Do you know?
It’s really hard to argue that America’s problem is a lack of manufacturing jobs when nearly half a million manufacturing job openings are unfilled today.
David Brooks
Tradition
…there’s a difference between a living tradition and a dying or dead one. A living tradition is still learning and growing. Yes, it looks back to celebrate its many discoveries, lessons, wisdom, and gifts from the past, but it doesn’t act as if it already has all the answers. It uses its blessings from the past to prepare participants in the present for new discoveries, new lessons, new wisdom, and new gifts.
…what we are all really seeking is a living and healthy tradition, something that isn’t just about words or arguments, but that is about life in all its fullness and about deep, deep love—a love for this earth, a love for each other, and a love for God who we experience both within us and all around us. When we find a way into a tradition like that, a tradition of love and growth and wisdom and humility and respect—what an honor and blessing! What a waste to only live your life for something small and self-centered when you have a chance to be part of a bigger story and a deeper Tradition.
Brian McClaren
Mystic
“The devout Christian of the future will either be a ‘mystic’—someone who has ‘experienced something’—or will cease to be anything at all.”
Karl Rahner
Certitude
…certitude leads to violence. This is a proposition that has an easy application and a difficult one. The easy application is to ideologues, dogmatists, and bullies–people who think that their rightness justifies them in imposing on anyone who does not happen to subscribe to their particular ideology, dogma, or notion of turf. If the conviction of rightness is powerful enough, resistance to it will be met, sooner or later, by force.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Babylon
Capitalism alone has no character.
Without a virtuous character, everything is measured by markets and fueled by ambition, competition, self-determination, and self-interest. Absent character, capitalism naturally produces a culture of greed. And it gets religious icing on its cake far too often. As Wayland-Smith once put it, “Americans have always genuflected before the inscrutable power of the free market to distribute favors both earthly and heavenly. That the market is righteous,” she sardonically remarks, “is a national article of faith.”
But the free market does not produce disciples on the way to the New Jerusalem. It produces Babylon.
Our quest
Doubt and tentativeness open us up to both God and others. It means that the answers await us and the adventure of faith is in full swing. We don’t own the truth right now, so we don’t have to protect it. We don’t have to build a fortress separating Us from Them. Rather, we leave the fortress behind, journeying forth on our glorious communal adventure to seek the face of God.
This is our quest.
Richard Beck
Cosplaying Masculinity
There is a difference between people who play Airsoft and those who join the military. There is a difference between a several thousand dollar “bootcamp” where men pay to get yelled at and signing up for a real boot camp. One is playing a role that is all benefit and no risk and the other involves real cost that cannot be removed from the experience. One is a simulation of danger and sacrifice the other takes a toll that cannot be excised from what is “real”.
This is also why so many Evangelical “man focused” events ring so hollow with pyrotechnics, fake SWAT teams, muscle cars and Harleys; they are so obsessed with selling masculine coded accoutrement as being “good” it sells the mere accoutrement as being the whole substance.
Jay Mallow
Bridging Conversations
a few reminders to be helpful:
• Before the conversation begins remember that you, too, have made bad decisions, and would resent being treated as if they defined who you are. Do unto others…
• Refrain from “making points.” Stay focused on sharing stories about the experiences that have shaped you and your views. Remember that the more you learn about another person’s story, the harder it is to diss them.
• Go into the conversation with understanding, not conversion, as your goal. This is a chance to listen deeply to another’s point of view, not to change their mind.
• Deepen your listening with honest, open questions that help you understand more fully. “How could you believe that?” is not an honest, open question! “Can you say more about how you felt in that moment?” is.
• Success means creating a container strong enough to sustain an ongoing conversation. When stereotypes fall away and real people show up, the “space between us” becomes safe enough to host complex explorations that don’t explode.
Parker J Palmer
A patch of heaven
I close my eyes and see myself hiking through the sun-dappled woods, paddling down a windswept lake, hearing the unforgettable call of the loon, watching the cosmic drama of the Northern Lights, or eavesdropping on the ancient conversation between those two old friends, the lake and the land, as the cold, clear water laps gently against the shore.
Parker J Palmer’s article “A Wilderness Pilgrimage” was a poignant reminder of my experience in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota two decades past. Palmer’s quote above echoes my thoughts. For me it it is remembered as a glimpse of heaven on earth. A Patch of Heaven.
STILL ON THE JOURNEY