Memory and Forgiveness

The article in today's New York Times, "After Shooting, Amish School Embodies Effort to Heal," caught my attention. The author, Melody Simmons, gives an update on the Amish community in Nickel mines, Pa., which suffered the terrible trauma of the killing of five girls and wounding of five others about four months ago. The community demolished the old school house and is building a new one that is set to be finished in February and opened in March.

For some the new school house "is a symbol of hope." Mennonite, Rita Rhoads, said, "We want the kids to just quietly show up one day and go to school normally." All but one of the wounded girls have returned to classes: the one who hasn't is in a coma and is living and being cared for at her home. One wonders what "go to school normally" might mean to those who survived.

The response of the Mennonite community that suffered this trauma has been remarkable. I say "remarkable" in its living out the gospel, particularly the Sermon on the Mount. The community's reaching out to the family of the murderer has been especially poignant. Rita Rhoads told the author that while the families have been devastated, "there's no anger. There is a lot of 'why?' But life goes on. The healing continues. It's not to say they're not sad. They are sad. They are mourning, but they're doing well."

How does one heal after going through such terrible tragedy? I think about this and the Mennonite response especially in light of the book I am currently reading by Miroslav Volf, The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World. Volf writes,

as trauma literature consistently notes, the healing of wounded psyches involves not only remembering traumatic experiences; it must also include integrating the retrieved memories into a broader pattern of one's life story, either by making sense of the traumatic experiences or by tagging them as elements gone awry in one's life. Personal healing happens not so much by remembering traumatic events and their accompanying emotions as by interpreting memories and inscribing them into a larger pattern of meaning--stitching them into the patchwork quilt of one's identity, as it were...the memory of suffering is a prerequisite for personal healing but not a means of healing itself. The means of healing is the interpretive work a person does with memory. So salvation as personal healing must involve remembering, but mere remembering does not automatically ensure personal healing (pp. 27, 28).

I am interested to learn what he says about how healing affects the remembering. It is precisely those memories that lodge in us like a stone in a shoe that seem to prevent the healing from occurring. Any thoughts about this process of forgiving, healing, remembering?

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Thought for the Day

What makes us true individuals therefore is that God calls us by name. Our individuality is not a personal achievement or power, and--most striking of all--it is established only in community with God. We are most ourselves not when we seek to direct and control our destiny but when we recognize and admit that our life is grounded in and sustained by God.
--Gilbert Meilaender, Bioethics

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Thoughts on the Brain and Consciousness

I have been thinking about Steven Pinker's article on consciousness and the brain in Time magazine (1/29/07) that I blogged about last week. As a scientific materialist (all that exists is matter and energy) he rejects the spirit, spirituality, soul, etc. Of course he has the right to believe whatever he wants to believe, but in the case of science which is held in such high esteem in our culture, frequently people do not distinguish between the science and the speculation that emerges out of the science. What one needs to keep in mind is that science did not lead Pinker to the conclusion that there is no spirit or spiritual world--he began with that premise.

In an article in the Journal of Psychology and Theology (Vol.34, pp. 226-271) philosopher Dallas Willard wrote about this problem.

Now of course secularism (naturalism) is not something any one has discovered. It is something that people decided to adopt so that they could get on with their work. If you think about what would be involved in proving secularism or naturalism to be true, you will see that they have not been proven or even rendered plausible. It certainly has not been proved by any of the sciences or any group of them. The sciences do not deal with reality as a whole, but with some particular part of it at best. And as to "science" which is no particular science, it simply does not exist and hence it has proven nothing. Defensive individual scientists often undertake to speak for "science," but what they say when they do so is never within their genuine cognitive authority. They are doing something else when they speak...it is something clearly moral or political...

At the end of his article Pinker refers to Tom Wolfe's essay, "Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died" where Wolfe shares his anxiety about the time that science has destroyed the soul when "the lurid carnival that will ensue may make the phrase 'the total eclipse of all values' seem tame." Pinker continues,

My own view is that this is backward: the biology of consciousness offers a sounder basis for morality that the unprovable dogma of an immortal soul. It's not just that an understanding of the physiology of consciousness will reduce human suffering through new treatments for pain and depression. That understanding can also force us to recognize the interest of other beings--the core of morality...And when you think about it, the doctrine of a life-to-come is not such an uplifting idea after all because it necessarily devalues life on earth...I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.

I have several comments about this. First, much of human life is not scientifically provable. Morality is not an issue that science can address. Dallas Willard's article addresses this issue in far greater detail than I can present here, but much of life is not scientifically provable. Secondly, I find his view unpersuasive and unlikely. The notion that empathy for others is a sufficient basis for developing moral human beings is naive in the extreme. Third, his assertion that belief in life after death necessarily devalues life on earth, is an egregious error in thinking. Maybe he could have benefited with a conversation from, say, Mother Theresa. This is a case that frequently occurs where the arguer (as with both Dennett and Dawkins do in their recent pejorative books about religion) creates a straw man or uses a caricature of that which he or she wishes to demolish. This is an easy feat with straw men. Fourth, ironically he ends is article using religious language: "...the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift." A gift from what or whom? The impersonal Cosmos? Mindless evolution? Does not "a gift" imply a giver?

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Thought for the Day

The whole of law of human existence lies in this: that man be able to bow down before the infinitely great.
--Fyodor Dostoevski

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The Monday Morning Quarterback

I can't speak for others who attended the UCC Weekend Away, but I had a great time. The frigid temperatures on Friday night and Saturday morning were a bit challenging, but other than that, I enjoyed the opportunity to make new friends and deepen other friendships, as well as enjoy Ocean Edge. I thought worship on Sunday morning was powerful. Barbara's homily moved me. I felt the presence of the Spirit in our midst.

From some of the feedback that I have received, it seems as though those who attended have a new appreciation for the power of the imagination in the life of faith both individually and in community. I'm looking forward to seeing what fruit this bears as we continue our journey of discipleship together.

I'm wondering if any of you who were on the weekend want to comment on your experience or thoughts?

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Thought for the Day

The greatest tragedy in life is not unanswered prayer, abut unoffered prayer.
--F. B. Meyer

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Report from Ocean Edge

We laughed a lot at the UCC Medfield Weekend Away! Tim Hartman, the storyteller/actor who worked with the children and youth was very funny. Saturday evening he provided the after dinner entertainment and I must confess it has been a long time since I have laughed that hard.

Today Pastor Liz led a workshop with the title, "Imagining the Church in Prayer," and helped those on the retreat to deepen their own prayer life and gave some helpful suggestions on ways of accomplishing this. Afterward, we had the worship service led by Carol Cassoli and the homily delivered by Barbara Seeglitz. I always find the worship service at the end of the Weekend Away inspiring.

All in all, I think attendees made new friendships, deepened older friendships, and we all had a chance to use our imaginations as a way of growing in our faith and visioning the church.

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Thought for the Day

Thus it is the ministry that more than anything else renders the Church a relational reality, i.e. a mystery of love, reflecting here and now the very life of the trinitarian God.
--John D. Zizioulas, Being and Communion

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Greetings from Ocean Edge

The UCC Medfield Weekend Away got off to a great start! Over 150 of us are in Brewster at Ocean Edge Resort and staying warm even though the temperature is frigid outside. The theme of the retreat is "Imagining the Church," and we also have Tim Hartman from Pittsburgh involved with the children and youth. This evening he will be providing the entertainment after dinner.



Last evenings session was on the power of the imagination in living life well. This morning's session was "Imagining the Church as Communion," and this afternoon's session was "Imagining the Church in Mission. One of the things that we have discovered is that everyone has a functional imagination, even those who don't believe they do, and sometimes when we use them things can be pretty funny! Please keep us in your prayers as the weekend continues...

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More on the Mind

In the 1/29/07 Time, Mind and Body Special Issue, I found the article 'How the Brain Rewires Itself" by Sharon Begley fascinating. An important finding of recent research about the brain is that of neuroplasticity which is "[t]he brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life." As the author notes,

For decades, the prevailing dogma is neuroscience was that the adult human brain is essentially immutable, hardwired, fixed in form and function, so that by the time we reach adulthood we are pretty much stuck with what we have...The doctrine of the unchanging human brain has had profound ramifications. For one thing, it lowered the expectations about the value of rehabilitation for adults who had suffered brain damage from a stroke or about the possibility of fixing the pathological wiring that underlies psychiatric diseases.

But new research has challenged these long-held dogmas and is beginning to revolutionize attitudes and strategies for addressing some of these problems.

As both a pastoral counselor and psychologist I find some of the findings about therapy especially interesting. Studies conducted with those suffering from OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) using cognitive behavioral therapy found that the brain "rewired" itself in the same way that taking medication for the disorder changes the pattern of brain functioning. When working with depressed individuals, the therapy changed brain activity but in different ways than medication.

Another experiment involved MRI scans of Buddhist monks meditating. One of the most significant findings concerned activity in the left prefrontal cortex, the location responsible for happiness. The study found that

[w]hile the monks were generating feelings of compassion, activity in the left prefrontal swamped activity in the right prefrontal (associated with negative moods) to a degree never before seen from purely mental activity...This suggests...that the positive state is a skill that can be trained.

While the study of neuroplasticity is in its infancy, I think the ramifications for this field are exciting and huge. Any thoughts about these new findings in neuroplasticity?

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Thought for the Day

There is clearly far more to Spirit-created living than can be detected by blood pressure and pulse rate. All the "vital signs" of botany, biology, an physiology combined hardly begin to account for life; if it doesn't also extend into matters far more complex than our circulatory and respiratory systems--namely, matters of joy and love, faith and hope, truth and beauty, meaning and value--there is simply not enough there to qualify as "life" for the common run of human beings on this planet earth. Most of us may not be able to define "spirituality" in a satisfactory way, but few of us fail to recognize its presence or absence. And to feel ourselves enhanced by its presence and diminished by its absence. Life, life, and more life--it's our deepest hunger and thirst.
--Eugene Peterson, The Wisdom of Each Other

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Flash Forward

This Sunday the texts for the service are Micah 4:1-4, 5:2-4, and Luke 2:8-14 and the title of the sermon is The Three Wise Men of Totenleben. The Rev. Dr. Thomas Sullivan will preach.

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Thought for the Day

Fear and growth go together like macaroni and cheese. It's a package deal. The decision to grow always involves a choice between risk and comfort. This means that to be a follower of Jesus you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life.
John Ortberg, If you Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat

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The Mind

There is an interesting article on the the brain in the 1/29/07 issue of Time. I haven't read it completely yet, but it has piqued my curiosity and have skimmed some of it. The article that I find particularly interesting is the one on consciousness with the title, "The mystery of Consciousness" by Harvard Psychologist, Steven Pinker.

There are actually two problems surrounding consciousness, what philosopher David Chalmers, has called the Easy Problem and the Hard Problem. The Easy Problem having to do with the difference between conscious and unconscious thoughts "is to distinguish conscious form unconscious mental computation, identify its correlates in the brain and explain why it evolved."

The Hard Problem according to Pinker

is why it feels like something to have a conscious process going on in one's head--why there is first-person, subjective experience. Not only does a green thing look different from a red thing, remind us of other green things and inspire us to say, "That's green" the Easy Problem), but it also actually looks green: it produces an experience of sheer greenness that isn't reducible to anything else...
The Hard Problem is explaining how subjective experience arises from neural computation. The problem is hard because no one knows hat a solution might look like or even whether it is a genuine scientific problem in the first place (pp. 60-61).

There is currently no solution at the present time, and may never be a scientifically satisfactory answer especially for the Hard Problem.

This article raises a lot of questions about the proper limits of science, scientism, and what passes for knowledge that I hope to address over time. The article is definitely worth reading.

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Thought for the Day

Materialists and madmen never have doubts...Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have the mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity.
--G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

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Thoughts About Time

I found an interesting article in the New York Times today about time. The author, Natalie Angier, in "Making Sense of Time, Earthbound and Otherwise," discusses the length and shortness of time in the universe. She notes that the time that we humans consider normal is really rather not normal for the universe as a whole. The earth has been around for about 4 billion years and the universe for 14 billion years.

In the subatomic world time is unimaginably short. An attosecond is a millionth of a trillionth of a second, the zeptosecond is a billionth of a trillionth of a second, and the yoctosecond is a trillionth of a trillionth of a second. Angiers writes

Fleeting does not mean flaky or unstable, however. To the contrary: the fundamental quivers of the atom "are exceedingly regular," Dr. Jaffe [a theoretical physicist at M.I.T.] said, adding, "They mark the heartbeat of the universe." Atomic events are so reliable, so like clockwork in their behavior, that we have started tuning our macroscopic timepieces to their standards, and our beloved second, once defined as a fraction of a solar day, is now officially linked to oscillations in a cesium atom.

Articles like this always fill me with awe about the universe.

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Thought for the Day

[T]he marvelous strength and fecundity of modern science is the result of the ascetical rigor with which it limits the scope of its inquiries. In the terms of Aristotle's fourfold scheme of causality, science as we understand it now concerns itself solely with efficient and material causes while leaving the questions of formal and final causes unaddressed. Its aim is the scrupulous reconstruction of how things and events are generated or unfold, not speculation on why things become what they are or on the purpose of their existence. Much less is it concerned with the ontological cause of what it investigates: It has nothing to say regarding being as such, or how it is that anything exists at all, or what makes the universe to be.
--David B. Hart in "Daniel Dennett Hunts the Snark," First Things

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PTSD After the Patriot's Loss

How many of you didn't sleep well last night because of the Patriot's loss? I noticed this morning at the place that I work out that there weren't nearly as many people as normal. I figure that is because they were up late, and that they are bummed out about the Patriot's loss. If it will help, feel free to comment on how you're feeling about the game and any thoughts you have about the Superbowl.

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Thought for the Day

If we think that by cramming theological or ethical or biblical information into people's heads we are helping them live better to the glory of God, we are badly mistaken. Getting the right information is the smallest part in the curriculum of wisdom. Living rightly and robustly in faith, hope, and love is what we are about. And that means, of course, that all our words must be lived words. What we say and the way we live are part of the same grammar.
--Eugene Peterson, The Unnecessary Pastor

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Prayer for the Day

Most High and glorious God, enlighten the darkness of our hearts and give us a true faith, a certain hope and a perfect love. Give us a sense of the divine and knowledge of yourself, so that we may do everything in fulfillment of your holy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
--St. Francis of Assisi

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I want to share some more thoughts from the author of Take Joy, Jane Yolen. While I can only qualify as a neophyte writer, I have talked with enough people and read enough articles to know that I am not the Lone Ranger when it comes to the difficulty I have in writing. Frequently I find procrastination sitting right next to me as I try to come up with something to write. Sometimes I can't even make myself sit down at the computer even though I harbor the best of intentions.

About this problem Yolen writes,

[I]f you want to wait around for the Time Fairy to visit you some morning, or for Imagination to lay his head with its mop of dark elflocks on your breast, or even have the Birkenstock Muse come with a cup of tea and a new story idea, set like a cold biscuit upon the accompanying saucer, please--be my guest.
I, on the other hand, being a professional writer, someone who makes a living writing, will do what professional writers always do. I will not wait around for inspiration but rush right into perspiration mode. I sit at my computer, fingers on the keyboard, and get to work.
Writers write.
It sounds too simple to be true, but there it is. Writers write.

She goes on to say that different writers have different writing goals as a way to get themselves to write, but what matters is that it works for you, the writer. She says, "And if you work at your writing every day, you will get better. Exercising the writing muscle is important, because flabbiness is as bad in a writer as it is in a runner."

She also notes that another important aspect of writing is finding a place for writing that works for you. It doesn't matter where it is, only that it is a place that is conducive for you to write. She says, "There is a big difference between the wannabes and the worker bees. The worker bees are the ones who get published. The wannabes just want to be published, they don't want to write."

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Thought for the Day

We do not want to be beginners [at prayer]. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything but beginners, all our life!
--Thomas Merton

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Thought for the Day

The only rose without a thorn is friendship.
--Fortune cookie

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More on Marriage

This past week the New York Times has had two article on marriage: "51% of Women Are Now Living Without Spouse" by Sam Roberts on Tuesday, 1/10/07, and "The Elusive Altar" by David Brooks in today's Times. Tuesday's article reports that for what is probably the first time in the U.S. there are more women living without a husband than are. There are a number of reasons for this change, among which are women marrying at an older age, the rate of cohabitation has increased dramatically, the increase in the divorce rate, and women who tend to live longer lives than men.

Roberts also notes that among African American women the marriage rate is low: approximately 30% of African American women are married. The rate is 49% for Hispanic women, 55 % for white women, and 60% for Asian women.

Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families and the author of a recent book on the changing status of marriage, writes, "this is yet another of the inexorable signs that there is no going back to a world where we can assume that marriage is the main institution that organizes people's lives...Most of these women will marry, or have married. But on average, Americans now spend half their adult lives outside marriage."

Roberts shares several quotations of women who are not married or were married and divorced and feel a new freedom. I would judge the tone of the article as informational with a slightly positive cast of this new change in marriage.

David Brooks article is not quite so sanguine about this trend. He notes that this change might be welcome for the wealthy, but for many,

the fact that many more people are getting divorced or never marrying at all is not such good news. For voluminous research shows that further down the social scale there are millions of people who long to marry, but who are trapped just beyond the outskirts of matrimony. They have partners. They move in together. Often they have children with the people they love. But they never quite marry, or if the do, the marriage falls apart, with horrible consequences for their children. This is the real force behind the rise of women without men.

In addition to his more negative assessment of this change than the other article is his inclusion of children in the discussion. Interestingly, Roberts never includes children in the equation--his focus is primarily on the desires of autonomous individuals.

What do you make of this change in marriage?

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Flash Forward

The scripture texts for this Sunday's service are Psalm 35:5-10 and Luke 4:14-21 and the sermon title is "Trusting in Jesus." The theme centers around the idea that when we understand Jesus' true identity and place our trust in Him, we open ourselves for transformation.

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Thought for the Day

The prayer preceding all prayers is "May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to."
--C.S. Lewis

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Thought for the Day

Discipleship is about individual Christians--and the church as a community of Christians--living in mission.
--Michael Foss, Power Surge

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Thought for the Day

Who, among Christians today, is a disciple of Jesus, in any substantive sense of the word "disciple"? A disciple is a learner, a student, and apprentice--a practitioner, even if only a beginner. The New Testament literature, which must be allowed to define our terms if we are ever to get our bearings in the Way with Christ, makes this clear. In that context, disciples of Jesus are people who do not just profess certain views as their own but apply their growing understanding of life in the Kingdom of the Heavens to every aspect of their life on earth.
--Dallas Willard, The Great Omission
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The Monday Morning Quarterback

Yesterday I finished my sermon series on the church. I actually learned a lot preparing for it, and I learned how deficient my theology of the church was. It was in no way an exhaustive series--there were many areas that I did not address--but it has given me a hunger to go deeper in this area. I wonder what you are thinking about the church, both in its global and local dimensions.

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Thought for the Day

The paradox of prayer is that it asks for a serious effort while it can only be received as a gift. We cannot plan, organize or manipulate God; but without a careful discipline, we cannot receive him either.
--Henri Nouwen

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Prayer for the Day

Teach us, gracious Lord, to begin our deeds with reverence, to go on with obedience, and to finish them in love; and then to wait patiently in hope, and with cheerful confidence to look up to you, whose promises are faithful and rewards infinite; through Jesus Christ.
--George Hickes

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Saturday is for the Arts

I have continued to read Jane Yolen's book, Take Joy, a wonderful book about writing fiction (although as one who writes mostly nonficton, I have found it very helpful). In Chapter 5, "The Alphabetics of Story," she asks the question, "Where do stories come from?" She then answers her question:

Stories are around us everywhere, like fireflies, and the writer must be ready to grab them as they fly by. Use a net with a very small weave. Ideas are small--what we do with ideas is the large part of the equation.
However often I capture an idea, its look, its size, its wingspread is always a surprise.
As writers we must be ready for those surprises.
The way to do that is to organize your luck. In other words: Be prepared for whatever happy accidents may occur along the route of a story. It means clipping articles that interest you, even when you have not a clue what to do with them. It means buying odd books on the off chance that you may some day have need of them. It means being open to a universe of possibilities long before a story has arrived. As Louis Pasteur noted: "Chance favors the mind that is prepared."

What is in your grab bag and how fine is the mesh in your net?

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Thought for the Day

...Lord, when I sleep I feel you near.

When I wake, and you are already wiping the stars away,
I rise quickly, hoping to be like your wild child
the rose, the honey-maker the honey-vine;
a bird shouting its joy as it floats
through the gift you have given us: another day.
--Mary Oliver from the poem "More Beautiful than the Honey Locust Tree Are the Words of the Lord," in Thirst

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Men and Vanity

I recently read an article on the internet by David Zinczenko with the title, "Are Men More Vain Than Women?" Apparently so. It turns out according to his research that men care as much about their appearance as women do. In a survey he made, 9 out of 10 men responded that they were not satisfied with their appearance.

He notes that while women purchase more shoes than men, when it comes to investing in their bodies, "men who seek medical help for their appearance are twice as likely to opt for an invasive cosmetic procedure like liposuction rather than a non-invasive appearance boost."

While only 34% of the women in the survey said they wanted bigger breasts, 38% of men said they wanted bigger pectoral muscles.

Men spend $1.1 billion on hair gel. They spend more than $300 million on toupees annually, and $800 million on hair transplants.

OK, so both sexes are vain. With our society's obsession with looks and youth, I would think the forecast for businesses involved in this field is rosy indeed!

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Thought for the Day

Biblical prayer is impertinent, persistent, shameless, indecorous. It is more like haggling in an outdoor bazaar than the polite monologues of the church.
--Walter Wink

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Flash Forward

The sermon text for this Sunday is Ephesians 1:20-23 and the title of my sermon is "Imagining the Church." I want to wrap up the series on the church that I began in October. I must say that I have learned a good deal through preparing for this series and, frankly, have discovered that my theology of the church--my ecclesiology--has been seriously deficient. I have been reading several Greek Orthodox theologians over the past year or two, and have found their ecclesiology enormously helpful.

In Orthodox theologian's, John Zizioulas' book, Being and Communion, I have found a very helpful discussion on the church. He emphasizes the importance not only of Jesus, but of the Holy Spirit in the origin and constitution of the church. He writes, "The Spirit is not something that 'animates' a Church which already somehow exists. The Spirit makes the Church be. [The work of the Holy Spirit] does not refer to the well-being but to the very being of the church. It is not about a dynamism which is added to the essence of the Church. It is the very essence of the Church" (p. 132).

I think we tend to think of the church as we do of other organizations, a collection, and aggregation of people. The church is the body of Christ and is so not on the basis of people deciding to worship together, but on the basis of Jesus Christ through whom the church is "in-stitued" and on the basis of the Holy Spirit through whom the church is "con-stituted" (p. 140). Since we tend to have an anemic or impoverished view of the church, we don't imagine much, and as a result of that we don't accomplish much.

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Thought for the Day

Energy and beauty are deeply linked in contemporary physics. At the highest energies, like those immediately after the Big Bang, perfect symmetry prevails, and all the forces of nature merge into one. As the universe cooled down, this symmetry was broken in various ways, so the world we see around us is, as Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg has put it, "only an imperfect reflection of a deeper and more beautiful reality."

--Jim Holt, New York Times Review, 1/14/07

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Interesting...

I found the following observations or quotations in the 1/9/07 issue of The Christian Century:
1. According to a recent Zogby poll, 85% of Americans want television to include more religious values, references to the Bible, and less violence and sex. At the same time the Nielsen ratings showed that among the ten most popular programs are: Desperate Housewives, CSI: Miami, Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds, Law and Order: SVU and Two and a Half Men. Go figure.
2. Not to long ago the pastor at a Baptist church in Mt. Airy, North Carolina was arrested for taking a handgun with him into the pulpit. He said that it was a prop. I'll bet he didn't get any complaints about his sermon or its length!
3. A University of Chicago professor, Richard A. Shweder, made the following comment recently on the antireligious books by Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris: "The popularity of the current counterattack on religion cloaks a renewed and intense anxiety within secular society that it is not the story of religions but rather the story of the Enlightenment that may be more illusory than real." Right on.

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Thought for the Day

Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with
the fragrance of the fields and the
freshness of the oceans which you have
made, and help me to hear and to hold
in all dearness those exacting and wonderful
words of our Lord Christ Jesus, saying:
Follow me.
--Mary Oliver from her poem, "Six Recognitions of the Lord," in Thirst

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Thought for the Day

In this modern era of cosmology, evolution, and the human genome, is there still the possibility of a richly satisfying harmony between the scientific and spiritual worldviews? I answer with a resounding yes! In my view, there is no conflict in being a rigorous scientist and a person who believes in a God who takes a personal interest in each one of us.
--Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, The Language of God

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The Patriots Advance

I can't help myself. I have to blog briefly about the Patriot's game yesterday. I was impressed with their ability to hang in, as well as their ability to finish off the Jets. It seems as though their MO frequently is to go ahead, but then let a team get back in the game, leaving us with a nail biter until the end. I think that if they bring their A game next week against the Chargers, they can win. In fact, if they can continue to bring their A game I think they can win the Superbowl. Of course, that is a big "if." Anyone want to weigh in on the Patriots chances?

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The Monday Morning Quarterback

I thought that on Mondays I would include a blog on Sunday's sermon for those who attended worship or who listened to it from the church website. Sometimes I find that if I let things settle and and reflect on them for a while, I will discover questions that are raised or other thoughts that come to mind.

Frequently when I start preparing the sermon I find that I end up going in a direction that I had anticipated. I have read the epiphany scripture, Matthew 2:1-12 many times, but this was the first time that verses 10 and 11 stood out to me. I had never before seen the pattern that I noted in my sermon: God initiates, we seek, are overwhelmed with joy with a real encounter with Jesus, are led to worship, are led to opening up our treasure chests. Then I suggested that the pattern repeats in a spiral upwards.

Any thoughts about the pattern or anything else that I said in the sermon? I welcome your responses.

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Thought for the Day

Trying to get to the answer before one has understood all the right questions is a prime source of error in human affairs.
--Phillip E. Johnson, The Right Questions

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Prayer for the Day

Lord, thou has taught us that all who come our way are our neighbours. But hear our prayer for those with whom we come in daily contact because they live close to us. Help us to be good neighbours to them. Give us the grace to ignore petty annoyances and to build on all that is positive in our relationship, that we may love them as we love ourselves, with genuine forbearance and kindness.
--B. F. Wescott

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Saturday for the Arts

I want to start blogging on some subject having to do with the arts on Saturdays. Since I love poetry and writing these subjects will, no doubt, occur more frequently. However, I do want to include thoughts on all of the arts as well.

For those of you who like to write, I recently received Jane Yolen's book, Take Joy, as a gift and have not only thoroughly enjoyed it, but also found it very helpful. She received the Caldecott Medal for her children's book, Owl Moon, an Honor Award for her book, The Emperor and the Kite, as well as numerous other awards. She has a delightful and accessible writing style which includes a dry sense of humor. If you are interested in improving your writing, or even becoming motivated to write, I recommend this book. It's a small book that packs a lot of power.

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Thought for the Day

Yet it is important to remember that poetry, at its most basic, is a short, lyrical response to the world. It is emotion under extreme pressure or recollection in a small space. It is the coal of experience so compressed it becomes a diamond.
--Jane Yolen, Take Joy

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More on the Pursuit of Happiness

I want to continue sharing some thoughts on the article about positive psychology that I began yesterday. Hovering throughout the article is the ghost of religion. What I mean by that is that the author and other psychologists are fearful that positive psychology is too much like religion (meaning unscientific, unsupported, bad). Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard says concerning positive psychology, "I guess I just wish it didn't look so much like a religion."

The author of the article, D.T. Max writes, "Indeed, the sectlike feel of positive psychology can be hard to shake off when watching classes like Kashdan's [the professor teaching Positive Psychology at George Mason University]ore even when reviewing the record of the field's beginnings." When interacting with students in the only masters program in applied positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, Max wrote, "I felt the spirit of Gandhi was hovering over us." Max also writes, "Two criticism as troubling as the problem of positive psychology's religiosity are 1) that it is not new--psychology always cared about happiness and 2) that the publicity about the field has gotten ahead of the science, which may be no good anyway."

I don't want to oversimplify the issue but I think the problem lies in part concerning a misunderstanding of the nature of science and our human need for meaning. The truth of the matter is that when we are dealing with human beings especially areas of psychology, sociology, cultural studies, etc. we are not dealing with "hard" science. The human being cannot be understood merely by laboratory experimentation. Furthermore, science cannot offer humans a meaning for life. It is beyond science's ken. And if there is one thing that humans need to live well, it is meaning as Victor Frankl captured so well in his classic book, Man's Search for Meaning.

I wonder what thoughts that you might have about this subject.

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Thought for the Day

The gloom of the world is but a shadow, and yet within our reach is joy. Take joy!
--Fra Giovanni

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The Pursuit of Happiness

The pursuit of happiness seems to crop up a lot lately. Last Sunday I saw Will Smith's new movie, "The Pursuit of Happyness (worth seeing, by the way)," and this week's New York Times Magazine has an interesting article, "Happiness 101," in it. The focus of the article is on the relatively new field of Positive Psychology founded about ten years ago by well-known psychologist Martin Seligman and several others.

The article raised a couple of issues that I have been thinking about lately having to do with how religious people are as well as the issue of the nature of science and religion and their "proper domains." As I read the article, I was aware of noticing the "religious" nature of positive psychology. One of my core beliefs about humans is that in the broadest sense everyone is religious: everybody has sacred "texts," symbols, "commandments," and even rituals by which they live their lives. This includes the most die-hard atheists as well.

My other observation is that for a subject to gain legitimacy all one need do is market it as "science." If you say that something is scientific, then it has automatic legitimacy. The professor of course on happiness at George Mason University that author D.T. Max sat in on referred to it as "The Scientific Pursuit of Happiness," and Seligman refers to Positive Psychology as "good tough science."

The problem is that science can say nothing about virtues, ends and goals that people "ought" to have or take. Science may describe what the course may be if one takes certain paths, but can't really comment on the "oughtness" of it; if it does it has immediately left the realm of science and entered into some other field.

I am not suggesting that research in this area is unwarranted: in fact I think that it is. However, the findings of certain attitudes and behaviors need to be placed into a larger interpretive framework in order to make sense, and this larger interpretive framework science cannot provide. By acknowledging this fact and then naming the interpretive framework(s) by which one chooses to evaluate them would be both honest and helpful. It is not a misfortune that human beings, human art, societies, and cultures cannot be reduced to scientific data. Actually, I think that life is much richer because of it.

What thoughts do you have about happiness and its pursuit? Is happiness something that one can pursue directly, or is it a by-product? Can science determine what makes for happiness by itself?

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Thought for the Day

Without wonder we approach life as a self-help project. We employ techniques; we analyze gifts and potentialities; we set goals and assess progress. Spiritual formation is reduced to cosmetics.
Without wonder the motivational energies for living well get dominated by anxiety and guilt. Anxiety and guilt restrict; they close us in on ourselves; they isolate us in feelings of inadequacy or unworthiness; they reduce us to ourselves at our worst. Instead of being formed by the Spirit that hovered over the waters and raised Jesus from the dead, we are malformed into lives of moral workaholism or pious athleticism.
--Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

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Our Work

I want to share part of a poem by Mary Oliver that I recently read and spoke to me. The poem's title is "Messenger."

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird--
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished...

How different the world would be if we had this attitude and understood our work as loving the world and standing still and learning to be astonished.

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Thought for the Day

Here we have the basic psychology of the patristic age [period of important theologians of the early Christian church from the end of the New Testament era until the 5th century]: human dignity comes from our relatedness to God, as given by God in creation. Unlike in the modern view, our dignity is grounded not in that which individuates us from others or demonstrates our self-sufficiency but in that which links us to God by virtue of his grace. Human dignity is seen in our connectedness to God, not in our autonomy. What is required is that one understand the objective state of things correctly: who God is and who we are as a consequence of his love, power, and respect for us.
--Ellen Charry, By The Renewing of Your Minds
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New Year's Resolutions

I must confess that I'm not big on making New Year's resolutions. Perhaps it is the result of not following through on many (or any) when I was young. Perhaps it has to do with my observation that in January the gyms seem to fill up with people for a month or two who are determined to start working out, getting in shape, and losing weight, but who are no where to be seen by the beginning of March. I don't say this as a way to berate those who try but can't seem to follow through; I say it as support for my thesis that most of them don't (or can't) keep them.

I do, however, try to spend some time assessing the past year and thinking about goals and possibilities for the coming year in a prayerful manner. I like to look back and thank God for the things that He has done over the previous year, and then consider what changes I might need to make, as well as what goals I might set.

You may wonder what difference there is between this and making New Year's resolutions. It is a big difference. New Year's resolutions feel like a straight jacket to me, and I don't do well in a straight jacket (metaphorically speaking). I try to create a way of looking at the New Year that invites evaluation, change, and creativity, and that has plenty of room for flexibility.

I'm wondering what you do when the New Year arrives. Are any of you able to make resolutions that you are actually able to keep?

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Thought for the Day

Putting down an anchor or two amid the swells of each day is essential if we are to avoid bobbing on its surface or being washed away by its demands...Regularity in prayer can seem impossible to those with hectic lives; and perhaps, some days or some months, it really is. When this is so, remember God's grace and don't fret about it. Leaping to the conclusion of impossibility without really reaching for the possible is foolish, however; many genuinely busy people do find ways to build a period of prayer into their days.
--Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the Day

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Prayer for the New Year

O Lord, who though you were rich yet for our sakes became poor, and has promised in your holy gospel that whatever is done for the least of your brethren you will receive as done to you: Give us grace, we humbly beseech you, to be always willing and ready to minister, as you enable us, to the needs of others, and to extend the blessings of your kingdom over all the world; to your praise and glory, who are God over all, blessed for ever.
--St. Augustine

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