COVID-19 at Least Partly Contributed to Dramatic Fall in Pollution Over China

Signatures

From Michiana Chronicles:

My daughter spent a lot of her spare time this winter wrapped up against the cold on the streets of downtown Brooklyn asking strangers for the signatures that are needed to get the fellow from her hometown on the presidential primary ballot in New York’s eighth congressional district. That’s Lily. Some of you know her, and I know the thought of her makes you smile. She has a positive spirit. Lily collected signatures from strangers on the streets of Brooklyn after work, after long, tough social worker days telling patients and their families the truth about what’s out there when they leave Manhattan’s Mt. Sinai hospital.  

"There was one lady,” Lily told me, “who said she absolutely would not sign a petition for Pete Buttigieg. She told me she had heard that the town where he was mayor, South Bend, Indiana, is a terrible place, especially for minorities, and he’s a bad guy who has done things to make life bad for people there.

“I told her, ‘I’m from South Bend,’” Lily said, “and I said, ‘I don’t think that’s true.’”

“Then the woman said, ‘Well, I have friends in South Bend, and I say it is.’”  Continue here....

-- Sid Shroyer


When can we move forward from the competition-only framework, that we've ended up with, and toward a collaborative-constructive one?  I think this resonates with those (young and old) who are interested in more than the current simplistic good-guys vs bad-guys win-at-all-costs mentality and actually want to solve problems positively, for the betterment of all.

You Will Have Been All Of These

...how far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.

-- George Washington Carver


The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.

-- Madeleine L’Engle

Disappointed

My recent knee surgery had a goal, at least in my mind.  It was pretty straight-forward:  to be able to run again, pain-free.

I have learned that the surgeon apparently had to take out about 70% of my meniscus to achieve the goal (the pain-free part, at least).  This leaves me with an inevitability—to run regularly again will only increase my chances of more significant knee problems.  In other words, no more regular running.

Devastation...is over-stating things a bit.  But, I am disappointed.

I've talked about disappointment before; but, this time, it is registering a bit more deeply with me.

You see, I love to run.  I think it has been one of my greatest sources of overall health.  Not just physically; it has also been one of my greatest therapies.

I am now imagining a world where fixing something (like surgery) is not possible—where living with less of something that I really want is perpetual.  I am tempted to think that this is more than simple disappointment.

But, in reality, that appeal to something more dramatic is probably just evidence of my sense of privilege—that most anything that isn't right, can be fixed or solved.  But, what if it can't?  Many people (and whole people groups) live with a lot of things that are way more disappointing than this—and with a perpetual sense that they will never have the something they really want, ever....

I can go a number of directions with this feeling.  But, the main one for me right now is to allow myself to just be disappointed.  To be fully present to it—not to get away from it or to re-position it, to feel victimized by it, etc.

This willingness, I suspect, is able to provide me with the capacity to experience something I otherwise would miss (in my rush to find other remedies).  Perhaps it is a means of knowing something I would not know, an experience of something that others experience that I know too little about, an awareness of something otherwise too long undetected.  And, perhaps it is a means of reconnecting me to something.

I don't like being disappointed.  But, I need to be able to be.

25% More

Employees who exercise regularly are 25% more focused, driven, and efficient than those who don't. 

-- Gary Sorrell

Unsuspected Joy of Slowness

I've noticed...though I too often tend to chafe against it, slowness can have its own kind of joy.

My recent knee surgery has slowed me down.  I've been a little chagrined at my frustration over how long it seems to take to get to the places I need to be.  I didn't think I was that committed to speed.  But, it turns out I am.  At the very least, I don't like to be slowed down.  That is a little sad.

For one thing, slowness can give us a chance to see things, we otherwise might not.  When we slow down or even stop, we can see what else is moving. Because of the surgery, I've had to spend time just sitting. But, being in one spot has enabled me to notice more of what is moving around me—a runner going by, the particularities of a bird winging itself across the sky overhead, leaves flittering in the wind, a man making a sign, and so on.
Life is in motion at so many levels beyond just the one I am on. There is a beauty to it that is independent of my participation, but that also invites it...even if that amounts to no more than just noticing it. I feel an unsuspected joy embedded in this reality—the one I've noticed because of slowness.

Recklessness

I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings.

-- William Sloane Coffin

World's Worst Football Coach

Initiative

The only way to get initiative is to take it. It’s never given.

And some people hesitate to take it, perhaps because they’re worried that we’ll somehow run out.

We’re not going to run out. It’s a self-renewing resource.

From an early age, most of us were taught to avoid it. Do your homework. Take out the trash. Wait to get picked. Wait to get called on. Become popular. Fit in. Maybe stand out, but just a little bit. Failure is far worse than not trying.

The alternative is to take some initiative. On behalf of those you seek to serve.

Go ahead, there’s plenty to go around.

-- Seth Godin, Initiative

Not About the Here and Now

Believing that spirituality is just about transcendence, and not about the here and now, allows us to excuse ourselves from intervening in the ongoing oppression and marginalization of certain bodies.

-- Hillary McBride

Embracing Risk

Many people believe they cannot afford (to risk) change.  And, it seems even more believe it is just too hard to embrace its disruption, even when it comes to them anyway.

But the reality is that life (God?) is always pulling us forward—inviting us to change (to grow) because changing is simply cooperating with what is already happening, everywhere.   Holding on to things, especially beliefs in the way things used to be, is largely a futile effort because things will change anyway, with or without our approval.

Holding on to beliefs is often largely about something else anyway, like a desire for security.  But, in what (or in whom) are we secure?  Certainly not in the fact that things won’t change...because they will—because they do.

Static is a design feature that we might prefer, but it doesn't actually exist—change just IS.

So, the real risk then, it seems to me, is not embracing it.

Who Is Right

Once you have given up knowing who is right...it is easy to see neighbors everywhere you look.

-- Barbara Brown Taylor

Instagram: nakedpastor

Not For Who You Are

Ever noticed...how awful it feels when you recognize the possibility that people like you primarily for your contribution, rather than for who you are?

Truth & People

As my last few posts have intimated, I am increasingly suspicious of organizations of truth that seems to lead more toward the defense of ideas than it does the defense of what has been created—especially, but certainly not limited to, human beings.


My soul is sore when I learn how our people are tortured, when I learn how the rights of those created in the image of God are violated.

-- Óscar Romero


I pledge allegiance to the Flag
of the United States of America,
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one Nation under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for ALL. (emphasis added)

Do we still believe this?  Belief is an active stance, not a passive one.

Wages vs Expenses

Our response shouldn't be, "as long as I can (cover it), it doesn't matter to me...".

The Factories

'Poem for the week' -- "The Factories":

I have shut my little sister in from life and light
   (For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair),
I have made her restless feet still until the night,
   Locked from sweets of summer and from wild spring air;
I who ranged the meadowlands, free from sun to sun,
   Free to sing and pull the buds and watch the far wings fly,
I have bound my sister till her playing-time was done—
   Oh, my little sister, was it I? Was it I?

I have robbed my sister of her day of maidenhood
   (For a robe, for a feather, for a trinket’s restless spark),
Shut from Love till dusk shall fall, how shall she know good,
   How shall she go scatheless through the sin-lit dark?
I who could be innocent, I who could be gay,
   I who could have love and mirth before the light went by,
I have put my sister in her mating-time away—
   Sister, my young sister, was it I? Was it I?

I have robbed my sister of the lips against her breast,
   (For a coin, for the weaving of my children’s lace and lawn),
Feet that pace beside the loom, hands that cannot rest—
   How can she know motherhood, whose strength is gone?
I who took no heed of her, starved and labor-worn,
   I, against whose placid heart my sleepy gold-heads lie,
’Round my path they cry to me, little souls unborn—
   God of Life! Creator! It was I! It was I!

-- Margaret Widdemer

Sometimes it is a poem that can pierce you like nothing else.

Megaphone

Your work is your own private megaphone to tell the world what you believe.

-- Simon Sinek


So, what am I working on? What are you working on?

One of the Great Ironies

One of the great ironies of life, it seems to me, is that growing old (or dying) often becomes about waking up.


The gospel of the day is not about the poverty of flesh, so much as it is about the holiness of ashes.

-- Barbara Brown Taylor

Space To Change

The agency of change is not coercion, it is space.

We can even be some of the space, for someone else, that allows them to change.

Damage

I've noticed...that, in general, I am fascinated by people.

The exception being, of course, those who hurt me (at the very least, fascination may not be the first word I would use). But even there, I feel like I am turning a corner; because any damage caused me by another person, is never as great as the damage to the one who is doing it (easier to believe, at times, than it is to feel).

And, knowing that sometimes I am that person, I have growing compassion for the pain that often creates that impulse.

To Be A Priest

To be a priest is to know that things are not as they should be and yet to care for them the way they are.

-- Barbara Brown Taylor

On the Lighter Side: So I Can Sound

On the Lighter Side:

Sometimes I use words I don’t understand, so I can sound more photosynthesis.

-- Anonymous

Not Your Enemy

Instagram: bobgoff

A setback isn't your enemy; it's your teacher.

-- Bob Goff

I Cannot Sing

'Poem for the week' -- "I Cannot Sing":

I cannot sing, because when a child, 
   My mother often hushed me. 
The others she allowed to sing, 
   No matter what their melody. 

And since I’ve grown to manhood
   All music I applaud, 
But have no voice for singing, 
   So I write my songs to God. 

I have ears and know the measures, 
   And I’ll write a song for you, 
But the world must do the singing 
   Of my sonnets old and new. 

Now tell me, world of music, 
   Why I cannot sing one song? 
Is it because my mother hushed me
   And laughed when I was wrong?

Although I can write music, 
   And tell when harmony’s right, 
I will never sing better than when 
   My song was hushed one night. 

Fond mothers, always be careful; 
   Let the songs be poorly sung. 
To hush the child is cruel; 
   Let it sing while it is young. 

-- Edward Nathaniel Harleston

Place of Conversion

Solitude is a place of conversion, the place where the old self dies and the new self is born, the place where the emergence of the new man and the new woman occurs.

-- Henri Nouwen


For me, solitude is one of the best ways to create the space to reconnect with myself and God (usually in that order)—in other words, to be converted again...and again, and again.

Disconnected

I've been feeling disconnected lately.

Every time I feel disconnected and seek connection externally, it never seems to really work.

I am starting to know, really know, how disconnection is most often a result of something internal—that is happening or, perhaps more likely, not happening.  To say it another way; it is rarely external, even if true realities exist there as well.  It is endlessly easy to believe that a re-arrangement of external realities (i.e., something in people around me) will resolve my sense of disconnection.

The truth is, our deepest connection is internal; with who we are, and with the source of our identity.  When internal connection happens or is maintained, external connection or disconnection is simply a bi-product of whatever else is going on—in my life or in the life of others around me.  We, more often than not, cannot control those external realities.  But, when we slip into believing that these external connections are more important (necessary) than the internal ones, we find ourselves on a road that leads nowhere.

In my experience, it has often taken a painful recognition, of one kind or another, to expose this kind of slide into disconnectedness.  Though inconvenient, and sometimes frustratingly repetitive, I am thankful for the mechanism of this dynamic which reminds me about where to look for the source of life—where to seek and maintain connection.

We Aren't Really Living

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.

-- Anatole France


OK—we get it!  At some point, this is just too hard to dismiss; it is easier and easier, at the very least, to acknowledge.

So, why then does it seem like there is often such a rub, when it comes down to actually accepting it or doing it?  More specifically, why are people so adverse to others who are moving change forward?

Anonymity

I'm wondering...who am I, in anonymity?

In other words, how much is my sense-of-self predicated on acceptance, not to mention approval, from others?  Does my answer still work when I am (or feel) anonymous?

Part of Something More Than We Are Observing Something

The Perennial Tradition constantly recognizes that we are part of something more than we are observing something. Read that again: we are part of something more than we are observing something. How does that feel to you? From the perspective of participation, we can recognize that most of religious and church history has been largely preoccupied with religious ideas about which we could be wrong or right. When it is all about ideas, we do not have to be part of “it”; we just need to talk correctly about “it.” We can avoid actually living out our beliefs and walking our talk.

-- Richard Rohr

Chroning

From Michiana Chronicles:

I can pinpoint the exact moment when I realized most American women of a certain age dye their hair. I was a guest at a Unitarian church, sitting in the back pew. Scanning the room, I realized I’d never seen so many middle-aged gray-haired women. Huh.  Did I miss a memo stating that graying women must become Unitarians?  No … a lightening clap of understanding broke across my brow.  It was simply that Unitarian women — this group, anyway — were less likely to dye their hair. That truth revealed an even more shocking one.  Most women in the US DO dye their hair rather than go gray naturally— somewhere around 75%, as best the record-keepers can tell. 

Now, I celebrate humanity’s penchant for self-decoration. Our own children spent many years mixing up gloppy hair dye in every psychedelic shade from Manic Panic pink to cobalt blue. I even Vaselined a few ears along the way, as the willing assistant. 

But many women in our youth-focused culture dye their hair not for fun or pleasure, but to hide the gray — an act that also, I’d argue, hides their experience and wisdom.  

...

I went to see Senator Elizabeth Warren this summer when she spoke in Elkhart at the RV Hall of Fame. She raced from the wings, high-fiving folks and bounding onto the klieg-lighted stage. I was both impressed with her youthful energy … and a little bummed by the necessity of the performance. Must she bounce and smile to please us? Aren’t her years of study and experience enough? Can’t we focus on her plans instead of her self-presentation?  Based on this campaign cycle, I’d say: Not yet. 

Perhaps this ruffles my silvering feathers because I’m leaning into croning pretty hard these days. I like the definition of the crone as a powerful, wise woman. And I like the idea of electing one for president.  However this election turns out, I hope we’re sailing toward a moment when women candidates — and women everywhere — can simply be themselves, with all their wisdom, undisguised, on full display. Continue here....

-- April Lidinsky

Visual: Loaded Down

Visual - "Loaded Down":

Winona Lake, IN

Loaded down 
feeling of cold
nothing seems
alive
except the memory
of your vibrant
branches

The snow knows 
tho
What the eye
cannot see

Afraid To Lose

The more you have, the more you may be afraid to lose.

This is not only true for our material lives; it is true for our social and political lives as well.

In fact, we are impacted spiritually, too, by all of our more.  And, this is the where the cost of our fear can be the greatest—it's impact on how we view others and the systems we use to protect ourselves and what we have.

The Loyalty Card

Ever noticed...when loyalty is weaponized—usually used to pit something (or someone) against...something (or someone) else, not to mention unabashed retribution?  It seems like there is a willingness to play the loyalty card at nearly any level—nationally, locally, and in inter-personal relationships.

A test for this is the level of genuine curiosity there is about the party whose loyalty is being maligned.  Is there real interest in what another party is experiencing?  Or, is it just too easy to broad-brush them with a label, like disloyalty?

Why wouldn't there be genuine interest in a possibility that is different than how the loyalty player is imagining or that someone is actually growing or changing?  Don't we want that for people? Or, is that only good if it is subordinate to something else, like loyalty to 'our' group?

Lack of curiosity reveals the weapon that loyalty can become.

...it also reveals that there is another problem; one that exists long before the loyalty card actually gets played—one that is really about ego (power, control, and fear).  Loyalty card plays are often just a pre-emptive disguise for these darker realities.

Perhaps talking about why loyalty card plays are so handy would be a good start toward disabusing its usefulness.

Any System That...

You are meant to grow, change, and adapt.  You are not meant to wear the same shoes you did at 15, or 30, that you did at 5.  The same is true of ideas, beliefs, and ways of seeing the world.  Any system that won't allow you to develop is a barrier to health.

-- Hillary McBride

Accessible Through

I've noticed...as a 9 on the Enneagram, I don't tend to believe (operate) that truth is as much resident within me, as it is accessible through me.

This has been both disappointing (ego) and exhilarating (flow).

God's Seed

God’s seed is in us. If it were tended by a good, wise and industrious laborer, it would then flourish all the better, and would grow up to God, whose seed it is, and its fruits would be like God’s own nature. The seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree, the seed of a nut tree grows to be a nut tree, the seed of God grows to be God.

-- Meister Eckhart

Gloaters

I suspect if you asked, most people would say they hate gloaters. Those people who, fresh off some kind of apparent victory (or even success), proceed with endless self-congratulation and, even worse, demonization of their now 'defeated' opponent.

Unless, of course, the victor is on your team or you envision yourself on theirs. Then, we don't call it gloating.

Which gloater do you hate more—theirs or yours?

Disney+

Facing Our Fears

That’s unlikely.

If I’m lucky, I can glance at them.

But just for a second or two.

Our fears burn so bright that if we truly face them, we think we might be blinded.

Of course, we may think we’re looking at our fears, dead on, but it’s more likely we’re just seeing a distraction, a shadow of what’s actually holding us back.

Because once we’re truly clear about the fear, it fades. It might even disappear.

-- Seth Godin, Facing our fears

Possibility Gets Planted

As I’ve come to understand that life “composts” and “seeds” us as autumn does the earth, I’ve seen how possibility gets planted in us even in the hardest of times. 

-- Parker Palmer

Boredom Is Like Soil

Sometimes, albeit not too often, I get bored with the way I think. Does that ever happen to you? Do you ever get bored with what you think about or how you tend to think about it?

I’m not sure why at times I am bored with the familiarity of what I think about or how I think about it, while at other times, I don’t feel that way.   So, it makes me wonder why do I feel about it the way I do one time and why, at another time, I feel differently about it.

One of the words I've noticed I use to describe this is boredom.  What does that tell me?  Is that a clue?  I wonder, is boredom a kind of soil, out of which something can grow, at a later time?

Most Creative Ideas

Our most creative ideas don't tend to come when we're consciously focused on the problem.

-- Scott Barry Kaufman

In All Flairness

I've noticed...when someone adds a little something extra to what they're doing, it moves me.

Recently, I saw someone do this on a piano and I was surprised by how much it affected me.  It was not meant to draw attention to the person playing the instrument; it was just meant to add something to the situation going on—nothing particularly necessary, just a little extra flair.

Something attractive happens when people add a part of themselves in this way.

We all have the chance to add our flair to things.  And, I think we need to because when we do, it awakens something in ourselves, and in others.

You don't need to do this everywhere or every time; just find one thing and add your unique flair to it, especially when you just want to.

In all flairness, it is one of your gifts to the world.

Any Single Theological Container

Instagram: aaronieq

As I stumble out of the certainty & fear of overly-conservative faith, I'm praying to stay clear of the certainty & despair of overly-liberal faith.  Instead of choosing one side, I long to let go and get swept up into a bigger, more beautiful Story.

The Creator is neither the Christian mascot that we control with good behavior (as I formerly believed), nor an impersonal force mostly irrelevant to real life (as some ex-fundamentalists choose in response).  Or maybe God is partially reflected in both.  However, the Loving Ground of our Being—fleshed out in Christ and his Body—is surely beyond any single theological container, and you and I have been graciously invited into this great Mystery.

Thanks be to God.

-- Aaron Niequist

Super Bowl Ticket Prices

Music

'Poem for the week' -- "Music":

There is music, deep and solemn
   Floating through the vaulted arch
When, in many an angry column,
   Clouds take up their stormy march:
O’er the ocean billows, heaping
    Mountains on the sloping sands,
There are ever wildly sweeping
     Shapeless and invisible hands.

Echoes full of truth and feeling
   From the olden bards sublime,
Are, like spirits, brightly stealing
   Through the broken walls of time.
The universe, that glorious palace,
    Thrills and trembles as they float,
Like the little blossom’s chalice
     With the humming of the mote.

On the air, as birds in meadows—
   Sweet embodiments of song—
Leave their bright fantastic shadows
    Trailing goldenly along.
Till, aside our armor laying,
    We like prisoners depart,
In the soul is music playing
     To the beating of the heart.

-- Alice Cary

More Than An Evolution

More than an evolution of ideologies, real growth leads towards love.

Ground Level

I like ideas.  I love ideas that work on the ground-level.

Cynicism

Cynicism is lazy.

-- Rob Bell

Aren't Always

Ever noticed...good guys aren’t always good...and, bad guys aren’t always bad?

In spite of how obvious this is, a little acknowledgement of it would probably go a long way these days.

The goal isn't, in fact, simply to win.  It is to do good, to be good to all involved—the good and the bad...because none of us are fully either.

Jesus Came to Proclaim Good News to the Poor. But Now They’re Leaving Church.

It’s well-established that the gap between the middle class and those who earn the highest incomes in the United States has grown wider over time, spurring partisan responses over how or whether to address income inequality.

But there’s a facet of this issue that should be particularly worrisome to Christians: Many of the poorest Americans are abandoning church en masse. By stepping away from church communities, the people who are most financially strapped also end up losing out on social networks and social capital—which can make their economic situation and outlook even worse.

To test the relationship between religion and socioeconomic status, I took four income brackets (adjusted for inflation over the time) from the General Social Survey (GSS) and calculated the share that said they never attended religious services. The change over the last 46 years was stunning.  Continue here....

-- Ryan Burge

Snow's Shush

Snow throws on us a blanket of silence, saying, "It's time to be quiet".

God Walks Slowly

God walks “slowly” because he is love. If he is not love, he would have gone much faster. Love has its own speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed—a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed.

-- Kosuke Koyama, Three Mile an Hour God


If the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy.

-- Corrie ten Boom


Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day, you must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.

-- Dallas Willard

Receptivity

Art begins with receptivity.

-- Mirabai Starr

Is our receptivity inhibited by all our hurry?

Does it take an artist to point this out?

More or Less

Life is not a race—the goal is not to beat other people, get there first, and take more of whatever you can.

In the end, it is rarely about more; not to mention faster. If anything, it is about less.

Longer

The tail of hate is incredibly long, but that of love is even longer.

Choices

Related to yesterday's post:

Our choices reveal our intentions.

-- Simon Sinek

MLK Day: Silence Of Our Friends

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.


Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'

​-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Worshiping My Own Ability

Instagram: sarcasticlutheran

I need a God who is bigger and more nimble and mysterious than what I could understand and contrive.  Otherwise it can feels like I am worshiping nothing more than my own ability to understand the divine.

-- Nadia Bolz-Weber

Your Brain Works Against You When You Argue With Your Significant Other

First comes love, then comes marriage (or some modern equivalent), then comes the inevitable really stupid fight you keep having over who threw whom under the carriage last time you went over to that person’s place for that thing. Spats with your significant other—there are infinite varieties—are unavoidable. But they don’t have to be so bruising or so frequent, according to Stan Tatkin, therapist, researcher and author of the new book We Do: Saying Yes to a Relationship of Depth, True Connection and Enduring Love.

Tatkin studies couples by filming them during a fight and then doing video microanalysis (a slow-motion, frame-by-frame examination of the footage) to see what’s really going on. Through this analysis, he has found that the human brain has a set of characteristics that can make fights with our loved ones worse...:

• You’re relying too much on your memory
• You’re expecting perception to be objective
• You’re overestimating how well you’re communicating
• You’re not looking at each other
• You’re seeking compromise but not collaboration

...continue here.

-- Belinda Luscombe

In Praise of Friendship

From Michiana Chronicles:

"Much of life is really about revision, re-imagining."

"Friendship is a revelation."

"No matter how bad things get, if you have a friend, you can keep going."  Continue here....

-- Joe Chaney

Fear and Insecurity

Instagram: bobgoff

Fear and insecurity will always try to talk us into settling for lesser things.

-- Bob Goff

My Dilemma

When I encounter a truly helpful thing (reading, music, art, nature, relationship) that I am drawn to—the nature of its descriptiveness of or resonance with something about life—I want to do something with it.  I don't to just hold it for myself; I want to, somehow, share it.

My sharing of choice often is to write about it.  And, then I can feel a dilemma.  The dilemma I feel, often from such encounters, is that what I would share (related to what excites me about them) has in some way already been shared (described, written, etc.).  The question that pokes at me is, what value would there be in my simply re-telling of it?

This stops something in me, on a fairly regular basis.  And, it shouldn’t.  I am missing something here, in the logic of my dilemma.  It is like I am believing something about what is necessary (needed) that actually isn’t true.  But, let's be honest, I don’t know precisely what that is.

It has been observed that authentic growth, for a person (like me) with the ego-structure of an Enneagram 9, is the ability to not try to protect others from our opinions (which is really just a form of self-protection).  As I've mentioned before, this is why it is easier for me just to keep my opinions to myself.

Perhaps, this is related to the reaction I observe from others to opinionated people—how much they resent (often even hate) them.  But, this dynamic is partly why I enjoy that thing so much in the first place—when something true is being described or presented, even if in an opinionated way.


Part of the answer to my dilemma is the recognition that, while there is ‘nothing new under the sun’, there are SO many things that people are not aware of—that have been historically forgotten or even unknown.

It is only in the telling (and re-telling) that anything true can be experienced or known—for the first time or the hundredth time by anyone.  It's not so much the novelty of something that matters, it's the truth of something that matters. We can speak our truth; more specifically, our encounter with it. What is true needs to be told and it can only be told as a result of our encounter with it.  

This should be part of my answer to, or the pathway through, my dilemma.

Care, Respect, and Delight

Love means care of, respect for, and delight in our own selves and bodies.

-- Anne Lamott

What Would My Life Be Like?

I'm wondering...what my life would be like today were it not for those I share life with.  How would I be different without them?  What would I lack?  What would I be insensitive to?  What of life would I not know?

I am so thankful for their influence; their effect, on me.  I'm grateful for what they call me to by who they are and how they live life, for the gaps in my life they fill, for the way I am shaped by their love...even more, for just who they are.

I am more whole because of others and (hopefully) they are more whole because of me; when this is true, the world has a better chance of recovering its wholeness.

Thinking Thoughts

We cannot know God only by thinking thoughts. Unfortunately, for much of Christianity, faith largely became believing statements to be true or false (intellectual assent) instead of giving people concrete practices so they could themselves know how to open up (faith), hold on (hope), and allow an infilling from another source (love). Contemplation opens our heads, hearts, and bodies to God’s living presence.

-- Richard Rohr

Insider Language

A few years ago, a friend, who was a successful insurance agent, invited me to attend a high-end luncheon. The hotel ballroom was filled with a few hundred insurance agents from around the region. After lunch was served, a prominent leader in the insurance industry spoke, joking about “claimants,” “negligence,” and “aggregate limits of indemnity.” While the other agents laughed, nodding in agreement with the speaker’s comments, I fidgeted in my seat. I appreciated my friend’s invitation and ticket to the lunch, but I left feeling unintelligent and confused.

Every group, if it’s together long enough, develops insider language. The luncheon I attended used insider language targeted to their specific industry. They didn’t use it to be exclusionary; they employed it for the sake of identity, clarity, and efficiency. But I realized—in maybe the clearest manner in my life—what happens in the hearts and minds of visitors and spiritual sojourners when we use insider language in a local church.  Continue here....

-- J. R. Briggs

We don’t call portraits people

But in fact, just about everything is a portrait.

It’s our temporary understanding of the world as it is, not an actual experience of it.

We see things through our filters, match them to our expectations and live out our story of what we expect and why. We build a narrative around every interaction we have, and that narrative is rarely as accurate as we’d like to admit.

It gets easier to work our way through a situation if we preface our retelling with, “the way I experienced what she said…”

-- Seth Godin, We don’t call portraits people

Wonders and Realities

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the Universe about us, the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side-by-side with a lust for destruction.

-- Rachel Carson

...how many more people would click on the title of this post, if it was 'Lust for Destruction'?

Say More

Some people say too much; others don't say enough.

A lot of the time, both are motivated by some type of ego protection.

I have an aversion to saying too much.  So, it is easier for me to believe it is better to not say something.

As I grow, however, I sense I need to err more on the side of saying too much, rather than not enough (it is likely that err will be involved either way).  I suspect I would have more regret over what I didn't say, than what I did say (especially, knowing my tendencies above).

It is true; each time I have done this, it has cost me something.  But, at the same time, it is also true that what I have discovered by doing so has, perhaps, been even more valuable than what I have lost.

Someone else once said something about this type of  saving / losing proposition about life....

Note to self—it is time for me to say more.

Pretend Do Not Exist

It is hard for us to heal wounds that we pretend do not exist.

-- Hillary McBride

Honesty and Hope

I've noticed...that the range represented in the last two days' posts is a reflection of the range that seems to naturally operate within me—the range between honesty (poison) and hope (restoration).  Sometimes those feel like polar opposites—that they are even at war with one another (...at the very least, incompatible).  But most of the time, that isn't how it feels to me.

Hope, for me, is muted when dishonesty exists.  We must be more honest about the state of things.  If we can't, hope has less meaning.

On the other hand, real honesty is not the end either.  In fact, it is only a means to an end.  Without an end, honesty is, well, just honesty—endearing to some; overwhelming to others.  I am naturally a hopeful person.  I believe in something bigger; I watch for it.  I am motivated by it.

From my perspective, hope is the antidote to honesty.  And, honesty makes hope real.

The more honest we are, the more hopeful we can actually be.  And, the more hopeful we can be, the more we can afford to be honest.  These two 'Hs' reflect the range of my spectrum.

God Is Restoring All Things

There was a time in the 1980s and 90s, when the response to the hypocrisies in the church was to start new, creative expressions of church—what many came to call “the emerging church movement.” My community in Philly, The Simple Way, was one of the fruits of that era. . . .

Many new movements have been born amid the remnants of the past. Fresh life can come from the compost of Christendom. I think we are poised for another great awakening. . . .

God is restoring all things. Institutions like the church are broken, just like people, and they too are being healed and redeemed. My friend Chris Haw put it this way. It’s the difference between being in a canoe and a rowboat. In a canoe, you look forward as you row, but in a rowboat, you look back as you move forward. Our way forward is behind us. . . .

Rather than throw out the traditions, I want to know and study them, find the treasures and spit out the bones.

The church needs discontentment. It is a gift to the Reign of God, but we have to use our discontentment to engage rather than to disengage. We need to be a part of repairing what’s broken rather than jumping ship. One of the pastors in my neighborhood said, “I like to think about the church like Noah’s Ark. That old boat must have stunk bad inside, but if you tried to get out, you’d drown.”

Just as we critique the worst of the church, we should also celebrate her at her best. We need to mine the fields of church history and find the treasures, the gems. We need to celebrate the best that each tradition can bring—I want the fire of the Pentecostals, the love of Scripture of the Lutherans, the political imagination of the Anabaptists, the roots of the Orthodox, the mystery of the Catholics, and the zeal of the Evangelicals.

One of the most promising things that has come out of the emerging church has been folks looking back and reclaiming the best of their traditions, seeing that it is not an either/or but a both/and—God is doing something ancient and something new. Phyllis Tickle [1934–2015] called it “hyphenated denominations”—Presby-mergence, Bapti-mergence, Luther-mergence—because what they are doing is renewing and building on what was.

-- Shane Claiborne

Religion Poisons Everything

A commenter going enigmatically by “notme” once responded to my rundown of a controversy over Scripture classes in schools:

"What has religion got to offer but War, Intolerance / hatred (of other religions and minority groups), and poverty? religion should not only be banned from classrooms but from the whole planet"

I faithfully reproduce the comment as is, grammatical warts and all, keyed in, I imagine, in the first flush of a righteous indignation.

They’re common accusations, straight out of the New Atheist playbook. Religious belief is irrational, snarling, psychologically and socially stunting. In the enduring formulation of Christopher Hitchens in God Is Not Great (2007): “Religion poisons everything.”

Christians have, after all, tortured heretics, burned witches, hoarded wealth, propped up slavery, rubber-stamped colonialism, expelled or massacred entire Jewish communities, silenced women, persecuted gay people, and moved known child molesters from parish to parish. These are not accusations; they are history.


And not only history. You don’t have to look far—probably not much farther than the murky corners of our own hearts—to see the same old ugliness cropping up today: the self-righteousness, the love of respectability and comfort, the inertia and cowardice, the militant certitude, the blindness to inconvenient truths, the fear of difference, the fear of losing power, the fear of change or challenge.

But underneath the cynicism, the absolutism, sometimes the smugness, I wonder if what I’m really hearing is...continue here.

-- Natasha Moore

But, the good news is, there is still what Miroslav Volf calls a 'thick' kind of religion.  Read the article (from the 'continue here' link above).

The Year

'Poem for the week' -- "The Year":

What can be said in New-Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of the year.

-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Restoring Wholeness

Generally, the first half of life is devoted to the cultural process—gaining one’s skills, raising a family, disciplining one’s self in a hundred different ways; the second half of life is devoted to restoring the wholeness (making holy) of life.

-- Robert A. Johnson

Vision & Dependence

As another year recedes and new one dawns, I feel mindful of a couple of things—things that, on the surface, even seem a bit divergent.

One, despite my attempts to suppress the notion, I have some awareness that there is an emerging level of anxiety within me.  I feel this mostly at the sub-conscious level; perhaps, because this is something I don't typically want to feel.  Partly as a result of 2019, I have a growing sense of more unknown ahead of me, at a variety of levels and on a number of fronts.  Several of these involve territory where I don't have direct personal experience.  Anxiety may be too strong a descriptor, but I do have a sense of more new things on the way....

Two, I also have a sense of hopeful anticipation—not unlike that which can come from a big trip somewhere I haven't traveled before.  But, I also know what these kinds of experiences often produce.  Even if they can be somewhat unnerving, at this point in my life, I am so grateful for what they bring to me.  Or, where they bring me to.

I feel more aware of this spiritually, but also physically.  And, I sense a new season emotionally.

All of this will likely necessitate kinds of practice that I am not used to; kinds that I will need to depend on to do this in a healthy way.  I'm curious what getting used to these new ways of being will look like.

Because of this dialectic, I am excited about the opportunities a new year will afford.  I am praying that God will surprise me with a kind of vision that I have not yet been able to imagine and a level of dependence I have not known before.  Above all else, whatever comes, I hope to continue to become more aware, more open, and more present to all that is around me and that somehow this will translate to something meaningful and helpful to others.

This thought keeps running through my spirit:

Goodness just cannot be stopped.  

Which pieces of all of this fit together in 2020?  We'll see!