Timing

It is more easy for us to get tangled up in the timing of things than almost anything else.  But, in a context of infinity, the importance of timing is much less significant.

Is this why we tend to be so concerned about timing when it feels like God isn't?  He sees it all, what we don't see through the limitations of our sense of time.  If you see it all, when things happen would become less significant, because the piece about whether things will happen is relieved.  So what about our common question, "Why do things take so long?"  Do they?  Against what standard (the standard of adulthood, mid-life, or our life-spans)?  If God is not as concerned about 'when' as He is about 'whether', then why should we fret about things like 'when'?

Why does this matter?  The timing-of-things seems to be a rather influential factor in how we think about, treat, pressure, and love others.  ...especially when it comes to our closer relationships, like family members.

It Takes Time

The men that will change the colleges and seminaries...are the men that will spend the most time alone with God.  It takes time for the fires to burn. It takes time for God to draw near and for us to know that He is there. It takes time to assimilate His truth. You ask me, How much time? I do not know. I know it means time enough to forget time.

-- John Mott

Who We Really Are

The older we get, the less we are able to avoid being who we really are.

This can be discouraging or liberating...and, with some irony, sometimes in the very same day!

Pursue

It is only when you start to pursue who you really are, not who you don't want to be, that you become someone.

Silence: Fear of What It Has To Say

So it's searchable:

Our world is becoming more busy and noisy.  We are pushing silence out of our lives at a rate that suggest a fear of what it has to say to us about ourselves.

-- John O'Donohue

Narrative Fallacy

Decision makers get stuck in a memory loop and can only predict the future as a reflection of the past -- this dynamic is referred to as the “narrative fallacy”, where you see the future as merely a slight variation on yesterday’s news.

-- Daniel Kahneman

A challenge for all of us, I suspect, in many domains of our lives.  We tend to see what we want to see.  It is helpful to know that what we want to see is largely influenced by what we have seen.

Permission to Grieve

Is there a greater gift we can give the world these days than the permission and ability to grieve?

We visited some dear friends this weekend and marveled at their courage to grieve deep loss in their life.  Whether such a thing is done privately or in public, a world like ours is in desperate need of grieving.

I suspect that our relative unpracticing of grieving makes a significant contribution to the violence of our society.  To see and, more importantly, experience this 'other way' (the way of grieving) is both profound and freeing, not to mention healing.

Not Foreign

We are thankful that the pain we feel is not foreign to God.

-- Nathan Baker

Imitating Another

Far better to fail at being yourself than to succeed in imitating another.

-- Herman Melville

Doing It

We learn how to do something truly new only through doing it, then adjusting.

-- Robert Fritz

The Secret to Breaking Bad Habits

The first fact to face is that our habits are largely invisible to us. That is, though we may know we need to eat or listen better, our repertoire of habit resides in a part of the brain that is ordinarily off-limits to our awareness. Our brain stores our habits there so we don’t have to pay conscious attention to the countless good habits that keep us going – everything from how to brush our teeth to what not to say to your boss.

That works well ordinarily. The brain needs to conserve energy this way, and it would be overwhelmingly distracting to have to figure these sequences out each time. But the problem comes when certain habits don’t work for us. Those are the ones we want to target for change.

The first step in changing them has to be noticing them in the first place. That means not letting them just go by on automatic, but becoming mindful of them. You can do this in two ways: getting familiar with the triggers that start the sequence, and noticing the way the habit operates.  Mindfulness de-automatizes habits –- while we used to reach for that soothing candy bar after an upsetting call from that person who drives us crazy, with mindfulness we can spot the habit trigger...in the moment.  We can replace that dysfunctional habit with something that works better for us.  Continue here....

-- Daniel Goleman

Choose Consciously

Routine activity conditions the brain to follow old, familiar neural circuits. Over time, new input has a harder and harder time registering, because the course of least resistance is to follow the same ingrained patterns.

Notice that routine isn't a problem in and of itself -- keeping regular hours, going to bed at the same time every night, and maintaining a regular health diet are all good for the body. The real problem is located in the mind, which is the seat of consciousness. Every day your mind controls a feedback loop where you can choose the kind of input that will be processed. As mechanical as this may sound, you can't pursue your dreams and fulfill yourself at a deep level unless you participate in a rich, evolving, fully alive feedback loop.

A conscious lifestyle isn't divided, but integrated.

-- Deepak Chopra

Ought To Be

All persons are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

I can never be what I ought to be, until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr

This seems true at a number of levels -- inter-personally, spiritually, and, yes, racially.

Grace

Grace treats us like we already are what we fear we'll never become.

Cannot Be Separated

Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from The Eternal.

-- Dante Alighieri

Trapped In His Body For 12 Years, A Man Breaks Free

What would you do if you were locked in your body, your brain intact, but with no way to communicate? How do you survive emotionally when you are invisible to everyone you know and love?

The story of Martin Pistorius, who fell into a mysterious coma as a young boy. He had only one thing left as his mind began to function again — his own thoughts. Here's a glimpse into his unbelievable story...here.

I resonate with a number of things in the story, including the observations about how to relate to darkness (about the 10-minute mark into the 11-minute audio) and the power of those around him.

Drinking Poison

Bitterness, resentment, and jealousy are like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. You are the only one who loses.

Life is too short to resent all the people who may have hurt you.

-- Jeff Haden

Hardly Knows

Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.

-- Henry Fielding

Developmental and Illuminating

There is nothing more developmental and illuminating than dealing with adversity.

-- Jack Welch

Even the business world recognizes this truth...that such things (adversity, suffering, challenge, etc.) cause something within us to grow.

Instead

A friend of mine, Nate, is going through a hard time with his young family. He shared this video, as part of his journey during these days. It is a gift of light to me.

Thanks, Veisa, for letting me know about it.

Light: Good Deeds

Let your light shine before others, 
  that they may see your good deeds
  and glorify your Father in heaven.

-- Matthew 5:16

What, in fact, are the 'good deeds' referred to here?

And, how do we shine as light ?

So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

-- Romans 13:12

There is something about the power of God's light that protects our hearts.

Nothing So Terrible

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This alone is nearly too cryptic to be of too much use.  In the context of my recent posts, however, it provides a necessary counter-point to what might appear to be an appeal to action just for its own sake (though, in some cases, that may be a sufficient appeal).  We live in a busy world with too much activity, frankly, and too little thought.  So, this strikes me as a healthy addition to the idea of the value and need for action.

Afraid to Act & Using Perfection

Action is life. Many people are afraid to act for fear of failure so they work to create perfection to protect them.

Action is synonymous with movement and movement need not always be grandiose and dramatic. It can be but subtle and quiet as thought. The movement from somewhere to somewhere else cannot be accomplished except through action.

Action, i.e. movement, can, and often does, yield unanticipated discovery. Discovery is by definition unanticipated. But if you are not moving, if you are not testing, experimenting, tweaking, and taking advantage of what you learn, discovery is dead on arrival and that death is the cessation of action.

...a very profound and effective lesson because perfection is the death of action -- not by homicide but by suicide.

-- Jim Sniechowski

Don't Ask. Act!

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act!
Action will delineate and define you.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Something Else

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

-- Ambrose Redmoon

Darkness & Light

It is out of our deepest and most personal darkness that our brightest light will shine.

This is hard enough to believe for ourselves, especially in moments of darkness, much less for someone else.  And, yet, it is only out of believing this for ourselves that we are able to believe it for others.

Pain & Desire

Pain and desire seem to be the two great catalysts for our openness to God.

Sometimes it seems to take pain to reveal our true desire for God.

Not a Jack-In-The-Box

God does not always heal us instantly the way we think. He is not a jack-in-the-box God. But God is walking with me through this.

-- Thelma Wells

A Thread Called Grace

When I'm feeling pretty bad about myself, when the wounds of my heart cry out loud for healing, when shame attempts to suffocate me, or when I'm especially discouraged over my most tragic failures, I find myself holding onto a thread.

A thread called grace.

...the ultimate key to move from secrecy to honesty is not telling the whole world, but rather letting God have access.

-- Jonathan Merritt

A powerful story about abuse, denial, and grace here....

Bekermeier Wedding

...fun for both our kids to be in this wedding of their mutual friends.

Transitions

Not in his goals but in transitions is man great.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We come to a point in our lives, where it seems that the only thing that still grows stronger is faith.  It feels like I have arrived here -- eyesight, physical strength, mental capacity...all seem to be diminishing, irreversibly.

A growing faith, though, is no insignificant or regrettable thing.  I wonder what other transitions are underway for me at the age of 51 -- what will be gained, what will be lost, what test, what joy -- and how I will reflect on them at the end of 2015.