In Alignment

I’ve noticed…when I am in alignment internally, many other things fall into place.

The People We Don't

Instagram: drop_the_stones

George Will & 230 Others

We don't demonize immigrants. We don't single them out for attacks. We don't believe they're poisoning the blood of the country. We're a nation of immigrants, and that's why we're so damn strong.

-- Joe Biden

Speaker Johnson continues to suggest that undocumented immigrants vote in elections, but it is illegal for even documented noncitizens to do so, and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the nonprofit American Immigration Council notes that even the right-wing Heritage Foundation has found only 12 cases of such illegal voting in the past 40 years.

Conservative columnist George Will, more than 230 former officials for presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and 17 former staff members for Ronald Reagan have all recently added their names to the list of those supporting Harris. Today more than 100 Republican former members of Congress and national security officials who served in Republican administrations endorsed Harris, saying they “firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump.” They cited his chaotic governance, his praising of enemies and undermining allies, his politicizing the military and disparaging veterans, his susceptibility to manipulation by Russian president Vladimir Putin, and his attempt to overthrow democracy. They praised Harris for her consistent championing of “the rule of law, democracy, and our constitutional principles.” 

-- Heather Cox Richardson

The Atlantic

3 Observations & A Question

AI can’t render the soul of something — at best, it can only simulate it, which is still quite detectable.

We all have strengths, either innately or from development — but, no one is strong in every way.

Though certainly more than just this, at one level, people are just creatures that are orienting to their environments.

"Nothing surprises me anymore" is both sad and cynical -- how much of surprise is willingness?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Creative Joy

'Poem for the week' -- "Creative Joy":   

God of cuttlefish and crystal caverns,

who formed the farthest reaches of the cosmos

and the yet-unreached depths of the sea,

whose creative joy is manifest in our ongoing discovery

of creatures and places and workings

in our own bodies, in our world and beyond it—

Help me to believe that patience isn’t torturous

but to be inhabited with delight,

knowing that you love to surprise

and that my future is threaded with the same playful love

that gave birth to axolotls and the grand canyon and the DNA double-helix.

When you ask or otherwise expect me to wait,

may I do so like a child on the eve of Christmas:

expecting nothing other than joy

and your heart brimming with the sight of your own patience fulfilled.

-- Emily Cash, Driftwood Prayers

Cease To Love

The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.

-- Williams Somerset Maugham

In A Position

Even though there are many predictable patterns to a lot of life, you never fully know what all the unexpecteds of it will actually be. 

Invariably, there are huge disappointments and all kinds of pain.  (I don't really want to rush past this either, because we too often do...).

But, there are also amazing twists and turns of grace and wonder.  And, one doesn't cancel the other.  

One small (perhaps) example.  I noticed the other day that it is something on the order of comforting for me to step out on my back deck for my daily pre-dawn walk and look up to see the Orion star constellation there waiting for me. I know the attribution of "waiting for me" sounds a little self-interested. But, whatever the more correct version may be, it does something for my relationship with the world over which it presides.

The irony here, for me, is that while it has been there the whole time, it took me doing something to notice it.

A lot of nature is like this, indifferent to any particular noticing I would do; just going on its merry way.  Sometimes, it feels like it smiles when I join in (but I'm not always sure that isn't just something I'm hoping for).

Stay open to such possibilities so that you don’t miss them, for they surely will occur.  Life (God) will provide you with some substantial gifts, like grace and wonder. So, keep yourself in a position to recognize them…if not receive them.

Hurt vs Harm

The truth may sting, but silence can leave a scar.

We see the barriers holding back the people we work with, just as they see ours. But telling them is hard.

Telling the truth might hurt them, but not telling harms them.

-- Shane Parrish

Feel Better

I’m wondering…about why there are SO many options that claim to make us feel better.

What does that indicate regarding all the things that make us feel bad in the first place?

 

Wisdom Begins in Wonder

Evangelical Narrative

Too often, the white evangelical narrative I encounter is driven more by fear and anxiety than by the hope and confidence of the gospel.

-- John Inazu

As Christians, if we feel we have to trust in the power and might of a man to protect our ideals, we have lost a significant dimension of our faith. Continue here....

The Decalogue for a Spirituality of Nonviolence

1. To learn to recognize and respect “the sacred” in every person, including in ourselves, and in every piece of Creation....
   
   
2. To accept oneself deeply, “who I am” with all my gifts and richness, with all my limitations, errors, failings and weaknesses, and to realize that I am accepted by God...
    
3. To recognize that what I resent, and perhaps even detest, in another, comes from my difficulty in admitting that this same reality lives also in me....
    
4. To renounce dualism, the “we-they” mentality (Manicheism). This divides us into “good people/bad people” and allows us to demonize the adversary. It is the root of authoritarian and exclusivist behavior. It generates racism and makes possible conflicts and wars.
    
5. To face fear and to deal with it not mainly with courage but with love.
    
6. To understand and accept that the New Creation, the building up of the Beloved Community is always carried forward with others. It is never a “solo act.”...
    
7. To see ourselves as a part of the whole creation to which we foster a relationship of love, not of mastery, remembering that the destruction of our planet is a profoundly spiritual problem, not simply a scientific or technological one. We are one.
    
8. To be ready to suffer, perhaps even with joy, if we believe this will help liberate the Divine in others. This includes the acceptance of our place and moment in history with its trauma, with its ambiguities.
    
9. To be capable of celebration, of joy, when the presence of God has been accepted, and when it has not been to help discover and recognize this fact.
    
10. To slow down, to be patient, planting the seeds of love and forgiveness in our own hearts and in the hearts of those around us. Slowly we will grow in love, compassion and the capacity to forgive.
    

-- Rosemary Lynch and Alain Richard

Which Party Best Serves Various Societal Groups

GALLUP - Front Page

3 Observations & A Question

We bring so much of what happens to us upon ourselves.

How unaware we seem to be that our commitment to escape unhappiness is what perpetuates it the most.

So many things are about what we want to feel.

What does it mean when the best thing you did this week for someone else was to dress up for Sunday church?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Political Violence

 

I really believe that the rhetoric from the Democrats ... is making the bullets fly. And it's very dangerous. Dangerous for them. It's dangerous for both sides.

-- Donald Trump, the day after the second assassination attempt in 65 days

Trump is "both a seeming inspiration and an apparent target of the political violence that has increasingly come to shape American politics." 

-- Peter Baker

Consider this admonition to non-violence...here.

Oh, and with regard to the largely manufactured-scare conspiracies about immigrants, how about this perspective?

Rush Right Past It

Most people rush after pleasure so fast that they rush right past it.

-- Søren Kierkegaard

Indulgence

Most indulgence is self-serving.

I come from a tradition, which would then also say, assuming that is true, that all indulgence is, therefore, wrong.

But, we do love our over-simplifications, don't we?

For one thing, not everything that is self-serving is automatically wrong (mental health, for example). And, some self-indulgence actually seems to be recommended ("eat, drink, and be merry..." — Ecc 9).

In broad terms, I do think that general conservatism is better — for both personal benefit and the good of all. After all, we are not here, primarily, to simply consume things. We are here to help and support those around us, even as has been said…for the 'glory of God'. Abundance exists. Even if it does not seem to be fairly distributed (perhaps that is our job), it is especially well-used when it helps those who don't have what they need (which, by the way, could be any one of us at any given moment).

The problem with the never-indulgent view, however, is that it, more often than not, reflects a kind of attempt at control — a type of control that heads one away from something important...trust. You have to trust something, to appropriately reflect not only on how you are able to enjoy things, but also that such will be provided again. Put another way, scarcity and trust are often at odds. And, for many (particularly religious people), it seems that disparaging indulgence is really more about control than the virtues of being conservative anyway.

So, to me, it seems wise to both save for a rainy-day (yours, or your neighbor's) and be indulgent

…from time to time.

This Morning's Moon

This morning's moon seemed to nearly fill the sky down the road I was on.

It was as if it was saying, “I, too, am here and that is helpful for you to know.”

LT: Decisions

No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.

-- Daniel Kahneman

Lose Weight

Ever noticed...that (in most cases) if you want to lose weight, you have to eat (or drink) less?

And, if you want to lose more weight, you have to exercise?

And, if you want to lose even more weight, you have to eat better food?

In other words, to get what you want, it takes less of something AND more of something else.

The Narrow Path

The narrow path is not about the number of people who will end up in heaven; it's about the number of people who will allow themselves to be formed by the subversive and, ultimately, redemptive way of Jesus.

-- Rich Villodas

3 Observations & A Question

Having something and using it are not the same thing.

Almost every question we don’t really contemplate is left in a blunt-force (unrefined) condition — most answers to good questions are pretty nuanced.

There are some people who are naturally sensitive and have grown to be tougher and there are some people who are naturally tough who have grown to be more sensitive — the rest just seem to wander around...not growing at all. 

When is the last time you had (or took) the opportunity to be outside at dawn — to hear all the sound going on in nature or to see the emerging sunlight sparkling through dew-drops adorning each blade of grass?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

‘Everything you know about happiness is a lie.’ This is the secret to getting the ‘new happy’

When I was in my early twenties, I had everything that I thought would make me happy. I had a prestigious job, lived in New York City, and had complete freedom. Yet, I was absolutely miserable. At first, I ignored my emotions. Then, over time, I started to experience more challenges: getting physically ill, struggling with my mental health, and feeling lonely. One day, I found myself lying on my bedroom floor sobbing hysterically, wondering why I was so desperately unhappy.

Then, I had a moment of clarity. What if there wasn’t something wrong with me? What if I had been lied to by the world around me? Perhaps everything I had been told about what I needed to do to be happy was wrong. Continue here....

-- Stephanie Harrison

The Peace of Wild Things

'Poem for the week' -- "The Peace of Wild Things":   

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-- Wendell Berry

Imagination Is The Secret

Imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization.

-- Henry Ward Beecher

Ideas & Energy

Ideas, like institutions, that cling to the past (to prior versions) become myopic, end up withering, and eventually disappear. They become devoid of the energy and relevance that not only sustains them, but also helps them to grow and flourish.

This doesn't mean that only new ideas are good. As Ecclesiastes points out, there is nothing new under the sun.

It's the clinging dynamic that is the problem. All ideas need to be, as it were, re-invented. Even reinvention is not necessarily as much about something new as much as it is about discovery.

It's the energy of relevance to current contexts that is key. Holding on to something that has simply passed on is not a constructive use of that energy. The application of energy to how an idea can work right now is what is needed.

Clinging is a closing off of energy.  The power of an idea, new or old, is satisfying the request of the new beneficiary, the current generation, to provide the connection between what is and what is needed.  That requires openness to creative energy.

Wash away your old opinions to let new ideas in.

-- Zhu Xi

This is largely why greatness isn't something to aspire to in historical terms.  Greatness is always what is happening now that leads to something better in the future.

Don't cling (and protect).  Reach out (and provide).

An example:  Justice

Demeans Others

A grown man who demeans and disparages others is really just insecure and small.  

A grown man who does so by using the power of leadership is cruel and incapable of the service of leadership.

Truly In Jeopardy?

I’ve noticed…that I rarely live in fear of physical threat — and yet, at times, fears can still abound within me.

Why, though? 

At the end of things, given what we will know at that time, how much will we look back and say, "what were we so worried about?" 

In spite of what we're told, so little of true substance is ever in real jeopardy. 

Everyday Activities

When our everyday activities aren't sacramental, they soon become flat and we unconsciously compensate for that by increasing the dosage.

-- Fr. Ron Rolheiser

Inflation & Jobs

4 Observations (from Others)

The first hour of the morning is the rudder for your day.

-- Henry Ward Beecher

Just because results are not visible doesn’t mean they are not accumulating.

-- Shane Parrish

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. 

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

We grow in generosity as we embrace simplicity. We are able to hold all things lightly and, if need be, let them go—our possessions, our money, our pretensions, even our anger, our prejudices, and our fears.

-- Margaret Guenther 

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

On The Lighter Side:

On The Lighter Side: 

Instagram: just_4jokes

Art of Life

The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us.

-- Gloria Steinem

Why You Believe Something

Some people believe things that aren't true, no matter what new information is provided.

But why?

As scary as this is, it begs an important point.  You really have to know why you believe what you believe — in other words, what has affected what you believe?

The content of our beliefs is one thing (and important, to be sure).  But, how you've reached your conclusions about that content is equally impacting because it is too easily observable that many people believe things that are simply not true.  Why would that even be?  

Well, there are actually more things going on related to what we believe than we tend to think.  For one thing, what we believe is highly influenced by how we believe.  For example, a certain percentage of people believe something simply because it is repeated so often that they conclude it must be true.  Whether in social dynamics, politics, or even religion, repetition is a powerful influence.

But, repetition, in and of itself, isn't what makes something true, is it?

So, you really have to ask why do we believe something?  How does it happen?  What things (often cultural and psychological) affect what we believe?  

How you grew up, things that happen in your family, things that hurt you, things that helped you, and probably most significantly your social context are all among the many things that influence that powerful combination of what you think and what you feel — your beliefs.

Have you ever noticed that you wish you could still believe something that you no longer do?  What is going on there?  Believing is a function of something.  And, without recognizing what that is — what those things are, we proceed with a certain kind of chosen blindness...sometimes to our peril.

Belief is often moored to some perception of truth.  But, in reality, it may have less to do with a particular truth than we tend to think.  This is why we often still believe something in spite of evidence to the contrary.  In other words, we believe it anyway.  But often without any really defendable reason; because what we believe is often not really based that much on reason.  It is based on other needs we have as human-beings (many that we are often unaware of), like the way we want (or don’t want) to feel.

I have come to believe in my life that people, more than they fear death, they fear not belonging.

-- Adam Kinzinger

We laugh now, but many people used to believe the earth was flat.  And, that it was the center of the universe.  And, that...well, the list goes on and on.  Silly?  The point is, one needs to know how that could happen?  And, if it could then, what are some of the same dynamics that are involved in what we believe today?

The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe.

— James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

This is often why people seem afraid to question their beliefs, isn't it?  That we would cease to believe altogether?  But, often what really happens is that our beliefs evolve, as a function of our experience, as they should (see Nicodemus).  

We really should know why...we believe what we believe.

What’s Right

Bad leaders care about who's right. Good leaders care about what's right.

-- Simon Sinek

Labor Day (of a different kind)

For some history on the more traditional version of Labor Day...continue here.

Stop Counting and Calculating

Once you experience being loved when you are unworthy, being forgiven when you did something wrong, that moves you into non-dual thinking.  You move from what I call meritocracy, quid pro quo thinking, to the huge ocean of grace, where you stop count or calculating.

~ Richard Rohr