Not Doing Anything

If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything.

-- John Wooden

How Close They Were

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

-- Thomas Edison

Like A Nail

Christianity is like a nail, the harder you strike it, the deeper it goes.

-- Yemelian Yaroslavsky, "League of the Militant Godless"

Surprise of Joy

I love the child-like joy of so many in the crowd.

I've Failed, too...

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

-- Michael Jordan

Though it's difficult to know how much to argue that Michael Jordan failed, at least athletically...it does seem like it is an important concept for our kids to consider -- to see in a success-dominated messaging culture that adults fail, including their parents.  If they never see me fail, how can my kids become convinced that it is OK when they do...that they will actually survive their failures, that failing actually creates opportunities for them?  In other words, I am not just the presentation of my successes to my kids.  I am my failures, too.

Here's an example to consider...continue reading.

Falling

We are not helping our children by always preventing them from what might be necessary falling, because you learn how to recover from falling by falling!  It is precisely by falling off the bike many times that you eventually learn what the balance feels like.  The skater pushing both right and left eventually goes where he or she wants to go.  People who have never allowed themselves to fall are actually off balance, while not realizing it at all.  That is why they are so hard to live with.

-- Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

Seven-years-olds and Grownups

I'm convinced that the main difference between seven-year-olds and grownups is that adults have learned to hide our emotions. But that doesn't mean we no longer have fears or dreams. It doesn't mean we no longer have short attention spans. It just means we have gotten very, very good at pretending to listen and understand.

Likewise, if you make adults listen to a convoluted strategy that you pay them to follow, adults will pretend to follow it. But the strategy still won't work.  Continue here....

-- Bruce Kasanoff

National Anthem - of Hell

The national anthem of hell is, "I Did It My Way".

-- Peter Kreeft

Emptiness

A friend spoke yesterday about the role of emptiness in our lives. It is counter-intuitive to consider its value, especially in our culture. People don't understand emptiness and the importance of it until they've been emptied....

Our frantic days are really just a hedge against emptiness.

-- Tim Kreider

Some may think this is 'a bit over-stated', but I think not.  Just watch what happens when you don't have something to do...how quickly you run to fill it with something else.  Watch how ferociously you are willing to attack something (someone) that pokes at the possibility of you being emptied.  We are frantic about it...much more than we realize.

The good news is that emptiness creates an echo of the bitterness we hold over not getting what we want...but in way that reveals to us what we didn't even know we wanted.  It is the beauty of submitting to something that is good for us.

Growing Into Freedom

True freedom is the freedom of the children of God. To reach that freedom requires a lifelong discipline since so much in our world militates against it. The political, economic, social, and even religious powers surrounding us all want to keep us in bondage so that we will obey their commands and be dependent on their rewards.

But the spiritual truth that leads to freedom is the truth that we belong not to the world but to God, whose beloved children we are. By living lives in which we keep returning to that truth in word and deed, we will gradually grow into our true freedom.

-- Henri Nouwen

Cultural Narcissism

This...is critical for our own civilization right now.  We have too many people on the extremes:  some make a "sacrificial" and heroic life their whole identity, and end up making everyone else around the sacrifice so they can be sacrificial and heroic.  Others, in selfish rebellion and without any training in letting go, refuse to sacrifice anything.  Basically, if you stay in the first half of life beyond its natural period, you become a well-disguised narcissist or an adult infant (who is also a narcissist) -- both of whom are often thought to be successful "good old boys" by the mainstream culture.  No wonder that Bill Plotkin calls us a "patho-adolescent culture".

-- Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

Courage is Not the Absence of Fear

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.

-- Meg Cabot

This makes a lot of sense towards explaining how the things in yesterday's post post could happen...where people move to help others in need.

The World - A Dangerous Place

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

-- Albert Einstein

We went to a local CASA vigil one evening this week, where the thought above was shared.  We have a responsibility to help those who are powerless.  I particularly like Bonhoeffer's perspective on this.

...like those that helped in the bombings in Boston earlier this week.  It seems to me that those who help others the most are the ones who have traveled through the pains of this life themselves -- they have seen the other side of pain and can reassure others that it is survivable and may even give you a gift in the process.  When this happens, we let go of the fist that grips the things that we believe we need to avoid pain and allows us to offer the same 'release' to others.  Here is a beautiful story from the bombings in Boston earlier this week that illustrates this surprising, but deeply true discovery.

Habit Formation: The 21-Day Myth

Most people believe that habits are formed by completing a task for 21 days in a row. Twenty-one days of task completion, then voila, a habit is formed. Unfortunately, this could not be further from the truth. The 21-day myth began as a misinterpretation of Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s work on self-image. Maltz did not find that 21 days of task completion forms a habit. People wanted it to be true so much so, however, that the idea began to grow in popularity.

-- Jason Selk

Continue Reading -- worth consideration.

What You Know vs What You Feel

 

Ego

It is often when the ego is most deconstructed that we can hear things anew and begin some honest reconstruction, even if it is only half heard and halfhearted.

-- Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

One Act

One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who vs Why

One of the deeper questions we have during suffering is 'Why?' Why is this happening? What is this happening to me? What is wrong? What can I do about it? Why, God?

We live enculturated with the assumptions of cause-and-effect. So, we can hardly avoid our 'whys'. We almost require an explanation.

But, the answers to our deeper questions really come more from the question of 'who?'...than from the question of 'why?'

In other words, it is not really the answer to 'why' that satisfies us (even though we crave that answer)...because it only lasts until we are forced to ask it again.  It is the answer to a different question that we really need, 'Who?'.  Who is with me...during this time of suffering?  Who am I? Who do I belong to?  ...the answers to these 'who' questions satisfy.  The Answer helps address our more human question of 'why?'.

This, by the way, is what so many people don't get about The Bible.  They think, as I have so often thought, that it is supposed address our questions of 'why', particularly when we suffer.  It doesn't.  It wants to tell us Who is with us, especially in our suffering.  ...a far different question, with a far different answer.

God doesn't offer us explanation for our pain nearly as much as he offers to be with us in it.

Words

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

-- Rudyard Kipling


Whether we use that drug to heal or harm lies in the power of the tongue.

-- Darlene Price

the Table

Most of the time, I eat like someone’s about to steal my plate, like I can’t be bothered to chew or taste or feel, but I’m coming to see that the table is about food, and it’s also about time. It’s about showing up in person, a whole and present person, instead of a fragmented, frantic person, phone in one hand and to-do list in the other. Put them down, both of them, twin symbols of the modern age, and pick up a knife and a fork. The table is where time stops. It’s where we look people in the eye, where we tell the truth about how hard it is, where we make space to listen to the whole story, not the textable sound bite.

-- Shauna Niequist

Love this read on the value of taking time to eat together...

Up and Down

Loss and renewal is a pattern so constant and ubiquitous that it hardly could be called a secret. Yet it is still a secret, because we do not want to see it. We did not want to embark on a further journey if it feels like going down, especially after we put so much sound and fury into going up. This is certainly the first and primary reason why so many people never get to the fullness of their own lives. The supposed achievements of the first half of life have to fall apart and show themselves to be wanting in some way, or we will not move further. Why would we?

-- Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

The Block (er, I mean...Foul!)

 

Sent to me from a Cardinal fan!

National Championship Game!

 

Deeply Rooted

Trees that grow tall have deep roots. Great height without great depth is dangerous. The great leaders of this world – like St. Francis, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. – were all people who could live with public notoriety, influence, and power in a humble way because of their deep spiritual rootedness.

Without deep roots we easily let others determine who we are. But as we cling to our popularity, we may lose our true sense of self. Our clinging to the opinion of others reveals how superficial we are. We have little to stand on. We have to be kept alive by adulation and praise. Those who are deeply rooted in the love of God can enjoy human praise without being attached to it.

-- Henri Nouwen

From:  http://wp.henrinouwen.org/daily_meditation_blog/?p=2031

Tragedy

Tragedy rightly calls faith into question, but it also affirms faith.

God has chosen to respond to our predicament not by waving a magic wand to make evil disappear, but by joining us and absorbing it in his very person.

-- Philip Yancey, National Tragedy and the Empty Tomb

The Mute Button

Another video...two in one week makes me think I need to get back to work. I did do some really good reading though, too.

Pretty funny study (using the term loosely) in human group dynamics!

Vision

The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined.  The imagination must come before the implementation.  Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing.  The same royal consciousness that makes it possible to implement anything and everything is the one that shrinks imagination because imagination is a danger.

-- Walter Brueggemann

Thanks, David, for passing this along...seems true in a number of domains of life.

The Familiar and The Habitual

The familiar and the habitual are so falsely reassuring, and most of us make their homes there permanently.  The new is always by definition unfamiliar and untested, so God, life, destiny. suffering have to give us a push -- usually a big one -- or we will not go. Someone has to be clear to us that homes are not meant to be lived in -- but only to be moved out from.

-- Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

Immodesty

Immodesty is a terrified attempt 'to be seen'.

-- Karla Denlinger

Modesty is Hottesty

More Than Once

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.

-- Margaret Thatcher