Faith Venture

Psalmists love to use the metaphor of dwelling in God’s house.

I wonder what they meant.

Preachers, priests, church leaders, they all seem to interpret that as being in (their) church buildings.

At the time the psalms were written, there were no church buildings.

I am pondering this in a spiritual sense. Dwelling with God. Both Old and New Testaments have phrases about living in God and God living in us.

What if they were talking about living each moment as if we were with God? Like an intimate relationship? Like when I have options there is something or someone inside me that guides me toward the proper decision or action?

I was jogging along Tawawa Creek yesterday. The creek held a mere trickle of water within its 20 feet of width. Only a few days ago, the creek bed was filled with a few feet of rapidly flowing water bubbling over the rocks and downed trees.

How like our emotional and spiritual lives.

Sometimes we are filled with passion–maybe good or maybe anger. This creek is fed by rains. The rains come and then sometimes don’t return for days or even weeks.

Sometimes our emotions are aroused with either anger or love and we are full to overflowing. And those around us are exposed to our abundance.

But then the source runs dry. And we retreat.

Some streams are fed by springs whose source is deep in the earth. These streams flow with a more constant volume.

When we feed our spiritual life through the disciplines of meditation, prayer, and study, we are tapping into the deep spiritual springs of God. We can maintain a consistent flow of the spirit. We are not dashed about on the rocks, but rather navigate with assurance through the vicissitudes life.

When we speak (or write), we have a responsibility to not cause harm to others. We have a responsibility to not spread lies, slander, unfounded rumors, hate.

The basic problem of the Internet, broadened into social media, is the ability to easily spread these things because something arouses our base emotions, and “click”, there goes another post.

I often advise that we carefully cultivate what we bring into our awareness.

Often when we click on things, we are spreading someone’s agenda. Maybe even someone that we don’t wish to promote.

On the other hand, many sources out there in the wild Internet try to sucker us into reading and clicking. Maybe their agenda is collecting information about us and even our email address. Why? So we can be sold to.

I did a part of my career in business-to-business magazines. Over the past 20 years, the entire marketing proposition has moved from advertising (for awareness) to lead generation. Lead gen is all about harvesting email addresses (and sometimes addresses and phone numbers) so that marketers can send you a flood of emails. And other people can sell your email address to still other marketers.

This blog is not a commercial blog. My business blog is commercial. I have three advertisers at this time. I appreciate every one of them. They pay my bills. I don’t collect any information from visitors to my site or email addresses from anyone who clicks on an ad. The advertisers are happy that a few hundred people each month do click on the ad in order to get more information. (I have a niche technology site, not a major news or consumer tech site.) Their Website is a chance to sell something to someone who needs their product.

But beware the “click bait” even found on reputable sites. “10 Ways To…”, or “8 Things That Will Reduce Body Fat…”, or “Guess what the Kardashians did this time…”.

It is so easy to get enticed into other people’s agendas. Develop the spiritual disciplines of awareness of what goes into our minds and what comes out of them.

Do you know Jeff Bezos? He started a company to sell books online in the late 90s. Now he sells just about anything online. I think my first book purchase from Amazon.com was 1997. My last book purchase was…yesterday. I also buy electronics, TV shows, grocery products.

Jason Fried, co-founder and CEO of a company called Basecamp, wrote in his blog Signal v noise about a time Bezos visited his company. In a Q&A session, he said,

people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds. He doesn’t think consistency of thought is a particularly positive trait. It’s perfectly healthy — encouraged, even — to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today.

He’s observed that the smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a well formed point of view, but it means you should consider your point of view as temporary.

How would I describe many Christians either I know or I read about? Pretty much the opposite. They know everything and are not afraid to let you know that they know…

How often I have been in a group discussion and someone says something about what we are studying, and it changes my whole view of the passage! How often we have read a passage of the Bible in a group and at least one person exclaims, “I don’t remember ever reading that before!”

I have basic principles that will not likely ever change. But my views around those principles–what is justice, what is peace, what did Jesus really mean–these change perhaps with the times, perhaps with growing wisdom, definitely with greater awareness of self and others.

Labor Day

Once upon a time, people made useful things in the shop under their apartment or in the shed out back.

The product of their labor was very much a piece of themselves. A little bit of their soul went into their creation.

Then some men had a brilliant idea. Since the demand for many things was increasing and it took too long for craftsmen to make the products, new technologies allowed machines to be set up along a line powered by water, then steam, then electricity. We can bring people into one place to make many products cheaply and sell them at a profit.

Thus, the birth of the Industrial Age in the mid-1800s.

As the price of men grew, capitalists turned to women for less expensive wages. And then they brought children into the factories.

People worked 7 10-hour days per week. Sometimes never seeing the sun. Conditions were hazardous.

Mid-to-late-19th century philosophers identified this as “alienation”, as in people were alienated from the fruits of their labor. One of my fields of study in graduate school—Marx’s theory of alienation.

Labor was divided from capital (the ownership of the factories) and each grew ever more distrustful of the other. Laboring people began striking (withholding their labor) in order to force improvements in wages and working conditions. Some strikes were bitter and bloody. The Pullman strike in Chicago led to the establishment of Labor Day.

The machinery developed in the last 30 years have served to remove humans from unsafe areas and alleviate back-breaking work. We sometimes curse automation and robots for taking jobs away from people. In reality, these have made jobs in factories cleaner, safer, and more intellectually challenging. All good things.

Loss of jobs can usually be traced to the root cause of either bad management decisions or the rise of increased competition.

I struggle to understand how management and politics combine to squeeze the wages of laboring people. These are people who build the economy and the things and buildings we enjoy. The growing gap of wages between the lowest and highest is morally indefensible.

On the other hand today Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson wrote on his blog about the technology companies that have been good about giving employees stock in the company. Something I was promised a couple of times but it never came through.

Today is Labor Day in the US. Most people celebrate a day off for one last outing before all the fall activities kick off in earnest.

Taking a few moments to pause and reflect on all those who build our good things is worth the time.

Thoughts on listening to Itzak Perlman play Mozart.

At the conclusion of a chamber concert by a famous concert pianist, an admiring woman rushed forward to greet her. “I’d give anything to play like that,” she gushed.

The pianist replied, “No, you wouldn’t.”

The woman was taken aback by the apparently rude comment. The pianist continued, “You could, maybe, but you would have to take lessons, study, practice playing scales for hours every day, prepare performances. There is much work and discipline behind the ability to play.”

It’s the same in spiritual life. You’re not going to reach John Climacus’s last four steps without going through the previous 26. You can’t skip the practice involved between wanting to and achieving.

Peter in his second sermon recorded in Acts told the people to develop four spiritual disciplines at the beginning of their spiritual journey–study the teaching of the apostles, meet together in small groups, pray, and participate in communion (the Eucharist).

My guitar sits in a corner of my office. Sometimes I pick it up and practice. Often I’m too busy. Oops, not too busy. Rather, deciding to do something else rather than practice daily. I’m only one short step ahead of the woman. I would love to play like Perlman, but I know I never will. I don’t devote myself to the discipline.

On the other hand, I do devote myself to other disciplines. How about you? If you are not, why not? Why not discipline yourself to become spiritually wise?

Picture a geeky, skinny, freshman engineering student. Freshman Comp class. Climax of the quarter was to write a “research” paper. At least x number of references. I forget how long, but probably as long as the magazine articles I wrote every month for years.

I had been doing some oddball reading on a topic in physical chemistry (I never read what you were supposed to be reading). Teacher said, oh, no, you must write on one of the things we read during class.

Rats.

So, I chose to write on Henrik Ibsen’s concept of truth gleaned from Peer Gynt.

That was a long time ago. I still remember. And I remember the embarrassment of my five-minute oral presentation to the class–my first ever speech.

I lived through it all. And I liked philosophy as much as science even then.

Truth?

According to Ibsen, it was a creative response to life.

Think on it. Life presents a continuous series of challenges. Maybe not as dramatic as Peer Gynt and the Mountain King. But today I rise, prepare for the day, and who knows what I might face?

Later, Viktor Frankl talked about how we can choose our response to what life throws at us.

We determine the rest of our life by the choices we make today.

Do we face every opportunity with the choice that springs from love of God and neighbor? Or do we respond with fear, anger, hate, or pride?

Don’t be like Indiana Jones’ nemesis in The Last Crusade, when the Crusader said of him as he chose a chalice, “He chose poorly.”

“For the Lord lives in patience, while the devil lives in an angry temper.”

I’m reading in another very early Christian text, The Shepherd of Hermas. This teaching talks about how one substance can corrupt another. And how unfortunate it is for a person to have patience but also allow anger to also live within.

How do we apply this?

I’m working on a project. It involves dealing with about 200 people on one side and many teams and schools on the other. It’s my annual job of assigning referees to soccer games.

There are as many variables as there are personalities.

This year I had 65 openings one week into the season. Thanks to storms rolling through at inopportune times, people deciding not to certify at the last minute, injuries, and more, two weeks into the season I now have 75 openings.

Someone calls and can’t make it to a game. I have two choices. I could become angry. Or, I could suck it up and add it to the list of project tasks.

Another application. I look at the project. It appears insurmountable. How do I tackle it? One game at a time.

How do I accomplish any project? How can you accomplish any project?

Remember, the Lord lives in patience. One step at a time. Then you look up, and you’re there.

Two of my favorite mentors from history are St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila. They were contemplatives–and reformers. Contemporaries in the chaotic times of the 16th century.

The life of a reformer is always difficult. There is so much underlying resistance to change. Even if the flow of tradition is corrupt or based upon fallacies.

I often contemplate the lives of the early Christians.

They gathered together to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Without that central fact, they had no religion, no hope.

But they were well known, in the times when it wouldn’t cost them their lives to be well known, as people who lived differently from the way society around them was arranged.

There was just something different, better, in the way they treated each other and their neighbors.

We, on the contrary, get so wrapped up in gathering with our kind and giving out names to others not our kind. Homosexuality just hit the headlines again. A significant group of people who call themselves Christians call these people sinners and outcasts.

Putting aside other arguments, let’s just pause a moment. To whom did Jesus minister? Whom did he love? Whom did he dine and party with?

Read the gospels and the answer is clear. Sinners and outcasts.

The irony would be amusing were it not so hurtful. For we are taught that everyone, even us within the organizations, are sinners. To try to classify two types of people sinners and us (implied not sinners) is simply wrong. We’re all caught in a trap. But we can get out. (Sorry Elvis.)

The spiritual discipline of worship (implied that you’d be gathering with your friends) must inevitably lead to the spiritual discipline of service–loving sinners and outcasts. Which is why I love mentors like John and Teresa.