Faith Venture

Wisdom is the perfect good of the human mind; philosophy is the love of wisdom, and the endeavor to attain it. The latter strives toward the goal which the former has already reached.

Seneca

The Christian Bible contains a significant amount of wisdom literature to complement history and prophecy. Check out the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Scriptures, for example. In the Christian part, check out especially James, but also Peter and some of Paul. Jesus’ teachings often come from Proverbs and other wisdom teaching.

Taking an aside—we are approaching the end of the year. A good way to start your new year is to read the Proverbs throughout January. 31 chapters, 31 days, a chapter a day. A solid foundation for the new year.

This concept from Seneca intrigues me. I would translate it from his first century experience and point-of-view and language like so: God is the perfect good of the universe; contemplation and service show the love of God; following Jesus is the endeavor to live in oneness with God.

This formulation leaves something to be desired. Yet, I think it captures my attempts to verbalize this concept of loving God and desiring to live in the Spirit.

In this final countdown to Christmas this year, let us live with anticipation of the coming of God to the world.

I have returned home to below freezing temperatures after four days in sunny and warm Florida. This is my second business trip since February 2020. Once again I am reminded of how many nice people there are in the world.

These people are the professionals—engineers, technicians, managers—whose role is maintenance and reliability of equipment. Think huge turbines and motors that provide power. Or equipment that manufacture the pharmaceuticals you take or the car you drive or the gasoline in your car. All week there were polite, helpful people.

We made connections. We discussed problems and solutions and got to know new people and renew old acquaintances.

It’s too bad that the news we feed our minds with from social media or TV lead us to believe the world is filled with loud-mouthed, violent, hateful people.

Then I thought, what if one of these people didn’t do their job correctly and your electrical power went out? My house is heated with natural gas. The house cools to a certain temperature and a device tells the furnace to fire up. But, with no electricity, the blower doesn’t work.

The furnace supplies a lot of heat, but it has nowhere to go.

Sounds like many Christians that I bet we know. They are all fired up, but to no good use.

Perhaps their churches could be like this conference where everyone is nice to others. They make connections and discuss problems and solutions helping each other out. The people are curious desiring to learn new methods and technologies and products. They learn how to lead teams. And we say good-bye agreeing to meet again at the next conference.

They spread the warmth to others.

Go spread a little warmth. And if you are a little chilly, I pray that someone enters your life for a bit offering to spread a little warmth your way.

Do you ever take time off? Get away from everything? In the Hebrew Scriptures (Christians call it the Old Testament), God introduced a concept of Shabbat. Take a day off a week. Take a year off out of every seven.

I am listening to a man called Jerry Colonna being interviewed on the Tim Ferriss podcast. He is talking about how he was feeling burned out and learned to take a 2-month sabbatical. They discussed how hard it can be to take that step away from everything to do something different.

It isn’t all sitting in mediation. He travels. Reads books he wouldn’t necessarily have time for. Contemplates where he is going in life.

He talked about clients who can’t even take one weekend day off. They think.

Some people cannot even take time during the “Christmas to New Years break.”

If you are not on a cycle that includes breaks, you should consider beginning a Shabbat cycle. Perhaps just a day to begin. Maybe you can figure out two weeks. Then two months.

Yesterday, one of the keynote speakers told us that we have the power to choose to be a leader. We have the power to choose what kind of leader we will be. We can choose to be a jerk. We can choose to be motivational.

We cannot always choose our circumstances. But we have the power to choose our response.

We don’t like the way some people celebrate Christmas or “the holidays.” We can choose to celebrate in our own way refusing to let other people determine our mood.

We came to Florida for a winter vacation. It was a chilly, rainy day. We can say, “We came here, but it rained.” We can choose to say, “We are on vacation, and it rained, so we…”

One of my favorite lines from the movies is spoken by the old Crusader in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. After the bad guy dies in agony after drinking from the wrong chalice, he says in a flat voice, “He chose poorly.”

Don’t choose poorly. Choose life.

I heard a message on hope yesterday. Right now I am hoping that a Lyft driver picks up my request for a ride to the airport. It’s amazing how a bit of uncertainty can affect your attitude. I have two alternatives if one doesn’t in the next 20 minutes. But still, I hope.

2,024 years ago, people in the greater Palestine area and perhaps the entire Mediterranean rim were hoping for something better. Acute spiritual hunger lodged in the hearts and minds of many people. But as always in times of change, there was no clear agreement about the form any change would take.

Jesus was born into that time of hope. But the pregnancy was unique. Word spreading that a new King was born caused fear and loathing in the heart of the current King. Jesus spent his infant and toddler years in Egypt as his parents hid out from the King.

Hardly the peace for which people hoped.

But it came. Patience plus hope wins.

Oh, and I never received confirmation that I had a Lyft driver. That company’s Website needs great improvement. I cancelled and got an Uber. I’m at the Terminal 1 Concourse C United Club en route to Florida. Although this week it will hit 60 degrees F in Illinois. Go figure.

Let me geek out for a moment. During the late 1990s and early 2000s I played with and wrote about a software application for PCs called Think and Do. This software was loaded on a PC which then controlled the actions of a machine.

The innovation was that you thought through all the actions the machine must do to produce its products using a simple flow chart interface and then the machine would perform the required actions. Think and Do.

An unfortunate (to my way of thinking) byproduct of “reformed” thinking in the Christian tradition was that everything begins and ends with faith. Luther famously was reading in the letter to the Romans and saw the verse, “By faith are you saved…” Evidently he stopped reading at this point.

That may be a bit unfair, but too many of his followers did. I have come across far too many examples of people who think that you only need to agree with a statement, with a proposition, with them, and then everything is alright. You are done.

Reading through Matthew 5-7, for example, I don’t hear Jesus telling us to sit on our butts. Nor when Luke records the actions we should take toward a neighbor in the story of the Good Samaritan.

Jesus didn’t come and preach, “I believe.” No, he healed people. He set people free from their sins so that they could enter God’s Kingdom.

Reflecting on my spiritual and intellectual and social development, I think I have always subscribed to the the invitation to a way of life that includes pursuing the depth of faith while also living out Jesus’ teachings regarding serving other people.

It’s both faith and do.

Common greeting during December in America. Instead of “Hi” or “Bye”, we might say “Merry Christmas.” In some cultures the phrase is Happy Christmas, which may mean about the same thing.

I was thinking of “merry” and “happy” and what does that mean. Maybe it means something like an often-heard parting “Have a good day.” Just a simple wish.

Paul, the Apostle, wrote about a way of life once to his friends in Galatia. He tried to describe how you could tell if you or someone you met was living in the spirit. He said that their life would exhibit, “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Could happiness, eudaimonia, also have fit?

I’m thinking about bringing the phrase we utter as a greeting into our self. That maybe we exhibit “having a merry Christmas” with a smile and an acknowledgement of the other person. That people can observe us and think, even if just briefly, “there is someone at peace and enjoying the season.”

So, I wish all of you a merry Christmas season. And if once or twice you exhibit the other meaning of merry, as in perhaps one wee nip of whiskey or whisky too much, well, so be it.

Beg our Lord to grant you perfect love for your neighbor, and leave the rest to Him. He will give you far more than you know how to desire…

Teresa of Ávila

Teresa is one of my favorite mystics. She has much to teach us.

Jesus taught us that we must love our neighbor. He didn’t qualify it. We are to just do it.

We may seek to escape the work by asking how will we know when to act or how to act.

Teresa answers. We can ask God for openness to his leading. And trust that he will lead us to someone who needs assistance and he will also give us the tools we need to show the love, be it words or money or presence.

We have sayings and proverbs, such as “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” or “that gift is really a white elephant”.

Seth Godin recently talked about gifts explaining the origin of the white elephant idea and how it has come to mean a gift that you don’t need or want. He suggests that if it is a gift, you can always decline it if it is something you can’t get rid of and is expensive to keep—like a white elephant.

Sometimes a gift is not a benefit.

Seneca wrote about 3,000 words (in English translation, of course, I don’t know how many Latin words) about balancing the ledger if someone gives you a benefit and later injures you. How do you figure out if you are indebted for the benefit or need retribution for the injury? He suggests ignoring the injury and acknowledging the benefit.

This may be Advent, but it is also the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. You may be contemplating the appropriate gift for family and friends. You may also be anticipating a nice gift from someone special.

Practice giving thoughtful experiences as gifts and graciously accepting what is given to you—unless, of course, you find a large stock truck parked in front of the house on Christmas.