Instructions on Not Giving Up

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Instructions on Not Giving Up":

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

-- Ada Limón

At The Center

​At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

-- Lao Tzu

Your Body

​If you disrespect yourself with your body, you make it very hard for your body to respect you.

The better you treat your body (one way of respecting yourself), the more you will be able realize who you are and what you are capable of.

Any Room?

Curiosity is essential for progress. Only when we look to worlds beyond our own can we really know if there's room for improvement.

-- Simon Sinek

This is worth not brushing off too quickly and worth contemplating its implications, in a number of realms.  Curiosity is a way to countermand assumptions; assumptions can be good and they can be bad.  Room is critical, for growth to occur.

Curiosity is the doorknob to open opportunities for change. If we don't turn it, we can become hostage to our assumptions.

Correlation?

Meet Those Who “Love Jesus but Not the Church”

The Hottest Thing at Church Is Not Your Pastor or Worship Leader

Is there a correlation between these two?  Could it be that there is a group of people who are less interested in more talking and more interested in more doing? 

Mothers Day

"I love this tree," I told my wife recently.  And, this got me thinking about why -- certainly a thing of beauty, but not all that unusual.  Or, is it?  As I've reflected a bit further, I've realized that part of my affection is connected to something more historical; something, in fact, from by childhood.  I remember visiting on occasion a section of Marietta, GA, where my Mom's mother lived.  I can still vividly recall the street she lived on, which was lined from one end to the other with white dogwood trees that seemed to hang underneath a canopy of old, large and stately trees overhead.  The sight was a bit magical to me, like Christmas lights in May.

I've come to realize that some of beauty's arrow that has so pierced me so much in life has come from such experiences.  My mother's heritage is there and it's like something from another place and time.  I have also heard my mom say, on several occasions, that her best memories of Mothers Day during the years we were growing up were when she would receive her Spring flowers for the summer.  I remember her working with them on one embankment in particular, as well as throughout the rest of our yard.  While I don't recall helping her as much as I likely should have during those years, I now do something very similar every year at this time.

More important than the flowers (though I hesitate to diminish the power of flowers in this life), I think I received so much more from my mom through those experiences.  It was the time spent together that gave me so much of who I am.  And, for that, I will be ever grateful to her, who in some ways, simply shared her own life with me through these kinds of times together.

And such gifts have a way of keeping on giving, as this has allowed me to recognize similar kinds of beauty in the mothering of our own kids by my wife.  Today our youngest daughter is struggling with some hard decisions, due to circumstances where others had clearly let her and others down.  I saw my wife say to her, ​"I'm praying for you. That you may be truthful and gracious."  These could be, perhaps, some of the most simple and beautiful flowers a mother could give to her daughter.


We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.

-- Oswald Chambers

#OpenYourWorld

The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face

'Poem selection' for the week -- "The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face":

The glory of the day was in her face,
The beauty of the night was in her eyes.
And over all her loveliness, the grace
Of Morning blushing in the early skies.

And in her voice, the calling of the dove;
Like music of a sweet, melodious part.
And in her smile, the breaking light of love;
And all the gentle virtues in her heart.

And now the glorious day, the beauteous night,
The birds that signal to their mates at dawn,
To my dull ears, to my tear-blinded sight
Are one with all the dead, since she is gone.

-- James Weldon Johnson

When I consider the idea of 'glory', I can't help but include things like the eastern sky this morning around 6am -- just...glorious!  So the juxtaposition of this with the reality of a friend of ours hovering near death today makes the affect of this poem even more startling and compelling -- an odd, disorienting holding of two seemingly contradictory things, that at a whole other level are not completely disconnected.

Life and death...are one.

Forgiveness

A friend shared a beautiful story of a local, attorney friend of his who posted this on his FB page yesterday (thanks, Jim):

Yesterday I went into the courtroom because I needed to talk to Deputy Prosecutor Jack Roebel and Judge Joe Sutton. They were conducting a sentencing so I decided to watch and wait.

An Amish family sat behind the defense table where the defendant, an Amish young man, sat with his lawyer.

On the other side of the aisle was an African American man in a wheel chair with two boys next to him.

The story was simple and tragic. The young Amish man had gone to a Notre Dame tailgate party and gotten drunk. He then drove back home. On the way he ran a stop sign and hit a car driven by the African American man with some kids in it. The man nearly lost his leg, suffered a collapsed lung and endured other pretty severe injuries. For a long time he was placed in a medically induced coma. One of the kids suffered an orbital fracture and frankly I missed who else was hurt and how badly.

The arguments were made by the lawyers and it then came time for the victim to speak. Clearly he was now disabled and his life is forever changed. And what he did was incredible--he completely forgave the offender. He looked at him and talked about how he had gotten off the right path earlier in his life. He told the defendant that he believed that the young man was a good person and could get back on the right path if he followed what his family taught him. He exhibited a grace, mercy, and forgiveness which I cannot remember seeing in 36 years of criminal law. And after the hearing the Amish family embraced him and all broke down in tears.

I came away realizing that my resentments and grievances are largely petty and am inspired to embrace and display as much forgiveness as I am able.

Cracks

​I've noticed...things can grow in the smallest of places, in the tiniest of cracks.  Perhaps, this is because things in cracks are often held in tight confines and are somewhat protected from being washed or swept away.

This is not unlike some things inside of me - good and bad - that grow in the tightest of places, even the cracks in my own heart.

People's Weaknesses

No man should be appointed to a managerial position if his vision focuses on people's weaknesses rather then their strengths.

-- Peter Drucker

Didn't Know You Could

There's something kind of amazing about doing something you didn't know you could do - like running a mini-marathon. So happy for the kids, who dedicated themselves to the idea and worked for months to prepare for the Indy Mini-Marathon, 2017. They did it!  A wonderful example of the merits of setting a goal and persevering to accomplish it; it was thrilling to watch them 'finish' - made me tear-up, just thinking about it (well, yes, and wishing I had done it with them!).  More pics here....

Peacemakers

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.

-- Matthew 5:9

This Beatitude follows as the logical consequence of all that has been laid out so far. When our hearts are gentled and single, when we’ve tamed the animal instincts, we become peacemakers. We are no longer wielding the sword of the binary operator that divides the world into good guys and bad guys, insiders and outsiders, winning team and losing team. When the field of vision has been unified, the inner being comes to rest, and that inner peaceableness flows into the outer world as harmony and compassion. This is what we mean by contemplative engagement: right action in the world stemming from inner attunement. Only from the unified perception of the heart can we discern what action is required of us to lovingly and effectively serve our hurting planet.

-- Cynthia Bourgeault

Instagram: bobgoff

So it's searchable:

Tell people who they are.
Not what they want.

-- Bob Goff

#EatTogether

​
Unrelated (or maybe not):

TG: Is it possible to have a more mindful relationship with technology?

JKZ: You can be more mindful of how addicted you are, but unless you impose behaviors on yourself, it’s like heroin. It’s not like you can live without technology — I own an iPhone. But you can’t live with it unless you find some kind of way to not lose yourself in digital reality to the point where you forget that your body is analog. Continue here....

Freedom

​I am caught sometimes, somehow
between two kinds
of freedom:
real and unreal

So compelled
by the moment
sabotaging what is beyond
the now

Availability to moments
I can't yet see;
Affected by openness
I can choose now

Desire of two kinds
to be free:
One real
One fantasy

What I Didn't See

​The people who have taught me the most in my career are the ones who pointed out what I didn't see.

-- Sheryl Sandberg

Hard Things

​I've noticed...that many hard things end up making you better, more capable of helping others.

This is the staggering loss of avoiding difficult or challenging things.

What Got You Here

What got you here won't necessarily get you there.

-- Marshall Goldsmith

Great Minds

​Great minds discuss ideas;
average minds discuss events;
small minds discuss people.

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Hungry for God

A man may study because his brain is hungry for knowledge, even Bible knowledge. But he prays because his soul is hungry for God.

-- Leonard Ravenhill

ubuntu

Regarding 'ubuntu', Eze summarizes it this way:

​'A person is a person through other people' strikes an affirmation of one’s humanity through recognition of an ‘other’ in his or her uniqueness and difference. It is a demand for a creative intersubjective formation in which the ‘other’ becomes a mirror (but only a mirror) for my subjectivity. This idealism suggests to us that humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual; my humanity is co-substantively bestowed upon the other and me. Humanity is a quality we owe to each other. We create each other and need to sustain this otherness creation. And if we belong to each other, we participate in our creations: we are because you are, and since you are, definitely I am. The ‘I am’ is not a rigid subject, but a dynamic self-constitution dependent on this otherness creation of relation and distance.

-- Michael Onyebuchi Eze

The Fool’s Song

'Poem selection' for the week -- "The Fool’s Song":

I tried to put a bird in a cage.
                O fool that I am!
         For the bird was Truth.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
                 Truth in a cage!

And when I had the bird in the cage,
                 O fool that I am!
          Why, it broke my pretty cage.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
                  Truth in a cage!

And when the bird was flown from the cage,
                  O fool that I am!
            Why, I had nor bird nor cage.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
                   Truth in a cage!
             Heigh-ho! Truth in a cage.

-- William Carlos Williams

Risks

Change happens because ideas compel people to take risks.

-- Tom Goodwin

Instagram: bobgoff

Great love
leaves little doubt.

-- Bob Goff

Experientially

​I've noticed...that what I know the most, I know experientially.

I go for a run nearly every day. Because I do, I have come to know certain things about myself - about my mind, my emotions, my body - particularly as it relates to running.  In other words, some of the things I know in this way, I would not know about myself, if I didn't run.

I know some things (not enough) about photography.  But, while I know about them cognitively, I really don't understand how they work together.  I have found that mostly I just have to try things with my own camera before I can figure out how it works. Once I do this and how the concepts inter-relate with each other, then I start to know photography, not simply about it.  But, this doesn't really happen, at least at any deep level, until I spend time doing it.

If this is true, imagine what the implications are for other, perhaps more significant, domains of knowing something; like relationships or God. Some, for example, believe this is the only kind of knowing one can really have with God - an experiential knowing of him.

We most often know, what we know experientially.

Authentic Interest

The single greatest people skill is a highly developed and authentic interest in the other person.

-- Bob Burg

Who are we seeking to become?

Who are we seeking to become?

We get what we invest in. The time we spend comes back, with interest.

If you practice five minutes of new, difficult banjo music every day, you'll become a better banjo player. If you spend a little bit more time each day whining or feeling ashamed, that behavior will become part of you. The words you type, the people you hang with, the media you consume...

The difference between who you are now and who you were five years ago is largely due to how you've spent your time along the way.

The habits we groove become who we are, one minute at a time. A small thing, repeated, is not a small thing.

-- Seth Godin

Before

The sea enters the rivers before the rivers can run into the sea. In like manner, God comes to us before we go to Him; and heaven enters into our souls before we can enter into heaven.

-- Peter Drelincourt


Be sure to pray much, that is, to keep your inner eye focused on Jesus.

-- Henri Nouwen

How Great Thou Art

To Connect

The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

One Choice

More often than not,
it only takes one
simple
choice
to start things
heading
in the opposite
direction.

Each moment
provides us
with one
opportunity
to make one simple
choice.

Choices all together
do add up.
But, it's still
just one choice
each time;
the next one.

No Further

​As long as we’re filled with ourselves, we can go no further.

-- Cynthia Bourgeault

We must learn how to empty ourselves, particularly because we have learned to keep ourselves perpetually full.

Insignificant

​I've noticed...that I am surprised sometimes at the significance of the smallest of things. Someone recently asked about my brother and whether or not I would see him soon. I had, frankly, forgotten about our recent plans to visit each other. One small comment reminded me to do something that otherwise I might have just missed. This kind of thing seems to happen regularly. Too regularly.

The other day I noticed the slightest tinges of pink lacing the edges of what otherwise looks like just some white flowers on the shrubs in our front yard. Who would have thought of adding a dash of pink, especially if most wouldn't notice it anyway?  A friend recently wrote Tami a note about the care she had observed Tami giving a student in real need.  One perspective might be that she was just doing her job.  But this person noticed how much more it really was.  A small thing, but not really...for any of those involved.

I am grateful for such seemingly insignificant things and encouraged to pay attention to them. Small things are not insignificant -- insignificant things are rarely insignificant.

Diversity

Leaders...must believe that diversity is necessary for future innovation and growth. Only then will...an organization...be willing to take the unnatural steps needed to effect change. If there isn’t buy-in from the top, it is impossible...to drive a shift in culture or mindset.

-- Mallun Yen

Where To Look

​Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.

-- Jonas Salk

Lives In You

Our old history ends with the cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.

-- Watchman Nee

www.youversion.com

So it's searchable:

The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.

-- Romans 8:11

Healed

By His wounds we are healed.

-- Isaiah 53:5

www.youversion.com

...even on a long, hope-crushing Saturday like this one during the Holy Week. What else could have been felt after the dashing devastation of yesterday? Some thoughts here....

Not A Religion

Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is the proclamation of the end of religion, not of a new religion, or even of the best of all religions. If the cross is the sign of anything, it’s the sign that God has gone out of the religion business and solved all of the world’s problems without requiring a single human being to do a single religious thing. What the cross is actually a sign of is the fact that religion can’t do a thing about the world’s problems—that it never did work and it never will.

-- Robert F. Capon

A prayer on this Good Friday:

God of the cross, your power is hidden
in a weakness that quietly overcomes the world.
Open our eyes to see this power at work.  May we walk

in it as we live out your alternative vision
for the world.  Amen.

-- Walter Brueggeman, A Way Other Than Our Own

Aware

As I contemplate the significance of this day of Holy Week, relative to Lent and to the next 3 days, I find myself aware of several things:

• There has been something significant about 'doing' Lent this year - it seems related to having participated in this more collectively (with a group of guys), rather than just by myself
• I tend to want such times, like this weekend (consider this perspective), to feel more transformative than it does
• I have a sense of anticipation, which is going simultaneously in seemingly opposite directions - I have a slight expectation or desire for something to crescendo a bit AND I feel myself resisting that very desire...a pre-emptive move, perhaps, to avoid some kind of disappointment
• What I do, with regard to the import of Easter, is increasingly like a call to something - something with more implications for the poor and needy, something that has more to do with a collective effort than just an individual one (though I'm not sure how separable those really are)
• There is something wildly subversive about the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus - this feels more apparent to me as our culture continues its seeming rotation away from the socialization of the church and religion
• A significant part of this subversiveness goes well beyond the typical evangelical perspective of atonement regarding our status before God and deeply into the impact it should have on my daily life, particularly as it relates to our cultural anxieties and on how I see and function in my relationship to the world and all that inhabit it

What will the next 3 days add to the mix for me this year?

​
As we walk the walk from Palm Sunday to Easter through the Thursday arrest and the Friday execution and the long Saturday wait in the void, imagine all of us, in the wake of Jesus, changing our minds, renewing our minds, altering our opinions concerning self and neighbor and world. The clue to the new mind of Christ is emptying of our need to control and our anxious passion for security. And as our minds change, we come to new freedom.

-- Walter Brueggeman, A Way Other Than Our Own

Ransom

www.youversion.com

The son of man came not to be served, but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.

-- Matthew 20:28

Everything New

If we get attached to computers and other machines, we get far more attached to the traditional ways in which we have organized and run our lives. And though we all know that things could be better, we all hope that we can simply add the better bit on to the way we do things at the moment, so that we won't have to change too much, if at all. This is a challenge every generation has to face, but for Jesus and his contemporaries it was massive. They had lived for many centuries with a traditional way of life. They assumed, naturally enough, that if and when their God came back to rescue them he would support and vindicate that way. And Jesus was telling them that something new was happening. God was indeed doing what he'd always said, but the old machines they had been working with — the things they'd expected to happen — simply weren't adequate for this new moment.

In particular, he was replacing an overall mood of sadness and longing with an overall mood of celebration and hope. They used to fast regularly, to remember the times long ago when their nation had suffered awful disasters. Jesus was coming to do something that would always be remembered with celebration — so fasting wasn't appropriate! That was revolutionary. But it was appropriate.

We today fast during Lent, to remind ourselves of the sorrow and sin that still abounds in the world and in our own lives. But we do so as a people whose basic mode of life is celebration. God has brought the new world into being in and through Jesus. Don't try to put the new cloth on the old coat, or the new wine into old bottles. God is making everything new, and he's inviting us to the party.

-- N.T. Wright

Why Most People Judge

Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge.

-- Carl Jung

This seems like an appropriate criticism in general, but especially for this Holy Week.  ...along with the reminder to not be too quick to assume this is talking primarily about others.

An Unfolding

The apparent eclipse of Christian wisdom by history is an optical illusion, since history itself is an unfolding of the event of Christ.

-- Bruno Barnhart

Live Your Way

Some conceptual snapshots from the TRINITY Conference:

You don't think your way into a new way of living, you live your way into new way of thinking.

-- Richard Rohr

Wholeness is when the way of your being matches the truth of your being.

-- Wm. Paul Young

For God to be good, he must be one.  For God to be love, he must be two.  But for God to be joy, he must be three.

-- Richard of St. Victor

We are now co-creators of the revelation of  the 'divine heart' of love.

-- Cynthia Bourgeault

We so enjoyed the final evening called Agape Liturgy, which ended with "The Lord of the Dance", by the Dubliners:

'The Hospitality of Abraham' -- Andrei Rublev

This icon is displayed this week at the 'TRINITY: The Soul of Creation' conference in Albuquerque, NM.  Tami and I are enjoying the time here -- in body, mind, and spirit -- with many kinds of opportunities to contemplate what we have known, what we are knowing, and what we can yet know.

Senses

​I go to nature to be soothed and healed and have my senses put in order.

-- John Burroughs

...more pics here.

Leveraged By Food

​I've noticed...that many good conversations are often leveraged by food.

Environment

​Your environment always wins. If you hang out with nasty and sullen people, you will become nasty and sullen. If you work for a Machiavellian company, you will eventually operate in a Machiavellian manner.

-- Bruce Kasanoff

Perfectionism

​Pressure to do our best at everything can be paralyzing, and perfectionism is deadly to balanced living.

-- Sam Chase

Go And Live Your Life

Feed on Christ, and then go and live your life, and it is Christ in you that lives your life, that helps the poor, that tells the truth, that fights the battle, and that wins the crown.

-- Philips Brooks

Instagram: bobgoff

Every time we see someone as ordinary,
we turn the wine back into water.

-- Bob Goff

Perspective

Perspective is a giver. Comparison takes.

Perspective is generous. Comparison pares down the loveliness of your life until it appears a thin shred of its former glory.

Perspective carries us through life laughing. Comparison evokes cursing and frowns and grumbling.

Perspective says that I got eight years with the dearest little fairy a mama could hope for.  Comparison says I got ripped off.  

Continue here....

-- Kate Merrick

Causing an Accident

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Causing an Accident":

The moon builds its tower
Sisyphean project
Like a velvet landscape
a velvet Elvis above the booth
I want to arrive this way
like resurrection
in front of you but not
Casual on a curb
trapped in a beam
almost crossing in front
of every moving vehicle
A long pause
A breath
Skin feathered over bone
silvering and bright
We want it to happen this way
A sudden capitulation
giving way to flesh
The secret plot revealed
Innocent face with eyes wide
whites showing
before the bump
I ride in my body’s hearse
We are circling the block
We are made entirely
by confiscation
We are waiting
for love to save us
something borrowed
an oxymoron
or absolute truth

-- Sarah Bartlett

From the author:

“I wanted to write a poem that examined the fine line between salvation and disaster. Specifically in the rare moment when love arrives. For me, it’s always a hot tangle—a little shocking, a little beautiful, and a little cataclysmic.”

Not Told

We do not normally see what we are not told to pay attention to.

-- Richard Rohr

Preparation

​I've noticed...when I have to prepare for something, that I also need to be proactive about it in other ways, too, like considering what I eat, what I take in, what I need to think about (or not think about). I've realized that the thing I will be doing is impacted by how I treat myself in advance. This can be something big, like getting in shape for a big hike or event, or something small like remembering what to eat for lunch because of my workout tonight, getting ready for a presentation, or even simply just meeting with another person.

I've noticed this with regard to involvement with others, too. I need to be clean, in my spirit, when I know I will be in a situation that will require something from me, for the benefit of someone else. In other words, I won't be able to listen as carefully or identify as much what love could look like, if I've been lazy or have compromised myself in other ways ahead of time.

I wonder, too, about the broader implications are of this. When, for example, could I not be prepared for the possibility of my need to be clean or ready for something I don't know about (as opposed to preparing just for the things I do know about)?  What if such preparation is more of a way of living, than simply a short-set of preemptive actions tied to any particular activity or event.  Besides, what am I really assuming, if this were not true?

What if being prepared isn't as much only a kind of selective  'getting ready' as it is a kind of learned on-going responsiveness to what is going on around me, within me?

Credit

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

-- Andrew Carnegie

I find something refreshing about people from other eras who at least spoke about, if not practiced, the timeless traits of good character.  I don't, in fact, know much about how this man lived, but it strikes me that simple words like these, fashionable in some circles today, have been discovered and manifested throughout history to both the benefit of those around them and posterity.  They remain valuable to the extent that they inform again how to live in our times.

Crazy

It’s okay to realize that you’re crazy and very damaged. All the best people are.

-- Anne Lamott

New Lens

If you wear glasses, you likely often forget that they’re even there! Only when you take the lenses off do you realize how much your capacity to see is informed by the lens through which you are seeing. When we talk about metaphysics we are speaking of a specific lens by which we have tended to perceive reality. Like glasses that we’ve grown accustomed to but are no longer strong enough, we need a “system update” in our Christian tradition. I believe the Trinity is our necessary new lens.

When we look at the Trinity from a metaphysical standpoint rather than simply a theological standpoint, it’s not so much about persons in relationship as it is about a process by which the world is constructed and maintained.

The vast majority of the world’s metaphysical systems are binary. They work on the principle of paired, equal opposites. We see great archetypal polarities that are somehow held in balance: male/female, dark/light, conscious/unconscious, good/evil, action/being. Our dualistic minds feel comfortable in that kind of binary swing. Binary systems prefer symmetry and come to resolution in stasis or stillness.

My hunch is that Christian metaphysics are not binary—as traditional religious metaphysics are—but ternary (having three parts). This is precisely because of Christ and the Trinity.

Ternary systems have three independent forces coming together to form something new, a fourth thing. Perhaps the simplest example is a braid. You need at least three sections of hair for a braid to hold; the braid is then a new creation. The interweaving of threeness results in something that didn’t exist before. It is not just a swinging back and forth between two old things that were already there, but a drive into a brand new dimension.

While a binary system is by nature stable and symmetrical, a ternary system is asymmetrical and innovative. Unlike a pendulum, it cannot come to equilibrium within its own orbit; it seeks stability in a new plane, through a resolution that is at the same time a new arising. It corkscrews its way through time, matter, form—whatever plane is at hand—in a riot of uncertainty and new combinations, the whole of which is the fullness of divine reality.

I believe that Christianity has, from the start, been a ternary swan in a binary duck pond. Once the ugly duckling has been correctly identified as a baby swan, we begin to see valuable clues for healing the schism between theology and metaphysics and for tapping into a ternary system’s inherent aptitude for dynamism, change, and process. That, I believe, is the real reason for paying more serious attention to this obscure principle of the Trinity.

-- Cynthia Bourgeault

The Busier You Are, the More You Need Quiet Time

In a recent interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein, journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates argued that serious thinkers and writers should get off Twitter. It wasn’t a critique of the 140-character medium or even the quality of the social media discourse in the age of fake news.

It was a call to get beyond the noise.

For Coates, generating good ideas and quality work products requires something all too rare in modern life: quiet.

He’s in good company.  Author JK Rowling, biographer Walter Isaacson, and psychiatrist Carl Jung have all had disciplined practices for managing the information flow and cultivating periods of deep silence. Ray Dalio, Bill George, California Governor Jerry Brown, and Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan have also described structured periods of silence as important factors in their success.

Recent studies are showing that taking time for silence restores the nervous system, helps sustain energy, and conditions our minds to be more adaptive and responsive to the complex environments in which so many of us now live, work, and lead. Duke Medical School’s Imke Kirste recently found that silence is associated with the development of new cells in the hippocampus, the key brain region associated with learning and memory.  Continue here.

-- Justin Talbot-Zorn & Leigh Marz

Cake

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Cake":

Look, you
want it
you devour it
and then, then
good as it was
you realize
it wasn’t
what you
exactly
wanted
what you
wanted
exactly was
wanting

-- Noah Eli Gordon

By Accident

​Most of us live our lives by accident -- we live it as it happens. Fulfillment comes when we live our lives on purpose.

-- Simon Sinek

Instagram: bobgoff

Quit holding on to your love of
waiting to find your purpose;
give it away freely and
purpose will find you.

-- Bob Goff

Receptivity

​When do we receive truth? Many such questions are best answered by the asking of another question.  Perhaps something like, when does soil receive rain?

When does soil receive seeds? When does truth start to grow?  Here, this seems to happen most often when the 'ground' has been plowed, when it is softened, when it is open.  Otherwise, rain (and truth) seems to just run off the surface to the side.

So how do we become receptive to truth?  We can do some of the tilling ourselves, often with life's help, by how we choose to live. Or, God can till us (also, often with life's help)...sometimes simply from the consequences of our own hardness or lack of receptivity.

What makes us receptive?  Or, perhaps another way towards the question, what makes us hard?

Misery & Abundance

​The selfishness of man creates misery. The selflessness of God creates abundance.

March Madness - On To The Sweet Sixteen

...more pics here.  And then, Michigan went on to land a spot in the 'Sweet Sixteen'!

Mercy Anywhere, On Our Knees

A post shared by Bob Goff (@bobgoff) on Mar 2, 2017 at 9:36am PST

When prayer is authentic, it will always lead to actions of mercy; when actions of mercy are attempted at any depth, they will always drive you to prayer.

-- Richard Rohr

SM Brunch 22: Best Players, Curiosity, Knowledge

​Another Saturday Mornings Brunch:

​The best players have curious minds.

-- ESPN Interview

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Curiosity is the path to enlightenment. Certainty is the path to ignorance.

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​Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

-- Confucius

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​Our experience with life is always creating opportunity; opportunity for us to know (and experience) something more; more deeply, more truly. We have a choice; to shut it down or to open ourselves more and more to it.

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...like these kids:

Spaces

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Spaces":

I do not know how
she felt, but I keep

thinking of her—
screaming out to an empty street.

I had been asleep
when I heard a voice

screaming, Help!
and frantic, when I opened my door.

I remember her shoulders
in the faded towel I found

before she put on my blue sweats
and white T-shirt. Call 911

please, she said.
When the officer arrived

I said, I found her there after the—
But she said,

No, that wasn’t what
happened.

What must be valued
I’m learning,

in clarity and in error,
are spaces

where
feelings are held.

Here—in a poem?
And elsewhere

-- Jenny Johnson

From the author:

“I tried to write a poem of witness. Then I decided that, for me, the more honest poem was the one about what a witness can’t know about another person’s experience.”

Separation

​Sometimes you need separation from something in order to see it again.

Return

​We all need to return at times to the foundation of our lives, to help us keep track of what we are building...of what is truly being built.

Genuine People

​We’ve all worked with people who can’t stop talking about themselves and their accomplishments. Have you ever wondered why? They boast and brag because they’re insecure and worried that if they don’t point out their accomplishments, no one will notice. Genuine people don’t need to brag. They’re confident in their accomplishments, but they also realize that when you truly do something that matters, it stands on its own merits, regardless of how many people notice or appreciate it.

Genuine people know who they are. They are confident enough to be comfortable in their own skin. They are firmly grounded in reality, and they’re truly present in each moment because they’re not trying to figure out someone else’s agenda or worrying about their own.

-- Travis Bradberry

Everyone Wants To Change

​Everyone wants to change, but change demands desire and discipline before it becomes delightful. There is always the agony of choice before the promise of change.

-- Larry Lea

Experience God's Presence

The question for me is not whether there’s a point to giving things up during Lent, but whether I should ever stop fasting from all that numbs, dulls, and deadens me to life, all of life, as it is today—the good and the bad. Fasting makes me willing to try.  Continue here....

-- María de Lourdes Ruiz Scaperlanda


The interior experience of God’s presence [through prayer] activates our capacity to experience God in everything else—in people, in events, in nature.

-- Thomas Keating

SM Brunch 21: Focus, Pay Attention, Distract Us, and Being Awake

More Saturday Mornings Brunch:

​It takes an incredible amount of focus, on every series, to be successful in this game.

-- Eric Spolstra, Coach of Miami Heat

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​What we pay attention to is of ultimate importance. If we pay attention to the wrong things, we may just miss the right things.

What if all Satan can really do is distract us from truth?  ...he is really good at it.

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We make ourselves sleepy when we end up avoiding our sense of creation through our comforts, diversions, and ways of relating to others.

Creation has been designed to keep us awake. In particular, to be awake to God.

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Instagram:  mountainafflicted@taylormichaelburk

Poem for My Son in the Car

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Poem for My Son in the Car":

The wipers sweep two overlapping hills
on the glass, we are quiet against the
squeaky metronome as we often are
before the concerns of the day well up.
Today: Is it dark inside my body?
The wet cedar’s dark of green-gone-black
of damp earth mending itself,
a pewter bell rung into night’s collected
sigh, choral and sleep-sunk.
Dark as the oyster’s clasp
in its small blind pocket
and the word pocket a tucked notion
set aside in-case-of.
Inside there are vestibules, clapboards
trapdoors, baskets,
there is cargo,
there is the self carrying the self
sprint, trodden—
nowhere does it not—
and mournful as a spine bowing to wood
you carry your actions; inside
is cave and concern,
everything purposeful
heartwood, clockwork, crank and tender
iron in the mountain belly,
all the hidden things breathing.
Outside of and woven into, you are
the knowledge you can’t touch
the desire you can’t locate,
unnameable questions unnameable answers,
source and tributary
and the rivers that hold you
beneath. Your darkness
lives in that potential,
snowblind
aurora
pulse
shore.

-- Jennifer K. Sweeney

From the author:

“The car is something of a truth portal for my son; from the steady rhythm and blurring landscapes, and with both of us pointed forward, budding philosophies, fears, and confessions arise. When he asked me this question at age five, I was moved in such a way I kept peeling back its layers—what might it mean to understand the darkness of the body. The more I turned over his question, the more darkness felt akin to tenderness.”

Intuitive Mind

​The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.

-- Albert Einstein

So, we can choose after all...distraction doesn't have to win.

Economy of Distraction

​There is now, more than ever, a whole economy of distraction which, among other things, conditions us to reactivity rather than proactivity.

Emotions

Leaders are in charge of their emotions, their emotions are not in charge of them.

-- Daniel Goleman

Doesn't Always Knock

​Opportunity doesn’t always knock; and those people who tend to sit around and wait for it for it often miss the opportunities that are waiting if they just put in a little effort. This sometimes also manifests as someone waiting around for the “easy button” scheme that will help them do the thing.

As Thomas Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Successful people understand that opportunity is fueled by work and putting oneself out there.

-- Bernard Marr

Honesty & Weakness

​I am convinced the main requirement in prayer is honesty....

-- Philip Yancey


In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.

-- Romans 8:26

SM Brunch 20: Truer, Effect, Enough, Wither, and The Jewel

More Saturday Mornings Brunch:

​The truer you become in being you, the less you and your personality need to enter the room.

-- Sally Blount

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​Our 'effect' is more like a wake than like a splash.

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​You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.

-- Maya Angelou

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Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun,
Now may I wither into the truth.

-- W. B. Yeats

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Harrowing

'Poem selection' for the week -- “Harrowing”, from this most wonderful reflection:

The plow has savaged this sweet field
Misshapen clods of earth kicked up
Rocks and twisted roots exposed to view
Last year’s growth demolished by the blade.

I have plowed my life this way
Turned over a whole history
Looking for the roots of what went wrong
Until my face is ravaged, furrowed, scarred.

Enough. The job is done.
Whatever’s been uprooted, let it be
Seedbed for the growing that’s to come.
I plowed to unearth last year’s reasons—

The farmer plows to plant a greening season.

-- Parker Palmer

Reality

​There is my reality - the one I live in, the one that I modify because of the way it needs to accommodate the needs of those around me. And, there is the one I would live in if my present one wasn't accommodating, where I would choose more just from what I prefer for myself. Then, there is my anti-reality, the one I know about, but don't live in myself; where I see (or just know) the needs of people who live very different lives from the way I live mine (there are multiple versions of this one).

...and then there is one that I am mostly unaware of, but certainly seems to exist.

If each person has these, there are many realities. So many. Too many. And, in what combination, are all these realities really real?

Ash Wednesday: Grace and Demand

On Ash Wednesday, we are reminded to pray anew:

God of grace and demand, you challenge us to reclaim our baptismal identity as those whose lives are built on your call and your promises--not on the easy, seductive forces around us.  Stir our hearts that we may engage your transforming word anew and rediscover its power to save.  Amen.

-- Walter Brueggeman, A Way Other Than Our Own

Here is a helpful description of the role of this historical day:

Ash Wednesday: The Church As a Midwife