Atomic Habits (second reading-- from about June 2020-May 2021)

"Your outcomes are lagging measures of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your clutter is a lagging measure of you cleaning habits. You get what you repeat" (18).


"Work isn't wasted, it's stored."

"Your habits are how you embody your identity" (36).

"The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do" (38).

"Each habit not only gets results but also teaches you something far more important: to trust yourself" (38).

"New identities require new evidence...Once you decide the type of person you want to be be  (39)

"Every action is a vote for the kind of person you want to be."

"Before we can effectively build new habits, we need to get a handle on our current ones. This can be more challenging than it sounds because once a habit is firmly rooted in your life, it is mostly non-conscious and automatic. If a habit remains mindless, you can't expect to improve it. As the psychologist Carl Jung says, 'Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate'" (62).

"Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior" (82).

"Making a better decision is easy and natural when the cues for good habits are right in front of you... Environmental design is powerful... Be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it" (87, emphasis mine).

"...whatever habits are normal in your culture are among the most attractive behaviors you'll find" (114).

"... there are many different ways to address the same underlying motive. One person might learn to reduce stress by smoking a cigarette. Another person learns to ease their anxiety by going for a run. Your current habits are not necessarily the best way to solve the problems you face; they are just the methods you learned to use. Once you associate a solution with the problem you need to solve, you keep coming back to it" (128).

"Even the tiniest action is tinged with the motivation to feel differently than you do in the moment. When you binge-eat or light up or browse social media, what you really want is not a potato chip or a cigarette or a bunch of likes. What you really want is to feel different" (130).

"Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition. The more you repeat an activity, the more the structure of you brain changes to become efficient at that activity...First described by neuropsychologist Donald Hebb in 1949, this phenomenon is commonly known as Hebb's Law: 'Neurons that fire together wire together'" (143).

"The most effective form of learning is practice, not planning" (147).

"Out of all the possible actions we could take, the one that is realized is the one that delivers the most value for the least effort. We are motivated to do what is easy" (151).

"Habits like scrolling our phones, checking email, and watching television steal so much of our time because they can be performed almost without effort. They are remarkably convenient.

"In a sense, every habit is just an obstacle to getting what you really want. Dieting is an obstacle to getting fit. Meditation is an obstacle to feeling calm. Journaling is an obstacle to thinking clearly. You don't actually want the habit itself. What you really want is the outcome the habit delivers" (152).

"The idea behind make it easy is not to do only easy things. The idea is to make it as easy as possible in the moment to do things that payoff in the long run" (153).

"You can also invert this principle and prime the environment to make bad behaviors difficult" (157).

Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" (203). 

Quote back from chapter 1: "If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change" (252).

An Almost Zero Waste Life: Learning How to Embrace Less to Live More by Megean Weldon

 "I believe shopping is a way to cope with stress, anxiety, and depression. Shopping can be addictive because it gives you a sense of immediate accomplishment and instant gratification. These feelings of instant gratification and accomplishment increase our feelings of pleasure, or in this case, our levels of the hormone dopamine, which leads us to continue to shop. Usually, you don't buy what you need--you buy what you need to feel good" (93). Oof. 

 This volume is packed with practical ideas for just about every area of life, broken up into neat sections with bullet points. I think this makes is conducive to beginners picking up ideas for starting small. She does point out that it's near impossible to have a completely zero waste life, and that moving in that direction is a process. Overall, I think Weldon comes across a lot less shaming than many in this space (based on my very limited experience). For example, when discussing glue sticks: "Use natural, nontoxic glue sticks if you can find them. If not, it's not the end of the world" (113). But to me, the work still seemed to have a tone of "You're not doing enough! Try harder!" like when she was discussing "Get your kids outside. Encourage them to put down their mobile devices and go plan outside. Bonus points if they play with a sibling or a friend!" (113). This is just an expression, I suppose, (as is the expression "it's not the end of the world," in this context, cringe), but still made me recoil a bit and wonder exactly who is handing out points. I need to read a bit more in this genre before I'm sure if this is recommend-able, I don't have enough of a sense where it is on the spectrum of available resources. 

Reading While Black by Esau McCaulley

CHAPTER 1: The South Got Something to Say

 "If the Bible needs to be rejected to free Black Christians, then such a view seems to entail that the fundamentalists had interpreted the Bible correctly. All the things that racists had done to us, then, had strong biblical warrant" (9). Here he's speaking of fundamentalists as those that "used the Bible as justification for their sins, personal and corporate" (8). 

"Given that evangelical means different things to different people, it is important to clarify what I mean by the term" (9). He describes Bebbington's quadrilateral: 
"--Conversionism: the belief that lives need to be transformed through a 'born-again' experience and a lifelong process of following Jesus.

"--Activism: the expression and demonstration of gospel in missionary and social reform efforts.

"--Biblicism: a high regard for and obedience to the Bible as ultimate authority

"--Crucicentrism: a stress on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as making possible the redemption of humanity.

"It is common knowledge that when it comes to beliefs about the Bible and Christian theology more generally, evangelicals and Black churches have much in common. Very few Black churches would have a problem with what is included in this list. The problem is what is left out" (10). 

"Eventually I started to notice a few things. While I was at home with much of the theology in evanglicalism, there were real disconnects. First, there was the portrayal of the Black church in these circles. I was told that the social gospel had corrupted Black Christianity. Rather than placing my hope there, I should look to the golden age of theology, either at the early years of this country or during the postwar boom of American Protestantism. But the historian in me couldn't help but realize that these apexes of theological faithfulness coincided with nadirs of Black freedom. 

"I learned that too often alongside the four pillars of evangelicalism obtained above were unspoken fifth and sixth pillars. These are a general agreement on a certain reading of American history that downplayed injustice and a gentleman's agreement to remain largely silent on current issues of racism and systemic injustice. How could I exist comfortably in a tradition that too often valorizes a period of time when my people couldn't buy homes in the neighborhoods that they wanted or attend the schools that their skills gave them access to? How could I accept a place in a community of the cost for a seat at the table was silence?

"My struggle was more than different readings of American history and issues of justice. I had difficulty with how the Bible functioned in parts of evangelicalism. For many, the Bible had been reduced to the arena on which we fought an endless war about the finer points of Paul's doctrine of justification. True scholars were those who could articulate the latest twists and turns in a debate that has raged since the Reformation. Yes, the question of our standing before God is important, vitally important (I laud the great emphases of the Reformation). But I wondered what the Bible had to say about how we might live as Christians and citizens of God's kingdom. I was told that the Bible says we must defend the sanctity of life. the authority of the government (including the military and the police), and religious freedom. Again, each of these questions is important. I am pro-life. I am not an anarchist. But what about the exploitation of my people? What about our suffering, our struggle? Where does the Bible address the hopes of Black folks, and why is this question not pressing in a community that has historically been alienated from Black Christians?" (11-12).

"One more story. Midway through the writing of this chapter, I was invited to give a lecture on Black biblical interpretation to a group of COGIC pastors. I began by outlining much of the material covered so far. I spoke about the Black church of my youth, mainline Protestantism, Evangelicalism, and the Black progressive tradition. I had planned on discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each when a pastor stopped me in the middle of the lecture and asked what they were supposed to do. He said that he accepted my criticism of a complacent orthodoxy that doesn't advocate for the oppressed. But when he sends his clergy to colleges and seminaries that share his concern for the disinherited, too often that comes at the price of the theological beliefs that he holds dear. I was asked where one could go that shares their social concerns and takes seriously their belief that the Scriptures are God's Word to us for our good. Who could they read that combined both? They said it seemed like they needed to go to one source for theological analysis and another for social practice" (14, emphases mine).

Quotes Brian Blount: "Euro-American scholars, ministers, and lay folk... have, over the centuries, used their economic, academic, religious, and political dominance to create the illusion that the Bible, read through their experience, is the Bible read correctly" (20). 

"For those of us who want to continue to affirm the ongoing normative role of the Bible in the life of the church, it will not do to dismiss the concerns raises about the Bible from many quarters. The path forward is not a return to the naivete of a previous generation, but a journeying through the hard questions while being informed by the roots of the tradition bequeathed to us. I propose instead that we adopt the posture of Jacob and refuse to let go of the text until it blesses us. Stated differently, we adopt a hermaneutic of trust in which we are patient with the text in the belief that when interpreted properly it will bring a blessing and not a curse. This means that we do the hard work of reading the text closely, attending to historical context, grammar, and structure" (21). 

CHAPTER 2: FREEDOM IS NO FEAR

"I am afraid still because I worry that my sons or daughters might experience the same terror that marked the life of their father and my ancestors before me.

"This fear might seem unwarranted to some. I am tempted to list statistics about Black folks and our treatment at the hands of the police. But I am skeptical that statistics will convince those hostile to our cause. Furthermore, statistics are unnecessary for those who carry the experience of being Black in this country in their hearts. We know, and this book is for us" (41).

CHAPTER 3: TIRED FEET, RESTED SOULS

"Nearly sixty years after the publication of this letter [King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"], the debate around the role of the church in the public square continues. Was King's mission to end segregation and create a just society at all analogous to the work of Paul and the prophets or was it merely partisan politics? Was his public and consistent criticism of the political power structure of his day an element of his pastoral ministry or a distraction from it?

"For many Black Christians the answer to this question is self-evident. We have never had the luxury of separating our faith from political action" (49). 

"...Romans 13:1-7 should be read as a testimony to our inability to discern when God's judgment will arrive. This does not mean that a Christian cannot protest injustice, it means that we cannot claim God's justification for violent revolution. Submission and acquiescence are two different things" (51).

"Prayer for leaders and criticism of their practices are not mutually exclusive ideas. Both have biblical warrant in the same letter" (53). 

"A theology of mourning allowed Rev. Dr. King to look on the suffering of the people in Birmingham and refused to turn away. Mourning calls on all of us to recognize our complicity in the sufferings of others. Sin is more than exploitation, but it is certainly not less. A theology of mourning never allows us the privilege of apathy. We can never put the interests of our families or our country over the suffering of the world" (65).

"To hunger for justice is to hope that the things that cause us to mourn will not get the last word" (66).

"Peacemaking, then, cannot be separated from truth telling. The church's witness does not involve simply denouncing the excesses of both sides and making moral equivalencies. It involves calling injustice by its name" (68).

"Once we posit a Creator, which is the bedrock of all Jewish and Christian theological reflection, then all things become possible. Building on the words of St. Paul, 'Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?' (Acts 26:8). Why can't God enable a virgin birth?" (86).

"One more point needs to be made here as it specifically relates to Black Christian biblical interpretation. In chapter one, I argued that all theology is canonical in that everyone who attempts to think about the Bible must place the variety of biblical texts in some kind of order, understanding one in light of others. This isn't unique to Black Christians; everyone does it.

"The question isn't always which account of Christianity uses the Bible. The question is which does justice to as much of the biblical witness as possible. There are uses of Scripture that utter a false testimony about God. This is what we see in Satan's use of Scripture in the wilderness. The problem isn't that the Scriptures that Satan quoted were untrue, but when made to do the work that he wanted them to do, they distorted the biblical witness. This is my claim about the slave master exegesis of the antebellum South. The slave master arrangement of biblical material bore false witness about God. This remains true of quotations of the Bible in our own day that challenge our commitment to the refugee, the poor, and the disinherited" (91). 

"God's vision for his people is not for the elimination of ethnicity to form a colorblind uniformity of sanctified blandness. Instead God sees the creation of a community of different cultures united by faith in his Son as a manifestation of the expansive nature of his grace. This expansiveness is unfulfilled unless the differences are seen and celebrated, not as ends unto themselves, but as particular manifestations of the power of the Spirit to bring forth the same holiness among different peoples and cultures for the glory of God" (107). 

CHAPTER 7: THE FREEDOM OF THE SLAVES

"On the first read, the Bible does not appear to say all that we want it to say in the way that we want the Bible to say it. And yet this is the crucial part: the Bible says more than enough. The story of Christianity does not on every page legislate slavery out of existence. Nonetheless, the Christian narrative, our core theological principles, and our ethical imperatives create a world in which slavery becomes unimaginable" (138).

"Jesus' argument [that 'it was not this way from the beginning'] suggests that the norms for Christian ethics are not the passages that are allowances for human sin, such as Moses' divorce laws. What matters is what we were made to be. Jesus shows that not every passage of the Torah presents the ideal for human interactions. Instead some passages accept the world as broken and attempt to limit the damage that we do to one another" (141).

BONUS TRACK: FURTHER NOTES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF BLACK ECCLESIAL INTERPRETATION

"All Christians are part of one story and are in varying levels of dialogue with past and present interpretations. Christian communities do not spring into existence ex nihilo" (175).

"...I speak to interpreters generally, there is a difference between acknowledging the social location of interpretation and letting said location eclipse the text itself" (182). 

"First, there is no one Black tradition, but at least three streams: revolutionary/nationalistic, reformist/transformist, and conformist. Much of the modern academic dialogue highlights the heirs to the revolutionary and conformist traditionist. I hoped to make a case for a third thing within the African American tradition. Second, I noticed that there were some common tendencies among the reformist/transformist stream. I named this the Black ecclesial tradition because I think it lives on in the pulpits even if it is less often in print" (183). 

McCaulley teaches us that social location is not everything, but it certainly a real consideration when endeavoring to read the Bible rightly, and that the church thrives when people from different perspectives bring their questions and interpretations to the community. McCaulley's exemplary demonstration of this, addressing issues he and his community face being Black in America, is theologically-rich, Scripturally-rooted, and truly an exercise in hope. I'm not sure if I was the intended audience, but I sure found it encouraging. I also loved listening to McCaulley's interview on the Bible Project (here) and highly recommend it. 

You Are Enough by Jonathan Puddle

 "In every way, you are enough for God." (Is this the conclusion to be drawn from his desire to create me? What is the evidence for this claim? I don't see anything mentioned, scripturally or logically.)

"We will use our thoughts about the goodness and generosity of God as a growing point, to which we will add breathing exercises in order to relax our minds and bodies. Let's begin" (1).

"If I was God and I was thinking about you, I would think that you were just like me. I would think that you were pretty freaking amazing. And I would love you" (3). From the beginning, this premise isn't based in Scripture, though Scriptures are quoted, but rather in some imagination of how things would be "if I was God." Basically, alert, alert, alert!

"You are the beautiful and good creation of an all loving God who made you so that you could experience and enjoy life. But no one ever gave you an instruction manual. People were cruel to you and life began to include much hardship. You have only ever been doing the best you could. The best you know how to do given the circumstances" (21). In some ways, this is graceful truth. But it is not the whole truth. That is a shoddy picture of why God created us, if the explanation is void of any mention of a relationship with him. And I'm not saying that the points he's making aren't inappropriately dismissed by some in certain theological circles (ie, sometimes we really are doing the best we can in our own woundedness and condemnation just leads to further harm), but I'm pretty sure that the omission of even the slightest reference to sin is dangerous, and could be considered heretical here. 

"The good news is that your brain can continue to grow and learn new ways of living. You are not stuck in this way. The good news is that God looks to you with compassion and grace. God does not see filthy, God sees beautiful. God does not see wretched, God sees wounded. God does not punish, God restores. All this time you have contained within yourself the glory of God and you have only ever been doing the best could to protect it. Now that you are grown, you can begin the journey back to your original glory, the glory of a human being created perfectly in the image of its creator" (22). Again, the fact that not even a nod is given to sin, atonement, justification, etc in this discussion makes it hard for me to see it as coming from a Christian worldview. And honestly, I just don't have much interested in a worldview that is clearly not a Christian worldview, trying to package itself as that. 

So many of us need a message like the one he gives in page 29, where he tells us to speak to ourselves and say, "God dwells in you. God likes you. God enjoys your company. God's capacity for compassion is in you. When God looks at you, he overflows with love towards you. Just the way you are, with all your sins and shortcomings, you are enough for God because you are God's child." This IS TRUE for the believer, and that is glorious, but part of the reason it's glorious is because of what God has done to deal with sin, the fact that our guilt isn't unfounded and he has dealt with the very real shame, not because we were foolish to believe guild & shame ever existed. 

"If you encounter presence that was not kind or safe, then it's not Jesus." Is this true for all of us all the time? He mentions this right after discussing the story of God driving out those buying & selling in the temple. Did those whom Jesus drove out with a whip find him safe and kind? I firmly believe and cling to the fact that because of Christ's work on the cross, God'd disposition toward us is always kind and safe. But again, you're leaving out key pieces of the puzzle for this fitting in with an orthodox Christian worldview. This is so frustrating to me because so many of us need to know that for the believer, God's disposition toward us is one of kindness, gentleness, and unconditional acceptance. But if you're saying that he's like that at all times to all people, it just doesn't make sense! Not to mention that such things make me feel unsafe, the idea of God showing the same disposition toward me as the unrepentant abuser of children, the impenitent actor of genocide, etc. 

He does have so many good things to say. We need messages like, "emotions are meant to draw your attention to what's going on around you" (91), and pointing out that Scripture teaches that God also has emotions. And that "emotions aren't good or bad, they're just information."

But then... "Your emotions only ever tell you the truth," and "the truth is highly subjective." I think he's trying to say that we don't feel things for no reason, that we need to get curious about what's going on instead of just disregarding/stuffing, that our emotions are showing us how we are interpreting what's happening, or as he expounds later, "emotional processing relies on data from prior events, not from logical reasoning" (92). But for the LOVE, this is so convoluted of course I can't look here for more good info.

I did make myself finish the book. He did have more to say about sin near the end (day 28). He says, "This [his retelling of the Prodigal Son] is a true story. It is the story of every one of us, who went our own way in search of freedom and pleasure, only to end up wounded and alone" (178). That is the most I'd heard him say that could be seen as talking about sin. Soon after, he says, "God became a human in Jesus so that we might experience the revelation of our belovedness and his goodness. That's what the Gospel is all about. God would become his own creation so that we would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we were loved and that his intentions towards us were only ever good. The Father didn't require Jesus' blood to be poured out like some kind of vengeful pagan deity, requiring death to be appeased. It was us who needed to see God die at our own hand before we would believe that this intentions were good,that he wouldn't control us or punish us. It was us who was blinded--by sin--to the reality that God is always close at hand, that he has never withdrawn his presence from us. When Jesus died, he sunk down into death itself, taking all the sin of humanity with him, lower than any person had ever sunk before. Because he was God, death could not hold him and he defeated it, rising to the right hand of God, cleansing us from sin and bringing with him every one of us who has ever lived" (179). 🥴 I'm not even sure what to say about that. But these theological views, paired with what I found to be a confusing explanation of emotional issues, made this a book I cannot recommend.

Born to Rebel by Benjamin Mays

I wanted to read this because I heard Mays quoted by Reginald Washington at my sister's graduation from CSU in May 2019. The quote,

“It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is sin.”

spoke to my Enneagram 9 heart. I looked up Mays and found out he'd written an autobiography, and now I've finally read it.

It wasn't all that I was expecting. Lots of information about Mays' work to end segregation in the South, which should be expected; maybe some of it started to sound a little redundant, and I didn't connect with the level of detail he was offering (certain events, people, all going about pretty much the same thing). He did share a bit about his upbringing, how he was personally affected, and how his work intersected with his faith. Overall, though, the book was more about his professional life in academia and a lot less about other things than I was hoping for. He referenced his work as a pastor, but so few details were given! I wanted to know more about relationships among different churches, how he saw doctrine intersecting with race relations. He referenced his wives but incredibly little detail was given about his personal life-- he mentioned having to live in a different state than his first wife-- what? Tell me more about that! Honestly, the work was a bit of a slog for me, (reading books from decades ago, about history, focusing on difficult topics isn't easy) but I'm glad I read it. 

One thing that will stick with me for awhile, I think, is the way that Mays described questioning "innate racial inferiority." As much as he knew that racism was wrong, and that every person made in God's image has equal value, the repeated messages from the people and structures around him made him question whether he was inferior, whether he deserved to be treated that way. It sounded very similar to what Kendi described in the introduction to Stamped from the Beginning. I find it so fascinating to think about how society's messages affect us... often in ways of which we aren't even aware.

 "To the extent that men possess freedom, to that extent they have responsibility" (XPi, introduction).

"Guild and innocence are meaningless words: the Negro is always blamed, always punished" (17).

"Vaguely, yet ardently, I longed to know, for I sensed that knowledge could set me free" (41).

"When I was at State College [the one state school where Black people could study], each of the four colleges for whites in South Carolina usually received more appropriation that State although more than 50% of the population of South Carolina were Negroes. The excuse for this blatant inequity and discrimination was usually that white people paid most of the taxes. This argument never took into account the fact that the taxable properties and wealth of the whites were the result of the starvation wages paid Negroes. Moreover, in a democracy the poorest and the richest child are entitled to the same training at public expense. Poor whites, who paid no direct taxes, had access to the public schools without any form of discrimination" (43). He goes on to say that the State College for Blacks only received 2% of the budget's appropriation for Higher Ed. 

"One has to rebel against indignities in some fashion in order to maintain the integrity of the soul" (47).

"If Jim Crowe cars, Negro waiting rooms at railroad stations, segregated Negro schools, and all the other accessories after the fact of segregation had been as good for Negroes as for whites, there would have been no need for separation" (102).

"Although the Negro has helped to make the wealth of the nation, he has not been allowed to help shape the policies of how that wealth is to be distributed. And this is true, too, in the use of government funds. Negroes constitute ten percent of the population of the country. It is my considered judgement that not one foundation, not one government agency, national or state, has ever thought in terms of allocating ten percent of all monies given for education to the support of black institutions or for the education of blacks" (193). 

"The steward [who refused to let him sit in the white section, but also refused to ask the white men to move who were occupying the Negro section] and the writes who came to his rescue were the law, and could refuse to seat me at the only table vacant in the diner. The law was not made for white men to keep but for Negroes to obey" (198).

"For many decades, the South has tried to make the world believe that the Southern way of life (the segregated way) was acceptable to Negroes. They trumpeted loud and long that Negroes were happy and satisfied with apartheid, Southern style, and that whenever a Southern Negro complained it was not really he who was speaking but, instead, he was being 'used' by white Yankees or by Communists. It was always 'outside agitators' who were 'stirring up trouble'; Southern blacks were content with things just as they were...

"But the South was committed to its fantasies. Every Southern Negro who spoke out against the status quo was automatically labeled a Communist or a fellow traveler. Those of us who were staunch supporters of the NAACP, [and others]... were labeled radical... Anyone who attended a meeting where any Communists were present, no matter how few, was promptly accused of having 'Communist leanings'" (209). 

"I believe that throughout my lifetime, the local white church has been society's most conservative and hypocritical institution in the area of White-Negro relations. Nor has the local black church a record of which to be proud. The states, schools, business enterprises, industries, theaters, recreation centers, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, trains, boats, waiting rooms, and filling states have all played their ignominious roles in the tragedy of segregating the black man and discriminating against him; but at least none of these enterprises claims to have a divine mission on earth. The church boasts of its unique origin, maintaining that God, not man, is the source of its existence. The church alone calls itself the House of God, sharing this honor with no other American institution. The church is indeed sui generis.

"The local white churches, the vast majority of them, have not lived up to their professed Christianity, because Christian fellowship across racial barriers is so inherent in the very nature of the church that to deny fellowship in God's house, on the basis of race or color, is a profanation of all that the church stands for" (240). 

"The church was so much a part of the system that lynching was accepted as part of the Southern way of life just as casually as was segregation" (243).

"I can sing and praise Atlanta as I sing the National Anthem and 'America,' as I recite the Declaration of Independence, read the Bill of Rights, and rejoice over the adoption of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. I know that the Declaration of Independence was not meant for me; that its chief architect, Thomas Jefferson, was a slave owner; that the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments have not been fully implemented; and that the 'land of the free' and 'sweet land of liberty' are not equally applicable to black and white. But these are the ideals to which the nation clings and the goals toward which it strives when it is at its best and think nobly. It is not always easy for a black man to swear allegiance to the flag, but the American dream is embodied in that allegiance, and until it is repudiated one can still hope for and work toward the day when it becomes a reality. As long as Atlanta struggles toward the dream, I can sing Atlanta" (275).

"Today, we take Negro policemen and firemen for granted. But it was terrifying to attend the public hearings in 1948 when Atlanta was trying to make up its mind about employing Negro policemen. The then Mayor, William B Hartsfield, Chief of Police Herbert Jenkins, and the aldermen made the decision to employ Atlanta's first Negro policemen in 1948. Yet it is probably not generally known that not until 1961, thirteen years later, could a Negro policeman arrest a white man. Negro police officers were confined to Negro neighborhoods; separate precincts were provided for them; and civil service status was withheld until their worth had been proven: (276).

"Seldom if ever does a weak, powerless group receive its fair share of citizenship rights merely because it should. This fact obtains as surely in Christian and democratic countries as it does in totalitarian states" (284).

"I interpret black power as a good thing. It is a blessing if it convinces black people that their strength lies in solidarity, and that black men can never get political and economic power if they are divided and fighting among themselves...

"But the phrase 'black power,' accompanied by the 'clenched fist,' is nothing more than a futile gesture unless it is filled with meaning and designed to develop a program to achieve for the black man that economic, political, and educational power which will enable him to bargain from a position of strength" (315).

"I believe in black awareness and black consciousness. No man is free unless he accepts himself for what he is and can become. If black awareness means that black people are proud of themselves, proud of their heritage, apologizing to nobody, not even to God, for what they are--black: wholly black; brown-black; yellow-black; or white-black; it is good. If it means that they will not be swept off their feet by the glamour of a partially desegregated society, it is indeed a fine thing for the black world... If it means in the minds of Negroes that is it just as good to be a black American as it is to be a white American, I embrace the concept. On the other hand, if integration means or implies that one must forswear his identity as a Negro, I reject it" (317).

"I believe in black colleges. For twenty-seven years I was president of one where the student body was almost one hundred percent black and where the faculty and board of trustees were racially mixed. But I do not believe in a black college or university if this means that all students, all faculty and staff members, the student body, and all financial support must be black. Even if the idea were a practical one, I could not embrace it, for setting people apart fosters segregation, which Negroes have fought against for a century" (317).

"I have always felt that white people who defend segregation as if it were a very God must be shivering cold in their emotional insecurity" (320).

"I am convinced that any program designed to solve the black-white problem by providing a geographically segregated place for twenty million blacks is destined to failure. Moreover, believing as I do in nonviolent actions of the Gandhi-Martin Luther King, Jr., type are the best way by which to improve Negro-white relations, I am convinced that any offensive, violent programs instigated by Negroes will profit little. Nor do I believe that the black man's salvation lies in the total destruction of the present social, economic, and political systems, and that on the ruins of a new order justice, freedom, and equality for all Americans will spring, full-blown. The same tainted and distorted humanity that built the present systems will build the new. Whatever the future holds for the American people, it must be accepted that the United States belongs to the black man as much as to the white man" (321). 

"But we seldom realize what discrimination does to the person who practices it. It scars not only the soul of the segregated but the soul of the segregator as well. When we guild fences to keep others out, erect barriers to keep others down, deny to them the freedom which we ourselves enjoy and cherish most, we keep ourselves to our own souls. We cannot grow to the mental and moral stature of free men if we view life with prejudiced eyes, for thereby we shut our minds to truth and reality, which are essential to spiritual, mental, and moral growth. The time we should spend in creative activity we waste on small things which dwarf the mind and stultify the soul. It is both economically and psychologically wasteful. So it is not clear who is damaged more--the person who inflicts the discrimination or the person who suffers it, the man who is held down or the man who holds him down, the segregated or the segregator" (354).

"The churches are called upon to recognize the urgency of th e present situation. Even if we laid no claim to a belief in democracy, if the whole world were are peace internationally, if atheistic Communism had never developed, if Fascism had never been born and Nazism were wholly unknown, a nonsegregated church and social and economic justice for all men are urgent because we preach a gospel that demands our deeds reflect our theory" (354). 

"But even when secular bodies initiate the change, local churches, Negro and white, follow slowly or not at all. It will be a sad commentary on our life and time if future historians can write that the last bulwark of segregation based on race and color in the United States and South Africa was God's church" (355).

Shadow & Light by Tsh Oxenreider

 "Lean into the joy of knowing, even if there is no accompanying joyful spirit" (68).

Think Again by Adam Grant

 "What he lacked is a crucial nutrient for the mind: humility. The antidote to getting stuck on Mount Stupid is to take regular doses of it... While humility is a permeable filter that takes life experience and converts it into knowledge and wisdom, arrogance is a rubber shield that life experience simply bounces off of." 

"The goal is not to be wrong more often, it's to recognize that we're all wrong more often than we'd like to admit, and the more we deny it, the deeper the hole we build for ourselves."

Part of the polarization problem... binary bias. "It's a basic human tendency to seek clarify and closure by simplifying a complex ___ into two categories. To paraphrase humorist Robert Benchley, there are two kinds of people: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't." 

"When someone knowledgeable admits uncertainty, it surprises people, and they end up paying more attention to the substance of the argument. Of course, a potential challenge of nuance is that it doesn't seem to go viral. Attention spans are short. We only have a few seconds to capture eyeballs with a catchy headline. It's true that complexity doesn't always make for good sound bites, but it does seed good conversations."

"It turns out that although perfectionists are more likely than their peers to ace school, they don't perform better than their colleagues at work."

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey (ABANDONED)

 "I'l be mortal forever."

"soy luz" does not mean "YOU ARE LIGHT" (!)

He tells of being led by a wet dream, "all on one hit of ecstasy" and finding truth. (What kind?)

"When you're up to nothing, no good's usually next." 

Oh, and the cocky laughs on the audiobook, argh. 

Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen

 "Opposition on so tender a subject would only attach her the more to her own opinion."

Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri

 "A patchwork memory is the shame of the refugee. Did I tell you that already?"

"Memories are tricky things, they can fade or fester."

"I think making anything is a brave things to do. Not like fighting brave, obviously, but a kind that looks at a horrible situation and doesn't crumble. Making anything assumes that there's a world worth making it for. That you'll have someplace, like a clown's pants, to hide it when people come to take it away. I guess I'm saying, making something's a hopeful thing to do. And being hopeful in a world of pain is either hopeful or crazy." 

"Miracles are absurd by definition. 
"If they weren't, they'd just be odd things that happened. Improbable things. 
"But while miracles are impossible, they aren't coincidences. They're knives that cut into our reality, and they're messy, and weird. 
"So all of a sudden, my mom had a six-year-old, saying she was a Christian, which--if you didn't know--was a crime in Iran. 
"Not a regular one either, a capital crime, the kind where if you're found guilty they kill you.
"I suppose if you don't want to believe it, all you have to do is say my sister wanted to be like Ellie, or she wanted to harass my mom. Both of which were true. 
"Or she was dreaming. 
"Or the pain medication for her finger made her brain wibbly. 
"Miracles are easy to explain away. 
"It doesn't really matter what you believe. 
"Because the point is that Sima, that's my mom's name, was forced at that moment to pay attention.
"She came to England unwilling to hear Ellie's (or Sanaz's) conversion story. When they arrived in England, they found a church that welcomed them. That made them Christians.
"Sima was a committed Shiite Muslim at the time, which meant--

"You know what, you're not ready for this.
"You kinda have to know the history of Islam--which Sima knew-- and compare it to her experience in England as she heard about Christianity. Then you can compare the claims they make about Truth and Reality that we all share but also mostly ignore in different parts. Which is why we can see the same thing but come to different conclusions about how to heal all our broken hearts. 
"Which we all have.
"Which is such a big part of our lives that we don't even notice the pain of it. 
"We're completely numb to it, because it's constant. 
"It's so true it's boring. 

"Which is really our brains, terrified, hoping to ignore the fact that we have giant holes in our chests.

"That's why everyone is distracted with TV shows and no one likes to talk about it. 

"Our broken hearts problem.

"But we're gonna have to talk about it soon, so gird your loins, reader.

"For now, here's a poop story to make you feel better. Or if not better, at least distracted." 

"If you wanna know how rich somebody is, just look at what they eat and how they poop. Everybody does both, so it's not like comparing cars" (174).

Still Life by Louise Penny

 "Homes, Gamache knew, were a self-portrait."

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

 "It's hard to split a man down the middle and always reach for the same half"- Samuel, 163.

"Now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." --Lee

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

 Seems like there's so many of ways of knowing, of gleaning knowledge from nature. One typical Western way is to completely ignore the thing and look at a screen. It seems a Native way may be to animate the thing. I think a Christian way might be to see the thing as a signpost. 

Jesus and John Wayne by Kristen Kobes Du Mez

 "Although Wayne occupies a prominent place in the pantheon of evangelical heroes, he is but one of many rugged, and even ruthless, icons of masculinity that evangelicals imbued with religious significance. Like Wayne, the heroes who best embodied militant Christian masculinity were those unencumbered by traditional Christian virtues. In this way, militant masculinity linked religious and secular conservatism, helping to secure an alliance with profound political implications."

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer

 "Sabbath is a way of saying, 'Enough.' Buying isn't always bad, but most of us have more than enough to enjoy a rich an satisfying life. As the psalmist said, 'I lack nothing.'"

"Your time is your life and our attention is the doorway to our hearts."

Bearing God's Name by Carmen Joy Imes

 She pointed out that other ANE (though I cannot remember if she used that term) deities made many demands of their followers as well, but they didn't know exactly what those demands were, they just lived in constant fear of displeasing them and being punished. In that light, God's revelation of his commands is merciful, showing the people the way to blessing. 

The Covenant Code or "The Book of the Covenant" is Exodus 20:22-23:19

Exodus 23:20-21--there is an angel that will continue to guide

All the people were sprinkled with blood because they were part of the covenant and called to be priests. Usually covenants were between suzerain (great kings) and vassals

Exodus 32:14- God repented

Leviticus 18-20- moral purity; Leviticus 11-15- ritual purith

liminal spaces (limen= Latin for doorway)

"Liminality exposes all our rough edges" (105).

"Jesus has no patience for those whose verbal proclamations do not match their agenda" (138).

"Lip service to Jesus without action that flows out of an intimate relationship is falsely bearing his name" (143).

"Peter's extended quotation from Joel includes the words, 'everyone who calls on the name of the Lord (kyrios) will be saved' (Acts 2:21; cf. Joel 2:32). In Joel, that name is Yahweh, signified in our English translations by "the LORD" in all caps. For Joel, Yahweh brings salvation to the remnant. Since kyrios is the Greek word that normally translates Yahweh in the Old Testament but also designates the 'Lord' (or 'master') Jesus in the NT, the significance of Peter's quotation is not immediately evident. Is Peter saying that those who call on Yahweh will be saved? Or those who call on Jesus?

"Later in the narrative Peter clarifies by healing a lame man 'in the name of Jesus Christ' (Acts 3:6) and declaring, 'Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved' (Acts 4:12). Appearing so soon after this quotation of Joel, Peter's statement presents a paradox: no other name but Yahweh and no other name but Jesus. The salvation available only to those who call on Joel's kyrios, Yahweh, is now found exclusively in Peter's kyrios, Jesus. Peter is convinced that Jesus of Nazareth is Yahweh in the flesh, 'God with us.'

....

"The hymn of Philippians 2 ascribes to Jesus the 'name that is above every name' (v. 9). Significantly, it also echoes Isaiah 45:23, one of the most important monotheistic texts in the Hebrew Bible. Yahweh had announced, 'I am God and there is no other' (Isaiah 45:22), adding, 'Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear' (45:23). In Philippians 2:9-11, Paul applies these words to Jesus (emphasis added):

"Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

and gave him the name that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

"Here Jesus is drawn to a role that Yahweh himself was expected to fulfill. Bearing Yahweh's name (the 'name above every name'), Jesus receives worship that belongs to God alone, and yet somehow God the Father is still glorified. As explained earlier, kyrios stands for the proper divine name, Yahweh, throughout the Greek Old Testament and into the New Testament. Therefore, the 'name above every name' is not 'Jesus.' Rather, he is given 'the name' LORD (kyrios), which is Yahweh. Knees will bow at the name that belongs to Jesus, that is, Yahweh" (152-153). 

"According to Colossians 1:15, Jesus is 'the image of the invisible God.' He represents the Father perfectly, but he is not the first image of God. The first humans were designated as God's image in Genesis 1:26-27. Scholars have suggested a variety of possibilities for what this might imply. Rather than an indication that they looked like God or shared some of his characteristics (e.g. creativity or relationality or eternal nature), I read Genesis as saying that humans function as the image. Humans are not like God's image, they are his image.

"In the ancient world, and 'image' or tselem was something concrete. Every deity had a temple, and every temple had an image. The image was a physical representation of the deity, a visible sign of his or her dominion. John Walton argues that the creation account in Genesis is meant to remind us of a temple dedication. Yahweh has build the cosmos as the temple in which he resides and the domain over which he presides. Rather than setting up a statue of himself, he makes men and women. We function as the sign of his rule to the rest of creation. 

"This sounds quite similar to bearing God's name: Covenant members are also representatives of God to the nations. However, there's an important difference between the concepts of being the image and bearing the name. Discussing it here will help clarify the implications of each and offer a fuller picture of biblical theology.

"Both being the image and bearing the name relate to the concept of election. God has chosen people and given them a job to do.

"Too often we think of 'election' as a matter of 'being picked to be saved.' But in Scripture, election is more like a game of blob tag, where if I'm 'it,' and I tag you, then we're both it. We run around together and try to tag as many others as we can, who join hands with us and continue tagging others until everyone has been tagged. In this game, the essence of 'it-ness' is to tag others. So, too, the essence of election, and therefore the essence of the believer's vocation, is to represent God by mediating its blessing to others. Once we are 'it' we don't lean back in our recliners, glad that someone picked us. No, to be 'it' is to tag others. And to be elect--to be his--is to bear his name among the nations, to demonstrate by our lives that he is king and to mediate his blessings to others. That is the whole point of being the elect...

"Every human being is an image bearer, whether conscious of it or not. As the crown of creation, humans bear witness to the majesty of our creator God. We extend his rule over creation by caring for it and bringing order to it.

"Name-bearing, on the other hand, is restricted to those in covenant relationship with Yahweh. It's the second dimension of election involving only a subset of humanity. The purpose of covenant election is to provide a visual model of people rightly related to the creator God, Yahweh.

"Jesus fills both dimensions of election by perfectly imaging God and bearing his name with honor. He is the human par excellence as well as the faithful covenant member through whom others can be reconciled to God" (164-166).

"For Moses, those who obey God's commands and worship him alone are considered 'faith-full,' and those who do not are 'faith-less.' Obedience and faith could almost be considered synonyms. To claim belief in God without obeying him--to bear his name in vain--would be an unthinkable contradiction for Moses" (179).

"Liminality exposes all our rough edges."