Collapse of transcendence
With the collapse of the transcendent we no longer struggle with guilt, how God views our actions. We’ve turned inward to take up “the vague and unending project of having to become one’s fullest self.” But this turning inward has come with its own pricetag. We’ve exchanged guilt for the weariness of the self.
Richard Beck
Falling in love with God
What a long way it is between knowing God and loving him! Pascal
Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.
Fr Pedro Arrupe via Richard Beck
Idols
When biblical/theological truth becomes tainted and compromised by ideological frameworks and pragmatic alliances it leads invariably to idolatry. An idol is anything or anyone we put our hope in other than or in addition to Jesus Christ. Idols are lifeless things that promise flourishing life and when we put our hope in a lifeless thing in pursuit of flourishing life we become lifeless. It’s why the telltale sign of idolatry is hard-heartedness. There is only one response to hard-heartedness—confession and repentance. Tragically, the person with a hard heart is all too often the last one to know.
J D Walt
Gift of presence
…part of what I’ve been so grateful is when people seem to have a real awareness of is the gift of presence. It’s when they’ve learned to put down some of that anxiety over not being able to solve other people’s pain, if not their own, and they learn to leave a little breathing room for ambiguity, for not knowing, for not always knowing the right words or that fix, and then also remembering that in that space, it’s not just that they’re the gift of community, which is so precious, and also the gift of presence because I love presents when I’m suffering, please give me presents. It’s so great.
Kate Bowler
Being Human
There is no cure to being human. Finitude is going to be part of this deal, but man do I understand prosperity gospel that says they just want to be able to look back through the details of their life and be able to draw that straight line between “and then things worked out because I have a God who loves me.” I no longer live in a world in which God’s reasons are immediately discernable to me. I just don’t.
Kate Bowler
Bureaucracy
Administrative system governing any large institution
In modern usage, modern bureaucracy has been defined as comprising four features:
hierarchy (clearly defined spheres of competence and divisions of labor)
continuity (a structure where administrators have a full-time salary and advance within the structure)
impersonality (prescribed rules and operating rules rather than arbitrary actions)
expertise (officials are chosen according to merit, have been trained, and hold access to knowledge)
Wikipedia
“Bureaucracies are automated systems made up of people who must choose each and every day whether their job will require any of their humanity.”
— No Cure for Being Human: (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) by Kate Bowler
SIN
This is how sin deceives us. We mistakenly focus on sin at the level of our behaviors when they are merely the symptoms of the sickness. Sin, in its deepest essence, is the condition of an unbelieving heart and an unbelieving or untrusting heart inevitably becomes a hardened heart. And a hardened heart is the most dangerous place on earth.
J D Walt
View from the Front Porch
Some perspectives have changed since emergency surgery and extended hospitalization. I am grateful for the many prayers on my behalf. They were a very present comfort. I heard, and it was reported, prayers for full,100% recovery… a return to a normal life … not unlike my own prayers. As I reflected on my experience and those petitions, I realized how much they reveal a deep resistance to embracing mortality. To believe I could or will get back to normal (whatever that was) denies the reality that my body has been changed and return is not possible. The perils of my health and continued aging cannot be denied. To live in an illusion that I can return to some previous health nirvana via prayer, miracle or bootstrap regimen would deny reality, by definition, insanity. As a Christ follower, my hope in not that my life will restored, but that I will live life in its present reality. So questions I am pondering in the shadow of mortality is, how then shall I live? Is it different from how I lived before? If so, in what way? What prayers should be offered ?
So much to think about.