For the Joy of 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

The Myth of a Safe Place

George February 15, 2022 THE CHURCH 0 Comments

Myth of a Safe Place

“Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’” Jeremiah 7:4 ESV

I do not know anyone who is unconcerned about children’s safety. Safety is paramount in our society. What differs today from past decades is pervasive distrust. In the parenting phase of our life (60-80’s) there were places we trusted as safe places for our children — family, church, neighborhood, school — cautious, sometimes suspicious, our default was trust. Social and cultural changes in the intervening decades, shifted parental default, for good reasons, to distrust. Each default has negative consequences. Negative results of naive trust are obvious. Distrust, though less obvious, has negative consequences of a different nature. What both have in common is the misconception that there are safe places for children. Safe places are a myth. Wide spread evidence clearly establishes occurrences of sexual abuse in places thought to be safe. A reality that can produce unhealthy paranoia and paralysis.
Of course, no organization would declare itself unsafe, but it is disingenuous to portray themselves as safe. Establishing policies and procedures to assure safety; all necessary t0 protect organizations in a litigious society, ultimately fail to achieve a 100% safe place.

Thinking about commercial airlines may be helpful. Flying is a risky business. I’ve never flown and not thought about the possibility of crashing, but I fly without fear. Airline procedures inherently communicate the possibility of crashing, pre-flight instructions — fasten seat belts — in case of emergency… et al. You can even buy life insurance at the gate. Passengers converse about the possibly of crashing. As far as I can tell, no major airline proclaims to be safe (except for COVID 19). No matter how low the probability, there is no question of their concern and awareness of the possibility of crashing. Measures to make flights safe are obvious. Risk is a part of normal conversations, as a result, passengers and employees are aware and vigilant.
Airlines are diligent about safety policy and procedures but do not claim, or imply, no risk. Transparency prompts responsibility which gives passengers confidence in their safety. Risk can never be eliminated but can be minimized.

Sadly, human organizations… communities, neighborhoods, churches, families… cannot eliminate sexual abuse.

Taking cues from commercial airlines, following are suggestions on how churches can become safer communities.

Educate leadership, staff and congregants on the prevalence of sexual abuse and its impact on individuals and society.
Create a community ethos defined by concern for safety — offering reliability, honesty, and credibility.
Eliminate all pretense of being a safe place.
Understanding their limitations, develop and implement appropriate prevention policies and procedures.
Cultivate and reward communication that encourages consistent and healthy dialogue about sexual abuse.
When prevention fails, respond with transparency.
Always make compassion for victims the first priority.

In the course of thinking about the myth of a safe place and developing a framework for safer communities, there were numerous contributors of ideas and thoughts worthy of sharing for further consideration developing and maintaining safer communities.

The bigger the church, the less transparency when things go wrong. And the greater the harm done.
Matt Redmond

Language has power. How we speak to each other is the medium through which a more positive future is created or denied. As we engage in conversation the questions we ask and the speaking that they evoke constitute powerful action. The questions we ask will either maintain the status quo or bring an alternative future into the room. The Answer to How Is Yes – Peter Block

More than anything else, being able to feel safe with other people defines mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives. Being validated by feeling heard and seen is a precondition for feeling safe…

There is ultimately a (steep) pastoral cost to be paid for being a community that serves individuals and communities only in the aftermath of their wounding. The question that many victims of trauma ask the church is not “where are you now?” but instead ask “why didn’t someone protect me or prevent this from happening to me?”.

…ecclesial communities can pivot from being primarily the field hospital [reactive] towards becoming an exponentially impactful agent for the transformation of its own life and the larger society in which it is located.
While moral injury is not a clinical diagnosis it is recognized in the clinical literature that there is a concrete need of something akin to forgiveness and remission of the things that to the individual are wrong or sinful.
…by centering the traumatized and the vulnerable in our communities we are able to better identify with the God who meets us in our woundedness still bearing his wounds, and can come alongside those most susceptible to injury as defenders and interrupters that push back the darkness.
Theology of Prevention – Michael Hanegan

Assigning individual blame gives to the public an illusion of safety and preventability, whilst isolating an already often guilt-ridden traumatized individual.

The Christian community’s own response can socially exacerbate trauma, where, “religious and spiritual beliefs change from a possible source of healing to another weapon in an overwhelming onslaught
A true theology of compassion must embrace a theology and practice of lament, both for the traumatized individual and community.

…friendship may be refused in the malaise of an individual’s trauma, it is better the offer be present than absent. Even from a distance it can be comforting to realize that a special community is orientating its practices because it acknowledges your pain; that fact alone can be immensely winsome for post-traumatic social re-integration.

Pastoral sensitivity to the needs of traumatized congregants will give apt direction to a form of worship which duly acknowledges the weight of burden that, some will feel, defies being translated into speech. Such sensitivity may avoid the pressure that most Evangelical forms of worship, requiring audible/cognitive participation for the worshipper to feel a co-participant, can create. This can be due either to incessant singing of praise choruses or a demanding cognitive focus on verbal preaching.
“Trauma, Compassion, and Community” – Roger P Abbott

It is apparent to me that the challenge of building safer communities encompasses more than policies and procedures and will necessitate re-thinking fundamental assumptions. Churches will be faced with a need to examine assumptions about every aspect of their faith. Which, in part, explains the continued epidemic of sexual abuse in faith communities.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY