Faith Venture

Childlike or Childish?

August 24, 2023

I may have written before about how I loved to take woks with my grandson when he was a toddler. We weren’t trying for distance. He would stop and explore leaves and bugs and worms and little lizards. Everything was fresh and new. He was filled with child-like wonder of things.

Perhaps that was the picture Jesus had in mind when he suggested that we should become like little children. Take in new experiences with eyes open with wonder. Accept whatever people came our way with the same anticipation and joy.

The rare times I turn on TV news or scan news on the internet, I’m shocked by the realization of how adolescent and childish so many of these people are.

We need to look at ourselves. The daily Examen. Morning and evening reflect on the day. Where did we delight in someone or something with childlike wonder? Where and when were we acting childish like a 2-year-old?

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Practice or Discipline?

August 23, 2023

Some teachers, not wanting to scare people with the word “discipline”, chose to water the term to spiritual practices. I saw the pool guy yesterday afternoon. We usually meet 2-3 days a week when I’m in the hot tub following my workout, and he’s doing whatever the pool guy does with chemicals and equipment. He asked how I was doing and then said, “You’re quite disciplined.”

When I get the Yoga mat out I am practicing Yoga. When I do it three days a week most weeks, then I have a discipline. Discipline is not a “four-letter-word.” It’s simply a part of my life.

People get on diets to lose weight. Pretty much all diets will cause you to lose weight. That’s not the point. The writers in one of my nutrition and fitness newsletters recently wrote, “The common denominator of all successful diets is how long you can stick to the plan. And that means following a plan that gives you the best chance to stay consistent for many months, and, ideally, years.”

He wrote about some research, “In the study, diet breaks were not associated with faster or more significant fat loss. But that’s only half the story. Even though one group took a one-week break every 2 weeks, they still lost the same amount of fat as those people who dieted without any time off.”

Our nutrition discipline, our physical training discipline, and yes our spiritual disciplines all benefit from a few simple things:

Do something that you can stick to for the long term
Don’t be afraid to modify along the way to keep it interesting
If you need to take a break for travel or life, don’t sweat it
When the break is over, have that discipline ingrained such that you fall right back into it

People try to meditate like the pictures of the beautiful model sitting in lotus with fingers touching looking over the waves of an ocean. Maybe somebody told them 20 minutes twice a day. Some say you need to light candles and burn incense.

Nonsense. Don’t make it so hard. Find a solid chair. Sit upright with good, but not tense, posture. Take a deep breath. Exhale slowly and relax. Focus on your breath. Inhale. Exhale. If thoughts come, heck when thoughts come, don’t worry or force them out. Just let them come and go. You have 2 minutes. That’s a great start. Maybe next week 5 minutes is easy. Most of us just can’t sit still. That takes practice. After a couple of weeks, the practice becomes a discipline. Ha! You have sneaked up on a spiritual discipline. Hopefully one that continues for the long haul.

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What If We Had Time To Think?

August 22, 2023

What if…

These two words along with “why” lead to many thoughts.

Looking at the situation of many people in the world, I thought “what if we had not constructed a society and an economy that depends upon all of us buying more stuff?”

Read the economics news from almost any country in the world today. What do you see? Consumer spending is up or down and therefore the economy is up or down. And employment is up or down.

Media (except this blog which generates no income) depends upon advertising—advertising convincing us by any of the latest psychology findings about motivation—where companies tell us to buy more stuff.

What if we didn’t get caught up in that gerbil cage wheel of consumption? What if we had time, like ancient peoples did, to sit and think? To meditate on God? To engage in conversations? To play?

Maybe today you and I can get off the consumption merry-go-round which drives people to 60-hour work weeks and pause, breathe, become aware of people and places around us?

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In The Spirit and Doing Good

August 21, 2023

An ancient observation, about 4,600 years old:

One of complete virtue is not conscious of being virtuous.

One of whole virtue does not need to do anything in order to be virtuous.

This is similar to what the Apostle Paul tried to explain many times as he taught about those living in the spirit of God as followers of Jesus and those who tried to avoid God’s anger by obeying each and every one of the 600+ laws of the Hebrew tradition.

If we are truly living in the spirit, living a life with-God, we just naturally live good (maybe not exactly perfect but good) lives. We are kind, empathetic, helpful, virtuous. We have peace and joy and hope. We don’t even realize it. We just are.

Yet, so many read Paul in order to find more rules (laws) to add to the 600+ Jewish laws. They unfortunately miss the point.

So many of us miss the point. Missing out on the sort of life that God wishes for us.

Self-awareness begins the journey. Focus and attention—not on ourselves but first on God then on others. Or, maybe first on others then we realize the God part comes along. We can change, otherwise Paul wouldn’t have written all those letters to guide us.

Posted in Awareness, Disciplines, Spirituality | Leave a Comment »

Seeking Proper Alignment

August 18, 2023

I got up this morning with a very stiff lower back muscle. That feeling is rare. I’ve had to bend a few times to loosen it.

It could be my mattress. Most likely the cause stems from a new exercise in my weight lifting routine. I’m thinking about alignment. If I don’t have my body perfectly aligned with my arms raising in the proper alignment and my breath just right, sore muscles will occur.

We teach proper alignment constantly in Yoga. One misalignment holding a pose can cause pain somewhere.

A person I’ve just met asked me about calming her soul. I told her 60 years of meditation dealt with much of my emotional and anger issues. She had heard too much about all the postures, things to do with hands, chants or mantras. I told her it is easy. Don’t stress. Just sit in a solid chair. Relax arms. Eyes closed or open. Don’t care. Thoughts fly through the brain like a flock of blackbirds in autumn. Don’t care. Just align breathing intentionally. In…Out… Thoughts come and go. I told her I can do 2 hours in corpse pose in bed. But 5 minutes a day is sufficient. Heck, even 2 minutes to begin. It’s like an old cola commercial…”the pause that refreshes.”

We align our soul with our breath.

That helps us align our soul with our life leading to a better, more appropriate response to what life brings to us.

The human condition. We think too much. We worry too much. We are anxious about being perfect too much.

Relax. Take a deep breath. Then another. Then tackle life’s challenges one thing at a time as we align our flow to the situation.

Posted in Disciplines, Meditation | Leave a Comment »

Now What?

August 17, 2023

I once shared an office with the president of the county anti-abortion organization. No, I’m not going to debate this issue here. Rather, I asked him:

Now that you have “saved” a baby’s life, Now what?

It is now in a home where most likely the mother is poor and single and the baby is not wanted. Now what?

I don’t know if that question provided the impetus, but the organization did do some things to help mothers.

A friend was focused on “saving” people. I think that meant getting people to say that they “accepted Jesus into their life.” And I asked that friend:

Now what?

Do you just leave that person adrift while you try to add another notch on the belt?

Or, do you develop a relationship that leads the person into experiencing peace, joy, hope, calmness, and so forth? Is it a numbers game? Or a life game?

“I did this.”

“Now what?”

Posted in Disciplines, Doing, Relationship | Leave a Comment »

Above The Law

August 16, 2023

How often do we think we are above the law?

Perhaps it’s petty rules we think do not apply to us. Perhaps it is driving faster than the speed limit or not stopping at stop signs. Perhaps getting away from a merchant paying far less than the price.

Maybe it’s bigger things. Cheating someone in business. Slandering an opponent.

Maybe really big things such as abusing the power given us by an organization.

People thinking they are above the law fill news stories once again. This is not new news. It evidently goes on as far back as civilization.

There is a 3,000-year-old story from the Hebrew scriptures. A very popular King, let’s call him David since that was his name, saw a woman. She was beautiful. Now, most men have seen a beautiful woman and had a fleeting thought about being with her. But, David was king. He had people. He sent one of those people to bring her. It was a request she couldn’t refuse.

As happens when you violate trust and authority, things happened. In the downward spiral he wound up killing the woman’s husband.

The a man who was close to God visited David. He told a story about a man who abused his authority. When David said that man should be punished, Nathan said, “You are that man.”

Where is that voice from God today when we need it?

Listen. It’s there somewhere.

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Forgive Yourself

August 15, 2023

The first step toward living a fulfilling life is to forgive yourself. Forgiving others, the next essential step, is truly impossible until we face ourselves.

We just finished a week of watching season eight of the English drama Grantchester. It is billed as a crime drama. That is only a setting for the real drama. At some point during the season’s eight episodes, the major recurring characters had to face situations of emotional turmoil that persisted until forgiveness came from within themselves before they could reconcile with others.

Truly seeing inside to the sources of my own emotional turmoils took a long time. Even prior to that resolution, I had learned to get past the wrongs perpetrated upon me by others. After reconciling within myself, though, moving on from those wrongs was easier. It takes energy to even remember.

The Apostle Paul taught us, “Get rid of all anger, wrath, malice, slander…”

Develop self awareness recognizing these forces that we must shed. This leads to a life filled with the fruit of the spirit.

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Why Do We Seek?

August 14, 2023

The topic of today’s fitness newsletter was the editor’s observation of the varying goals people have written to him about fitness and nutrition. He asked, Why do you work out? Why an hour a day on a fitness bike, or lift weights, or go out and run daily?

A friend told him once when asked why he spent an hour a day on the exercise bike, “To be lean and mean.” Really? “Well, actually to look good to women.”

That may sound trivial, but not really. It was motivational to get him up and exercising every day.

We grow from those first motivations into more mature and sustainable habits.

I ask you, “Why seek a spiritual life?”

I think I was influenced by the Zen movement of the 50s. The Beatniks. I was more influenced there than by the later Hippie movement. The goal was enlightenment. We weren’t taught the Christian mystics way back then, only Zen Buddhism. Now my library is filled with the writings of Christian mystics.

But, is that really why? A famous Zen master once said, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Much of Eastern wisdom traditions I have read have less to do with enlightenment and more to do with living a full life.

Jesus never said the ultimate goal was a mystical enlightenment. I think his “biographers” (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) only recorded a two or three mystical experiences. He didn’t talk about dying and going to heaven. He talked about how we could live a better life, now, in the “Kingdom of Heaven” now. It is near us, he said. Around us.

I had some inner drive for contemplation and enlightenment. Maybe I’ve had some enlightenment experiences. But, in the end, it was to calm my inner emotions driving anger and anxiety and low self esteem.

Think about your question. What are you seeking? Really? Once uncovered, then you can grow from it. And become a better human for it.

Posted in Living, Spirituality | Leave a Comment »

Process Control, Quality In, Quality Processing, Quality Out

August 11, 2023

Two conversations this week involved process control. One involved coffee beans and the other scrap steel. One discussed why the direct trade coffee (from the Chavarria farm in Nicaragua) tastes so much better than the big chain brands. The other conversation with the CEO of a software company discussed achieving high quality steel products from the raw material input of assorted scrap steel.

A couple of takeaways.

The quality of the feedstock, the raw material the process begins with, impacts the process and the final product.

Adjusting the process to allow for variations of feedstock impacts the quality of the final product.

Just so in our own development.

What is the quality of the feedstock with which you fill your attention and mind?

How do you process, that is, reflect on, the stuff filling your attention and mind?

Posted in Disciplines, Learning, Listening, Thinking | Leave a Comment »