For the Joy of the Journey

So Much To Think About

George March 4, 2022 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

Mature Religion
The true purpose of mature religion is to lead you to ever new experiences of your True Self. If religion does not do this, it is junk religion. Every sacrament, every Bible story, every church service, every sermon, every hymn, every bit of priesthood, ministry, or liturgy is for one purpose: to allow you to experience your True Self—who you are in God and who God is in you—and to live a generous life from that Infinite Source.
Richard Rohr

“He came to himself.”
These words form the turning point in the story of the Prodigal Son. They are words of judgment, apocalypse, and revelation. When the younger son demanded his inheritance from his father, he was not himself. When he traveled to a far land and wasted everything in wild pleasure, he was not himself. Only when everything was lost and what was in front of him became disgusting do we hear, “He came to himself.” The unfolding of that reality took time.

Disgust is not the revelation of the self. Disgust is the reaction that makes us want to spit something out. It is tasting something horrible and wretched. As unpleasant as the sensation is, it remains a guardian and protector, a shieldagainst poison and disease. Disgust is a discernment of something that is “not the self.” Still, knowing that something is “not the self” is not the same thing as seeing the self as it truly is. For the younger son, the revelation of the self begins when he says, “I will go to my father.” It is his recognition that he is a son, and that “who he is” can only be known in that context that constitutes “coming to himself.”
Fr Stephen Freeman

Pruning
When a Japanese gardener “prunes open,” Marsha explained, he or she cuts away not only dead branches and foliage, but also often a number of perfectly healthy branches that detract from the beauty inherent in the tree’s essential structure. Pruning open allows the visitor to see up, out, and beyond the trees to the sky, creating a sense of spaciousness and letting light into the garden. It also enables an individual tree to flourish by removing complicating elements, simplifying structure, and revealing its essence. The process of pruning open turns the tree inside out, so to speak, revealing the beautiful design inherent within it. . . .

The truth is, God does not wish for us to stand stubborn like the autumn oak tree, cloaked in a façade of protection, our truest, most authentic selves obscured beneath a tangled bramble of false security. Rather, [God] desires us to live like the Japanese maple tree, our true essence revealed and flourishing, our true self front and center, secure and thriving. God yearns for us to live wholeheartedly and truthfully as the unique, beautiful, beloved individuals [God] created us to be. Most of all, God’s deepest desire is for us to know [God], to root our whole selves in [God] like a tree rooted by a stream, and to know [God’s] deep, abiding love for us. . . .
Richard Rohr

‘Litany of Humility
O Jesus, meek and humble of heart,
Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being loved,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being extolled,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being honored,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being praised,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being preferred to others,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being consulted,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being approved,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being humiliated,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being despised,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of suffering rebukes,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being calumniated,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being forgotten,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being ridiculed,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being wronged,
Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being suspected,
Deliver me, O Jesus.

That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be chosen and I set aside,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be praised and I go unnoticed,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be preferred to me in everything,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
Richard Beck

Leading
Pregame at a D1 college basketball game: ROTC brought out the flag, and everyone stood dutifully for the national anthem. The distinguished-looking soloist was introduced as a member of the faculty in the musical theatre department. In a beautiful baritone, he started acapella: “Oh, say, can you see?…” Then he started moving his arms, and by “what so proudly…” it was clear we were all invited to join in. Without missing a beat, he stepped back from the microphone, stopped singing entirely, and conducted a choir of some 15,000 people (who had come here to yell, not sing) through our musically awkward national anthem. I swear he made eye contact with every soul as he guided us through the words we all know but don’t always know how long to hang on to. We even came in at the same time with “o’er the la-and of the free…” He could have sung it way better. A handful would have sung along, and everyone would have clapped and settled in for some basketball. But instead, he stepped aside and made everybody think we could sing. He led us. And I paid attention.
Jennifer Sawyer

Still On the Journey

So Much To Think About

George February 24, 2022 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

Pandemic
“[The pandemic] might come to resemble our decades-long battle with tobacco. We should neither expect that every stubbornly unvaccinated person will get jabbed before next winter nor despair that none of them will ever change their mind. Let’s accept instead that we may make headway slowly, and with considerable effort. This plausible outcome has important, if uncomfortable, policy implications. With a vaccination timeline that stretches over years, our patience for restrictions, especially on the already vaccinated, will be very limited. But there is middle ground. We haven’t banned tobacco outright—in fact, most states protect smokers from job discrimination—but we have embarked on a permanent, society-wide campaign of disincentivizing its use.”
Benjamin Mazer – The Atlantic

Born Again
For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.
Translation: The Miracle has happened. Everything has changed. The center of gravity has shifted. It is like a total restart. i.e. New Birth.
Still, the typical way the Christian faith gets translated is believe and behave. The problem? This is just not the Christian faith. It is a religion of conformity. The Christian faith is transcendent transformation. The move is not from believe to behave. It is from believe to behold and the outcome is far more powerful than behavior change. It is becoming a completely new kind of human being.
Herein lives the beautiful mystery of the Christian faith. The way is not “replacement” of bad behavior with good behavior. The way is “displacement” of an old life with a new life. The more we focus on behavior the more that behavior will hold us in its grip. The more we behold Jesus, the more Jesus will hold us in his grip. His presence begins to actually displace our problems.
J D Walt

Prayer
To pray is to open up oneself to God who dwells within us. It means holding back nothing from God and sharing everything with God. . . . Only the grace of God can enable us to let go of our fears and allow God to be the God of our lives. True prayer is fundamental for life in God. It is that grace of conversion that opens up our hearts to realize the humble presence of God in our lives. Prayer of the heart is unceasing prayer, where God breathes in us and our hearts are turned toward God. This deepening of our lives in the divine life is the path to self-discovery. In and through prayer we discover our true selves, the self that God has created each of us to be. . . .
Ilia Delio

GOOD NEWS
The United Church of Christ has now paid off more than $100 million in medical debt for people across the United States.The UCC announced Monday (Feb. 14) that it used $200,000 from one of its annual Giving Tuesday campaigns to purchase and pay off $33 million in medical debt for residents of Ohio, where the mainline Protestant denomination is based.
That brought the total medical debt the UCC has purchased and paid off since late 2019 to more than $104 million.

Into the woods
We understand something, we humans: woods are never just woods. Sensing the breaths and rustlings inside, we have learned to marvel at and to mind—at times, to fear—the exhale of otherness that meets us when we stand on the sparser side of a wall of trees.
In storytelling and specifically old Anglo-Saxon fairytales, woods are a place of transformation, a world apart where loss is faced and pain shifts its shape. Always a thin place, woods guard a realm in which the spiritual mingles confoundingly with the temporal. We feel our humanness differently there; no one who goes in comes out the same.
Jamie Townsend

No one is alone
No cure or antidote for our creeping self-centeredness exists, other than humility and the presence of one another. Without these, we do our best and so often don’t have the radical vulnerability to simply say it isn’t enough. We lose our tempers. We miss out on ideas and nuances and growth. We take sides even when there really ought not to be sides for the taking. We judge others. For the more righteous of us, we judge others for judging others and still blindly perpetuate the buzz of masses playing judge, jury, and executioner. We forget to spare such judgment even for ourselves. In summary, we forget that every person who lives and breathes, or almost does or once did, is sacred.
Because life is sacred. Because, as best we can guess, God crafted us and breathed life into us out of his want for nearness and creativity and work and dwelling with us. And so we are not only sacred, but loved.
And no one truly loved by such a constant compassion as their Creator can ever be truly alone, so no one is alone, nor is anyone ever meant to believe such an exceptionally brilliant, crushing lie.
Jamie Townsend

Tapestry
“It will be very interesting one day to follow the pattern of our life as it is spread out like a beautiful tapestry. As long as we live here we see only the reverse side of the weaving, and very often the pattern, with its threads running wildly, doesn’t seem to make sense. Some day, however, we shall understand. In looking back over the years we can discover how a red thread goes through the pattern of our life: the Will of God.” Maria von Trapp

Death in the Modern Church
…the culture has moved even deeper in its “normalization” of death. A mega church in my metropolitan arena has now set a rule that does not allow for the body of a deceased person to be present for the funeral. The service is a “celebration of life” with music, a video presentation, and remembrances (maybe a sermon?). Dealing with bodies is awkward, cumbersome, fraught with emotions, and such. No doubt, the new rules make everything easier for everyone.
Death is anti-modernity. It mocks progress and the project of a better world. At the grave, we have everything in common with a pre-historic figure and nothing in common with the schemes of our modern world. Everything has come crashing to its ironic conclusion. As we bustle about with slogans of a better world we force ourselves to be oblivious to the fact that our Sun is dying and our planet will someday grow cold or be dissolved in fire, or, much sooner, endure yet another extinction-level visitation from a modest-sized asteroid. It is, of course, utterly astounding that the Creator of the universe Himself walked among us, speaking Aramaic, sweating beneath the heat of the noon-day Sun. His visitation alone makes us, the merest specks in a near infinity, remarkable and of significance.
Fr Stephen Freeman

Bible
Everyone reads the Bible from a location, a context. And everyone reads that Bible for their own context. It’s impossible not to. It’s just as impossible not to know these truths.
The ones who don’t know these truths are the ones most dangerous to church and society. To think we are unimpacted by location and that our location does not preform our eyes to see one thing and not another weaponizes the Bible on behalf of one location.
Scot McKnight

You are a Royal Priesthood
…a royal priest moves about among the human race, helping to orient people with the King who sits on the throne at the center of it all. You are a living signpost pointing people to our King and Good Father and helping them get there. To hold your hand is to feel the clasp of mercy. To listen to your voice is to hear the sound of grace. To be in your presence is to smell the fragrance of Christ. To behold your countenance is to share in very Peace of Jesus. To sit with you at table is to taste and see that the Lord is good. You, priest, are a living reminder of the love of God, a way finder for the lost and a way maker for the weary. Instead of giving directions you walk with them along the road. At times you will seem to follow their lead in the wrong direction, patiently waiting for them to come to the end of their broken self and make the turn toward home. At other times, you stand at the end of the road, seeing beyond its winding ways, with your eyes peeled on the horizon looking for the fragile frame of returning sons and daughters—ready to run at the drop of a hat.
JD Walt

View from the beach
This is the final post before returning to Wilmore. It has been an enjoyable three months in Florida. We are deeply thankful for the opportunity. This year has been especially nice as we watched the difficult winter in Kentucky, making It particularly hard not to gloat. If any of you have been subjected to my gloating, please accept my almost sincere apology.

Still on the Journey

So Much To Think About

George February 17, 2022 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

PIGEON FORDGE, Tennessee —
Leave it to Dolly Parton to deliver the good news of the day.
The legendary singer’s theme park, Dollywood, will begin paying full college tuition for all employees who choose to go.
The company will also cover miscellaneous fees and textbooks.
The education perk is available to employees starting on their very first day of work and will be available to all seasonal, part-time, and full-time employees. This tuition coverage starts on Feb. 24.
Dollywood has a reputation for caring for employees.
Along with the new tuition benefit, employees receive access to the Dollywood Family Healthcare Center and are provided free meals for every working shift.
There are also apprentice and leadership training programs offered through the company.
The park also pays a portion of childcare costs for employees who need childcare while they work.

Pain of grief
Unlike people who tried to soothe my pain, part of the comfort God offered me was to never flinch or look away. God saw my pain and knew not to try to make me feel better, but to sit with me in the endless ache. God knows the only thing that can slightly lessen the pain of death is for it to be seen and known. So Jesus wept. And God does not forget, even for an instant, the stories of every single person who is gone.
Hannah Mitchell

RULES FOR LIFE
“vacuum of meaning.” But what Peterson is really concerned about is our “vacuum of morality.” Peterson is a moralist. And you see this most clearly in his popular book 12 Rules for Life. The 12 Rules:
Stand up straight with your shoulders straight.
Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
Befriend people who want the best for you
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not the useless person you are today
Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
Set your house in order before you criticise the world
Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient
Tell the truth. Or at least don’t lie
Assume the person you are listening to knows something you don’t
Be precise in your speech
Do not bother children while they are skateboarding
Pet a cat when you encounter one in the street

Vacuum of Morality
Peterson is correct, the modern world is a moral vacuum. Moral norms, much widely accepted, have evaporated. People no longer go to church and families are complete trainwrecks. Young people are lost and aimless. And into that void Peterson says, “Tell the truth” and “Stand up straight.” And millions of people listen on YouTube. Advice, in the modern world, is rain in the desert.
Can the church take a hint here? Let me say something quite pointed. There are a lot of pastors with MDiv, DMin, or PhD degrees who sneer at topical, advice-giving preaching. These pastors prefer expository preaching, teaching from “the text.” And when they preach “the text” they explain a lot about the Bible and speak in vague generalities about joining the mission of God. The sermon is for everyone and therefore no one. And the young people sit the pews bored, looking at their phones.
Here’s the truth. Those pastors who preach advice-giving, practical, topical sermons? People follow them. People listen to them. People go to their churches. And the appeal here is the same appeal as Jordan Peterson’s. These pastors are giving concrete moral guidance in a world aching for concrete moral guidance.
Am I saying that pastors need to give up textual, expository preaching to become more topical and practical? No. What I’m saying is this: Stop sneering at the advice givers and pay attention. Do better. Be a more incisive cultural anthropologist. The modern world is a moral vacuum and people are craving concrete, specific and particular advice. You might, for impeccable reasons that got you an A+ in seminary, decide that your sermon just isn’t the place to give advice. Fair enough. But don’t wrinkle your nose at Jordan Peterson when young people stop listening to you and start listening to him. You can speak into the vacuum. So say something.
Richard Beck

Compassion
One way to nurture compassion is to be honest about the adversity in our own lives. Reckoning with our own hardship and suffering better prepares us to express empathy for others who know adversity. Empathic solidarity with others having a hard time in life can lead us to be more generous, kind, and supportive toward them.
Peter W Marty

Image inspiration: Sometimes we don’t have the energy to climb the stairs or jump off the dock. Wherever we are in this moment: in community, in solitude, in joy, in sorrow, with motivation or with great exhaustion… God meets us here.
via Richard Rohr

Self deception
Perhaps the most broken part of our broken human nature is just how hopelessly self-deceived we are. How else can we account for the levels of sheer chaos in this world? Self deception compounds like inflationary interest until it creates a debt that cannot possibly be repaid. Perhaps the greatest collective self-deception is that there is some kind of collective solution like communism or socialism or even capitalism. There is only a personal solution. We don’t want this to be true, but unfortunately it is, and we can live out our entire lives trapped within our broken selves in an empty way of life. The craziest thing about self-deception is you have no idea of it when you are self-deceived. And it’s in this kind of enslaved condition where we are most apt to isolate ourselves from other people.
JD Walt

Obedience
The Greek term for obedience, hupakoe (pronounced, hoop-ak-o-ay) means in the most literal sense (hypo) “under” and (akouo) “hear”; to hear while sitting under. You recognize the term “acoustics” as coming from this Greek root. Obedience is all about hearing. So to obey the truth means to sit under the sound of truth “to hear while sitting under.
Obedience does not mean compliant submission to an authoritarian leader. It means a deep kind of submissive listening to the authority of the Truth—which is the Word of God and the God of the Word. Before obedience ever takes a step, it sits down. Before the first hint of activity it is surrendered attention.
JD Walt

Beyond
Think of the visible spectrum—all the light we can see—with red on one end and violet on the other. Just past the ends, invisible, there is infrared and ultraviolet. Maybe “ultranatural” is a better word than supernatural to describe this liminal space where we step outside what we know and see and realize there is something else, something beautiful and mysterious.
Mark Geil

View from the Lanai

I recently came across this list of extravagances of Billionaires

$238 million on a New York penthouse like hedge fund manager Ken Griffin
vacation at his own private island in Belize like Bill Gates; or
throw $10 million birthday parties featuring camels and acrobats like investor Stephen Schwarzman; or
$70,000 a year on hair care like Donald Trump; or
buy a preserved 14-foot shark for an estimated $8 million like Steven Cohen;
or spend more than $1 billion on art like media mogul David Geffen; or
budget $23 million for personal security like Facebook did for Mark Zuckerberg. Or
own spaceships like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos; or
a 600-foot flying airship like Sergey Brin; or
a decommissioned Soviet fighter jet like Larry Ellison; or
a $215 million yacht with a helipad and a pool like Steve Wynn; or
a private train with three staterooms like John Paul DeJoria; or
a $5 million luxury car collection like Kylie Jenner.

I am confident that not one of them can find more joy and meaning in their extravagance than I experience with friends and family.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY