LT: Behind Them

To lead people, walk behind them.

-- Lao Tzu

Heading Things Off

I'm wondering...about how many mechanisms we build and accumulate in our lives that are primarily designed to head-off something else?  

This may not necessarily be bad; in fact, it could be called learning.  

But, when does it become avoidance...of things that actually needs attention?

Isn't About Certainty

In the gospels, Jesus is asked 187 questions.  He answers (maybe) 8 of them.  He himself asks 307.  Maybe faith isn't about certainty, but learning to ask — and sit in the complexity of — good questions.

-- Kevin Nye

3 Observations & A Question

Purpose and beauty seem even better when married.

Narratives change meaning — it seems like 'conservative' now almost fully means "against liberals" (not what it used to mean, at least exclusively).

One surprising thing I’ve learned about…love is, ultimately, I have to let others love me the way they want to love me (rather than the way I want to be loved).

What If...we are being given so much more than we know in the middle of the circumstances we are in?

Prior  3 Observations & A Question….

Annual Inflation Rate Since the Start of the Pandemic

The Morning

Don't Turn Away

One of the most valuable gifts in my life was from my mom. She taught us to never look away from pain. The lesson was simple and clear:

Don’t look away. Don’t look down.

Don’t pretend not to see hurt.

Look people in the eye.

Even when their pain is overwhelming.

And when you’re hurting and in pain, find the people who can look you in the eye.

We need to know we’re not alone—especially when we’re hurting.

Even in my fifties, I find myself wrestling with the same questions that left me confused as a kid: Why do we cause each other so much pain, and why do we turn away from hurt when the only way to the other side of struggle is through it?... It just takes so much more energy and creates so much more emotional churn than having a seat and asking hurt or uncertainty to pull up a chair….

Every single day, our feelings and experiences show up in our bodies, they’re shaped by where we come from and how we were raised, they drive how we show up, and each feeling has its own unique backstory. Understanding these emotions and experiences is our life’s work. The more we learn, the deeper we can continue to explore.

-- Brené Brown

That Ask and Answer

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

-- Zora Neale Hurston

37

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude, then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

I'm afraid some (many?) would find this observation not only odd, but equally not understandable.  

But for me today, on our 37th wedding anniversary today, it rings largely true — both in concept and in experience.  How solitude, in this context, occurs could perhaps best be described in this way:

“One of the most memorable accounts of a long successful marriage comes from Dostoevsky’s wife, Anna. She and Fyodor were, she said, of contrasting character…different temperaments. Entirely opposing views. Yet they never tried to change one another. Nor interfere with the other’s soul. This, she believed, enabled her and her husband to live in harmony.”

-- John Major, The Crown

“In truth, my husband and I were persons of ‘quite different construction, different bent, completely dissimilar views.’ But we always remained ourselves, in no way echoing nor currying favor with one another, neither of us trying to meddle with the other’s soul, neither I with his psyche nor he with mine. And in this way my good husband and I, both of us, felt ourselves free in spirit.”

-- Anna Dostoevsky

It is a kind of profound respect to let another person truly be...themselves.  This is especially true when that looks quite different than what you might expect...or want.  But, ultimately, to not do that cannot really be as much about love, as it is about demand and control.

The notion of interference in another person's soul is quite something to recognize and contemplate, if not accept as something unbeguiling and distrustful.  It places you in an unfortunate position, if not a harmful one.

I have to admit...finish here.

Depth

There is a depth within you that senses the depth around you. 

-- Jason Miller

Cables

I've noticed...that I have a strained relationship with cables — I do my part and they don't do theirs.

using AI, every US president as a Pixar character.

Dan Szymborski

Self-Interest

One of my criticisms of modern American evangelical Christianity is its preoccupation with self-interest, particularly as opposed to common interest. 

Even its sense of salvation seems to be primarily private (personal).

But, this is in contrast to nearly the whole Biblical narrative of the larger community of faith it is interested in...that God is interested in and actively working toward.

Yosemite National Park: What is the famous ‘firefall’ and how can you see it?

copyright - Katie Rodriguez Unsplash

California’s incredible Firefall is back. Every February, thousands of photographers and tourists flock to Yosemite National Park to glimpse a ribbon of ‘lava’ gushing down the imposing El Capitan granite rockface. This famous natural phenomenon is actually a trick of the light, generated as sunlight reflects off of a waterfall. Continue here.... 

-- Charlotte Elton

3 Observations & A Question

Just because you’re used to it, doesn’t make it right.

Whataboutism is not a good way to set or reinforce a standard.

Your primary point of reference cannot be outside of yourself.

Suffering from earthquakes (like the recent one in Turkey) is really hard to comprehend; they feel so distant from human causality — so where does that leave us?

Prior  3 Observations & A Question….

6 Senses You Might Not Know You Had

We’ve all heard that we have five senses — sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste. That idea goes back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle. However, it’s wrong.

Modern science has identified as many as 32 senses, by looking at receptors in our bodies with the job of receiving and conveying specific information. Our senses also tend to work in tandem without us noticing a connection. We mostly take this intricate system for granted — until something goes wrong, and we gain a deeper appreciation of the complexity of the human body. Learning more about our senses can help us both understand health problems and appreciate the many ways our bodies perform beautifully. Here are six senses you probably didn’t know you possess...continue here.

Masks

Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

-- James Baldwin

Fletcher is going to die...and thoughts about compassion

Our dog, Fletcher, is 12 — he's not in imminent danger (for those of you who know him), but he is showing his age in a variety of ways.

As he rubbed up against me again the other day (making his routinely irritating contribution of hair and dander to my dark dress pants), a thought snuck past my typical reaction, "You're not going to be doing that much longer, are you?"

Not a particular watershed thought, for sure. But, it did prompt me toward something closer to wondering what I will feel when he will never do that any more. Will miss it — will I miss him?

Yes, I will. He is so presumptuous at times...and I will miss him even for that simplicity.

So, what would it be like to have compassion for him and his 'irritations'...simply because of who he is? You can see where I might be going with this....

After all, I'm showing my age, too. And, perhaps because of that, I'm catching myself actually trending toward irritability (in a number of domains) rather than toward compassion.

It got me thinking about some things; noticing some things. Like, I don't have infinite time left either. And, I need to pay more attention to some realities about my existence, too.

For example, I've discovered lately that the last person I am compassionate with is...me.

I can often easily discover compassion for someone else — just tell me their story. But, it is not as easy for me, to honor mine and to extend it to myself. And, that actually limits my compassion for others more than I often realize.

The truth is, I want compassion, as badly as anyone else. The strange part is that I hide my need for it from others. A habit (maybe)? A mechanism (more likely). In fact, this pattern often hides my need for it from myself.

So, I'm exploring these patterns of thinking and behaving (and I must say I'm not too thrilled with what it is revealing).

A week or two ago, I blew an emotional gasket. As usual, it was not about the thing that triggered it. I was bruised by it, in more ways than one. The week after I was having bizarre dreams (you know, the perennial ones we all have from time to time; but, this time with some derivative versions that were...disturbing). Something consistent and something not. What IS happening?

I shared the gory details...continue here.

Nice News: Pre-Heat

Previous Nice News....

Will You?

'Poem for the week' -- "Will You?":

When, at the end, the children wanted
to add glitter to their valentines, I said no.

I said nope, no, no glitter, and then,
when they started to fuss, I found myself

saying something my brother’s football coach
used to bark from the sidelines when one

of his players showed signs of being
human: oh come on now, suck it up.

That’s what I said to my children.
Suck what up? my daughter asked,

and, because she is so young, I told her
I didn’t know and never mind, and she took

that for an answer. My children are so young
when I turn off the radio as the news turns

to counting the dead or naming the act,
they aren’t even suspicious. My children

are so young they cannot imagine a world
like the one they live in. Their God is still

a real God, a whole God, a God made wholly
of actions. And I think they think I work

for that God. And I know they will someday soon
see everything and they will know about

everything and they will no longer take
never mind for an answer. The valentines

would’ve been better with glitter, and my son
hurt himself on an envelope, and then, much

later, when we were eating dinner, my daughter
realized she’d forgotten one of the three

Henrys in her class. How can there be three Henrys
in one class? I said, and she said, Because there are.

And so, before bed we took everything out
again—paper and pens and stamps and scissors—

and she sat at the table with her freshly washed hair
parted smartly down the middle and wrote

WILL YOU BE MINE, HENRY T.? and she did it
so carefully, I could hardly stand to watch.

-- Carrie Fountain

Care For Themselves

Ever noticed...that the people who’ve learned how to deeply take care of themselves are often the most capable of deeply caring for others?

Football: Can Still Be Bigger Than The Game

AXIOS

"The journey will continue"

Cannot Love Our Neighbor

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

-- Beatrice Bruteau

3 Observations & A Question

What is done to others is, ultimately, done to ourselves — the only distinction is timing (what goes around, comes around; you reap what you sow; etc.).

We are saturated as a society — when that happens, we are no longer able to take anything in…especially things that we need to.

 

Perhaps one of the greater opportunities we have in our growth is to learn how to live with tension — because of what happens when we don’t.

 

At what point are we so intoxicated by new ideas that we are no longer cognizant that their greater value comes not from having them, but from applying them?

 

Prior  3 Observations & A Question….

SOTU

AXIOS

It's probably just the 55+ people who are stunned by this....

Quitting Anxiety

 

Anxiety can become a habit, and mindfulness might be able to help us quit it.

Why it matters: Anxiety is the most common mental illness, affecting some 300 million people around the world, per The Lancet.

We can fixate on anxious thoughts because worrying about situations gives us a false sense of control over them. Mindfulness can help us realize that worrying for the sake of it isn't helpful.

-- Jud Brewer

In a recent study published in JAMA Psychiatry, researchers found that mindfulness training and exercises were effective in decreasing participants' anxiety levels.

The stunning revelation was that these exercises worked just about as well as anti-anxiety drugs.  Continue here....

-- Elizabeth Black

From Its Hiding Place

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.

-- Zora Neale Hurston

Our Habits

Do we become our habits? How defined are we by our habits?

Habits form.

Maybe the question for each of needs to be, which ones do I want to form?

Habits seem to have both upsides and downsides.

While one upside is that habits can actually be part of what protects and nurtures you; one downside seems to be that you can become ensconced in them.

They can insulate us, at times, from the some of the harsher realities of life — by keeping us out of some kinds of trouble. But, they can also insulate us from some of the beauty of life — from the kinds of discovery that not only keep us alive, but actually enliven us.

In other words, our habits can work with us and against us (sometimes whether we realize it or not).

Perhaps some other observations could help us:

These 5 Mindful Habits Will Keep You From Burning Out

10 Horrible Habits You're Doing Right Now That Are Draining Your Energy

20 Lessons From Atomic Habits That Changed My Life

In effect, habits are part of our strategies to be healthy in our human existence:

Long-Term Health Comes Down To Two Main Habits

Like many things, intentionality can be useful as we consider our habits.

Together

Together is better.

-- Simon Sinek

Hesitation To Pray

I’m wondering…if my hesitation about praying sometimes simply a lack of habit? Or, is it effectively that I am willing to believe that I need to provide for myself more than believe that God provides for me, especially at practical levels?

If so, that seems rather indicting; something that smacks of the point of the parable of the talents told by Jesus. Am I really prepared to say that out loud, exposing that I likely think that way more than I realize?

We live with a 'do your job' mindset in our culture. And that, at least for me, complicates things. Because I have recognized that I tend to trust most where I am putting my effort most. If that is what I need to do, then it tends to follow that I end up much of the time trusting in that (even when I realize how inadequate that seems to be).

So, what are we really talking about here? Something serious? Herein, perhaps, lies a clue to the assumptions embedded in my question — prayer is for serious things...the rest is up to me. But, breaking it down that way; how do I even know what goes in which category?

Which likely exposes something else — the sometimes hidden notion that praying is primarily about getting something.  And, that, likely is not the primary purpose (not to mention function) of prayer.

An aside, I’ve noticed that a lot of what I eat is related to anxiety that I’m feeling, almost as if the eating of whatever it is, is a kind of comfort or relief...that I need.

So, now, it’s hard not to notice that these two tracks of thinking (my use of prayer & and my use of food) could, in fact, be quite related….

Overly Spiritualized Interpretation of Christianity

In many ways, I think part of the explanation for perhaps the powerlessness of much of modern Christianity has been that it has lost touch with the Hebrew Scriptures. In particular, we have lost touch with the prophets. When we lose the sense of the prophets and their vision, we enter into a very overly spiritualized interpretation of Christianity. The prophets kept the word of God earthy. They kept it whole. They kept it real. They would not let us divide earth from heaven. They put heaven and earth together and they said, “It’s all one.”

The prophets give us a sense of the possible. They give us a sense of the impossible, too. That’s why, frankly, they are so hard to listen to — because they explode our minds and push back the limits of our imagination. They increase our capacity to feel. They intensify our capacity for suffering. That’s why people don’t want to listen to them, because prophets increase our ability to feel what God is feeling. To feel God’s pain, God’s desire, God’s longing, and even God’s anger, if you’ll allow.

-- Richard Rohr

4 Observations (from Others)

I believe truth is revolutionary; it’s part of the work of fierce love. Truth makes a personal, spiritual, ethical, and moral demand upon us. It wants to be said, known, told. It hurts and it’s inconvenient, but it’s essential to our well-being.  

-- Jacqui Lewis

Anger is a source of my creativity. It’s a vaccination against apathy and complacency. It’s a gift that can be abused—or wisely used. Yes, it’s a temptation, but it’s also a resource and an opportunity, as unavoidable and necessary as pain. It’s part of the gift of being human and being alive.

-- Brian McLaren

I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.

-- Gerry Spence

The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.

-- Gaylord Nelson

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

Change In The Cost of Food

Improving On Silence

A worthy consideration from Michiana Chronicles:

I can still feel the prickle of adrenaline, from a dozen years ago, while sitting in Quaker meeting trying to maintain silence, and knowing I was about to fail. The almost physical itch to share a story, an anecdote, a stray thread of personal philosophy, was often impossible to resist, despite the standard that one really shouldn’t speak in Quaker meeting unless one can improve upon the silence. 

Silence has rarely been a friend of mine. Like many younger siblings, I learned early on to diffuse tense silence in a room with chatter and goofs. As a student, I was Hermione Granger, flinging up a hand the first beat after a teacher’s question, to spare us the awkward silence of classroom apathy. And as I learned more about the injustices of the world, I saw how silence was a powerful tool of abusers, who bully and intimidate victims until they’re too afraid for their lives to speak up. 

And yet, I’m in a season of life when silence seems swollen with meaning. Maybe I’m learning to focus on its lessons.  

In winter walks, I’ve noticed how sounds can somehow heighten the depths of silence.  Continue (or listen) here....

-- April Lidinsky

What Makes the Emptiness Bearable

In all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.

-- Carl Sagan

Emsley Monroe Wilkins

Regularly scheduled programming interrupted by this Social-Media preview (standard deets to follow, I'm sure!):

The most precious-est thing you've ever seen (our 1st grand-daughter; 3rd grand-child) — I’m unabashedly biased!

Ultimate Test

I know many people who have a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. That's the ultimate test of how you have lived your life. The more you give love away, the more you get.

-- Warren Buffet

Physical Proximity

I've noticed...that physical proximity is important to me.  

Something isn't quite complete when I don't choose location, physicality, touch — in other words, actual experience in addition to cognitive understanding.

Not Friendship

Instagram: richvillodas

Christians are often bad at making friends with non-Christians because our end goal is not friendship.

But Jesus is regarded as a friend of sinners.

-- Rich Villodas

Besides the topic itself (not to mention the indictment), who is Rich Villodas?  For a glimpse, click here (or the IG link above)....

And, probably not completely unrelated to the essence of the above:  In honor of Tyre Nichols, who just died from a recent police-beating, click here....

All He Was Trying To Do Was Get Home

3 Observations & A Question

How we become convinced of something is not as straight-forward as we think.

Faith without doubt is just belief — though often doubt is the bridge we cross to get from belief to faith.

Religion too often is the attempt to codify God…which is a kind of impossibility from the onset.

Doesn't it all come down to what you trust in and whether trusting in yourself is, in fact, your best option?

Prior  3 Observations & A Question….

Adults Who Spend More Than They Make

AXIOS

AXIOS

Winter: A Dirge

 'Poem for the week' -- "Winter: A Dirge":  (does it not feel this way sometimes?)

The wintry west extends his blast,

   And hail and rain does blaw;

Or, the stormy north sends driving forth

   The blinding sleet and snaw:

While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down,

   And roars frae bank to brae;

And bird and beast in covert rest,

   And pass the heartless day.

“The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,”

   The joyless winter-day

Let others fear, to me more dear

   Than all the pride of May:

The tempest’s howl, it soothes my soul,

   My griefs it seems to join;

The leafless trees my fancy please,

   Their fate resembles mine!

Thou Power Supreme whose mighty scheme

   These woes of mine fulfil,

Here, firm, I rest; they must be best,

   Because they are Thy will!

Then all I want—O do Thou grant

   This one request of mine.—

Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,

   Assist me to resign.

-- Robert Burns

At Your Feet

Your path is at your feet whether you realize it or not.

-- Agnes Martin

Habits, Proximity, and Surprise

I have 3 posts unfinished posts started for today.  So, right now, I'm chiding myself with "Hey, how about a little focus here...?!?"

It's not really working, as I'm still not landing the plane of my mind.  Perhaps, sometimes it's better to just notice what is (rather than try to scold it into any particular shape)....

I have been thinking a lot about our habits — how they enable us, but also how they ensconce us.

I've also been thinking about proximity — how differently we see things when we are actually close to them.

And, I've been thinking about the role of surprise in the discoveries of my day-to-day life — how often it actually is an unanticipated by-product (perhaps of things like our habits and proximity).

Today's mash-up may be a likelihood because of things like my recent viewing of the movie "A May Called Otto", a powerful sermon I recently heard on the healing wisdom of grief, the house-fire of a co-worker, more mass-shootings, the personal disruption of the last year, a desire for change, a future I can't force my way into (but can still walk towards), etc.  So many dynamics, both of kind and nature.  

So, I sit here in the middle of it all — sometimes naïve, sometimes bewildered, sometimes frustrated, sometimes enlivened, and sometimes scared...often more powerless than I prefer to be (feel).

When I write like this, I've noticed that it is often in the revisions where the better stuff lies or, at the very least, where the clarity is.  One thought or way of expressing something leads to another, which opens up another and which leads to an eventual return to the original one, but at that point with a quite a bit more nuance and flavor in tow.

Sometimes, this can go on all day (even if I can't actually get to the editing at the time).  Today, I'm experimenting with the model here.  I'll add and subtract, tweak, revise and supplement as my engagement allows.  Let's see if and where it lands after all....

So here's a subsequent thought (approaching final descent?) — what if surprise is related to my proximity to...continue here?

Because Of Your Power

Some people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power.

-- Bell Hooks

The More Open You Are

Ever noticed...the more open you are, the more interesting people you seem to meet?

Snow Day

More snow day pics here....

Most paths lead somewhere; at least somewhere somebody else has traveled (here's a link to path-imagery I've collected over the years).

Innumerable Points of Access

In spite of the undeniable history of abuses committed in the name of religion, the monotheistic faiths [Judaism, Christianity, and Islam] offer innumerable points of access to the realm of love. We would do well to revisit the teachings and practices so carefully engineered over millennia to invoke the God of Love and bring [God] into our midst. By saying yes to the best of our own heritage and entering the holiest grounds of one another’s faith traditions, we may be able to usher in an age of love within our own lifetime. We can only do this together. Through a process of perpetual discernment and “prayer unceasing” we may dive into the well of each faith and emerge with the treasure that connects us all.

-- Mirabai Starr

3 Observations & A Question

Despite appearances, politics is not about what you believe or even what is true; it is about narrative...and the power that wields. 

Everybody should probably be an agnostic for a season (and nobody should pronounce how long that season should be for someone else).

It seems more conspicuous as we age, that we have to make more decisions without the predictability of specific outcomes.

How comfortable are you with trust right now?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Still Counting 2020

AXIOS

On the Lighter Side: When You're Drunk

On the Lighter Side:

Risk Something

Risk something or forever sit with your dreams.

-- Herb Brooks

Preparation?

My whole life has been preparation for this day.

While perhaps a bit laden with overtones of productivity and singularity, there is some truth to this notion.  At the very least, it is not too hard contemplate such an observation.

Against a backdrop of some kind of grandiose revelation, closer to the truth is the likelihood that any related revelation like this may be something like awareness and presence in the moment.  Each moment and the experience of it is, at least, related to a prior, as well as to the next, one.  In terms of days, each one adds one more element to that possibility — just as the past has informed my experience of today, so today will likely do the same for the future.  What a vision to potentially live from, weather there is any particularly specific assertible claim associated with it or not.

Does this understanding change my experience of the current moment?  Does it create more opportunity to be present to it? Or, does it move me away from it and present me with the constancy of the future, and the oft inadvertent attempt to live there, always anticipating, and never present?

Always there; never here. 

When this is prevailing upon us, do we forfeit the very thing that allows us to be more capable of being prepared for whatever the future does bring?  If the moment we are in is not being actually experienced, the growth that can come from it can be lost because we aren't actually participating in it.  We are too preoccupied with our efforts to try to always be anticipating the next one.

Do we arrive then in the future, relatively unprepared, because of this habit to rarely more fully engage in our current experience and what each moment can teach us in the present?

Growth and development seem to be predicated on our ability to experience what is happening in the now. It is often solidified by subsequent reflection on what that experience afforded us (even if that is different than what we thought it was at the time).

Some examples?

What informs me in my current job are some of the experiences in my prior jobs. 

What helps me in a conversation now often comes from what I've learned about listening from previous conversations. 

My ability to engage with someone unfamiliar to me is...finish here.

On The Other Side

 On the other side of suffering, you trust yourself.

-- Jen Hatmaker

...soak in this one a little — it grows on you as it resonates with experience.  

MLK Day: Any Religion That

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

It takes something to speak from a place that is deeper than our fear — a true sense of our humanity in the face of what is right (see one description of Dr. King here).

Agape Love

Martin Luther King Jr. defined agape love as willingness to serve without the desire for reciprocation, willingness to suffer without the desire for retaliation, and willingness to reconcile without the desire for domination.

-- Richard Rohr

3 Observations & A Question

Part of wisdom is knowing which stories are yours to tell, and which ones are not.

We only pay attention to certain things, which by implication means we aren't paying attention to other things — that's not necessarily bad, but being unaware of it can be.

It is often change in circumstances that usher us into opportunities, not to mention ideas, that we may never have considered before.

Have you ever felt way more like a function, than a person?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Word for the Year: Pause

AXIOS Finish Line

I think my word for 2023 would be ‘risk’ — where do I need to take more risks?

What would your word for this year be?

Life Is About

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it.

-- Gilda Radner

Living AND Dying

A recent walk in the woods affirmed something for me.

We are co-existing with things that are living and dying all around us...all the time. 

What does that tell us? 

Among other things, this seems to indicate that living AND dying are actually quite compatible with each other...as opposed to being mutually exclusive and something to be resisted. 

Such understanding changes our relationship with this reality. It moves us from a posture of resistance to a binary characteristic of it (that we so often presume) and toward the implications of something that we actually can (need to) cooperate with. 

Living and dying is often positioned in the context of parameters, like bookends, as if the essence of living or of life itself is ever actually truncated. A more holistic point of view would likely demonstrate that living of all kinds is perpetual and that dying is just part of it. What changes is more its form than anything else. Somehow, we’ve accumulated something close to a conclusion that the sustenance of life is predicated on the resistance to death. And yet, nothing could be further from the reality that we observe all around us — that the two are mutually inclusive and that they cooperate with each other, even in harmony.  The loss of one form is really just a transference to another form, and the sooner that we can both recognize and become comfortable with the sheer nature of this reality (and I do mean nature), the more capable  we become of perpetuating something good about what it means to really live, even as we die. 

Everywhere we look, we can see that nothing lives forever…and, if it did, there would be some real problems in the general ecosystem, in overall existence. It’s also true that we can recognize, without even trying too hard, how something lives on even after some part of it dies.  We can see this, for example, in our natural ecosystems, like in a forest. We can see this in terms of family. We might often observe (if not comment on) how a son is like a father or a daughter like a mother. Any study of history shows that so much of what lives on does so across generations. Things live on.  Death doesn't prevent life — in fact, it might actually perpetuate it.

We can even see this in the context of ideas — they come and they go and often return again. As it has been said, there is really nothing new under the sun. Most certainly, there is at least rediscovery, even to the point where the rediscovery often looks more like something brand new. 

It is so apparent that there is...finish here.

Why They Were Spoken

Listening is not simply hearing the words that are spoken.

Listening is understanding why the words were spoken. 

-- Simon Sinek

Self-Contempt

I'm wondering...about self-contempt — why does it, at times, seem so useful to us?

Grace To...

May God give you the grace never to sell yourself short; Grace to risk something big for something good; and Grace to remember the world is now too dangerous for anything but the truth and too small for anything but love.

-- William Sloane Coffin