Your Silent Cry Has Been Heard

Sisters and brothers, especially those of you experiencing pain and sorrow, your silent cry has been heard and your tears have been counted; not one of them has been lost!... The resurrection of Jesus is indeed the basis of our hope. For in the light of this event, hope is no longer an illusion.... That hope is not an evasion, but a challenge; it does not delude, but empowers us. 

-- Pope Francis (1936–2025), "Urbi Et Orbi," Easter, 2025

The legacy of Pope Francis lives on, especially in the hearts of the people (where it should be):

...click images to link to the posts referenced.

Earth Day 2025

Before We Get It

I’m wondering…about why it takes a few times before we get it.

Too often we hear such observations with overtones of expectation (if not condescension).  But, since from the beginning of our receptivity to life, we are progressively able to embrace it, it might stand that there are reasons for why and how things sink in to us when they do.

For one thing, as we age, it appears that as much as our receptors grow, so do our resistors.  There are things that develop in us over time that inform us to not accept everything at face value.  That there is positioning of things for illicit gain.  That there are those who are seeking to take advantage of something in us.  In other words, we learn that we need to be able to resist certain kinds of things.  

And this resistor-mechanism can become highly developed, with multiple kinds of layers.  We can even detect things like wariness in others (and, in ourselves), not to mention cynicism.  

So, perhaps it should not surprise us that not everything makes its way past all that immediately.  

Sometimes, it just takes a little time for the proof in the pudding to be revealed.  For us to be able to more fully receive something — to sort the chaff from the wheat.

…for us to get the things that are real and true and good.

Easter: Sped-Up Reality

Easter speeds up the reality that life outlasts death. It uses the bodily form to animate the spiritual reality that life continues beyond death.  

Stunning us, Easter awakens us to the greater truth of our otherwise sleepy existence — death is never final. God’s power has seen to this all the way along, of course.  But, not unlike Spring itself, it is especially manifest in personal form through Easter.

So, it is worth uttering the words of reality — He Is Risen!

Here’s a meditation on the meaning of Easter.

And, a reflection on Holy Week...not just for dog lovers.

3 Observations & A Question

In most cases, becoming good at something requires lots of practice.  

Absent an intervening event, change is mostly incremental, due to the evolutionary nature of it. 

Most living things are adaptive over time — they adjust.

Why do we seem attracted to threat?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Working In A Factory: Americans

 

Holy (Good) Friday: Moving Downward

Jesus’ state was divine, yet he did not cling to equality with God, but he emptied himself.

-- Philippians 2:6–7  

In the overflow of rich themes on Palm Sunday, I am going to direct us toward the great parabolic movement described in Philippians 2. Most New Testament scholars consider that this was originally a hymn sung in the early Christian community. To give us an honest entranceway, let me offer a life-changing quote from C. G. Jung (1875–1961):    

In the secret hour of life’s midday the parabola is reversed, death is born. The second half of life does not signify ascent, unfolding, increase, exuberance, but death, since the end is its goal. The negation of life’s fulfilment is synonymous with the refusal to accept its ending. Both mean not wanting to live, and not wanting to live is identical with not wanting to die. Waxing and waning make one curve. [1]  

The hymn from Philippians artistically, honestly, yet boldly describes that “secret hour” Jung refers to, when God in Christ reversed the parabola, when the waxing became waning. It starts with the great self-emptying or kenosis that we call the incarnation and ends with the crucifixion. It brilliantly connects the two mysteries as one movement, down, down, down into the enfleshment of creation, into humanity’s depths and sadness, and into a final identification with those at the very bottom (“took the form of a slave,” Philippians 2:7). Jesus represents God’s total solidarity with, and even love of, the human situation, as if to say, “nothing human is abhorrent to me.”  

God, if Jesus is right, has chosen to descend—in almost total counterpoint with our humanity that is always trying to climb, achieve, perform, and prove itself. This hymn says that Jesus leaves the ascent to God, in God’s way, and in God’s time. Most of us understandably start the journey assuming that God is “up there,” and our job is to transcend this world to find God. We spend so much time trying to get “up there,” we miss that God’s big leap in Jesus was to come “down here.” What freedom! And it ends up better than any could have expected. “Because of this, God lifted him up” (Philippians 2:9). We call the “lifting up” resurrection or ascension. Jesus is set as the human blueprint, the oh-so-hopeful pattern of divine transformation.   

Trust the down, and God will take care of the up. This leaves humanity in solidarity with the life cycle, and also with one another, with no need to create success stories for ourselves or to create failure stories for others. Humanity in Jesus is free to be human and soulful instead of any false climbing into “Spirit.” This was supposed to change everything, and I trust it still will.

-- Richard Rohr

Provincialism

Provincialism: concern for one's own area or region at the expense of national or supranational unity.

There are other nuances to the use of the word, provincialism. But, I'm going with this one today.

There are probably many words that could describe our collective state of being these days. And, while some of those appear to be not unsimilar terms that have been used for such things all along the way, it does feel like there is a timbre in the current set of language that is substantively different. And, the quality of that difference is noticeably disturbing.

Under the guise of populism, it is sometimes difficult to isolate what or who is exactly the fuel for many of our raging cultural fires. Is it a reflection of something important going on for everyday people? Or, is it a function of the charlatans who are stoking the flames of fear, common to everyday people?

It is against that backdrop, that I fear a word like provincialism falls woefully short of the description actually needed. But, for now, I’m going to use it as a means of getting to some of what appears to be involved. As I've mentioned, we recently recently traveled outside the country, and I was reminded again of the importance of doing such things. Sure, the vacationing aspect can be a lot of fun. But, it doesn’t take very much, even in that context, to notice things about the way other people live their lives that are important to consider; not only for their lives, but also for ours.

And, then, when you really talk to them, you get a whole lot of information about how they see things...and about how we see things.

Other people have fully functioning lives. Provincialism tends to be unaware of that. At the very least, it doesn't tend to respect it. It tends to have a high degree of respect for how 'we' do things. But, almost automatically, it has little space for the possibility that others do, too (especially when the way that looks is different). As the definition indicates, it elevates 'our' concern over that of others.

When you travel, you not only notice this, but you also sense that other groups of people having varying degrees of their sense of interdependencies in the world. The American version, right now, seems to be heavily focused on what we need...not what someone else needs (collectively and individually). It is our interests that should prevail, not only for what we estimate is best for us, but also over anyone else (unless it serves our interests).

People in Europe are very concerned about Russia (in particular, Putin). They have a visceral relationship with what is happening around them. This is likely due to the prices they have paid historically from the wars fought by their family members, on their soil. Our wars tend to be 'over there'. And, while we also have some similar fears about things like Russia, it is palpably not the same. Europe is highly sensitive to the powers that surround them in both the east and west. America largely disregards Europe's concerns.

Provincialism is like that. It tends to say things like, "that's not our problem..." and move on with our concerns.

Media can't bridge this gap. Experience can...and often does, especially when real human connection occurs.

I share some pics of our travels here (Top10...if you don't have all day) and here (Motherload...if you do), not for the purpose of thumbing my nose at the real problems of the world, including provincialism (effectively communicating something like, "sorry you got deported...sucks to be you. But, we're sure having fun..."). I'm sharing them to reveal some of the marvels of the way other peoples have adapted to their environments and live their lives...and for the questions that should lead us to.

Lean Into The Crack

If you wake up and the day feels broken, just lean into the crack.

-- Björk

What Matters

The most important thing is to stay focused on what matters. Most little things ultimately have no effect on an enterprise. It's the big deals — and the big decisions that do. Don't spend too much time on little things. The important choices and opportunities are the ones that move the dial.

-- Larry Tisch

Broken Up

I’ve noticed…that while routines are in some ways essential. They also need to broken-up from time to time.

Certain efficiencies can lead to unintended consequences.  Remaining open to new and disruptive possibilities helps us avoid becoming fixated and inflexible.

After a week of vacation, I returned this morning to my default daily routine.  But, I also noticed that I had to think through some of the steps I'd developed and whether or not I wanted to continue them.  Not a bad thing to do.  A break from the routine allowed me to re-evaluate it.  Do I want to fall back into the pattern I had developed?  Do I want something else, because of having not continued?  Push-ups — do I really want to do them?  Yes, I do...because I need to.  Bridges?  Rowing?  What about the other things?  What has changed since I stopped for a while?  Are my priorities still the same?

Besides, sometimes our routines themselves need to be altered.  Because of the inertia that can so easily get involved, breaking things up a bit can be quite helpful (if not liberating).  If nothing else, at least, making conscious choices (vs unconscious ones) is important from time to time.

A Deep Well Within

There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes I am there, too.... Dear God, these are anxious times.... We must help You to help ourselves. And that is all we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves. 

-- Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life

Father Richard turns to Scripture and contemplation in the face of collective suffering.   

In the wisdom of the Psalms, we read: 

In God alone is my soul at rest. 
God is the source of my hope. 
In God I find shelter, my rock, and my safety. 

-- Psalm 62:5–6 

What could it mean to find rest like this in a world such as ours? Every day more and more people face the catastrophe of extreme weather. The neurotic news cycle is increasingly driven by words and deeds that incite hatred, sow discord, and amplify chaos. There is no guarantee of the future in an economy designed to protect the rich and powerful at the expense of far too many people subsisting at society’s margins.  

It’s no wonder the mental and emotional health of so many people in the USA is in tangible decline! We have wholesale abandoned any sense of truth, objectivity, science, or religion in civil conversation; we now recognize we’re living with the catastrophic results of several centuries of what philosophers call nihilism (nothing means anything; no universal patterns exist). 

Somehow our occupation and vocation as believers must be to first restore the Divine Center by holding it and fully occupying it ourselves. If contemplation means anything, it means that we can “safeguard that little piece of You, God,” as Etty Hillesum describes. What other power do we have now? All else is tearing us apart, inside and out. We cannot abide in such a place for any length of time or it will become our prison. 

God cannot abide with us in a place of fear. 

God cannot abide with us in a place of ill will or hatred. 

God cannot abide with us inside a nonstop volley of claim and counterclaim. 

God cannot abide with us in an endless flow of online punditry and analysis. 

God cannot speak inside of so much angry noise and conscious deceit. 

God cannot be born except in a womb of Love. 

So offer God that womb. 

Contemplation can help stand watch at the door of your senses, so chaos cannot make its way into your soul. If we allow it for too long, it will become who we are, and we’ll no longer have natural access to the life-giving “really deep well” that Etty Hillesum returned to so often to find freedom. 

In this time, I suggest some form of public service, volunteerism, mystical reading from the masters, prayer — or, preferably, all of the above.

-- Richard Rohr

It may not be in our power to determine how things will unfold, but it is in our power to decide how we respond. It is in our power to hold on to the practices that nourish us, inform us, and give us courage. 

-- Adam Bucko

3 Observations & A Question

A lot of life is about calibration. 

By nature, human-beings are, more often than not, reactionary creatures. 

Escaping the present by constantly anticipating the future may result in a different future than you imagine.

When it is no longer about right and wrong or good and bad, but about power, what do you do?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

I Just Got Back From Europe. They All Know….

Just when we thought not much more could happen...we’ve only been out of the country for a little over a week and, boy, were we wrong.

I Just Got Back From Europe. They All Know America’s a Mess and That He’s Nuts

Being embarrassed is the least of it….  What can possibly happen next?   Well…:

When 60,000 Votes Don’t Count and Harriet Tubman Disappears

While most just don’t want to know, we will find out either way.  So, wouldn’t it be better to engage (than it is to pretend)? 

Bells

There is something about bells — here’s some from Rome:

The orchestration and playing of bells seems to hail something of significance.  Often, it appeals to our sense of the historical.  But, it uses sound to symbolize that something involved also meets the present. And, because of that dynamic, it extends something into the future. Perhaps, one the more significant points of history is what it speaks to us about today.  Bells can call us to some of history’s voice.

Visual imagery works the same dynamic (even if not quite as effectively as sound).  Here’s some we’ve seen this week:

Rome, Italy

Love Whoever Is Around

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

-- Kurt Vonnegut

LT: What's Right

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

-- Simon Sinek

Once You've Experienced It

Ever noticed...you often only really know stuff once you’ve actually experienced it.

Cathedral of Saint Andrew Apostle

Amalfi, Italy

4 Observations (from Others)

Hatred corrodes the container it's carried in.

-- Alan Simpson

So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.

-- David Super, Georgetown Law School...regarding Musk's actions

We must pay attention to our inner states, so we don’t perpetuate the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion, and constant disorientation.

-- Daniel Hunter

I always thought that belief precedes action, and sometimes it does. But all too often, it is practices that shape us, that change our beliefs and help us internalize them in ways that are transformative. We learn by doing. 

-- Karen González

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

On The Lighter Side: Greenland Says

On the Lighter Side:

Perspectives

Sometimes it looks like all we are really doing is borrowing the words of others to maintain a description of what we see and feel.

Inherently, this is not automatically bad (after all, no ideas are in a vacuum). However, if this stays confined to just what we think we see, we miss the opportunity for any broader perspective. And, too many missed opportunities—other perspectives—invariably seem to lead to a certain degree of distortion (this, by the way, is a direct contradiction to those who claim other perspectives distort the truth).

Somehow, we have to merge what we think we see with what actually is. This requires experiencing something beyond what comes from our normal understanding. It takes some wisdom to do this—usually wisdom from outside of what we tend to try to maintain in our minds.

This can be stretching at times and...liberating.

We are traveling this week to a foreign country. I suspect that we will see many things that, at the very least, operate differently, not to mention the assumptions which drive them. When I was in college, I traveled both to the greater part of Europe and Japan. The implications of what I saw there rocked my paradigm of how I thought things worked (especially my assumptions about the universality of how things worked), including challenging what I thought was even true.

Those experiences set in motion some things that have persisted throughout the balance of my life. And, I think I would have to say looking back that, without those experiences, my view (if not my understanding) of things would most likely remained unaltered.

We continue to borrow (more heavily than we often realize) from what is around us. That seems to be a given. It is the quality of what we are surrounded by that becomes the issue worthy of our consideration. Perhaps, our greatest opportunity is both to acknowledge and appreciate the value of alternative perspectives. The agency involved seems to be our openness and willingness to do so.

It is easy to repeat the not uncommon mantra that it’s important to have perspective. Wisdom, though, seems to include the conscious choices we make to pursue it.

Once You Realize

Once you realize that you can do something, it would be difficult to live with yourself if you didn’t do it 

-- James Baldwin

A meditation on the concept: Silent Agreements of the Group

Lifestyle Creep

That what each of us calls our 'necessary expenses' will always grow to equal our incomes unless we protest to the contrary.

-- George Clason, with insight on the entropy of lifestyle creep

Need Some Hope?

I’m wondering…what it looks like to have hope right now.

This piece by Ben Cremer is helping me with it.

Jesus Was A Refugee

Perhaps if we saw Jesus more as a refugee, we would better understand some of what he said:

The gospel story begins with Jesus’ family fleeing violence as political refugees, pushed around Palestine by the imperial forces of Caesar and Herod. The adult Jesus not only characterizes himself as homeless, but stateless. The evangelists also portray Jesus as a constant recipient of hospitality who sometimes even “invites himself in.” 

-- Ched Myers

3 Observations & A Question

Our reason for existing is to contribute to the well-being of others.

The only way to know what it feels like to lose and develop the musculature to handle it, is to lose.

Excavation of the heart is very hard and few do it (or, are willing to do it) — but, that doesn’t mean it’s not necessary.

Are you actually worried about the state of our republic?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Enjoying Moral Superiority

It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.

-- Thomas Sowell

The range of where such applies is both wide and varied. Here might be two places it is involved: 

DOGE Is Courting Catastrophic Risk

A pandemic plan was in place. Trump abandoned it — and science — in the face of Covid-19

Life Owes Me?

It's probably time for a new coffee-maker.

I would describe the temperature of a fresh pot of coffee from my coffee-maker as...warm.  Does anyone really like warm coffee?  I don't.  So I've added the additional step in my morning coffee routine of microwaving my coffee before pouring it into my thermo-mug.  I've thought, it's just one more little thing, so I do it.

But, there are more steps involved than I'm admitting to myself (which probably simply makes my opening comment even more true).  I have to pour the coffee pot coffee into a glass mug (so that I can microwave it — you know what happens when you microwave metal) and then pour that into my thermo-mug.  This all seems to create an ever-increasing trail of items that need to be cleaned, so I also wash the glass mug (another step).  If this is getting a bit tedious even to read, imagine what it feels like to do it.  But, I digress....

This morning, while cleaning the glass mug, I dropped it in the sink.  Before I could even stop myself, I blurted out, "How does this even happen?!?".

Wait, what?

It's easy to see how it happened; I dropped it.

Besides the relatively benign significance of this (non)-event, I couldn't help but notice an unanticipated kind of echo in my unfiltered blurt — because I'm mumbling something like that more and more to myself..."how does that even happen?".  

Among other things, the mood reflected in my question is that whatever is happening, shouldn't be. So, it's not really a question after all. It’s really a statement — a statement of frustration — and that's the part worth noting.  There's an assumption in there somewhere and it appears to be growing.  Now I'm suspecting the question is not my real question anyway.  As I've pondered the dynamic a bit, I'm detecting something else the question might be revealing — a growing spirit that believes life owes me something that it isn't delivering.

I am becoming increasingly aware how much I expect life largely to work, especially if I make conscious efforts to the likelihood of it doing so. For example, have you ever noticed the primary emotion you sometimes feel when you’ve consciously tried to keep something from happening ahead of time and it happens anyway?  Anger, for me, is a common indicator of this. So, it is useful for me to at least notice it.

It is likely the case that we all have desires, if not expectations, that life will increasingly cooperate with us. We are even willing to invest in that possibility.  But, the often undetected feature of these desires or expectations is that we are owed this possibility, especially when we’ve put forth effort to realize it.

When you stop and think about it, it's actually surprisingly true how often, in fact, that it does work out this way (at least for some people — but, that's a whole other story). But, too often, that simply reinforces our notion that the more we do along these lines, the more we can expect the benefits of doing so.  And, this is most exposed when it doesn’t happen. 

It is a faulty assumption that life owes us anything. While it is amazingly true that there are many benevolences in life, that still doesn’t translate to mean that it owes them to us. When we get this wrong, we set ourselves up for many unfortunate dynamics and, therefore, conclusions.

In spite of the stupidity of doing so, it would not be too hard for me to conclude that life is somehow conspiring against me…that a coffee mug falling out of my hand is somehow proof of that.  But, conflating these two particular things is not only a bit weird, it also points out some of my basic working assumptions right now.

After all, it is probably more likely true that I exist for the benefit of life m, rather than that life exists for the benefit of me. When a perspective about such things is more in tune with reality, it is also more likely that the benefits involved are mutual.

Life really doesn’t owe me anything.

So, now that that’s settled, it’s still likely just time for a new coffee-maker.

Not Forgetting

Only by not forgetting the past, can we be the master of the future.

-- Ba Jin

Content and Context

I think it may be easier to see solutions if you can distinguish between context and content. If you can place a problem within the framework of the larger universe, its dimensions are put into perspective and automatically diminished.

-- Peter Cundill, on the power of perspective

Odds In My Favor

I've noticed...that the odds are in my favor in some things, and not so much in others.

Assuming the same is true for you, it's probably worth considering more what the implications of that really are...not only for ourselves, but perhaps more importantly for others.

Year of Favor

The Spirit of God has been given to me,   YHWH has anointed me.   He has sent me to bring good news to the poor,   To bind up hearts that are broken,   To proclaim liberty to captives,   Freedom to those in prison,   To proclaim the Year of Favor from the Lord.   

 -- Luke 4:18–19 (quoting Isaiah 61:1– 2)

Consider how well we love others, especially the stranger

Once you see it, it is very hard to miss this as a pervasive theme throughout the Christian scriptures (we've just been enculturated, by political powers, not to see it):

Welcoming Strangers in Scripture

Fall Into Barbarism

The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.

-- Hannah Arendt

3 Observations & A Question

Sustainable strength is almost always based on respect.

Greatness and power are not necessarily synonymous — one wields power, while the other shares it.

If it’s only good for some, it’s probably not good.

At the end of the day, isn't it significance that we're all after?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Inhabit My Body

To inhabit my body in all its grace and its flaws appears as a gift for the new/mundane bodily territory I’m on in midlife. Aging is the ultimate slow motion loss, inevitable for us all, and yet somehow for me and everyone I know, it’s come as a surprise. You hit a point where it’s no longer so incremental, and no longer amenable to cover up. The original dance between order and chaos takes over our bodies inside and out—even with lots of yoga. As I watched my children move through the primal metamorphosis of adolescence, I made a decision to be fascinated rather than terrified. I’m trying to impose the same discipline on my reaction to myself on this end of aging’s metamorphosis.   

There is grief to be had, to be sure, and fear, and lots of simple dismay. But settling into this as best I am able, I experience a wholly unexpected gift of contentment. Contentment is not something I’ve known much in my life and not something I ever really knew I wanted. This, too, is the body’s grace—a gift of physiology, right there alongside my fading hair and skin. At younger ages, our brains are tuned to learn by novelty. At this stage in life, they incline to greater satisfaction in what is routine. Slowing down is accompanied by space for noticing. I am embodied with an awareness that eluded me when my skin was so much more glowy. I become attentive to beauty in ordinary, everyday aspects of my life. There is nothing more delicious than my first cup of tea in the morning; no experience more pleasurable than when my son, now much taller than me, wraps me in a hug; no view I find more breathtaking, over and over again, than the white pine that stands day in and day out behind my backyard.   

-- Krista Tippett

Delete It (Them)

Trump's desire to remake America by simply deleting it continues:

Black Medal of Honor recipient removed from US Department of Defense website (mistake? or...not)

Trump terminates program tracking mass abductions of Ukrainian children

He's betting that most of us just won't notice or, worse, won't care enough to do anything about it because it doesn't affect us directly...yet.

But, it isn't simply that valuable information is being systematically removed.  The implication, of course, is that the people the information describes are being removed, too.  Message:  you, too...if you're not one of us. 

And, he is daring the courts to try and stop him, because he’s betting there, too, that they won’t.

Will we?  

In case you’re still wondering, he's not doing this for us....

Empowered by Justice

 

Words, empowered by justice can never be silenced.

-- Isabel Ibañez

Is Never

The time to make up your mind about people, is never.

-- Philip Barry

Rarely Condemned

Ever noticed...that we are rarely condemned to the degree that we think we will be?

What (Who) To Defend

Jesus never called his followers to defend Christianity, a "Christian nation", or even their Christian churches.

Jesus called them to defend the poor, the oppressed, and the hurting.

Stop manipulating Jesus for the benefit of a few.  Get to feeding, healing, and peacemaking.

-- Carlos A. Rodriguez

3 Observations & A Question

Energy creates energy.

Violence changes nothing for the better.

Grief isn’t as much something you have to go through, as it is a way to deal with what you have already gone through.

If challenged by health, how hard would you fight to live? Perhaps more importantly, why?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Way Things Are Going

GALLUP - Front Page

This day is not the first time such a question was being asked. How about some history of March 15th?

Ways to Measure Trees

'Poem for the week' -- "Ways to Measure Trees":   

        Level II: Basic Assessment

All my life I was a hammer:     
I struck at everything I touched.   

Then I commit a few Thursdays     
to trees. I am not gentle but I could be.    

Around one tree, I try my basic circling     
steps, tap the tree’s bark with my mallet     

and listen for the difference: alive?     
dead? alive? dead? alive? still alive?     

I muscle coils of clay and learn     
the same lesson again and again–   

could be clay trees family trees     
literal trees: I hear the precarious things.     

I go phone-my-forester asking     
about sounding trees, about my ears?     

How I want to save a few trees     
but don’t understand what I hear.     

All my life I swung the wrong things.     
I put down mallet and muscle,     

circle the tree’s girdling roots     
and ask, “Where does it hurt?”     

The forester returns my call.     
He’s glad he caught me this evening.   

He heard what I asked about trees     
and ears. “It’s subtle, takes practice.”

-- MaKshya Tolbert

When Many People Walk It

Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.

-- Lin Yutang

Where the real fight is

Where the real fight is....

Oh, tell me more.  You want details, right?

I'm going to skip most of those (for now) and go for the net-out:

I have learned the most about relationships
from my closest ones.  

That's it?  That's a little disappointing (I know) and not particularly newsworthy (maybe it is a confession, though).

We all are prone to assumptions (often the start of most fights, too, by the way).  Assumptions, after all, are how we get by.  But, sometimes they are quite wrong.  We do tend to craft our view of things around what makes sense to us.  The problem is that, too often, what makes sense to us is exclusive in nature...it often doesn't consider what makes sense to someone else.

At the very least, it is often confined to the particularities of our experience, which we control far more of than we tend to think.

Countless times, I've discovered (sometimes painfully) that what I'm thinking is not what someone else is thinking, even when they are close to me and I think I know them well.  This has borne itself out in my relationship with my wife, my kids, my friends, my neighbors, my co-workers, etc.  In fact, the list is conspicuously large.  That should indicate something.

There are often significant compatibilities, to be sure, with those around us.  But, those are really never all-encompassing or absolute.

I want to zero in.  But, I need to open myself up.  What I need (or want) vs what is good for the other person.  This is where the real fight (battle) is.  

A basic ingredient of living with understanding of what another person is working with is believing that they are doing so — not trying to change them or speed anything up.   Our disposition has to be invitational in nature, primarily, by the way you live and give to them, to the work they are doing (without complicating the process by making them take care of me first).  

None of this may be easy, especially at certain times (it may, in fact, take a lifetime).  It comes down to what you are willing to trust in — to what you are willing to entrust yourself to.

Love is a long-term thing and, therefore, requires this kind of faith — trusting that something is true, even when you don't see the truth of it in a particular moment or circumstance.  Love has faith.  It trusts.

Yes, there is a religious version of faith, too.  Sadly, religion too often seems to contribute more to the doubt about it, as it is often only lives up to inconsistency (if even that much).  And, this is, I suspect, because much of it isn't really love-based faith.  It doesn't really trust.

Essentially, you have to stare down the question:  what does it really mean and take to truly trust another person?

In other words, what do I really have to assume (believe)?

Most of that answer will come from your personal experience of love.  Most of that experience will be with those closest to you…where the real fight is, with yourself.

Attention Isn’t Free

Attention isn't free. It's the most valuable thing you spend. Action creates inspiration. 

-- Shane Parrish

Frame of Reality

I’m wondering…when you realize how much your frame of reality has changed, what happens internally?

Do you feel lost?  Homeless?  Freed?  Excited?

Worship…of Power

It's not just that they're wrong on politics. They are evil. 

-- Dan Bongino

Beware those who invoke the rhetoric of evil.  Other Americans are evil because…?

Leveraging language from the new deputy director of the FBI (although, Bongino’s been saying that kind of stuff for a long time now on his shows).  What we say, how we say it, what terminology we use — all are significant…and revealing.  

Perhaps, such political language tries to leverage such terminology because it tends to work the religious side of things.  But:

Cremer is certainly not the first one to make this observation:

What can we do? 

Here’s some ideas:  Take Heart

3 Observations & A Question

We all are trying so hard…to cope.

Too many people don’t really care about things that don’t affect them directly.

The only healthy way forward now is through grief (more here).

Why do we so often feel compelled to cast other people in terms of evil?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

On The Lighter Side: Just Explain How Your Mom Did It

On the Lighter Side:

Prayers of an Early Morning

A peer at work sent me an email this week that she was leaving early to cry...because her brother had just died.

Among other things, I told her I would pray for her. I didn't then, but the next morning I did.

It is early in the morning and today my 84-year-old mother is having open heart surgery. I visit her knowing the possibility of the same fate as my co-worker's brother. So, I am praying for her this morning. Doing so, leads me to pray for my dad, too. Which brings my brother to mind and how he, too, is impacted by the situation. My prayers then wander to all of our collective children and their relationship with my mother.

I couldn’t bring myself to watch a presidential address to the nation the other night (normally, I force myself to do so, for what I used to think was the greater good of civic responsibility). And, I'm finding that one of my few remaining choices, regarding the anxiety I sometimes feel about the impacts of our current political system, is to pray.

I’m surprised at times how prayer can still feel like a last resort and yet while doing it, one of my best options.

As do many things, including my better desires, I’ve noticed more recently that prayers come more easily for me in the morning (perhaps, the two are not actually different things — one rather simply being the expression of the other). It seems the prayers of an early morning often pull me back out of the rabbit-holes of despair over the environment many days impose on my psyche.

Perhaps this is because our purest prayers help us articulate our desires (even when our desires are not all that good). Prayers can be one of the most raw and authentic things we can do, especially as we discover that their whole essence has very little to do with things like duty after all. Rather, they are the expression of yearning we have for what is good and the acknowledgment that significant portions of our ability to embody the goodness of those things (our desires) is dependent on additional resources beyond what we can provide for ourselves.

Prayers serve to remind us that our desires are not autonomous. There is a latent dependency in what we want. In other words, our desires involve other things, often other beings…like God, or people (or even animals). In both times of peace and calamity, our prayers acknowledge this dependency, our need, our desire for what is good in life. And, in that way, prayers migrate us from the simply transactional nature of asking for things that we want and toward the things that we all want — expanding our desire from self-satisfaction toward collective harmony.

Prayers can also be the catalyst to move us from our contemplation of what is good for ourselves (and others) to the actions that contribute to the realization of this goodness. Something must bridge what we think we want to what we do about it. There are likely many things that can serve this function.

In my experience, prayer is often one of those...particularly the prayers of an early morning.