"It's tough to understand and balance the fact that our faith is through grace alone by faith alone and we are called to pursue good works to the glory of our Father" (33).
"God's grace is sufficient. Pain is hard, and he knows it. Enduring suffering is at times akin to torture, and he doesn't ask us to deny that. Sometimes we want to give up. He doesn't expect us to grin and bear it, and he doesn't leave us alone. 'His grace is sufficient' means he is with you. He will sustain you with his righteous right hand" (47). True, but the use of that word torture. The suffering of the children of a sovereign God is akin to torture, and yet somehow he is good. Oof.
The choice of Randy Alcorn as an example of endurance irked me. He had to learn humility with a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes (the difficulty of which I have to right to demean, but in this age with treatments and his access to medical care, and his obvious good support network just make it difficult for me to find that very compelling), and he "was arrested for blocking the doors of abortion clinics," for which he had to pay a large settlement and could only make minimum wage or his wages would be garnished, and he still has the royalties of all of his books go to his ministry so that he won't have to pay the settlement against his conscience. Am I the only one who has a nasty taste left in my mouth after hearing that example? Anyway...
"Lift your weak knees, unless they are bowed down in prayer to the One who saves. God isn't asleep; he's awake and active in our midst. If every person leaves the church and we divide in every way possible, we still have a great mission to go and make disciples of all nations. If every social issue that seems to smack Christian ethics in the face becomes law, we continue to preach the truth in love and serve our neighbors" (86).
"Of course, God isn't physically present. We can't touch him or hold his hand. But he is there just the same, guiding our steps and counseling our hearts according to truth, if we'll only listen" (88).
Saturday, May 30, 2020
Sunday, May 24, 2020
05.24.2020 🎧 Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading by Eugene Peterson
I think I heard about this one from Lisa Hensley and the blurb + Lore Wilbert's praise for Eugene Peterson in general were enough for me to pick it up. And I'm so glad I did. So many wise insights and reflections on Scripture.
What we need is "reading formatively, reading to live."
"If you're after devotionally cozy Bible reading, you have to pick and choose a good bit. There are such huge chunks of it that either put you to sleep or keep you awake nights, but there are little crib sheets available at most Bible bookstores that tell you what parts of the Bible to read when you want to be comforted or consoled, or whatever your present disposition requires. I don't want to be too hard on any one of these groups of Bible readers, especially since I've spent considerable time in each group myself, but I do want to call attention to the conspicuous fact that in whatever group you find yourself, you will be using the Bible for your purposes, and those purposes will not necessarily require anything of you relationally. It is entirely possible to come to the Bible in total sincerity, responding to the intellectual challenge it gives, or for the moral guidance it offers, or for the spiritual uplift it provides, and not in any way have to deal with a personally revealing God who has personal designs on you. Or to put it in the terms in which we started out, it is possible to read the Bible form a number of different angles and for various purposes without dealing with God as God has revealed himself, without setting ourselves under the authority of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who is alive and present in everything we are and do. To put it bluntly, not everyone who gets interested in the Bible and even gets excited about the Bible wants to get involved with God. But God is what the book is about."
"The form in which language comes to us is as important as its content. If we mistake the form we will almost surely respond wrongly to its content. If we mistake a recipe for vegetable stew for a set of clues for finding buried treasure, no matter how carefully we read it, we will end up as poor as ever and hungry besides."
"Exegesis is foundational to Christian spirituality. Foundations disappear from view as the building is constructed, but if builders don't build a solid foundation, their building doesn't last long. Because we speak our language so casually, it is easy to fall into the habit of treating it casually. But language is persistently difficult to understand. We spend our early lives learning the language, and just when we think we have it mastered, our spouse says, 'You don't understand a thing I'm saying, do you?' WE teach our children to talk, and just about the time we think they might be getting it, they stop talking to us, and when we overhear them talking to their friends we find we can't understand more than one our of every 8 or 9 words they say. A close relationship doesn't guarantee understanding. A long affection doesn't guarantee understanding. In fact, the closer we are to another and the closer the more intimate our relations, the more care we must exercise to hear accurately, to understand thoroughly, to answer appropriately. Which is to say, the more spiritual we become, the more care we must give to exegesis. The more mature we become in the Christian faith, the more exegetically rigorous we must become. This is not a task from which we graduate. These words given to us in our Scripture are constantly getting overlaid with personal preferences, cultural assumptions, sin distortions, and ignorant guesses that pollute the text."
"Exegesis is nothing more than a careful and loving reading in our mother tongue. Greek and Hebrew are well worth learning, but if you haven't had the privilege, settle for English. Once we learn to love this text and bring a disciplined intelligence to it, we won't be too far behind the best Greek and Hebrew scholars...Exegesis is the furthest thing from pedantry. Exegesis is an act of love. It loves the one who speaks the words enough to want to get the words right. It respects the words enough to use every means we have to get the words right. Exegesis is loving God enough to stop and listen carefully to what he says."
"I'm not the only one to notice that we are in the odd and embarrassing position of being a church in which many among us believe ardently in the authority of the Bible, but instead of submitting to it, use it to ply it, take charge of it endlessly, using our own experience as the authority for how, and where, and when we will use it. One of the most urgent tasks facing the Christian community today is to counter this self-sovereignty by re-asserting what it means to live these holy Scriptures from the inside-out instead of using them for our sever and devout, but still self-sovereign, purposes."
"Every expectation that we bring to this book is inadequate. This is a unique book, this text that reveals the sovereign God in being and action. It does not seek to please us. We enter this text to meet God as he reveals himself. Not to look for truth or history or morals that we can use for ourselves. What he insists on supremely is that we do not read the Bible in order to get God into our lives, get him to participate in our lives. WE open this book and find that page after page it takes us off our guard, surprises, draws us into its reality, draw us into participating with God on His terms."
"I don't want to master the text, I want to submit to it."
From the Q&A portion of the audio, responding to the question of how to get unbelievers or new believers to see themselves in God's story: "I'm teaching people to see themselves in God's story by first listening to their story, and showing them that they have a story!"
"Words are inherently ambiguous. They are never exact. The character of the person speaking influences how we interpret them. The attentiveness or intelligence of the listener affects how they are understood. Place and weather and circumstances all play a part in both the speaking and the hearing. The more we are in context when language is used, the more likely we are to get it."
"Contemplation is not another thing added onto our reading and meditating and praying, but the coming together of God's revelation and our response."
Taking God's word seriously doesn't equal taking it literally. There is so much metaphor in the Bible! "A metaphor is literally a lie... for example, 'God is a rock.'"
What we need is "reading formatively, reading to live."
"If you're after devotionally cozy Bible reading, you have to pick and choose a good bit. There are such huge chunks of it that either put you to sleep or keep you awake nights, but there are little crib sheets available at most Bible bookstores that tell you what parts of the Bible to read when you want to be comforted or consoled, or whatever your present disposition requires. I don't want to be too hard on any one of these groups of Bible readers, especially since I've spent considerable time in each group myself, but I do want to call attention to the conspicuous fact that in whatever group you find yourself, you will be using the Bible for your purposes, and those purposes will not necessarily require anything of you relationally. It is entirely possible to come to the Bible in total sincerity, responding to the intellectual challenge it gives, or for the moral guidance it offers, or for the spiritual uplift it provides, and not in any way have to deal with a personally revealing God who has personal designs on you. Or to put it in the terms in which we started out, it is possible to read the Bible form a number of different angles and for various purposes without dealing with God as God has revealed himself, without setting ourselves under the authority of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who is alive and present in everything we are and do. To put it bluntly, not everyone who gets interested in the Bible and even gets excited about the Bible wants to get involved with God. But God is what the book is about."
"The form in which language comes to us is as important as its content. If we mistake the form we will almost surely respond wrongly to its content. If we mistake a recipe for vegetable stew for a set of clues for finding buried treasure, no matter how carefully we read it, we will end up as poor as ever and hungry besides."
"Exegesis is foundational to Christian spirituality. Foundations disappear from view as the building is constructed, but if builders don't build a solid foundation, their building doesn't last long. Because we speak our language so casually, it is easy to fall into the habit of treating it casually. But language is persistently difficult to understand. We spend our early lives learning the language, and just when we think we have it mastered, our spouse says, 'You don't understand a thing I'm saying, do you?' WE teach our children to talk, and just about the time we think they might be getting it, they stop talking to us, and when we overhear them talking to their friends we find we can't understand more than one our of every 8 or 9 words they say. A close relationship doesn't guarantee understanding. A long affection doesn't guarantee understanding. In fact, the closer we are to another and the closer the more intimate our relations, the more care we must exercise to hear accurately, to understand thoroughly, to answer appropriately. Which is to say, the more spiritual we become, the more care we must give to exegesis. The more mature we become in the Christian faith, the more exegetically rigorous we must become. This is not a task from which we graduate. These words given to us in our Scripture are constantly getting overlaid with personal preferences, cultural assumptions, sin distortions, and ignorant guesses that pollute the text."
"Exegesis is nothing more than a careful and loving reading in our mother tongue. Greek and Hebrew are well worth learning, but if you haven't had the privilege, settle for English. Once we learn to love this text and bring a disciplined intelligence to it, we won't be too far behind the best Greek and Hebrew scholars...Exegesis is the furthest thing from pedantry. Exegesis is an act of love. It loves the one who speaks the words enough to want to get the words right. It respects the words enough to use every means we have to get the words right. Exegesis is loving God enough to stop and listen carefully to what he says."
"I'm not the only one to notice that we are in the odd and embarrassing position of being a church in which many among us believe ardently in the authority of the Bible, but instead of submitting to it, use it to ply it, take charge of it endlessly, using our own experience as the authority for how, and where, and when we will use it. One of the most urgent tasks facing the Christian community today is to counter this self-sovereignty by re-asserting what it means to live these holy Scriptures from the inside-out instead of using them for our sever and devout, but still self-sovereign, purposes."
"Every expectation that we bring to this book is inadequate. This is a unique book, this text that reveals the sovereign God in being and action. It does not seek to please us. We enter this text to meet God as he reveals himself. Not to look for truth or history or morals that we can use for ourselves. What he insists on supremely is that we do not read the Bible in order to get God into our lives, get him to participate in our lives. WE open this book and find that page after page it takes us off our guard, surprises, draws us into its reality, draw us into participating with God on His terms."
"I don't want to master the text, I want to submit to it."
From the Q&A portion of the audio, responding to the question of how to get unbelievers or new believers to see themselves in God's story: "I'm teaching people to see themselves in God's story by first listening to their story, and showing them that they have a story!"
"Words are inherently ambiguous. They are never exact. The character of the person speaking influences how we interpret them. The attentiveness or intelligence of the listener affects how they are understood. Place and weather and circumstances all play a part in both the speaking and the hearing. The more we are in context when language is used, the more likely we are to get it."
"Contemplation is not another thing added onto our reading and meditating and praying, but the coming together of God's revelation and our response."
Taking God's word seriously doesn't equal taking it literally. There is so much metaphor in the Bible! "A metaphor is literally a lie... for example, 'God is a rock.'"
Friday, May 8, 2020
04.25.2020 🎧 The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning
Not sure how to sum this up. I benefited from the reminder of the greatness of God's love, and the utterly staggering truth that his love is never, ever dependent on what I do. God does invite us to change, but by the gift of his Spirit, not by shame.
I loved the examples he gave of an AA member who "fell off the wagon" and showed that responses of compassion, empathy, and presence were so much more likely to actually help a person get back to the good, desired behavior than responses of disbelief, unacceptance, and shame.
There were points where I thought I either wasn't sure where he stood and wanted to, or was fairly certain he was venturing into theological territory where I didn't want to follow. It probably won't be the one that I recommend very highly. Obviously, there were some praiseworthy quotes (below). But on the whole, for this topic, I far prefer writings by Tim Keller, or better yet,Alan Kraft's Good News for Those Trying Harder. the entire work that includes and puts flesh on Tim Keller's quote:
"Jesus spent a disproportionate amount of time with people described in the Gospels as the poor, the blind, the lame, the lepers, the hungry, sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, the persecuted, the downtrodden, the captives, those possessed by unclean spirits, all who labor and are heavy burdened, the rabble who know nothing of the law, the crowds, the little ones, the least, the last, and the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
"In short, Jesus hung out with ragamuffins.
"Obviously, his love for failures and nobodies was not an exclusive love. That would merely substitute one class prejudice for another. He related with warmth and compassion to the middle and upper classes not because of their family connections, financial clout, intelligence, or Social Register status, but because they too were God's children."
"The gospel of grace is brutally devalued when Christians maintain that the transcendent God can only be properly honored and respected by denying the goodness and the truth and the beauty of the things of this world."
"Yahweh is first perceived by the Jewish community as a personal, relating Being. Their concept of God was vastly superior to that of the pagans whose gods were quite human, fickle, capricious, erotic, as unpredictable as the forces with which they were identified--wind, storm, fertility, the nation, and so forth.
"But Israel knew a holy God, transcending everything visible and tangible, yet personal. He was somehow reflected in things but was not to be identified with things. Exodus depicts God as stable, interested, a Rock of dependability among so many dependents."
"The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior."
"Perhaps the supreme achievement of the Holy Spirit in the life of ragamuffins is the miraculous movement from self-rejection to self-acceptance. It is not based on therapy or the power of positive thinking; it is anchored in their personal experience of the acceptance of Jesus Christ."
I loved the examples he gave of an AA member who "fell off the wagon" and showed that responses of compassion, empathy, and presence were so much more likely to actually help a person get back to the good, desired behavior than responses of disbelief, unacceptance, and shame.
There were points where I thought I either wasn't sure where he stood and wanted to, or was fairly certain he was venturing into theological territory where I didn't want to follow. It probably won't be the one that I recommend very highly. Obviously, there were some praiseworthy quotes (below). But on the whole, for this topic, I far prefer writings by Tim Keller, or better yet,Alan Kraft's Good News for Those Trying Harder. the entire work that includes and puts flesh on Tim Keller's quote:
The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.Quotes from The Ragamuffin Gospel:
"Jesus spent a disproportionate amount of time with people described in the Gospels as the poor, the blind, the lame, the lepers, the hungry, sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, the persecuted, the downtrodden, the captives, those possessed by unclean spirits, all who labor and are heavy burdened, the rabble who know nothing of the law, the crowds, the little ones, the least, the last, and the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
"In short, Jesus hung out with ragamuffins.
"Obviously, his love for failures and nobodies was not an exclusive love. That would merely substitute one class prejudice for another. He related with warmth and compassion to the middle and upper classes not because of their family connections, financial clout, intelligence, or Social Register status, but because they too were God's children."
"The gospel of grace is brutally devalued when Christians maintain that the transcendent God can only be properly honored and respected by denying the goodness and the truth and the beauty of the things of this world."
"Yahweh is first perceived by the Jewish community as a personal, relating Being. Their concept of God was vastly superior to that of the pagans whose gods were quite human, fickle, capricious, erotic, as unpredictable as the forces with which they were identified--wind, storm, fertility, the nation, and so forth.
"But Israel knew a holy God, transcending everything visible and tangible, yet personal. He was somehow reflected in things but was not to be identified with things. Exodus depicts God as stable, interested, a Rock of dependability among so many dependents."
"The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior."
"Perhaps the supreme achievement of the Holy Spirit in the life of ragamuffins is the miraculous movement from self-rejection to self-acceptance. It is not based on therapy or the power of positive thinking; it is anchored in their personal experience of the acceptance of Jesus Christ."
Saturday, April 18, 2020
04.18.2020 🎧 The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
This one seemed underwhelming in the beginning, but I'm so glad I pushed through because the threads came together beautifully and brought themes of love, friendship, and the possibility of change into clear view. Also, the bookishness of it all was so endearing. The truth that right book isn't the right book until the right time shines brightly here. Also, "I like talking about books with people who like talking about books."
"The things we respond to at 20 are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at 40 and vice versa. This is true in books, and also in life."
"The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a sh*t about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a sh*t about everything."
"Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, AJ decides, because they are. We have to look inside many. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes, so that we can be exhilarated every now and again."
"The things we respond to at 20 are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at 40 and vice versa. This is true in books, and also in life."
"The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a sh*t about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a sh*t about everything."
"Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, AJ decides, because they are. We have to look inside many. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes, so that we can be exhilarated every now and again."
Sunday, April 12, 2020
04.12.2020 📘 Coming Clean and The Book of Waking Up
COMING CLEAN
"The bottle is not the thing. The addiction is not the thing. The pain is the thing" (71).
"In the school of bootstrap theology, children learn straining and striving. They learn a responsible, if not tired, faith. The sin prohibitions promote personal holiness, and personal holiness kept our Sunday best from tarnish, and in turn, it kept us from tarnishing the glory of God. After all, the Christian faith isn't all about us; it is about God, we were told. And told. And told" (73).
"These prayers and supplications tire me. After all, it is an insane person who engages in the same behavior in the hope of achieving a different outcome. I don't suppose myself insane, so instead of these spiritual gyrations, I find a way to kill any expectations" (87).
"[The area of my nonconformity to God's will] is my inability to accept that God's plan might be opposed to my own human will, my desire for immediate healing. And the mismatch between my will and God's gives rise to the anxiety, to the pain" (137).
"It bears admitting--this word from God could be nothing more than the tired mind playing tricks...This is why our more conservative, systematic brothers in the faith tell us not to trust listening prayers. THere is a danger that one might conflate the voice of God with your own, they say, and I am not naive to this. This, some believe, is the reason we listen for answers only and always through the Scriptures, never through the still small voices that speak to us in the night. I find this notion ironic. No one ever has misread, misheard, and misapplied a passage of Scripture..." (151).
"Titus's healing would bring steel to the legs of my faith. But in praying through the divine no, in asking God to relent, I am finding that my will is becoming more malleable; I am becoming more open to the not my will but yours be done. This is the slower process of shoring up genuine faith, and it seems a different expression of faith than that of the faith healers of long ago.
"This is an expression of faith that hurts.
"The bones of faith are brittle. This is a product of the human condition. When our prayers go unanswered, when God does not meet us at the point of our desires, we turn to the lowercase gods to ease the pain of living. Bow to the god of booze; bow to the god of sex; bow to your food, to your material possessions! I traded my prayers for a liquid fire-god, because the idea of having my will bent around God's (as if I'd yet discerned it) was unbearable" (157-158).
"The invitation to make our will known to God, to beg fro his intervention, is an invitation to act like the blood-sweating Jesus in the garden. Bending the will, though, requires the Christlike willingness to endure the cup of unmet expectations" (158).
“I consider his presence then, his presence now, and I’m hopeful that the bending of my will to his is yet another sign that he is with me, even to the end of the age (158).
"If you can seek comfort in the arms of another," she says, "you can handle the worst the world has to offer" (177) quoting Sue Johnson in some EFT teaching.
"As Buddy Wakefield, spoke-word poet, says, 'forgiveness is releasing all hope for a better past.' At the same time, though, forgiveness is the manner of preparing oneself to forgive all future deaths, releasing all expectation of a pain-free future.
"Forgiveness is unbounded by time and space. It operates within the fifth dimension to this dynamic marvel we call life" (199).
Quote from Henri Nouwen, page 210: "Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family."
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP
"If the life of Christ shows us anything, it's that the Stuff of Earth is meant to point us to the substance of heaven. How? Consider the way he came eating and drinking" (51).
"Pain has a shape, yes. It has a voice too. It spins archetypal narratives.
"Scarcity whispers, 'There's never enough.'
"Abuse pounds, 'No one is safe.'
"Loss reminds us, 'You're always alone'" (82).
"...ask yourself this: Am I able to shake the temptation to use whatever it is, or do I always give in?
"See how so many of our coping mechanisms sound a great deal like addictions? See how we all might be addicted to something?"....
"Often, habits, affections, attachments, and dependencies lead you around by the nose, just as cocaine leads the hardcore drug user" (116-117)
The brain is "primed to chase pleasure when pain comes knocking" (119).
"If you turn to the Stuff of Earth when you're hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, or all four, there's a good change you're running in a groove etched by a dopamine loop" (135).
"Dr. Gabor Mate' writes, 'Addictions always originate in pain, whether felt openly or hidden in the unconscious. They are emotional anesthetics.' Put more succinctly, he writes, 'The question is never, 'Why the addiction?' but 'Why the pain?'" (148).
"Addiction is nothing more than attachment to the thing that could never satisfy our deepest longing, the longing for bonded connection" (151).
This is where the word "attachment" gets confusing to me. I think he's using it to mean our habit of seeking pleasure, relief from the pain; it also seems so connected to the 'attachment' of Attachment Theory / Science.
"Sobriety is all about ordering our affections, our loves. It's about being awake to God in every moment, even the moments of our pain, and fixing our adoration to him. It's a call that can be seen throughout the Scriptures, even in the oft-misunderstood Ten Commandments" (164).
"Jesus knew that true sobriety--a sobriety characterized by living int he love of God--requires a deeper sort of awakening, an awakening to our underlying emotions, desires, imaginations, even our pain" (171).
page 183:
132. Jesus Used Bread to Point to the True Bread, Wine to Point to the True Wine
Yes, Jesus came preaching a message of proper attachment: Don't attach to the Stuff of Earth. Attach to me, the only one who can satisfy you. But still, he used the Stuff of Earth to draw the people into that attachment. In the aforementioned gospel story, he used loaves and fishes to point to himself as the bread of heaven. In the water-to-wine miracle in Cana, he used wine to point to himself as the true life of every party. He used water as an object lesson to invite a serial divorcee into his eternal love (John 4:7-15). He used spit and mud to give sight to a blind man( John 9:6). He even used a coin to invite the religious leaders out of a fixation on the Roman Empire and into the eternal kingdom (Mark 12:16-17).
See? For Christ, all material is useful for drawing us into the Divine Love of God. He uses the Stuff of Earth to direct us to the love of heaven.
"[The goal is] a true, inner, sobriety. A sobriety that is less about avoiding addiction and more about the practice of adoration. It is a way of seeing the Stuff of Earth with eyes wide open. A way of understanding how all things--bread, books, clothing, making money, and even wine--are diving portals to draw us deeper into his Divine Love" (193).
"Step 1: Wake to your pain and invite God into it.
Step 2:Wake to your coping mechanisms, your lesser loves and confess them.
Step 3: Wake to the Diving Love and pursue it as best you can" (196).
Community, with whom we "eat the waking meal" (communion), "sing the waking songs," and "participate in the waking community."
_____________________________________
What can be said to sum these up, to make them into concise ideas, articulated to bring understanding? Probably nothing I can say. I think these works and ideas are so important. Probably especially to us Enneagram 9s, who numb out with the best of them. Haines teaches that we all have pain, and we all turn to addictions/coping mechanisms to deal with them. He points out how this Stuff of Earth can often be either sacramental, or idolatrous and harmfully addictive, depending on how we choose to partake. I so appreciated these thoughts. I wanted more about what Waking Up looks like. How do I stop doing the old habits to find pleasure and escape pain?
Probably the biggest take-away for me was the idea that we all have pain (yes, different pain, and some pain is bigger and worse...but we all have it; that's real) and that we all, by our very brain chemistry, seek out practices/substances/experiences that give pleasure so as to stop feeling the pain. We are all addicted, in a way, looking to the Stuff of Earth (which he wisely points out CAN ALSO BE SACRAMENTAL. DRAWING US TO CHRIST, when we are seeking to be "rightly attached" to him and he is our greatest love,) to bring relief, in the form of alcohol, food, shopping, social media, or, he even mentioned once, books (!). Often the first step is to identify the pain, and look right at it and sit with it, stop trying to lessen it with these addictions. But we only experience victory over addiction when we actually stop looking at the addiction and how to avoid it, and turn to adoration of Christ.
I still have so many questions about how. It makes me want to revisit You Are What You Love, all about how every-day liturgies can draw us into loving Christ more. It makes me want to Just Practice the Thing. I loved his three general types of pain and something about that rings true. I was left wanting to know a lot more about the pain, but maybe it's something each individual needs to approach in the presence of God. I was also left wanting more facts and definitions, etc related to attachment. He talked a lot about attachments and affections, and it seems to have so much overlap with Attachment Theory/Science (and he does seem to be sympathetic with/come from a perspective of EFT, so it seems like he knows it too) but maybe that's something I'll have to work through for myself.
It had a lot of concepts I've been learning already in my journey of healing. It had a few more ideas for me. And I'm hungry to keep going.
"The bottle is not the thing. The addiction is not the thing. The pain is the thing" (71).
"In the school of bootstrap theology, children learn straining and striving. They learn a responsible, if not tired, faith. The sin prohibitions promote personal holiness, and personal holiness kept our Sunday best from tarnish, and in turn, it kept us from tarnishing the glory of God. After all, the Christian faith isn't all about us; it is about God, we were told. And told. And told" (73).
"These prayers and supplications tire me. After all, it is an insane person who engages in the same behavior in the hope of achieving a different outcome. I don't suppose myself insane, so instead of these spiritual gyrations, I find a way to kill any expectations" (87).
"[The area of my nonconformity to God's will] is my inability to accept that God's plan might be opposed to my own human will, my desire for immediate healing. And the mismatch between my will and God's gives rise to the anxiety, to the pain" (137).
"It bears admitting--this word from God could be nothing more than the tired mind playing tricks...This is why our more conservative, systematic brothers in the faith tell us not to trust listening prayers. THere is a danger that one might conflate the voice of God with your own, they say, and I am not naive to this. This, some believe, is the reason we listen for answers only and always through the Scriptures, never through the still small voices that speak to us in the night. I find this notion ironic. No one ever has misread, misheard, and misapplied a passage of Scripture..." (151).
"Titus's healing would bring steel to the legs of my faith. But in praying through the divine no, in asking God to relent, I am finding that my will is becoming more malleable; I am becoming more open to the not my will but yours be done. This is the slower process of shoring up genuine faith, and it seems a different expression of faith than that of the faith healers of long ago.
"This is an expression of faith that hurts.
"The bones of faith are brittle. This is a product of the human condition. When our prayers go unanswered, when God does not meet us at the point of our desires, we turn to the lowercase gods to ease the pain of living. Bow to the god of booze; bow to the god of sex; bow to your food, to your material possessions! I traded my prayers for a liquid fire-god, because the idea of having my will bent around God's (as if I'd yet discerned it) was unbearable" (157-158).
"The invitation to make our will known to God, to beg fro his intervention, is an invitation to act like the blood-sweating Jesus in the garden. Bending the will, though, requires the Christlike willingness to endure the cup of unmet expectations" (158).
“I consider his presence then, his presence now, and I’m hopeful that the bending of my will to his is yet another sign that he is with me, even to the end of the age (158).
"If you can seek comfort in the arms of another," she says, "you can handle the worst the world has to offer" (177) quoting Sue Johnson in some EFT teaching.
"As Buddy Wakefield, spoke-word poet, says, 'forgiveness is releasing all hope for a better past.' At the same time, though, forgiveness is the manner of preparing oneself to forgive all future deaths, releasing all expectation of a pain-free future.
"Forgiveness is unbounded by time and space. It operates within the fifth dimension to this dynamic marvel we call life" (199).
Quote from Henri Nouwen, page 210: "Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family."
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP
"If the life of Christ shows us anything, it's that the Stuff of Earth is meant to point us to the substance of heaven. How? Consider the way he came eating and drinking" (51).
"Pain has a shape, yes. It has a voice too. It spins archetypal narratives.
"Scarcity whispers, 'There's never enough.'
"Abuse pounds, 'No one is safe.'
"Loss reminds us, 'You're always alone'" (82).
"...ask yourself this: Am I able to shake the temptation to use whatever it is, or do I always give in?
"See how so many of our coping mechanisms sound a great deal like addictions? See how we all might be addicted to something?"....
"Often, habits, affections, attachments, and dependencies lead you around by the nose, just as cocaine leads the hardcore drug user" (116-117)
The brain is "primed to chase pleasure when pain comes knocking" (119).
"If you turn to the Stuff of Earth when you're hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, or all four, there's a good change you're running in a groove etched by a dopamine loop" (135).
"Dr. Gabor Mate' writes, 'Addictions always originate in pain, whether felt openly or hidden in the unconscious. They are emotional anesthetics.' Put more succinctly, he writes, 'The question is never, 'Why the addiction?' but 'Why the pain?'" (148).
"Addiction is nothing more than attachment to the thing that could never satisfy our deepest longing, the longing for bonded connection" (151).
This is where the word "attachment" gets confusing to me. I think he's using it to mean our habit of seeking pleasure, relief from the pain; it also seems so connected to the 'attachment' of Attachment Theory / Science.
"Sobriety is all about ordering our affections, our loves. It's about being awake to God in every moment, even the moments of our pain, and fixing our adoration to him. It's a call that can be seen throughout the Scriptures, even in the oft-misunderstood Ten Commandments" (164).
"Jesus knew that true sobriety--a sobriety characterized by living int he love of God--requires a deeper sort of awakening, an awakening to our underlying emotions, desires, imaginations, even our pain" (171).
page 183:
132. Jesus Used Bread to Point to the True Bread, Wine to Point to the True Wine
Yes, Jesus came preaching a message of proper attachment: Don't attach to the Stuff of Earth. Attach to me, the only one who can satisfy you. But still, he used the Stuff of Earth to draw the people into that attachment. In the aforementioned gospel story, he used loaves and fishes to point to himself as the bread of heaven. In the water-to-wine miracle in Cana, he used wine to point to himself as the true life of every party. He used water as an object lesson to invite a serial divorcee into his eternal love (John 4:7-15). He used spit and mud to give sight to a blind man( John 9:6). He even used a coin to invite the religious leaders out of a fixation on the Roman Empire and into the eternal kingdom (Mark 12:16-17).
See? For Christ, all material is useful for drawing us into the Divine Love of God. He uses the Stuff of Earth to direct us to the love of heaven.
"[The goal is] a true, inner, sobriety. A sobriety that is less about avoiding addiction and more about the practice of adoration. It is a way of seeing the Stuff of Earth with eyes wide open. A way of understanding how all things--bread, books, clothing, making money, and even wine--are diving portals to draw us deeper into his Divine Love" (193).
"Step 1: Wake to your pain and invite God into it.
Step 2:Wake to your coping mechanisms, your lesser loves and confess them.
Step 3: Wake to the Diving Love and pursue it as best you can" (196).
Community, with whom we "eat the waking meal" (communion), "sing the waking songs," and "participate in the waking community."
_____________________________________
What can be said to sum these up, to make them into concise ideas, articulated to bring understanding? Probably nothing I can say. I think these works and ideas are so important. Probably especially to us Enneagram 9s, who numb out with the best of them. Haines teaches that we all have pain, and we all turn to addictions/coping mechanisms to deal with them. He points out how this Stuff of Earth can often be either sacramental, or idolatrous and harmfully addictive, depending on how we choose to partake. I so appreciated these thoughts. I wanted more about what Waking Up looks like. How do I stop doing the old habits to find pleasure and escape pain?
Probably the biggest take-away for me was the idea that we all have pain (yes, different pain, and some pain is bigger and worse...but we all have it; that's real) and that we all, by our very brain chemistry, seek out practices/substances/experiences that give pleasure so as to stop feeling the pain. We are all addicted, in a way, looking to the Stuff of Earth (which he wisely points out CAN ALSO BE SACRAMENTAL. DRAWING US TO CHRIST, when we are seeking to be "rightly attached" to him and he is our greatest love,) to bring relief, in the form of alcohol, food, shopping, social media, or, he even mentioned once, books (!). Often the first step is to identify the pain, and look right at it and sit with it, stop trying to lessen it with these addictions. But we only experience victory over addiction when we actually stop looking at the addiction and how to avoid it, and turn to adoration of Christ.
I still have so many questions about how. It makes me want to revisit You Are What You Love, all about how every-day liturgies can draw us into loving Christ more. It makes me want to Just Practice the Thing. I loved his three general types of pain and something about that rings true. I was left wanting to know a lot more about the pain, but maybe it's something each individual needs to approach in the presence of God. I was also left wanting more facts and definitions, etc related to attachment. He talked a lot about attachments and affections, and it seems to have so much overlap with Attachment Theory/Science (and he does seem to be sympathetic with/come from a perspective of EFT, so it seems like he knows it too) but maybe that's something I'll have to work through for myself.
It had a lot of concepts I've been learning already in my journey of healing. It had a few more ideas for me. And I'm hungry to keep going.
Saturday, April 11, 2020
04.11.2020 🎧 The End Is Always Near by Dan Carlin
"The idea of 'progress' is not without bias."
"The question of motive and context are crucial when deciding how far to believe a contemporary account."
"So much of war is about nerve and morale and avoiding panic."
"Looking at history has a way of putting our circumstances in better perspective...premodern dentistry alone is enough to convince me that things are pretty good now."
I started this book exactly 6 days before Covid Got Real (in my world.) I wanted to read it because I've listened to some Hardcore History with Andrew, and I certainly like his story-telling approach to things, and I liked even more the idea of his words contained in a focused, succinct book, because my attention span is often no match for the podcast.
The first two chapters were my favorite. I loved the questions he raised about toughness, like: Do tough times make more resilient, even virtuous, people? Considering how different cultures have different definitions of and morality assigned to the concept is fascinated. I was then absorbed by the questions about how different child-rearing practices might have affected people in different cultures, because of differing interpretations of said practices. All of this reflection on what is truly timeless and what is culture-based is so interesting, especially for one always on the lookout for how to have a better hermaneutic for a text in which a deity identifies himself as Father.
Each chapter after that is a vignette of a different point in history defined by sudden transformation, either "progress" or "fall." I didn't really get into the main part of the book until it became available on Scribd as an audiobook, and I think listening to Dan Carlin narrate was the ideal way to consume this book. The point of all of these historical snapshots was well-made and hard-hitting: the people described here probably didn't expect their city to be taken, or their way of life to suddenly change any more than we do now (or did a few weeks ago, when our sense of control and security in predictable comfort were even greater than they are now.) It's so easy for us in our current age to think that we are uniquely unassailable... but every country conquered, every culture with a sudden change to their way of life thrust upon them probably thought the same thing too.
@tonyreinke has pointed out in one of his books that our current relationship with digital media has made us lose our place in history and gives us a "miscalibrated time stamp." I think maybe one of the applications of that concept is this: when something terrible happens in our lives or especially in the world at large (like, say, a global pandemic), it can be easy for some of us to think that this is the first time the world has ever seen something like it. (Am I talking about myself, confessed history ignoramus and stereotypical millennial, obsessed with having feelings about my feelings? ((This idea is from @iamdavidkessler on @artofmanliness podcast, and yes, I feel seen.)) Why, yes, I think so.) Reading this book was oddly comforting to me because it showed that humanity has survived far worse changes in the past. I also learned a lot!
"The question of motive and context are crucial when deciding how far to believe a contemporary account."
"So much of war is about nerve and morale and avoiding panic."
"Looking at history has a way of putting our circumstances in better perspective...premodern dentistry alone is enough to convince me that things are pretty good now."
I started this book exactly 6 days before Covid Got Real (in my world.) I wanted to read it because I've listened to some Hardcore History with Andrew, and I certainly like his story-telling approach to things, and I liked even more the idea of his words contained in a focused, succinct book, because my attention span is often no match for the podcast.
The first two chapters were my favorite. I loved the questions he raised about toughness, like: Do tough times make more resilient, even virtuous, people? Considering how different cultures have different definitions of and morality assigned to the concept is fascinated. I was then absorbed by the questions about how different child-rearing practices might have affected people in different cultures, because of differing interpretations of said practices. All of this reflection on what is truly timeless and what is culture-based is so interesting, especially for one always on the lookout for how to have a better hermaneutic for a text in which a deity identifies himself as Father.
Each chapter after that is a vignette of a different point in history defined by sudden transformation, either "progress" or "fall." I didn't really get into the main part of the book until it became available on Scribd as an audiobook, and I think listening to Dan Carlin narrate was the ideal way to consume this book. The point of all of these historical snapshots was well-made and hard-hitting: the people described here probably didn't expect their city to be taken, or their way of life to suddenly change any more than we do now (or did a few weeks ago, when our sense of control and security in predictable comfort were even greater than they are now.) It's so easy for us in our current age to think that we are uniquely unassailable... but every country conquered, every culture with a sudden change to their way of life thrust upon them probably thought the same thing too.
@tonyreinke has pointed out in one of his books that our current relationship with digital media has made us lose our place in history and gives us a "miscalibrated time stamp." I think maybe one of the applications of that concept is this: when something terrible happens in our lives or especially in the world at large (like, say, a global pandemic), it can be easy for some of us to think that this is the first time the world has ever seen something like it. (Am I talking about myself, confessed history ignoramus and stereotypical millennial, obsessed with having feelings about my feelings? ((This idea is from @iamdavidkessler on @artofmanliness podcast, and yes, I feel seen.)) Why, yes, I think so.) Reading this book was oddly comforting to me because it showed that humanity has survived far worse changes in the past. I also learned a lot!
Monday, March 23, 2020
03.23.2020 🎧 Chasing Vines by Beth Moore
"What's fertile for a vine might be fatal for corn."
"God doesn't mind being misunderstood."
God loves watching things grow... "we don't have to despise the process."
"Holier than thou people usually end up holier than nobody."
"God doesn't mind being misunderstood."
God loves watching things grow... "we don't have to despise the process."
"Holier than thou people usually end up holier than nobody."
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