Not Only Compatible

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

-- Carl Sagan

Don’t be so trashy.

Don’t be so trashy.

What I mean is, we have to stop creating so much trash.

Single-use items, among other things, just have to go.  We're drowning in all our containers (now from the inside out — see micro-plastics).

Of course, the real issue, is the degree of our consumption in the first place.  I know that's getting into pretty sacred territory for many Americans — who might almost immediately react with something like, "What am I supposed to do...if I can't go shopping?".

Like with many other things, we just don't see things we don't want to see. It’s almost like if we won't look at a consequence, it is easier to avoid the cause.

But, recognize it or not, we have a trash problem that land-fills can't really keep covering up.  And, that's largely because we have a consumption problem.

In the end, it's an identity issue — for too many of us, we just don't seem to know who we are if we can't constantly be buying stuff.

That's actually pretty trashy...on a number of levels.

90 Percent

90 percent of success is not getting distracted.

-- Shane Parrish

Distraction

I’m wondering…about distraction.

In a world of so much distraction, it’s very hard to get on track sometimes (not to mention stay on track).

Perhaps, we need to consider not only what we're looking at, but also the direction we're looking.

How much we miss when we’re always looking down (especially at our phones), rather than looking around (not to mention up) — how much is there already for us to observe and learn from in those directions?

Wisdom Begins in Wonder

Controlling People

Controlling people try to control people, and they do the same with God — but loving anything always means a certain giving up of control.  You tend to create a God who is just like you — whereas it was supposed to be the other way around.

-- Richard Rohr

3 Observations & A Question

When you are closer to a mode of inquiry (genuine curiosity), let me know — I’d enjoy talking more then.

Most of the time there’s a story involved.

There is almost nothing that is not in motion.

What do you feel when people throw trash out the window of their car onto your lawn?  — How is that fundamentally different from what we do with our trash on planet earth?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Confidence in Election Accuracy

GALLUP - Front Page

Mankind & Power

Mankind seems to have an endless propensity to destroy things (even good things), not to mention each other.

We have so much power; we don’t even need to use it to protect ourselves. 

But, for some reason, we are prone to misunderstanding what the nature of that power is.  And, so, rather than use it for the benefit of others, we use it against people who are a little different (from us) by trying to gather people around us who just look a little more like us.  

How much of our power do we forfeit because of how small our view of it is?  Power is exponentially greater when it is used to include and expand (love) than when it is used to exclude and protect (fear).

Living Our Fears

Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.

-- Les Brown

Not A Virtue

Given our times, it might actually surprise us to know that being critical, for the sake of being critical, is not a virtue.

The steady diet of our endless critique of the world (or other people) ends up taking on addictive qualities, not to mention the unsightliness of looking like an overly developed bicep in just one arm. Should we really be this convinced that we hold the cards on everything that is wrong, especially when we simultaneously seem quite under-developed in seeing how we ourselves contribute to it?

We seem to think that calling out something that doesn't work well gets us off some kind of hook. And, the gap between seeing something and doing something about it seems to only be growing.

To be sure there, is a lot to be critical of. But, shouldn't we get better at what we're doing about it than simply perfecting our articulation of what they aren't doing about it?

One (perhaps) unintended consequence of this propensity seems to be our declining ability to admire, to appreciate, much of anything at all.

We must equally (if not more) be able to stop the inertia of these inclinations and observe the many wonderful and beautiful things about the world (and, yes, other albeit imperfect people).

Without that kind of balance, we simply end up so deformed in our thinking that we are unable to provide any kind of care at all for what is needed. As has been said before, we should be more defined by what we are for than simply by what we are against.

Besides, it really isn’t that hard. We just need to make ourselves more available to the timeless things that can teach us, like the simple instruction of a morning sunrise.

…willingness to be open and to learn might be closer to virtue.

Out of the Process

The advice I like to give anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to do an awful lot of work.

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.

-- Chuck Close

Habits We've Formed

Ever noticed...how much we live out of the habits we form around our insecurities?

Animated by Faith, Hope, and Love

Christians in the United States and around the world have seen their faith in Jesus Christ distorted and leveraged in defense of authoritarian leaders who seek to erode freedoms essential to a thriving democracy. Some Christians enthusiastically praise dictatorial leaders and regimes.

We will meet in a moment of crisis. Yet we do so as people of God animated by faith, hope, and love. It is in this spirit that we reaffirm Christian support for democracy and invite all Christians and people of moral conscience to do the same.

-- Test of Faith: A Summit to Defend Democracy, September 19-20, 2024

Leap of Faith

4 Observations (from Others)

When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people becomes an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.

-- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death...four decades ago prophesied an apocalypse of moral idiocy in the age of mass media

Courage is knowing it might hurt, and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. And that's why life is hard.

-- Jeremy Goldberg

We usually think of resilience as the ability to recover from an adverse experience and pick up our lives where we left off…. But there are times when adversity permanently changes our reality and we can’t go back to the way things were…. Resilience then becomes the work of coming through the adversity. -- Alice Updike Scannell

People are always looking for happiness at some future time and in some new thing, or some new set of circumstances, in possession of which they some day expect to find themselves. But the fact is, if happiness is not found now, where we are, and as we are, there is little chance of it ever being found. There is a great deal more happiness around us day by day than we have the sense or the power to seek and find.

-- Thomas Mitchell

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

Young men and women are moving in opposite directions

Data of all kinds reveals a little-discussed, future-defining trend: Men and women are going separate ways.

Why it matters: The split is clear in politics, religion, education and the labor market. For the next generation, gender is becoming the biggest predictor of how you think, act and vote.

"There’s a much broader story here," says Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life. "Even after all the votes are tallied and we’ve moved on from the 2024 election, we’re not going to have resolved any of the cultural and relational tension between young men and young women."

You see it in politics: Women are turning left, and men are turning right.

You see it in religion: For the first time ever recorded in the U.S., young men are more religious than young women.

You see it in education: There are 2.4 million more women on U.S. college campuses than men, the American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM) notes. And those degrees are often resulting in higher-wage jobs for women in big cities, a Pew Research Center analysis of census data found.

You see it in the labor market: Wages and labor force participation have increased since the 1980s for college-educated men and women, and for working-class women. But they have stagnated for working-class men, who are also now significantly less likely to be employed compared to four decades ago, according to AIBM's analysis.

You see it in visions for the future: Men are more likely than women to want marriage and kids, according to Pew. The percentage of 18- to 34-year-old women wanting kids has fallen to 45% versus 57% for men.

What we're watching: The polarization is even stronger among adults under 25, Cox notes. Social media content and algorithms may be one key reason.  Continue here....

-- Erica Pandey

And Own It

You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.

-- Brene Brown

Live & Die, But…

The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.

-- Joan Borysenko

We live for a little while and then we die.

...but, how we do the living part, can extend the frame of our existence in dramatic ways. 

If we were to live in complete isolation, that might not be (though terribly reductionist) an inaccurate summary statement. But we don’t live in isolation. We live in utter inter-dependence with everything around us, and it’s in those dimensions that the possibilities of living beyond the short frame of our particular life become realizable. What other people do around me, like it or not, has so much impact on me. And the same is true for me to them. 

This is rather obvious in the sphere of having children. But even having children is done in an inter-dependent context in the world. How they see me interacting with what is around me, with those who are around me, sets in motion, almost irrevocably, their capacity to do the same in their lives. 

If that is done in increasing ways, then the range of this dynamic never ends.  If that is done in diminishing and isolating ways, then that dynamic is thwarted. 

This reality is not confined to parents and children. What I do in any given day is in the context of everything else and thereby has an impact on everything else. What I spend my time on, what I spend my money on, how I wrestle with challenging or painful things, what I allow myself to enjoy, what I point to in the world, physical and metaphysical, how I go about my daily existence in one way or another has an impact. I can either extend the reach and glory of the virtues of living or minimize them.

The problem with the summary statement — we live and then we die — misses so much of the power and joy of everything that goes on in between.

LT: Service To Be Given

Leadership is not a rank or position to be attained. Leadership is a service to be given. 

-- Simon Sinek

This contrast might not be any more evident than...here.