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Who Is Our Neighbor?

February 10, 2025

It seemed so simple. The local politicians/theologians asked Jesus for the most important commandment. They knew the answer. Jesus supplied it—you shall love the Lord your God.

But he was not finished. There was a second commandment equal to the first. They were companions. You couldn’t really do one without the other.

You shall love your neighbor.

Maybe there is an out, here, the politicians thought. So they asked a question assuming they knew the answer. Who is our neighbor?

They thought, we can draw a circle. There would be people like us inside the circle, and people like them outside the circle.

Who is our neighbor?

Jesus told a story. It is famous today even among people who have no thought of actually following Jesus. Even today knowing the end of the story, there are people who think they know the answer.

The story goes that someone was desperately in need of a good neighbor. Jesus picked his characters with great intention. Two people that his questioners thought would be in the circle were not so neighborly in the story.

Which character in the story was a neighbor? Jesus picked a person from the most despised social group he could find—a Samaritan.

Jesus blasted all the circles away. There are no circles around groups inside our neighborhood and outside our neighborhood. Even the despised are our neighbors.

Let us consider—who is the despised outcast of today that Jesus would pick as the hero of his story?

Ironically, followers of Jesus were the despised outcasts in the Roman world for centuries. The movement grew because those despised followers of Jesus acted like the Samaritan—binding the wounds caused by upheavals such as the Antonine Plague of 165-66. People said, “I want what they have.”

The question for us today, right this minute, where do we fit in the story? Are we the religious people who were not neighbors? Do we identify with the Samaritan who was?

Answering this honestly can change your life—for the better.

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Open To Change

January 29, 2025

I am writing this at the end of January.

Do many people set New Year’s Resolutions anymore?

If they do, most have drifted away from them by now settling into life the way they’ve always lived it.

Twenty years ago, the gym was packed in January. By the end of the month the traffic had returned to normal. We saw the usual people working out. I noticed that gradually over time the January rush was not so large.

Back to you (and me). How are your January resolutions doing?

Are you back to your same old habits? Eating too much. Exercising too little? Reading too little helpful books?

Durning my morning reading both Arnold Schwarzenegger in his fitness newsletter and Ryan Holliday in his Stoic newsletter approached the question:

If it isn’t working for you, why are you still doing it?

Change is hard. Being open to new ways of living and thinking is hard.

Change your routines. Put a little less food on the plate. Walk a few more steps. Sit in silence in mediation a little longer (or begin the practice)

Change is not easy. Change is necessary.

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It Is In The Body

January 22, 2025

I am working on a study guide to lead people into the practice of Spiritual Disciplines. I constructed a parallel list of practices from several writers. I wondered what was similar. What was different.

I stared at the list while sitting in the lounge of the ship taking us from Australia to New Zealand. A piano/violin duet performed quietly in the background. Comfortable seating. Art displayed. Small groups of people talking. And I pondered.

The thought came to me clearly. They all began with a list of ancient practices. They dived right in with prayer, study, communal worship, fasting. These indeed are individual practices.

They all assumed that the seeker has already made the decision. That the seeker knew how to develop some habits and unlearn others.

To write to a beginner, intellectual knowledge goes nowhere.

Let us look at nutrition.

Body weight is directly proportional to calories ingested. If you eat more calories than you burn, your weight will go up. If you resistance train, then the added weight might be muscle. Otherwise it will be white adipose tissue—fat.

Before anything, we must look in a mirror and realize we have too much weight. Perhaps we realize the health ramifications of too much weight—diabetes, high blood pressure, joint pain, loss of mobility.

Then we decide that something must be done. We change our attitude toward food. We realize we must eat fewer calories, but we also must supply proper nutrients to the body. We also still need to enjoy eating. No diet that we cannot sustain over time will work.

We change what we eat, how we eat. We realize we can eat good food and eat well, yet cut portion size, late night snacking, pitching things from our pantries such as potato chips (and the like) and pastries.

I’ve dropped 20 pounds over a couple of years that way. With dedication to resistance training adding muscle (which weighs more than fat).

Let’s talk about spiritual life. Somewhere we’ve looked into the mirror of life and realized that we are not walking with God. We would like to experience living with-God. We would like to experience at least some of those fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We know people like that. We’d like to be one of them.

We decide to change. Maybe one thing at a time. Maybe setting aside five minutes every morning to read from the Bible or from a devotional. Maybe we learn to pray with just our breath to begin with in those five minutes.

Then we learn about how to study, how to meditate, how to pray. We find a group where we can worship and pray together—like finding a gym for fitness, it’s a gym for spiritual fitness.

Habits start one little trigger at a time. I see my cup of coffee and my chair. I take the freshly brewed coffee to my chair to savor both for a few minutes of intentional reading or prayer daily. It becomes a habit. We expand. We roll out of bed 30 minutes earlier so that we can spend a little more time in the chair. One day we look in the mirror and marvel at the change.

The pursuit of spiritual discipline begins with the small step of decision and intention. Maybe it starts with nutrition and fitness so that when we roll out of bed heading to the coffee maker and chair we feel fit and alive. It’s hard to concentrate when the body screams at you.

Maybe this will become the introduction to my little study guide—or a longer book. Who knows?

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Beginner’s Mind

January 21, 2025

Finding good sources then returning to read them often allows you to go deeply into the material. The Bible. Shakespeare. Seneca. Thomas Merton. The Desert Fathers.

These, I return to.

I confess to being off my decades-long habit of reading the Book of Proverbs every January as a way to set a foundation for the year. The excuse was spending the first ten days of the month on a cruise to Australia and New Zealand without my usual Bible.

Poor excuse, I know.

Trying to pack light, I did bring along Anam Cara by John O’Donohue and Contemplative Prayer by Thomas Merton. I’m still slowly going through Contemplative Prayer.

Merton’s primary intended audience focuses on monks. He was a Trappist monk.

He discusses those who enter the contemplative life thinking they already know everything figuring there are spiritual shortcuts to enlightenment. He says, “The only trouble is that in the spiritual life there are no tricks and no short cuts.”

Continuing, he observes, “One cannot begin to face the real difficulties of the life of prayer and meditation unless one is first perfectly content to be a beginner and really experience himself as one who knows little or nothing, and has a desperate need to learn the bare rudiments.”

Cultivating beginner’s mind is also fundamental to Buddhist meditation practice.

But also, cultivating a beginner’s mind is foundational for developing curiosity.

As an example of my eclectic reading, this week’s MIT Sloan Management Review newsletter pointing to top articles linked to one on Essential Leadership Skills for this year. Not to hold you in suspense, they are fairness (how to treat people), curiosity (open to learning), and sense of humor (not as comedian, but as ability to laugh at yourself).

I can’t think of a better way to set a course for the year than the beginner’s mind. Being open to new experiences. Open to new ideas and information even if it causes you to rethink current positions. Open to God’s leading (rather than prayer as telling God what he ought to be doing).

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Christian Virtues

January 20, 2025

Ryan Holliday has built a career writing about the Stoics and their set of virtues. I’ve read often of the set of Buddhist virtues. This is not a term common in my Christian reading. So, I asked claude.ai (one of the large language model AI services) to provide a list of Christian virtues.

1. Love and Compassion

2. Dignity of Human Life

3. Service and Humility

4. Forgiveness and Reconciliation

5. Hope and Resilience

6. Community and Mutual Support

7. Ethical Framework

8. Stewardship and Responsibility

9. Personal Transformation

10. Sacrificial Love

These all nestle nicely within my outline of spiritual disciplines or spiritual practices. These should be considered as a guide to living a life with-God. More of a guide or attitude than as a checklist.

Sit and Think

January 1, 2025

How have you used your precious time and attention so far today? This week? What will you do tonight?

Have you ever been in the shower and forgotten whether you have shampooed your hair yet because you’ve been lost in thought?

I remember I think it was second grade. So I was maybe six. We were sent outside for an extra recess. There were men cutting down a tree and then cutting it into pieces. I was totally focused on what they were doing and how they did it. I have no idea how long it was before I realized that there were no other kids around. Strangely, I just went back to the classroom and found my seat. I don’t recall any comments.

There is a story, this could have been me but it wasn’t, of a little boy in elementary school. He was staring out the window totally lost in thought. As each classmate and then the teacher noticed the room grew noticeably quiet. This brought the little boy back to present reality.

“What were you doing?” asked the teacher. “Thinking,” said the little boy. To which the teacher responded perhaps a little too quickly, “Don’t you know that you’re not supposed to think in school?”

Is this not an important part of the well lived life? To sit and think. Ancient people had time in the evenings and perhaps mornings to sit and think. Modern life of the past two hundred or three hundred years has robbed us of that time.

Remember, even Jesus went off to be alone to sit and think and rest in God. That is a good example for us.

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Prayer Mantra

November 12, 2024

The little book The Way of the Pilgrim tells the story of a Russian peasant in the 19^th century who takes to heart Paul’s advice to pray without ceasing. He adopts the “Jesus Prayer” praying it constantly during his wanderings around Russia.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me” has formed the spiritual foundation for probably millions of spiritual seekers.

I have used it as part of my daily meditations for at least 30 years.

Musician Jon Batiste recently appeared on Tim Ferriss’s podcast. He mentioned his prayer mantra. I like this one, too. I’ve begun using it as a way to do something different in order to not be in a rut.

“Be still and know that I am God.”

It reminds me first to be still. That is so hard for us.

Next is know. Not “I think” or some other weak verb. I know.

Finally, “I am God.” The object of my knowing.

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Principles

November 11, 2024

My feeble attention requires frequent reminders of my core principles.

Peace and Justice.

Peace is an action word. It’s not the Eagles’ “Peaceful Easy Feeling.” Rather practice peace through reaching out with love toward those who are hurting (which is everyone).

Justice without mercy is simply revenge dressed up. Rather practice justice through discovering others’ needs and helping.

Yes, there is a political component. In practice, it’s an attitude of individuals acting in community.

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Life Goes On

November 7, 2024

The election is finally over in America. Sometimes I like the parliamentary system where political campaigns consume seemingly endless time, money, and attention.

Maybe, just like in most of the rest of the world, your candidate one and you feel satisfied. Or maybe your candidate lost and you feel discouraged and worried. (Just as in all of my election history, some of mine lost and some won.)

Remember what Jesus said about this. Oh, wait, Jesus said nothing about politics. Jesus told us that we live best when we live in another kingdom—God’s kingdom.

Regardless of outcome, today is another day when life goes on. We must continue to follow Jesus first, loving God and loving others.

That never changes. That always satisfies.

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Wesley Warning about Spiritual Practices

October 22, 2024

I’ve used meditation for most of my life for both spiritual and physical benefits. I’ve had God experiences. The practice has been calming when I needed it. It’s even impacted my overall personality.

Meditation, called mindfulness, has become all the rage over the past several years as therapists have discovered its benefits for their clients.

Meditation is also one of the spiritual disciplines. People who intentionally pursue practices such as prayer, study, fasting, worship and the like can find a deeper God relationship.

There is a trap into which one is easily snagged—pride.

John Wesley discusses spiritual practices that he calls means of grace. He warns, “After you have used any of these, take care how you value yourself thereon: How you congratulate yourself as having done some great thing. This is turning all into poison.”

The tradition I grew up in discouraged broadcasting the practice. Pride is a horrible thing.

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