Monthly Archives: February 2015

Daily Riches: Purpose Driven or Just Driven? (Mark Buchanan)

Posted on by under applause, approval addiction, Being and Doing, Busyness, Ego Issues, Hurry Sickness, Striving and drivenness, The Sacrament of the Present Moment

“Drivenness may awaken purpose or be a catalyst for purpose, but it rarely fulfills it: More often it jettisons it. A common characteristic of driven people is that, at some point, they forget their purpose. They lose the point. The very reason they began something – embarked on a journey, undertook a project, waged a war, entered a profession, married a woman – erodes under the weight of their striving. Their original inspiration may have been noble. But driven too hard, it gets supplanted by greed for more, or dread of setback, or force of habit. Drivenness erodes purposefulness. The difference between living on purpose and being driven surfaces most clearly in what we do with time. The driven are fanatical time managers – time-mongers, time-herders, time-hoarders. Living on purpose requires skillful time management, true, but not the kind that turns brittle, that attempts to quarantine most of what makes life what it is: the mess, the surprises, the breakdowns, and the breakthroughs. Too much rigidity stifles purpose. I find that the more I try to manage time, the more anxious I get about it. And the more prone I am to lose my purpose. Truly purposeful people have an ironic secret: They manage time less and pay attention more. The most purposeful people I know rarely overmanage time, and when they do, it’s usually because they’re lapsing into drivenness, into a loss of purpose for which they overcompensate with mere busyness. No, the distinguishing mark of purposeful people is not time management. It’s that they notice. They’re fully awake.” Mark Buchanan

“And there arose also a dispute among [Jesus’ disciples]
as to which one of them was regarded to be greatest.”
Luke 22:24

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Do you find that the more you attempt to manage time, “the more anxious you get about it?” … and more “prone” to lose your purpose?  or temper?
  • How often do you “pay attention more?” How often are you “fully awake?”
  • Do you “overcompensate with busyness” when you stray from your purpose? What can you do to change that?

Abba, when I lapse into drivenness, when I overcompensate with busyness, remind me not to hurry, remind me to be fully awake, remind me to listen well, to love well, and to choose a pace that allows for depth and intimacy with you and others.

For More: The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: Consumption as a Sacrament (Thomas Merton, Noam Chomsky, Bob Dylan and Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Posted on by under Awareness, Detachment and Attachment, Simplicity, truth and illusion

“We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.” Merton

“You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption.” Noam Chomsky

“Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments.” Thomas Merton

“Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you”
Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”

“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“Then [Jesus] said to them,
‘Watch out! Be on your guard
against all kinds of greed;
life does not consist
in an abundance of possessions.’”
Luke 12:15

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • To what degree are you “distracted” by consumption? Do you passively embrace the advertizing?
  • Has marketing captivated and mesmerized your ego, deceiving and manipulating you while “life outside goes on all around you?”
  • Are you on guard against the temptation to embrace the idea that life consists “in an abundance of possessions?” What are you doing to live more simply?

Abba, help me see through the illusions of my day, through all the artificial complexity, to the true simplicity on the other side.

For More: The Seven Story Mountain by Thomas Merton

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

 

 

Daily Riches: The Value of Mental “Down Time” (John Hersey)

Posted on by under Busyness, Rest and Relaxation, Self-care, Silence, Solitude, Stillness
 “Fifty-eight percent of American adults have a smartphone today. The average mobile consumer checks their device 150 times a day, and sixty-seven percent of the time, that’s not because it rang or vibrated. …all you really have to do is go outside and see how many people can’t even walk without staring at a screen. …one thing is clear: Paying attention to our smartphones through so many of our waking moments means our minds don’t spend as much time idling. And that matters! We talked to boredom researcher Sandi Mann [who said]… ‘You come up with really great stuff when you don’t have that easy lazy junk food diet of the phone to scroll all the time.” Mann’s research finds that idle minds lead to reflective, often creative thoughts…. Minds need to wander to reach their full potential. During bouts of boredom our brains can’t help but jump around in time, analyzing and re-analyzing the pieces of our lives, says Jonny Smallwood, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of York. …inspiration strikes in the shower because it’s a moment when we’re not really looking at or focusing on anything else. Researchers have only really started to understand the phenomena of ‘mind-wandering’ — the activity our brains engage in when we’re doing nothing at all — over the past decade or so. ‘There’s a close link between originality, novelty, and creativity… and these sort of spontaneous thoughts that we generate when our minds are idle.’ [Smallwood] But when mental stimulation is a touch of the phone away? ‘That’s where daydreaming and boredom intersect,’ Smallwood says. ‘What smartphones allow us to do is get rid of boredom in a very direct way because we can play games, phone people, we can check the Internet. It takes away the boredom, but it also denies us the chance to see and learn about where we truly are….'”
 .

“Pay attention, Job, and listen to me;
be silent, and I will speak.”
Job 33:31

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • We all have our reasons for moments of obliviousness to others. Is your phone one of your reasons?
  • Can you embrace some moments of boredom, or must you distract yourself? Can you be “reflective?” What does your answer say about you?
  • Can others get your undivided attention? Can God?

Abba, meet me in “off” times when my mind is at rest.

For More: “Bored and Brilliant”

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: How the Poor Bless Us (Bob McCahill, Thomas Merton, Eduardo Galeano)

Posted on by under Learning Your Proper Place, Loving Well, The Poor and Disenfranchised, The Upside-Down Kingdom

“The mask that each man wears may well be a disguise not only for that man’s inner self but for God, wandering as a pilgrim and exile in His own creation.” Merton

“It seems to me that the poor evangelize us by giving us various types of good example. They instruct us in patience by their patience under adversity. They edify us by their uncomplaining struggles. They inspire us by undergoing suffering without becoming bitter. They encourage us to face our own problems more bravely by grappling with the pain in their lives. They teach us about the simplicity with which one can live a human life. They offer us a good model for prayer life by their dependence on God: that is, in times of great need they look to God before all else. They do not appeal to God secondly or lastly after other possibilities have failed them. When we witness their efforts to survive with dignity amidst the hardships they constantly encounter, they help us to put into perspective our own overblown problems. Through the struggling poor we begin to understand how good God is to us and how stingy we are with our thanksgiving to God. If we think about them deeply enough, they put us to shame, for, though they are oppressed, they can still laugh and sing.” Bob McCahill

“I don’t believe in charity; I believe in solidarity. Charity is vertical, so it’s humiliating. It goes from top to bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other and learns from the other. I have a lot to learn from other people.”  Eduardo Galeano

“You say, ‘I am rich;
I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’
But you do not realize
that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”
Revelation 3:17

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Have poor people helped you to realize how poor you are? how good God is to you? how “stingy” you are with your thanksgiving to God? What else?
  • Do you think of ministry to the poor in terms of “solidarity?” What would that mean?
  • Jesus wandered as a poor man, in disguise among his own creation. Does remembering that help you to love those who are poor?

Abba, use your poor to show me the way, to bless me as I attempt to bless them.

For More: A Dialogue of Life by Bob McCahill

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: The Crucible of Interruptions (Mark Buchanan)

Posted on by under Awareness, awe and wonder, Mindfulness, The Sacrament of the Present Moment, Uncategorized

“Jesus … lived life with the clearest and highest purpose. Yet he veered and strayed from one interruption to the next, with no apparent plan in hand other than his single, overarching one: Get to Jerusalem and die. Otherwise, his days, as far as we can figure, were a series of zigzags and detours, apparent whims and second thoughts, interruptions and delays, off-the-cuff plans, spur-of-the-moment decisions, leisurely meals, serendipitous rounds of storytelling. …Purposefulness requires paying attention, and paying attention means … that we make room for surprise. We become hospitable to interruption. I doubt we can notice for long without this hospitality. And to sustain it we need … a conviction in our bones that God is Lord of our days and years, and that his purposes and his presence often come disguised as detours, messes, defeats. ‘I came to you naked,’ Jesus says. ‘I came to you thirsty.’ ‘When, Lord?’ we ask, startled. When He wore the disguise of an interruption. Think a moment of all the events and encounters that have shaped you most deeply and lastingly. How many did you see coming? How many did you engineer, manufacture, chase down? And how many were interruptions? The span between life as we intend it and life as we receive it is vast. Our true purpose is worked out in that gap. It is fashioned in the crucible of interruptions.” Mark Buchanan

“Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro … and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness … and he looked, and behold, [a] bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, ‘I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up.'” Exodus 3:1-3

Moving From Head to Heart

  • What if Moses hadn’t “turned aside?”
  • Imagine yourself living as Jesus did, with “zigzags and detours …” etc. How would that feel?
  • Can you become more hospitable to what happens in “the [vast] span between life as you intend it and life as you receive it?”

Abba, “Grant us, we pray you, a heart wide open to all this joy and beauty, and save our souls from being so steeped in care or so darkened by passion that we pass heedless and unseeeing when even the thornbush by the wayside is aflame with the glory of God.” Walter Rauschenbusch

For More: The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: New Gestures for a Changed Life (Mark Buchanan)

Posted on by under Sabbath Rhythms, Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Formation, The Call to Change

“Repentance is a ruthless dismantling of old ways of seeing and thinking, and then a diligent and vigilant building of new ones. …We need to change our minds, yes, but we also need to change our ways. And for this we require practices to embody and rehearse our change of mind. The physical is a handmaiden to the spiritual, but a necessary one, without practices—without gestures with which to honor fresh ways of perceiving—any change of mind will be superficial, artificial, short-lived. We might attain a genuinely new thought, but without some way of putting it into practice, the thought gets suck in abstractions, lost in forgetting. Good practices are both catalysts and incubators for new thoughts, they initiate them, and they nurture them. But they do even more: they make real our change of mind. It’s like marriage. When I married my wife, Cheryl, I had to change my mind about who I was. I was no longer a bachelor. My habits of thought had, for more than twenty years, taken shape around the fact of my singleness. I had bachelor attitudes about how to spend time and money, about the ideal color to paint a bedroom, about the best car to drive, about other women. It all had to go through a dramatic shift, in some cases a complete about-face, when I took vows (actually, the change began a long time prior to that, and continues lifelong.) I had to–have to–change my mind. But if I changed only my mind and never changed my behavior, I doubt I’d still be married. I have needed, at every turn, practices that embody and rehearse–that make real–my change of mind. [cf. Zacchaeus’ story in Luke 19] …When salvation comes to your house, first you think differently, then you act differently. First you shift the imagination with which you perceive this world, and then you enact gestures with which you honor it.” Mark Buchanan


“Jesus said to [Zacchaeus], ‘Today salvation has come to this house….'” Luke 19:9

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Has “salvation come to your house” but left you frustratingly unchanged?
  • Have your resolutions to change been “short-lived?”
  • Are there practices (“gestures”) that you can adopt to build change into your daily routine, and thereby, your life?

Abba, help me as you and I work out my salvation.

For More: The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: Everyone Around You is Exhausted … Are You? (Wayne Muller and Mark Buchanan)

Posted on by under Busyness, Hurry Sickness, Rest and Relaxation, Sabbath Rhythms, Self-care, Striving and drivenness

“I have visited the large offices of wealthy donors, the crowded rooms of social service agencies, and the small houses of the poorest families. Remarkably, within this mosaic there is a universal refrain: I am so busy. It does not seem to matter if the people I speak with are doctors or day-care workers, shopkeepers or social workers, parents or teachers, nurses or lawyers, students or therapists, community activists or cooks…. As their work all piles endlessly upon itself, the whole experience of being alive begins to melt into one enormous obligation. It becomes the standard greeting everywhere: ‘I am so busy.’” Wayne Muller

“And something dies in us. Too much work, the British used to say, makes Jack a dull boy. But it’s worse than that. It numbs Jack, parches Jack, hardens Jack. It kills his heart. When we get too busy, everything becomes either a trudge or a scramble, the doldrums or sheer mayhem. We get bored with the familiar, threatened by the unfamiliar. Our capacity for both steadfastness and adventure shrivels. One measure for whether or not you’re rested enough … is to ask yourself this: How much do I care about the things I care about? When we lose concern for people, both the lost and the found, for the bride of Christ, for friendship, for truth and beauty and goodness; when we cease to laugh when our children laugh (and instead yell at them to quiet down) or weep when our spouses weep (and instead wish they didn’t get so emotional); when we hear news of trouble among our neighbors and our first thought is that we hope it isn’t going to involve us – when we stop caring about the things we care about – that’s a signal we’re too busy.” Mark Buchanan

“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts.”
Hebrews 4:7

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Does your life feel like “one enormous obligation?” Do you feel like a slave?
  • Are you too busy and tired to “care about the things you care about?”
  • Are you able to believe the good news that God wants to save you from such a life?
  • If you’re not already keeping a Sabbath day, would you try it one week? for one month?

Abba, help me protect this day for myself – and my salvation.

For More: Sabbath by Wayne Muller

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: Loneliness and Fear (Robert Frost, Macrina Wiederkehr and Jim Palmer)

Posted on by under Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, Loving Union with God

“Where had I heard this wind before

Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
Holding open a restive door,
Looking down hill to a frothy shore?
Summer was past and the day was past.
Sombre clouds in the west were massed.
Out on the porch’s sagging floor,
Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly struck at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God.”
Robert Frost, “Bereft”

“My loneliness attracts me to the feet of Jesus. Like a magnet I am drawn there, longing to be all one with God. The separateness I keep choosing makes me desperately homesick, and so I am willing, at last, to surrender my divided heart. I am homesick to be one with God. Union with God is the only heaven there is, and it begins here on earth. …There is someone I must become. There is someone I must be grafted onto, and how lonely I am until it is accomplished. My loneliness blesses me because it shows me that I’m not enough all by myself, and so I am impelled to reach out my arms and heart to God and to others. My loneliness blesses me because it encourages me to allow myself to be vulnerable. My loneliness blesses me because it won’t let me hide in the illusion of my self-sufficiency.” Macrina Wiederkehr

“Fear, guilt and shame can be useful on your spiritual journey. When you experience these, follow the trail back to the idea, notion, belief or concept that was the source.” Jim Palmer

“Whom have in heaven but you?
I desire you more than anything on earth.
My health may fail,
and my spirit may grow weak,
but God remains the strength of my heart;
he is mine forever.”
Psalm 73:25, 26

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Have you experienced the loneliness, the fear of being alone, with “no one left but God?”
  • Can you “follow the trail [of that feeling] back to … the belief or concept that was the source?”
  • Is there a way that your loneliness “blesses” you?

Abba, may loneliness carry me to you.

For More: A Tree Full of Angels by Macrina Wiederkehr

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: Elusive Joy (James Martin, Donald Salier, Henri Nouwen and Peter Kreeft)

Posted on by under Desolation's Gift, Emotions and Spirituality, Joy, Suffering and Grace, The Love of God

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” Ernest Hemingway
“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”  Mark Twain

“Joy is what makes life worth living, but for many joy seems hard to find. …Strange as it may sound, we can choose joy. Two people can be part of the same event…. One may choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise. The other may choose despair and be destroyed by it.” Henri NoJoyuwen

“Joy is not simply a fleeting feeling or an evanescent emotion; it is a deep-seated result of one’s connection to God. …Joy has an object and that object is God. …Joy is a fundamental disposition toward God … [having] ability to exist even in the midst of suffering, because joy has less to do with emotion and more to do with belief. It does not ignore pain in the world, in another’s life, or in one’s own life… Rather, it goes deeper seeing confidence in God – and for Christians, in Jesus Christ – as the reason for joy and a constant source of joy.” James Martin and Donald Salier

“He came. He entered space and time and suffering. He came, like a lover. Love seeks above all intimacy, presence, togetherness. Not happiness. ‘Better unhappy with her than happy without her’ – that is the word of a lover. He came. That is the salient fact, the towering truth…. He came. Job is satisfied even though the God who came gave him absolutely no answers at all to his thousand tortured questions. He did the most important thing and he gave the most important gift: himself. It is a lover’s gift. Out of our tears, our waiting, our darkness, our agonized aloneness, out of our weeping and wondering, out of our cry …he came, all the way, right into that cry.” Peter Kreeft

“consider it all joy”  James 1:2

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Can you “choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise?”
  • What might happen, if in spite of the world’s pain, you adopt a “fundamental disposition” of confidence in God?
  • What might happen, if in spite of your “thousand tortured questions” you experience the gift of God’s presence?

Abba, may our connection lead to fullness of joy in me.

For More: Between Heaven and Mirth by James Martin

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”