Enneagram

My interest was recently peaked as I ran across the Enneagram spiritual formation concept:

It is a wonderful tool that can help us see and let go of the false self--which masks the image of God within us--and allow us to live from our True Self--the unique manifestation of Love that God intends us to be. It seems we are most defended against that which we most deeply know to be true, our original blessing. 

The Enneagram describes nine different personalities, each of which covers a broad spectrum from "immature" to "mature," or "compulsive" to "redeemed." It is more about recognizing "energies" than it is about describing precise traits. People who know the Enneagram in a superficial way think it's about putting people into boxes, but its real goal is to let people out of their self-created boxes. It makes us aware of our root sin, our passion, our particular trap or blindness that prevents us from experiencing reality holistically and honestly. These passions were called the seven "capital sins" by Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century, although predictably he missed the most common ones in Western civilization, which are fear and deceit. You can't see as sin what you have idealized as virtue.

Freedom from our habitual trap comes through some in-depth experience of Love, be it a sudden overflowing, hitting the bottom and being lifted up, or the gradual opening through contemplative practice. 

-- Richard Rohr

I will be exploring more of this each week for a while.

2nd College Graduate

So proud of Conner, our second college graduate.  We are grateful for the opportunity of a solid education in a healthy environment and for those who supported him through his four years.

I so enjoyed this admonishment during baccalaureate:  We carry the imagination of the Creator, the resolve of the Redeemer, and breath of the Spirit to a world in need.

Close Listening

The secret to fostering great creativity is the same as conducting a great radio interview — close listening.

-- Brooke Gladstone


The confident ask questions to learn what will connect. The insecure just keep talking with the hope something will stick.

-- Simon Sinek

Bono & Peterson

There is something extraordinary about these two figures embracing each others' faith; I often find it fascinating when the old and young(er) have a serious conversation about things that really matter. It seems to me that there is some genuine listening going on between these two.

I often feel a surprising level of emotion hearing the U2 song, '40'.  I am grateful for the unanimous opinion here that faith requires real honesty (in part, by acknowledging a prevalent kind of dishonesty).  And, I'm mesmerized here by Peterson's eyes when he talks about violence.

I Used To Think: Entrust

​I used to think...that I was responsible to make things happen, now I know that I need to entrust even the smallest of things to God.

Tend to Flowers

Photo by Rujida Kreft

For me, it is important to tend to flowers. Why would that be?

Because it is important to work at something over which I have almost no power, especially something that involves beauty.

It reminds me of who I am, and of who I am not -- and that life and growth is not something that I provide.

...not to mention the glories of these Spring mornings.  With their explosive, vibrant voices, they take my breath away...especially the flowers.

Loaves and Fishes

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Loaves and Fishes":

This is not
the age of information.
This is NOT
the age of information.

Forget the news
and the radio
and the blurred screen.

This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.

People are hungry
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.

-- David Whyte

...and here's a good 'Well ,Get Over It' story that came with it.

Have Hope

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.

-- Romans 15:4

Pastor Admits ‘Doing Life Together’ Just An Excuse To Do Whatever & A Second Chance

On the lighter side -- how about some satire:

Pastor Doug Gosport, 53, admitted that his recent forays into “doing life together” with people in his church and community were really just an excuse to do whatever he felt like doing, sources confirmed Monday.

““Frankly, it’s genius,” Gosport reportedly crowed to three of his friends during a weekend golf outing. “Normally, you get all sorts of flak from the family if you want to go grab something to eat and just watch the game, you know? But if I tell my wife I’ve got some guys I need to ‘do life with,’ she instantly approves...continue here.

This, though, is real -- everyone needs a second chance:

Truely Scared About

It is through risks that we leave the comfortable world of ego-protection and find what we’re truly scared about. And if we go even deeper, we’ll find what we truly desire.

-- Brady Toops

Never Too Late

It's never too late to start.  Everyone starts sometime.

You can't start before now anyway.

Feeling behind is irrelevant.  Now is relevant.

I've Noticed: Breadth

​I've noticed...that I seem more drawn towards breadth than depth, at least in terms of where my energy seems to most naturally flow. I long sometimes for the depth of narrowness, even though I tend to find depth in breadth.

Deeply Held

​Our deeply held views mature and grow when we talk about them with others, especially the ones we hold privately.

The Thing Is

'Poem selection' for the week -- "The Thing Is":

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

-- Ellen Bass

Most Of Our Theology

I’ve heard that most of our theology is autobiography.

-- Sarah Bessey

Thirst

“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.
“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.
“Then drink,” said the Lion.
“May I—could I—would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.

The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.

The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

“Will you promise not to—do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.
“I make no promise,” said the Lion.

Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.

“Do you eat girls?” she said.
“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”
“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.

It never occurred to Jill to disbelieve the Lion—no one who had seen his stern face could do that—and her mind suddenly made itself up. It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down, and began scooping up water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted. You didn’t need to drink much of it, for it quenched your thirst at once.

-- C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

Miserable

Before the truth sets you free, it tends to make you miserable.

-- Richard Rohr

Spring comes after winter.

Incidentally (perhaps), listen to today's edition of Michiana Chronicles on 'How To Make America Great', for a critical perspective on the importance of dialogue (not to mention how 'easy' violence is).

Light

​There was a sign on the door, but I couldn't see it, because it was dark.

Someone turned on an overhead light and I saw what was written on it.

The sign was there the whole time, whether I was able to see it or not.

I Used To Think: Confess

​I used to think...that I needed to right a wrong by trying harder or doing something good. Now I know that I simply need to confess a wrong and ask for forgiveness.

Attention, Will, and Character

To succeed in his studies, one must have qualities which depend on attention, will, and character.

-- Alfred Binet

Is Education Being Measured to Death?

Is education being measured to death?

...the thinking behind incessant testing is akin to treating a child suffering from hypothermia by repeatedly taking his or her temperature.

-- Jesse Hagopian

The latest obsession, for instance, is to develop and use new tests, not for assessing academic knowledge and skills, but to ascertain how well schools and teachers have developed children's character, such as their self control, reflection, and persistence. As social scientist Angela Duckwork recently noted with concern in her New York Times op-ed, nine California school districts are adding "measures of character into their accountability systems" this testing season.  Continue here....

-- Jeff Bryant

Home

Seems that God is looking more for ways to get us home than for ways to keep us out. I challenge you to find one soul who came to God seeking grace and did not find it.

-- Max Lucado

A Long Walk - Revisited

About a month ago, we took a 'long walk' as a family...a hike really.  Long walks give us a chance to think about things in a way that we often don't, in our normal fast-paced, bouncing, media-laden times.

A long walk is not unlike the prolongedness often involved in a healing process, which I could describe somewhat like this...each step leading to the next, often without much detectible precision in timing (except, perhaps, in retrospect):

• the first is a surgical slice - confession...acknowledgement, an entering in
• the second is something unexpected - forgiveness...rectifying the false reality
• then, a bandage - gratitude
• fourthly a reminder...a scar - obedience
• the fifth is a new lifestyle - freedom
• the sixth is using health for new purposes - sacrifice
• the seventh is true community - joy

...all on a path called 'healing'.

At the beginning, it feels unknowable...where are we going anyway?  We don't even know for sure.  During, it feels full of everything; awful, good, and lots in between.  In the end, it is fragrant with both a sense of a great distance traveled and arrival...a desirable destination, pre-anticipated or not.  And, we're better for it...like a long walk, when we've come to see things differently, new things.

Double View

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Double View Of The Adirondacks":

The mountains are at their theater again,
each ridge practicing an oration of scale and crest,
and the sails, performing glides across the lake, complain
for being out-shadowed despite their gracious
bows. Thirteen years in this state, what hasn’t occurred?
A cyclone in my spirit led to divorce, four books
gave darkness an echo of control, my slurred
hand finding steadiness by the prop of a page,
and God, my children whom I scarred! Pray they forgive.
My crimes felt mountainous, yet perspective
came with distance, and like those peaks, once keening
beneath biting ice, then felt resurrection in a vestige
of water, unfrozen, cascading and adding to the lake’s
depth, such have I come to gauge my own screaming.
The masts tip so far they appear to capsize, keeling
over where every father is a boat on water. The wakes
carry the memory of battles, and the Adirondacks
hold their measure. I am a tributary of something greater.

-- Major Jackson

This one also warrants listening to...here.  Sometimes, a word about or from the author is...just helpful.  In this case, a rather already compelling poem escalates its beauty with a word from the author:

“Fathering has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, and yet, like many fathers I have led an imperfect life that preceded redemption and grace. This might prove, in the end, to be my greatest gift to my children.”

The Trick Is

Organic:  Attention-to-detail vs micro-managing: the trick is knowing what details to focus on and why.

I Have Noticed: Focus

​I have noticed...that what I focus on tends to runs in patterns. I recognize things I focus on and so I focus on the things I recognize.  In other words, I see what I'm accustomed to seeing.

...and miss many other things.  Thinking often seems to work this way, too.  So, this means I'm missing a lot, including things or ideas I easily dismiss, not to mention people.

What and When

If knowledge is about what can be known, wisdom is about what and when what is known needs to be said or done.

...reminds me of this post on knowledge and wisdom, a few years ago.

Spotlight

We watched the movie, Spotlight, last night with some friends.  I was provoked....

After speaking in church yesterday about the topic of healing, I couldn't help but wonder how my descriptions of healing feel to victims of sexual abuse, like that exposed in this movie.  I felt like it was possible that I had significantly under-estimated the depth of healing needed in this life, as well as what Christ offers to this world through what He did on our behalf.

But, my ability to do justice to this idea is not really the point.  In fact, what Christ is offering us through the His resurrection is truly far greater than any of us really imagine -- both in terms of the degree of our need for healing, as well as the capacity and intention of God to do it.  I am reminded again of the significance of what God is saying:

...if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

-- 2 Chronicles 7:14

...we certainly need this level of healing -- personally, nationally, at the most basic and deepest levels of our existence.  I must keep humbling myself, praying, seeking and turning to God.  These are not rules from God, they are pathways to Him and to the healing of all that is so broken in our lives.  God desires to heal us, even of the most awful things we do to ourselves and others.  Our lives, personally and as a society, require a kind of healing that only God can provide because only he can heal us physically as well as our broken hearts, not to mention our waywardness.

...though difficult, I believe 'Spotlight' is an important movie for adults to see.  Our land is suffering from this sickness.

Glory

When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. For you must not think that I am putting forward any heathen fancy of being absorbed into Nature. Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects.

And in there, in beyond Nature, we shall eat of the tree of life. At present, if we are reborn in Christ, the spirit in us lives directly on God; but the mind and, still more, the body receives life from Him at a thousand removes—through our ancestors, through our food, through the elements. The faint, far-off results of those energies which God’s creative rapture implanted in matter when He made the worlds are what we now call physical pleasures; and even thus filtered, they are too much for our present management. What would it be to taste at the fountainhead that stream of which even these lower reaches prove so intoxicating? Yet that, I believe, is what lies before us. The whole man is to drink joy from the fountain of joy. As St. Augustine said, "the rapture of the saved soul will 'flow over' into the glorified body."

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

"I Agree In Principle..."

"I agree in principle...but in practice, I'll need to be more hard-hearted, practical, selfish, mass-oriented, short-term, callous..." Principles, it seems, are for other people.

Because business is business.
Because my boss won't let me.
Because he'll never get elected.
Because we've never done it that way.
Because the buyer will never take it for the store.
Because it's too risky.
Because I'm under a lot of pressure.
Because I'm afraid.
Principle, of course, is for us, not only for other people. One of the great privileges of not living on the edge of disaster is that we have the ability to act on our principles.

The hard part is realizing that it's never the edge of disaster, and that the long run is always shorter than we imagine.

-- Seth Godin

Beauty Is Confession

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "Beauty is Confession":

Question the beauty of the earth,
the beauty of the sea,
the beauty of the wide air around you,
the beauty of the sky;
question the order of the stars,
the sun whose brightness lights the days,
the moon whose splendor softens the gloom of night;
question the living creatures that move in the waters,
that roam upon the earth,
that fly through the air;
the spirit that lies hidden,
the matter that is manifest;
the visible things that are ruled,
the invisible things that rule them;
question all these.

They will answer you:
"Behold and see, we are beautiful."

Their beauty is their confession of God.

-- St. Augustine

April is national poetry month. It seems fitting to take a while (month) to celebrate poetry; consistent with the very nature of it.

Surroundings

​We have a rather remarkable capacity to work on our surroundings, to make them more precise...and more comfortable. It can be a problem, however, when we are no longer able to see or interact with much of anything outside our surroundings and become so insulated that we are of no real use to anyone but ourselves...and our surroundings.

I Used To Think: Change Us

​I used to think...of difficult and painful things as things to just get away from. Now I know that they are designed to change us for the better...not to simply return us to the way we were.

More

Faster is not
always better,
Slower can be
deeper.
Just like
More is often
less
and Less
is actually more,
true satisfaction
does not end
with just wanting
more.
I receive more Less
when I give more
deeply,
patiently.

Costs Everything

Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people -- the one who is called, and the one who loves that one.

-- Oswald Chambers


For the joy set before him he endured the cross...

-- Hebrews 12:2

Easter: Joy & Love

Easter must be the most joyful of all joys, this side of Heaven.  Our hopes have not been dashed, they have been exceeded!

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die..."

-- John 11:25

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

-- Romans 8:31-39

Sacrifice & Liturgy

​

Photo by Rebecca Boyd

We are often caught wondering if sacrifice is worth it.  It was worth it to God...and it is for me, even if I know this only as feebly as I do.

Sacrifice is always about something more.

...this reading seems helpful to me today, especially these observations regarding violence and the role of liturgy in calling us to something different than what our culture so often offers:

This anti-liturgy is met in the true liturgy of the Eucharist, where the body of the victim makes possible the creation of a new body which lives by resurrection hope and loves by a power not of its own making.

As Lent moves toward its conclusion and its purpose, Christians journey toward resurrection where we will enact the liturgy of hope not fear, of embrace not exclusion. This liturgy is "political" in the truest sense of the word: the gathered community, the polis, enacting a counter-story to the world's politics.

If our deepest Easter metaphors have mostly to do with butterflies, we will miss this. The Easter proclamation, as Fleming Rutledge has noted, "is not a cheerful message about longer hours of sunshine. It is a world-overturning announcement about the reorientation of our entire existence."

-- Debra Dean Murphy

This is why sacrifice was worth it then and remains worth it now...because sacrifice is more about what is gained, than what is lost.

Violence

It seems appropriate to consider violence on Good Friday:

Violence is what happens when we don't know what else to do with our suffering.

This is a more profound statement than it at first appears....

But suffering, held in a supple heart, can break the heart open to compassion instead of breaking it down into cruelty. When we live with broken-open hearts, our suffering leads us to love life more, not less. Then we can become light-bearers and life-givers in a world of too much darkness and death. 

-- Parker Palmer

The miracle of Good Friday is that God was doing something about everything, even when we were still clueless...even hating.

Holy Week & Fascism

The context parallels of Holy Week and the ideals of fascism, then and now, are strikingly disturbing.  We think we need something, other than what we need, so we look in the wrong direction, to the wrong thing.  Lord, save us...save me from my own complicity.

The ultimate conversation-stopper is not the word “fascism” but fascism itself, which aims at shutting down the dialogue of differences that characterizes democracy at its creative best.

That base is aroused when would-be leaders appeal to those fearful, angry, and resentful parts in us — in all of us — that yearn for an authoritarian “fix” for our problems and a “strong man” to administer it. Lest we forget the hard-won lessons of bloody history, here are three traits of a fascist leader in the making...continue.

-- Parker Palmer

Maundy Thursday:

Here is the source of every sacrament,
The all-transforming presence of the Lord,
Replenishing our every element
Remaking us in his creative Word.
For here the earth herself gives bread and wine,
The air delights to bear his Spirit’s speech,
The fire dances where the candles shine,
The waters cleanse us with His gentle touch.
And here He shows the full extent of love
To us whose love is always incomplete,
In vain we search the heavens high above,
The God of love is kneeling at our feet.
Though we betray Him, though it is the night.
He meets us here and loves us into light.

-- Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons

I Have Noticed: More Critical

​I have noticed...that I tend to become more easily critical, when I'm less directly involved in the lives of others.

...more Graces of Lent.

Worse Than You Think

Because we live in a society that regularly peddles the notion that things are 'not that bad', it's worse than you think.

Be Human In An Inhuman Age

You are not big enough to accuse the whole age effectively, but let us say you are in dissent. You are in no position to issue commands, but you can speak words of hope. Shall this be the substance of your message? Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.

--Thomas Merton

Palm Sunday

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "Palm Sunday":

Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,
The seething holy city of my heart,
The saviour comes. But will I welcome him?
Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;
They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,
And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find
The challenge, the reversal he is bringing
Changes their tune. I know what lies behind
The surface flourish that so quickly fades;
Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,
The hardness of the heart, its barricades,
And at the core, the dreadful emptiness
Of a perverted temple. Jesus come
Break my resistance and make me your home.

-- Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons

...thanks, Jim, for passing this 'sonnet' along.

Miss Watson

Renewal, Wisdom, Wonder, and Giving

I wish I could go back and tell myself that not only is there no trade-off between living a well-rounded life and high performance, performance is actually improved when our lives include time for renewal, wisdom, wonder and giving. That would have saved me a lot of unnecessary stress, burnout and exhaustion.

-- Arianna Huffington

Decide

​You do have to decide how you want to be, as a person. And, recognize that our ability to do this is largely contingent on what we choose to believe.

I Used To Think: Farther

I used to think...that I could only go so far. Now I know that with desire, commitment and training, I can go much farther.

Unpleasantness

​We can carry the unpleasantness of each other as part of the way we help preserve the beauty of each other. After all, we are grateful when others do this for us.

Passage

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "Passage":

A dark sail,
Like a wild-goose wing,
Where the sunset was.
The moon soon will silver its sinewy flight
Thro the night watches,
And the far flight
Of those immortal migrants,
The ever-returning stars.

-- Cale Young Rice

...did we ever see the moon and stars last week!

Ask

You just have to be willing to ask.

God is always waiting for us, even inviting us...to ask.

Arizona Hiking, 2016 - Grand Canyon & Sedona

Grand Canyon (pics)...to the bottom and back up. Unparalleled beauty!

Sedona (pics)...Devil's Bridge.

...some 35+ miles altogether.  A delightful time in nature and with family.

Here are some of our reflections:

• I LOVE each of you very much and can't imagine these adventures and doing life without you. Grateful for all of the time God has given us as a family and that we (Ryan, Conner, Kenzie) have parents that sacrifice to make these amazing memories and trips happen.
• As I was hiking down, in between, and up I kept thanking God that, we are all able physically to do that kind of activity. When I got back I told my friends that I also was so grateful that this was the kind of trip my family wanted to take. #cactioverpalmtrees 
• I experience God in a really real way when I'm out in nature and traveling with you all. It breathes life into me. Even though it was an exhausting trip, it refreshed me. So thanks mum and dud for making this happen and for putting much thought into it. I also think about the idea of waiting. We've wanted to do this for three years and it made the time that much more sweet. 
• I'm grateful for Conner hiking up with me. I don't think I would've wanted to do that alone and I was grateful for the time just to be with him during that rough 5 hours too. 
• I loved being together....
• I was very grateful to see Dad standing at the top and to see him walk down and meet us. Reminded me of all the times he (and you too mom) have come alongside me during my life, met me where I am at, and walked with me.
• I was reminded that sometimes we are asked to just take one step at a time, even if we don't know what is ahead or how long  God is going to take to get us where we are going.  Each step is a courageous step towards something even if we don't know what that "thing" is. 
• I loved being together.  You are my favorite people.
• The idea that we all have our own pace/journey to walk.  Don't require/compare others to be on the same pace.
• Keep walking (just keeping on, moving long enough will get you a long way)
• We can do more than we think we can (walk farther / deeper)
• It is good to acknowledge fear (falling); it keep us focused

Keep Walking

If you want to get there, you have to keep walking.

...true in a number of respects -- physically and metaphorically.

Beauty Demands

Beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past — whether he admits it or not — can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.

-- Hans Urs von Balthasar

...a piercing description of the intimate relationship prayer and love have with beauty, a favorite of mine.

I Have Noticed: Do More

​I have noticed...that I can always do more.

...and, that it is good for me to ask these questions:

• Should I?
• Why?
• Whom am I serving?

Different Speeds

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds.

-- William James

The Answer

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "The Answer":

You have spoken the answer.
A child searches far sometimes
Into the red dust
                          On a dark rose leaf
And so you have gone far
                         For the answer is:
                                                 Silence.

   In the republic
Of the winking stars
                          and spent cataclysms
Sure we are it is off there the answer is hidden and folded over,
Sleeping in the sun, careless whether it is Sunday or any other day
       of the week,

Knowing silence will bring all one way or another.

Have we not seen
Purple of the pansy
                   out of the mulch
                   and mold
                   crawl
                   into a dusk
                   of velvet?
                   blur of yellow?
Almost we thought from nowhere but it was the silence,
                   the future,
                   working.

-- Carl Sandburg

Intention

​God has great intention to surprise us!

Steals Inward

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Never Exposed

Jim Sphorer, computer scientist at IBM's university partnerships, said that he likes to hire people from start-ups rather than right out of universities because they have experienced failure and learned from it.

Students rarely see good models of failure in their daily lives to emulate because parents and teachers often hide their mistakes. Students are never exposed, for instance, to the feedback process that is the hallmark of most jobs today.  Continue here....

-- Jeff Selingo

Too Close

Standing right next to a big building one night, I looked at the windows next to me to see if the lights were on. I couldn't tell, however, how many other windows had lights shining from them. They were at an angle from which I couldn't see; I was too close to the building.

From the middle of the park across the street, I could see all the windows, and the light coming from each of them. Distance helped me see what was really going on, when I was otherwise too close to tell.

I Used To Think: What I Do

I used to think...that what I do is important. Now I know this is perhaps not half as important as what I do after I've done it.

When I mess up, it's what I do next that probably makes the most difference.  When I do something really good, it's what I do next that is probably most significant.

In other words, it may be how I think about what I've done that most prepares me for what is next.  Am I proud?  A I humble? Am I wallowing in self-pity?  Do I get up again?  Do I understand why I do these things?

First Of All

I must see another person, first of all, as human...and all that being human really means.

Hazardous Attempt

For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding; it is the deepest part of autobiography.

-- Robert Penn Warren

​Poems can be a unique way of telling a story. At other times, they have a unique way of only inferring something, implying something or creating an impression of something. Something that more straightforward narrative or prose doesn't quite capture -- a part of something deep within us, profoundly personal...even risky, in the attempt to discover or in the exposure that may result.

February 29:
An extra day—

Like the painting’s fifth cow,
who looks out directly,
straight toward you,
from inside her black and white spots.

An extra day—

Accidental, surely:
the made calendar stumbling over the real
as a drunk trips over a threshold
too low to see.

An extra day—

With a second cup of black coffee.
A friendly but businesslike phone call.
A mailed-back package.
Some extra work, but not too much—
just one day’s worth, exactly.

An extra day—

Not unlike the space
between a door and its frame
when one room is lit and another is not,
and one changes into the other
as a woman exchanges a scarf.

An extra day—

Extraordinarily like any other.
And still
there is some generosity to it,
like a letter re-readable after its writer has died.

-- Jane Hirshfield

“Behind this poem, written February 29, 2012, was the death of a friend. I had, months before, brought her the present of a traditional bamboo-slat painted reproduction of a famous Chinese painting. She had commented, with her customary inhabitance of all things from the inside, how hard it is to paint a cow so well from the front. Her death was unexpected, and a letter from her I had not wanted to put away was still out on my kitchen table. My year’s extra day circled around it.”

Graces of Lent

There are graces all around us, many more than we know; even more available to us...if we would reflect, repent, refresh, and receive.  This week, I was struck by a Lenten reading from Ann Voskamp:

...and this version of Amazing Grace by The Blind Boys of Alabama.

Extremism

Extremism is rarely the thing we need.

Absolutes let us off the hook, because they demand not to be negotiated. But absolutes usually bump into special cases that are truly hard to ignore.  

The good middles, the difficult compromises that matter, that’s where we can build things that have long lasting impact.  

We need a compass and a place to go. But the road to that place is rarely straight and never absolute.

-- Seth Godin


More specifically, here is a helpful perspective (imho) on the Syrian Refugee Crisis, particularly as it relates to fear and ignorance.  "...we allow our fears to act as confirmation for themselves"...continue below:

Controlled by Fear, Controlled by Ignorance: America Keeps Getting the Syrian Refugee Crisis Wrong

Unexpected Tears

Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if you soul is to be saved, you should go next.

-- Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

Unexpected

Organic:  The efficacy of an unexpected complement is surprising.

I Have Noticed: Less Patient

I have noticed...​that the less patient I am with myself, the less patient I am with others. Patience with others often occurs more easily when I recognize how I am like them.

Both are clues.

I Would Have Writ

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "The Poem I Would Have Writ":

My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.

-- Henry David Thoreau

The first words are the hardest. Sound
surrounds you in the womb, grows louder
when you’re born. You listen. You know
the day will come when you must speak
words, too — that’s how we make our way
through this trackless landscape called
the world. But how? And what to say?
And what does saying do?

Later, words come easily. You learn
to speak the language of what you
want and need, to help you find a
pathway into and through your life,
to make it clear what you believe,
reach out to friends, find work to do,
heal your wounds, ease your fears,
get chance on chance to give love
and receive. Sometimes words leap
out of you in ways you soon regret —
or in ways so magical you silently
rehearse them, hoping never to forget
how these words came out of the blue,
begging to have life breathed into
them by you. You live a life of words.

Then you learn that first words aren’t
the hardest. The hardest are the last.

There’s so much you want to say,
but time keeps taking time and all your
words away. How to say — amid the
flood of grief and gratitude you feel —
“Thank you!”, or “How beautiful, how
grand!”, or “I’m so glad I survived…”,
or “I was changed forever the day
we two joined hands and lives.”

As you reach for your last words,
you realize, this is it — this ebbing tide
of language called your life, words
trailing into silence, this unfinished poem
you would have writ — had it not been
for the heartache and the gift of all
the years that you've been living it.

-- Parker Palmer

30

I am really amazed at this length of time.  As of today, Tami and I have been married now for 30 years.  This seems a bit like an odd combination of unreal, surreal, and...very real.

• I feel aware of some of the dangers we've endured over this period of time...times where we felt unsure of how we would make it through.
• I feel aware that God has been more than kind to each of us, and to us together, throughout these years together.  
• I feel aware of a deep gratitude; that we are still together, that we love each other the way we do, and for the community that God has used to shape our love.  
• And, I feel aware of this desire in me:  that I would be increasingly willing to love Tami with the love that God has loved me.

Ephesians 3 talks about this love.  The ESV describes a 'strength to comprehend'...this love.  The NIV describes it as a 'power to grasp'...this love.  I need this kind of strength and power to love...another 30 years.

Returning

As part of Lent this year, I am reading these verses out loud each day...

If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts,
  then rid yourselves of the foreign gods...
    and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve Him only,
and He will deliver you out...

-- 1 Samuel 7:3

...if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

-- 2 Chronicles 7:14

...anticipating how meaning from these apply to me these days.

Getting Old

Unrelated (I think), I am finding a beautiful reprieve on Saturday mornings from the typical, daily requirements of these early-50s days of my life.  The option to choose what to do and when to do it is...liberating, freeing, relieving of something that I now more normally live under.  I get just as much done, but the option to choose when and how is like fresh air or what you feel like after a good night's sleep.  I can even stop to jot down a thought I might have because of the spontaneity of these moments.

I think what I am grateful for is the space of these mornings...and for the kind of fast that it is from the others.  Of course, I may just be getting old.

Small Places

Many of us find ourselves in small places. And it is not because we can't get to the big places. It is because in small places people often are more open to listening, to hearing things, to being needy and because God has put us in small places; he wants us here. In the big places, few people are interested in what others have to say. They're primarily interested in advancing themselves, in getting bigger, for their own sake. They're not needy or don't recognize that they are. And, they're not listening.

We need to get more comfortable with small, the inconspicuous.

Ins and Outs

Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.

-- C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

I Used To Think: Not Enough

I used to think...that there was always something about me that wasn't enough. Now I know that this is completely true and that this misses the point.  I am never enough; God is always enough.

More Courage

It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield.

-- W. B. Yeats

Silence

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "Silence":

Within each of us there is a silence
—a silence as vast as a universe.
We are afraid of it…and we long for it.

When we experience that silence, we remember
who we are: creatures of the stars, created
from the cooling of this planet, created
from dust and gas, created
from the elements, created
from time and space…created
from silence.

In our present culture,
silence is something like an endangered species…
an endangered fundamental.

The experience of silence is now so rare
that we must cultivate it and treasure it.
This is especially true for shared silence.

Sharing silence is, in fact, a political act.
When we can stand aside from the usual and
perceive the fundamental, change begins to happen.
Our lives align with deeper values
and the lives of others are touched and influenced.

Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses,
to our selves. It locates us. Without that return
we can go so far away from our true natures
that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves.

We live blindly and act thoughtlessly.
We endanger the delicate balance which sustains
our lives, our communities, and our planet.

Each of us can make a difference.
Politicians and visionaries will not return us
to the sacredness of life.

That will be done by ordinary men and women
who together or alone can say,
"Remember to breathe, remember to feel,
remember to care,
let us do this for our children and ourselves
and our children's children.
Let us practice for life's sake."

-- Gunilla Norris

Tami and I commented again yesterday on the beautiful silence of snow.

Hardness of God

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him of whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

-- C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

Who’s Really Addicting You to Technology?

“Nearly everyone I know is addicted in some measure to the Internet,” wrote Tony Schwartz in a recent essay in The New York Times. It’s a common complaint these days. A steady stream of similar headlines accuse the Net and its offspring apps, social media sites and online games of addicting us to distraction.

There’s little doubt that nearly everyone who comes in contact with the Net has difficulty disconnecting. Just look around. People everywhere are glued to their devices. Many of us, like Schwartz, struggle to stay focused on tasks that require more concentration than it takes to post a status update. As one person ironically put it in the comments section of Schwartz’s online article, “As I was reading this very excellent article, I stopped at least half a dozen times to check my email.”

There’s something different about this technology: it is both pervasive and persuasive. But who’s at fault for its overuse? To find solutions, it’s important to understand what we’re dealing with. There are four parties conspiring to keep you connected and they may not be whom you’d expect.  Continue here....

-- Nir Eyal

From the article referenced above, I think this observation by Eyal is true:

...we should come to terms with the fact that it’s more than the technology itself that’s responsible for our habits.

Recognition and Resistance

[There’s] hardly a sin I can think of that isn’t somehow born of misperceived need, of haste and its accompanying inattentiveness, of some feverish variation once more of Hurry up and matter! Being true—ringing true—will have to involve a slow work of recognition and resistance to that mad and nervy, deluding spirit. To begin to be true is to try to choose—or risk choosing—presence over progress, really showing up, and taking the time to wonder what we’re really up to, what we’re doing and why.

-- David Dark, Life's Too Short To Pretend You're Not Religious

I am working on something different for Lent this year.

Sometimes I feel like I am a skimmer, a purveyor of variety and breadth,  Affection for variety and breadth may be one of my beauties or strengths.  But, with every strength, an inherent weakness is also often embedded therein.  At times, I feel shallow; without depth...because of all the range.  This may not necessarily be bad or good, but I do sense a desire to go more deeply into something; to experience the beauty and strength of...focus and depth.  I am watching for signals of what this might mean for me, in the next few weeks.  Where, for example, this may lead me.  In some way, whatever this is, it feels like David Dark is describing some of it for me.

Legitimate Suffering

Carl Jung said that so much unnecessary suffering comes into the world because people will not accept the “legitimate suffering” that comes from being human.  In fact, neurotic behavior is usually the result of refusing that legitimate suffering!  Ironically, this refusal of the necessary pain of being human brings to the person ten times more suffering in the long run.

-- Richard Rohr

I Have Noticed: Diminished

I have noticed...that, by the evening hours, both my willpower and my ability to physically see clearly are diminished.

I wonder if  (how) the emotional, the physical, and the spiritual are interrelated.  Ashes.

Communication -- The lllusion

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

-- George Bernard Shaw