Faith Venture

Take Time To Breathe—For Health and Spiritual Uplift

January 12, 2024

So, how is the new year going? Already have forgotten your resolutions? Maybe you’re in northern Illinois where I am as I write this. We had about six inches of snow on the ground at 6 am. Morbid curiosity drove me to the community Facebook page. Already people were complaining about snow removal. It was still snowing. We received perhaps four more inches.

Maybe other things are getting you uptight? Perhaps the trouble is resting enough prior to going to bed that sleep comes late?

Part of my Yoga teacher training dealt with breath. Yes, we all breathe constantly all day and all night. Are you ever aware of that breath?

I offer a simple, easy breath method to help you to relax. Dr. Andrew Weil recommends it often. When Ted Lasso of the popular TV series was experiencing panic attacks, his therapist recommended it. I’m in good company.

The key to this method is to not stress over it or force it. It’s easy. Let it be easy.

Sit. Upright. But not tense.
Inhale through your nose counting to four. It doesn’t matter how fast or slow you count. Breathe as deeply as is comfortable for you.
Hold your breath for a count of seven. Try to make it the same pace as the four. If you don’t make it to seven at first, no problem. Don’t stress over it.
Exhale through the mouth for a count of eight. Try to make a whoosh sound through pursed lips. Try to keep the same pace to your counting. Imagine your lungs completely empty.
Repeat 2-4 times.

When all those questions and more crowd your hyperactive brain that many people call the “monkey brain,” pause, sit, breathe.

4-7-8

It’s easy.

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So You Want To Be a Prophet?

January 11, 2024

Parents sent notes. They came to my house. They pleaded. I was an elected member of the school board. There were parents who wanted us to start a “gifted and talented” program because they were convinced their little offspring would be the next Mozart—or something.

I advised seeing the movie Amadeus. Do you really want your child to be sub-threshold or even over-threshold psychologically disturbed?

These memories returned while I was thinking about how many “Christians” over the past 2,000 years have wanted to be prophets.

For one thing, they thought that meant foretelling the future. They missed the part of the Bible where God says he hates fortune-tellers.

And they inevitably get it wrong.

And they think that means telling everyone else they have it wrong and they are all going to hell.

They don’t know. I’ve not heard of a human person yet who had the power to look inside another person and know for certain the status of their soul. Sure, people leave trails. But, I certainly would turn back any power vested in me to determine someone’s future. Although I’m sure that there are people who just love telling other people off.

They also, unless they had some weird persecution complex (check out Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ for a Freudian take on Jesus), they haven’t read and understood the bios of most of the prophets. They had lonely and frustrating lives.

You are what you are. As Paul once told a church that was messing up organizing itself, they should look at the spiritual gifts of everyone and everyone look at their spiritual gifts. They should be tested. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. That is the road to grief.

Note: we instituted a “gifted” program like everyone else. The teachers that first year said, great, we have the brightest kids, we’ll make them work. The parents said, our kids are in this special program, they should all receive automatic A’s that are worth 5 points on a 4-point scale. In the end, I don’t think it mattered much. There are many kids not from that program running around with MA’s and PhD’s.

Note Two (don’t read if you are going to read the book):

The last temptation was marrying Mary, having kids, and sitting on the doorstep enjoying family life.

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Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

January 10, 2024

Apologies to Paul Simon and his 59^th Street Bridge Song:

Slow down, you move too fast

You got to make the morning last

Just kicking down the cobblestones

Looking for fun and feeling groovy
Paul Simon, 59th Street Bridge Song

We have laptop on the lap. Amazon is so easy. Instead of getting off our butts and going to a store like millennia of shoppers, we click and buy. Next day, delivery.

I cannot for the life of me fathom why a 55-and-older community has so many people in a hurry. But as I go out for morning exercise, I cannot believe the number of speeding cars who also have not enough time to stop at a stop sign.

I just listened to an interview with Michael Easter, author of Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough. He talked about staying for a while in a monastery and again staying with natives in the Arctic. He learned to slow down. Then he felt much better—mentally and physically.

Once I rushed everything I did. Perhaps it was Chicago traffic that helped cure that inner urge to rush. If you can’t go anywhere faster than 5 mph, then you just turn on some good music and chill.

Paul Simon had an image of just kicking down the cobblestones on the approach to the 59^th Street Bridge in New York. We all need an image of slowing, taking it easy, feeling groovy. We can get our work done without raising a cloud of dust—and anxiety.

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A Proverb

January 9, 2024

The adventure of life is to learn.

The purpose of life is to grow.

The nature of life is to change.

The challenge of life is to overcome.

The essence of life is to care.

The opportunity of life is to serve.

The beauty of life is to give.
A Proverb

This “proverb” that I picked up somewhere in my reading is not from “The Proverbs”. These are great verbs to consider incorporating into our lives this year.

Learn, Grow, Change, Overcome, Care, Serve, Give.

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Dear Prudence

January 8, 2024

I don’t know how many times I have read the eighth chapter of the book of Proverbs. I stared at the words and one word popped into consciousness—prudence. Why have I not pondered that word before?

The associated thought was the song from the 1968 Beatles “White Album” written by John Lennon to Prudence Farrow, the sister of actress Mia Farrow—Dear Prudence.

There was a time when the fashion was to name girls after positive character traits—Hope, Grace, and yes, Prudence.

But what is prudence? Why should Wisdom, the narrator of the Proverbs, emphasize it?

Prudence is a discipline of oneself, a behavior of minimizing or avoiding risk, making good and careful decisions.

Pause here and reflect on all the hasty and ill-taken decisions taken. They come flooding into my consciousness.

Just as we need to count to ten (or count to ten ten times) before replying to certain statements, a pause before making a final decision on a purchase or a course of action is also, well, prudent.

A person even into their 20s who rush into decisions would look at prudence as crimping their freedom of action. For those of us who have been burned by bad decisions, we have learned prudence. Rushing to decision—or when someone is pressuring us to rush into a decision—usually turns out for the worse.

Prudence. Yes, a worthy character trait to infuse into our lives.

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Whatever Else Get Insight

January 5, 2024

As the story goes, Solomon was about to become king at a young age. God said to him, what would you like? Solomon asked for wisdom. He got enough to fill two books. His renown for wisdom spread through the known world.

Yet his life was a shambles. His son destroyed the kingdom in short order.

Reading through the book of Proverbs every January starts the year off providing a solid foundation for which to build a good life in the new year.

Buried in the beginning of Chapter 4 lies a bit of a warning.

Get wisdom, and whatever else you get, get insight.

Wisdom itself will not provide the righteous and good life. People with PhDs who have no sense about how to live are more numerous than stars you can count at night.

Insight—accurate and deep understanding; the capacity to gain understanding; to perceive clearly or deeply.

Do not merely read through the proverbs. Take some time daily to ponder them. Think about the meaning. Think about how these apply to how I will live today.

Need an example of wisdom without insight and the ability to live out the wisdom—think Solomon.

Don’t be a Solomon. Be like someone who puts wisdom into action—be like Jesus.

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Service

January 4, 2024

If, instead of working on making more money, we spend some time each day contemplating how to serve others better and more creatively, everyone is richer for it.
Earl Nightingale

We can preach, cajole, persuade, argue, scream, and so forth as much as we want, but

Our kids will still misbehave
People will still think of us as obnoxious humans
People close to us will not become fellow disciples of Jesus

People watch who we are which speaks more loudly than our words. Just think if we all worked on serving others better. Building products that help rather than addict. Providing a smile and a meal or a coat. Providing a ride to the doctor. Buying a coffee for the person next in line.

Add your own thoughts. Then go and do.

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Optimism—We Must Live It

January 3, 2024

Reading through the Proverbs gives those of us trying to walk that path of wisdom a sense of optimism. We are with God and God is with us as we live that sort of life.

A news item in todays feed reported an increase of American consumer confidence (after a year of almost all good economic news). The reporter added a caveat—these are opinion polls and Republicans (this year) might be reluctant to say things are getting better at the risk of saying the Democrats were right. I imagine if the roles were reversed, so would be the opinions.

On the other hand, media stokes fear about dangers of artificial intelligence. There is more violence in the Middle East. The war in the Ukraine continues killing or wounding hundreds of Russian soldiers every day while destroying cities and towns. China is (as we say in diplomatic circles) saber rattling about its intentions in Taiwan. How can we be optimistic?

Or as Barry McGuire sang the PF Sloan song in 1965 (all this is hardly new)

[Chorus]

And you tell me over and over and over again, my friend

Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction

[Verse 3]

Yeah, my blood’s so mad, feels like coagulatin’

I’m sittin’ here just contemplatin’

I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation

Handful of senators don’t pass legislation

And marches alone can’t bring integration

When human respect is disintegratin’

This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’

But to live a sane daily life, we need some optimism.
Eve of Destruction, PF Sloan recorded by Barry McGuire

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor, who lived and died in the worst of times in Germany:

The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.

An essential human trait is to “claim the future”, especially for those who live the with-God life. The time is ripe for us to grab this stance.

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Pride—The Sin of Hubris

January 2, 2024

When I’m serious about studying Christian thought, I love to go to the writers of the first two to three generations of the church. These people were trying to figure out what this new movement meant, what it meant to live with a risen Jesus.

Especially the Desert Fathers were concerned with pride. They knew the power of pride to bring people down.

I’ve been rereading some of the theologians of the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries. What amazes me is that these very smart and educated men all latched onto certain verses from the Bible and then built a system of theology on them. One source noted that Calvinism is “proved” by these six verses. Meanwhile Arminianism by a different set of six verses.

A few hundred years later a preacher in a small village near my home town was studying scripture and “discovered” a Bible verse. He built a “Biblical Research Institute” and started a movement called The Way International.

What I do find amazing is the hubris of people who read a translation of a translation and then proceed to tell people they know exactly what God thinks.

There is a phrase from French psychologist Émile Coué repeated by Chief Inspector Dreyfus in the Pink Panther movie series—“Every day in every way I’m getting better and better.” (Oh, that was said to help many people, but it didn’t work for Chief Inspector Dreyfus.)

The first step to knowledge is to recognize our lack. Then, dispelling hubris, we learn a little bit more each day. I think we could read Matthew chapters 5-7 everyday for the remainder of our lives and everyday realize something new to apply to our lives.

[Check the beginning of Proverbs Chapter 2.]

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For Learning About Wisdom

January 1, 2024

A chapter a day for the 31 days of January. (I promise not to write about Proverbs every day, although that wouldn’t be a bad idea. My mind searches too broadly to stay on topic.)

Why read the Proverbs (and actually any other Wisdom literature):

For learning about wisdom and instruction;
For understanding words of insight;
For gaining instruction in wise-dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity;
To teach shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the young;
To let the wise also hear and gain in learning, and the discerning acquire skill;
To understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

[Note: fear of the Lord does not mean to be afraid, rather, it means living within the awe and reverence of God however you define he/she/it.]

From the Prologue to the book of Proverbs. I couldn’t have said it better. So I won’t try. The types of people you will meet–the wise seek learning, the simple can be taught, the fool shuns learning, the scoffer cynically derides learning.

And Happy New Year 2024. Many blessings to you all for a great year.

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