Faith Venture

It Should Be Easy

December 15, 2023

“It should be easy. Here it is in black and white. How can people argue about it?”

He was in a Bible study class composed almost entirely of people who went to church regularly but who had never read the book.

He was reading in one English translation. Had he but lined up say five English translations, there may have been 2-3 different words in that passage. They may or may not have changed the meaning very much. But the nuance of the verse could have changed.

He also fell victim to the fallacy that should have been overcome by high school English classes. Unfortunately, few high school courses actually teach one how to read.

There must be hundreds of phrases and sentences taken from the Bible that altered the course of history that were completely out of context of the meaning. As I type these words several flash through my brain.

Humans so easily fool themselves into thinking they have completely arrived at understanding and wisdom, when in reality they are creatures in the process of growing. We have so much hubris as to think we know more than people who have spent their entire adult lives studying ancient Greek. And I have read some of those who still discuss the meaning of one word Paul used in a certain place. I started to learn New Testament Greek and then thought “How do I expect to learn enough in a few months to be better than scholars who have devoted 30 years to the study?”

Back to the question. It is easier if we devote time and curiosity to exploring the complete paragraph or letter. It helps to have a guide who can lead us through the logic of the Greek in the passage which is different from the logic we use in English. I am currently refreshing my knowledge of German and learning Spanish. (I should be doing Irish Gaelic and Welsh given I have grandparents from each heritage.) Each of these has its own logic. And the brief introduction to Gaelic shows me another set of logic principles.

I return to my thought about time and curiosity along with humility. As soon as we say we don’t know everything, then the work of learning begins.

Posted in Disciplines, Learning, Study | Leave a Comment »

Wandering Around

December 14, 2023

We are drilled on efficiency and productivity. I was a “GTDer” for some time—Getting Things Done (David Allen).

That begs a question, What do we miss by dashing from one focus to the next all day?

When I exercise in the morning, I quit running but I walk as fast as I can for about 40 minutes before tackling the rest of my fitness routine.

In the afternoon, however, I like to just wander outside. Look for birds and muskrats and trees and other people. There is a phrase in French called being a flȃneur. A flȃneur strolls and observes without a plan. I like going into downtown Chicago to just stroll and look at people and things. One of my favorite philosophers these days, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, calls what he does and writes about the results of being a flȃneur.

In fact there exists a management philosophy called Management By Walking Around. This is called Gemba Walk in Lean Manufacturing. There is a rich history to getting off your chair and moving.

Sometimes we get into such a rush we have no time to think and observe.

Do you have a problem you are thinking about? Looking for an insight into a spiritual teaching that just isn’t coming into focus? Take a walk. Be a flȃneur for a bit. Insights will come to you. Better have your little Field Notes or Moleskin notebook or iPhone to take notes. Preparation will pay off.

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The Practice

December 13, 2023

I sit back in my chair in my office. I often like to sit back with my feet resting on the desk and laptop in my, well, lap. Staring at my bookshelves, I see one of the several books I’ve turned facing out. This reminds me of a book I wish to remember.

There at the top is Seth Godin’s The Practice: Shipping Creative Work. I highly recommend this one.

I have been thinking about style versus substance. Let’s say, for example, at church. The example works also for personal development seminars and even technology presentations. But, let’s stick with church.

There are churches that specialize on experience. You go, as if to a rock concert. You expect to be entertained. You’ll get some lively music. Perhaps a few words about the work of the organization. Then a teacher will try for the final 30 minutes to get you motivated. Then you leave.

And life goes on.

I’ve been involved with people whose focus is on decision. The focus is on getting another person to decide to believe in Jesus.

I’ve always been haunted by the question—then what?

I might like the entertainment, the style, for a brief moment. Maybe I say Hi to a few people I see each week. And that is it.

But where is the mentor relationship? The depth? Beginning the practice of following Jesus?

Yesterday I fast-walked about 3 miles followed by resistance weight training followed by 20 minutes in the hot tub. Today, Yoga replaced the resistance work. It’s my daily practice. Just like a daily practice of writing. And meditation. Well, also of eating nutritionally dense meals (thanks to my wife).

The challenge—how do we help people begin and maintain the practice of following Jesus? I think that is a lot of what Paul and James tried to do in their letters. Get us out of our comfort zone and both practice and help others practice.

Posted in Disciplines, Habits | Leave a Comment »

Dawning of the Age

December 12, 2023

When the moon is in the Seventh House

And Jupiter aligns with Mars

Then peace will guide the planets

And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius

The Age of Aquarius

Aquarius! Aquarius!

Harmony and understanding

Sympathy and trust abounding

No more falsehoods or derisions

Golden living dreams of visions

Mystic crystal revelation

And the minds true liberation
5th Dimension

It is dark outside my office window in the early morning at this time of year. I thought perhaps I was staring at Mars in the western sky. It was probably an airplane. We are on a flight path to Chicago’s O’Hare airport.

Thinking of Mars reminded me of that 5^th Dimension song from the psychedelic 60s. Dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Fifty-five years later we don’t seem to have harmony and understanding and sympathy and trust abounding.

There were predictions (hopes?) like that, even greater in fact, 2026 years ago (give or take a few months). The coming of the Prince of Peace and Lord of Lords. Yes, those were the titles taken by Caesar Augustus and then co-opted and used to describe the Jewish Messiah called Jesus.

Those words—harmony, understanding, sympathy, trust, no falsehoods, no derisions—can also be used to describe the type of person who follows Jesus. Yet, oftentimes during this ensuing 2,000 years his followers have exhibited the opposite. Look around even today and see the actions of some people claiming to be followers. Of course, many do.

There is a Christian theology that Jesus must come back to finish the work he started. That’s not a theology that has impacted me all that much. I live in the present, not in the future. And I think that Jesus thought we should be living lives like he taught us beginning now and not waiting to live sometime in the future.

We can start (continue) to live those values right now. Don’t wait for a New Year’s Resolution. The best time is now.

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Lighting the Love Candle on the Advent Wreath

December 11, 2023

In our tradition, a candle in a wreath is lighted for each of the four Sundays leading up to Christmas when the fifth candle is lighted. The first, second, and fourth candles are traditionally purple. They denote Hope, Love, and Peace. The third is traditionally pink denoting Joy, sort deriving from another ancient tradition of a Joy Sunday celebration. Leading up to the commemoration of Jesus birth the lights grow brighter as Jesus was the Light of the World.

This Sunday we contemplated Love. John, Jesus’s friend and author of the fourth gospel, used light and dark as the theme of his story. He also is famous for making love the core idea. God is love. Jesus is love.

Love not so much as an emotion. Love is a way of acting toward yourself and others. Can you pray for others? Can you perform acts large and small for others? Can you treat others and yourself with kindness and compassion?

During this week of Advent we could hardly do better than contemplate how we love. And how our love appeared yesterday. And how we will respond with love today.

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Why Is It So Confusing?

December 8, 2023

One of my wife’s friends recently talked about the genealogy of Jesus found in Matthew’s gospel. She was left with questions—something like where is Mary when other women are mentioned in the list and others.

I wrote back to her. The Messiah is supposed to be a descendent of David. So, beginning with David, Matthew traces through Solomon and Luke through Nathan. Interesting. Both go to David, but through different sons.

Then there is Joseph. Matthew and Luke ascribe Joseph to different fathers.

A very early church leader suggested that Matthew traces the genealogy through Joseph who was Jesus’ legal father. That seems to fit the overall tone of his story. Luke, on the other hand, traces through Mary, but he couldn’t actually say that due to cultural norms. Given Luke’s generally positive portrayal of women, that makes sense to me.

But…

The same leader thought some more—always a dangerous thing. He remembered the cultural norm about when a brother dies childless the next brother in line marries the wife to father children in the brother’s name. Remember the story when the Sadducee asked Jesus about such a case and who would be the husband in heaven. And Jesus told him he missed the point.

Anyway this early thinker supposed that perhaps Solomon fathered a child in Nathan’s name and that Heli or Jacob fathered Joseph in that same brother marries wife situation.

I like the Mary genealogy scenario because it is simpler and makes sense. There is a philosophical razor that suggests the simplest explanation that fits the facts is probably the best.

But, unfortunately, what was my wife’s friend to do? Why is it so confusing. Why didn’t they just come right out and say what they meant plainly and clearly?

I don’t know.

I do know that I’m happy that I changed my career to technology rather than being a philosophy professor. Professors spend their time on these idle speculations.

For me, Jesus was born, and he died, and he came back to life. And what he taught (I think he actually meant what he said) are words that we can live by. Anything else is mere froth on the latte.

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Can’t Sit Still?

December 7, 2023

Blaise Pascal, 17^th century French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer, said, “Many of our major problems derive from our inability to sit still in a room.”

Pioneering Swiss psychologist Carl Jung told of a patient who exhibited anxiety and restlessness. Jung prescribed for him to go home, go to his office, close the door, and sit for a few hours every day.

The patient returned for his next appointment stating that he didn’t feel any better. Jung asked about his day. He said, well, I sat in my chair. Then I got a book and went through a few pages. Then I got out my violin and played for a short while. Then I tried another book.

Jung reprimanded him, “I told you to sit quietly. Just be with yourself. Just sit.”

Modern psychology? Pascal prescribed that 300 years earlier.

If you cannot stand to be alone with yourself for even an hour or even a half-hour a day, is it any wonder that others cannot stand to be with you, either?

The story concerns an elementary schoolroom from many years ago, but it could be yesterday. The teacher noticed that while she was explaining something a little boy sat staring out of the window. “What are you doing, little boy?” asked the teacher. “Thinking,” replied the boy. “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to think in class?” responded the teacher before realizing the irony.

The boy was on the right track. Finding time to sit and think is a good thing. Try it.

Posted in Disciplines, Meditation, Thinking | Leave a Comment »

Blessing for Work

December 6, 2023

I was greatly blessed at work. For most of the positions I held, I was the first person to hold the position. I had the opportunity to forge new paths and ways of doing things. Yes, I had several terrible bosses that cost my health for a bit. But many more were the bosses who taught and provided opportunities for growth. Most of the time I did not feel like a functionary simply filling in my time—like the protagonist in Franz Kafka’s eerie story of the man who turned into a cockroach over night.

Given an Irish and Welsh ancestry and vast eclectic reading habits, I don’t know how I missed John O’Donohue. Jerry Colonna introduced us in his book Reunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong.

O’Donohue seems (although I haven’t found the document to study) to be the closest to my interpretation to the German philosopher GWFHegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit. That enough was enough of an enticement. But it his capture of the Celtic spirit that captivated me.

In the fourth chapter of Anam Cara (soul friend), he discusses work. And how modern work can be soulless robbing us of imagination and creativity. (He also references an early essay of Karl Marx about the alienation of the worker in modern industrial work. One of my favorites.)

With that long introduction, I will leave you with O’Donohue’s blessing for work.

May the light of your soul guide you.

May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart.

May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.

May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light, and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work.
John O’Donohue

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Advent Replicates Waiting

December 5, 2023

I have been much impacted by the Samuel Beckett play, Waiting for Godot. It is a two-act play where two people (often portrayed as tramps) meet while waiting for someone named Godot to show up. He never does. But the conversations are deep and meaningful.

Many people throughout humankind must have thought that they were waiting for someone who never shows up. Maybe a parent? Maybe a lover? Maybe God?

Hugh Laurie, English actor, comedian, writer, musician, noted, “It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.”

Here is another kind of waiting. It is the waiting to act before we feel ready. We are waiting to write the Great American Novel, but never get the pen or laptop out and begin writing. We will be a pastor or teacher or business leader—someday when we are ready. Some things we should not sit around waiting for the time to be right. I have seen people waiting for permission—from someone, anyone. We must seize the moment and do something.

Then there is waiting in anticipation. This I like the Jewish people waiting for The Anointed One, meaning King, Messiah in their language. Most of them pictured David returned to kick out the foreigners and re-establish the empire. Not being alive in the first century, I have no idea how prevalent this waiting, indeed longing, was among the Jewish people at large. Definitely it was among the more spiritually attuned. I have read histories that described that era as one of great spiritual longing. The success of Paul among the non-Jews shows that that longing was more widespread than just among the Jews.

I think of the stories in Luke about Anna and Simeon waiting at the Temple convinced that the baby who was the Anointed One would be brought to be dedicated. They were there not just years but decades. Waiting. And then Joseph and Mary brought little Joshua (Jesus in Greek and now English). And they knew. How? God obviously spoke to them. The waiting was over.

Advent as a season of the year to recreate that waiting, but instead of a political king a man who points us toward God with the invitation to enter God’s kingdom the kingdom of heaven. “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand (around us),” he said at the beginning of his ministry. Turn your life around because you, too, can live with God in the Kingdom. Beginning now.

We wait now. Then, we go and do for the wait is over.

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Watching

December 4, 2023

I still remember the story I read as a child about the European/American pioneers trekking from the eastern USA to the western part that was being new developed thanks to gold and stories of plentiful farm land.

The trail went directly through territories inhabited by various tribes of native peoples. Those people weren’t thrilled with the invasion and were known to attack those “wagon trains” traveling through. At night the travelers would post guards to watch for attack. After a hard day of traveling, the guards would be tired. Falling asleep could be fatal for them all.

They solved a problem with a 2-legged stool. They could sit. If they dozed, the stool would tip over and awaken the guard.

The common lectionary for this year’s first Sunday of Advent included the thought of watching. It draws from an odd passage at the end of Mark. I thought of other watching, especially in Luke. There were shepherds watching their flocks. They, too, were observant for predators. But being awake, they could observe the angels and hear the message and take action. There was Simeon in the temple watching for the arrival of the Messiah. And there was Anna also at the temple watching for the arrival of the Messiah.

We are beginning Advent. Are you on guard, watching? What do you expect to see or hear? Who is coming? Where will you watch? Do you expect to see or hear Jesus? Where?

I watch. And wonder. And expect.

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