In Christ, we see an image of a God who is not armed with lightning bolts but with basin and towel, who spewed not threats but good news for all, who rode not a warhorse but a donkey, weeping in compassion for people who do not know the way of peace.
-- Brian McLaren
Poetry, like nothing else, can grasp the spirit of something we all resonate with before it gets away.
'Poem for the week' -- "Venetian Siesta":
I know I’m getting away with a crime
stretched out on the couch
and listening to rain
making a hole in the afternoon
through which I can drift slowly away
for sleep is sometimes
just as delicious
as white polenta and grilled angle fish.
So I give up my hands,
my tears and my face,
the smells of tar,
damp rope and mud,
the late slanted light of November
rippling below on the gondola wood
and then I count backwards from 27
trying to pretend I’m Wallace Stevens
he of the freakish intellect
and the taste of a ruthless
wandering gourmet
who rummages in the mystical kitchen
in search of oranges and café espresso
or a blown glass peacock
or a Byzantine horse
cast in some delicate metal.
He speaks of the world,
how it’s changed by art
and bread you can’t eat
powdered with light
where someone is toasting
their mother’s health
and someone is writing a letter to death
which makes things beautiful
in its way
and also makes everyone the same
as laughter does
or the late autumn rain.
-- Joseph Millar
My grandfather fought in France in WWI, but when I think of that horrific, interminable conflict, and all that it says about war, I think not of him, but of George Lawrence Price.
In 1918, Price was a private serving with Company A of the 28th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Belgium. Along with all the other exhausted soldiers, Price had heard that their leaders had negotiated for the guns in Europe to fall silent once and for all on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The soldiers hardly dared to hope the peace would really come to pass.
As the moment of the armistice approached, a few soldiers continued to skirmish, and Price's company set out to take control of the small town of Havre. As they crossed a canal to their target, a German gunner hidden in a row of houses tried to stop them. Once safely across, just ten minutes before the armistice, the Canadian patrol began to look for the German soldier who had harassed them. They found no one but civilians in the first two homes they searched. And then, as they stepped back into the street, a single shot hit Price in the chest. He fell into the arms of his comrade, who pulled him back into the house they had just left. As Price died, German soldiers cleared their guns in a last burst of machine-gun fire that greeted the armistice.
Price’s life ended just two minutes before the Great War was over.
Even at the time, Price’s death seemed to symbolize the pointless slaughter of WWI. When an irony of history put Price in the same cemetery as the first Allied soldier to die in the conflict, disgusted observers commented that the war had apparently been fought over a half-mile of land. In the years after the war ended, much was made of George Price, the last soldier to die in the Great War.
But ever since I learned Price’s story, I have been haunted by the unknown story of the German sniper who killed him. What made that man take that one last life, two minutes before the war ended? Was it rage? Fear? Had the war numbed him into a machine that simply did its job? Or was it a final, deadly act of revenge against a world that had changed beyond his reckoning?
And what did the knowledge that he had stolen another man’s future—legally, but surely immorally—do to the man who pulled that trigger? He went back to civilian life and blended into postwar society, although the publicity given to Price's death meant that he must have known he was the one who had taken that last, famous life in the international conflagration. The shooter never acknowledged what he had done, or why.
Price became for the world a heartbreaking symbol of hatred’s sheer waste. But the shooter? He simply faded into anonymity, becoming the evil that men do
-- Heather Cox Richardson
Another lingering reflection, from a recent Randoms...:
When people don’t pay attention to us, why is it so easy to believe that they don’t care?
Has this ever happened to you?
Perhaps you had to sneak into it by catching yourself claiming something like no one cares about me. Why is it easier to portray something as extreme, than it is to simply acknowledge that you want something — something as simple as a little attention (maybe you want way more than...a little — which may be another issue)?
More often than not, isn't it just true that most people are simply more focused on their own concerns?
In spite of not wanting to admit it, truth be told, I am...more focused on my life (than on yours). I'm even sorry about that (sometimes).
Sure, people should pay more attention to others (than to themselves, given our propensity to self-obsess ). But, they just don't. We just don't.
In some cases at least, if that secret were to actually still get out somehow, people would actually see their transgression and ask you a question, about your life (or, anything, for that matter). They would actually feel bad, that such an accusation could possibly be true. They would want to make it right (even if they didn't need to, or shouldn't...).
That's probably not the biggest issue here. The bigger one probably is closer to what I do with it — with why I reach the conclusions I do...about others. Especially one like that — that they don't care.
It really isn't as personal as we are tempted to believe it is. But, we can make it seem like more than it is. We might even twist it up a bit further with a version of no one cares about me...in order to increase the chances of getting something what we want — in this case, just some attention once in a while.
For some reason, it's often not easy to simply be vulnerable and express our need or desire. But, look at what happens (the conclusions we can reach) when we don't. Perhaps, more beautifully, consider what happens when we do.
I've noticed...recently, how short-term my sense of vision is — in other words how quickly I tend to lose it...often in just a matter of days (sometimes, hours).
Maybe that hasn't really changed or maybe it has....
Compassion changes everything. Compassion heals. Compassion mends the broken and restores what has been lost. Compassion draws together those who have been estranged or never even dreamed they were connected. Compassion pulls us out of ourselves and into the heart of another, placing us on holy ground where we instinctively take off our shoes and walk in reverence. Compassion springs out of vulnerability and triumphs in unity.
-- Judy Cannato
Only people at home in such a spacious place can take on the social illnesses of their time, and even the betrayal of friends, and not be destroyed by cynicism or bitterness.
-- Richard Rohr
We cannot be empathetic only to our allies. We cannot allow fear of law enforcement excess to deprive fellow citizens of the protection they need. And we have to recognize both that threats and harassment are always wrong and that in our present moment they’re especially dangerous. Our nation is playing with fire. It’s imperative that it stop now, or the angry and the cruel will ignite a blaze that we cannot contain.
-- David French
The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.
Man is born broken. He lives by mending. Grace is the glue.
-- Eugene O’Neill
When I grow up, I’m gonna look up from my phone and see my life.
-- Phoebe Bridgers
...find the thread? (Prior Randoms...from Others).
Visual - "Fire of Fall"
Comparison is a thief of creativity. Somehow we judge ourselves by the best in others and the worst in us when, in fact, people are waiting on what we have to offer.
-- Danté Stewart
Don't wait. The time will never be just right.
-- Napoleon Hill
How does information impact us?
How has that changed?
It seems to me that information, in the end, has to be digestible; otherwise, it is mostly simply discarded. Perhaps there was a time when digestion (of information) was something that the course of things allowed to be done slowly — like working with your hands, you learned something in time, through practice. The information was repeatable and also divergent and you learned the difference and when it was happening, in part, because the pace allowed you to digest it.
Now, it seems, if it can't hold our attention, information is rather quickly discarded. On to the next data-point please. While this shift has been under way for a while now, social media has really accelerated it. "I don't have time to read this whole thing..." we might hear someone thinking. I've thought that.
But truth is a bit more nuanced and not easily reducible to sound-bites — at least when its substance is more seriously engaged.
I feel aware that what I post here on Saturday Mornings (for whoever the audience may be) needs to be accessible or it won't have opportunity for digestion (and, therefore, impact). I feel conscious of what might be too long...or too short. If people won't eat it, no possibility for digestion occurs.
Like it or not, I am playing in the information game. As always, some information gets through; what, why, and perhaps more importantly how is the key to digestion (perhaps, it always has been).
And, this may be why we seem to have more indigestion these days — information isn't impacting us in the same way and, as a result, truth isn't either.
Don’t take counsel of your fears or naysayers.
-- Colin Powell, What Colin Powell Taught Me About War and Optimism
Most major Christian holidays focus on an event in the life of Jesus, but All Saints’ Day, which falls on Nov. 1, is fixed on stories of his people.
Though the day is understood and celebrated differently in different traditions, most people in my denomination, Anglicanism, understand the term “saint” to include both canonized heroes and average Christians.
For a religious holiday, All Saints' Day is surprisingly earthy. It reminds me that for all of us — so-called religious or non-religious people alike — faith and spirituality are shaped in profoundly relational ways. No one is a “freethinker.” None of us come to what we believe on our own.
For good or for ill, we believe what we believe because of our particular encounters with people and human communities. All systems of belief and practice are handed down in ordinary ways by people with particular names, faces, languages, traditions, limitations and longings.
In popular imagination, a saint is someone who is perfect and selfless, who dwells in holy ecstasy and impeccable goodness. “Don’t call me a saint,” Dorothy Day said. “I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.”
But saints are imperfect people. And this is what draws me to this day. Christians don’t remember these men and women because they were perfect. We remember them because, like us, they were broken, selfish and fearful, yet God wrought beauty and light through their lives.
At the first Anglican church I attended, over a decade ago, we didn’t have a sermon on All Saints’ Sunday. Instead, congregants were invited to tell stories about people who had changed their life and faith. Some told stories of well-known saints — Teresa of Ávila or Francis of Assisi. But they also told of friends bringing casseroles after the death of a spouse, of people showing up when life was falling apart, of professors, parents and neighbors. It was like a less polished version of “The Moth Radio Hour,” but in church. I loved it.
The story of how I came to know God is one about chance encounters and long friendships, honest conversations and books I’ve read, people who have left the Christian faith and those who haven’t, communities who’ve loved me and dismayed me.
Though I grew up going to church, for most of my childhood, church history was a hazy and irrelevant idea. My imagination started with Jesus and his followers, then skipped across two millenniums and landed at my own congregation in a small town in central Texas. As an adult, I began learning about church history and it felt like an almost miraculous discovery. This broader global and ancient family expanded my vision of what Christianity is beyond the small confines of my culture, race and moment in time.
I learned about how Christians created orphanages and hospitals. I encountered Ephrem the Syrian, a poet and musician, who began women’s choirs and composed some of the earliest hymns for female voices, spreading literacy among women in the fourth century. He died tending the sick in a plague.
I read about Felicity, an enslaved woman who was martyred in the third century while offering forgiveness to her executioners. I learned about Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Catholic priest who hid thousands of refugees during the Nazi regime. Kolbe died in Auschwitz after volunteering to take the place of another prisoner who was to be executed.
But learning church history was also deeply disillusioning as I discovered how parts of the church have been complicit in white supremacy, colonialism, abuse, misogyny and astonishing evil. All faith stories are shaped by human communities, and these human communities often disappoint us.
In a cultural moment where want to divide all people and institutions neatly into “good guys” and “bad guys,” those on the right side of history and those who aren’t, the righteous and the damned, this day reminds us of the checkered and complicated truth of each human heart. Martin Luther gave us the helpful phrase “simul justus et peccator” — simultaneously saint and sinner. It names how we are holy and wayward at once. It proclaims a paradox that we are redeemed yet in need of redemption.
All Saints’ Day reminds me that God meets us, saints and sinners, despite our contradictions, and makes good out of haphazard lives. It tells me that all of us, even the best of us, are in need of unimaginable mercy and forgiveness. The church is “first and foremost, a community of forgiven sinners,” writes the theologian Gilbert Meilaender. It is not “a community that embodies the practices of perfection” but instead “a body of believers who still live ‘in the flesh,’ who are still part of the world, suffering the transformations effected by God’s grace on its pilgrim way.” Recalling the stories of saints is, in the end, a celebration not of perfection but of grace.
-- Tish Harrison Warren, NY Times Newsletters
...beware of the man who is too convinced of his own righteousness.
-- Matt Labash, Anger Fever
I recommend the whole Anger Fever piece from which this observation came.
Liberty and responsibility are two sides of one thing.
For most people, it’s hard to care about things (or people) they’re not close to.
There are few things as captivating as unvarnished human emotion.
What are the earmarks of someone whose primary interest is themselves?
'Poem for the week' -- "The Power of Hope Today":
Today’s hope is a flickering candle that dwells in a snow-dusted window,
circulating the prayers of Christmas mornings.
Today’s hope is the crisp daffodil in colorless photos,
containing the soul of a small
child,
who only wishes and knows of
Today’s hope is the sparkling eyes that
truly believe in achieving
anything to reach unity.
Today’s hope is the palm to palm connection
bracing each other for the climb neither expected,
but couldn’t abandon.
Today’s hope is peering
beyond
the lingering barrier,
but still recognizing the diversity in ourselves.
Today’s hope has been dimmed and tossed recklessly,
but still generously stays with us,
for we cannot help but come back
like wide eyed children to candy.
We are said to be weak to rely on such strength,
but we are only believers.
That spark
That gives science a baffled case
And oceans an infinite plane,
is the eagle that dips
and soars
and fights,
which stands for
the hope of
today.
-- Gabrielle Marshall
Another lingering reflection, from a recent Randoms...:
Chiding (oneself or others) is rarely an effective long-term strategy for change.
If you want to be different, you really have to focus — on your habits and your use of energy.
Take habits; it's just so easy to continue doing something, isn't it? Whatever it is — complaining, eating, thinking — it is surprising how much easier and easier it becomes to keep repeating patterns that you've ended up developing, consciously or unconsciously.
Recently I've caught myself swearing under my breath, when the seemingly smallest of things don't work. Is that really necessary (or, even warranted)? No, but, I catch myself doing it, basically because I've let a habit of doing it form. If I don't choose to un-habit it, I will likely just continue doing it.
Negative self-talk can easily become habitual. We can do it without thinking, simply because we've done it before. It is easier and easier to just continue doing it. Chiding ourselves works that way. It tricks us into thinking we're doing something about things we don't like about ourselves. But, are we really? Or, are we just using negativity to keep ourselves asleep to how we are treating ourselves — never really intending to change or doing anything about it?
Which brings us to energy. Chiding (like most negative energy) too easily becomes a kind of self-reinforcing consumption of energy that leaves us with less to work with in changing for the better. Assuming that's true, what if we took the same amount of energy and directed it towards something constructive? In this case, What If...I consciously re-directed the negative energy I use to chide myself for being less than I want to be and actually created positive energy towards identifying what I want to do or be? Criticizing myself for things I don't do could be transformed into energy for working at what I do want to do.
Energy creates energy — in both directions.
Our self-talk often influences our behaviors. If I really want to change something, considering and energizing how I talk to myself might go a long way towards enabling that change. How I talk to myself about it, changes the way I end up thinking about it (and myself). How I think about something changes the way I behave regarding it.
Chiding is a form of self-talk. It consumes energy. It is often habitual. And, therefore, it inhibits my ability to change.
…not to mention that how I view myself ends up being how I view others (a topic for another day).
Early adopters change the world.
While one person choosing not to eat meat will have a small impact on our climate, it will have a much bigger impact on the restaurants, groceries, and food suppliers who notice what you’re doing.
They’ll change what they offer, and that will lead to a multiplier effect of other people changing their habits.
Buying an electric car or installing solar before they’re the obvious economic choice has the same impact. Because once marketers and investors discover that there’s a significant group that likes to go first, they’re far more likely to invest the time and energy to improve what’s already there.
The same goes for philanthropy. When some people eagerly fund a non-profit with a solution that’s still in beta, it makes it easier (and more likely) that someone else will start one as well.
It also happens in the other direction. If we buy from a spamming telemarketer, abandon a trusted brand to save a buck or succumb to the hustle, the market notices.
Very few people have the leverage to change the world. But all of us have the chance to change the people around us, and those actions change what gets built, funded and launched.
-- Seth Godin, Contagious Commerce
Ever noticed…where you tend to be most able to help someone else — is it not often related to things you have gone through?
I keep meeting fellow church leaders, artists, and other stakeholders who share a feeling of estrangement from some of the dominant expressions of American Christianity. We feel homeless for a few reasons.
While Evangelicalism is the theological and cultural tradition that formed many of us, and we're grateful for the gifts it gave us, we find its boundaries too narrow for our experience of God and its politics corrupted by an un-Christlike vision.
We believe that every person is made in the image of God, and sometimes naming each person's inherent worth has led to our own loss of belonging.
We want a more just and inclusive expression of faith, but we're also wary of the temptation to simply trade one exclusionary stance for another in the process.
We see the Spirit moving through new ideas and theological and liturgical visions, but we also embrace the depth and breadth of historical faith and worship.
We believe art and beauty are essential for vibrant spiritual community, but have also seen how highly-performative expressions of church can crowd out our authentic humanity.
We believe in the importance of deconstruction, but we also believe in rebuilding faith, and we're excited about inviting others into this way of life following Jesus.
We don't just want to take our cue from national church trends; we take our cue from our local contexts. We believe our churches should look and sound and taste more like the neighborhoods they serve than the latest church trends emerging from high profile places.
And we want faith to be a gateway to the Mystery, rather than a boundary around it.
-- Jason Miller
Sustained dysfunction often leads to authoritarianism.
In love, while words have power, presence has more.
Curiosity is like muscle — it grows from use.
When we don’t know what to do or how to approach something — What If...we pulled back and tested our assumptions (sometimes, it’s actually our assumptions that have us in a bind)?
Prior Randoms...
This summer, on a lark, I took a course on poetry geared toward Christian leaders. Twelve of us met over Zoom to read poems and discuss the intersection of our faith, vocations and poetry.
We compared George Herbert’s “Prayer” to Christian Wiman’s “Prayer.” We discussed Langston Hughes’s “Island,” Countee Cullen’s “Yet Do I Marvel” and Scott Cairns’s “Musée” to examine suffering and the problem of evil. We read about Philip Larkin’s fear of death and what he sees as the failures of religious belief in his poem “Aubade.” It was my favorite part of the summer.
In our first class, we took turns sharing what drew us to spend time with poetry. I clumsily tried to explain my longing for verse: I hunger for a transcendent reality — the good, the true, the beautiful, those things which somehow lie beyond mere argument. Yet often, as a writer, a pastor and simply a person online, I find that my life is dominated by debate, controversy and near strangers in shouting matches about politics or church doctrine. This past year in particular was marked by vitriol and divisiveness. I am exhausted by the rancor.
In this weary and vulnerable place, poetry whispers of truths that cannot be confined to mere rationality or experience. In a seemingly wrecked world, I’m drawn to Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Autumn” and recall that “there is One who holds this falling/Infinitely softly in His hands.” When the scriptures feel stale, James Weldon Johnson preaches through “The Prodigal Son” and I hear the old parable anew. On tired Sundays, I collapse into Wendell Berry’s Sabbath poems and find rest.
I’m not alone in my interest in this ancient art form. Poetry seems to be making a comeback. According to a 2018 survey by the National Endowment for the Arts, the number of adults who read poetry nearly doubled in five years, marking the highest number on record for the last 15 years. The poet Amanda Gorman stole the show at this year’s presidential inauguration, and her collection “The Hill We Climb” topped Amazon’s best-seller list.
There is not a simple or singular reason for this resurgence. But I think a particular gift of poetry for our moment is that good poems reclaim the power and grace of words.
Words seem ubiquitous now. We carry a world of words with us every moment in our smartphones. We interact with our family and friends through the written word in emails, texts and Facebook posts. But with our newfound ability to broadcast any words we want, at any moment, we can cheapen them.
“Like any other life-sustaining resource,” Marilyn Chandler McEntyre writes in her book Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, “language can be depleted, polluted, contaminated, eroded and filled with artificial stimulants.” She argues that language needs to be rescued and restored, and points us to the practice of reading and writing poetry as one way of doing so. Poems, she says, “train and exercise the imagination” to “wage peace” because “the love of beauty is deeply related to the love of peace.”
Indeed, in our age of social media, words are often used as weapons. Poetry instead treats words with care. They are slowly fashioned into lanterns — things that can illuminate and guide. Debate certainly matters. Arguments matter. But when the urgent controversies of the day seem like all there is to say about life and death or love or God, poetry reminds me of those mysterious truths that can’t be reduced solely to linear thought.
Poetry itself can engage in smart debate, of course. Yet even didactic poetry — poetry that makes an argument — does so in a more creative, meticulous and compelling way than we usually see in our heated public discourse.
Another reason that I think we are drawn to poetry: Poems slow us down. My summer poetry class teacher, Abram Van Engen, an English professor at Washington University in St. Louis, reminded me that poetry is the “art of paying attention.” In an age when our attention is commodified, when corporations make money from capturing our gaze and holding it for as long as possible, many of us feel overwhelmed by the notifications, busyness and loudness of our lives. Poetry calls us back to notice and attend to the embodied world around us and to our internal lives.
In this way, poetry is like prayer, a comparison many have made. Both poetry and prayer remind us that there is more to say about reality than can be said in words though, in both, we use words to try to glimpse what is beyond words. And they both make space to name our deepest longings, lamentations, and loves. Perhaps this is why the poetry of the Psalms became the first prayer book of the church.
I am trying to take up more poetry reading in my daily life. Reading new poems can be intimidating, but I figure that the only way to get poetry really wrong is to avoid it altogether. It helps that poetry is often short and quick to read so I fit it into the corners of my day — a few minutes in bed at night or in the lull of a Saturday afternoon.
During the past school year, with my kids home because of Covid precautions, we would pile books of poetry on our table once a week (Shel Silverstein, Shakespeare, Nikki Grimes, Emily Dickinson), eat cookies, and read poetry aloud. I now try to always keep some books of verse around.
In one of my very favorite poems, “Pied Beauty,” Gerard Manley Hopkins writes of a beauty that is “past change.” In this world where our political, technological and societal landscape shifts at breakneck speed, many of us still quietly yearn for a beauty beyond change. Poetry stands then as a kind of collective cry beckoning us beyond that which even our best words can say.
-- Tish Harrison Warren, NY Times Newsletters
Below all the chatter, noise, and bluster of our time; I hear a persistent question — it seems like people are essentially asking, will there be enough?
At a fundamental level, people seem to know that our personal and collective consumption is disproportionate to our need.
This seems to leave us in a posture of scarcity, and the fear that results from it.
The irony is that the more I consume, the more I am subconsciously aware that if everyone were consuming at that same rate, there wouldn’t be enough and, thereby, a sense that I have to get, keep, and protect everything I can.
One consequence of this is a view of the world and, thereby, others that we are not in this together and are instead competing with one another. The world, then, increasingly becomes a place of threat...and hostility (sound familiar?).
Which perpetuates the question — will there be enough (for me)?
The answer is, yes. But, that answer comes with some strings attached. There will be enough only if we recognize what Wm Paul Young said (here) about the significance of each day as it is.
It is important, too, to recognize that we often think or feel about this subject in highly monetized terms (a function of our economic / market based culture). But, of course, our sense of enough is way bigger than our financial concerns. After all, our financial concerns are simply our collective way of overcoming what we fear in our persistent question.
Because below our surface version of the question is the prevailing concern about whether we are enough. It is fascinating to observe that we actually believe that if we have enough, we won't really have the question of whether we are enough. It is almost as if we say, in effect, if I have enough I don't have to care about the rest. But, the rest is where is real answer is — we are not enough on our own. With ourselves, with others, with the earth, with God.
It is, after all, with God that the answers we seek come. God has no scarcity. God created everything. God created us. God created me. Our sense of scarcity is a result of our lack of recognition of what true abundance is and where it comes from.
We have more than enough.
But, we can destroy a lot of it...
...if we don't recognize that and live accordingly with everyone and everything else in less fearful, consumptive, and hoarding ways.
-- Isaac Newton
I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don't want to lose it. ...It has to do with the enormity and the quickness and the suddenness of life and death. Oh my god, it’s unbelievable.
The moment you see the vulnerability of everything; it’s so small. This air, which is keeping us alive, is thinner than your skin.
Everybody in the world needs to do this. Everybody in the world needs to see.
-- William Shatner
I'm no space-geek, but I was impressed by the impact the different perspective about our existence had on Shatner. Knowing about something (like playing a role about it on TV), is not the same thing as experiencing it.
I’m wondering…about what the mainline religion Origin Stories would look like from the perspective of a woman?
I wouldn't have considered it very much had I not read a poem by a black woman (I am a white man) that got me wondering....
You might say (or just think), why would that be important? Why it wouldn't be may be more telling....
We are so often a product of the narrative of the time and space in which we are immersed.
To empty the self is not an act of denial, but of fulfillment, for it creates space for God to fill one’s being.
-- Sallie McFague
Being...patient is an active (engaged) kind of waiting.
One way to get better at something is to actually do it.
Winning isn't the only metric of success; in fact, in our culture now, it may be necessary to more seriously embrace alternative measures of success.
Don't we know by now what lack of regulation (personal and collective), more often than not, seems to appeal to?
Prior Randoms...
A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.
Another lingering reflection, from a recent Randoms...:
When you give of yourself, it tends to cost you something.
I'm guessing most people are either consciously or sub-consciously aware of this, which often fosters an impulse to a question like — do I want, then, to give of myself?
Perhaps this tendency accumulates over time (prior experience influencing the present one).
Cost, though (depending on the severity of the situation), becomes a way to truncate something that (not only isn't necessary) limits the dynamics involved in giving. Because giving is a reality that plays not as much in loss as it does in expansion.
You have probably heard people say, when you give, you also receive.
And what is received is often in a different dimension (than what is given), which makes the equation-format for evaluating giving-at-a-cost pretty arbitrary.
In the end, we don't sustain a spirit of giving by maintaining cost-benefit analysis. That is not why we give. More often we give because of need — it is for the good of someone else. And, when need isn't a primary driver, we find ourselves giving because of the good that doing so enhances.
Giving of ourselves extends something we have for the good of something or someone else.
We don't, in the end, give because of what we receive. We give of ourselves...because whatever the cost may be, it is good for us (both givers and receivers) to do so...and that kind of giving both extends and expands the goodness of it.
One doesn’t lead because he or she is a leader. One leads because they...lead.
Leading is often confused by perceptions about the role of leadership. The role of leading is not really what leading is about — too many people aspire to the role more than they do to actual leading.
University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross defines awe as “the wonder we feel when we encounter something powerful that we can’t easily explain.” Often the things which bring us awe have an element of vastness and complexity. Think of a starry night sky, an act of great kindness, or the beauty of something small and intricate. During your workday the colors of the leaves outside your office or an act of sacrifice by a colleague could prompt a similar feeling — especially if you are attuned to it. In the United States and China especially, experiences of awe are frequently related to the virtuous behavior of others: an act of dedication, skill, or courage.
Cultivating experiences of awe is especially important and helpful now...continue here.
-- David P. Fessell and Karen Reivich
'Poem for the week' -- "Starfish":
This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
What distinguishes the present age is the widespread and lucrative focus on the apocalyptic: the magnification of threats and minimizing of opportunities; the exaggeration of differences; the desire to see things as worse than they are. If you feel, as so many do today, that these are some of America’s worst days, if you fear for the future of this democratic republic, then your duty is to master the fear and refuse to be governed by it. If the voice on TV is trying to scare you, turn it off. If your social media leave you anxious, shut them down. Let the worst of times bring out the best of you, for a light shines brightest in the dark.
-- David Von Drehle
I get that the picture looked bad: White guy chasing a black guy with what looked like a whip. But it wasn’t a whip and there was no whipping of any Haitian migrants. The whipping motion of the reins is a standard practice for maneuvering the horse, not rounding up humans.
This was clear very early in the development of this story, but not early enough. Vice News still has this tweet up:
"Border Patrol agents are whipping Haitian migrants at the US-Mexica border in Texas."
Continue here...
-- Jonah Goldberg
If we are unwilling to take the risk to trust others, then others will be unwilling to take the risk to trust us.
-- Simon Sinek
Ever noticed...how momentary pleasure is?
In fact, that may be one of its purposes — immersion in the moment.
But, it doesn’t (can’t?) last, and that doesn’t make it bad. There is just a new opportunity to enjoy something pleasurable or to be present to when it happens.
While many conspire for greed, and many conspire for power, and many conspire for supremacy and domination, may your spirit fill us, Holy One, to follow the way of Jesus, joining in a creative and liberating conspiracy for your peace, your shalom, your ubuntu, for all. Amen.
-- Brian McLaren
Once you have a gun, why bother to learn to read and write.
-- Robert Kaplan, Imperial Grunts
The first wealth is health.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive.
-- Maya Angelou
...find the thread? (Prior Randoms...from Others).
From Michiana Chronicles:
Like Key West had gotten into my head because of a book, Silas House’s Southernmost, Maine is in my head thanks to my honey, Larry’s, summer sojourns there with his grandparents when he was a “ute,” and the writings of Elizabeth Strout. Books, naturally: that’s where curiosity is born and nurtured. As an aside, if you’ve never read any of Elizabeth Strout’s works, get cracking. She’s a “Mainer,” sets her stories there and both the characters and settings are mesmerizing. You’ll wanna’ go, even if it is inconveniently located. Continue here...
-- Jeanette Saddler Taylor
Knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing.
Perhaps a bridge between the two is understanding.
Knowledge alone can actually become destructive. In the end, all rationality must be seasoned with some kind of actionabilty.
While insight is constructive, wisdom is necessary, or you have something that is, at the very least, incomplete.
Those who are wise know. But, those who know may not be wise.
The art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it.
-- Georg Cantor
I’m wondering…about the role of disruption in our lives. Is it something we create — by intention or neglect? Or, is it a dynamic that just happens in the normal course of things?
Is it a function of resistance within us?
It is hard not to notice the amount of effort and energy we expend to prevent or avoid being disrupted. And, yet, when it finally happens, we kind of knew it would...like it even needed to.
They take it to a craftsman who gathers the shards of the broken vessel and mends it with lacquer dusted with 24k gold powder in an art form known as “kintsugi.”
The result is an object that is imperfect but paradoxically more beautiful than it was before it broke.
What we can learn from kintsugi is what the Japanese call “the perfection of imperfection.”
When mended, the owner displays the kintsugi bowl in a place of honor in their home where visitors and guests can see and admire it. The display reminds them that imperfections are not only okay–they can even be made resplendent!
So the next time your Inner Critic tells you that you’re beyond repair, incapable, or even unworthy of love and relationship, turn to it and say, “No. God has made me perfect in my imperfection.” We can overcome the many forces that conspire to keep us from fully living our lives when we believe that God can make our damaged hearts beautiful.
-- Ian Morgan Cron
