Everybody Knows

April 30, 2025

I caught myself about to use the explanation “of course, everybody knows.” 

I don’t know what everybody knows.

Does everybody even know all the same things?

If I am looking for justification, does “everybody knows” justify anything?

I know what I know. (I’m content.)

Except for the times I know something and don’t know that I know. (I’m asleep. Wake me up.)

Then there are the times I know that I don’t know. (I need to learn. Develop curiosity.)

Sometimes I don’t know that I don’t know. (That is dangerous. I could be spreading false ideas.)

But I don’t know what you know—until you tell me and I listen.

Did I just trap myself in that endless loop that I know so much that I know nothing?

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Choose Your Focus

April 29, 2025

Some people always see what’s wrong. They see mistakes others make. Sometimes they focus on their own mistakes or shortcomings. The lawn isn’t mowed correctly. The government is all screwed up. The pastor’s message put me to sleep. My co-workers don’t pull their weight. They frown.

Some people choose to see where people are helpful. They focus on what good they can do right now, where they are. They complement good work. They smile.

Who would you prefer to associate with? Who would you like to be?

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Visualize the Process

April 28, 2025

Have a goal they tell us. Write it on a Post-It note and stick it on your bathroom mirror. Visualize attaining it. Dream it, and it will come true.

In business or organization life, they also tell us to have a mission statement. Although most people write a paragraph, wisdom says it should be brief enough to print on a T-shirt.

But maybe this isn’t the best advice.

Professor of Happiness Arthur Brooks says, “No evidence exists for a mystical force that gives you what you imagine, and acting as though such a force does exist can even demotivate you and set you back. However, considered reflection on the process of achieving a desired outcome can change your behavior in productive ways. If you want a big balance in your bank account, thinking of a large number won’t help. But thinking about how you’re going to make financial progress and anticipating possible setbacks can encourage you to adopt useful habits of thrift and responsibility—and that becomes how you manifest a chosen goal.”

Did I mention he was a professor? At Harvard, no less. So he writes a paragraph. Try this…

Visualize the process. 

See yourself eating less in order to lose weight. See the team working on your ministry.

Posted in Habits | Leave a Comment »

Time for a Morals Check-in

April 25, 2025

We’re about a third of the way through 2025. Time to reflect. How are we doing on our Moral Compass? A four-point checklist:

  • Integrity 
  • Responsibility 
  • Compassion 
  • Forgiveness 

Where are we maintaining our moral being? Where do we need to improve? How can we do that?

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Getting Started

April 24, 2025

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.—Mark Twain

Procrastination.

Where are you delaying action?

Study/researching something important?

A ministry of help or healing or service?

Reaching out to someone?

Daily contemplation/prayer/meditation?

Eating less but healthy?

Getting your daily steps?

Get started—right now.

Posted in Attitude, Doing | Leave a Comment »

Facing The Consequences

April 23, 2025

Novelist Robert Louis Stevenson: “Sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.”

I think the attitude that I can do what I want, say what I want, because I am free and unfettered exists not only in America. We find this often in America, though.

And then these people are criticized, lose friends, perhaps even jobs, and wonder why. Can’t I be obnoxious, hateful, hurtful and call it merely being my freedom of expression?

No.

We call it being juvenile. Immature.

A mature human realizes the wisdom of millennia of thinkers that “the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness, a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

When we say things and do things, sooner or later we will sit down to a banquet of consequences. This may be a banquet without end.

Posted in Attitude, Freedom | Leave a Comment »

Pope Francis

April 22, 2025

Preparing to write this morning, the news centered on the passing of Pope Francis.

I am not Catholic, but I taught 7th grade at a Catholic school long ago learning a lot about the faith and the organization. I also read many Catholic theologians in my day. My favorite is Pierre Teilhard.

I respected Francis from the first I heard about him in his days in Latin America. As Pope, he represented being a Jesus follower well. He did his best to move a huge, bureaucratic organization into modern times.

His predecessor, Benedict, had a marvelous theological mind. He was, however, the ultimate organization man protecting the organization as best he could.

Francis, rather, tried to deal with past indiscretions, treating people with humility and respect.

The best lesson we can learn from him is just that—living in humility and respect for others.

Posted in Humility, Leadership | Leave a Comment »

Monday People

April 21, 2025

Leon Festinger’s concept of Cognitive Dissonance was presented as part of an undergraduate class. I love the concept. It often applies to me.

Sometimes events just don’t make sense. We can’t wrap our heads around what’s happening. My life has experienced many changes—especially around employment. Accepting the changed environment and moving on can take time. Maybe some people adapt quickly. Not always me.

While I’ve been thinking about things during this Holy Week, I’ve concluded how unfair we’ve always been to Jesus’s followers. It was a tough week.

  • Sunday—a huge parade with thousands cheering them on.
  • Monday-Wednesday—teaching at the Temple, quiet dinners with Mary and Martha and Lazarus
  • Thursday—a quiet Passover meal with teachings they didn’t understand fully, quickly followed by arrest, trial 1, trial 2, judgement.
  • Friday—after a long night when they made themselves scarce, another type of parade through Jerusalem, no cheering, just jeering, ending with death.

Preachers will sometimes talk about Saturday people. This is the in-between time. The followers who had scattered and hid on Friday regrouped on Saturday completely unsure of the significance of what happened and fearful of what would happen. Would the Jewish leaders be satisfied with doing away with the leader? Would they search out followers to kill them and put an end of the threat to their leadership?

Sunday, the empty tomb. Try to wrap your head around that! No experience could have prepared them for the shock.

Then Monday. And beyond. How do we live with this new reality? We have to grow up and become the leaders he had trained us to be. We have to learn to live with a different experience of Jesus.

They did, and we can.

Posted in Awareness, Faith, Waiting | Leave a Comment »

He Meant What He Said

April 18, 2025

What if Jesus actually meant what he said?

It’s Good Friday—evidently a mistranslation from Old English for those of us who wonder about the term “good” referring to the day Jesus was executed. Could be a better word is “holy.”

How about some context?

The Romans build a world based upon power relationships. People sought power and, once attained, keeping it. This worldview, or mindset that we might call it today, filtered from the Emperor to family relationships. It was all about power.

The Jewish people had not lived under their own government for hundreds of years. Despite occasional revolts, the first Century dawned with them still under foreign rule. They longed for a leader who would lead a successful revolt and throw out the foreigners.

They thought Jesus might be the real deal, unlike the many before him whose naked corpses on short crosses (the pictures we see are not historically accurate, the reality was to demean the prisoner as much as possible) were often found along the roadways.

Therefore as I wrote a couple of days ago, the gospel writers point out that he had the equivalent of a Roman legion of followers ready to make him king. He entered Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday to those expectations that he came to the capital to overthrow the Romans.

What did Jesus actually teach? And live?

The inverse of power—love. He taught that our relationships should be come from a love based on God’s grace. He repeated frequently the need for a new way of living—the way of the Kingdom of Heaven. He said that his followers would be known by their love. He said that the greatest love was to give up our life for the sake of helping other people.

I’ve heard sermons and read books where the author was shocked that the crowd turned against Jesus on that Thursday. I am not shocked. Their expectations were crushed.

They didn’t listen to what Jesus said. They put their hopes and dreams on him instead of incorporating Jesus’s hopes and dreams for them into their lives.

Even his closest disciples hid on execution day and the following day. Even when Sunday came with the empty tomb and then his appearances, they could not comprehend. I don’t blame them. They also tried to put their interpretation on the movement (see James and John asking for places of power in the new kingdom).

Sometimes it takes me a period of time to digest new situations. I don’t blame them. They are us.

Then they understood that Jesus meant what he said and then proceeded to model it. It changed the world.

If Jesus actually meant what he said, maybe we should also believe it. And live it. Maybe we can change the world.

[Sorry, I usually try to keep these meditations to about 200 words. This one is like a sermon. I just had to figure out my logic. Based on 50+ years of study, this is as succinct as I can think today. I wish you all a happy Easter.]

Posted in Christianity, Faith, Thinking | Leave a Comment »

Setting a Compass

April 17, 2025

Sailors once upon a time checked a map to determine the direction of their destination. They left port, set their compass for that direction, and followed the course.

We have GPS today. I am contemplating a vacation to Scotland. Part of the desired destination is to visit the Shetland Islands. OK, only because we’ve watched a TV series based on a series of novels where the setting is there. 

I visited Google Maps. We would fly into Edinburg and spend some time. A ferry crosses to Shetland from Aberdeen. The GPS told me the route from Edinburg to Aberdeen (1 hr 27 min if you’re interested). When we visit, I’ll set the GPs for the destination and follow the course.

Some people teach that the goal of someone entering Christianity is to go to heaven (sometimes incorrectly visualized as somewhere in the sky) by praying a magic prayer. And that’s it.

That concept has always made me uncomfortable in the sense that it’s (one) too easy and (two) there’s no “then what.” 

I’m one of those strange people who believe that Jesus meant what he said. And, much of what he said taught how to live with God in the Kingdom of Heaven starting right now.

Perhaps instead of trying to short-circuit to the goal, we should set our compasses toward the goal and practice living a life with-God.

Just as I wrote a couple days ago, stories evolve in layers unveiling new and more important meanings. As we live out our vision of progressing toward a goal rather than being completed resting on our laurels, we live a better life.

Posted in Disciplines | Leave a Comment »

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