Janet’s example inspires me to conceive of a scheme in which we proactively pursue a relationship with next-door neighbors at all times. So, for example, the next time Dave’s birthday rolls around, we give him a gift.
“Such people will go on and on about visions they’ve had; they get puffed up without good reason by merely human thinking, and they don’t keep hold of the Head. It’s from Him that the whole body grows with the growth God gives it, as it’s nourished and held together by its various ligaments and joints.”
— Colossians 2:18-19, my emphasis
Paul here—or whoever wrote this wonderful letter—is making a case they the Colossian church shouldn’t listen to people trying to put rules onto them because of visions they’ve had. But I extract a principle here that corrects: Visions are not what will sustain your faith. Connecting to Jesus is what will sustain your faith.
I am grateful for a wife whose life beckons me to be empathic. She came home from work and told me what she had found out from Carole via Facebook: that Janet has been transferred to Danville for a blood transfusion that she needs in order to be able to go through chemotherapy to fight the lymphoma. Carla told me explicitly that she wants me to feel sad like she does. I didn’t at first, and I still don’t very explicitly. It’s the lack of lucidity, the lack of being there that disturbs Carla—and indeed, that is the most disturbing thing about it. She wants to “doula” for Janet, camping out at the hospital or nursing home or wherever to advocate on Janet’s behalf. Janet had conjunctivitis for days before they put her on erythromycin for it—despite her having said something repeatedly to her caregivers about it. I say go, Carla, go, do the good work of advocating on behalf of the woman who taught us how to be neighbors.
I am grateful for a son who knows more and more what he wants out of life. One of those desires is simple: LEGOs, four sets of which he very happily and explicitly gratefully received as gifts yesterday for his birthday. His joy, gratitude, and assiduity made me proud.
Following Richard Beck’s lead, I will attempt to answer in quick, bulleted form why I pray, even if and when most prayer requests go unanswered. I pray because in prayer:
- amplifies, directs, and actionizes my empathy,
- pledges my allegiance to God (or, if He isn’t real, the idea of Him and the virtues it represents to me),
- develops self-control,
- helps me sort out my thoughts,
- gets me outside,
- is generally healthy, like meditation, for the mind, and
- does, particularly on those rare occasions when I feel like God is directing me to pray something very specific, lead to answers!
Everything I pray for must lead to action on my part as well.
One could make a formula that would calculate the solidity of my conviction that God is real. The formula’s elements?
- the amount of sleep I’ve gotten,
- the degree of self-control I’ve been exercising, and
- the last time I prayed.
“Housatonic” means “beyond the mountain place,” and to me it means that my source of life and faith must come directly from You, not mediated by reading others.
You’re daring me to find You by helping others (Matthew 25:31-46).
I am grateful for the opportunity to help Janet in her time of need. But I want need not to be! Carla has visited a few times over the past several days because Janet has been loopy because of some medication she is one in connection with her perma-asthma that set in this winter like last. Apparently, MRIs at the hospital today may have revealed lymphoma.
I am grateful for the resilience and emotional maturity Éa displayed upon getting her ears pierced at Ikonic Ink downtown today. It hurt, but she displayed (and was multiply congratulated by onlookers for) stoicism while Miranda the “piercing artist” was doing her work. When it was done, she cried honest, quite-but-unashamed tears in Mommy’s arms. May all my children know what to do with their sadness and pain.
And may more families make family outings at tattoo and piercing parlors?
I am grateful for the moment of clarify I had reading Romans 14 this evening: If I let Paul’s use of the word “doubt” (diakrino) in vv. 22-23 interpret James use of the same word in James 1:5-8, then it is clear that Boyd’s thesis about “doubt” not being synonymous with uncertainty is true.
Actually, reading all of Romans 14, which touches on ritually-based vegetarianism and people following their own consciences, was exciting.
I am grateful for the light resolution I made while on my evening walk tonight that I can thank God for everything good and usually thank someone else for everything, too—a resolution I put into practice by thanking Christian Carion for making Joyeux Noël, which we watched with the Rookes last night.
I am grateful for Carla, whose beauty and diligence inspire me.
“I do not want to merely be called a Christian, but to actually be one.”
—St. Ignatius, as quoted by Stephen Crosby
This is how I feel.
Doubt baby review:
- empathy
- action-orientation (Jesus' main thing)
- final marginalization of Teen Mania-esque emphasis on making converts
- metaphysical flexibility (for me and for others)
- humility
- pluralism & ecumenism
- lightheartedness
- reset for my fight against sexual sin
- reset for my distraction at work
I am less self-disciplined, less loving, and less diligent whenever Carla leaves.
Carla has been peevish recently. But so have I. It’s a cycle. I realized one way to break the cycle is to drop my expectation that anyone, including my wife and kids, act perfectly lovingly all the time. I don’t, so why should I expect them to?
I’ll go further: When a demand is made of me or a disagreement voiced, let my first instinct be to satisfy the demand or come to accord quickly and happily. Obviously, I won’t be a pushover, but I will be a volunteer, a happy second-miler.
For this reason we don’t lose heart. Even if our outer humanity is decaying, our inner humanity is being renewed day by day. This slight momentary trouble of ours is working to produce a weight of glory, passing and surpassing everything, lasting forever; for we don’t look at the things that can be seen, but at the things that can’t be seen. After all, the things you can see are here today and gone tomorrow; but the things you can’t see are everlasting (2 Corinthians 4:16-18, KNT).
We look at the things that can’t be seen. That’s a religious paradox strict empiricist might choke on. But besides being poetic, it’s true, and whether the objects of our gaze are real or not, our hope in them has real sustaining power.
It’s also leads to a thought we as believers ought to remember: We are, in the end, talking about Someone invisible. Why balk at the idea that some folks don’t believe?
With apologies to philosophers and neuroscientists who believe there is no such thing as free will, we humans are the only (or perhaps one of just a few) species capable of choosing what we consume and how. We have a huge responsibility.
As this first day of my sprint toward getting a minimum viable website up for Frank and PolyGreen America ends, I am reminded that hobbies are happiest when they are not only enjoyable, but also seen as a form of generosity. In the case of web-development-on-the-side-that-disturbs-my-schedule-equilibirum, the enjoyment is possible only when I view it as such.
So Lord, let me renew that vantage on this work—and all work, really.
The important thing is not to obsess.
If, when I’m old, you were to ask me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you it was I day I think—I hope—I turned a corner in my character. You see, since screening the finale of the second season of Gatiss & Moffatt’s Sherlock this past Saturday, entitled “The Reichenbach Fall” (and probably a good bit before then), I had been obsessing over the show: obsessing about its plot, obsessing about its characters, obsessing about its actors, and obsessing about its writers. I was obsessing about my decision to stop watching it because of my obsession.
I needed to be rescued from all this.
And it’s more than Sherlock: In recent months, I have spent far too much time and attention setting up operating systems, selecting an iPhone case, and other such minutiae. I prioritize trivialities. And it robs me of life (and steals from DiamondBack).
We have overcome perfectionism. We have overcome stoniness. We have overcome self-distraction at work. We have overcome religious doubt. (All of the above are still works in progress, but they are works well on their way with clear paths to completion.) Perhaps now we can take on obsessiveness and the resulting misprioritization.
Deliberation, yes: You do that about problems and decisions. Cogitation, yes: You do that about profundities. Obsession, no: You do that, by definition, with things you ought not to. And I know what it feels like.
If you’re going to obsess about anything, do it about giving yourself for the benefit of other people.
If, when I’m old, you were to ask me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you we had our 72-year-old next-door neighbor Janet Donald over for leftover Stilson rotini dinner, homemade quick bread, a thirteen-year-old shiraz Janet had donated to us a month prior for Carla’s birthday, and some after-dinner Dixit at the kids’ prompting, all while piano jazz played on Spotify and the thermostat was set to a balmy 67°F.
I told her I love having her over.
Did I say it because I love the feeling of moral pride it gives me to know I have my aged next-door neighbor over for dinner and counter her as a friend? In part, yes. But I also said it because I really do like her.
“Now you together are the Messiah’s body” (1 Corinthians 12:27, KNT). In other words, I extrapolate, we are how Jesus acts on this earth.
Matt Poehner has the following quotation on his Facebook profile:
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that…will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.
— Marcus Aurelius
I can get behind that.
If, in my old age, you asked me to tell you one thing about my life as it was today, I predict I’d tell you it was the day I metaphorically threw my hands up in the air about whether I have a principled reason for supporting Friends & Farmers Food Co-op: I don’t. I support the co-op because I enjoy hanging out with those kinds of people at the kinds of functions they hold.
I could go into my reasons for suspecting that “buy local” is a slogan with slippery ethical foundations (hint: for a start, it smacks of egogeocentrism), but I think I’ll leave it at this: I buy local for the pleasure of it. That’s all. It is a luxury. It makes my community a smilier, more human place.
Completism is not a fruit of the spirit.