Things I Think About

I've noticed...that things I think about are often traceable to things I’ve recently read, seen or heard.

Not too surprising really; but, informative, regarding how easily we are influenced by our environment.

Justice

Justice is about everybody having enough.

-- Rob Bell

Randoms...

Truth is only experienced through context.

You can’t take somebody to some place that you haven’t been willing to go yourself.

Hold your conclusions lightly, because of what often happens when you hold your conclusions tightly.

What is it about masculinity that needs to be redeemed?

Prior Randoms...

Visual: Elements

 Visual - "Elements":

Whitefish, MT

Our Table

Our table is a place that captures much of the essence of all things.  At the very least, it is where so much of all things (so eloquently described below) is talked about.  Our most beautiful response is our willingness to be present to the moments reflected at such a place.

This Thanksgiving Day, I am so grateful for the connection and love I have for those I will be eating with today.  

Where would I be?  Who would I be, without each one in my life?

'Poem for the week' -- "Perhaps the World Ends Here":

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

-- Joy Harjo

Something Larger

Without an active sense of something larger than yourself, even the accumulation of more of your own self only serves to make you smaller.

The activating participation in the larger good is what expands us into more of what we truly are. 

In that way, we are always only expanding or contracting our capacity, because the energy for the dynamic involved is love.  

And, in the end, love is invariably about expansion.

Entitlement

An attitude of entitlement doesn’t increase the chances you’ll get what you want.

And it ruins the joy of the things you do get.

Win or lose, you lose.

-- Seth Godin, Entitlement

Response?

I’m wondering...is gratitude our response to something that we recognize as good?

Goodness is everywhere (despite the presence of evil — one of these being true doesn't cancel the other).  But, we don't often feel thankful for it.  It seems to me that the difference, between the moments that we are and are not grateful, has something to do with our recognition of it.  When we recognize something good, being grateful seems to be a natural response. 

This seems to be confirmed in a variety of contexts — the beauty of color say in things like trees in the Fall, a newborn baby, a sense of deep connection with other people, a gift from someone, the joy of good news.  All are examples of things that take our recognition of them, of the goodness in them, in order to produce the response of gratitude.

Conversely, when we don't feel grateful, it isn't really the case that all those things don't still exist.  It is more often the case that we're simply not in a position to recognize them, for one reason or another.

This gives me pause this week in particular, to wonder...what goodness exists in my life, in those I love, in the world around me, in the expanse of all reality?

Prayer

It seems to me that there is a kind a prayer that might feel like a vending machine.  There is something that you want or need; you put some money (prayer) in and hope that it will fix this or that, provide the help you feel you need, etc.

And, there is the prayer that notices the pre-dominant self-interest of that kind of prayer and tries to avoid that through the repetition of platitudes — almost as if doing so would make the general graces of God or power more available to you.  If you can get some kind of generic benefit from doing so, then you’ll try it...sometimes even for a long time.

Then there seems to be the kind of prayer that is more contemplative; the kind that seeks to meld into the sacred, that is about trying to become more aware of the reality of the divine all around us and recognizes the need to access that reality through awareness, rather than leverage.

I'm not trying to suggest the illegitimacy of any of these types of prayer (or others).

I am suggesting though that, at some point, prayer needs to include the goal of or (perhaps better) desire for...awareness.

Because when this happens, it is hard not to notice that awareness of the divine invariably seems to lead us toward gratitude, a kind of prayer in and of itself.

Scientists Discover Outer Space Isn't Pitch Black After All

 

Look up at the night sky and, if you're away from city lights, you'll see stars. The space between those bright points of light is, of course, filled with inky blackness.

Some astronomers have wondered about that all that dark space--about how dark it really is.

"Is space truly black?" says Tod Lauer, an astronomer with the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Arizona. He says if you could look at the night sky without stars, galaxies, and everything else known to give off visible light, "does the universe itself put out a glow?"

It's a tough question that astronomers have tried to answer for decades. Now, Lauer and other researchers with NASA's New Horizons space mission say they've finally been able to do it, using a spacecraft that's travelling far beyond the dwarf planet Pluto.  Continue here....

-- Nell Greenfieldboyce

Randoms...

We shouldn't end up more capable of diagnosing other people than we are of ourselves.

Be aware that righteous indignation makes money...and is still in high demand.

Meaning comes through doing, more than it does through thinking.

Everything begins and ends, but each end is really more like a new beginning; like something that begins again, in a new way.

Prior Randoms...

This Week's Miscellany

 

Credible

Regarding COVID-19:

AXIOS

Regarding the election:

 

The Morning

AXIOS

Thinking of Frost

'Poem for the week' -- "Thinking of Frost":

I thought by now my reverence would have waned,
matured to the tempered silence of the bookish or revealed
how blasé I’ve grown with age, but the unrestrained
joy I feel when a black skein of geese voyages like a dropped
string from God, slowly shifting and soaring, when the decayed
apples of an orchard amass beneath its trees like Eve’s
first party, when driving and the road Vanna-Whites its crops
of corn whose stalks will soon give way to a harvester’s blade
and turn the land to a man’s unruly face, makes me believe
I will never soothe the pagan in me, nor exhibit the propriety
of the polite. After a few moons, I’m loud this time of year,
unseemly as a chevron of honking. I’m fire in the leaves,
obstreperous as a New England farmer. I see fear
in the eyes of his children. They walk home from school,
as evening falls like an advancing trickle of bats, the sky
pungent as bounty in chimney smoke. I read the scowl
below the smiles of parents at my son’s soccer game, their agitation,
the figure of wind yellow leaves make of quaking aspens.

-- Major Jackson

Change Your Habits

If you want change in your life, start by changing your habits.

-- Kelli Krueger

Start Sooner

Whenever it is that I will be in a significantly different place, literally or metaphorically, will I look back and say, "why didn’t I start this sooner?!?" 

Perhaps I will ask it this way, "Why did I spend so much time frittering around with things that really weren’t related to (or distracted me from) what I really wanted to do, from what I really want to express?"

Regret can be a motivation.  

But, at such a point, maybe there won't be much time for regret because the then activated energy will eclipse the waste of time it is.

Ready. Set. ...

LT: The Transition to Leadership

The flawed theory is that A+ students become good leaders.

There’s no reason to think that this should be true.

Doing well on tests, paying attention to what’s being asked, being diligent in short-term error correction–these are three hallmarks of someone who is good at school.

None of these are important once you’re charged with charting a new path, with figuring out what to do next. In fact, they get in the way.

We invented the educational regime to produce compliant factory workers. But the most compliant aren’t always suited to be the bravest, the most empathic or the most intuitive.

-- Seth Godin, The transition to leadership

Other People Think

Ever noticed…how much of what we think about ourselves is impacted by what we think other people think about us?

Grace Cannot Prevail

Grace cannot prevail until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed.

-- Robert F. Capon

Christian Colleges Are in Crisis. Here’s What That Means for the Church.

Evangelicals struggle to create and sustain lasting, influential cultural institutions because we too often think in terms of individual good rather than corporate or common good.

Whatever your views are on racial division in 2020, the fact is we cannot heal — we cannot even repent — until we understand what our nation, our denominations, our churches have done.  Continue here....

-- O. Alan Noble

Randoms...

You can only give from what you have...and I'm not referring to things.

Timing may have as much of an influence on things as anything.

What you are going through right now is what can change you.

What happens if you never wonder about why you believe what you believe?

Stories create stories, our stories.

This Week's Miscellany

AXIOS

The Morning

Visual: Details

Visual - "Details":

Winona Lake, IN

Already Are

Remember that you already are what you are seeking.

-- Richard Rohr

From Where

We tend to see things from where we see things.

Like we think how we think because of who we spend time with, we see what we see because of where we sit (see it from).

If I am not where you are, I won’t be able to as easily see what you see.  I see what is around me, not so much what is around you.

In other words, we can’t see things very well from a place we’re not in.

Examples of our where that influence how and what we see:

• Geographic location
• Family history
• Education
• Lived experience

What would you add?

LT: When Things Go Wrong

A leader should not take credit when things go right if they are not willing to accept responsibility when things go wrong. 

-- Simon Sinek

Easier

I've noticed...it’s easier to be mad, than it is to be sad.

I've also noticed...I'm not well-suited to live with perpetual tension.

I'm guessing there is a correlation here that I should be conscious of.

Miroslav Volf on Christian Witness in Turbulent Places

This is interesting on a number of topics. 

Against that backdrop, it gets quite fascinating around 26:58 with respect to paganism, Trump, and evangelical Christians.

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

'Poem for the week' -- "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour":

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. 
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth, 
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole, 
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one... 
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind, 
We make a dwelling in the evening air, 
In which being there together is enough.

-- Wallace Stevens

This Week's Miscellany

Regarding the election:

AXIOS

Regarding COVID-19:

Regarding golf:

Welcome: Grand-baby Reid Baker Wilkins!

Fear of Suffering & Deep Foundations

 Man suffers most through his fears of suffering. 

-- Etty Hillesum

If you plan to build a tall house of virtues, you must first lay deep foundations of humility.

-- Anonymous

Another thing we could use a little more of these days....

Patiently?

AXIOS

Do you feel impatient about the results of the election?  I do.

And, so, I am reminded of these sacred verses:

But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

-- Romans 8:25

Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains.

-- James 5:7

Which prompts this question; what is it, really, that I am waiting for?  The outcome of an election (which would mean what exactly)?  Something else?

What is my hope really focused on?  How do things, like elections, expose my focus?  How do they create opportunities to re-center myself?

Voting: Joy & Sensitivity

 As I left the voting place, I felt aware of 2 things:

1. Joy of the opportunity to register my voice (even if just one of many — there are things about that, too, that are good), for some reason a feeling unique to this election
2. Sensitivity to how easy it was, how safe it was (for me) and the reasons why...knowing all the while that there are so many who don't feel either of these things

I hope my vote somehow helps with the reasons that so often prevent others from having the experience I had.

Tragic Gap

For those of us who want to see democracy survive and thrive—and we are legion—the heart is where everything begins: that grounded place in each of us where we can overcome fear, rediscover that we are members of one another, and embrace the conflicts that threaten democracy as openings to new life for us and for our nation. . . . 

Of all the tensions we must hold in personal and political life, perhaps the most fundamental and most challenging is standing and acting with hope in the “tragic gap.” On one side of that gap, we see the hard realities of the world, realities that can crush our spirits and defeat our hopes. On the other side of that gap, we see real-world possibilities, life as we know it could be because we have seen it that way. . . .

If we are to stand and act with hope in the tragic gap and do it for the long haul, we cannot settle for mere “effectiveness” as the ultimate measure of our failure or success. Yes, we want to be effective in pursuit of important goals. . . . [But] we must judge ourselves by a higher standard than effectiveness, the standard called faithfulness. Are we faithful to the community on which we depend, to doing what we can in response to its pressing needs? Are we faithful to the better angels of our nature and to what they call forth from us? Are we faithful to the eternal conversation of the human race, to speaking and listening in a way that takes us closer to truth? Are we faithful to the call of courage that summons us to witness to the common good, even against great odds? When faithfulness is our standard, we are more likely to sustain our engagement with tasks that will never end: doing justice, loving mercy, and calling the beloved community into being.

-- Parker Palmer

New Life, Hope, and Dynamism

On the eve of the US Presidential election, where hopes are so high (on both sides), this kind of hope (for me) transcends the outcome, however hard it may still be:

In all my years of traveling around the world, one thing has been present in every region, everywhere. One thing has stood out and convinced me of the certain triumph of the great human gamble on equality and justice.

Everywhere there are people who, despite finding themselves mired in periods of national [disruption] or personal marginalization refuse to give up the thought of a better future or give in to the allurements of a deteriorating present. They never lose hope that the values they learned in the best of times or the courage it takes to reclaim their world from the worst of times are worth the commitment of their lives. These people, the best of ourselves, are legion and they are everywhere.

It is the unwavering faith, the open hearts, and the piercing courage of people from every level of every society that carries us through every major social breakdown to the emergence again of the humanization of humanity. In every region, everywhere, they are the unsung but mighty voices of community, high-mindedness, and deep resolve. They are the prophets of each era who prod the rest of the world into seeing newly what it means to be fully alive, personally, nationally, and spiritually. . . .

It is that steadfast, unyielding, courageous commitment to the eternal Will of God for Creation—whatever the cost to themselves—that is the prophetic tradition. It sustains the eternal Word of God while the world spins around it, making God’s Word—Love—the center, the axle, the standard of everything the faithful do in the midst of the storm of change that engulfs us as we go. . . .

Our task is to be obedient all our lives to the Will of God [which is Love] for the world. And therein lies the difference between being good for nothing and good for something. Between religion for show and religion for real. Between personal spirituality that dedicates itself to achieving private sanctification and prophetic spirituality, the other half of the Christian dispensation. 

Yes, the Christian ideal is personal goodness, of course, but personal goodness requires that we be more than pious, more than faithful to the system, more than mere card-carrying members of the Christian community. Christianity requires, as well, that we each be so much a prophetic presence that our corner of the world becomes a better place because we have been there. . . .

The quality of life we create around us as “followers of Jesus” is meant to seed new life, new hope, new dynamism, the very essence of a new world community. 

-- Sister Joan Chittister

Every Human Live

We cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life.

Renewed contact with the Gospel of faith, of hope and of love invites us to assume a creative and renewed spirit. In this way, we will be able to transform the roots of our physical, spiritual and social infirmities and the destructive practices that separate us from each other, threatening the human family and our planet.

-- Pope Francis