Faith Venture

Two traits to develop during your year–curiosity and imagination.

Read more this year–and try reading outside your usual genre. Then use the new insights to build seemingly outlandish analogies to your long-held beliefs. Cultivate new friends and travel to someplace new.

The old folk saying, “Curiosity killed the cat”, is misleading. Lack of curiosity will kill your enthusiasm for life and (as Agatha Christie’s little detective Hercule Poirot would put it) your “little grey cells” in your brain.

Albert Einstein rated imagination as the most important trait. His theories (and those of Henri Poincare and many others) came from “thought experiments” where imagination ran loose until settling into new insights.

Eat well. I have unbounded curiosity about the latest nutrition findings, even though they mostly support basic common sense of eating whole foods and not too much.

Maybe a new way of exercise to grow those “little grey cells”. Have you tried Yoga or Pilates? Our Y began offering “cardio drumming.” Beat your frustrations into submission. (I looked at that, but as a trained percussionist, I’m not so sure I could just let go and pound wildly.)

Meet some new people this year–from outside your normal circle. Be curious about different lifestyles and cultures. You probably will learn some useful and fascinating things.

I’m beginning the new year with a fitness and health course and a deep book on analogy as the fuel and fire of thinking. Looks like I’ll be diving into deep theology as NT Wright has a new book out. 550 pages on thinking followed by 990 pages on history and theology of the first Christians. Should be a way to get my “little grey cells” jump started for 2020.

I’ve always liked the Carl Sandburg story about the Kansas farmer I heard from Earl Nightingale many years ago.

A Kansas farmer who, as he contemplated the great mysteries of life, was asked by a passing stranger in a covered wagon, “What kind of people live around here?” To which the farmer replied, “Well stranger, what kind of folks were there in the country you come from?”

“Well, there was a mostly low-down, lying, thieving, gossiping, backbiting lot of people,” said the stranger. And the farmer replied, “Well, stranger, I guess that’s about the kind of folks you’ll find around here.”

The first wagon was hardly out of sight when another newcomer interrupted the farmer’s reverie with the same question: “What kind of folks was there in the country you came from?” the farmer asked again. “Well,” said the stranger, “there was mostly a decent, hardworking, law-abiding, friendly lot of people.” And again the farmer replied, “Well, I guess, stranger, that’s about the kind of folks you’ll find around here.”

What kind of year will this be for you and me?

I guess we’ll get what we look for. Our attitude determines what we see and how we experience.

Happy new year. I pray for your growth and success this year. May you be a light in someone’s life.

As you search for ideas in order to compile your list of New Year’s Resolutions (do people still do that???), consider instead two things for the new year and for life–attitude and habit. I found this list compiled by a friend on social media. I can personally vouch for almost all of these. They can help you intentionally change your attitude and habits.

1. Exercise your body and your brain every day.

2. Count your blessings.

3. Try to see others’ point of view.

4. People, not things, make you happy.

5. Work to earn, to live. Don’t live for your work.

6. Keep reminding yourself: It’s not all about me.

7. Just teach your kids how to cope.

8. Use your conscious reasoning to slowly make the changes you want.

9. When stressed, process your worries consciously.

I saw this on Twitter. Yes, mom, some good can come from social media–but for me much more on Twitter than Facebook.

Shared it with my small group. Got a lot of knowing smiles.

Thanks to @steveryancarter for sharing this thought from @michaelfrost6

I’ll begin the New Years with number 1.

A friend who is on “The Spectrum” in my small group tells me that I embody number three.

As for number two, I may have to start. I am a member of a United Methodist church in the West Ohio Conference. Turns out the Bishop (leader of the conference) made The New York Times when he tried to quietly dispose of a case of sexual misconduct by a clergy member of the Conference. Only some of the women involved felt greatly ignored by the process.

I’ve seen this bishop’s leadership style. Typical of organizations–tries to keep things as quiet as possible and smooth over problems. I’ve seen the same tendency in public school superintendents.

Now to go find insignificant friends. And then live again.

Some groups of people seem to make all the noise. They know how to manipulate media, sometimes even while deriding it.

“The Media”–to whom I often refer as “mainstream media”–are as gullible as many evangelical Christians. They’ll fall for anything. I turn to NYU professor Jay Rosen for reasoned critiques of The Media. Look especially at his latest post about Meet the Press.

While I consider it a necessary spiritual discipline to avoid getting sucked into media drama, I notice who gets the press time (we used to say ink, but now it’s also pixels).

There are many more people who are actually out in the communities and world doing what Jesus actually commanded. Getting into relationship with God and into his kingdom. Going out amongst strangers and feeding the hungry, healing the sick, helping the poor, bringing comfort to the ailing, justice to the oppressed.

It’s the same in all organizations, both religious and secular, where we hear the negative, the nihilistic, the mean, the hate, the ego. Those make the headlines.

The people doing the work, well, we don’t hear much from them. They are too busy doing. Where are the algorithms that spread that word? Oh, they don’t sell ads?

Are you a Christian; or, are you a follower of Jesus? We know you by your love.

I’m traveling for the holidays, and therefore on a different daily regimen. Which means, I read my news feeds before thinking for the day.

There were stories of greed, deception, lying, pride, ego, power seeking.

These were also the stories of 2,000 years ago. This could describe the Roman Empire and Jewish leaders.

And it describes the antithesis of the kingdom that Jesus described. The kingdom that turns it all on its head by putting love and humbleness and ethics at the center.

It’s not that we’ve lost. It’s just that every new individual born into human society must decide which kingdom it will reside in. And as we often say, failure to decide is in itself a decision.

Will we decide to enter, or just slide into, the kingdom of following our emotions and agree to manipulation?

Or, will we decide to enter the kingdom Jesus introduced?

Choose wisely.

The kingdom of God is here.

Mr. Rogers was after my time. But I enjoyed how every movement and word he shared had a meaning. And there was his phrase.

In the times when Jesus lived people everywhere had a longing for spiritual meaning. There were different cultures and attitudes, but the feeling of a hole in their life that needed to be filled had spread throughout the Mediterranean region.

And Jesus popped into the scene. He told people there was a God, and God desired to be in relationship and fill that spiritual hole. And heal people of their anxieties, illnesses, drifting through life.

He told people it was OK to relate to God. He said we should love one another and by doing so we were getting closer to God. In his way, he asked, “Won’t you be my friend?”

An amazing number of people spreading from the epicenter of Palestine even to Rome on one side and India on the other bought into the message and experienced changed lives.

Like Carole King sang, “Ain’t it good to know, you’ve got a friend?”

This season is when we celebrate that Jesus came. So, go celebrate.

There are many who are enkindled with dreamy devotion, and when they hear of the poverty of Christ, they are almost angry with the citizens of Bethlehem. They denounce their blindness and ingratitude, and think, if they had been there, they would have shown the Lord and his mother a more kindly service and would not have permitted them to be treated so miserably. But they do not look by their side to see how many of their fellow humans need their help, and which they ignore in their misery. Who is there upon earth that has no poor, miserable, sick, erring ones around him? Why does he not exercise his love to those? Why does he not do to them as Christ has done to him? — Martin Luther

Sometimes our emotions are aroused by things we’ve read from centuries long past. Sometimes just last week. “I would have done that differently,” we tell ourselves.

Yet in present moments, we walk past those in need without a thought or acknowledgement.

Indeed, why do we not do to them as Jesus has done for us?

The irony of these words lies in Luther himself, who at one and the same time discovered God’s grace and sparked a revolution causing hundreds of years of bitter wars throughout Europe. Vestiges exist to this day in the religious divisions of American Christianity.

Celebrating, as we do at this time of year, the coming of Jesus and the kingdom of heaven, perhaps we could begin looking by our side to heal the divisions and the wounds. Beginning one person at a time.

Of course, the kingdom of heaven is here. I’m sure it actually existed long before Jesus. But when Jesus came, he pointed everyone explicitly toward it.

What have we learned about the kingdom of heaven?

It starts out small but grows to encompass all.

We can choose to participate or not.

We choose not by what we say but by how we act.

When we enter the kingdom of heaven, we are rewarded with a better life–love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

That is something to celebrate.