For the Joy of the Journey

Serendipity was scarce in 2023 . Prognostications for 2024 are not promising.

In 2003, a NASA Investigation Board blamed the disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia in part on PowerPoint.

---

Useless

Oscar Wilde:

A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental. It is a misuse. All this is I fear very obscure. But the subject is a long one.

---

Sacramental Life

The sacramental life of the Church is not an aspect of the Church’s life – it is a manifestation of the whole life of the Church. It is, indeed, the very character and nature of the Church’s life. The Church does not have sacraments – the Church is a sacrament. We do not eat sacraments or just participate in the sacraments – we are sacraments. The sacraments reveal the true character of our life in Christ. 

Fr Stephen Freeman

---

God is at work here

How many times have you thought or said this. I’ve said it too. “God must be at work here.” And what you and I are observing is something successful, something cool, something remarkable, something miraculous, something astounding. Which trains our eyes, ears, and senses to see God in the extraordinary and successful. More importantly, which trains us not to see God at work elsewhere.

What is so remarkable about Paul is that he states over and over, especially in 2 Corinthians, that he sees God most at work in his life when he is vulnerable and suffering and in pain and weak. This is the real Paul being real about the real Christian life. For him the Christian life is not about glory and success and money and prestige and honor. He does not look for the work of God in the forum of Rome or at the bema in Corinth or at the Acropolis in Athens or in well-known celebrities turning to Jesus (which is good, so too is the conversion of someone few know). He looks for the work of God in the ordinary person following the way of Jesus.

The Corinthians “Expected to see God at work in places of physical strength, material success, social achievement, human flourishing, lasting smiles and rhetorical brilliance.” But not Paul. Not the way of. Not cruciformity or Christoformitiy. In… “physical weakness, emotional brokenness and social humility” the apostle Paul “proudly witnesses to God at work in enduring and hopeful ways.
https://scotmcknight.substack.com/p/look-elsewhere

---

Bull-headedness

If people refuse to change, what my mother used to call “bull-headedness,” the world will only get worse. We have to learn how to dialogue, how to forgive, and how to trust, and how to give people the benefit of the doubt. In the United States, our country has become very cynical about truth and love. We hear politicians take oaths to be fair and just leaders and we all know it doesn’t mean anything. We expect everybody to be for the truth of their group and their “kingdoms.” But Jesus tells us to change our minds and accept the kingdom of God, which is what’s good for the whole.

Richard Rohr

Grief, Lament and Spiritual Bypassing

“Spiritual bypassing is a tool used to sidestep complicated emotions, psychological issues, and unfinished developmental tasks.”

“Many HCR’s (High Control Religions) instill in their followers of fear that if they grieve for too long, even after a loved one has died, their emotions will take over. Instead, HCR’s offer platitudes to get people to look on the bright side so that others around them can avoid feeling their own discomfort with grief and loss. Focus is instead placed on seeing what people can learn through the experience or what God might be teaching them. Rather than dealing with difficult emotions or painful experiences, many are taught to instead look for how God can use the situation to bring glory to his name.”

Spiritual bypassing also explains the inability, or perhaps even the unwillingness, genuinely to enter into a period of lament and sitting in it, rather than finding release points, positive possibilities, and hope. The Book of Lamentations Simply does not take us to where many in the spiritual bypassing mode want to go.

 The Book of Lamentations, then, “is both survivors’ literature and survival literature.” The story we tell about the past and the story that gives meaning to the present and hope for the future. “Trauma makes one mute and numb, and recovery is not feasible without the victim finding his/her/their voice and naming his/her/their suffering.” Lament in the book of lamentations avoids mentioning God while inveighing against God. “They do not wait for Yhwh to speak; rather, they expect him to listen.”

It is a fundamental mistake then to minimize lament and grief. Healing does not occur by spinning a narrative of victory, of triumph, and of hope. Healing occurs by facing reality and in the reality learning the language of healing and hope. It is too easy to call it lament, and then abort the lament by turning to stages of progress and development.

https://www.amazon.com/When-Religion-Hurts-You-High-Control/dp/1587435888

---

The Roman Catholic Blessing of Same-Sex Couples

The reality is that the statement is far more limited.  A few points will make this clear:

1. The document clearly retains the church’s position that Christian marriage is between a man and a woman.
2. Any blessing given to a same-sex couple cannot be given in a formal “liturgical” setting, which would mirror the kind of ceremony we associate with Christian marriage.
3. Any blessing given to a same-sex couple is not intended to extend moral legitimacy to same-sex unions.

The blessing the document envisions is what is known as a “spontaneous” blessing.  It may not be fully appreciated by many Protestants, but it is very common for Roman Catholic priests (identifiable by their clerical collar) who may be found in malls, airports, places of pilgrimage etc. to be approached by someone asking for their blessing.  The document now allows priests to bless same-sex couples in these “spontaneous” non-liturgical situations.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/04/vatican-says-blessing-of-same-sex-couples-is-not-blasphemous

---

Advent

It is a season of wonder. Wonder is an interesting thing. Scot Erickson says that wonder is “the moment when all of our narratives and stories about life disappear in the rapturous experience of actually being here.” He says that wonder is “being present with the glorious now.”

A moment of Wonder is the moment when you are speechless, overwhelmed, and caught up in a mystery. In a moment of wonder, you momentarily develop a singular focus, and everything else stops.

I want you to bring to mind the last time you experienced wonder. Don’t you long for a life of wonder and mystery and surprise and joy?

Kelly Edmiston

---

Taxes

The poorest quintile of Americans pays more than twice the rate of state taxes as the top 1 percent does, and about half again what the top 10 percent pays.

Single Parenting

According to the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, 60 years ago just 20 percent of children born to parents with a high-school education or less lived in a single-parent household; now that figure is nearly 70 percent. Among college-educated households, by contrast, the single-parent rate remains less than 10 percent. Since the 1970s, the divorce rate has declined significantly among college-educated couples, while it has risen dramatically among couples with only a high-school education—even as marriage itself has become less common. The rate of single parenting is in turn the single most significant predictor of social immobility across counties, according to a study led by the Stanford economist Raj Chetty.

---

---

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

Final So Much to Think About for 2023.

Many football fans punch, shoot, run over, or otherwise destroy their TV when things don’t go well for their team.

---

Contrast

Rick Reilly put Mike McDaniel, the sunny head coach of the Miami Dolphins, and Bill Belichick, the gloomy head coach of the New England Patriots, side by side: “One is as open as a new Safeway, and the other is as closed up as an old submarine. One will tell you anything you want; the other will hand out information on a need-to-go-screw-yourself basis. One looks like a nerd who got lost on a stadium tour and wound up as head coach. The other looks like an Easter Island statue nursing a grudge.”

---

Death shadow

The most beautiful times of day are dawn and dusk when shadows are long, offering contrast, refuge and form. Death is the shadow that gives shape to existence, urgency to love, brilliance to life. Limitless life is tedium without resolution.

Roger Cohen

---

Humility

“…we must—absolutely must—maintain a fundamental humility before the Great Mystery. If we do not, religion always worships itself and its formulations and never God.”

Richard Rohr – The Divine Dance

---

Good news

Good news: crime rates are going down, no matter what many of us actually think or believe:

Crime in the United States has declined significantly over the last year, according to new FBI data that contradicts a widespread national perception that law-breaking and violence are on the rise.

A Gallup poll released this month found that 77% of Americans believe crime rates are worsening, but they are mistaken, the new FBI data and other statistics show.

The FBI data, which compares crime rates in the third quarter of 2023 to the same period last year, found that violent crime dropped 8%, while property crime fell 6.3% to what would be its lowest level since 1961, according to criminologist Jeff Asher, who analyzed the FBI numbers.

Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023 at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded, Asher found, and every category of major crime except auto theft declined.

Yet 92% of Republicans, 78% of independents and 58% of Democrats believe crime is rising, the Gallup survey shows.

“I think we’ve been conditioned, and we have no way of countering the idea” that crime is rising,” Asher said. “It’s just an overwhelming number of news media stories and viral videos — I have to believe that social media is playing a role.”

The FBI’s quarterly numbers cover about 78% of the U.S. population and don’t give as full a picture as the more comprehensive annual report the FBI puts out once a year. But Asher said the quarterly reports in the past have hewed fairly close to the annual ones.

The most recent annual report, released in October, covered 94% of the country and found that violent crime in 2022 fell back to pre-pandemic levels, with murder dropping 6.1%.

Asher maintains a separate database of murder in big cities which found that murder is down 12.7 percent this year, after rising during the pandemic. 

Detroit is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1966, Asher found, while Baltimore and St Louis are on track to post the fewest murders in each city in nearly a decade. A few cities, including Memphis and Washington DC, are still seeing increases in their murder rates, but they are outliers.

Scot McKnight

---

Covering up

the story of the old Oxford don who, whenever the paper on his desk got quite out of control, would simply spread a copy of the Times over the lot and start again. After his death they found several layers, like an archaeologist’s tell, of matters that had never been dealt with.

N T wright Surprised by Hope

---

Hospitality

Humility is more important than zeal. Descent into nothingness and dependence on God. Otherwise I am just fighting the world with its own weapons and there the world is unbeatable. Indeed it does not even have to fight back, for I will exhaust myself and that will be the end of my stupid efforts.

Thomas Merton

---

Doing what we can|
Anne Lamott

Recently I was walking along the cliffs above the Pacific with one of these old friends, named Neshama. We go back 50 years. She is 84, short and sturdy with fuzzy hair like mine. Every so often, she bent down somewhat tentatively and picked up small items that she’d then tuck into a small cloth pouch that dangled from her belt.

“I’m picking up micro litter, bottle caps and bits of wrappers. I try to help where I can.”

I reminded her of an old story along these lines, of a sparrow and a horse. A great warhorse comes upon a tiny sparrow lying on its back with its feet in the air, eyes squinched tightly shut with effort. The horse asks it what it’s doing.

“I’m trying to help hold back the darkness.”

The horse roars with laughter. “That is so pathetic. What do you weigh, about an ounce?”

And the sparrow replies, “One does what one can.”

This is what older age means; we do what we can. We pick up smaller things and move more tentatively. We’ve unwillingly become characters from the movie “Cocoon.”

---

Feeling 

…last month, Americans felt worse about the economy than they did in April 2009. The key word is feel, because by any standard remotely tied to this planet, it is delusional to think that things are worse today than during the meltdown of the Great Recession. As James Surowiecki (a contributing writer for The Atlantic) dryly observed on X about the comparison to 2009, “It’s true that if you ignore the 9% unemployment rate, the financial system melting down, the millions of people being foreclosed on and losing their homes, and the plummeting stock market decimating people’s retirements, it was better. But why would you do that?”

…few people are spending less, no matter how much they carp about inflation; in surveys, she notes, “people say that they are trading down because of cost pressures. But in fact they are spending more than they ever have, even after accounting for higher prices. They’re spending not just on the necessities, but on fun stuff—amusement parks, UberEats.”

Abraham Lincoln implored citizens in 1838 to rely on “cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason.” But if Americans are now stuck in the mode where nothing but vibes and feelings matter, much more is at risk than one or two elections. No democracy can long survive an electorate whose only guidance is emotion.
The Atlantic

---

Vulnerability

Dr. Brene Brown defines vulnerability as showing up to your life without any guarantees.

Vulnerability is being rigorously honest with those around you, through your actions and your words, about who you are and what you need. Vulnerability is the willingness to be seen for who we are, not who we want to be.

God became vulnerable in Jesus so that when you face the inevitability of vulnerability in your own life you can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God meets you there, in that precise place.

Kelly Edmiston

---

Short Wedding Quotes

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” —Aristotle

“We loved with a love that was more than love.” —Edgar Allan Poe

“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”—Hermann Hesse

“If you are with the right person, it brings out the best version of you.” —Beyoncé Knowles

“To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.” —David Viscott

“Marriages are made in heaven. But so again are thunder and lightning.” —Clint Eastwood

“Two hearts in love need no words.” —Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

“You are the butter to my bread, and the breath to my life.” —Julia Child

“Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always.” —Dante Alighieri

“Some people care too much. I think it’s called love.” —Winnie the Pooh

“The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.” —Audrey Hepburn

---

Wanted – Nanny/ Manny

the “personal and household services” ads on Monster.com. At the time of this writing, the section for my town of Brookline, Massachusetts, featured one placed by a “busy professional couple” seeking a “Part Time Nanny.” The nanny (or manny—the ad scrupulously avoids committing to gender) is to be “bright, loving, and energetic”; “friendly, intelligent, and professional”; and “a very good communicator, both written and verbal.” She (on balance of probability) will “assist with the care and development” of two children and will be “responsible for all aspects of the children’s needs,” including bathing, dressing, feeding, and taking the young things to and from school and activities. That’s why a “college degree in early childhood education” is “a plus.”

In short, Nanny is to have every attribute one would want in a terrific, professional, college-educated parent. Except, of course, the part about being an actual professional, college-educated parent. There is no chance that Nanny will trade places with our busy 5G couple. She “must know the proper etiquette in a professionally run household” and be prepared to “accommodate changing circumstances.” She is required to have “5+ years experience as a Nanny,” which makes it unlikely that she’ll have had time to get the law degree that would put her on the other side of the bargain. All of Nanny’s skills, education, experience, and professionalism will land her a job that is “Part Time.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/

What better way to conclude So Much to Think About for 2023 than:

More Good news 

Just about the worst calamity that can befall a human is to lose a child, and historically, almost half of children worldwide died before they reached the age of 15. That share has declined steadily since the 19th century, and the United Nations Population Division projects that in 2023 a record low was reached in global child mortality, with just 3.6 percent of newborns dying by the age of 15.

That’s the lowest such figure in human history. It still means that about 4.9 million children died this year — but that’s a million fewer than died as recently as 2016.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY