All Journeys

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

-- Martin Buber

Paths

I’ve always been a little intrigued by the imagery of paths (not to mention, the idea of them and what they essentially represent). 

I’m particularly drawn to ones that I have actually walked. So, over the years, I’ve been taking pictures of them.

For me, the intrigue of a path is at least two-fold.  

First, a path typically is heading somewhere.  Often, that somewhere is something you can't see (especially at the beginning).  But, clearly something is down the path that is worth seeing (or worth going to).

Which leads to the second idea — others have apparently agreed that there is a destination involved.  They've been on the path — both creating and sustaining it.  In other words, the fact that enough people have travelled it implies something...that there is something the path is headed to.  Maybe it is something glorious, like an epic vista or a waterfall.  Maybe it is the journey of it itself that is important.  Maybe it...just stops at some point, leaving you with a question like, "What's the point if...?" or "...did I get off the path somehow?".

Some paths are travelled enough that you can see fellow travelers using it right now.  They may be ahead of you or behind you, but you can see them (or hear them).  On other paths, though clearly worn, no one is in sight.  You know it's been (is being) travelled by others, but for now you're on by yourself — just having to believe something about the reason the path is there.  

The merging of these ideas feels important.  Perhaps, it is that sometimes you have to travel where others have gone, in order to find what is worth heading to.  Sometimes that needs to be done by yourself.  But, the knowledge that others apparently have gone before you can encourage you to take the first step (and all the subsequent ones).  A path indicates that on a journey, wherever it is heading, you are ultimately not alone (even if, in the moment, it feels like it).

Paths are a kind of physical evidence of this.  They invite you to just start walking — to see where they take you...perhaps to places you've never been, to see things you've never seen, or to discoveries you've not yet imagined.

Change Your Own Actions

To change the world, you need persistent and positive thoughts that are strong enough to change your own actions.

In other words, before your thoughts can change the world, they must change you.

-- Bruce Kasanoff

Heavier Stuff

Ever noticed...that heavier stuff settles to the bottom of the glass?

A metaphor perhaps....

Risk and Uncertainty of Love

We need to create a new vision for the Christian life that is built not on the safety and certainty of our opinions, but on the risk and uncertainty of love.

-- Jared Byas

Welcome To The End of Democracy

Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here. After we burn that swamp to the ground, we will establish the new American republic on its ashes, and our first order of business will be righteous retribution for those who betrayed America.

-- Jack Posobiec, opening statement from this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)

3 Observations & A Question

How you start is often pretty close to how you will finish.

Many people can only react to external forces because they’ve never developed any interiority.

We all seem to know that we have too much stuff and that, in both theoretical and literal ways, it is choking something in us.

What happens when fear is commoditized?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Social Media: Children

To The Sea

‘Poem for the week’ — “To the Sea”:

Sometimes when you start to ramble
or rather when you feel you are starting to ramble
you will say Well, now I’m rambling
though I don’t think you ever are.
And if you ever are I don’t really care.
And not just because I and everyone really 
at times falls into our own unspooling
—which really I think is a beautiful softness
of being human, trying to show someone else
the color of all our threads, wanting another to know 
everything in us we are trying to to show them—
but in the specific, 
in the specific of you
here in this car that you are driving
and in which I am sitting beside you
with regards to you 
and your specific mouth
parting to give way
to the specific sweetness that is
the water of your voice 
tumbling forth—like I said 
I don’t ever really mind
how much more 
you might keep speaking
as it simply means 
I get to hear you 
speak for longer. 
What was a stream 
now a river.

-- Anis Mojgani

38

At one point, when my wife and I were younger, we knew a couple who had been married for 25 years and we thought they were really old. Now that we have hit the 38-year mark, we are a little surprised at where all the time has gone. One thing we don’t feel is particularly old in our love for each other.  

Maybe that couple didn’t either. Our relationship with time sometimes is a funny thing.  Its distinctions certainly evolve, as do relationships themselves.  I continue to find the larger arc of our relationship a wonderfully mysterious thing, as each of us continues to grow in life and together. 

As our kids congratulated us for our anniversary today, I noted that Tami continues to be my favorite person. I am grateful for that and for her and all that she continues to become.

And, while some days bring challenges within and outside our marriage, I also continue to discover some of the joys of simple companionship. 

And, for that, I look forward to the next 25 years together.

I don't know if David is completely right about this, but what if he is?

As a culture, we could improve our national happiness levels by making sure people focus most on what is primary — marriage and intimate relationships — and not on what is important, but secondary — their careers....

-- David Brooks

What We Put Into Our Bodies

 

I observed at one point that we are the ones who have to take responsibility of what we put into our bodies.

We have to understand for ourselves what is (and isn’t) good for us — for our health, our strength, our overall well-being. In other words, we can't leave it up to the disciplines of markets to do this for us. Too much of the time, the goals (and drivers) of markets are not operating as much for our self-interest as it is for theirs. Markets often have an amoral (sometimes, even immoral) quality to them — they will literally sell anything that we are willing to buy (whether it is good for us or not).

American mass-food systems are often complicit in creating (if not driving) markets for things that are quite bad for us. Stores are packed with things (especially at the front and at checkout) that literally are breaking us down and making us unhealthy. And, they are appealing to addictive tendencies we have as human-beings to perpetuate them.

Why would human beings promote systems, structures, ideologies, and lifestyles that work against their own survival? 

-- Randy Woodley

There are many other examples of whole industries targeting our bodies which are not asking the question about the health or overall good of its products (or, if they are, they also suppressing negative realities about them). NEWSFLASH: just because you can buy something, doesn't mean it is good for you.

But, we already know this, don't we?

Well, yes, but...we succumb to such forces anyway, too tired to navigate (not to mention discriminate) all the details. Until we have problem...then we get more interested, with surprisingly relative haste.

There is both individual and collective health. And, each inter-relates and impacts the other. So, what we are putting into our bodies, consciously or not, has impacts in both of those dimensions and, accordingly, we need to pay more attention. Yesterday's post regarding changing our minds is pretty insightful and contributes to our sense of how to do so.

Some of the effect of what we put into our bodies is impacted by the realities of our DNA, our up-bringing, our environment, etc…which basically underscores the point. That, in the end, it is up to us to be mindful of what is good for us and do something about it; to know what is bad for us and to live accordingly.

Our bodies are amazing containers that interact with the realities of our existence — they provide a gold-mine of information about enhancing or degrading it. We should both respect and trust them more.

If we, individually, would act from the premise that it is up to us, even at a physical level, collective tides could also shift (in fact, even markets could...at least to some degree). We can no longer afford the laziness of our cultural habit of deferral to someone else to deal with such things, especially the good and bad things that need our focus.

Perhaps what is true in other contexts is literally true in this case — what we put into our bodies IS what we get out of them, because they are the source of our strength, power, and safety.

5 simple strategies for changing anyone’s mind

We are told you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. But what if you could? Having spent the past two decades helping leaders and organizations embrace the changes they’d rather fight or ignore, I think changing the minds of even the most stubborn individuals is possible. However, the process is very different from what conventional wisdom suggests.

While stubbornness is nothing new, we live in an era when it is more prevalent than ever. You could almost describe obstinance as one of the hallmarks of our age. Yet changing people’s minds is something we spend a lot of our lives attempting. We spend 40 percent of our time trying to sway the minds of others, but our persuasive efforts are only successful three to five percent of the time.  

One of the dominant emotions associated with stubbornness is fear. Although we’re often told that humans are inherently afraid of change, recent research reveals this is not true. It is not change that we fear most; it is loss. Whether it’s a loss of pride, dignity, or certainty, successful persuasion isn’t as much about selling the upsides of change as it is about lessening the loss.

Continue here....

-- Michael McQueen

An Emergence

I've noticed...an emergence, within myself.

Its features, there as long as I can remember, seem to be gaining some kind of momentum. I woke up thinking about it; feeling its grip growing stronger.

3 words symbiotically encapsulate it, even as it is still evolving:

• Peace
• Shalom
• Harmony

The representation of these words are quite obviously as inter-related as they are unique.  They both borrow from and stack on each other.  And, they resonate with me in a deep place.  

I seem to both watch and hunger for them; consciously and subconsciously.

Pure Diamond

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut [now Fourth and Muhammad Ali Boulevard], in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness.… The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream…. 

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed.… I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and “understood” by a peculiar gift…. 

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.

-- Thomas Merton

3 Observations & A Question

Language facilitates a common experience (for good or bad); one that makes us able to feel less isolated or alone.

Patience and resilience are two unpopular features of healthy living.

You have to learn what is good for you, and what isn’t.

Economic power is not necessarily progress — how would you describe some of the ways this is true?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Presidential Candidates - Americans' Willingness to Vote For

 GALLUP - Front Page

Are you catastrophizing?

If you’re a person who spends even a minuscule amount of time consuming news of any kind, you may find yourself in a doom spiral: ongoing war, the upcoming presidential election, climate change, the withering of the media. It isn’t just news that can inspire despair. Life is full of anxiety-inducing interactions, high-stakes scenarios, and unavoidable conflicts that can lead to overthinking, hopelessness, and catastrophic thinking.

Catastrophizing is a common thought pattern where you assume the worst possible scenario. If you fail a test, you might believe you’ll never get a job in the future. When the group chat is silent after you initiate plans, you jump to conclusions and take it to mean everyone hates you. Your boss says she wants to talk and you assume you’re getting fired. Catastrophic thinking escalates the most benign interactions into crises. Very often, though, these predictions do not come to fruition.

People catastrophize in order to prepare for these worst-case scenarios. Catastrophic thinking, however, can lead to heightened anxiety, prolonged feelings of physical pain, risk aversion, and less confidence in problem-solving when big issues do arise. “If you find that you are constantly looking for what could go drastically wrong in your life, this could reflect deeper concerns about safety, security, or self-protection,” says Scott Glassman, director of the master of applied positive psychology program at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. “This style of thinking can emerge if you’ve experienced an unexpected traumatic event, like a loss or serious injury, or if you grew up in an environment where fears were often amplified and responded to with panic or overprotection.”

Climbing out of the spiral that is catastrophic thinking requires both in-the-moment grounding techniques and big-picture reframing. Focusing on the reality of a situation...continue here.

-- Allie Volpe

Made Me Prove It

My dark days made me strong.  Or, maybe I already was strong, and they made me prove it.

-- Emery Lord

Simplicity

There is SO much going on — stuff that could fill page after page in the book of our lives.

Maybe, though, what is important is not as much the range or the depth, but the simplicity with which we choose to live.

Denies Their Reality

In hard times, urging people to be positive doesn’t boost their resilience. It denies their reality.

-- Adam Grant

Fame

Ever noticed...how fleeting nearly all fame is? 

For the most part, it persists for one generation or two (including things like the Grammys or the SuperBowl). Occasionally it lasts a little longer, but even then, rarely the heart of it does.  Even, despite some decent effort to prevent it, cultural icons like Abraham Lincoln get plowed into the sands of time and attention. This is kind of nice for the bad guys involved.  But, for better or worse, time takes no prisoners.

Maybe this is a good reminder (surprising as it is that we need still one...), especially in light of some absurdities we all seem to be addicted to, like:

I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.

-- Donald Trump, February 10, 2024

If You Don’t...

Simple everyday decisions can lead to improved health and well-being.

Roots of Healing

I am a gardener, a lover of dark soil and rooted mysteries. The fact that flowers, herbs, and vegetables eventually burst forth from dampened seeds is always a wonder. It is also a joyful surprise when people who’ve been harmed to the extreme find peace and healing even while trauma continues. My anecdotal observations of my own community have convinced me that the roots of healing are deeply sown by the same Spirit that hovered over creation during the “let there be” transformation of the world. The shamans and root workers, the aunties and folk healers long gone, taught us that everything we needed to heal us was within our reach. Even salty tears could cure raw wounds if we could stand the pain.

What does healing look like for communities overwhelmed by ongoing trauma? How do communities survive? Those of us who are raised in communities under siege can tell you that there are many coping mechanisms. As one of the first steps toward healing and survival, we take a big gulp of reality. We have to admit that we’ve been broken before we can be healed. We can’t heal until we grieve the events that have wounded us, release the spiritual toxins left behind, and open ourselves to something new. Communal grieving offers something that we cannot get when we grieve by ourselves.

-- Barbara Holmes

3 Observations & A Question

Don’t be a faith-bot.

Awe is a baseline.

We all have working assumptions — it's whether we ever question them that is important.

One thing I’ve learned to ask myself when there’s something at stake is, how am I getting in the way (of myself)?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Fast Car

Wondrous Magic

‘Poem (prayer) for the week’ — “Rippling Earth”:

My making of magic—

welded words, simmering soups, moments of metaphorical music—

is costly work,

and deeply valuable.

But your work of sowing the universe with Spirit?

Of Christmas cactus blossoms

and sunsets striped with clouds?

Of tiny vessels behind my pupils

and glowing galaxies?

It is miraculous.

What a feat the world is!

What a ceaseless wonder that you hold together the cosmos

with such attention,

such beauty,

such love.

Self-donating,

self-expressing,

self-revealing God:

Thank you for your eternal incarnation,

fluttering in and enabling every moment.

Thank you for your own breath in me.

I am in awe of your magic.

Amen. 

-- Emily Cash, Driftwood Prayers

Admire As Much As You Can

Admire as much as you can, most people don't admire enough.

-- Vincent Van Gogh

What the hell are we thinking?

Disheartening as it may be, this excerpt is from a rather helpful read on the question so many are asking:

Every week, I get letters and emails saying, “I don’t understand how Christians, especially evangelicals, can support Donald Trump. I don’t understand any of this.”

The notes are often tragic — someone was shunned by other churchgoers for being a Democrat, a person questions politics preached from a pulpit and is marginalized by the pastor, or a member slinks away distressed because his friends choose MAGA over the gospel. Often, it is deeply personal — the parents of a gay teen who leave when people in their church joke about or make threats regarding LGBTQ people, a minister who preaches an upsetting sermon gets fired, or someone whose spiritual journey raises issues about justice is ridiculed or disciplined by their community.  

...

It isn't about religion...continue here.

-- Diana Butler Bass

It sets a frame to comprehend a bit of the frighteningly 'burn it all down' mentality that has emerged (from another, undelightful, but important-read; you won't believe what this guy is saying…unless you really feel this way, too — not to mention how this preacher reinforces this apocalyptic war-is-better notion):

"Our System Needs to Be Broken, and He Is the Man to Do It"

The notion that somebody might wish for the country’s dismantling would have sounded shocking coming from anybody, but it was especially jarring coming from Johnson.

“I think his policies are going to be good,” he said, “but it’s going to be hard to watch this happen to our country. He’s going to pull it apart.”

“When did you stop believing?” I asked Ted Johnson.

“About when Trump became president,” he answered.

Continue here....

Sometimes, looking back (another helpful, and constructive, piece here), we can see things we couldn't see at the time:

Looking back at my schooling, our whole introduction to history was told in terms of domination. The mighty empires that dominated, the explorers sent out by their home countries to dominate the world. Even my religious background was deeply rooted in the domination story because we Christians believed that our religion should dominate…. Theologically, my understanding of God was that God was the ultimate and universal dominating force. I remember from my youngest age hearing a Bible verse from the New Testament, “Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord” (Philippians 2:10–11). What I pictured is this powerful omnipotent God with sword drawn … demanding you bow your knee. It was this dominating vision of God. In that way, domination was the way the universe was supposed to run.

-- Brian McLaren

But,

When you see cultures based on White supremacy, misogyny, environmental exploitation, consumerism, oppression, and domination, you are actually seeing the fallout from self-centrism. Entire systems, institutions, and societies are fully capable of this sin, as when a group places itself at the center and expects the rest of humanity and creation to support its singular prosperity.

There is no possibility for right relationship if one powerful group protects and sustains itself over and against all others. From there, it’s just too easy to construct binaries and hierarchies of human existence. Our group is good; all of you are bad. Our group belongs on top; we have to keep you low. Our group owns these resources and knows the best way to use them; you will only receive what we give you. Other members of the human family become objects and tools to be acquired, controlled, used, and discarded.

-- Stephanie Spellers

So how do we even get at this?  Where do we even start, to do something constructive?  For one, maybe the Bible could actually still help us, if we had a more accurate understanding of things (that have subsequently been co-opted by those whose only purpose seems to be to promote fear...and make money off it).  Wrong thinking moves in the wrong direction, as it moves things simply into the rhetorical realm.  Right understanding aligns us with reality and moves us towards the practicality of our daily relationship with our existence.

Dominion, for example (in the Bible), does not mean domination (especially, as described above):

The book of Genesis is often blamed for the domination story because, in the Garden of Eden story, human beings are given dominion over the rest of creation (Genesis 1:28). People assume dominion means domination, but I don’t think you have to read the story that way. The nature of God in the first creation story isn’t God dominating and forcing the world into a certain mold. It is “Let there be light.” It’s a permission-giving power.

It’s such a fascinating phrase: “Let there be light.” And also “Let there be land, let there be sea, let there be crawling creatures, let there be fish, let there be humans.” It’s a permission-giving rather than a domination. Then when human beings are made in the image of God, and God says, “You can have dominion,” we would expect it should be the same kind of gentle presence rather than a dominating, controlling, exploiting presence. It’s not “Let there be exploitation.” It’s very, very different.

-- Brian McLaren

Admire

Admire those who admire others.

-- Simon Sinek

Engage More

I'm wondering...about what I engage with, and why.

I seem to engage more with things that come to me, than with things that I seek out. And, I’m wondering if this is a function, at least in part, of the way I’ve organized my life.

In other words, if my life was organized differently, what would I be engaging with then?  I have a feeling it could be quite different (there are, after all, many influences in our lives that we can't even control).

Point being, how much then can I imagine that the way I live (engage with life) should be normative for others?  How much is choice?  How much is circumstance?

Love & Power

Both love and power are necessary building blocks of God’s peaceful realm on earth. Love utterly redefines the nature of power. Power without love is mere brutality (even in the church), and love without power is only the sentimentality of individual lives disconnected from the Whole. The gospel in its fullness holds love and power together, creating new hope and healing for the world.

Power assumes that life is lived from the top down and from the outside in. It draws its strength from elites and enforcement. As such it is efficient, clean, practical, and works well on many short-term goals. The gospel offers us the inefficient, not-so-clean, multi-layered, long-haul way of love. Love is lived much more from the bottom up and from the inside out. It’s easy to see why even churches don’t believe in it. It does not give ego or institution any sense of control. Often it doesn’t even “work.”

Perhaps one way of stating the “spiritual emergency” that Christianity faces is that many clergy and church membership were trained from the top down and the outside in. Love was the message, but power/control was the method. Holiness was in great part defined as respect for outer mediating structures: the authorities that “knew,” the rituals that were automatic, the laws that kept you if you kept them, the Tradition that was supposed to be the unbroken consensus of many centuries and cultures. I am convinced that the best top-down Christianity can do is get us off to a good start and keep us inside the ballpark, which isn’t bad! But it is not close to satisfactory for the great struggles of faith that people today face in family, morality, and society.

The very depth and truth of the gospel has led people to a more daring and necessary conclusion: Human life is best lived from the inside out and the bottom up. Now love is both the message and the method. Somehow our experiences, our mistakes, our dead ends are not abhorrent to God but the very stuff of salvation. There is no other way to make sense of the Bible or of every human life. Are we secure enough now to admit that there is just as much truth, maybe even more, inside our own journeys and for those living on the margins? So-called “tax collectors and prostitutes are making their way into the kingdom of God before you” (Matthew 21:31). Mature Christianity is perhaps when the inside meets the outside and the bottom is allowed to teach the top.

Authentic power is the ability to act from the fullness of who I am, the capacity to establish and maintain a relationship with people and things, and the freedom to give myself away. Sounds like pure gospel to me.

-- Richard Rohr

How different this is from the daily diet of power and love offered by our culture....

4 Observations (from Others)

The roots of ultimate insights are found...on the level of wonder and radical amazement, in the depth of awe, in our sensitivity to the mystery.

-- Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man

You can only spend in good works what you have earned in contemplation.

-- Meister Eckhart

If we are not trained in a trust of mystery and some degree of tolerance for ambiguity and suffering, we will not proceed very far on the spiritual journey.

-- Richard Rohr

It’s our wounds that lead to wisdom and teach us, ultimately, how to love and heal the world.

-- Mike Petrow

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

5 Billion

Morning Brew

And, then, I read something like this and can't help but see an infuriating connection....

Which, sometimes, makes even a cartoon not really that funny:

David Horsey / Tribune Content Agency

Something To Attract

Happiness isn’t something to be found; it’s something to attract.

-- Arthur C. Brooks, Aristotle’s 10 Rules for a Good Life

1. Name your fears and face them.
2. Know your appetites and control them.
3. Be neither a cheapskate nor a spendthrift.
4. Give as generously as you can.
5. Focus more on the transcendent; disregard the trivial.
6. True strength is a controlled temper.
7. Never lie, especially to yourself.
8. Stop struggling for your fair share.
9. Forgive others, and forbear their weaknesses.
10. Define your morality; live up to it, even in private.
    
    

Seems like more than one of these still applies....

Very Little Is Needed

Very little is needed to make a happy life.

-- Marcus Aurelius

I don’t often live as if this is true; but, what if it really is?

How much of yesterday’s post content would become obsolete?