Nonviolence

What does it mean to be nonviolent? Coming from the Hindu/Sanskrit word ahimsa, nonviolence was defined long ago as “causing no harm, no injury, no violence to any living creature.” But Mohandas Gandhi insisted that it means much more than that. He said nonviolence was the active, unconditional love toward others, the persistent pursuit of truth, the radical forgiveness toward those who hurt us, the steadfast resistance to every form of evil, and even the loving willingness to accept suffering in the struggle for justice without the desire for retaliation. . . .

Another way to understand nonviolence is to set it within the context of our identity. Practicing nonviolence means claiming our fundamental identity as the beloved [children] of the God of peace. . . . This is what Jesus taught: “Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be called the sons and daughters of God [Matthew 5:9]. . . . Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors, then you shall be sons and daughters of the God who makes [the] sun rise on the good and the bad, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” [Matthew 5:44-45]. In the context of his visionary nonviolence—radical peacemaking and love for enemies—Jesus speaks of being who we already are. He talks about our true identities as if they propel us to be people of loving nonviolence. . . .

Living nonviolence requires daily meditation, contemplation, study, concentration, and mindfulness. Just as mindlessness leads to violence, steady mindfulness and conscious awareness of our true identities lead to nonviolence and peace. . . . The social, economic, and political implications of this practice are astounding: if we are [children] of a loving Creator, then every human being is our [sibling], and we can never hurt anyone on earth ever again, much less be silent in the face of war, starvation, racism, sexism, nuclear weapons, systemic injustice and environmental destruction. . . .

Gandhi said Jesus practiced perfect nonviolence. If that’s true, then how . . . did he embody creative nonviolence so well? The answer can be found at the beginning of his story, at his baptism. . . . Jesus hears a voice say, “You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased.” Unlike most of us, Jesus accepts this announcement of God’s love for him. He claims his true identity as the beloved son of the God of peace. From then on, he knows who he is. He’s faithful to this identity until the moment he dies. From the desert to the cross, he is faithful to who he is. He becomes who he is, and lives up to who he is, and so he acts publicly like God’s beloved.

-- John Dear

Visual: Layers of Life

Visual - "Layers of Life"

Bozeman, MT

Social Reconstruction

Single cases of unhappiness are inevitable in our frail human life; but when there are millions of them, all running along well-defined grooves, reducible to certain laws, then this misery is not individual, but a social matter, due to causes in the structure of our society and curable only by social reconstruction.

-- Walter Rauchenbusch

Look up when Rouchenbusch lived AND the context about which he was speaking.


The psalms remind us that the way we judge each other, with harsh words and acts of vengeance, constitutes injustice, and they remind us that it is the powerless in society who are overwhelmed when injustice becomes institutionalized. . . .

In expressing all the complexities and contradictions of human experience, the psalms act as good psychologists. They defeat our tendency to try to be holy without being human first.

-- Kathleen Norris

Where To Start

It is helpful to start with questions, especially the ones being asked.

So Little Empathy

We have so little empathy for what we haven’t experienced in bodily form, not to mention those who have.

Sometimes

I've noticed...sometimes I feel the rare, yet raw surge of life pulsing through me—everything is bright and alive.  I feel hyper-aware of the brilliance, power, and danger of being (and, I suppose, of being too much, if that is possible).  Is it chemical?  Biological?  Spiritual?  Whatever the cause, I feel quite alive.

At other times, everything seems laboriously slow, seems to hurt, feels devoid of meaning, without any legitimate prospect of hope—I feel dead.

Oddly, sometimes these rather contrasting times are not too far apart.  Other times these feel more like seasons, which will only end because they theoretically do.

Sometimes I wonder what this means.

Sometimes I don't.

Is this just me?  Are we dead and alive at the same time?

YHWH's Image

'Poem for the week' -- “YHWH's Image”:

And YHWH sat in the dust, bone weary after
days of strenuous making, during which He,
now and again, would pause to consider the
way things were shaping up.  Time also would
pause upon these strange durations; it would
lean back on its haunches, close its marble
eyes, appear to doze.

But then YHWH Himself finally sat on the
dewy lawn—the first stage of his work all but
finished—He took in a great breath laced with
all lush odors of creation.  It made him almost
 giddy.

As He exhaled, a sigh and sweet mist spread out
from him, settling over the earth.  In that
obscurity, YHWH sat for an appalling interval,
so extreme that even Time opened its eyes, and
once, despite itself, let its tail twitch.  Then
YHWH lay back, running His hands over the
damp grasses, and in deep contemplation
reached into the soil, lifting great handsful of
trembling clay to His lips, which parted to
avail another breath.

With this clay He began to coat His shins,
cover His thighs, His chest.  He continued this
layering, and, when He had been wholly
interred, He parted the clay at His side, and
retreated from it, leaving the image of Himself
to wander in what remained of that early
morning mist.

-- Scott Cairns, Recovered Body: Poems

God is in us.

% of Total US Stockmarket

...something we knew we didn't know.  What do we value?

Knowing vs Belief

I really shouldn't even frame it like this—knowing vs belief—because many parts of each concept overlap each other.

But, there are some unique things to each.

It seems to me, the difference between belief and knowing is participation.

I can claim to believe something.  But, if I don't actually participate with it, I don't really know it that well.  I mostly just know about it.

For example, regarding my relationship with my wife, I don't say, I believe she loves me.  Why not?  Because I know she loves me.

How do I know?

Three things stand out to me that embody the idea of love:

• Mercy
• Firmness (Integrity, or Strength)
• Forgiveness

It is my participation in these elements of love with Tami that have led me to know she loves me.

Perspective

Patience provides perspective.

-- Simon Sinek

Influence Us

Instagram: bobgoff

It will be people with the greatest love, not the most information, who will influence us to change.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Power & Relationships

You can tell where a leader is as a person—give them some power (or authority) and see what happens, particularly in their relationships.

Do they protect the people they serve or the institutions they represent?

Details

I've noticed...certain things about details.

Some don't tend to stick to me.  Unless there's a reason for them to adhere (like pain), it seems timing details for me tend to fall into a big pot somewhere.  They're there, they're around; but, they tend to melt into something rather indistinguishable.

On the other hand, there are also some details that seem to fasten themselves to me for years—these are often related to how something or someone made me feel.  Or, ones that make me wonder how I made someone else feel.

Self-Hatred

Self-hatred is also the hatred of God, because God and ourselves are united.

-- Thomas Keating


Just remember, on the practical level, the Christian Church was much more influenced by Plato than it was by Jesus.

-- Fr. Larry Landini

Besides, there is something (God?) about the beauty of things, like the wonder of this morning's good rain, that calls out to us not to (hate ourselves).

Till It's Gone

Visual: Pop

Visual - "Pop"

Torrey Pines State National Reserve, CA

How Bold

How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.

-- Sigmund Freud


All actual life is encounter.

-- Martin Buber

Perhaps we can not recognize the depth of either of these observations without awareness of their interdependence.

Grip

We can learn how to hold things with a firm, but also loose, grip.  An inability to do so often leads to damaging people and what they need.

Best Teachers

The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see.

-- Alexandra Trenfor

I love how my wife does this with her students—what wisdom, courage, strength!

Deep Recognition

Ever noticed...that deep growth usually only comes after deep recognition?

Can Make Him A Saint

Dismiss all anger and look into yourself a little. Remember that he of whom you are speaking is your brother, and as he is in the way of salvation, God can make him a saint, in spite of his present weakness.

-- St. Thomas of Villanova


Hope is openness to surprise.

-- Brother David Steindl-Rast

Childhood Neighbors Celebrate 7 Decades Of Love

On the lighter side—what do you hear?

A Certain Contempt

This seems fitting in light of this week's posts, especially in the context of the recent mass-shootings, because religion is often used to help bring and maintain sway to such things:

To those who need profound succor and strength to enable them to live in the present with dignity and creativity, Christianity often has been sterile and of little avail. The conventional Christian word is muffled, confused, and vague. Too often the price exacted by society for security and respectability is that the Christian movement in its formal expression must be on the side of the strong against the weak. This is a matter of tremendous significance, for it reveals to what extent a religion that was born of a people acquainted with persecution and suffering has become the cornerstone of a civilization and of nations whose very position in modern life has too often been secured by a ruthless use of power applied to weak and defenseless peoples.

It is not a singular thing to hear a sermon that defines what should be the attitude of the Christian toward people who are less fortunate than himself. Again and again our missionary appeal is on the basis of the Christian responsibility to the needy, the ignorant, and the so-called backward peoples of the earth. There is a certain grandeur and nobility in administering to another’s need out of one’s fullness and plenty. . . . It is certainly to the glory of Christianity that it has been most insistent on the point of responsibility to others whose only claim upon one is the height and depth of their need. This impulse at the heart of Christianity is the human will to share with others what one has found meaningful to oneself elevated to the height of a moral imperative. But there is a lurking danger in this very emphasis. It is exceedingly difficult to hold oneself free from a certain contempt for those whose predicament makes moral appeal for defense and succor. It is the sin of pride and arrogance that has tended to vitiate the missionary impulse and to make of it an instrument of self-righteousness on the one hand and racial superiority on the other.

That is one reason why, again and again, there is no basic relationship between the simple practice of brotherhood in the commonplace relations of life and the ethical pretensions of our faith. It has long been a matter of serious moment that for decades we have studied the various peoples of the world and those who live as our neighbors as objects of missionary endeavor and enterprise without being at all willing to treat them either as brothers or as human beings. I say this without rancor, because it is not an issue in which vicious human beings are involved. But it is one of the subtle perils of a religion which calls attention—to the point of overemphasis, sometimes—to one’s obligation to administer to human need.

-- Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited

The Means

The means justify the ends, not the other way around.

Rejecting ideas too often also means rejecting people.

Drug Of Choice

I think our drug of choice these days is knowing who we're better than.

-- Nadia Bolz-Weber

The answer is not more opinions and more talk; in the end, opinions and talk are not the same thing as action.  It’s the question that needs to change.  The question can’t remain, what do they (other people—congress, the communities of the people directly impacted, etc.) need to do about this?  

That IS the problem (drug?).  

This is not somebody else's issue—it's OUR issue.  The answer can only come from me questioning myself.  It needs to start with me—what do I need to do about this?

LT: Won't Take Responsibility

When leaders won’t take responsibility (i.e., jump into the problems surrounding their people), it is rare that the people they serve will either.

Impatience

I'm wondering...is impatience a function of being insecure?

Never Been Separate

I have never been separate from God, nor can I be, except in my mind. 

-- Richard Rohr

Visual: Forces of Nature

Visual - "Forces of Nature"

Yosemite National Park, CA

Little Use

You’re of little use to someone else (especially, but not limited to times of need), if you haven’t been taking care of your own self.

Health, of any kind, is often the result of one choice at a time (just as in unhealth).

Courage To Lose Sight

If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan.  And, guess what they have planned for you?  Not much.

-- Jim Rohn


You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

-- André Gide

Not By What We Know

Instagram: bobgoff

We're not limited by what we know, but what we can imagine.

-- Bob Goff

Many Things You Don’t Want To Do

Many things you don’t want to do are actually ways for you to get better or stronger.

Mowing The Grass

I've noticed...when I mow the grass, I sometimes complain and feel sorry for myself.

Maybe that's because I think no one will notice or hear me.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking that such things are bad.  But, I’ve been wondering if I need to do such things more often (no, I'm not referring to mowing the grass...).  Because complaining and feeling sorry for myself seems to lead me to other things—like being more honest about the impact life is having on me.  And, that seems to lead me toward compassion for the impact of life on others.  I need to feel life's impact on me; feeling things keeps me alive and attentive, to myself and to others.

I need to acknowledge the basic-ness of my humanity; that I feel things, too; that I don't live above the drama of life; that I'm fully in and fully feeling the fray of human existence.  Being human is what I need to most be.

Mowing the grass is really a first-world thing; so, perhaps it is really the physical labor that provides the opportunity, to complain AND to be more fully...human.

Have The Power

We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh. We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt. 

-- Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

Debt

"Houston, we have a problem...".

The Creative Drive

'Poem for the week' -- "The Creative Drive":

A recent study found that poems increased
the sale price of a home by close to $9,000.
The years, however, have not been kind to poems.

The Northeast has lost millions of poems,
reducing the canopy. Just a few days ago,
high winds knocked a poem onto a power line

a few blocks from my house.
I had not expected to lose so many at once.
“We’ve created a system that is not healthy

for poems,” said someone. Over the next thirty years,
there won’t be any poems where there are overhead wires.
Some poems may stay as a nuisance,

as a gorgeous marker of time.

-- Catherine Barnett


From the author:

“Thinking about literary influence, I wanted to write an ars poetica out of a day’s New York Times. I turned first to the Real Estate section, which would, I figured, be least poetic and therefore most challenging. It was a fortuitous mistake—there I found Ronda Kaysen’s thoughtful lament about the fate of trees in her New Jersey suburb; her article provided the raw material for this cento (with substitutions). I tip my hat to all of the Times reporters, to whom we are indebted for their excellent and very real reporting (along with environmentalist Mike Brick and forester John Linson, whose quotes also slip into the poem). I tip my hat to all trees, which, like poems, prove simultaneously fragile and resilient.”

Accurate Mirror

How we relate to someone we love . . . provides an extremely clear and accurate mirror of how we relate to ourselves.

-- John Welwood


We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

Generalizations

Some people seem to be easily pissed off by generalizations—perhaps because they don’t feel accurately represented by whatever is being generalized.  We live in a time when this is important to recognize because we have, in fact, over-stayed our welcome with our generalizations.

That doesn’t make all generalizations untrue (though, some truly are...untrue), it simply reveals that there are ranges to things; there is variety, there are alternatives and, yes, there are patterns that are true (generally).

LT: Questions They Ask

The quality of a leader cannot be judged by the answers they give, but by the questions they ask.

-- Simon Sinek

Often times, people in leadership roles just don't ask questions, because they don't really want to know.

Threats

I've noticed...that as they get older people tend to become preoccupied by potential threats in life.

My Work

My work is to free
myself of myself
so that You can be
born in me.

-- Meister Eckhart

A Privilege To Sleep With Someone

It's a privilege to sleep with someone.

OK, I might now have the attention of some.  It struck me the other day what a privilege it is to be able to have a relationship with someone for many years, not to mention the extent to which that is true about someone you sleep with (like a spouse) for that long, too.  Perhaps, another way to put it is, it is a privilege to love another person, especially over a long period of time.

When you consider what that involves; the vulnerability at so many levels, the risk, the imposition, the challenges, the forgiveness, the joy...loving someone is as much a wonder as being loved by someone.

Visual: Once

Visual - "Once":

Joshua Tree National Park, CA

More pics from a recent trip to San Diego here....

Not Understanding Ourselves

For the most part all [our] trials and disturbances come from our not understanding ourselves.

-- Saint Teresa of Ávila

See One's Self Pass By

How good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by! 

-- Howard Thurman

Thinking

Truth be told, there may not be that much great thinking going on—a  lot of thinking, perhaps, but not much of it great.

But, as indicting as that may sound, it usually takes a lot of thinking of one kind or another to get to great thinking, perhaps even to good thinking.

Like a river, it takes a lot of moving water to get downstream, to somewhere you haven't been before.  To see something you haven't seen before.  To think something you haven't thought before—perhaps even, something great.

Self-Imposed

So many (most?) of our fears are self-imposed.

Loyalty

Ever noticed...that those who preach loyalty often require much more of it than they are willing to provide?

And, how they often use a group of people to secure it, disguising it as loyalty to certain ideas, when it is really mostly just loyalty to them?

Tell God

Instagram: bobgoff

Each of us gets to decide every day whether to lean in or step back—to say yes, ignore it, or tell God why He has the wrong person.

-- Bob Goff

Belief Narratives

Consciously (or sub-consciously), some often try to keep people 'in' a group by constructing, and then maintaining, a belief narrative. And, often the same people try to keep others 'out' of the group by questioning or challenging what they believe (not believing the 'right' thing...that the group believes).

Using belief narratives this way is really just a way of avoiding something—like the hard work in a relationship of really dealing with the pain or the discomfort that is often involved between people, especially over time.  In that way, working on what people believe or saying (narrative) that 'they' don't believe the right (same) thing is a cop-out.  It is easier—but, it's really just avoidance, it's self-protective.

And, it certainly isn't love.  Which is a bit ironic because love is often the more compelling piece of what belief itself tends to call for.

A Skull

'Poem for the week' -- "A Skull":

is like a house
            with a brain inside. Another place
where eating
            and thinking
                         tango and spar—

At night
             you lean out, releasing
thought balloons.
             On the roof
                         someone stands ready

                         with a pin—

-- Dana Levin


From the author:

“A poem can sometimes feel like something hidden behind a door: the door opens and you are invited into something strange—maybe something confounding, disturbing—in some way that is felt, beyond intellect. The reader, the writer, tries to clothe the poem in interpretation, but such poems will not completely surrender to analysis, will prefer, always, to be naked and beyond. This is part of the intimacy of poetry, part of its stubbornness, part of its genius.”

Not How This Will End

At any given moment you have the power to say:  this is not how the story is going to end.

-- Christine Mason Miller

Women Who Fight

When men will only fight to protect their own comfort, women are left to fight for others alone.

Thank God they do.

LT: Stand Up For

Good leaders stand up for the people they lead when they don't view them simply as problems.

So Different

I've noticed...I can feel so different (physically, mentally, emotionally ...spiritually) in one part of a day than in another, not to mention one day from another.  So different, in fact, I sometimes wonder what happened.  Am I the same person, each time?

Wholiness

In very real ways, soul, consciousness, love, and the Holy Spirit are one and the same. Each of these point to something that is larger than the individual, shared with God, ubiquitous, and even eternal—and then revealed through us! Holiness does not mean people are psychologically or morally perfect (a common confusion), but that they are capable of seeing and enjoying things in a much more “whole” and compassionate way, even if they sometimes fail at it themselves.

-- Richard Rohr

Piano Forte

Another rather wonderful edition of Michiana Chronicles:

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to sit in on a singing lesson with a well-known voice teacher. It was like stepping back in time. The walls of her one-room studio were covered in posters commemorating performances around the world, each one boasting faded signatures and dedications in foreign languages. On the hardwood floor sat piles of sheet music, along one wall an overstuffed couch, and in its neighboring corner a bed covered in all manner of papers. From my perch on the couch, I contemplated the ceiling with its peeling paint, the result of who knows what disasters from upstairs neighbors over the years. But of course, the main attraction of this room was on the far side: taking up one whole end of the room, a fabulously appointed honey-colored grand piano, with seductively carved legs and scrolls in all the right places.

Teacher and student took their places...continue (or listen) here.

-- Andrew Kreider

"...value, not volume. Gentle AND strong."

Visual: Active

Visual - "Active":

Monterey Bay, CA

Freedom

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

-- Galatians 5:1

My how we humans use the Bible sometimes.  Of course, the statement alone should lead one to wonder something like, set us free from what?  I'm contemplating that today.

Though perhaps only indirectly connected, I am mindful this 4th of July of some of the wonderful freedoms I enjoy, we as a nation enjoy.  I know not everyone does or can.  That knowledge alone gives me pause....

As I ran trails near our house today, I met numerous people who were doing the same -- outside, freely walking, running, or biking simply for the enjoyment of it.  Almost completely without fear, at least when compared to many of our human brethren around the world who live nearly every minute in fear of one kind or another.

I have so much freedom.  I don't have to work today, because my employee is paying me not to work.  I have mobility to be out and about, exercising however as I wish.  I have emotional equilibrium to imagine the wonder of everything around me this morning -- the color, the coolness, the sound, the smell.  I even enjoyed food I don't normally eat because I had the freedom to eat it.  So much freedom.  So much to enjoy.  I am so grateful to be aware of a God who provides of all this and more.

"It is for freedom, that Christ has set us free..."

May I live and give out of the abundance of such freedom.

Without Fully Knowing

In the initial stages of our journey in life, we seek to understand the meaning of our reality by describing our experience with it.  This is necessary and normal—among other things, it is a function and purpose of language.

As we grow and develop, we become more aware of reality we can't fully describe, because of the limitations of our experience.  And, we continue to reach for experience to impute meaning onto what we can't fully describe, what we don't fully know.  Nonetheless, an ability to know without fully knowing grows within us.

Our Limits

The fears we don't face become our limits.

-- Robin Sharma

Clarity

I’ve noticed...I think with more clarity when I am doing something else.

Around People

We need to stop building our churches around categories and start building them around people.

-- Rachel Held Evans


If we cannot love our neighbor as ourself, it is because we do not perceive our neighbor as ourself.

-- Beatrice Bruteau

Love Floods Into

Instagram: bobgoff

None of us really fall in love, we just stop making everything about ourselves, and love floods into the space selfishness leaves behind.

-- Bob Goff

The More

'Poem for the week' -- "The More":

The more I try by going it alone
   the more I believe I need to
The more I believe I can do it alone
   the less I seem to feel
The less I feel
   the more stressed I become
The more stressed I become
   the less aware I am
The less aware I am
   the less open I am
The less open I am
   the more I seem to need others to agree with me
The more I need others to agree with me
   the more I fear
The more I fear
   the more I try to go it alone

Surprise of Its Own Unfolding

I would love to live like a river flows,
carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.

-- John O'Donohue

You know something is good when your response to it is something like, "I just want to take a deep breath right now and take this in...". ...something like the above.

When You Want To

Mostly, you start to grow up when you want to.
...unless you’ve been forced to earlier.

LT: Numbers or People

Managers work to see numbers grow. Leaders work to see people grow.
​
-- Simon Sinek

Comparing Myself

I've noticed...if I took the amount of time I have spent comparing myself to others and put it towards who I am as opposed to who they are—how much time I would save?

Oh, not to mention, how much better off would I be?  How much more happy?  Free?  How much more would I be able to offer the world?

Our Effort

The goal of the spiritual life is to allow the Spirit of Christ to influence all our activity, prayer as well as service. Our role in this process is to provide conditions in our lives to enable us to live in tune with [Christ’s] Spirit. Our effort is not a self-conscious striving to fill ourselves with the important Christian virtues; it is more getting out of the way and allowing [Christ’s] Spirit to transform all our activities. Christ will do the rest. His Spirit has joined ours and will never abandon us.

-- Richard Hauser

For years now I've contemplated the question of our effort in relation to our faith.  This is one of the better descriptions I've heard regarding how our effort relates to the spiritual life.

Hiawatha Trail, MT

There is no Wi-Fi in the forest, but I promise you will find no better connection.

-- Anonymous

More pics here....

Coeur D’Alene, ID

More pics here....

Through Your Hands

The way to move information from your head to your heart is through your hands.

-- Brené Brown

Another way to say this truth is that it is through the body that we come to access what is really going on within us.  There is something incomplete about a process that doesn’t include the physicality of our existence.

Indicator

Pain is an indicator—the question is, of what?

Transported

Just like a plane takes me from Indiana to Montana, great writing or music moves me into wonderful places in my spirit.  I often feel transported.

Not Responsible

I've noticed...that I need to have space for a while where I’m not responsible for something.

For me, orchestrating is an already well-developed muscle.  It is time for some other muscles, not energized primarily by responsibility, to grow.

If it feels like I’m wandering (rather than being responsible), it could also be that I am growing.  I need to just receive such space and to resist the urge to understand it (in order to use it).

I’m looking forward to some of this happening this week as my wife and I hike and bike in Montana and Idaho.

Where Do You Want To Go?

Instagram: bobgoff

A father's job is to get down on both knees, lean over his children's lives, and whisper, "Where do you want to go?"

-- Bob Goff

Greatest Insight

When I was sixteen and first learning to drive with my mother, I nearly side-swiped a car in the adjoining lane. I still remember the fearful jolt of discovering a blind spot. I'd assumed what I could not see was not there. What a shock to realize we can miss whole parts of the world.

Learning to see beyond our perspective can save our lives. It can also reveal landscapes previously outside our imaginations. My father has told me the story of taking a course at the North Carolina Botanical Garden when I was young. The students would go out into the countryside to find and identify flowers in the wild. The course forever changed what he sees in empty fields. In fact, those fields are not empty at all. In his transformed awareness of eye-opening study, they are full of Bee-Balm, Blazing Star, Obedient Plant and Blood Root. 

All around us, unseen, are cars just off to the side, flowers out in the field, and the unique and vivid worlds of others' perceptions. It's all too easy to live a life blind to this rich complexity. Dan and Chip Heath, who wrote a book on the perils of narrow perspective when it comes to decision making, have documented the "spotlight effect," in which we pay attention only to what is focal in our minds. Everything outside that sphere of illumination is rendered invisible, even to our imaginations.

Curiosity is in short supply in our culture, political discourse and even our offices. I believe it's vital to reclaim it, as it's the path to human connection and broader vistas we could never perceive on our own. It is the prerequisite to discovery, the font of creativity and the essence of influence. It's the solution to what I'm going to dub the perception paradox: that the greatest insight is to be found in the places we don't see.  Continue here....

-- Katya Andresen

The Skylight

'Poem for the week' -- "The Skylight":

You were the one for skylights, I opposed Cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove Of pitch pine. I liked it low and closed, 
Its claustrophobic, nest-up-in-the-roof 
Effect, I liked the snuff-dry feeling, 
The perfect, trunk-lid fit of the old ceiling. Under there, it was all hutch and hatch, 
The blue slates kept the heat like midnight thatch.

But when the slates came off, extravagant Sky entered and held surprise wide open, For days I felt like an inhabitant 
Of that house where the man sick of the palsy 
Was lowered through the roof, had his sins forgiven, Was healed, took up his bed and walked away. 

-- Seamus Heaney

It is amazing how contextual nearly everything is...has to be.  Out of context, I might have glanced right over this one.  But, at the recent Nowhere Else Festival, this was used to open the event in a rather magnificent way (at least for me...and my context).

From Conservatives

I’ve learned a lot from conservatives—good and bad.

Loosen Our Grip

We have a sacred choice.  We can remain addicted to certainty because it seems to serve as an anchor in our often-troubling world.  Or we can begin to discover the plenty that lies within the mystery as we loosen our grip on certainty.

-- Christena Cleveland

So Much

So much of what we think seems to be a function of what we've been exposed to.  This is often what puts people in positions of leadership—because of what they know (whether or not that makes them a good leader is another matter altogether).  We often feel more comfortable with things we have seen or, even more, experienced.

This process of this exposure is a function of both our choosing, as well as not of our choosing.  Some things are thrust upon us—we have to deal with whatever it is.  Other things are more a function of what we pursue.  Often that disposition—pursuing things—leads us simply to more things, which then lead us to even more things, and so on.

At the end of the day, what and how we think are impacted as we get more comfortable with a reality that carries both great consistencies and great variations.  For those seeking a singular meaning of things, this tension can be crushing.  For others, where meaning is endless, it quite simply can't be described other than joy.

Most people who can change their thinking have been exposed to something new (at least to them).  In many cases, this can be described as growth and those who are interested in things like growth often have a propensity to lead others to do the same.

The Rinsing of Sleep

I've noticed...that sleep is like a rinsing of the mind and heart.  The crazy things you feel and think are rearranged and flushed.  When that doesn’t happen, as needed, you just get dirtier and dirtier—clogged up in your emotional mud.  It starts to affect how you see things, how you think.

You need sleep because it’s your body that does does your cleaning for you.

Church Does Not Allow

Most of us come to the church by means the church does not allow. 

-- Flannery O’Connor

An ER Doctor Speaks at a High School Graduation

Last week, I delivered the Baccalaureate address at my alma mater North Central High School in Indianapolis. This is what I said to the graduates.

In kindergarten, I got a prize in the science fair for painting Play-Doh black. I wedged plastic dinosaurs and saber-tooth tigers in it to make it look like the La Brea tar pits. I think it was in 4th grade when I won a ribbon in the Allisonville grade school pancake supper poster contest.

And those two pinnacle moments pretty much sum up the entirety of my academic accolades in Washington Township schools, including all the way through high school.

I got an F in high school chemistry, and an F in algebra and a bunch of C’s, a couple D’s and if it weren’t for gym and kings court singers, I doubt I would have gotten any A’s. Any kings court singers here? I was the jester in the madrigal dinner. I did a few other things. I was in junior spec, Reviewing the Situation, 1981 baby. I played trumpet in band — actually I was second to the last trumpet — which means I played exactly two notes in every song. Blaaamp blaaammp. Nobody ever saw my name on some academic kudos report sent out by the school and no parent ever uttered the words:

“Louis Profeta made honor roll, why can’t you?”

And if I had to apply to college today at Indiana University, I would not get in.

...

I ask of you, in your journey to give people a break, give your fellow human the benefit of the doubt, the patience of Job. Don’t be so quick to judge another’s behavior as rude, disrespectful, racist, sexist or intolerant. Not every bit of attitude or inattentiveness directed towards you is about you. You simply are not that important to the stranger on the street. And many people simply do not have the insight that you might demand of them. They have their own lives. Spend a day in our ER: I’ll show you real problems. You’ll see what I’m talking about. Don’t be so quick to assume the professor, the waiter, the clerk or the driver has a bias against you. Instead, entertain the prospect that perhaps their own worlds are falling apart with a sick child, a failing marriage, a terminal illness, financial struggles, an addicted sibling, or just a lack of awareness and that they are simply too preoccupied with their own lives to worry about your frailties. Continue here.

-- Louis M. Profeta

Visual: Wood It?

Visual - "Wood It?":

Muir Woods National Monument, CA

Talent

Talent is often mesmerizing, isn't it?  Even startling at times.

But, talent still needs to be cultivated—developed.

And, It still requires courage and effort.  I'm amazed at the amount of both many talented people put tout.  Good artists, athletes, writers, leaders, pastors...seem quite courageous and willing to really work at what they do.

I would also venture to say that talent still needs to be offered—given to others—because it doesn't seem to grow in isolation.

From what I can tell, these are all parts of how talent gets developed.

Few Things More Precious

I am enamored with the power of wonder (click the wonder links for a sampling). Short of love—well, and maybe beauty—I suspect there is no greater power on earth than that which emanates from wonder. It is the soul of nearly everything.

Wonder is the heart blooming. It is the prayer of the curious. It is posture that draws us into the goodness that is, and the beauty all around and through us. It is the wide-eyed marvel and faith of children seeing the magic of life. It draws us into bigger and wilder, and at the same time the right here and now. It disarms the facade and hungry performing. It invites us into the mystery.

-- Hillary McBride

Instagram: hillaryliannamcbride

Everything You Are Striving For

Everything you are striving for, you already have.

-- Rob Bell

...can you feel yourself objecting?  Good—now we're getting somewhere!

More and More

I've noticed...that Mary is right:

If you notice anything, it leads you to notice more and more.

-- Mary Oliver

Why God Needs Skin In The Game

Pascal’s Wager famously argues a rational case for belief.

Given that we cannot know whether God exists, he argues, it is better to believe than not to believe. For to believe costs us very little, but offers the possibility of eternal life. Not to believe, however, risks eternal damnation. So, given we cannot know which position is true, we might as well believe – the upside to belief is so much more attractive than the downside to unbelief: heads you win, tails nothing lost.

I don’t know anyone who has actually been convinced by this argument. Nonetheless, it remains one of the most celebrated philosophical arguments for belief – and has been credited as one of the earliest examples of probability theory.

For a sustained take-down of Pascal’s position, pick up the work of the financial-markets-trader-turned-public-philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He’s a Greek orthodox Christian by background, and someone who understands belief – and probability – far better than Pascal himself.

As he sees it, there are two fundamental problems with Pascal’s Wager. First, as he puts it in his little book of aphorisms, The Bed of Procrustes: “Those who think religion is about ‘belief’ don’t understand religion, and don’t understand belief.” And, second, because, without what he calls, as per the title of his most recent book, Skin in the Game, a wager such as Pascal’s is morally vacuous.

As anyone seriously embarking on the season of Lent will know, the Christian injunction to believe is framed in terms of the instruction to share in the suffering of the cross. “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me”. “Belief”, then, is hardly the cost-free option that Pascal proposes. Indeed, as Taleb rightly suggests, to call this a “belief” – that is, a question of epistemology – seriously misunderstands the basis of Christian discipleship.  Continue here....

-- Giles Fraser



...a rather fascinating point in the discussion occurs around 9:50 into the interview—what it means to believe in God.