Faith Venture

I had to make a new batch of steel cut oats this morning. I use the InstantPot. It’s easy. Get the cooker out, measure 3 cups of water, 1 cup of oats, and a pinch of salt. Put in cooker and give it a stir. Set the timer for 3 minutes. I usually get out the computer and read and write and remember to open the cooker after it has simmered in the pot for 25-35 minutes—whenever I remember I have to fix the oats. Sometimes I double the recipe leaving the time setting the same.

The last ones I purchased were “authentic” Irish oats. This bag is from a different company. How could I not buy them? Listen to this blurb from the bag: These aren’t ordinary oats. Our Gluten Free Organic Steel cut Oats are milled from the highest quality farm-fresh oats in the world. Each batch is handled with care in our dedicated gluten free facility and tested in our state-of-the-art laboratory to ensure our strict gluten free quality standards are met. Make the world’s best oatmeal at home…

[I think in Europe what we call oatmeal is called porridge. Whatever the name, an excellent breakfast.]

Disclaimer—in my life I have written such [stuff] in a variety of marketing jobs.

Then I thought about many Christians—especially many who claim to be “spreading the gospel”. Do they seem like they are taking the highest quality farm-fresh oats and handling with care?

More like they are sour with those artificial smiles pointing out with seeming glee the failures and shortcomings of other people. That doesn’t sound like “handling with care.”

And supposedly they are leading people to live a life in the spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I think I could write a better marketing message.

The Sioux Native American tribe has a proverb, “Do not point the way, but lead the way.”

That is actually the best, no-BS marketing message.

The first generation of Christians had it. Others looked and said, “I want what she’s having.”

The body requires adequate sleep. As does the mind. And soul. The body does some work during sleep removing wastes from cells and performing minor repairs. The brain gets a bath of chemicals to rejuvenate it.

The physical body is composed of cells. These cells are constantly dividing and shedding. During the course of 7 to 10 years every cell has been replaced.

The apostle Paul wrote of applying a similar idea to our minds. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” he wrote to the Roman Christ-followers. “Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

We are so easily manipulated into patterns of this world. When we lived in tribes and villages, the pressures of conforming were intense. Now we have the universal power of social media that serves to reinforce our prejudices and conform us to a world often filled with hate toward others not like us.

Daily renewing involves setting aside a quiet time—best is two, one at the beginning of the day and one at the end. Read something, even if only a little. Reflect. Pause and meditate. Write something—journal or thoughts or 20 things I can do today to contribute for good.

Nourish the body with proper nutrition, exercise, and rest. Likewise, nourish the mind with proper information, thought, and meditation (rest).

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled. — Plutarch

Education does not consist alone of filling a mind with facts. That path leads nowhere.

You can read your scriptures as much as you want, study words and discuss nuances of translating from original languages to modern. You can memorize dates and places.

You will not meet God.

Let alone walk the path with-God in the spirit.

Some have described the feeling like a fire within. Not the fire of anger and wrath. The fire of spreading warmth and passion. A passion for God and for justice, mercy, and grace.

Reading and study can help nurture the fire. But the spark that ignites the kindling which ignites life and creativity and imagination—that spark springs from stillness.

Only when we are still and empty our mind of its useless chatter and prejudices is it ready to be filled with the fire of the spirit.

In the beginning, God spoke and the universe was created. In our stillness, God speaks and we only then can hear. And start the fire.

I am listening to a man tell his story. Today he is accomplished in his profession, is married to a beautiful wife (I don’t know what her physical appearance is, but the beauty of her being shines through his words), lives a life in the spirit (that also shines through his words).

This man’s story arc is similar to many successful people. They don’t plan out every detail at 10 years old and then follow the master plan to success. He went to university to study one field, took one class to fulfill a requirement, that class led to a career and a life.

The part that I am meditating on this morning returns to that spirit-filled life.

His dad was converted to an evangelical / fundamentalist version of his religion when he was a small lad. That religion contributed to the break up of the marriage. The man grew up in that faith.

He doesn’t describe the process exactly, but he gradually left that way of life behind in pursuit of a richer, fuller life. Actually the life Paul describes with the fruit of the spirit phrase, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

What I ponder often is why we who have the words do not have the life we talk about?

How much are we like this song performed by The Temptations?

Smiling faces sometimes
Pretend to be your friend
Smiling faces show no traces
Of the evil that lurks within (can you dig it?)
Smiling faces, smiling faces, sometimes
They don’t tell the truth
Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies and I got proof
Oh, oh, yeah

The man is Hugh Jackman. The podcast interview is with Tim Ferriss.

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It’s July 1. We’re half-way through the year.

When I sat down over the Christmas/New Years holidays and envisioned what I’d be and who I’d be this year I never saw:

• We would have sold our house in Ohio
• Bought a house in Illinois
• That I’d be sitting on my patio this morning staring at a totally different landscape
• That I would have seen almost no one other than my wife for two months of shelter-in-place (we’re still speaking)
• That the economy would be largely shut down
• That people were getting sick from a highly contagious virus while others ignored the peril

And yet, I kept reading, writing, and thinking. I picked up a research and analysis contract despite everything going on.

I know that a few of my evangelical friends will hate the reference, but Darwin after his studies of the lives of various species of animals noted that only the species that are adaptable to their changing surroundings survive.

We have to know what is our unshakable core and where we need to adapt to changing realities. As ancient mystics taught, “Wherever I go, there I am.”

I am still “here”, but I have gone elsewhere. How about you? How have you adapted to changing surroundings? And, how will you adapt when the virus passes and we have new surroundings? It’s an important question.

I lay in meditation this morning with a problem before. Sort of like the Zen monks who ponder insolvable propositions in order to free the mind.

Why is it, I asked, that some people search their scriptures and pull out a saying, turned into a rule, for other people to live? Maybe themselves, too.

And yet, they ignore other sayings from their scriptures that are, shall we say, inconvenient for them to follow or judge others with?

And I was answered. Many ways.

I now understood why the apostle Paul wrote that if you choose to live by rules, then you must live by all of them. No exceptions. Living life by rules means you must not break even one. There is no going back.

He was the supreme rule-follower. He discovered, and now I understand deeply, that living by rules and forcing others to live by your rules is a dead end on the road to life.

Better is to worry about yourself. Have you chosen a path of life that leads to true life? That is the entire message in the letter to the Galatians. But you find that teaching throughout the New Testament.

When you throw off the chains that hold you to rules, then you just live in God’s spirit. And then we find a life that rules will never give—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Why live a life of judgement and bitterness when you can have that?

He who has great power should use it lightly.—Proverb of the Seneca Native American tribe.

In the Hebrew scripture in the Psalms, we read, “[God] adorns the humble with victory.”

Or in the Hebrew Proverbs, we read, “but to the humble he shows favor” and “but wisdom is with the humble.”

The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius possessed absolute power yet he exercised it with restraint and humility.

How hard it is for most of us to practice the spiritual discipline of humility. Our pursuit of fame or to be noticed in media or social media captures our soul.

Do accomplish some great service and point to others for the notice seems not a natural urge.

When we have power—whether as parent or executive or politician—can we show restraint and humility?

If we can practice this, then wisdom is with us.

So put me on a highway
And show me a sign
And take it to the limit one more time—The Eagles

There is a phrase from American football used in business many years ago, “Take the ball and run with it.”

A colleague and I at a company long ago used to talk about the people who “took the ball and ran with it—and ran through the tunnel and spiked it on the highway on the way home.”

Humans seem to have a problem with limits and balance. Adolescence is a time of testing limits. But there must be limits, or maturity and freedom are lost. When my daughter was that age, I would tell her, “Your job is to push the limits; my job is to rein you in.” It seemed to work.

Some people are all about themselves. Freedom is what I want to do, when I want to do it, with whom I want to do it with, and so forth. No thought about others.

There exist other people who lose their core in serving someone or some idea or some thing. They fail to think of their own well being while serving the other.

Wise people have know for millennia that balance is the key. I am a disciple of Jesus (but you could be following some other ancient tradition with similar advice on this point). Reading Jesus’s teaching carefully, we find that he often was concerned with the state of the individual person’s heart. Are you strong and focused?

But he also was concerned that you care for (love) your neighbor. And who is your neighbor? Once he gave an example. His example of the good neighbor was the most despised ethnic group his listeners could imagine.

There must be balance. You must look after yourself (eat and train like I said yesterday). But you must also think of those around you in an ever widening circle.

Don’t take it to the limit…and beyond.

Think Eat and Train, not Diet and Exercise.

I was listening to an audio excerpt from Tim Ferriss’s book of tips from successful people Tools of Titans. That phrase grabbed me.

Change your focus.

Any diet will guide you to weight loss. In the longer term though, they will not be healthy and you will regain the weight.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (Michael Pollan, Food Rules)

Simple.

Instead of some vague—get some exercise—intentionally train.

Move. Lift. Stretch. (Gary)

Train—your mind.

Read. Think.

Train your spirit.

Pray. Meditate.

Technology is supposed to make our lives better.

This has been true for thousands of years. A better plow. Figuring out how to use oxen to pull the plow. A simple pull cart leading thousands of years later to autonomous vehicles. Medicines.

Technology in just the last decade figured out better ways to blow people up, yet on the other hand better devices to replace those missing hands, arms, and legs. Better mobility for invalid people.

And yet—there is social media.

With all the problems in the world to solve, today’s prevalent technology mostly serves to spread hate, fear, anger, lies, division.

The latest issue of MIT Technology Review proclaims technology has let us down.

The thesis contains much truth. But it doesn’t have to.

Technologists could remember that they have a moral responsibility to make the world a better place. And, so could users of technology.

After all, the inscription on Pete Seeger’s banjo read, “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”

We could, if we wish, develop and exercise our spiritual muscles and go on a “social media diet” and be mindful of our use.

Technology, and we ourselves, do not have to let society down. We can be the solution, not the problem.