The Deeply Formed Life by Rich Villodas

"Sobriety is intrinsically connected to truthfulness and transparency" (153).

"The practice of sobriety also requires us to reframe addiction. We find it hard to speak honestly about our addiction because we have fixated ourselves on the act and not on the pain the addiction is trying to soothe" (154).

Marva Dawn's exegesis of Genesis 1 and 2 in which she "distinguished genital sexuality from social sexuality. She made the important point that many people anxiously rush for genital sexuality when what they need is social bonding and closeness" (156). 

"In many Christian traditions, doing is often at the expense of being. In others, being is often at the expense of doing. We need a life of doing that flows from being" (173). 

"[When we practice doing without being] Our engagement in the world becomes marked by a kind of stale obligation rather than a joyful participation.

"The remedy for this kind of missional engagement is not total withdrawal but creative withdrawal" (175). 

"God is in the business of rescuing people. We are all called to play a part in facilitating this salvation, but in ways that bear witness to the loving winsomeness of Jesus" (181).

The nice summary in the afterward: "So, to come full circle, when I speak of being deeply formed, I'm specifically referring to a way of being in the world that's marked by new rhythms, contemplative presence, and interior awareness, which results in lives that work for reconciliation, justice, and peace while seeing the sacredness of all of life. It is this kind of life that God wants to form in us. Why? Because our transformation in all these areas is one of the most effective ways to see a world come to experience God's saving love" (217).

Until Unity by Francis Chan

 learning vs. loving

" We owe each other a debt of love "

Keeping Place by Jen Pollack Michel

 "We fall into our lives much more often than we decide them."

Mother to Son: Letters to a Black Boy on Identity and Hope by Jasmine Holmes

 "Here's what I mean: black abortion does not happen in a vacuum. Unless you truly believe that black mothers are more blood-thirsty, ignorant, or depraved than their white or Hispanic counterparts, there has to be something else going on behind those numbers. And while the Republican Party's bread and butter is paying no attention to the man behind the curtain, the Democratic Party's usual stance is to pretend that there is no curtain and focus solely on the man" (46). 

On tribalism: "We don't want to talk to reach understanding. We want to argue to establish dominance."

The More of Less: Finding the Life you Want Under Everything You Own by Joshua Becker

 "You cannot grow in one area of life if you are curious in all the areas."

Prayer in the Night by Tish Harrison Warren

 "I brought a friend to my Anglican church and she objected to how our liturgy contained (in her words) 'other people's prayers.' She felt that prayer should be an original expression of one's own thoughts, feelings, and needs. But over a lifetime the ardor of our belief will wax and wane. This is a normal part of the Christian life. Inherited prayers and practices of the church tether us to belief, far more securely than our own vacillating perspective or self-expression" (16).

"When we pray the prayers we've been given by the church--the prayers of the psalmist and the saints, the Lord's prayer, the Daily Office-- we pray beyond what we can know, believe, or drum up in ourselves. 'Other people's prayers' discipled me; they taught me how to believe again.... We come to God with our little belief, however fleeting and feeble, and in prayer we are taught to walk more deeply into truth" (17).

"Theodicy is not merely a cold philosophical conundrum. It is the engine of our grimmest doubts. It can sometimes wither belief altogether. A recent survey showed that the most commonly stated reason for unbelief among Millennials and Gen Z-ers was that they 'have a hard time believing that a good God would allow so much evil and suffering in the world'" (23). 

"If there is no one to keep watch with us, no who we can trust to look out for us in the night, then anything that happens, however good or bad, is sheer chaos, chance, and biological accident. But belief in a transcendent God means we are stuck with the problem of pain. So there are libraries of books seeking to answer the question of theodicy--responses and solutions offered by the hundreds, many of them good and wise.
"Yet despite all the ink spilled, we are not satisfied. Our questions persist.
"Because ultimately theodicy is not a cosmic algebra question, where we can simply solve for x. It is almost primordial. A scream. An ache. A protest from the depths of the human heart. 
"Where are you, oh God? Is anyone watching out for us? Does anyone see? And tell us why! WHy this evil, this heartbreak, this suffering?
"I have come to see theodicy as an existential knife-fight between the reality of our own quaking vulnerability and our hope for a God who can be trusted. 
"At the end of the day--in my case, literally the darkness of the night--the problem of theodicy cannot be answered. As Flannery O'Connor wrote, it is not 'a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be endured.'
"We sometimes talk about mystery as if it's a code to crack--as if the full sweep of knowledge is available to us, but we just haven't sussed it out yet. But true mystery invokes things that are fundamentally beyond our grasp. Mystery is an encounter with an unsearchable reality, an acknowledgement that the world crackles with possibility because it is steeped in the shocking and unpredictable presence of God. Avery Cardinal Dulles wrote that mysteries are 'not fully intelligible to the finite mind,' but that the reason for this is 'not the poverty but the richness' of the mystery.
"One reason the problem of suffering cannot be answered tidily is that pain and brokenness are, at their roots, anti-rational. Christians understand evil and suffering to be forces of 'anti-creation.' They don't fit in the realm of reason and order because they frustrate reason and disintegrate order. If there was a neat rationale for pain, it would necessarily fit somewhere in the order of the cosmos, an essential part of reality. But the early church's understanding of suffering and evil was that they were an absurd and inexplicable abnormality, a gross absence of the good and true.
"But secondly, and much more importantly, the problem of pain can't be adequately answered because we don't primarily want an answer. When all is said and done, we don't want God to simply explain himself, to give an account of how hurricanes or head colds fit into his overall redemptive plan. We want action. We want to see things made right.
"At its heart, theodicy is the longing for a God who notices our suffering, who cares enough to act, and who will make all things new. It is an ache that cannot be shaken, which we all share deep in our bones and carry with use very day--and every night" (24-26).

"Francis Spufford writes, 'We don't have an argument that solves the problem of the cruel world, but we have a story.'
"If there is anything remotely approaching a Christian answer to our questions about theodicy, the story is the answer" (29).

"The story we live by is one that we somehow enter into--we discover our own small lives and stories in the larger story of God and his church.
"We do that through practices and prayers we receive from those who have gone before us. We take up and learn the craft of faith that allows us to know an actual, surprising, frustrating, and relentlessly merciful God. In the present tense" (30). 

"God is good an powerful, and terrible things regularly happen in the world.
"The church has always known this paradox, but instead of resolving its tension, it has let it persist. We have left this chord humming in dissonance for thousands of years, always believing that it will only be resolved when God himself sounds the final consonant note.
"My deepest question, Where is God in all this? is an ache that I hope to endure until my longing meets its end I want justice; I want resurrection; I want wholeness, wellness, and restoration. And I won't be fully satisfied until God--before whose face our questions die away--sets every last thing right" (27). 

"If the question of whether God is real or not--or or whether God is kind or indifferent or a bastard--is determined solely by the balance of joy and sorrow in our own lives or in the world, we will never be able to say anything about who God is or what God is like. The evidence is frankly inconclusive... For every breathtaking splash of a whale's breach, I raise you a forest fire obliterating acre after acre. For every monarch migration, I raise you ticks spreading Lyme disease. For every mother enraptured by her child's first smile, there is another mother whose newborn struggles for his final breath. For every inspiring act of human goodness, there is another person scheming against the weak. In all our lives, from the happiest to the most tragic, the circumstantial evidence for God's goodness is divided. There is beauty and there is horror" (28). 

"Spufford writes that, ultimately, 'we don't ask for a creator who can explain himself. We ask for a friend in time of grief, a true judge in times of perplexity, a wider hope than we can manage in time of despair.' If we suffer deeply, he says, there is no explanation, no reason, no answer that can ease our heart-break. 'The only comfort that can do anything--and probably the most it can do is help you endure, or if you cannot endure to fail and fold without wholly hating yourself--is the comfort of feeling yourself loved'" (33).

"Feeling sadness is the cost of being emotionally alive. It's the cost, even, of holiness" (41).

"If we do not make time for grief, it will not simply disappear. Grief is stubborn. It will make itself heard of we will die trying to silence it. If we don't face it directly it comes out sideways, in ways that aren't always recognizable as grief: explosive anger, uncontrollable anxiety, compulsive shallowness, brooding bitterness, unchecked addiction. Grief is a ghost that cannot be put to rest until it's purpose has been fulfilled" (43).

"The Christian response to a culture of outrage must not be to mimic or perpetuate it, but we also cannot simply condemn outrage in favor of some pure form of enlightened logic that denies emotion altogether. There is, truly, plenty to be upset about, plenty of loss to mourn, plenty to lament. The church's prophetic witness to an outrage culture is to be a people who know how to weep together at the pain and injustice in the world (both past and present) and at the reality of our own sin and brokenness. We must learn to listen tot he fear and sadness underneath the anger that people spew through political vitriol and digital venom" (44). 

"It is better to come to God with sharp words than to remain distant from him, never voicing our doubts and disappointments. Better to rage at the Creator than to smolder in polite devotion. God did not smite the psalmist. Through the Psalms, he dares us to speak to him bluntly.

"Yet, to make things trickier, most of us not only live in a culture that has inoculated itself against lament, we also live in a cultures where it's easy to assume we know better than God. We are taught in subtle ways that our feelings and experiences are the center of reality. This is cultivated in both big and small ways every day. An advertisement for jeans blares from my radio, proclaiming, 'I speak truth in my Calvins.' This constant messaging reduces us to mere agents of self-expression and curated identities--what we think, what we feel, what we want, and what we buy...We wait for God to convince us he's a useful accessory to our own project of self-creation. In this way, so very subtly, we approach God not in honest lament but as unhappy customers. God isn't giving us what we want, he isn't taking away the pain of this world, and frankly he's so terribly slow. We are not pleased with the job God is doing, and the customer is always right" (49).

"God himself took the time to grieve. He is no stranger to the weight of heartbreak and horror, to the ache of swollen eyes that have cried so long they've run out of tears. He did not numb himself or downplay the losses. He never gave a pat answer. God was--and remains-- shockingly emotionally alive" (51).

Prayer from friend & parishioner Noel: "Grant me, O Lord, for your sake, through the work of your Holy Spirit, love for my patient, joy in participating in this work, peace as I follow your lead, patience in the trying times of this case, kindness... to all in the room, goodness in this difficult task, faithfulness to have integrity in the details even when no one else but you sees... and self-control that my own sins of anger, anxiety, and vain-glory would not mar my judgment" (74).

"In the face of loss or failure, we launch immediately into work--into solutions, activity, programs, and plans--without leaving space for grief or attentiveness to God, our work will be compulsive, frenzied, and vain. (This is why, by the way, I reversed the prayer's order and began with weeping. Except in emergencies, there is usually wisdom in not going straight to work.) If we watch for God's restoration without also mourning and laboring, we minimize the urgent needs of the world and become sentimental, apathetic, or passive. If we weep without watching for the coming kingdom and participating in God's work, we fall into despair. To take up the practices of weeping and watching compels us to work, and our work is shaped and sanctified by being people who, through embodied and habitual practices, have learned to weep and to watch" (75).

"It turns out that God hasn't been trusted to keep bad things from happening to us for generations upon generations. And yet generations upon generations have trusted God.

"How can this be?

"We don't pray the way people use magic" (114).

"There is no contradiction here. Christian asceticism is never meant to be a denial of the goodness of materiality or embodiment. Christianity is an earthy, pleasure-affirming faith. But Christians have practiced self-denial in order to learn to enjoy good things in their proper place.

"We embrace ascetic practices to learn to suffer. We know that we all inevitably will suffer, so we practice it ahead of time. It's an exercise in discomfort... By doing so, we learn over time how to enter into a soothing that is deeper than what's offered by our drug of choice. We learn to face the pain we are avoiding" (133).

"Since birth we have been nurtured on the logic of consumerism--that pain can be erased, or at least dulled through enough consumption. If we can buy enough, be successful enough, be famous enough, imbibe enough, get the girl or the guy, get the home and the career, then our suffering can be soothed. We can even use spirituality in the same way, marketing God or the spiritual life as the path to self-fulfillment and triumph, not the way of the cross. We've been brought up on this lie like a daily vitamin, and it has harmed us--as people, as a culture, as a church" (134).

"There is wisdom that can be wrought only in self-denial--only when all our other props, devices, and numbing agents are taken away" (134).

"I can set up my own subconscious timetables, for myself or others, about how long suffering should last. But most often, healing takes longer than we think it should. The quick fix is always a temptation, but the quick fix for suffering is dishonesty, addiction, and the denial of their humanity. Even in the church we often want people to help themselves, fix themselves, and save themselves--and hurry it up already.

"But as we learn to long for God to soothe us and others, we also learn to wait on the slow process of him doing so" (136).

"In this prayer we ask God to 'pity the afflicted.' the word pity has fall on hard times. It seems woefully inadequate for what we long for. It sometimes invokes defensiveness, as in, 'I don't need your pity.' But the root of the word pity is from the Old French word for compassion. To feel pity is to share in someone else's sadness, to commiserate with another's suffering. In a world prone to tribalism and outrage, to hardheartedness, judgment, and apathy, we all need as much pity as we can get, both from God and others.

"And here again, this prayer challenges my assumptions. We don't ask God directly to take away the affliction of the afflicted--though he might, out of pity. That's what I most want to ask: 'Dear God, end all affliction.'

"And our hope is that God will. Someday.

"But for now, we ask that God would show sympathy. In this particular prayer, we don't ask for a permanent solution, but for God to suffer with us, which is what compassion literally means. We ask that God might feel what we feel, to enter into the dark room in which we find ourselves and sit with us in our pain and vulnerability. It's a bold ask: that God himself would suffer with the alcoholic, the homeless kid, the Alzheimer's patient, the bipolar woman in a manic spell--that somehow the Holy One would feel precisely and palpably what they are feeling. We're asking that God see this kind pain and enter into its depths, not as a voyeur but as one who suffers with us" (140).

Why Do I Feel Like This? by Peace Amadi

"Emotions as energy... Recall what you've learned about energy, perhaps from a past physics course. Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transferred or transformed. This is the law of conservation of energy, and we can apply it to our understanding of the way emotions work... What we resist persists. Unexpressed negative feelings get stores in our minds and bodies only to later manifest in rage, resentment, broken relationships, chronic healthy issues, anxiety-boosting avoidance, passive aggressiveness, and undesired changes in personality. our feelings will move throughout our body until we do something with them." 

Growing up... "Deep down I believed the bullying wasn't the fault of the bullies; it was mine."

"Dignity is the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect. Thus, restoring dignity means engaging with someone in a way that communicates that inherent worthiness of honor and respect."

"In my studies of worship in Scripture, I've come to define it as the reflection, contemplation, acknowledgment, engagement, celebration, elevation, and adoration of the truth of God. Worship is a heart-grasp of who God truly is."

"Look at how Mirriam-Webster defines the word enough: 'occurring in such quantity, quality, or scope as to fully meet demands, needs or expectations.'

"I love it every time I read it. When we believe that we are enough, we believe that within ourselves we have as much quantity, quality, and scope of whatever is needed to fully meet the demands and expectations of our lives.

"Whatever is required of relationships--the ones we have and the ones we desire--we have enough of it. 

"Whatever is required of our career, we have enough of it.

"Whatever is required of success, we have enough of it.

"Whatever is required of lasting impact and influence, we have enough of it.

"Whatever is required of joy and happiness, we have enough of it.

"Whatever is required for the dreams of our hearts, we have enough of it.

"Whatever is required of the calling God put on our lives, we have enough of it.

"For everything God has created, designed, and planned for our lives, we are enough for it. We don't need anything more than we already have."

Envy: "The object of your envy must be similar or comparable to you....We'll feel it toward the people with a similar start line, in a similar race. People who look like us and act like us. People our same age. People who graduated when we graduated or started their business the year we did. Because when people similar to us have something we don't, our perceived lack of progress feels personal. It's much harder to explain. The gap between where they are and where we are seems to point to a problem within ourselves. And that's the real problem with envy."

"We need to feel like our current engagements and activities are related to and working toward a future outcome. This is a sense of purpose.

"We need to feel like our actions reflect some sort of moral value--for example, value for justice, freedom, liberation, helping, healing, family, respect.

"We need to feel effective. We need to feel that we have enough power and control over our outcomes to truly make a difference in some positive way.

"We need to feel a positive sense of self-worth. Namely, we need to feel valuable to others and also distinctive from everyone else.

"All four needs--purpose, moral value, self-efficacy, and positive self-worth--must play out in our daily lives for us to feel like our lives have meaning."

"Loneliness is what happens when you're not sharing anything that matters to you with anyone else."

Psalm 77

Plasticity of the brain: "I have fun showing [my students] clips of six-month-olds who can tell the difference between identical-looking primates but then lose that ability by the time they're nine months. Since human babies don't need the super skill of distinguishing primates from one another, but rather the ability to distinguish their human caregivers from strangers, the latter skill is what will be strengthened throughout their early years.

"Unused abilities will disappear. It's the repetition of their actual experiences that matters here. That's what the brain wraps itself around. Experience. Experience acts like an architectural blueprint for a developing brain.

"Thought itself is also an experience. This has been the focus of Dr Caroline Leaf, a cognitive neuroscientist and a believer who studies, among other things, the mind-brain connection. Her work has revealed the incredible discovery that thought itself changes the brain. Our thinking can literally alter brain structure and matter"

"Sadness signals to us that we need some soothing and comforting."

"Emotional range is a hallmark of wellness... Allowing ourselves to feel sadness is actually what helps us release it."

Quoting someone else about materialism, that people are more likely to be materialistic when they see messages that pursuit of money and possessions is important, and "Second, and somewhat less obvious--people are more materialistic when they feel insecure or threatened whether because of rejection, economic fears or thoughts of their own death."

Quoting her father: "You need the kind of faith that won't fail you. You choose your type of faith."

"When heartbreak occurs, something else happens. These feel-good hormones drop, and cortisol explodes...Too much cortisol is the result of too much heartbreak."

"Beliefs don't change on account of good words. Beliefs need to be altered at the level they were created. New beliefs require new experiences."

Finding Holy in the Suburbs by Ashley Hales

Hales may have a distinct idea of what "suburbs" look like, but I think her observations and challenges apply to anyone in any area who is tempted to find personal safety, security, and satisfaction as their highest good, being surrounded by a culture that teaches this. And I would argue that's most of us in this cultural moment. She does speak uniquely into the the issues facing the demographic who is isolated or just closed off from the needs of others or who is tempted to idolize house, home, and family. I love that Hales first reminds us of God's greater story, and that our ultimate good is in seeking him. Having this perspective, many of our outward actions look the same, but this orientation leads to true contentment and belonging, and does lead to a life of true sacrifice that looks different than what the world is selling. Lots to think on and apply here. 

"When we try to find ourselves in a product only available to a select few, we miss out on finding both the kingdom of God and ourselves. Ultimately, because a house remains imminently 'chase-able,' as the chief object of our desires, we equate rootedness, safety, and shelter with an object that money can buy. We answer our hunger for home and belonging with a house.... Houses are more than mere objects, more than status symbols, more than indicators of wealth and privilege. We hope, of course, to find home in them. But we also hope to find ourselves. The sovereign self is inextricably linked to the house... In our homes we choose... Our practices of home and the stuff of home illustrate what we value. For most of us in the suburbs, we ultimately value ourselves."

"As we walk this line of detaching ourselves from the shiny objects we pursue for belonging and run to the Man of Sorrows, we will find contentment. There alone is belonging, no matter your circumstances. The good life is only in the suburbs to the extent that you, in the suburbs, are in God. God is our promised land, our ultimate home."

"Staying put is not based on permanence, it is a call of presence."

"We functionally trust in our wealth, not Jesus to save us."

She mentions a quote from this article where Stern describes the research that being exposed to those in need makes us more generous, amid findings that the wealthiest among us are statistically likely to give away the least, and it's not likely to be to an organization that helps the poor.  

"Also, as an offering to your suburb, you will have to die. Your dreams of the good life will have to be swallowed up into the sweeter story of the gospel, whose narrative arc never has us at its center, but God alone. Every other thing and idea you serve in the suburbs, safety, success, self-provision, self-actualization, productivity, will put you on a treadmill that never ends. There will always be safer fences for you to erect, to protect you and yours, physically and emotionally."

"We embrace sacrifice as the good life" with Jesus as our example. 

"Flourishing is only found on the other side of sacrifice."

"My tears are not a liability."

"Placement alone never makes us holy. You glorify God by being a faithful member of your suburb."

Boundaries for Your Soul by Allison Cook and Kimberly Miller

"In Celebration of Discipline Richard Foster observed, 'By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they only get us to the place where something can be done. They are the means by which we place ourselves where God can bless us.' Our religious activities, or spiritual disciplines, on their own don't change us, they create an environment in which growth can occur."

 "Whether of not you realize the full potential of this relationship vision depends not on your ability to attract the perfect mate, but on your willingness to acquire knowledge about hidden parts of yourself" --Harville Hendricks, Getting the Love You Want

I am still relatively new to this Internal Family Systems framework, but I see it as quite helpful. Cook and Miller give us a helpful process of identifying the different "parts" of our internal worlds, seeing what those internal conflicts are really about, and experiencing growth and healing. I'm still a bit hesitant about talking to the different parts of myself as if they are distinct persons, but I get the point they are trying to make and it is helpful. I am so aware of the need to approach the "inviting Jesus to be near" portion with discernment and care; flawed theology here is likely to leave to further wounding and also ruptures of faith. I so long to develop my "baptized imagination," but the language of metaphor and image is so much more helpful than the yes-no, right-wrong thinking that comes naturally to me. Overall, a helpful work. I plan to practice much of what I heard here. 

The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu

"We have already remarked how who we are can be defined, at least in part, by what we attend to - how much more so this is when what we attend to is determined less by our volition and more by ambiance. When we speak of living environments and their effects on us, then, we're often speaking too broadly of our city, the countryside, and so on. Our most immediate environment is actually formed by what holds our attention from moment to moment, having received or taken it. As William James once put it, 'My experience is what I agree to attend to.'"

Quoting a journalist in London from the US during WW2: "The journalistic approach, while objective, is not neutral." 

"Video games also consumed something else, human attention, in a way that was both old and new at the same time. As in any real game--be it tennis, pinball, or blackjack--the fast-flowing stimuli constantly engage the visual cortex, which reacts automatically to movement. No intentional focus is required, which explains why children and adults with Attention Deficit Disorder find the action of video games as engrossing as anyone else." Hm, interesting.

"In retrospect, the word 'remote control' was ultimately a misnomer. What it finally did was to empower the more impulsive circuits of the brain in their conflict with executive faculties, the parts with which we think we control ourselves and act rationally. It did this by making it almost effortless, practically nonvolitional, to redirect our attention--the brain had only to send one simple command to the finger in response to a cascade of involuntary cues. In fact, in the course of sustained channel surfing, the voluntary aspect of attention control may disappear entirely. The channel surfer is then in a mental state not unlike that of a newborn or a reptile. Having thus surrendered, the mind is simply jumping about and following whatever grabs it.

"All this leads ot a highly counterintuitive point: technologies designed to increase our control over our attention will sometimes have the very opposite effect. They open us up to a stream of instinctive selections, and tiny reward,s the sum of which may be no reward at all. And despite the complaints of the advertising industry, a state of distracted wandering is not really a bad one for attention merchants; it was far better than being ignored."

"Perhaps a century of the ascendant self of the self's progressive liberation from any trammels not explicitly conceived to protect other selves, perhaps this progression, then wedded to the magic of technology serving not the state or even the corporation but the individual ego, perhaps it could reach no other logical endpoint, but the self as its own object of worship.

"Of course, it is easy to denigrate as vanity even harmless forms of self-expression. Indulging in a bit of self-centeredness from time to time, playing with the trappings of fame, can be a form of entertainment for oneself and one's friends, especially when undertaken with a sense of irony. Certainly, too, the self-portrait, and the even more patently ludicrous invention, the selfie stick, has become too easy a target for charges of self-involvement. Humans, after all, have sought the admiration of others in various ways since the dawn of time; it is a feature of our social and sexual natures. The desire of men and women to dress up and parade may be as deeply rooted as the peacock's impulse to strut. Like all attention harvesters, INstagram has not stirred a new yearning within us, merely acted upon one already there, and facilitated its gratification to an unimaginable extent. Therein lies the real problem.

"Technology doesn't follow culture so much as culture follows technology. New forms of expression naturally arise from new media, but so do new sensibilities and new behaviors." 

Tim Wu has undertaken a sweeping history of the harvesting and selling of attention for profit, from the earliest advertisements for snake oil, to the enveloping of behavior psychology's insights in marketing, to now big tech and social media simultaneously holding and fragmenting our attention. All along the way, we see that, as Wu says, "Technology doesn't follow culture so much as culture follows technology." I found it haunting. 

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."

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

"Usefulness does not equal worth... despite what capitalism says, productivity does not equal value."

"I am opposed to the way that corporate platforms buy and sell our attention, as well as to designs and uses of technology that enshrine a narrow definition of productivity, and ignore the local, the carnal, and the poetic. I am concerned about the effects of current social media on expression, including the right not to express oneself, and its deliberately addictive features. But the villain here is not necessarily the internet or even the idea of social media. It is the invasive logic of commercial social media, and its financial incentive to keep us in a profitable state of anxiety, envy, and distraction. It is furthermore the cult of individuality and personal branding that grow out of such platforms, and affect the ways we think about our offline selves and the places where we actually live."

"Our citizenship in a bio-region means not only familiarity with the local ecology, but a commitment to stewarding it together. It's important for me to link my critique of the attention economy to the promise of bio-regional awareness, because I believe that capitalism, colonialist thinking, loneliness, and an abusive stance toward the environment all co-produce one another."

"Simple awareness is the seed of responsibility."

"I'm sort of the quintessential California atheist."

"If we think about what it means to concentrate, or pay attention at an individual level, it implies alignment. Different parts of the mind and even the body acting in concert, and oriented toward the same thing. To pay attention to one thing is to resist paying attention to other things. It means constantly denying and thwarting provocations outside the sphere of one's attention. We contrast this with distraction, in which the mind is disassembled, pointing in many different directions at once, and preventing meaningful action."

"As I noted earlier, there is a significant portion of people for whom the project of day-to-day survival leaves no attention for anything else. That's part of the vicious cycle too. This is why it's even more important for anyone who does have a margin, even the tiniest one, to put it to use in opening up margins further down the line. Tiny spaces can open up small spaces. Small spaces can open up bigger spaces. If you can afford to pay a different kind of attention, you should."

"I don't know what a personal brand is, other than a reliable unchanging pattern of snap judgments. 'I like this, and I don't like this,' leave little room for ambiguity or contradiction."

"I worry that if we let our real-life interactions be corralled by our filter bubbles and branded identities, we are also running the risk of never being surprised, challenged, or changed, never seeing anything outside ourselves, including our own privilege."

"Eventually, to behold is to become beholden to." 

"It's pretty intuitive that truly understanding something truly understanding something requires attention to its context. What I want to emphasize here is that the way this process happened for me with birds, was spatial and temporal. The relationships and processes I observed were things adjacent in space and time. For me, a sensing being, things like habitat and season helped me make sense of the species I saw, why I was seeing them, what they were doing, and why. Surprisingly, it was this experience, and not a study on how Facebook makes us depressed, that helped me put my finger on what bothers me so much about my experience of social media. The information I encounter there lacks context, both spatially and temporally.

"For example, let's take a look at my Twitter feed right now as I'm sitting inside my studio in Oakland in the summer of 2018. Pressed up against each other in neat rectangles, I see the following: an article on Al-Jazeera by a woman whose cousin was killed as school by ISIL; an article about the Rohinga Muslims fleeing Myanmar last year, an announcement that At Dosharee Zone, a joke account, is selling new T-shirts, someone arguing for congestion pricing in Santa Monica, California; someone wishing happy birthday to former NASA worker Katherine Johnson, a video of NBC announcing the death of Senator McCain, and shortly afterward cutting to people dressed as dolphins appearing to masturbate on stage; photos of Yogi Bear mascot statues dropped in a forest; a job alert for director of the landscape architecture program at Morgan State University; an article on protests as the Pope visits Dublin; a photo of yet another fire erupting, this time in the Santa Ana Mountains; someone's date visualization of his daughter's sleeping habits during her first year; a plug for someone's upcoming book about the anarchist scene in Chicago; an Apple ad for Music Lab featuring Florence Welch. Spatial and temporal context both have to do with the neighboring entities around something that help define it. Context also helps establish the order of events. Obviously, the bits of information we're assailed with on Twitter and Facebook feeds are missing both of these kinds of context. Scrolling through the feed, I can't help but wonder, 'What am I supposed to think of all this? How am I supposed to think of all this?' I imagine parts of my brain lighting up in a pattern that doesn't make sense, that forecloses any possible understanding. Many things in there seem important, but the sum total is nonsense. And it produces not understanding, but a dull and stupefying dread."

"Presented with information in the form of itemized bits and sensationalized headlines, each erased by new items at the top of the feed, we lose that which was spatially and temporally adjacent to that information. But this loss happens at a more general level as well. As the attention economy profits from keeping us trapped in a fearful present, we risk blindness to historical context at the same time that our attention is ripped from the physical reality of our surroundings."

"...much necessary work is ignored or devalued as caregiving, a gendered after thought to the real dynamos of the economy, when in reality, no shared life could do without it."

"It's tempting to conclude this book with a single recommendation about how to live, but I refuse to do that. That's because the pitfalls of the attention economy can't just be avoided by logging off and refusing the influence of persuasive design techniques. They also emerge at the intersection of issues of public space, environmental politics, class, and race. Consider two things in tandem: first, people in wealthier neighborhoods almost always have more access to urban parks and to park land, on top of the fact that such neighborhoods are often in the hills or by the water... Second, consider that while seemingly every kid in a restaurant is now watching bizarre, algorithmically-determined children's content on YouTube, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both severely limited their children's use of technology at home. As Paul Lewis reported for The Guardian, Justin Rosenstein, the Facebook engineer who created the Like button, had a parental control feature set up on his phone by an assistant to keep him from downloading apps...without personal assistants to commandeer our phones, the rest of us keep on pulling to refresh [like on Twitter, a feature the creature is 'penitent' about bringing into the world], while overworked single parents juggling work and sanity find it necessary to stick iPads in front of their kids faces. In their own ways, both of these things suggest to me the frightening potential of something like gated communities of attention--privileged spaces where some, but not others, can enjoy the fruits of conemplation and the diversification of attention."

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Like the deeply introverted Gifty, I held my experiences with God and the Scriptures I had memorized sequestered inside my being as I went into a world both full of wonder and discovery and also set against the idea of there being a God if his existence implies any bit of relevance or answerability.

"This is something I would never say in a lecture or a presentation or, God forbid, a paper, but, at a certain point, science fails. Questions becomes guesses become philosophical ideas about how something should probably, maybe, be. I grew up around people who were distrustful of science, who thought of it as a cunning trick to rob them of their faith, and I have been educated around scientists and laypeople alike who talk about religion as though it were a comfort blanket for the dumb and the weak, a way to extol the virtues of a God more improbable than our own human existence. But this tension, this idea that one must necessarily choose between science and religion, is false. I used to see the world through a God lens, and when that lens clouded, I turned to science. Both became, for me, valuable ways of seeing, but ultimately both have failed to fully satisfy in their aim: to make clear, to make meaning."

 

"My mother crawled out of her deep, dark tunnel, but perhaps this phrasing is too imprecise, the image of crawling too forceful to encapsulate the relentless but quiet work of fighting depression. Perhaps it is more correct to say that her darkness lifted, the tunnel shallowed, so that it felt as though her problems were on the surface of the Earth again, not down in its molten core."

 

"'I think it's beautiful and important that to believe in something, anything at all. I really do.'

"She said the last part defensively because I was rolling my eyes. I'd always been annoyed by any whiff of the woo-woo, faux spirituality of those who equated believing in God with believing in, say, a strange presence in a room. In college, I'd once left a spoken-word show Anne had dragged me to because the poet kept referring to God as a 'she,' and that need to be provocative and all-encompassing felt to trite, too easy. It also went counter to the very concerns of an orthodoxy and a faith that ask that you submit, not in the kumbaya spirit of the Earth, but in the specific. In God as he was written, and as he was. 'Anything at all' didn't mean anything at all. Since I could no longer believe int he specific God, the one whose presence I felt so keenly when I was child, then I could never simply 'believe in something.'"

 "We read the bible how we want to read it. It doesn't change, but we do."

 "Like everyone else, I get a part of the story, a single line to study and recite, to memorize."

"I'd once been like that, so lonely that I craved further loneliness." 

"I think we are made of stardust and God made the stars."