Faith Venture

What They Thought I Wanted To See

January 26, 2024

Facebook leaders were concerned people were only looking at posts from friends and not spending enough time on the app looking at ads. They told engineers to develop rules that would search the entire database and present people with posts that Facebook thought you want to see.

Twitter executives faced a similar problem. They wrote similar rules, called algorithms, to keep you on the app longer.

So, I wondered about our spiritual reading—the Bible and other writers. Do we allow someone to determine what parts we read and spoon-feed us just their point of view?

I have spent little time on social media for several years. What they thought I wanted to see was not congruent with what I really wanted to see.

Fortunately, there is no app filtering what I should see in the Bible or in my other spiritual reading. I read out of curiosity and out of desire to refresh my poor memory.

Things like the thought I just heard, “He’s God. I’m not.”

Things like, “The first is to love the Lord your God… and the second likewise is to love your neighbor…”

I need those reminders to keep me on the right path and likewise to guide my reading.

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Decisions, Decisions

January 25, 2024

It began early.

The first decision—should I get up or stay in bed?

To decide whether or not to have coffee.

To decide to sit in that particular chair where I read something spiritual and helpful and then meditate or pray.

Shall I have porridge to start the day healthy by eating something that lowers cholesterol or perhaps an egg (an almost perfect food) or perhaps that jelly-filled doughnut because I feel weak and want a treat?

Shall I go out for a workout and exercise?

Our day is filled with decisions. Each decision defines us. What sort of person do we wish to be? Our decisions, whether made with intention or by emotion, determine the story.

I love the line from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where the old Crusader says in a dry, flat voice as Indiana Jones chooses which of the chalices was the one that held Christ’s blood according to myth—Choose wisely.

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When Love Meets

January 24, 2024

When love meets pain, it becomes compassion.

When love meets happiness, it becomes joy.

Joy is an expression of the awakened heart, a quality of enlightenment. When we live in the present, joy often arises for no reason.

When I came across these thoughts, I was compelled by the spirit to pause and consider. I love that thought of “when love meets…” What a powerful picture.

And I thought about how joy is a fruit of God’s Spirit according to the Apostle Paul.

Then I remembered this little folk song from the time when I sold my electric guitar and bought a nylon-stringed acoustic one and sang folk songs. Many from Catholics in the mid-to-late 60s. Like this one written by Sister Miriam Therese Winter, Joy Is Like The Rain.

I saw raindrops on the river, Joy is like the rain.

Bit by bit the river grows, till all at once it overflows.

Joy is like the rain.

Perhaps today I can rest in joy.

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To Do Righteousness and Justice

January 23, 2024

Reading through the Proverbs in January. Trying to start the year on the front foot. Here is an example of a theme found throughout the Hebrew and Christian texts.

To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.

The closest we can come in modern American (and other) culture is that it is more acceptable than going to church.

Not that you shouldn’t gather together with others. A social life is good for both body and soul.

Maybe the rest of the proverbs can be condensed to those personal characteristics–one who lives out righteousness and justice.

What if we all made this the year of righteousness and justice? What a wonderful world it would be!

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When Today Is Done

January 22, 2024

When you begin a day, preferably with reading and meditation, where do expect the day to end? How will you spend the next precious 15 hours? Where will your focus and attention take you?

I hope that you don’t have a calendar filled with what to do every 15-minute time block of the day. That is stifling. It fails to allow for thinking and serendipity.

I do hope for you and for me that we place our attention on what good we can do as we travel through the day. That we are aware of what surrounds us and meets us such that we can show kindness and service.

And when we perform our evening Examen we can say that today we have done some good for the world.

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Sit and Think

January 19, 2024

How have you used your precious time and attention so far today? This week? What will you do tonight?

Have you ever been in the shower and forgotten whether you have shampooed your hair yet because you’ve been lost in thought?

I remember I think it was second grade. So I was maybe six. We were sent outside for an extra recess. There were men cutting down a tree and then cutting it into pieces. I was totally focused on what they were doing and how they did it. I have no idea how long it was before I realized that there were no other kids around. Strangely, I just went back to the classroom and found my seat. I don’t recall any comments.

There is a story, this could have been me but it wasn’t, of a little boy in elementary school. He was staring out the window totally lost in thought. As each classmate and then the teacher noticed the room grew noticeably quiet. This brought the little boy back to present reality.

“What were you doing?” asked the teacher. “Thinking,” said the little boy. To which the teacher responded perhaps a little too quickly, “Don’t you know that you’re not supposed to think in school?”

Is this not an important part of the well lived life? To sit and think. Ancient people had time in the evenings and perhaps mornings to sit and think. Modern life of the past two hundred or three hundred years has robbed us of that time.

Remember, even Jesus went off to be alone to sit and think and rest in God. That is a good example for us.

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There is Understanding and Then There is Opinion

January 18, 2024

Try out some wisdom on yourself that is at least 3,000 years old. I guess people have been the same since the beginning of culture. From the book of Proverbs (18:2)

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinion.

We experienced that often even before social media amplified it I seldom watch TV news, but what I have seen amplifies this with the appropriate (trained) facial expressions.

I catch myself—have I researched this appropriately or am I merely parroting some thought that originated in Russia or China?

Or, perhaps we violate this additional warning (18:13).

If one gives answer before hearing, it is folly and shame.

How often we impulsively blurt out an often stupid opinion on someone’s problem without ever fully listening and understanding.

I have that problem, too. Working on it…

Posted in Attitude, Learning, Listening, Wisdom | Leave a Comment »

First Things

January 17, 2024

Physicists talk of first principles. The basic laws or principles of nature. You can jump from a second-story window and hope you won’t fall and break some bones, but you will fall. Gravity is a law.

One of my mentors when I was learning mechanical design told me, “You can’t violate the laws of physics.”

Another first is what you do.

Suggestion:

Put first things first.

What is your first thing, your first principle? Or your next first thing?

God? Work? Family? Yourself? Your image? Your addiction?

Better sort out what the really important first thing is. Then put it first. Use intention. Don’t drift into it. Or, you may drift into violating a law of nature and wind up with fractured health or relationships or life.

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Holding Your Tongue

January 16, 2024

I write several emails a day responding to various requests for my time and attention. I have discovered that I need to take a deep breath, refocus, then cut 80% of what I’ve written.

I say too much. Explain too much. Drag in thoughts about motivations that probably are not there. I can get snippy, especially when tired or stressed.

Reading a chapter of Proverbs a day for January in order to start the year on the right foot, I noticed over and over the admonitions of reining in anger and minding your tongue.

Every time I have violated that prescription I have lived with regret.

And I know better.

The distance from knowing to speaking or writing within the brain is short. The only circumventing technology is a breath. Maybe also counting. Take Jesus’ advice to Peter about forgiving and use it here—count 70 times 7.

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Peace and Justice and MLK

January 15, 2024

Today in the United States we recognize the work and person of Martin Luther King, Jr. Even though I lived where there were no black people and similarly there were no black people in my university as far as I can recall, the civil rights movement captivated me. I had read stories of the Ku Klux Klan and lynchings and cross burnings as a youngster. I was deeply affected. I can remember lying awake on some nights wondering if some local KKK would discover I was a closet believer in rights for black people and surround our house.

Of course, that was never a threat in the north with no black people around. But some of the local people had joy teasing me about following MLK in the late 60s.

King took lessons from Gandhi in India going about working for change in a peaceful manner. That appealed to my personality.

King was correct in his analysis that few seem to remember. He affected much change in society as we began to change laws that specifically discriminated. But he also talked of the need to change people’s hearts. He knew as a Christian pastor how difficult, yet essential, that is.

Many things are much improved in America following that time. Yet, many human hearts remain closed and biased.

That’s a human thing, not just an American one. I’ve seen looks and subtle comments on trips to Germany (where I speak a little bit of the language). I’ve experienced it elsewhere in many countries.

We have so far to go as seekers of peace and justice to show people how to live with kindness, humility, empathy, justice.

In the end, we must see hearts change. “I have a dream…”

Check out Abraham, Martin, and John by Dion.

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