Enough about that.

 Good morning,

I pray the day finds you well.

Did you see the debate last night? All I can say is "wow" I wasn't sure if I was seeing a debate or a middle school argument. In fact, I am sure I didn't see a debate and I did see a middle school argument.

Enough about that.

Well maybe a little more. I would have liked to see an actual plan. A way to help us be a better country, a better people.

I teach a worldviews class at a university and in the very first class of the session I tell my students, "Do not tell me what you believe, your actions will tell me what your core commitment is."

Parker Palmer says it even better, he says, "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you.  Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let you life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent."[1]

I wish that the moderator had said that to the debaters/middle school arguers last night. 

As we go through our days may we be more diligent on our actions and not our words. Let us be the hands and feet of Christ and not his mouth.

If our actions do not match our words maybe we need to check our core commitment and see if this is who we want to be, if not we should work on being better.

Something to ponder,

Blessings,

Roger

---

[1]Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak, (San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, 2000), 3..

Dancing with God Redux

 Good morning. 

I pray that the day finds you well.

This is an old bread, but I thought it was relevant for what we seem to be going through at the moment. 

Enjoy and ponder.

The wind was blowing the other day, and I noticed a leaf being

carried along. It blew one way, then another.

I watched as it went back and forth, tumbling over its stem, then

over its tips. I sat for quite a while observing this leaf.

At first I was amused by the back-and-forth action, and thought

about how the wind changed direction, causing the leaf to change with it.

I thought about how the leaf had no say in where it wanted to go.

The wind was in control.

It occurred to me that most of us live and work at the whim of

others. If someone decides to go in another direction or the economy

takes a dip, our jobs might go away, and we will have about as much

say in it as the leaf does with the wind.

Then God said, “Relax and watch the leaf.”

I sat silently and did as He asked.

After a while, my heart began to change. I began to see the leaf

differently.

I began to see it dance.

It no longer was an out-of-control leaf pushed here and there. The

leaf was dancing.

A still small voice said, “This leaf makes Me smile. It is dancing

with Me.”

I watched the leaf for quite a while.

In the end, I was no longer thinking in a negative fashion. My

thoughts turned to all the blessings and small miracles that happen

every day. I just need to have eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to

accept.

My prayer is that we all choose to see the beauty in God’s creation,

to see a leaf dance, and to ask, are we dancing with God or merely

allowing ourselves to be blown out of control?

It is a matter of perspective.

Blessings,

Roger

Hydroplaning can be fun I suppose, but I have never found it to be so.

 Good morning,

I pray the day finds you well.

It was raining again today as I left the house on the river to drive to the "Y". 

It wasn't an easy rain, but one that could make you hydroplane if you were not focused. I was focused. Hydroplaning can be fun I suppose, but I have never found it to be so.

As I drove along the Columbia River God reminded me what a beautiful day it was. 

I have often said, "If you can see God in the puffy clouds of a beautiful sunny blue sky day, then you can also see Him in the mudpuddles of a rainy one." 

I hadn't always realized that, but found it later in my walk with Him. In fact I had spent a good amount of time in my early years saying things like, "God where are you? or  I wish you would come back." It wasn't until much later that I truly grasped the concept and understanding that God is always here and it is I that leaves Him or ignores Him.

When you get to the point where you see God at work in His creation you get the opportunity to see Him working in places you would never expect. He even works with Nihilists.

Ernest Hemmingway is one of my favorite authors. His writing style intrigues me. I was reading one of his books many years ago and this is what he wrote: 

"He had always known what I did not know and what, when I learned it, I was always able to forget.  But I did not know that then, although I learned it later."[1]

I love this quote. It reminds me of how big God is and how small I am. 

Seeing God in mudpuddles is fun, if you haven't tried it you should give it a go. You just might be surprised at what you find.

Something to ponder.

Blessings,

Roger 

---

[1]Ernest Hemmingway, Farewell to Arms, (New York: Scribner, 1929), 14.

God just wants to talk with us.

 Good morning,

I pray the day finds you well.

Today the sun was just rising as I drove to the "Y". The fact that I could see the sun meant that it was not raining. 

The sun is shining today. 

I spent my drive to the "Y" talking with God.

Trevvvvvvvvvvvvvvvor our CEO has mentioned that I tend to drone on. I am glad I can drone to God and He doesn't seem to mind, at least He has never said anything about my droning yet.

I like talking with God, I like to hear what He has to say. When I say I hear from God people say, "You hear God? Are you sure your not just crazy?" I respond, "Well if being crazy means I hear, Love that neighbor that is hard to love. Help that homeless person. I know it is hard but listen more intently to that hurting person. Then I do not mind being crazy."

When I talk to people about prayer I get a variety of responses:

• I pray all the time
• I don't pray
• I don't know how
• I am not any good at it

When I ask if they listen for a response I get:

• What do you mean
• No
• God doesn't talk to me

What I find funny is prayer is just a conversation with God. There isn't a magic formula to prayer, you don't have to have the right words or say certain things. You just need to talk to God like you would to your friend and leave room for God to talk back, just like you would for your friend.

God just wants to talk with us.

Richard Foster says in Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home:

We today yearn for prayer and hide from prayer.  We are attracted to it and repelled by it.  We believe prayer is something we should do, even something we want to do, but it seems like a chasm stands between us and actually praying.  We experience the agony of prayerlessness.[1] 

He goes on to say:

The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives—altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter.  Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel that good from the bad, the pure from the impure.  But what I have come to see is that God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture.  We do not have to be bright, or pure, or filled with faith, or anything.  That is what grace means, and not only are we saved by grace, we live by it as well.  And we pray by it.[2] 

He finishes with:

What I am trying to say is that God receives us just as we are and accepts our prayers just as they are.  In the same way that a small child cannot draw a bad picture so a child of God cannot offer a bad prayer.[3]

If you already pray, awesome keep it up, if you haven't yet give it a try, you might be surprised how easy it is. 

Something to ponder.

Blessings,

Roger

---

[1]Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishing Company, 1992), 7.

[2]Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishing Company, 1992), 8.

[3]Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishing Company, 1992), 8-9.

The more I learn about God, the more I realize I do not know.

 Good morning,

I pray the day finds you well.

It was raining today when I got up. I actually enjoy the rain as much as I enjoy the sun. I do however enjoy fall as my favorite season, the colors, hot days but cool nights. The woods seem more alive somehow. I see salmon swimming upstream when I take my walks by the river. 

My walks give me time to think, they give me pause. 

This morning I was ruminating on something Richard Foster wrote twelve years ago. I had been thinking of "chaos" and why people are the way they are. I teach  a worldviews class for a university and I have an understanding of differing worldviews. I know that they think differently (thus the "different" in our worldviews). When I give instruction on Christian Theism I talk about what a "Life with God" looks like.

I am also a Spiritual Director. 

When people come to me for a Spiritual Direction Experience (which by the way is different than Discipleship, although there is an aspect of this in Spiritual Direction) I direct them in ways of having a better relationship with God.

Anyway, I was ruminating on Foster this morning. 

Foster said:

The source of the problem is rooted in the two most common objectives people have for studying the Bible.  The first is the practice of studying the Bible for information or knowledge alone.  This may include information about particular facts or historical events, or knowledge of general truths or doctrines, or even knowledge of how others are mistaken in their religious views, beliefs, and practices.[1]

He went on to say:

The second common objective people often have for studying the Bible is to find some formula that will solve the pressing need of the moment.  Thus we seek out lists of specific passages that speak to particular needs rather than seeking whole-life discipleship to Jesus.[2]

And he finished with this:

If we want to receive from the Bible the life “with God” that is portrayed in the Bible, we must be prepared to have our dearest and most fundamental assumptions about ourselves and our associations called into question.  We must humbly and in a constant attitude of repentance.[3]

So often I have conversations with people that seem to think they have it all figured out. When the beginning began, when the end will come. How they are right and others are wrong.

The more I learn about God, the  more I realize I do not know. 

I focus on my relationship with Him, and how that is going. I do not focus on others and how theirs is not going. 

How about we all try to focus on our relationship with God, come to Him in humble humility and let Him guide us and comfort us, allowing us to then help others and love on them.

Something to ponder.

Blessings,

---

[1]Richard Foster, Life With God. (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishing Company, 2008), 4.

[2]Richard Foster, Life With God. (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishing Company, 2008), 5.

[3]Richard Foster, Life With God. (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishing Company, 2008), 5.

I would have liked to hear the tree's story, but alas, I cannot talk to trees.

 Good morning,

I pray the day finds you well.

Laurie and I live by a river. 

Every so often, usually in the winter when the water is high and running fast, we watch as things go down the river to eventually be deposited in the ocean.

Every year we see at least one huge tree floating down the river, we had one the other day.

I sat and watched this tree go by. As I watched this tree I began to ponder (I like to ponder) about this tree. It was obviously old and now dead as it floated down the river, but it was once alive and vibrant. I thought about how it sprang to life as a seedling somewhere up in the mountains. How this tree had fought the deep snows of its early years, lived through rain and drought, heat and cold, summers and winters. I thought how it had seen so many things. 

I had no idea of how old this tree was (It is hard to count tree rings as a tree floats by in the river) but I knew it was at least 60 years old. 

It is funny when I stop to think that I am as old as a tree.

As I thought about this tree and the life that it lived. I thought how it dodged the loggers, averted catastrophe in its youth. 

I do not know how or why it died, and what brought it down the river. Its roots were intact and it was not cut. 

I would have liked to hear the tree's story, but alas, I cannot talk to trees. 

I am also a people watcher. I like to watch people.

I especially like to watch people when I am at the airport. People going to and fro. Some smiling, others not so much. Couples holding hands, parents chasing kids. 

As I watched the tree I thought about the airport. People going by like a tree in a river and all I know is they have a story, a story that I do not know.   

We have a saying in the YMCA, "You may know my name, but you do not know me." meaning you may know my name but you do not know my story. We try really hard to get to know people.

When we know a person's story we have a better understanding of who they are and what makes them, well them. 

As I pondered on this tree I thought about how if we actually took the time to get to know one another there might not be so much fighting, arguing, strife.

If we got to know each other and truly worked on loving each other the world would be a better place.

Maybe Heaven could even reach down and touch earth?

Something to ponder.

Blessings,

Roger

Oh the fires have been a burning, and the people have been a protesting.

 

Good morning,

I pray the day finds you well.

Oh the fires have been a burning, and the people have been a protesting. 

One of the questions that I continually ask myself is, "How do I lead effectively through chaos?" 

Leading when times are good is easy.

Leading when times are hard is a bit more difficult

Leading in Chaos is the hardest of all. 

We are in a pandemic.

We have political tension that brings people to a place of, "Does one wear a mask or not?"

We have a media that screams at people for gathering at events and not wearing masks, yet at the same time cover protests with hundreds of people not wearing masks and not a peep from the network.

We have wildfires burning homes and communities and people laying blame and others making excuses.

Chaos is defined as, "Complete disorder and confusion." According to Webster's anyway.

We supposedly live in a free country, but as Viktor Frankl writes in Man's search for Meaning, "Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth…That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplanted by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast."[1]

Laurie and I have gotten into the habit of watching old gameshows, we find them on YouTube.

We watch them because we are old. 

We watch them because they remind us of days gone by. 

We watch them because we find how people treat each other and the way they speak is so foreign to the way people treat each other and speak to each of today.

This chaos we live in did not happen overnight.

It did not happen after the last election.

No, it was a much slower process. A process no-one really noticed. 

Somewhere along the line it became everyone else's fault. 

Everyone is the victim.

Chaos.

Chaos happens when we take our eyes off our neighbor's well being and place it on ourselves.

Jesus told us about the good Samaritan.

He also told us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. 

Chaos happens when we do not help our neighbor

Chaos happens when we do not love our neighbor.

If the Statue of Responsibility encompassed being responsible for our neighbor's well being along with the planet God entrusted us with, then we just might have something.

Something to ponder.

Blessings,

Roger  

---

[1]Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, (New York: Touchstone Books, 1984), 134.

The times are a changing.

 Good morning,

I pray the day finds you well.

The wind keeps blowing.

The times keep changing.

The winds of change have been and are upon us. 

We had what the weather people call a "wind event" last night, in fact the wind is still blowing this morning. 

There are trees down in our neck of the woods. 

The "event" got me to thinking. 

How often when times are good we fail to take a moment and soak them in. Instead, we start to think that this is the way things will be and do not think about change. 

The only constant that I know of is change. 

We have been living through Covid-19, the killing of George Floyd; in Portland we have just surpassed 100 days of continuous protest. 

The times are a changing. 

The thing about a wind event is the wind tends to clean out the weak and the dead. the tree that cannot bend to the wind will snap. 

Jesus when He talked of change He talked of "Stiff necked people." People that would not bend to the winds of change that God was asking them to do in their lives. 

Pharaoh (Ramesses 2)  was stiff necked and would not see the change in front of him and would not let the Hebrew slaves go.  Look how well things went for him. 

The times are a changing, let us be pliable enough to change with them and not become a tree blown to the ground. 

Let Christ do His will in us and let us love one another.

Something to ponder.

Blessings,

Roger

Everything is relative.

 Good morning,

I pray the day finds you well.

We have a heat wave coming, well a heat wave by Pacific Northwest terms, it will be above 90  degrees for a few days. Phoenix would call it balmy, Kansas would call it nice, up here in the upper left of the country we call that a heat wave. 

Everything is relative. 

Some of my day is made up of working with people that are in real pain:

• Cancer
• Chronic physical pain
• Mental anguish

Most of my day is made up of working with people who are upset when something does not go their way.

• The pool is full.
• They have to wear a mask.
• They can't park their expensive car in three parking spots to avoid a door ding.

These people are truly upset. their whole day is now off kilter.

Everything is relative.

The people who are upset about the pool, mask, or parking spot are not dealing with the more dire of diagnoses. I have found on my time on the Dairy Farm (Chemo) that these people don't sweat the small stuff. I learned the same thing from my time on the farm. 

Another thing I learned was just about everything is small stuff.

I was reading a book the other day and it talked about Christians being thrown to the lions in Rome. 

The last time I looked nobody was being eaten by lions in any of our football stadiums.

Everything is relative. 

I guess when you are not running from a lion a parking space is important. 

I guess when you don't have a lion chomping on your leg, not getting into the pool is important.

I guess when you are not worried about a lion, a person has time to think about whether to wear a mask or not.  

Everything is relative.

What about the family down the street that needs food, can we worry about that?

What about the kid that needs help in school, when will this child become important?

What if we took the focus off of ourselves and looked to help others.

Jesus said:

"I was hungry and you fed me,

I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,

I was homeless and you gave me a room,

I was shivering and you gave me clothes,

I was sick and you stopped to visit,

I was in prison and you came to me."

Then the people said, "When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? When did we every see you sick or in prison and come to you? Jesus said, "I am telling you the truth whenever you did one these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me-you did it to me."

What if we all took a deep breath, relaxed and did that? 

I wonder what the world would look like then?

Something to ponder.

Blessings,

Roger