Menu Close

“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

“You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart — your stories, visions, memories, visions and songs. Your truth, your version of things, your own voice. That is really all you have to offer us. And that’s also why you were born.”
Anne Lamott

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.
YEP!

Church Attendance

More than half of Americans (56%) say they seldom or never attend religious services, according to new data from Gallup. Less than a third (30%) say they attend on a weekly or almost weekly basis.

Gallup found that almost all of the so-called Nones (95%) say they seldom or never attend services. More than half of Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Orthodox Christians say they rarely attend as well.

Among religious Americans, Latter-Day Saints (67%) are most likely to say they attend weekly or almost weekly, followed by Protestants (44%), Muslims (38%) and Catholics (33%).

Critical Thinker

Good education forms a person into a critical thinker. That doesn’t mean a chronic skeptic! A critical thinker is someone who knows how to examine an idea by its history, context and coherence—coherence with other, more grounded ideas and inner coherence as logical consistency. A critical thinker learns to step back from ideas put before him or her and ask questions, even the right questions. A critical thinker is slow to embrace any idea until it is examined. And examining an idea requires a certain “distance” from it.

Roger Olson

The Small Gesture

Social media has turned many people into thirsty faux celebrities needing a grand gesture to publicize their identities. Engagements need to be choreographed, filmed, and put on YouTube. We’re not really cleaning debris from a beach for the sake of the environment but for a photo opportunity for Instagram. Yet, there are thousands of people who quietly, without acknowledgment, spend a day off, or even an hour off, doing something necessary for others. The small, intimate gesture is as valuable to the community as the big, grand gesture, for both are about improving humanity. As poet John Donne said, we are all “a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” Any act that lifts one of us, lifts us all.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar

Everyday mystics

Mystics are people who have a personal religious experience or an encounter with God. This description has freed me and many others from thinking that God appears to people only after years of prayer and living an ascetic, isolated life. Thurman believed anyone can be a mystic if they are open to the experience. He opened a door to a world where mystics move freely among us and live ordinary lives. Mystics are the ones who can hear the water flowing beneath the street. They know how to quiet the surface noise enough to hear the meaning of all things coursing below daily life.

Everyday mystics are people who commune with the presence of God, receive guidance through prophetic visions, voices, and dreams, and commit themselves to living for God rather than solely for themselves. Their vision for life is larger and more expansive, knowing that they are alive for a reason, a purpose that will benefit human spirits they may never meet…. Thurman lived out an identity grounded in mysticism, as he regularly felt oneness with God and on occasion experienced visions. He also believed that mystical moments should stir people toward love, community, and social action.

Lerita Coleman Brown on Howard Thurman

WWJD

What would Jesus do? My answer to that question, day by day, presupposes a loving trust in Jesus, the urgent and creative  experience of God’s love shed abroad in my heart, a desire to abide in the One who abides in me, and a deepening of understanding, compassion and commitment in the face of all those other people who move in and out of my life. 

Jim Gordon

Reason for Evangelism

“I share my faith in Christ with others not because I believe God will eternally torment them if they don’t accept Christ, but because I believe that in Jesus God came to us, to show us the way, the truth, and the life. I believe from him we have the clearest picture of who God is, and who God calls us to be. I tell others about Christ because my faith in him has changed my life for the better, because in him I find God’s love. I am passionate about sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with others because in it we find the purpose for which we were made, God’s answer to the deepest longings of our hearts, the road map for how we are meant to live, hope in the face of despair, and God’s love, mercy, and grace incarnated in him.”

Adam Hamilton

You might be a Christian Nationalist if you think:

  1. The federal government should advocate Christian values
  2. The federal government should allow prayer in public schools
  3. The federal government should allow the display of religious symbols in public spaces
  4. The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation
  5. The federal government should enforce strict separation of church and state
  6. The success of the United States is part of God’s plan.

Forgiveness

a definition of forgiveness. Forgiveness occurs when:

A. an act violating a moral norm breaks trust, disturbs or destroys a relationship, and produces moral outrage (resentment, anger, hatred, vindictiveness, righteous indignation),

B. is addressed at the level of morality, damage, and responsibility,

C. but, with full awareness of the gravity of the moral offense, an increased understanding of the personhood of the wrongdoer, and contrary to a retributive sense of justice, and on the basis of one’s own personal beliefs,

D. a victim chooses to release (suddenly or progressively) the moral outrage in various ways (emotionally, cognitively, behaviorally), depending on the victim’s conditions (repentance, repair, restitution, retribution) and goals (psychological health, social justice, reconciliation).

Scot McKnight,

https://scotmcknight.substack.com/p/forgiveness-and-the-moral-order

Dealing with people

…in dealing with facts you can be sure before you commit yourself, but in dealing with persons you must commit yourself before you can be sure.

In daily life we trust people for three reasons: because they claim our confidence, because their claims are supported by the testimony of others, and because we can test them for ourselves by our own experience.

G.B. Caird

Facebook

…studies have consistently shown that the more time people spend on Facebook the worse their mental health becomes; Facebooking is also correlated with increased sedentariness, a diminishment of meaningful face-to-face relationships, and a decline in real world social activities.” She closes the door on the essay with this damning word about Facebook:

…neither a record-setting five-billion-dollar penalty for privacy violations nor the latest antitrust efforts have managed to check one of the world’s most dangerous monopolies. Billions of people remain, instead, in the tight fisted, mechanical grip of its soul-saving mission.

Jill Lepore’s The Deadline

The Mission 

Once the mission takes over all that matters is the mission. Ethics, morality, doing the right things – they fall into the ditch of claims we make that are important but only when we need them.

Scot McKnight on mission statements:

First, they need to be organic to the community, not a top-down imposition followed up by a passionate claim that God’s at work because this is our mission, and it’s God’s. Let the people speak. Let their voices rise to the surface. Listen to them.

Second, claiming something to be the mission, and plastering it on the church’s publications, does not make it the mission. The mission is God’s, it is centered in Jesus, and most mission statements don’t say enough about either. Or they are too simplistic to guide sufficiently.

Third, to discern the mission of a church community requires excavation of what the people in the church are actually doing. Not what they want to do. Not what they’d like to do. Not what they know the Bible says they are to do. But what they actually do. We might be surprised.

Fourth, I’m no fan of building vision statements and branding on the basis of the mission statement. It gets kitchy. Too clever. It’s not owned by the people. It looks cool because the cool kids are all building mission statements.

Fifth, having said that, I believe a church’s decision, over months and months, to examine the Bible and to articulate the Bible’s complexities about mission, can be a redemptive process. As long as it keeps the problems in view. I have heard over the years a number of leaders say that the process of working on a mission statement was helpful for the church to find its way. That’s all to the good.

View from the Front Porch

Spring’s appearance has been reluctant at best. The front porch is ready, cushions out and ready for conversations. On one recent warm day, I had the first conversation of this year. One of the best parts of front porch conversations is you never know who might show up or what the conversations might be about. If the first conversation is any indication, this will be an interesting year. The subject was circumcision. No worry it was an appropriate and healthy conversation, but I would never anticipated that beginning. Excited for what is come.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

A Word or Two

Steve Elliott 0 Comments

The Conversation of a Lifetime

‘He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. ”
“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”’
John 3:2-4

The man who was certain of everything is suddenly uncertain. The man who had control over his world is suddenly finding things beyond his control. The man who had it all figured out has his brain turned in figure 8’s.

Jesus reply to him, says in effect, “There is a reason you cannot figure this out Nic. You cannot see the Kingdom because you are not in it. You are not a part of it.” Nic who has all the best of spiritual pedigree does not have an adequate faith to see or enter or be a part of the Kingdom of God. He must be born again. He must be born from above.

His spiritual status, his Jewish nationality, his conformity to the law … his knowledge, his understanding, his prestigious religious role as noted in v. 10 … none of this is good enough. But he has no other spiritual card he can play. All human effort is never going to be enough. But all he’s got is who he is and what he is and Jesus says, that’s not enough. You must be born again.

Nic, like all of his generation, is looking for the Kingdom of God on earth. They want David’s throne restored and the Roman’s thrown out, and this great theocratic realm set up. But the Kingdom of God is not about a realm, it’s about a reign. It is the rule and reign of Jesus Christ in the human heart. A reborn heart, a new born life, born from above by the Spirit of God. It’s not about rebirthing a nation. It’s about building a Kingdom.

Nic learned that evening and we must learn anew: that you cannot buy or serve or work your way into the Kingdom of heaven. You cannot sacrifice, flatter or ingratiate your way into the kingdom of heaven. You can not beg, plead, pose your way in or reason, argue or debate your way in. You cannot moralize, theorize or rationalize your way in.

Jesus doesn’t care if you’ve got all the credentials of a Nic, or how religious you are, or how spiritual you seem, or what status you have or what degrees you hold: there is only one door-faith; there is only one means-grace; there is only one way-Jesus Christ; and there is only one outcome-eternal life. 

 …you never know (1) what will come of an everyday conversation. At the end of John’s gospel we find Nic at the foot of the cross, a fearless follower of Jesus who defies the Sanhedrin and identifies with fully with Christ. But he doesn’t get there if this conversation doesn’t happen in John 3.

Death and Dying – Precarity

George 1 Comment

precarity 
A state of being defined by its insecurity and vulnerability.

Precarity means something that can be given and taken away and for such a long time I thought that precarity must inherently be a bad thing or at least not a very Christian thing to feel that way when I know I felt delicate and I thought well surely I just have to get back to that place before where I felt durable. And then I read a wonderful comparison of the work of Dorothy Day, Catholic reformer, and compared with Reinhold Niebuhr, the amazing Protestant, theologian, and both of their account of the word precarity. Dorothy Day used it to describe the state in which we live as people of faith aware in the world, and yet delicate, and Reinhold Niebuhr described precarity as a way of describing the delicacy of our world, but hoping that we just need to plow through with faithfulness and reasonable good conscience and I was like no,I think I’m on the Dorothy side. I think that when we’re really honest most of the things that we build our lives on are things that can come apart in any moment, and once we know that, and can maybe live inside that with a little more honesty, we might begin to start to see different spiritual things than we did before . 

Kate Bowler

In a previous post I wrote about the impact avoidance of death has on Christian communities.

Kate Bowler’s observations about precarity further affirm my belief in the importance of memento mori1The term memento mori combines the Latin memini, “to remember, to bear in mind,” with morior, literally, “to die.” Taken together, the phrase serves as a warning: “Remember! You will die!”.

Beliefs not subjected to a crucible of memento mori  will atrophy and become mental assents; ultimately useless when death becomes a personal reality.

People who want to die well must be willing to confront their finitude. We do not have to accept death, invite it, or wish for it. But we must be prepared to say, “Yes, I am human and therefore mortal. One day I will die.” We cannot both cling to the indefinite extension of life and effectively prepare for death.2The Lost Art of Dying

We will fail to live/die well if we refuse to acknowledge that we are finite creatures.

The connection between memento mori and spiritual formation is so profound memento mori should be recognized and practiced as a spiritual discipline.

Practical suggestions for practicing memento mori :

[In the midst of composing practical suggestions I was Interrupted briefly and checked my emails and was surprised to see a post from Lee Camp’s NSE Notebook entitled THINK: Memento Mori —WOW! What follows are excerpts from his post providing specific opportunities to practice Memento Mori ] Thanks Lee.

And if we seriously engage the fact and reality of our coming day of our death, without falling prey to a morbid sentimentality about it all, memento mori has a surprising clarifying power: what ought and ought not be prioritized, what sort of life we want to live, what sort of human beings we want to be.

DO: Specific opportunities to practice Memento Mori

Keep tangible reminders of those who have died close at hand. I’m grateful for the leather bracelet I’ve been wearing since Christmas, a gift to me from Angela, the wife of my friend Clay. Clay died last year, same age as me, way too young, from cancer. Clay wore the bracelet during the final season of his life. It is now my most tangible memento mori.

Visit cemeteries and go to funerals: I hardly pass up an opportunity to wander slowly through a cemetery. Here in Florence I’ve visited the old cemetery behind San Miniato on the hill above our villa, as well as the cemetery above Monterosso in Cinque Terre, as well as the “Protestant cemetery” on the island of Capri. They are a wealth of wisdom and wonder. And in addition to wandering through cemeteries, go to funerals! The experience is most always salutary, in some fashion, and always sobering.

Begin with the end in mind,” as Stephen Covey puts it: this is not just good wisdom about project planning (have a clear idea of the desired outcome, and then design actions and strategies to get you to the desired outcome), but also good wisdom about a life: what kind of person are you seeking to become? What kinds of things do you want to characterize your life by the time you arrive at your death? Make this an actual practice: put things on paper, and give it appropriate self-reflection and contemplation.

Lee Camp –

memento mori practiced as an individual is vital but requires support of community which is strengthened in its practice of memento mori.

Practical ways Christian communities can practice memento mori3The Ars moriendi are two related Latin texts dating from about 1415 and 1450 which offer advice on the protocols and procedures of a good death, explaining how to “die well” according to Christian precepts of the late Middle Ages. :

  • Recognize and celebrate All Saints Day
  • Develop and implement meaningful ways to acknowledge deaths in the community.
  • Provide space for memorials
  • Encourage attendance at funerals
  • Initiate ars moriendi (The Art of Dying) ministries.

 “LORD, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered- how fleeting my life is. Psalm 39:4 NLT

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

  • 1
    The term memento mori combines the Latin memini, “to remember, to bear in mind,” with morior, literally, “to die.” Taken together, the phrase serves as a warning: “Remember! You will die!”
  • 2
    The Lost Art of Dying
  • 3
    The Ars moriendi are two related Latin texts dating from about 1415 and 1450 which offer advice on the protocols and procedures of a good death, explaining how to “die well” according to Christian precepts of the late Middle Ages.