Faith Venture

So goes a famous phrase. It is as true today as any time since humans were hunter/gatherers.

On the one hand, some people disappoint me with their responses. News “reporters” pander idle speculation in lieu of facts and call it reporting (a recent comment by the editor of Axios, formerly my favorite go-to news app, now I prefer Morning Brew). Politicians puff themselves up as great leaders while they flounder to juggle all the ramifications of different courses of actions.

Yet, we traveled once more to the Chicago area yesterday to close on the purchase of our new house and to take possession. Once again we met pleasant, professional, and helpful people wherever we went. The only strange thing was no concluding handshake or hug. Some writers think that we’ll never go back to touching. I beg to differ. It’s a human need. As soon as we get past worry, we’ll be back to human normal.

Speaking of leaders, the last of the “good 5” Roman emperors and fervent Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, developed mindfully a humble attitude. He searched out the best and brightest people to help him run his empire. He brought them to Rome, put them in charge, and let them do their thing. His reign experienced years of plagues and disease. He brought Galen, the foremost doctor of the time, to work things out.

American presidents such as George Washington (steeped in the Stoics) and Dwight Eisenhower acted in the same manner.

As to keeping your head—this is the most important thing we can each perform. Spreading calm concern and a helpful attitude rather than spreading worry and panic like the dust that always followed Charlie Brown character Pigpen.

We do that by a regular discipline of meditation, prayer, and returning to spiritual writers and the Bible for inspiration and the reminder that God is. (Thanks for that thought, Jon)

Dire predictions of the end of industries, end of the world, end of life as we know it are everywhere throughout my news scan these days.

Yet, here I am about to sign the papers to own a new house 270 miles from where I’ve lived for the past 40+ years. The movers assure me they will be there Monday to load up.

I received a press release about a company buying land to build two more buildings on its site. I figured the company was doing well, but plans to triple size—wow.

I study the “Internet of Things.” This technology forms an integral part of smart cities. There have been some interesting applications over the past few years principally traffic monitoring and flow control. Now, I’m receiving news of focusing smart cities ideas into both fighting this virus outbreak and controlling or preventing future ones. People around the world are pooling talents, knowledge, initiative to solve serious problems to benefit all humans.

I saw a news item from San Francisco about an organization trying to help those who help and at the same time helping those who might lose their jobs and businesses. For $1,000, they buy 50 meals from some of the best restaurants and take them to front-line health care workers. Maybe you, your church, your organization could spearhead something like that for your community.

I had to resign from a community center board due to my move. I returned some materials yesterday and saw how they were handing out box lunches to those in need of a meal. Serving still goes on.

Perhaps extended time at home allows for deeper reading of spiritual writers bringing you closer to living with God. Part of living with God is helping out those in need. Have a neighbor who needs help getting food? Deliver some coffee to someone trying to help? There must be something.

In my other blog, I’m a well-known writer/analyst about manufacturing—leadership, technology, strategies. That email box is filling with messages from PR people announcing this or that company’s response to the virus. CEOs and Marketing officers are more than willing to be quoted. Everyone wants to be a thought leader.

Reminds me of Prairie Home Companion and stories from Lake Wobegone where all the children are above average.

However, it is important to stop the spread of the virus. Like the flu and other such diseases, 99% of the general population will survive the sickness and a huge percentage of at-risk people who get the virus will not (although hopefully we can keep the number who do get it small).

Be careful of information you take in. Like I do for health and nutrition and fitness, I carefully vet my sources. Most likely similar to you I am amazed at the number of people pandering to fear and feeding false information.

I maintain my spiritual disciplines first. Then my health and nutrition disciplines (it is important to keep the immune system healthy). I know what I can only do what I can control and as to the rest that I can’t—well, I know I must focus on other things.

These are weird, even surreal, times. One place of normal gatherings after another closed by order of the government. Schools, churches, restaurants, bars. People panic-buying toilet paper, bottled water.

I saw one family at the grocery yesterday afternoon evidently stocking up for the “cocooning” (as we used to say) who had a grocery cart filled to overflowing with snack “foods”. I can see them in a week, 20 lbs. heavier each with clogged arteries and unable to walk up a flight of stairs…

We need to remember advice from the most ancient of sources—that we realize what we can control and do that. The rest is outside our power to affect. Be aware, but don’t worry about it. That is lost energy better applied elsewhere. So we do what we can and survive a day at a time. Most of us will, of course.

Remember the most common commandment in the Bible? “Fear not!” Take that thought into our being. And do something for someone today. Like maybe thanking a healthcare professional.

Covid-19 appears to be a respiratory illness, yet even here in the rural Midwest there is a massive purchasing of toilet paper. I guess when all around you are messages of fear and uncertainty, you grasp for something safe.

I was thinking that the skills that get you somewhere are seldom the skills that serve you well when you arrive.

If your speaking skill is stirring the emotions of your true believers, then when you arrive as a leader and panic of the led requires a reasoned, calming speech you are ill prepared.

Same thing works in business. The skills that got you to CEO or other leadership position are not the skills you need to survive at that level. Only those who continually learn and adapt survive. Nature teaches us that every day.

I never wrote as much as a paragraph in school until I was 16 and a senior. The teacher did not teach us how; he just said Write. I have written something every day for the past 22 years. I guess I had a lot of stuff building up for those 16 years that’s taking a long time to get out…

Back to the current situation.

• Wash your hand thoroughly and often
• Maintain a healthy immune system
• Get adequate sleep
• Eat good food, lots of berries and veggies, but not too much
• Get some exercise daily
• Yoga, mediation, classical music—whatever is calming
• Consider supplements such as Emergen-C to boost immune system
• Yes, I heard you mom, I’ll wash my hands

Yesterday afternoon the emails notifying cancellations of events began pouring in. My last chance at mentoring at a soccer referee academy in Ohio was cancelled. Games we were assigning referees were cancelled. State championship basketball games were cancelled. Think of that…teams worked hard all season to be able to play for the big prize, and poof, gone.

I hope the movers still show up on the 23rd. It’s only two of us…

Happy wife, happy life. —American myth

Well, it’s a common saying, anyway. In my case, there is a very happy wife.

She has desired a move to a different type of house for the last 12 years after she saw one that a friend bought. Back then the market was terrible.

Since then, instead of kids in Illinois and Florida, they are all in Illinois. And the market has turned to a seller’s market.

So, she said she’d call a friend of mine who is a realtor to see what the going price for our house would be. Turns out quite higher than I’d thought.

One day later the house was listed. Four days later, an offer. Two days later, a second offer. And we had no place to go. After a few moist eyes, I mentioned that if we were ever going to move close to the grandkids (at least the very few years they will still be around), now was the time.

Two weeks later, I get a call after teaching a soccer referee class. “Drive up here to the Chicago area and sign the papers.” By the end of this month, less than two months after that first glimmer of hope and a lot of work on my part, we’ll be Illinois residents. After coming home for a part-time job after university work in Louisiana, we stayed here for 49 years. Guess it was time.

There is no cool little coffee house selling direct trade coffee near by, but there is a coffee place with WiFi. As I tell people, that’s all I need for my “day job”. And flights will be direct from O’Hare rather than connections from Dayton.

I’ve given up all my soccer referee responsibilities except for assigning (couldn’t find a replacement, plus I’ve already done that from Germany, China, and Japan, so why not Illinois?). That also means there is an unemployed referee in the northwest suburbs. Any readers here looking for a Regional Emeritus and former college referee? 😉

And I have a very happy wife.

That we can’t fix it.

Dorothy Day, a Christian social activist of the early 20th Century when problems looked at least as grim as today, said, “The sense of futility is one of the greatest evils of the day.…People say, “What can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?” They cannot see that we can only lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment.”

That is the discipline. One step at a time. One day at a time. Actually, one hour at a time. Choosing in this minute just what I’ll do for one other person. Even Presidents of the United States soon discover that there are limits to even their power.

I recently talked with two guys in the locker room who run marathons. Each has qualified for Boston in their careers. I run to keep up with soccer players. I can’t fathom three hours of plodding along.

“What do you think about?” I asked. “You can’t think,” they replied. It is just a focus on putting the next foot in front. That’s the trick. One step at a time and then there you are at 26 miles.

The media has your emotions and fears amped up? Wash your hands frequently. Keep your immune system healthy with proper sleep, nutrition, and exercise. Just one step at a time. That’s what you can do.

Unless, of course, you happen to read this blog and you’re a microbiologist who knows how to design vaccines. Then, by all means, your step-at-a-time is to put the building blocks of a vaccine together. For the rest of us, though, we help immensely just by staying sane and taking proper precautions.

Same with political and religious/political viruses. They spread perniciously, too. Same thing…

Jesus used a metaphor of a vine and branches to describe living in the life force of God while bearing fruit in our lives.

Bearing healthy fruit in a grape vine requires judicious pruning to focus the life force coming in through the soil through the vine to the branches to the fruit.

A little later, Paul talked about circumcising the heart—a picture of cutting as a sacrifice and symbol of focusing the heart on God.

It’s always amazing to discover the weekend reading merging together to reveal a truth for spiritual formation.

When we focus our hearts on the source of life—God—then we live the “with-God” life as Richard Foster and Dallas Willard would describe it. We can channel our renewed energies into bearing fruit by doing love to our neighbor so—both those near and those far away.

Pruning is a never-ending process for the vine. Similarly for us. We have daily distractions—heck, minute-by-minute distractions—that interfere with the flow of the spirit. Prune away non-essential distractions and focus on what is good and meaningful. And then you have no need for laws and rules. Doing the right thing just comes naturally.

“My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” (Letter of James chapter 2)

James, brother of Jesus, writing to the new congregations of people striving to figure out what it means to follow Jesus, looks into the soul of those groups and finds a problem. Favoritism. Divisiveness. One group of people is “in” and another is “out”.

Even to this day, we have churches who hold that women are to be segregated out into “women’s roles” and not leadership. Even to this day, we have congregations that cling to racial homogeneity rather than inclusiveness. We have congregations that segregate out homosexual people holding them in a second-class status (attend in order to be “saved” but never leadership).

How many other ways to we differentiate and divide people? Is this what Jesus taught by word and example?

James says later that those who judge people so will themselves face harsh judgement.

I was shown a better way by God. It’s called accepting the common humanity of all people, recognizing and rejoicing in differences, and open to all to partake of the fruit of the spirit and find their unique service in the spirit.

Like Jesus said about Mary (Martha’s sister), choose the better way. Live in the kingdom of God.

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you

Rudyard Kipling

Journalists constantly look for the Big Story. Employers of journalists look for stories that raise emotions, which raise readership, which raises the value of advertising, which adds profits.

This is not a US-only phenomenon. Everywhere I observe it’s the same stirring of emotions.

The opening lines of Kipling’s poem If gives us a hint. By the way, the conclusion of all the “if’s” in the poem is “then you’ll be a man” (allowing for 19th Century perspectives).

Temperance is one of the classic Stoic virtues is also a virtue practiced by Jesus. He experienced the swirling emotions of power and insurrection, stared them down, and kept to the mission of ushering in the kingdom of God build upon love and justice.

So should we, as we stare down constant attempts to stir our emotions to no good for ourselves. Maintain our practice of kingdom principles—love God with all of our being and love our neighbor as Jesus loved.