Faith Venture

It seems there is no escaping Black Friday.

The emails began on Wednesday, trickled through yesterday (Thanksgiving), and hit in full force this morning.

It is the Friday after Thanksgiving and the official start of Christmas shopping (buying) season. Thanksgiving is a US holiday (on this date anyway). Yet, my messages have come from Europe as well as the US. Perhaps even Asia.

First up this morning was a message from the Polish developers of my “Getting Things Done” app offering four free months with a one-year renewal for Black Friday. I’ve had messages from France, Germany, and the UK. Maybe more.

I know that retail is a tough business. Unless you’re WalMart, you’re not making large amounts of profits. Business plans are often built around a spike in sales in December.

Consumer buying supports the country’s economy. It enables worldwide manufacturing and distribution jobs.

It is your patriotic duty in many countries to buy.

This all conflicts with my natural inclination toward the spiritual discipline of simplicity. Although, giving is also a spiritual gift. But, how much must we give for Christmas? And there is financial discipline. Don’t spend more than you have.

We began our Christmas season with the annual watching of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” Let the holiday music begin…

In America, today’s Thanksgiving.

If only for one day, pause and thank someone for something.

If for no other reason than it is beneficial for your own physical and mental health.

Thank you for following.

My mom was Midwestern traditionalist all the way through. Holidays were to be celebrated according to tradition on the appointed day.

To my wife, the second time she does something–say visit the Christkindlmarkt in downtown Chicago on “Black Friday”–becomes a tradition.

Many countries now celebrate some form of Thanksgiving. Tomorrow is the day in the US. Most of the people of the country will be traveling today.

We celebrate on a day called Thanksgiving thanks originally to a woman who wrote letters to the Presidents for 40 years pleading for a day observing Thanks. Abraham Lincoln looking for a symbol of unity for a divided nation (think it’s bad now, try living in the 1850s and 1860s) proclaimed a holiday for Thanksgiving.

But it soon became a commercial holiday as retailers jumped on a way to promote sales. By the late 1930s, it was so well known as a commercial holiday that Franklin Roosevelt tried to move it up a week to get people in the buying mood earlier to help spend us out of the Great Depression. But tradition said, leave it alone.

Tradition and Commerce. The foundation and structure of the holiday.

We don’t have to wait for one day a year to offer gratitude. It is a spiritual discipline. I have a recurring “to do” in my app that pops up every week that reminds me to slow down for a moment and reflect on everything for which I am, or should be, grateful.

It’s too bad I need the reminder.

…as you would have them do unto you.

Or refrain from doing to others that which you would not like them doing to you.

This is individual to individual; but it also can be group to group; country to country.

When you have made things theoretical, a universal law of sorts, when you live in generalizations…

Then you are free to not practice the Golden Rule or its inverse the Silver Rule.

When I make it a theory that a certain group of people are outside my preferred grouping, then I am free to treat them exactly the opposite of how I wish to be treated.

Take white people’s treatment of black people, for example. Or “straight” people’s treatment of “gay” people. Or men’s treatment of women.

Jesus, for example, took the Jewish tribal law (which by the way was most likely derived from a more ancient law) and applied it generally for individuals of any group toward individuals of any another group.

Living a with-God life is not intellectual or theory. It is lived minute-by-minute, person-to-person in the hard realities of daily life.

We are judged on how we treat each individual person by our actions or policies. Not by being holier than some other group. When we recognize the struggle other people go through and provide help–that is the Golden Rule. It lies not in pointing fingers at others.

Amongst all my studying, there are two disciplines that evoke the most confusion.

Interpretation of Christian theology.

Fitness and nutrition.

I just listened, for example, to two MDs interviewed. One had done the usual thing–discovered one molecule and extrapolated into a book and then a writing/speaking career.

Talking about good and bad foods, one MD said stay away from peanuts and peanut butter–it’ll kill you.

I hit pause. What?? Those are nutritionally dense foods you can snack on and not gain weight.

He went on, “I was at a conference where a doctor from Harvard said they feed lab rats peanut butter when they want them to develop atherosclerosis.”

Interest piqued, I researched. Found at least 25 papers on nutritional benefits of peanut butter.

It worries me that even a highly trained medical doctor who runs around the country espousing his “wisdom” would develop a teaching from an offhand comment.

Same with spiritual matters.

Someone lifts one comment or aside from a writing of a Gospel writer or from an apostle and develops a speaking/writing career spreading confusion and misinformation.

I still remember vividly where I was and what I was doing on another November 22 some 56 years ago.

And there was 9/11/2001 (can you believe 18 years ago now?).

Some people remember the day vividly when they met Jesus. Or their spouse-to-be.

I don’t remember the first time I began the contemplative life. But I have imprinted experiences along the way.

Sometimes scientists studying animal life talk of imprinting desired actions in the brains of young.

We all have certain ways of thinking and acting imprinted in our brains by our parents (do you walk the same way your mother walked?) or more likely by our peers.

Many of these we need to grow beyond and set aside in the quest for maturity.

I can look back and see the way I was at 17 and the way I am now and marvel at the changes mostly due to self-awareness that comes from spiritual disciplines of contemplation and meditation with a feedback loop from deep study of spiritual things.

I hope you are all growing past those youthful thoughts and actions into a changed and more mature direction.

The tricky thing is retaining the energy and enthusiasm of our youth and integrating with a more humble and wiser life.

Leaders take notice. When you fail to grow, you hold others back.

The work of leadership is far beyond thinking of things for other people to do.

It begins first with us.

Are we self-aware?

Are we emotionally and spiritually maturing?

Are we reading works that expand our minds and understanding?

Do we have a focus on providing ways for others to grow?

Do you care?

Do you support others?

What have you done (or will do) today to grow?

We sat through two-and-a-half hours of presentations preparing us (writers, thinkers, journalists) for the coming two days of technical meetings. Speakers included the CEO, various vice presidents, and, oh, yes, three teenaged inventors.

Do not throw up your hands and mutter about “kids these days.” That’s a disservice. I am at an event sponsored by the technology supplier Rockwell Automation. The company sent out a challenge through various social media to students inviting them to invent something that would solve a social problem. The top three were given an all-expense trip (with parents) to Chicago to attend Automation Fair.

These three gave the best presentations of the day–content, presentation skills, poise, command of the audience. Yes, they had mentors, but that’s the key. Instead of complaining about kids, give them a useful challenge and then mentor them.

One project solved a problem with sump pumps not keeping up with ground water resulting in flooded basements. Areas of the US had large amounts of rain this spring and early summer. Many of the audience probably wanted to sign up to buy one.

Bullying remains a serious problem in schools (and other places where kids congregate). One young inventor came up with an anti-bullying backpack. It included a battery pack, two wifi-enabled web cameras, and communication. In a bully situation, the owner could quick-call an authority (parent, administrator, whatever) and show live video of the bullies. It also records to the cloud.

Sanitation kills more people throughout the world than just about anything else–lack of sanitation, that is. In many places, people just defecate in the street or wherever. Simple toilets requiring little to no water to operate widely available would save millions of live. The third young inventor actually invented such a device.

Make a difference. Find a way to mentor someone. Make it one of your spiritual disciplines.

Dr. Henry Cloud is a psychologist, writer, and speaker. He is on my A list of people to read. He recently wrote:

I remember when I first became a committed Christian. For a long time, I really looked up to people who were religious. I admired their dedication to God and their Bible knowledge. They seemed so strong and “together” that I wanted to be like them. 

For about five years, I hung around these kinds of people. During that time I grew a lot and learned a lot of theology, but unknowingly, I also was getting farther and farther away from being a real person. I became more and more “religious,” less and less of what I now understand to be spiritual. I was losing touch with my vulnerability, my pain, my need for other people, my sinfulness and “bad parts,” and many other aspects of what it means to be a person. 

How often do we follow the rules and neglect the person. Check out what Jesus had to say to a group of guys who practiced that Mark 7), “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

It’s all about where your heart is.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov:

Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude…

Since I wrote about Jesus’ command about loving one another, every day a thought from someone pops up in my inbox or reading about love.

Have you ever read The Brothers Karamazov? It is great fiction. The story of the Grand Inquisitor meeting Jesus, who had returned to medieval Spain is worth the price of the book.

Yes, we have the love that the Romantic poets sang about. The love of Valentines’s Day Hallmark cards.

But there is the love in action for those we see every day and perhaps grow to take for granted.

The love for those who look, and speak, and think differently from us.

The love for those suffering from mental illnesses who are difficult to relate to.

The love for the random stranger whose life intersects with ours briefly.

It is labor and fortitude.