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“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

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Living in the sunset is a challenge. The desire to grasp and absorb infinite nuances of color and contrast before darkness invades can be overwhelming. Only the assurance of a new day and another sunset, restrains despair. Exhilaration and frustration are constant companions. I hold no regrets for my life, but I can say with confidence, I have never felt more alive than now. 
My blog posts are meager attempts to share sunset experiences. Certainly they will be inadequate. As we all know, the grandeur of sunset is beyond description.

Life in the Sunset – Jan 2020

Six Word Memoir

Some years ago I read Not Quite What I Was Planning. The book is a collection of six-word memoirs. It originated from a project by on-line magazine SMITH that solicited submission of peoples’ life memoir stated in six words. I recently shared that I am writing my memoir. After working on it some, I’m thinking I might settle for a six word memoir. Here are a few examples from the book:

Seventy years, few tears, hairy ears.

Born in the desert. Still thirsty.

Macular degeneration. Didn’t see that coming.

Kentucky trash heap yields unexpected flower.

Thought long and hard. Got migraine.

Thinking about my own memoir. Here is what I came up with:

I Knew. I Know. I didn’t’t

How about yours?

The Progeny Parable

The wedding was stunning in every way, the bride a fantasy princess, the groom Sir Galahad personified. Their only rival for attention were spectacular vistas framing the ceremony. Family and friends gathered to witness and celebrate. A spectacular honeymoon was almost anti-climactic.

Promising careers… white picket fences … beautiful people.. life is good, almost perfect … almost.
Months and years pass, life is good, almost perfect…almost. 
Empty nursery, dreams of progeny unfulfilled. Doubts and questions, Why? Who? 
God’s will?  Surely not.
Google it. No stone unturned. Calendars, thermometers, timing is everything. Hurry home, now is the time. Doctors, meds. Try harder!
Surely it is God’s will.
Resignation. It is not to be. 
Foster parenting. Hearts aching. Choice, not chance.
We’ve done it. Nursery songs ..diapers.. Mama…Dada
Life is almost perfect..almost. No matter. Thank you God.
Life is good.. love abounds. No calendars…no thermometers, no demands.

Could it be? Yes! How could it be? 
Did we just get out of the way? 
Surely it’s God’s will. 

Boring Christianity

No one tells you that Christianity is a 70 to 80 year grind in becoming more kind, more gentle, more giving, more joyful, more patient, more loving. You learn that God isn’t in the rocking praise band or the amped up worship experience. What you learn after college is that Holy Ground is standing patiently in a line. You learn that Holy Ground is learning to listen well to your child, wife or co-worker. Holy Ground is being a reliable and unselfish friend or family member and being a good nurse when someone is sick. Holy Ground is awkward and unlikely friendships. Holy Ground is often just showing up.

Richard Beck

Old age

It’s easy to issue forth proclamations from the Olympian heights of age when we are no longer at the mercy of rampant hormones, parental expectations, and peer pressure. Every generation embraces their own slang and music, while harshly dismissing the slang and music of the subsequent generations. The warm cocoon of nostalgia makes them forget the pettiness and drama that dominated their lives.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar

Meaning

Meaning that is self-made is in the last analysis no meaning. Meaning, that is, the ground on which our existence as a totality can stand and live, cannot be made but only received.

For to believe as a Christian means in fact entrusting oneself to the meaning that upholds me and the world; taking it as the firm ground on which I can stand fearlessly…It means affirming that the meaning we do not make but can only receive is already granted to us, so that we have only to take it and entrust ourselves to it. 

Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)

“apoplectic rigidity,” 

an inability to see the world as it is, but rather only those nightmarish elements that justify the hatred and rage that is the source of your self-worth. 

Reinhold Niebuhr 

Self Improvement

“Self-improvement must not be confused with the pursuit of kingdom righteousness” (How Long, O Lord?

It can feel so Christian to take better care of ourselves, to improve ourselves in all the same ways the world coaches people to improve themselves — diet, exercise, sleep, even meditation, and probably prayer.

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/how-christian-is-self-improvement#:~:text=The%20Christianity%20we%20find%20in,(Luke%209%3A23).

Aging

In Rainer Maria Rilke’s novel “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge,” the protagonist notices that as he ages, he’s able to perceive life on a deeper level: “I am learning to see. I don’t know why it is, but everything penetrates more deeply into me and does not stop at the place where until now it always used to finish.”

Still on the Journey

The Presence of God (5)

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The doctrine of the Fall is about the loss of the Presence of God.
(Marshall Davis)

And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Genesis3:22-24

The previous post focused on “God is present everywhere all the time” and its essentiality to our faith. Today is an examination of conflicting realities, of the loss of the literal presence of God as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s disobedience and God’s punishment. i.e.”he drove the man out” and the truth that God is present everywhere, all the time.
Banishment from the Garden of Eden is basis for a “two storey universe” perspective. 1“We live here on earth, the first floor, where things are simply things and everything operates according to normal, natural laws, while God lives in heaven, upstairs, and is largely removed from the story in which we live. To effect anything here, God must interrupt the laws of nature and perform a miracle.” For us to see or hear from God, God has to come downstairs to visit us. But most of the time, it’s just us alone on the first floor. God is absent, upstairs and minding his own business.
FR Stephen Freeman The story of God’s relationship with the people of Israel is mostly a “two storey” drama. So the dilemma is: is God present everywhere all the time or not?
At this point my answer is yes and no!
Yes, God is present everywhere, all the time! But, No we not perceive his presence everywhere, all the time. The issue is not God’s proximity but our ability to perceive his presence. We are like Job:
When he passes me, I cannot see him; when he goes by, I cannot perceive him. 2Job 9:11
With the fall, beyond proximity to God, humanity lost communion (nous) with God. nous is the God-given faculty of the soul whose purpose is the perception of God and divine things. Noetic perception was lost. 3“Noetic perception” is a phrase that describes the ability of the human heart to perceive that which is Divine. As such, it is our capacity for communion with God and the whole of creation. … Without such a perception, we do not see the truth of things. By the same token, without such a perception, we cannot know the truth of our own selves.
Fr Stephen Freeman
Deficiency of “noetic perception” is an underlying condition that makes Christians most vulnerable to secularism. Devoid of “noetic perception” and unable to perceive that which is divine, belief is shallow, lacking in meaning and purpose; as Freeman observed, we are unable to even know the truth about ourselves. Desiring God on our own terms, we consign him to “up there” until He is needed.

Practicing the presence of God happens in a One Storey Universe.4A One-Storey Universe is the world in which the noetic faculty is restored to its proper place and role. We do not perceive the true nature of creation, for example, in order to control it. Rather, we perceive it in order to have communion with God through creation. And creation itself is only rightly seen when perceived in this manner. Things cease to be things-in-themselves: everything exists as a manifestation of the goodwill and providence of God.
Richard Beck Prerequisite to living in a One Storey Universe is restoration of  nous, the God-given faculty of the soul whose purpose is the perception of God and divine things. 

Here is my quandary:

  • I am convinced God is present everywhere, all the time.
  • Much of my life is reflective of living in a Two Storey Universe.
  • I am deficient in noetic perception.
  • Spiritual formation and discipleship are dependent on the presence of God.
  • GOD is: utterly beyond me, beyond the sweep of my imagination, beyond the comprehension of my mind His judgments are unsearchable and ways past finding out.

Maybe I need “The mind of Christ”? 5“..but we have the mind of Christ.” 1 For 2:16

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

  • 1
    “We live here on earth, the first floor, where things are simply things and everything operates according to normal, natural laws, while God lives in heaven, upstairs, and is largely removed from the story in which we live. To effect anything here, God must interrupt the laws of nature and perform a miracle.” For us to see or hear from God, God has to come downstairs to visit us. But most of the time, it’s just us alone on the first floor. God is absent, upstairs and minding his own business.
    FR Stephen Freeman
  • 2
    Job 9:11
  • 3
    “Noetic perception” is a phrase that describes the ability of the human heart to perceive that which is Divine. As such, it is our capacity for communion with God and the whole of creation. … Without such a perception, we do not see the truth of things. By the same token, without such a perception, we cannot know the truth of our own selves.
    Fr Stephen Freeman
  • 4
    A One-Storey Universe is the world in which the noetic faculty is restored to its proper place and role. We do not perceive the true nature of creation, for example, in order to control it. Rather, we perceive it in order to have communion with God through creation. And creation itself is only rightly seen when perceived in this manner. Things cease to be things-in-themselves: everything exists as a manifestation of the goodwill and providence of God.
    Richard Beck
  • 5
    “..but we have the mind of Christ.” 1 For 2:16

So Much To Think About

George 0 Comments

Dostoevsky said, “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.”

We know the sound of two hands clapping. But what is the sound of one hand clapping? 

A Zen K?an

The sound of two hands clapping is the sound of a person being elevated into a joyful state by art because they are reminded of their connection to all other people facing the same struggles. The sound of one hand clapping is the silence of suppressed joy and appreciation. It is the person who feels delight in another person but is unable to express that out of fear of embarrassment or some other repressed reason. The one hand is raised in desire to participate, now thwarted by a lack of courage. This reluctance to express one’s feelings to another human being is isolating—it is the deafening, unbearable sound of silence.

Kareem Abdul- Jabbar

Technology and Religion

If the misuses and abuses of technology depend upon how people engineer, design, envision, imagine, and market culture, then simply introducing new technological tools will not lead to the realization of Christians’ deepest fears. Rather, those fears are only realized when Christians, themselves, are complicit participants in affecting the cultural life produced by the misuse and abuse of new technologies. Religious communities have long critiqued how new technologies fail to meet people’s expectations of their material and spiritual well-being. By taking those critiques seriously, perhaps there could be a more holistic, human solution to address the cultural issues behind the fears inaugurated by technological change.

Good for Connecticut:

Connecticut will cancel roughly $650 million in medical debt for an estimated 250,000 residents this year, Gov. Ned Lamont announced Friday, saying it is the first state to provide this type of relief.

The effort will liberate many residents from “the cloud” over their heads and give them more freedom to buy a home, start a business or continue with their education, Lamont told CNN. That will help them strengthen their financial standing in a state with a large wealth gap.

“It’s a debt that you had no control over,” Lamont told CNN. “It’s not like you overspent. You get hit by a health care calamity.”

Residents whose medical debt equals 5% or more of their annual income or whose household income is up to 400% of the federal poverty line, or about $125,000 in 2024, are eligible.

Those who qualify do not need to apply – they will receive letters in the mail saying their debt has been eliminated as soon as this summer. More than 1 in 10 Connecticut residents have medical debt in collections.

via Scot McKnight

Knowledge

True knowledge changes us. “If only I had known,” can also mean, “If only I had been a different person.” Knowledge, in this biblical sense, is much deeper than the collecting and management of facts. In biblical terms, we know by participation or communion. When Christ says of his detractors that they do not know God, he dismisses their mastery of the facts (“And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me.” John 16:3) Those who accused Christ and urged the Romans to crucify Him, not only knew the facts of the Jewish faith – they were experts.

Fr Stephen Freeman

God’s fire

Real fire is destructive; throw yourself into a fire and you will be destroyed.
God’s fire is destructive too because it can swiftly eliminate all self-illusions, grandiose ideas, ego-inflation, and self-centeredness. Throw yourself into the spiritual fire of divine love and everything you grasp for yourself will be destroyed until there is nothing left but the pure truth of yourself.

Scientist and theologian Ilia Delio

The beauty of rising every morning…

…we all arise from bed each day with some pain—the pain of lost loved ones, the pain of lost dreams, the pain of aging out of relevance. Yet, we endure that daily pain because it is the worthwhile cost of the daily joys and delights we experience in loving, in dreaming, and in growing older among family and friends.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar 

View from the Lanai

Precarity 

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 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 say different spiritual things than we did before . 

Kate Bowler (interview with Russell Moore)

STILL ON THE JOURNEY