How You Begin

How you begin may be largely influenced by how you end.

So, as you reflect on this last year, how are you ending?

It is easy to focus on this year's circumstances (they were a bit unusual).  But, perhaps more importantly; where are you as a result of it, as you move from one year to another?  

Are you connected to what you want to be connected to?  What do you want to be different (or the same) in a new year?

As I reflect on my passing year, I am reminded of how I ended 2019 (see my 12/31/19 post, You Are A Problem).  The question is, what did I do with that and everything else in 2020?

I will attempt to answer by updating the list below, throughout the day today:

• I resisted the appeal of cynicism 

• I recognized more fully that change is a function of growth 

• I need a sense of community 

• I learned more about how meaning is strength 

• Fear often controls us — collectively and personally — but, it can also awaken us 

• I need to acknowledge that there appears to be an inverse relationship between my piety and my questions 

• Justice is a collective thing — in other words, it is NOT just someone else's problem...it is also mine 

• What I do matters the most...way more than just what I think 

• We have choices to make about power in our lives. For me, the best way to make them is to look and listen differently

• My use of time reflects my values — conspiracies and labeling others are a waste of time; empathy isn't

• The birth of a child has a way of re-centering my priorities, from everything else going on around me

• As I end 2020, I want to begin more deeply with this question:  What do I want?

Maybe music is the way to both end and begin!

Bob Boilen's Top 10 Albums Of 2020

In a world like ours, we must continue to create and listen to music.  Thank God for those who make it...and for those who are still willing to listen.

 

I'm checking these out. Any that you already like?

Discipline

Whether coming off our holiday indulgences or in anticipation of a new year, we can be disciplined about what we let into ourselves (and, I'm not talking just about food).  

Being disciplined doesn’t have to be as much about control, as it is about trust — trusting that something bigger than ourselves is at work (including in us) and that we are, therefore, not missing out by submitting to a discipline.

While it may be true that we can be more disciplined, we may also need to do it.

What If...rather than deride ourselves when we’re not disciplined (by the way, why is that such a handy thing to do?), we acknowledged when we are and then ask ourselves if that is something we want more of?

Antidote

Travel is an antidote to ignorance.

-- Trevor Noah

One's Popularity

Ever noticed...that the most sustainable element of one’s popularity is often manifested after they have died?

There is a certain undeniability of this, and some implications....

Incarnation

Christianity’s true and unique story line has always been incarnation. That means that the spirit nature of reality (the spiritual, the immaterial, the formless) and the material nature of reality (the physical, that which we can see and touch) are one.

-- Richard Rohr

Visual: Reflection

 Visual - "Reflection":

Hyalite Canyon, MT

The Lord Almighty Will Accomplish This

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.

-- Isaiah 9:6-7

Oh Holy Night

A musical interpretation of Justin Kauflin, by Phil Peugh.

What Gift?

As much as Christmas involves the idea of gifts, it often ends up being more about presents.  

What would be a gift that you need to receive this year? 

What gift can you give this year?

What If...the gift you give this year is the one you are willing to receive?

A Few Of My Favorite Things

A few of  My Favorite Things....

In The Dark

New life starts in the dark.

-- Barbara Brown Taylor

There is a lot to notice in this seemingly inconspicuous observation; besides basic biology, there's the basic incubator of innovation, if not even a hint (at least in my mind) at the nature of Christmas.

Snow Angels

I'm wondering...will my grandson, at some point along the journey of his life, ever wonder what it was about snow angels that his grandfather loved to show him?

Receiving the Gift

Why, from the earliest centuries, have Christian people been so excited about Mary? What’s happening in the depths of our soul when we hear her story? Surely it must be about more than the miracle of the virgin birth. As Benedictine oblate, author, and poet Kathleen Norris shares, Mary’s “virginity” has less to do with biology than with her stance towards God and life itself.

It’s in the monastic world that I find a broader and also more relevant grasp of what it could mean to be virgin. Thomas Merton, in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, describes the true identity that he seeks in contemplative prayer as a “point vierge” [virgin point] at the center of his being, “a point untouched [by sin and] by illusion, a point of pure truth . . . which belongs entirely to God. . . .”

It is only when we stop idolizing the illusion of our control over the events of life and recognize our poverty that we become virgin in the sense that Merton means. . . . We all need to be told that God loves us, and the mystery of the Annunciation reveals an aspect of that love. But it also suggests that our response to this love is critical. A few verses before the angel appears to Mary in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel, another annunciation occurs; an angel announces to an old man, Zechariah, that his equally aged wife is to bear a son who will “make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” The couple are to name him John; he is known to us as John the Baptist [Luke 1:11–18]. Zechariah says to the angel, “How will I know that this is so?” which is a radically different response from the one Mary makes. She says, “How can this be?”

I interpret this to mean that while Zechariah is seeking knowledge and information, Mary contents herself with wisdom. . . . Mary’s “How can this be?” is a simpler response than Zechariah’s, and also more profound. She does not lose her voice but finds it. Like any of the prophets, she asserts herself before God, saying, “Here am I.” . . . Mary proceeds—as we must do in life—making her commitment without knowing much about what it will entail or where it will lead. I treasure the story because it forces me to ask: When the mystery of God’s love breaks through into my consciousness, do I run from it? . . . Or am I virgin enough to respond from my deepest, truest self, and say something new, a “yes” that will change me forever?

If Jesus is the representative of the total givenness of God to creation, then perhaps Mary is the representative of humanity, showing us how the gift is received. And I believe that is why we love Mary. She’s a stand in for all of us. When we can say, like her, “Let it be,” then we’re truly ready for Christmas.

-- Richard Rohr

Randoms...

There are things about time that are counter-intuitive.

Everything dies and yet, in some way, everything also lives on.

We should fully occupy the space we are in, and be open to moving new spaces.

When is it better not to know than it is to know?

Prior Randoms...

Poet Tracy K. Smith On Grief In The Holidays And 'Different Vocabularies For Feeling'

When I was a kid, I watched the winter holidays shift for my family after my mother died. We no longer gathered with her family for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Instead, these holidays contracted, and it was just my sisters, my dad and me, each of us uncertain how to proceed as a unit.

And this year, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, I lost an uncle, and not being able to gather with family to mourn him because of COVID-19 restrictions has given me new questions about how to meaningfully honor his life without the usual traditions to direct my grief.

Any year, the holidays can exacerbate feelings of loss. But this year, so many events — including the nationwide protests about police brutality and systemic racism, as well as the lead-up to the presidential election, to name just two — mobilized many in the U.S. and contributed to a general atmosphere of grief. All of this, combined with a general uncertainty of what or who we still might lose as a result of this pandemic, can feel overwhelming.

It really is important to remember, too, that we all have different vocabularies for feeling in general. But grief is one of those really specific points of feeling. 

Sometimes just meeting someone where they are is important and understanding that everything that we're hearing — everything that we're saying to one another, everything that I'm receiving from you — is coming through this huge lens of loss or fear or regret, whatever the circumstances are. And so, at this moment, this is your language for those things. And sometimes the way that happens with family is silence — and sometimes I think that's OK.  Continue here...

-- Tracy K. Smith

Snow Day - Get Back to Growing Up Tomorrow!

 

See some of our 'snow day' pics...here.

Context

Another lingering reflection, from a recent Randoms...:

Truth is only experienced through context.

Ever noticed that seemingly obvious portions of truths don't appear to dawn on some people (true for all of us, at any given point)?  What If...they haven't actually experienced it yet?

Truth, in and of itself, can at times seem abstract, cold, soul-less.  But, when understood, it can feel specific, invigorating, and personal.  I can recall several life circumstances when something that typically didn't feel too alive to me became very real.  One time, after I lost my job, people brought us simple things like food.  The truths of generosity and tangible care sank deeply into me. 

What makes it one or other seems to be related to one's personal encounter with it.  In other words, truth can be so alive when we have a context in which it resonates with us.

In that way, we can be sensitive to people for whom portions of truth doesn't seem to register; perhaps the context for a personal experience with it is still on its way.

Meteors a sight to behold as Geminid shower shoots across the sky

 

Did you see it?

The Geminid meteor shower peaked Sunday night into Monday in what is recognized as the best annual meteor shower for skywatchers in New England.

The shower is named after the constellation Gemini, which occupies the portion of the sky where the meteors...continue here.

-- Breanne Kovatch

For some reason (Spirit of Christmas?), this kind of thing calls out to me. 

I set my alarm for 2:30a Monday night to see what I could see.  Can't say it was exactly like the image above, but over the course of an hour I did see a few spectacular streaks across the sky.  

Staring into the starry host often leaves me sensing a variety of things — some old (familiar), some new.  The idea that so is much happening 'out there', whether I know about it (see it) or not, stokes a reminding-quality within me.  It comes like an echo from the past and whispers to me about how my present is somehow connected to a future.  

And, this recognition seems to settle something in me that tends to grow unsettled over time.

I am a part of something infinitely bigger and somehow a small part of it that still matters (ever noticed...how often we caveat smallness with insignificance — why is that?).  I have a part to play in that biggerness, if nothing else than to be present to it — to notice it, to point to it, to live as if the truth of it mattered, even if in some incomprehensible way.  

The canopy of active night sky is good for me to behold.

Contradictory answers to obvious questions

Contradictory answers to obvious questions.

That’s how you know that they’re not obvious.

When smart, committed people disagree about the answer to a question, you’ve found a question worth pursuing and a discussion worth having.

-- Seth Godin, Contradictory answers to obvious questions

These days, there seems to be many contradicting realities being maintained by so many groups of people.  When are we going to actually talk to one another?  

When you don't (won't) talk, there is something way too convenient going on.    

It seems to me that, at the end of the day, a lot of this is about security...and what we are effectively trusting in, to try to get it or maintain it.  

And, this security we seek smells like money.  When all else fails or seems out of control, we want money to make us feel secure.  We vote for people who will protect our prospects for getting or keeping money.  Money's security-pitch pushes us towards believing that other groups are a threat and want to take it from us.

We trust in it, more than we should.  Perhaps, that's why we talk about other things (like all our 'issues' with those who are supposedly threatening us) in a way that disguises what we really are believing in...to save us, to protect us.  We can get to the point, where we don't even realize anymore that this is what we are doing.

This is "a question worth pursuing; a discussion worth having".

Flow vs Force

I’ve noticed…it is not as easy for me to force thought as it is to let it flow. 

What seems to happen more naturally is the free flow of thoughts, by creating or fostering contexts for them.  I never seem to know, though, which ones will come or from where.  But, they do seem to percolate from things or ideas I've recently encountered.

Like many things in life, things work better when they flow, than when they are forced.

Movements

As we zero in on our cultural celebration of Christmas, I like how Brian McLaren describes the significance of Jesus' coming in the context of historical movements — movements of the Spirit of God that we, too, are a part of:

I believe that the Spirit of God works everywhere to bring and restore aliveness—through individuals, communities, institutions, and movements. Movements play a special role. In the biblical story [of Exodus], for example, Moses led a movement of liberation among oppressed slaves. They left an oppressive economy, journeyed through the wilderness, and entered a promised land where they hoped to pursue aliveness in freedom and peace. Centuries after that, the Hebrew prophets launched a series of movements based on a dream of a promised time . . . a time of justice when swords and spears, instruments of death, would be turned into plowshares and pruning hooks, instruments of aliveness [Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3]. Then came John the Baptist, a bold and nonviolent movement leader who dared to challenge the establishment of his day and call people to a movement of radical social and spiritual rethinking. . . .

When a young man named Jesus came to affiliate with John’s movement through baptism, John said, “There he is! He is the one!” Under Jesus’ leadership, the movement grew and expanded in unprecedented ways. . . . It rose again through a new generation of leaders like James, Peter, John, and Paul, who were full of the Spirit of Jesus. They created learning circles in which activists were trained to extend the movement locally, regionally, and globally. Wherever activists in this movement went, the Spirit of Jesus was alive in them, fomenting change and inspiring true aliveness. . . .

[Christianity] began as a revolutionary nonviolent movement promoting a new kind of aliveness on the margins of society. . . . It claimed that everyone, not just an elite few, had God-given gifts to use for the common good. It exposed a system based on domination, privilege, and violence and proclaimed in its place a vision of mutual service, mutual responsibility, and peaceable neighborliness. It put people above profit, and made the audacious claim that the Earth belonged not to rich tycoons or powerful politicians, but to the Creator who loves every sparrow in the trees and every wildflower in the field. It was a peace movement, a love movement, a joy movement, a justice movement, an integrity movement, an aliveness movement.

-- Brian McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking

I am grateful for the distinction between the cycles of nonviolence-and-aliveness and violence-and-death; for the ways that God's movement throughout time are re-creating the original order of things, despite what looks like, at times, evidence to the contrary.  No wonder, the is more place for the 4 power words of Christmas than ever.

COVID-19 has influenced my malaise towards Christmas so far this year.  Usually there's something that sneaks its way in and moves the dial for me each year; the reality described here just might be it.  

Randoms...

It seems unfortunate when we don’t know what’s really out there, simply because we can’t see it.

Just because something is corrupt, doesn't mean that everyone in it is.

One thought often seems to lead to another, which can be either a rather fascinating thing or an insidious one. 

I've been contemplating this question; what do I want to do with all that I am learning?

Prior Randoms...

This Week's Miscellany

AXIOS

AXIOS

 

The Morning 

It seems pretty obvious that narrative is powerfully influencing (controlling?) what people believe — what narrative are you participating in?

Forget Me Not

As so many persist in a dark season, while anticipating still more: 

'Poem for the week' -- "Forget Me Not":

When in the morning’s misty hour,

When the sun beams gently o’er each flower;

When thou dost cease to smile benign,

And think each heart responds with thine,

When seeking rest among divine,

                                    Forget me not.

When the last rays of twilight fall,

And thou art pacing yonder hall;

When mists are gathering on the hill,

Nor sound is heard save mountain rill,

When all around bids peace be still,

                                    Forget me not.

When the first star with brilliance bright,

Gleams lonely o’er the arch of night;

When the bright moon dispels the gloom,

And various are the stars that bloom,

And brighten as the sun at noon,

                                    Forget me not.

When solemn sighs the hollow wind,

And deepen’d thought enraps the mind;

If e’er thou doest in mournful tone,

E’er sigh because thou feel alone,

Or wrapt in melancholy prone,

                                    Forget me not. 

When bird does wait thy absence long,

Nor tend unto its morning song;

While thou art searching stoic page,

Or listening to an ancient sage,

Whose spirit curbs a mournful rage,

                                    Forget me not.

Then when in silence thou doest walk,

Nor being round with whom to talk;

When thou art on the mighty deep,

And do in quiet action sleep;

If we no more on earth do meet,

                                    Forget me not.

When brightness round thee long shall bloom,

And knelt remembering those in gloom;

And when in deep oblivion’s shade,

This breathless, mouldering form is laid,

And thy terrestrial body staid,

                                     Forget me not.

“Should sorrow cloud thy coming years,

And bathe thy happiness in tears,

Remember, though we’re doom’d to part,

There lives one fond and faithful heart,

                        That will forget thee not.”

-- Ann Plato

Optical Illusion

Click image and....

So, Why DO You Believe...What You Believe?

Sometimes, one of my Randoms lingers with me a while and I find myself reflecting further on it.  Here's one like that regarding wonder and belief:

Do you ever wonder about why you believe, what you believe?  

Or, you may find yourself saying something like, "I don't believe that...".  Do you wonder why?

The key here is partly the believing; but, more importantly in my view, the why.

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

I first encountered this when I studied in Europe in college.  Up to that point, I was so sure about the nature of truth (even though I was only in college! — which is partly the point here).  My experience there caused me to really wonder about the basis of my certainty.

There is so much involved in our notions of belief; often much that we are completely unaware of.  You should wonder about it, because of what tends to happen when you don't.

Ideas That Are Repeated

Simple ideas are easier to understand.

Ideas that are easier to understand are repeated.

Ideas that are repeated change the world.

-- Simon Sinek

This is both liberating...and scary.  You can see a lot of this going on right now, for good and bad.

Comfortable With

Ever noticed...how much easier it is to just read (or listen or watch) things you are comfortable with, rather than things that are outside your comfort zone?

In a changing and increasingly political world, can you see what a dilemma that creates?

To Show Us How

Jesus didn’t die so that we don’t have to, he died to show us how.

-- Jason Miller

Randoms...

Freedom is not intended for indulgence.

Beating things down doesn't make things go away, it only drives them further in.

Despite how counter-intuitive it is, there seems to be a need to have enemies.

Why is moral authority so universally appealing?

Prior Randoms...

This Week's Miscellany

The organization of power speaks volumes....

Morning Brew

AXIOS

Your Base

Many people seem to spend a lot of time playing to their base; only rarely interested in different perspectives, not to mention other points-of-view.  Few ever really consider reaching out to those outside their base.  

There is something about 'your base' that seems to stifle curiosity, preferring instead self-proclaimed grandiosity.

This seems to be a fundamental way groups work in order to maintain themselves.  But, cultivating your base also seems to have a more sinister side and is perhaps why it so easily seems to result in viewing others as enemies and it appears, at times, to actually create them for you.  

Not confined exclusively to political contexts, I have seen this dynamic in many other types of groups of which I have been a part as well.  

In other words, 'base' thinking is something to be wary of.

Wellspring

Wonder is the wellspring for love....

-- Valarie Kaur

We Have Ruined Childhood

According to the psychologist Peter Gray, children today are more depressed than they were during the Great Depression and more anxious than they were at the height of the Cold War. A 2019 study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology found that between 2009 and 2017, rates of depression rose by more than 60 percent among those ages 14 to 17, and 47 percent among those ages 12 to 13. This isn’t just a matter of increased diagnoses. The number of children and teenagers who were seen in emergency rooms with suicidal thoughts or having attempted suicide doubled between 2007 and 2015.

To put it simply, our kids are not O.K.

For a long time, as a mother and as a writer, I searched for a single culprit. Was it the screens? The food? The lack of fresh air and free time, the rise of the overscheduled, overprotected child, the overarching culture of anxiety and fear?

Those things might all contribute. But I’ve come to believe that the problems with children’s mental and emotional health are caused not by any single change in kids’ environment but by a fundamental shift in the way we view children and child-rearing, and the way this shift has transformed our schools, our neighborhoods and our relationships to one another and our communities.

Tali Raviv, the associate director of the Center for Childhood Resilience, says many children today are suffering a social-skills deficit. She told me kids today “have fewer opportunities to practice social-emotional skills, whether it’s because they live in a violent community where they can’t go outside, or whether it’s because there’s overprotection of kids and they don’t get the independence to walk down to the corner store.” They don’t learn “how to start a friendship, how to start a relationship, what to do when someone’s bothering you, how to solve a problem.”

Something has to change, says Denise Pope, a co-founder of Challenge Success, an organization based in Palo Alto, Calif., that helps schools make research-backed changes to improve children’s mental health. Kids need recess. They need longer lunches. They need free play, family time, meal time. They need less homework, fewer tests, a greater emphasis on social-emotional learning.

Challenge Success also works with parents, encouraging them to get together with their neighbors and organize things like extracurricular-free days when kids can simply play, and teaching them how not to intervene in normal peer conflict so that children can build problem-solving skills themselves. Continue here....

-- Kim Brooks

Enlarged, Not Threatened

We must learn to feel enlarged, not threatened, by difference.

-- Lord Jonathan Sacks

This observation seems like a coherent summary of a prior post of his I put up in 2016 (click link in his last name above) and strikes me as true today as it was four years ago.