For the Joy of the Journey

 Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it. _{^{Steven Wright}}

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religion cannot be restricted to beliefs.

To reduce religion to “belief” betrays a distinctively Christian and perhaps even Protestant myopia in conceiving religion. Christians have always defined themselves as “Believers” and internally policed the boundaries of belief far more than other religions where the emphasis was on orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. But religion more broadly defined is the totality of a life lived before God, something embodied, a way of life, rhythms and rituals, habits of holiness, calendar and community. In many religions it not conceivable let alone possible to compartmentalize religious beliefs away from the daily expressions of religious life.

Michael Bird

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Success

I think we have to be very careful using the word “success” when discussing being Jesus’s apprentices. It is easy to perceive following Jesus as a project similar to getting in shape, fixing up our house, or obtaining a certification. We can incorrectly think of it as a process, that if we apply ourselves properly and learn the right principles and actions, we will act like him and thus be successful spouses, parents, friends, employees, leaders, etc. And while success in those areas may be a byproduct, that is not the primary goal of following Jesus. Being Jesus’ apprentice is not a program to make us successful in our lives and careers. It is learning from him how to naturally BE like him, so that like him we can be the embodied presence of God in love, faith, hope, joy and peace for the sake of others.

Jason Zahariades 

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Perception of the heart

There is a perception, a “seeing” that is beside the seeing of the mind. This is the perception of the heart. The tendency of our mind (thoughts and feelings) is to fragment everything. We see details. We are overwhelmed with details. We experience the world as a cacophony of the senses. Repelled by one and attracted by another, we stumble through life like a drunken man, pushed and pulled by the things around us. This is a description of the passionate life. With increased purity of the heart, however, there comes the increased ability to perceive the whole. To see one thing, not only as itself but in its relations as well, is the beginning of knowing the logos of something. Were we to perceive everything in such a manner, we would perceive the truth of all things. For nothing is as it is in itself, but only as it is in relation (including most especially its relation to God).

Either life is nothing more than the chemistry of his brain, and thus no more significant than the digital programming of a computer model, or there is something unquantifiable, something “ineffable, incomprehensible, invisible, beyond understanding,” etc. within our experience and just beyond the edge of our knowing. [Our] choice lies between the fragmented mastery of the chemical equation and union with the Joy that extends beyond.

Fr Stephen Freeman

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Idolatry

Idolatry may also seem far removed from modern life, conjuring images of ancient peoples bowing to golden statues. But we should understand that those who bowed before images did so because they believed they could persuade or manipulate the gods to give them what they longed for — fertility, rain, abundant harvests, victory, happiness, security and safety. We may use different means today, but modern people are driven by the same motivations. We also seek, in our own ways, to control our world and to wrest from it what we need and desire.

The idea of idolatry is not, necessarily, having false gods that we can name — or sculpt, for that matter. Instead, it is a term for disordered love. It describes a devotion to even good things that is excessive or obsessive. It conveys to us that well-meaning people who desire worthy things can seek them in ways that harm themselves and others, that we can be driven by longings that we may not know, understand or be able to articulate but that determine the shape of our lives and our society. The 16th-century Protestant theologian John Calvin famously said that “the human heart is a perpetual idol factory.” We are constantly devoting ourselves to what will make us feel secure and safe, things that promise to provide what we most desire and need. Idolatry, Calvin thought, is a subconscious motivator. Our idols are the deepest loves and urges driving us under the hood of our conscious minds, our default mode of being.

Understanding our hearts as idol factories invites us to the difficult work of honesty and humility. It tells us that people do harm, sometimes without knowing it or without meaning to, which means that weprobablydo as well. It tells us that we are not driven by pure rationality or unfettered love to the degree we suppose we are. And this humility allows for compassion and charity to others, even our enemies. It tells us that they are not uniquely evil. They are driven by disordered passions and loves just like us.

Trish Harrison Warren NYT

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Old men

“Every old man complains,” so said Samuel Johnson, “of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.” 

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Unintentional injury 

The CDC tracks hospital admissions for unintentional injuries. You fell off a ladder, you fell on a bike. The people that get injured the most, traditionally, are teenage boys. They have very high rates of injury, and then as men get older, the rates go down. That’s the way it used to be.

But what happens beginning in the early 2000s is the boys’ rate begins going down and down, especially after they move on to smartphones around 2012. Boys are no longer going to hospitals for broken arms. It’s a very rare thing now. Now you might think that’s good, but boys are now getting injured at the same rate as 50-year-old men, teenage boys who you think are out taking risks, same hospitalization rates as 50-year-old men, and lower hospitalization rates than teenage girls had 15 years ago. Because boys are not doing anything where they could get hurt. They come home after school, they put on their headphones, they play video games with their friends. Now it’s great fun, but it’s missing most, it’s missing many of the active ingredients of play. It’s missing actual fear, actual thrill. And so I don’t think that, I don’t think our kids are getting the risk exposure that they need to be able to manage risks for the rest of their lives. By the time they come to us in college, they seem to think that reading Shakespeare could be dangerous for them.

All else equal, I would rather there were fewer broken arms. But if the cost of having fewer broken arms is a doubling of the suicide rate, I think from almost all of recorded history, at least as far back as I can see data, young people were much more likely to be killed by someone else than by themselves. But beginning in this period, I think it’s around 2012, the suicide rate for the first time exceeds the murder rate. So kids are still getting hurt and killed, but it’s by themselves now. And I think that’s really, really sad.

Jonathan Haidt 

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STILL ON THE JOURNEY