notice differences between things that are or are not the way we want them to be; we have to take the steps needed to create the context for something different to occur.

I've Noticed: Don't Say

​I've noticed...that I don't say as much as I would like to.  What of this is wisdom? What is fear?

Truth Differently

​We engage with truth when we actually hear it; often when we hear it differently, often when we're forced to hear it differently.

Fathers Song

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Fathers Song":

Yesterday, against admonishment,
my daughter balanced on the couch back,
fell and cut her mouth.

Because I saw it happen I knew
she was not hurt, and yet
a child’s blood so red
it stops a father’s heart.

My daughter cried her tears;
I held some ice
against her lip.
That was the end of it.

Round and round: bow and kiss.
I try to teach her caution;
she tries to teach me risk.

-- Gregory Orr

No Holier Name

Father! - to God himself we cannot give a holier name.

-- William Wordsworth

Refugees Look Into The Eyes

There is something powerful about actual contact with another human being...whether they be refugees or friends.  We must see each other as, above all else, human.

To Be United With Beauty

We want so much more—something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

-- C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Estes Park

Tami and I celebrated our 30th anniversary this week in the mountains of Colorado. We hiked a little over 30 miles throughout Estes Park. The beauty was so refreshing for me.  More of our pics here....

Greatest Source

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

-- Bill Gates

Change

Be the change you want to see.

-- Gandhi

A Man Said To The Universe

'Poem selection' for the week -- "A Man Said to the Universe":

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

-- Stephen Crane

Stanford: 20 Things We’d Better Tell Our Sons Right Now About Being Real Men

Dear Sons,

When you’re the mother of four sons, the Stanford rape case — it’s not about somebody else… it’s about us.

Let’s be real clear, boys — I’m never writing you a letter like the father of Brock Turner, defending any sexual assault of a horrifically traumatized young woman as merely as “20 minutes of action.” Rape is not “20 minutes of action” — it’s a violent act with lifetime consequences and it’s time for parents to take far less than 20 minutes of action and stand up right now and say hard things to our sons right now before it’s too late.

The Stanford rape case is about having a conversation with sons about hard things and asking sons to do holy things.  Continue here....

-- Ann Voskamp

Transform Suffering

I've always been impressed by the "alchemy" of the human heart — by its capacity to transform the suffering that comes to all of us into compassion and generosity of spirit.

I know so many people who have used their own wounds to become "wounded healers." Instead of growing bitter and passing their pain on to others, they've said, "This is where the pain stops and the love begins."

They've become better able to offer understanding and compassion to others — not in spite of their suffering, but because of it.

-- Parker Palmer

You Are One Day Away From Being Tabloid News: Why We Are All the Gorilla Pit Mom

There has been some remarkably graceful commentary for the mother of the boy who fell into the gorilla pit. We are telling stories about losing our kids in the grocery store or about that time they unbuckled their own car seats. But I want us to go a little deeper than that. We should not see articles criticizing this woman and think, “There but for the Grace of God go I.” We should see her image and think, “Hey! Look! There I am!”

Because our kids are always falling into gorilla pits. There may not be a camera present. People may not be internet shaming you. But every single day mothers (and fathers) make terrible parenting decisions that have the potential for dire consequences. Did you text your friend back with your kids in the car? Car accident....

What I wish for this shamed-by-the-entire-internet-mother is that she would not stand alone. I wish that we would see ourselves in her trauma. I wish we would remember those times that we have completely lost control. Unfortunately, we are not likely to do that. No one wants to admit that they have lost control of their lives. Because admitting that you have lost control means thinking back to a time when you actually felt like you had it. And let’s be honest, that time has never existed.

Instead, we cling to our mirage of control and we isolate the least, the last, and the lonely. We judge the woman and her five husbands...continue.

-- Sarah Condon

Patience

​As patient as I want or try to be, I have realized that being patient still is a tremendous battle. Battle, because it requires trusting in something I cannot see, in something I cannot control. It seems that lurking around nearly every corner of patience is the threat of or the accusation of not doing enough.  "You could do more, you know...you should do more, etc.".

This has a really powerful appeal and attack on the virtues of patience, one that I encounter nearly every day. But, this battle also walks me right up to the door of a good question; what is informing my impatience?

Old Enough

​For a long time, I didn't feel old enough...to really know.
Now, I feel only old enough to speculate.
Perhaps, I will live long enough to even have something to say.

Satisfied

​The human experience with satisfaction is so temporary. It is easily fully satisfied and then, almost as quickly, only desiring it to be again.

Lesvos

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

Fishermen out before dawn. None returned.
              I asked you why they left their nets behind,
but you were looking out, across to Assos,
              and maybe didn’t hear me in the wind.
We both wore the same ironic mask:
              one blue eye floating upon a white sea.
On that balcony, beside the iron table,
              a geranium held on for dear life.
All day we watched waves capsize in the rain.
              Our shoreline here: the other shoreline’s mirror.
Those aren’t nets, you said after a long time,
              but mounds of sodden jackets and lost oars.
Stray cats sheltered in the light of the café.
              We didn’t know the others huddled there.
The wind changed course and tried to explain
              by shaking the geranium, but words sank
in the crossing, so we heard under water.
              When I opened my hands, my palms burned,
as if they’d been lashed by splintered wood.
              In sleep, you told me, we have been rowing.
Truth is, no one here knows where we’re going.
              I begged you not to leave, but you’d already
slung a orange scarf over your wet head.
              There aren’t enough boats to carry them,
I shouted, so there’s nothing left to do.
              There is, you said. I’m going down to see.

-- Christopher Bakken

From the author:

“I have spent a lot of time over the years in Molyvos (a port town on Lesvos) and also in Assos (just across the water on the Turkish mainland). In the past two years, an estimated three to five thousand refugees drowned while attempting to cross the stretch of water separating those two places. Many of my Greek and expatriate friends have volunteered on Lesvos, or in refugee camps on the northern border town of Idomeni. What they have described is heartbreaking. The poem registers my sense of regret for not being there, if only to bear witness.”

Seconding The Motion

All prayer is seconding the motion. God is the initial motion, the initiative. In contemplation, we become aware of God's movement and surrender to it. We begin with "yes," ready to receive reality just as it is and ready to let it teach us. Contemplation teaches us how to say "yes"--yes to the moment, yes to the event, yes to the relationship. It is what it is before you analyze it, compare it to something else, or prefer it to something else. It takes much of your life to learn how to always begin with yes. I warn you that if you begin with no--which culture by and large trains us to do because the ego prefers the negative--it's very hard to get back to yes.

Saying "yes" to the moment allows space for the real question, which is "What does this have to say to me?" Those who are totally converted come to every experience and ask not whether they like it, but what does it have to teach them. "What's the message or gift in this for me? How is God in this event? Where is God in this suffering? What is God calling me to do?"

As you practice contemplation--in whatever form you choose--intentionally say yes to God's presence and leading. Outside your times of contemplation, stay in this posture of willingness and openness. Let the hard, consequential questions of our world's suffering stir your love into action. Discover and say yes to your unique way of participating in God's love and healing, which is already working in every life, in every place, and simply asks for you to join.

-- Richard Rohr

Medal of Honor

Pope Francis' Field Hospital for the Family

The late cardinal said that it is insufficient simply to drop the truth on people and then smugly walk away. Rather, he insisted, you must accompany those you have instructed, committing yourself to helping them integrate the truth that you have shared.

I thought of this intervention often as I was reading Pope Francis's apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. Pope Francis wants the truths regarding marriage, sexuality, and family to be unambiguously declared, but that he also wants the Church's ministers to reach out in mercy and compassion to those who struggle to incarnate those truths in their lives.

In regard to the moral objectivities of marriage, the pope is bracingly clear.

He bemoans any number of threats to this ideal, including moral relativism, a pervasive cultural narcissism, the ideology of self-invention, pornography, and the "throwaway" society. He explicitly calls to our attention the teaching of Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae regarding the essential connection between the unitive and the procreative dimensions of conjugal love (80).

However, the pontiff also honestly admits that many, many people fall short of the ideal, failing fully to integrate all of the dimensions of what the Church means by matrimony. What is the proper attitude to them? Like Cardinal George, the pope has a visceral reaction against a strategy of simple condemnation, for the Church, he says, is a field hospital, designed to care precisely for the wounded (292). Accordingly, he recommends two fundamental moves...continue.

-- Robert Barron

Solitude Is Not

Solitude does not necessarily mean living apart from others; rather, it means never living apart from one’s self. It is not about the absence of other people — it is about being fully present to ourselves, whether or not we are with others.

-- Parker Palmer

How Big

​It is important to know how big we are, but more important to know how big we aren't.

I've Noticed: Force

​I've noticed...that I feel stopped sometimes, by my fear of using force with others. I think I have something yet to discover about my relationship with force.