In Alignment

I’ve noticed…when I am in alignment internally, many other things fall into place.

The People We Don't

Instagram: drop_the_stones

George Will & 230 Others

We don't demonize immigrants. We don't single them out for attacks. We don't believe they're poisoning the blood of the country. We're a nation of immigrants, and that's why we're so damn strong.

-- Joe Biden

Speaker Johnson continues to suggest that undocumented immigrants vote in elections, but it is illegal for even documented noncitizens to do so, and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the nonprofit American Immigration Council notes that even the right-wing Heritage Foundation has found only 12 cases of such illegal voting in the past 40 years.

Conservative columnist George Will, more than 230 former officials for presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and 17 former staff members for Ronald Reagan have all recently added their names to the list of those supporting Harris. Today more than 100 Republican former members of Congress and national security officials who served in Republican administrations endorsed Harris, saying they “firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump.” They cited his chaotic governance, his praising of enemies and undermining allies, his politicizing the military and disparaging veterans, his susceptibility to manipulation by Russian president Vladimir Putin, and his attempt to overthrow democracy. They praised Harris for her consistent championing of “the rule of law, democracy, and our constitutional principles.” 

-- Heather Cox Richardson

The Atlantic

3 Observations & A Question

AI can’t render the soul of something — at best, it can only simulate it, which is still quite detectable.

We all have strengths, either innately or from development — but, no one is strong in every way.

Though certainly more than just this, at one level, people are just creatures that are orienting to their environments.

"Nothing surprises me anymore" is both sad and cynical -- how much of surprise is willingness?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Creative Joy

'Poem for the week' -- "Creative Joy":   

God of cuttlefish and crystal caverns,

who formed the farthest reaches of the cosmos

and the yet-unreached depths of the sea,

whose creative joy is manifest in our ongoing discovery

of creatures and places and workings

in our own bodies, in our world and beyond it—

Help me to believe that patience isn’t torturous

but to be inhabited with delight,

knowing that you love to surprise

and that my future is threaded with the same playful love

that gave birth to axolotls and the grand canyon and the DNA double-helix.

When you ask or otherwise expect me to wait,

may I do so like a child on the eve of Christmas:

expecting nothing other than joy

and your heart brimming with the sight of your own patience fulfilled.

-- Emily Cash, Driftwood Prayers

Cease To Love

The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.

-- Williams Somerset Maugham

In A Position

Even though there are many predictable patterns to a lot of life, you never fully know what all the unexpecteds of it will actually be. 

Invariably, there are huge disappointments and all kinds of pain.  (I don't really want to rush past this either, because we too often do...).

But, there are also amazing twists and turns of grace and wonder.  And, one doesn't cancel the other.  

One small (perhaps) example.  I noticed the other day that it is something on the order of comforting for me to step out on my back deck for my daily pre-dawn walk and look up to see the Orion star constellation there waiting for me. I know the attribution of "waiting for me" sounds a little self-interested. But, whatever the more correct version may be, it does something for my relationship with the world over which it presides.

The irony here, for me, is that while it has been there the whole time, it took me doing something to notice it.

A lot of nature is like this, indifferent to any particular noticing I would do; just going on its merry way.  Sometimes, it feels like it smiles when I join in (but I'm not always sure that isn't just something I'm hoping for).

Stay open to such possibilities so that you don’t miss them, for they surely will occur.  Life (God) will provide you with some substantial gifts, like grace and wonder. So, keep yourself in a position to recognize them…if not receive them.

Hurt vs Harm

The truth may sting, but silence can leave a scar.

We see the barriers holding back the people we work with, just as they see ours. But telling them is hard.

Telling the truth might hurt them, but not telling harms them.

-- Shane Parrish

Feel Better

I’m wondering…about why there are SO many options that claim to make us feel better.

What does that indicate regarding all the things that make us feel bad in the first place?

 

Wisdom Begins in Wonder

Evangelical Narrative

Too often, the white evangelical narrative I encounter is driven more by fear and anxiety than by the hope and confidence of the gospel.

-- John Inazu

As Christians, if we feel we have to trust in the power and might of a man to protect our ideals, we have lost a significant dimension of our faith. Continue here....

The Decalogue for a Spirituality of Nonviolence

1. To learn to recognize and respect “the sacred” in every person, including in ourselves, and in every piece of Creation....
   
   
2. To accept oneself deeply, “who I am” with all my gifts and richness, with all my limitations, errors, failings and weaknesses, and to realize that I am accepted by God...
    
3. To recognize that what I resent, and perhaps even detest, in another, comes from my difficulty in admitting that this same reality lives also in me....
    
4. To renounce dualism, the “we-they” mentality (Manicheism). This divides us into “good people/bad people” and allows us to demonize the adversary. It is the root of authoritarian and exclusivist behavior. It generates racism and makes possible conflicts and wars.
    
5. To face fear and to deal with it not mainly with courage but with love.
    
6. To understand and accept that the New Creation, the building up of the Beloved Community is always carried forward with others. It is never a “solo act.”...
    
7. To see ourselves as a part of the whole creation to which we foster a relationship of love, not of mastery, remembering that the destruction of our planet is a profoundly spiritual problem, not simply a scientific or technological one. We are one.
    
8. To be ready to suffer, perhaps even with joy, if we believe this will help liberate the Divine in others. This includes the acceptance of our place and moment in history with its trauma, with its ambiguities.
    
9. To be capable of celebration, of joy, when the presence of God has been accepted, and when it has not been to help discover and recognize this fact.
    
10. To slow down, to be patient, planting the seeds of love and forgiveness in our own hearts and in the hearts of those around us. Slowly we will grow in love, compassion and the capacity to forgive.
    

-- Rosemary Lynch and Alain Richard

Which Party Best Serves Various Societal Groups

GALLUP - Front Page

3 Observations & A Question

We bring so much of what happens to us upon ourselves.

How unaware we seem to be that our commitment to escape unhappiness is what perpetuates it the most.

So many things are about what we want to feel.

What does it mean when the best thing you did this week for someone else was to dress up for Sunday church?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Political Violence

 

I really believe that the rhetoric from the Democrats ... is making the bullets fly. And it's very dangerous. Dangerous for them. It's dangerous for both sides.

-- Donald Trump, the day after the second assassination attempt in 65 days

Trump is "both a seeming inspiration and an apparent target of the political violence that has increasingly come to shape American politics." 

-- Peter Baker

Consider this admonition to non-violence...here.

Oh, and with regard to the largely manufactured-scare conspiracies about immigrants, how about this perspective?

Rush Right Past It

Most people rush after pleasure so fast that they rush right past it.

-- Søren Kierkegaard

Indulgence

Most indulgence is self-serving.

I come from a tradition, which would then also say, assuming that is true, that all indulgence is, therefore, wrong.

But, we do love our over-simplifications, don't we?

For one thing, not everything that is self-serving is automatically wrong (mental health, for example). And, some self-indulgence actually seems to be recommended ("eat, drink, and be merry..." — Ecc 9).

In broad terms, I do think that general conservatism is better — for both personal benefit and the good of all. After all, we are not here, primarily, to simply consume things. We are here to help and support those around us, even as has been said…for the 'glory of God'. Abundance exists. Even if it does not seem to be fairly distributed (perhaps that is our job), it is especially well-used when it helps those who don't have what they need (which, by the way, could be any one of us at any given moment).

The problem with the never-indulgent view, however, is that it, more often than not, reflects a kind of attempt at control — a type of control that heads one away from something important...trust. You have to trust something, to appropriately reflect not only on how you are able to enjoy things, but also that such will be provided again. Put another way, scarcity and trust are often at odds. And, for many (particularly religious people), it seems that disparaging indulgence is really more about control than the virtues of being conservative anyway.

So, to me, it seems wise to both save for a rainy-day (yours, or your neighbor's) and be indulgent

…from time to time.

This Morning's Moon

This morning's moon seemed to nearly fill the sky down the road I was on.

It was as if it was saying, “I, too, am here and that is helpful for you to know.”

LT: Decisions

No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.

-- Daniel Kahneman

Lose Weight

Ever noticed...that (in most cases) if you want to lose weight, you have to eat (or drink) less?

And, if you want to lose more weight, you have to exercise?

And, if you want to lose even more weight, you have to eat better food?

In other words, to get what you want, it takes less of something AND more of something else.

The Narrow Path

The narrow path is not about the number of people who will end up in heaven; it's about the number of people who will allow themselves to be formed by the subversive and, ultimately, redemptive way of Jesus.

-- Rich Villodas

3 Observations & A Question

Having something and using it are not the same thing.

Almost every question we don’t really contemplate is left in a blunt-force (unrefined) condition — most answers to good questions are pretty nuanced.

There are some people who are naturally sensitive and have grown to be tougher and there are some people who are naturally tough who have grown to be more sensitive — the rest just seem to wander around...not growing at all. 

When is the last time you had (or took) the opportunity to be outside at dawn — to hear all the sound going on in nature or to see the emerging sunlight sparkling through dew-drops adorning each blade of grass?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

‘Everything you know about happiness is a lie.’ This is the secret to getting the ‘new happy’

When I was in my early twenties, I had everything that I thought would make me happy. I had a prestigious job, lived in New York City, and had complete freedom. Yet, I was absolutely miserable. At first, I ignored my emotions. Then, over time, I started to experience more challenges: getting physically ill, struggling with my mental health, and feeling lonely. One day, I found myself lying on my bedroom floor sobbing hysterically, wondering why I was so desperately unhappy.

Then, I had a moment of clarity. What if there wasn’t something wrong with me? What if I had been lied to by the world around me? Perhaps everything I had been told about what I needed to do to be happy was wrong. Continue here....

-- Stephanie Harrison

The Peace of Wild Things

'Poem for the week' -- "The Peace of Wild Things":   

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-- Wendell Berry

Imagination Is The Secret

Imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization.

-- Henry Ward Beecher

Ideas & Energy

Ideas, like institutions, that cling to the past (to prior versions) become myopic, end up withering, and eventually disappear. They become devoid of the energy and relevance that not only sustains them, but also helps them to grow and flourish.

This doesn't mean that only new ideas are good. As Ecclesiastes points out, there is nothing new under the sun.

It's the clinging dynamic that is the problem. All ideas need to be, as it were, re-invented. Even reinvention is not necessarily as much about something new as much as it is about discovery.

It's the energy of relevance to current contexts that is key. Holding on to something that has simply passed on is not a constructive use of that energy. The application of energy to how an idea can work right now is what is needed.

Clinging is a closing off of energy.  The power of an idea, new or old, is satisfying the request of the new beneficiary, the current generation, to provide the connection between what is and what is needed.  That requires openness to creative energy.

Wash away your old opinions to let new ideas in.

-- Zhu Xi

This is largely why greatness isn't something to aspire to in historical terms.  Greatness is always what is happening now that leads to something better in the future.

Don't cling (and protect).  Reach out (and provide).

An example:  Justice

Demeans Others

A grown man who demeans and disparages others is really just insecure and small.  

A grown man who does so by using the power of leadership is cruel and incapable of the service of leadership.

Truly In Jeopardy?

I’ve noticed…that I rarely live in fear of physical threat — and yet, at times, fears can still abound within me.

Why, though? 

At the end of things, given what we will know at that time, how much will we look back and say, "what were we so worried about?" 

In spite of what we're told, so little of true substance is ever in real jeopardy. 

Everyday Activities

When our everyday activities aren't sacramental, they soon become flat and we unconsciously compensate for that by increasing the dosage.

-- Fr. Ron Rolheiser

Inflation & Jobs

4 Observations (from Others)

The first hour of the morning is the rudder for your day.

-- Henry Ward Beecher

Just because results are not visible doesn’t mean they are not accumulating.

-- Shane Parrish

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. 

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

We grow in generosity as we embrace simplicity. We are able to hold all things lightly and, if need be, let them go—our possessions, our money, our pretensions, even our anger, our prejudices, and our fears.

-- Margaret Guenther 

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

On The Lighter Side:

On The Lighter Side: 

Instagram: just_4jokes

Art of Life

The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us.

-- Gloria Steinem

Why You Believe Something

Some people believe things that aren't true, no matter what new information is provided.

But why?

As scary as this is, it begs an important point.  You really have to know why you believe what you believe — in other words, what has affected what you believe?

The content of our beliefs is one thing (and important, to be sure).  But, how you've reached your conclusions about that content is equally impacting because it is too easily observable that many people believe things that are simply not true.  Why would that even be?  

Well, there are actually more things going on related to what we believe than we tend to think.  For one thing, what we believe is highly influenced by how we believe.  For example, a certain percentage of people believe something simply because it is repeated so often that they conclude it must be true.  Whether in social dynamics, politics, or even religion, repetition is a powerful influence.

But, repetition, in and of itself, isn't what makes something true, is it?

So, you really have to ask why do we believe something?  How does it happen?  What things (often cultural and psychological) affect what we believe?  

How you grew up, things that happen in your family, things that hurt you, things that helped you, and probably most significantly your social context are all among the many things that influence that powerful combination of what you think and what you feel — your beliefs.

Have you ever noticed that you wish you could still believe something that you no longer do?  What is going on there?  Believing is a function of something.  And, without recognizing what that is — what those things are, we proceed with a certain kind of chosen blindness...sometimes to our peril.

Belief is often moored to some perception of truth.  But, in reality, it may have less to do with a particular truth than we tend to think.  This is why we often still believe something in spite of evidence to the contrary.  In other words, we believe it anyway.  But often without any really defendable reason; because what we believe is often not really based that much on reason.  It is based on other needs we have as human-beings (many that we are often unaware of), like the way we want (or don’t want) to feel.

I have come to believe in my life that people, more than they fear death, they fear not belonging.

-- Adam Kinzinger

We laugh now, but many people used to believe the earth was flat.  And, that it was the center of the universe.  And, that...well, the list goes on and on.  Silly?  The point is, one needs to know how that could happen?  And, if it could then, what are some of the same dynamics that are involved in what we believe today?

The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe.

— James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

This is often why people seem afraid to question their beliefs, isn't it?  That we would cease to believe altogether?  But, often what really happens is that our beliefs evolve, as a function of our experience, as they should (see Nicodemus).  

We really should know why...we believe what we believe.

What’s Right

Bad leaders care about who's right. Good leaders care about what's right.

-- Simon Sinek

Labor Day (of a different kind)

For some history on the more traditional version of Labor Day...continue here.

Stop Counting and Calculating

Once you experience being loved when you are unworthy, being forgiven when you did something wrong, that moves you into non-dual thinking.  You move from what I call meritocracy, quid pro quo thinking, to the huge ocean of grace, where you stop count or calculating.

~ Richard Rohr

3 Observations & A Question

It’s very hard (impossible?) to react and listen (at the same time).

Our most recent experience of something tends to overshadow our historically experienced one … but, never fully.

Your ego is your default control-mechanism — the more you feed it, though, the greater your illusion about that control becomes (not to mention the illusion it creates about yourself).

People often do things because of the way it makes them feel — what else would explain why would you wear a shirt like that?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

U.S.Adult Interest In Election

AXIOS

RIP: Our Dearest Fletcher

You were a better friend than we know — how we will miss you!

Is Final

 

No idea is final.

 

-- Taika Waititi

Impasses

Do you ever feel like you are at an impasse about something in your life?

Something at work, a health-concern, a social dynamic.  Perhaps something with a family member, a friend or your spouse feels stuck.  Or, something in your mind or heart feels like you just can't get past it.

When you feel like you are at an impasse, physically, emotionally, psychologically, literally or in theory, what do you do? 

Do you try to force something? Do you patiently wait long enough for the arrival of something that somehow releases the situation?  Of course, there's often gradation surrounding and in between these two options.

I’m not saying that one automatically is better than the other. But, I do know one other thing about this kind of thing — that we are often fraught with impatience….  And, impatience, more often than not, comes down to some kind of battle related to trust...of something (or someone).

Impasses often involve assumptions that have become lodged and that seem immovable. It stands to follow, then, that release of impasses (or resolutions to them) are often about discovering assumptions that we didn’t know were involved.  And, the not so funny thing about, assumptions is what they often lead to:  conclusions.

Conclusions mask and solidify assumptions, often burying them completely.

This is where patience does come in.  It takes some time (and effort) to make enough space to allow for a revelation of something...usually at the assumption level of things.  Force may be efficient, but not always effective, especially in the long run.

Impasses invariably occur.  They're a simple fact of life.  Our response (openness) to them, though, can often result in unanticipated kinds of break-through.

A Depreciating Asset

I talk a lot about the responsibility of a leader is to be optimistic, to believe that good things can happen, because optimism is sort of a depreciating asset in an organization. People look up to their leaders. And if their leaders don't believe, then they don't believe. Now, it's not just blind optimism. It's optimism coupled with a credible plan.

-- Jeff Zients

Think Certain Thoughts

Ever noticed...how difficult it is to sit down and try to think certain thoughts, to come up with new thoughts, etc.? 

Or, is that just me? 

For me, new thoughts seem to come to my consciousness more from the side or from a context in which I’m not really trying to think them.  Such things tend to pop into my mind and from there I can take it and run with it, mull it over, test it, develop it. While consciously trying to organize prior thoughts is a little easier or natural, consciously trying to think of a new thought rarely works for me.

This may be a result of the habits and structure in my life. Perhaps, it actually works the opposite way for other people and the structure in their lives allows for engagement with ideas in a different way.

Now there's a thought....

Loss of a Single Species

Faith is about making all things new. 

-- Steven Charleston, Choctaw elder and retired Episcopal bishop

We all find the life that calls to our bones. Perhaps we nourish life by putting pen to paper or hands in the dirt. Perhaps we help those who are dying to walk with joy, or a classroom of kids to sing a little louder, or by feeding the birds. Perhaps we have claimed the title of aunt, uncle, godparent, neighbor, or friend to a beloved child. All of it is necessary. 

-- Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

3 Observations & A Question

There are many things in the heart of a man — some of them are known to him…

Much of what we don’t know about is simply related to our lack of experience with it.

There are few things quite as centering as the beauty of a peaceful dawn.

When does "you should have..." move from an admonition or encouragement to a kind of condemnation?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Words Used at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions & Alcohol Consumption

New York Times

GALLUP - Front Page

Today

Who do I want to be today?

A really great question. It is one, though, that has to translate to another one. In light of who I want to be today, what do I want to do today? Which, in the end, really needs to extend to the next version of the question, what do I want to do…for someone else today?

The answer to that question is probably the best answer to the first question.

Life Engenders Life

Life engenders life.  Energy creates energy.  It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.

-- Sarah Bernhardt

A Mind Like Mine

What do I do with a mind like mine?

I’ve talked to enough people that I'd be surprised if we all don't say something like this, at one point or another.

Over time, we come to recognize that there are clear patterns or pathways to the way that our minds seems to work. Some of it is innate. Some of it is conditioned. And, some of it is developed. Either way, the combination often seems to resort to the modality in which it tends to go. Why do I think this thought over and over? Why do I come back to this way of thinking so often? The answer, in part, is that this is a mechanism that provides some type of ease in navigating our perceptions of the world and life.

We think the way we think, largely, because it is easier for us to think that way. Whether by habit, by design or intention, we seem to choose mental routes because they are familiar to us…and, in that way, easier. Sometimes, it may be appropriate to fight those patterns in an effort to develop new ones, especially when the ones that have developed are destructive.

But, aside from those scenarios, perhaps the better use of our effort and energy would be to ask ourselves something closer to, what can I do with my mind that works in this way? Where can I apply it? What use could it be to me beyond the confines of itself?

What could I do with a mind like mine?

LT: Doesn’t Complain

Leadership doesn’t complain.

Let It Flow

I’ve noticed…that I am rarely (if ever) in perfect flow. 

What I mean is, because I’m still tinkering with too much of the details of my life — assessing them, organizing them — I never fully let them translate who I am to where I am and to those around me. The combination of perfecting myself, in the context of truly serving the needs of others, not only stunts my growth, but inhibits my ultimate sense of being — which is really where the crux of my existence and where the meaning of it lies. 

A little more of this and a little less of that pails in significance against the scale of any perfection I can give to someone else. The real value of what is in me is what flows from me or through me. And, because of that dynamic, what is really significant then is the flow within me, not the perfection of me (although some of that tends to happen in the state of flow). The irony is that it is in the process of giving myself that I actually gain what I need and it is that service to the needs around me that ultimately matters the most. 

One metaphor may help illustrate this:  a reservoir. Often, under this premise, we see it as our job to distribute some of what we have accumulated in our reservoir, but never at the expense of being fully depleted. Accordingly, we are constantly monitoring how much we think we have to give and pretty oriented to what we have to preserve. A better metaphor of what we can be, at least in terms of water, might be that of a spring. Understanding where what we have to distribute comes from can be illuminating.  If we try to manage a spring like a reservoir, the less this true resource actually gets distributed to where it needs to go. 

The source of a spring is relatively infinite, and if we were to recognize and believe that orientation about ourselves to the world, the less preoccupied we might be with self-preservation and the more we might be freed up to be in the business of distributing the water that flows through us — after all, that is from the source of all life and is a sustenance of it.

I want to learn more about less tinkering and more release.  In other words, how to...let it flow.

Protecting God

As a general rule, I would have to say that human beings never behave more badly towards one another than when they believe they are protecting God.

-- Barbara Brown Taylor

3 Observations & A Question

Most of your ideas about other people are what you ultimately have to let go of.

Where you spend your time impacts what you see — how you see, what you think, what you conclude….

We all have desire (and need) for a degree of control over our lives — but, we all also know what it feels like when someone else is exerting that control over you. 

You do realize you don’t get any points for what you’re against, right?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Cigarette Smoking & Vaccinations

GALLUP - Front Page

If you do these 8 things, you’re mentally stronger than most

These days, we could do with all the mental strength we can muster. 

Mental strength is the ability to productively regulate your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, even in the face of adversity. And adversity is in no short supply. If you want to overcome more challenges, achieve more success, experience more happiness and less stress — it takes mental strength. 

After spending decades studying mental strength and interviewing and surveying thousands of people for my recent book, “The Mentally Strong Leader″, I have good news. The mentally strongest people tend to share certain habits we can learn from. There are patterns I’ve noticed when it comes to what they say (and don’t say) and what they do. 

1. Manage emotions without minimizing them
2. Remember confidence isn’t the absence of doubt
3. Talk to yourself like a friend in need
4. Know your resilience needs and draw on resources accordingly
5. Don’t let the daily grind get you down
6. Unlearn as needed 
7. Act like an epicenter of encouragement
8. Act like change is happening for you, not to you

Continue here....

-- Scott Mautz