Gary Mintchell

Author Archive

You Are Blessed

August 25, 2022

What a great way to begin a long session of teaching:

You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
Your blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the one most dear to you.
You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.
You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘carefull’, you find yourselves cared for.
You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.
You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s Kingdom.
Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.

No matter what season of life you are inhabiting right now–you are blessed.

So many of us can only see all the bad things around us. We open “social” media–other people are either parroting misinformation designed to make us feel bad or extolling how great their life is (making us think about how much we are missing). We turn on “news.” It is designed to capture our emotions to keep us tuned in to sell us stuff through advertising. This has been true for many years of the news media. We used to nickname a leading local TV station as “wrecks, rapes, and murders.”

But Jesus says we are blessed.

I think I will sit in contemplation for a bit today and soak in this blessedness. Perhaps tomorrow and the following day, also. Perhaps I can experience what being blessed feels like. Must be good.

Posted in Christianity, Faith, forgiveness | Leave a Comment »

Blessed When People Don’t Like You, or Worse

August 24, 2022

We are reaching the end of the Beatitudes. Sort of an outline for Jesus and his teaching. This one is a bit different. We must be careful how we approach this one, which is longer.

You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s Kingdom. Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.

Some people, at least in America I’m not sure about other places, seem to go out of their way to achieve this one. Or perhaps look for instances of this. But their view of persecution stops short of anything personally threatening. It’s more along the lines of “the popular people in town don’t like me.” Some actually use this as a source of pride.

I think of people who emulate the preacher in the stage play and movie Paint Your Wagon who thought it was his role to condemn people and took a perverse pride in not being liked.

I don’t think that Jesus told us to try to be disliked. That is merely being obnoxious. But in Jesus’s day, choosing him (God) was rejecting both the Roman power structure and the Jewish power structure. Either one of which could cause death in the extreme cases.

Continuing to live on the path of following Jesus–living in the moment with-God–will threaten some people who may attack you physically, emotionally, financially. You are blessed because you are still with God. It’s not a disgrace. It’s not a source of pride. It’s a blessing to live with-God no matter what.

Posted in Attitude, Christianity, Faith | Leave a Comment »

Blessed Are The Peacemakers

August 23, 2022

The seventh Beatitude in The Message translation:

You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.

And, God, can we use more of these today!

This blog has an international readership. I studied international politics at university writing a major paper on US-China relations (in 1968). I’ve imported and exported and dealt internationally for most of my career. I don’t think there exists a single place where I know people or read about in the entire Earth that cannot use someone who can show people how to cooperate.

I am working on a blog post/essay analyzing several announcements by technical trade organizations that have competed vehemently over the past 15 years or more. These announcements have at least one common theme–cooperation. They still compete. But, for the good of the customer, they are cooperating on standards and compliance. The organizations represent companies from Germany, US, France, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Italy, Japan, even China. And more.

Cooperation makes life better for us all.

That’s why I turn off all inputs to my mind that emphasize divisiveness. TV news. Social media. Most print/web news. I pick my sources carefully with the goal of knowing what’s going on in the world with as little hype as possible.

And I tune out all the people who seek to make faith in God political. The guy I follow, Jesus, shunned politics. His kingdom was God’s kingdom. It was about living with God. He tried to show both the Roman governors and the Jewish leaders a new way.

Every day in every way we can point to cooperation and reconciliation rather than strife and conflict. We could make this a movement.

Posted in Attitude, Disciplines, Justice | 1 Comment »

Bring Order To Your Inside World

August 22, 2022

I’m slowly thinking my way through the beginning of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. The bullet points to outline the context we cal the Beatitudes–written in The Message translation. This is the sixth of eight. We have learned about emptying ourselves so that we can have room for God. Then about focusing on God in order to fill ourselves with him.

But wait! Sometimes there is more. A next step.

You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

We have tried to empty ourselves and focus on God. Sometimes we may try to focus our mind, yet our heart is not with us.

Have you ever tried to meditate or pray or even read and our mind says it is time but our heart it troubled? Or, perhaps our heart wants to settle into meditation and our mind is scattered into a thousand thoughts?

How blessed we are when we sit in meditation or sit with someone else and our mind and our heart are together, focused on the moment. There is a calm that envelops us. We are completely present in the moment.

Posted in Disciplines | Leave a Comment »

Being Full of Care

August 19, 2022

Later I realized this 1969 encounter was my introduction to a Baby Boomer/Yuppie attitude that I’ve noticed ever since. He had a good job lined up after graduation. However, if he didn’t pass this second-year German class, he would not graduate. The professor suggested he contact me (why, I don’t know) for tutoring to get through the class. I mentioned once about feeling bad about the professor’s lot of moving from Vienna, Austria to Ada, Ohio. My pupil remarked, “I don’t have time to care.”

Jesus’s fifth of the eight Beatitudes, “You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘carefull’, you find yourselves cared for.”

Life is filled with these reciprocal situations.

Love when shared returns to the sender.

Gratitude when shared returns to the sender.

Even money at some point when shared appropriately returns benefits to the giver.

Jesus makes a point–we are blessed when we care.

Let us make that today’s mantra (saying that we repeat). We will then be presented with people or situations for which we should express care.

Posted in Compassion, Ethics, Gratitude, Habits | Leave a Comment »

Fill Me With God

August 18, 2022

According to the Apostle Matthew, Jesus noticed the crowds and his closer followers (probably one of the better understatements in the New Testament), and walked up a hillside, sat down (as was the custom), and taught.

He led with eight thoughts about being blessed. The first three we discussed in the last two posts concerned emptying yourself. Now, why should we empty ourselves? Yes, to be blessed, for sure. But Jesus continues:

You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.

An empty mind and soul can be the devil’s playground. But not if you intentionally choose what will fill them. That is why I always recommend turning off TV news. Be ever watchful of what fills your mind. With 2,000 years of Christian writers to help us, there is no excuse for not finding something to help us fill our minds with God. Work up a good appetite, Jesus says. Eat and drink from the goodness of God.

Here are a few items on the buffet table: the Desert Fathers, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, many more guides and mentors.

Read. Sit quietly and focus. Fill your mind and soul.

Posted in Disciplines | Leave a Comment »

Content Within Our Own Skin

August 17, 2022

Walking through the Beatitudes in The Message translation. Here is the third one, which is akin to the first two.

You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

The theme of the first two of these theme points of Jesus’s talk concerned emptying yourself so that there is room for God to enter.

This one talks of emptying yourself of all the delusions you have about yourself. Maybe you think that within you are the seeds of being a gazillionaire technology entrepreneur. Maybe, on the other hand, you think that you are worthless–someone who can’t do anything.

Neither is true.

I was lying on the ground staring up at a circle of faces. Below one face was the body of a boy my age wearing boxing gloves. We were maybe 12. I also had on boxing gloves. I don’t think he hit me that hard, but I was down. At that moment I saw the entire scene as if I were above it. I saw the stupidity and futility of living with anger and fighting. More than likely that was the moment I became a pacifist and sought peace in life. Perhaps I was on the way to being content with who I was.

Jesus said that when we empty out the illusions, when we, as Scottish poet Robert Burns said to “see ourselves as ithers see us,” then, at that moment, we own that which cannot be bought–God.

Posted in Attitude, Awareness | Leave a Comment »

When You Are Empty, Then You Can Be Filled

August 16, 2022

I’ve been reading the Christian Bible, the New Testament, in a different translation. I like to do that. The new choices of words open my mind enabling deeper insights into meaning. These sentences are the first two “Beatitudes” or the opening words of the way Matthew presented what we call The Sermon on the Mount.

You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
Your blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the one most dear to you.

Both of these speak to our condition. When we are too full of ourselves, too full of our competence, importance, possessions, people, then we have no room for God.

The presentation seems to prepare us for all the teaching that follows throughout Matthew chapters 5, 6, 7.

We should not have the hubris to dive in and just read those teachings as if we can easily pick up the meaning. We must begin, much like the 12-step program, by recognizing our limitations, by emptying our self-importance. Then we can appropriately approach what Jesus is trying to teach us.

Scholars, both professional and amateur, miss the next point which is the conclusion of of the sermon:

Whoever hears these words and does them…

Posted in Disciplines, Doing, Wisdom | Leave a Comment »

Waterfall in Iceland

August 15, 2022

I have lots of words running around through my head. But, we grabbed a holiday in Iceland last week. We contemplated ocean waves, geysers, and waterfalls. Here is a waterfall from southwestern Iceland. What can I add?

Posted in Awareness | Leave a Comment »

To Pray in Spirit and in Truth

August 12, 2022

To pray in spirit and in truth enables us to enter into contact with that infinite love, that inscrutable freedom.
Thomas Merton

The church I attended for years sponsored a youth camp in the hills of southern Ohio every summer. The theme was JOY—Jesus, Others, You.

All the writers of the New Testament agreed, but James was most clear, that first you need to be in communion with God, then you needed to exhibit that faith through how you treat others. Then, of course, you have to take care of you.

We need daily—some of us several times daily—to reconnect with that source of love, energy, direction we call God.

One of my Biblical mentors is Daniel. Not for the visions at the end of the book about him. No, what impressed me was that he took time from his busy days administering the greatest empires known at the time to reconnect with God—three times a day. Regularly. With intention.

He remained focused until the end of his days as far as we know.

It works also for us. To come with intention to pray in spirit and in truth. Set aside time and place and prepare to meet with God.

Posted in Meditation, Prayer | Leave a Comment »

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