Faith Venture

The Less I Know

October 16, 2025

George Bernard Shaw said, “The trouble with this world is that the ignorant are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”

A later interpretation of Shaw is the Dunning- Krueger Effect—the less you know about a subject, the more certain you will be that you are correct.

Jesus once said, “Unless you change and develop minds like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” This thought exists in many wisdom traditions. It’s called more simply (and I like simply) “beginners’ mind.”

Unless we empty our minds and soak up learning like children, we become fixed in our beliefs. And these beliefs could, and probably will, be completely wrong.

Journeying on the path to deeper learning, we will encounter friends and acquaintances who have not progressed beyond the beliefs and opinions of childhood. Certainly there exists a small, but thriving, online community that continues to believe the earth is flat.

Encountering such people, which we will daily, our only real response is compassion. Arguing is counterproductive only leading to strained relationships. Acquiescing is not being true to ourselves. Compassion, reflecting the frequent response of Jesus, becomes the way to health.

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Posted in Attitude, Awareness, Learning | Leave a Comment »

How To Be A Good Person

October 15, 2025

Do something good.

Repeat.

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Posted in Doing, Ethics, Habits, Service | Leave a Comment »

Making A Good Run

October 14, 2025

When you go skiing, the goal isn’t making it to the bottom once. What you really want is to make it a great day of many runs until the sun sets.

Similarly with life. It’s not just making it to the end. Or to make it to the end with the most toys. It’s making many runs until the sun sets.

And no matter who you are reading this, you have a few more runs before the sun sets. Get back on the lift and head back up.

Posted in Disciplines | Leave a Comment »

Sleep—The Long Game

October 13, 2025

What stories do you tell yourself when trying to find better sleep. We’ve been told way too often about how beneficial good sleep is. And to get 6-8 good hours of sleep every night.

I’ve been a fan of Kevin Meyer, who writes at Evolving Excellence, for years through his honest and insightful manufacturing and Lean Thinking writing. He’s retired and pursuing new avenues of thinking.

He had told himself the story that a glass of wine before bed would be relaxing and slide him into deep sleep.

Not so.

He eliminated alcohol for 3-4 hours before bedtime immediately realizing a sleep improvement.

My wife needs almost total darkness for optimum sleep. I don’t think that I notice. Meyer invested in a quality sleep mask creating a dark environment. It helped him.

I am a creature of routine. Intentionally. I am in bed plus/minus 15 minutes of 10 pm and up at 5:30 am unless we’re at a concert or traveling. Consistent timing helps the body prepare for both sleep and wake. The only times I use an alarm are when I have an early car to the airport.

We sometimes have a light snack about 2 hours prior to bed time. Meyer also found ceasing eating 2 hours or more prior to bed to be helpful.

I have taken a number of supplements for years. I have not yet taken magnesium l-threonate for relaxation and sleep. Meyer finds the research is compelling with his personal results aligning with the clinical findings.

Posted in Attitude, Habits | Leave a Comment »

Explore Stillness

October 10, 2025

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.—Blaise Pascal

The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung told the story of a therapy session with a man who came to him for treatment. “What you need to do,” Jung instructed him, “is to go home and sit alone in your study for an hour every day.”

The man returned complaining that the therapy did not help. “What did you do?” inquired Jung. “Well, I sat for a while, then I got up and looked out the window thinking of the landscaping, then I got my violin and played for a while, then I wrote a note to my daughter.” Jung told him, “I instructed you to sit still. Just sit still for an hour.” The man was unable to sit still.

People often think of meditation of some sort of exotic experience that only a certain weird set of humans can access.

That is not so. Zen teacher Henry Shukman, explains, “Meditation is exploring what it means to be still.”

Our minds are marvelous creatures for inventing excuses for avoiding things we should do. There are ways around almost everything. You don’t need Jung’s one hour. You don’t even need Shukman’s basic 10 minutes. Rolling out of bed five minutes earlier to spend even that precious five minutes alone and quiet can work wonders. Think of it as an exploration into stillness.

Posted in Meditation, Silence | Leave a Comment »

Embracing the Cold

October 9, 2025

Sometimes in the winter when the outside temperature is below 20 F, I pull on an appropriate coat heading outside for a walk.

I find myself tensed up as if to fight off the cold. Then I remember that my coat is rated for this temperature. I relax my shoulders. Shake my arms. Embrace the joy of a brisk winter walk.

We find ourselves at times in life tensed. Our shoulders tight. Hands in a fist. Perhaps leaning forward. Perhaps abdomen tight.

Then we inhale deeply. Shrug and drop our shoulders. Move our arms. Allow the belly to expand and contract with breath.

We relax into our day.

Posted in Awareness, Intention | Leave a Comment »

Four Useful Tips For Living a Full Life

October 8, 2025

I’ve written about these tips for a few years. Axios Finish Line recently published these in a succinct format. Check them out. Where are you on top of it? Where can you improve?

These four steps — all available for free — will help you thrive, personally and professionally:

🤖 AI yourself. Starting today, learn how to use ChatGPT, Grok or any free or premium LLM to optimize your personal obligations and professional work. AI will make you exponentially more efficient and more capable. Soon, AI inequality — the gap between proficient AI users and the rest — will be the defining characteristic of success vs. struggle at work, especially for those newly entering the workforce. Replace social media or gaming time with AI practice. It’s more fun and useful.

🧠 Bionicize your brain. Social media algorithms are controlling more and more of our brains, often pumping nonsense or anxiety into them. Few of us are powerful enough to resist the algorithmic addictiveness. But, if you unplug your brain from social media and fill it instead with high-quality information — available via podcasts, books, YouTube, Axios, Substack and more — you’ll flourish.

🥦 Optimize you. Almost every expert who studies any dimension of mental and physical health comes to the exact same conclusions. So listen to them. Eat real, healthy, protein-packed foods. Purge fake and ultra-processed garbage. Exercise daily, even if it’s just a walk. Lift some weights. Sleep 7+ hours. Make and keep real, human friendships. Minimize booze and screen time. Do all of this, all free, and you’ll be in the top 5% for setting yourself up to lengthen your healthspan.

😇 Be moral. Another free, easy, life-changing hack: Take the time to read, listen to, and think about values you want to live by. What are your personal red lines about how you treat yourself and others? That is your compass, your morality. Set it, or you’ll get lost. Read, pray, meditate, study those you admire. Form your own personal moral structure — then reinforce it, and lean on it when tough times hit.

Posted in Disciplines, Habits, Living | Leave a Comment »

House of Compassion

October 7, 2025

We sit quietly and still. Our breath, passing through our nose, sighs slow and steady.

We see ourselves outside a small house. The guest house of a large estate. We enter this house of compassion.

We allow our focus to rest on ourselves. We feel a warmth of compassion for ourselves in our chest. We rest in the warmth.

Another visit finds us dwelling on a person. We know that person. We feel their current struggles. We focus compassion on that person. Seconds, minutes, who knows the time. We feel that warmth in the center of the chest. The compassion extends from us to the other.

We have arrived in the House of Compassion.

Posted in Compassion, Meditation | Leave a Comment »

Grace Infusion

October 6, 2025

My last post pondered living in grace.

I am fascinated with the concept of infusion. You know, like when you put tea leaves in a cup of boiling water. Soon the cup is filled with deliciousness.

What if I (and you and everyone) allow grace to infuse us as if we were a cup of hot water and grace the tea leaves?

Then our selves and our lives are filled with this grace deliciousness.

How would we then describe how we live every hour of every day?

Would it be different than how we live now?

Maybe we are already infused, but weakly. Maybe we can become more infused and live even better lives.

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Living In Grace

October 3, 2025

I’ve listened to a sermon series about grace. You know, the grace that comes from God. The grace that the Apostle Paul spends an inordinate amount of time trying not always successfully to explain.

There is one Grace that manifests in different ways. (Sort of like trying to explain that we worship One God, yet there are three—Father, Son, Spirit. Don’t go crazy trying to wrap your head around that. People have gone crazy there.)

Analytically we can observe a grace that is always there waiting for us to acknowledge and accept it. There is grace that comes along with recognizing and accepting God. Then grace that helps us grow spiritually.

Then there are a few ways that we can try to refresh our experience of grace, such as, partaking of the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist, or Holy Communion, or whatever label you use.

The questions that came to me this morning in meditation include—

How do I actually live in grace?

What does that mean in how I relate to people?

Or even, God forbid, consider politics?

Or how I relate to nature?

Has grace so infused my life that people can notice by how I behave toward others?

What do you think? How has grace affected your daily life?

Posted in Grace | 1 Comment »