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Full serenity prayer
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; taking this world as it is and not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will; so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.
Niehbur
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Out of the depths
“The most beautiful people…are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.” - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
I think it was Anne Lamott who said that it’s okay if you are crazy and damaged, because all the best people are.
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“Ambition is tying your well-being to what other people do and say. Sanity is tying it to your own actions.” -Marcus Aurelius
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an inspired creation – a floating studio in the woods, dedicated to poetry. www.ericjsmitharchitect.com/recent-wo…
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culture values
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On being overly involved and responsible for OTHERS.
“I’ve written about my tendency to shift between overfunctioning and distancing. For me, it’s easy to lead the group or skip the meeting. Planning the trip, or not going on the trip, are the easy options for me. Simply going on the trip is the real challenge, the real adventure.”
A lot of good stuff here, I relate to – especially in regards to me and one coworker.
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Education packs information in my head. Learning transforms the way I do things. Education is knowledge-based; learning is transformational.
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Give it all, give it now.
“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.” -Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
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Every day create – without hope, without despair.
https://austinkleon.com/2017/07/13/hope-and-despair/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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more on “sensitive strivers”
Sensitive strivers like Terence are often applauded for the way they explore angles and nuance. But at the same time, they are also more susceptible to stress and overwhelm
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On taking your job too personally.
Our jobs often provide more than a paycheck: They often offer a sense of purpose, growth, and community. But over time, our professional roles can become too intertwined with our sense of self. This is especially true for “sensitive strivers.” When you’re driven to perform and also think and feel everything more deeply, it’s easy for interactions, decisions, or feedback to have a direct — and often disproportionate — impact on your emotions, self-worth, and identity.
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Storify: "How did you come to believe that?"
Storify whenever possible. I no longer ask people: What do you think about that? Instead, I ask: How did you come to believe that? That gets them talking about the people and experiences that shaped their values. People are much more revealing and personal when they are telling stories. And the conversation is going to be warmer and more fun.
-David Brooks
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Informative vs. Provocative.
“It’s important to remember this: businesses that rely on constant online or televisual engagement — social media platforms, TV news channels, news websites — make bank from our rage. They have every incentive, whether they are aware of it or not, to inflame our passions. (This is why pundits who are always wrong can keep their jobs: they don’t have to be right, they just have to be skilled at stimulating the collective amygdala.)” … “If you’re reading the news several times a day, you’re not being informed, you’re being stimulated. Try giving yourself a break from it. Look at this stuff at wider intervals, and in between sessions, give yourself time to think and assess.”
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It takes a daily effort to be free.
From Out of Sheer Rage, Geoff Dyer’s book about wrestling with D.H. Lawrence:
“Films and books urge us to think that there will come certain moments in our lives when, if we can make some grand, once-in-a-lifetime gesture of relinquishment, or of standing up for a certain principle – if we can throw in our job and head off, leave the safe life with a woman that we do not love and, as it were, come out – then we will be liberated, free. Moments – crises – like these are crucial to the cinema or theatre where psychological turmoil has to be externalised and compressed. Dramatically speaking what happens after moments such as these is unimportant even though the drama continues afterwards, with the consequences of these sudden lurches beyond the quotidian. Up until then the question is what you are freeing yourself from; the real question, however, as Nietzsche points out – and Lawrence repeats in his Nietzschean Study of Thomas Hardy – is free for what?
Unless, like Thelma and Louise, you plunge off the side of a canyon, there is no escaping the everyday. What Lawrence’s life demonstrates so powerfully is that** it actually takes a daily effort to be free. To be free is not the result of a moment’s decisive action but a project to be constantly renewed. More than anything else, freedom requires tenaciousness. There are intervals of repose but there will never come a state of definitive rest where you can give up because you have turned freedom into a permanent condition. Freedom is always precarious.”**
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Marriage isn't the goal.
“So often, when we Christians talk about marriage and singleness, we seem to forget that we’re running a race. The things of this world are not our goal. We’re running toward an eternity with Christ and grabbing as many people as we can along the way to join us. For some of us, getting married to a fellow runner will help speed us up. For others, it would slow us down. Much will depend on the specific person we might marry, not just whether we marry or not. Marriage should not be the goal of life for any of us. Running after Jesus is the goal. And married or single, none of us should run alone.” -Rebecca McLaughlin
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A gospel cure for loneliness.
- Reimagine church.
- Reimagine family.
- Reimagine singleness
I’m grateful for Rebecca McLaughlin’s voice. https://quarterly.gospelinlife.com/how-gospel-community-can-overcome-loneliness/?mc_cid=abd095a2a3&mc_eid=617d9c07af
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A strategy of self-redemption
A system of self-redemption is a way of dealing with our shame, our sense that something is wrong with us. Instead of turning to God, our creator, redeemer, and source of our true identity, we turn to idols and develop a strategy for asserting an identity, redeeming ourselves through our own efforts. This is the very essence of sin, but it often develops unconsciously as a result of the ways we are trying to cope with our shame. … My surface idols were grades, being proficient in music, and meeting expectations. But my deeper idol was control. I clearly exhibited a mastery pattern, pursuing a sense of competence and self-worth by doing. Between power or control, I preferred control because I put the pressure on myself. I know that my strategy of control developed long before the sixth grade, but in this particular moment my strategy became more defined: I would only pursue competence in things I was good at, solidifying my way of becoming my own savior. … Because of my past experiences with my parents, I acted as if everything was all up to me, which led to the old painful feelings of being alone as I tried to handle things that felt overwhelming to me. As this pattern became more apparent, I realized that I did not know enough about who God really is to trust him. I related to him as if he did not have the power to change my circumstances or my distress without my own efforts to change them. I was relying on myself and disparaging his omnipotence in my life.
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That thing deep down inside of you has a name.
“The truth of the matter was, none of those things ever got to the place down deep inside of me, where there was this emptiness. I had no word for it. It had been that man, then the next man, the ski instructor, then there was a man that I’d been working with. He was having his way with me on the weekends. But, he did take me to Redeemer. I went to Redeemer with him a few times, and then he kind of dumped me. I cried for two whole years, all the while going to Redeemer. I kept going. I began to hear the word, and I think that the turning point for me was, ‘“This thing you’re feeling down inside of you, that you can’t get to, has a name, and that name is sin.’”
https://quarterly.gospelinlife.com/story-of-a-changed-life/?mc_cid=abd095a2a3&mc_eid=617d9c07af
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Prayer is not thinking. - from Abraham Joshua Heschel
Prayer is not thinking. To the thinker, God is an object; to the man who prays, He is the subject. Awaking in the presence of God, we strive not to acquire an objective knowledge, but to deepen the mutual allegiance of man and God. What we want is not to know Him, but to be known to Him; not to form judgments about Him, but to be judged by Him; not to make the world an object of our mind, but to let the world come to His attention, to augment His, rather than our, knowledge. We endeavor to disclose ourselves to the Sustainer of all, rather than to enclose the world in ourselves. For neither the lips nor the brain are the limits of the scene in which prayer takes place. Speech and devotion are functions auxiliary to a metaphysical process. Common to all men who pray is the certainty that prayer is an act which makes the heart audible to God. Who would pour his most precious hopes into an abyss? Essential is the metaphysical rather than the physical dimension of prayer. Prayer is not a thought that rambles alone in the world, but an event that starts in man and ends in God. What goes on in our heart is a humble preliminary to an event in God. Ultimately, the goal of prayer is not to translate a word but to translate the self; not to render an ancient vocabulary in modern terminology, but to transform our thoughts into thoughts of prayer. Prayer is the soul’s imitation of the spirit, of the spirit that is contained in the liturgical words.
What, as a rule, makes it possible for us to pray is our ability to affiliate our own minds with the pattern of fixed texts, to unlock our hearts to the words, and to surrender to their meanings. The words stand before us as living entities full of spiritual power, of a power which often surpasses the grasp of our minds. The words are often the givers, and we the recipients. They inspire our minds and awaken our hearts.
Most of us do not know the answer to one of the most important questions, namely, What is our ultimate concern? We do not know what to pray for. It is the liturgy that teaches us what to pray for. It is through the words of the liturgy that we discover what moves us unawares, what is urgent in our lives, what in us is related to the ultimate.
We do not realize how much we acquire by dwelling upon the treasures of the liturgy until we learn how to commune with the spirit of Israel’s prophets and saints. It is more inspiring to let the heart echo the music of the ages than to play upon the broken flutes of our own hearts….
It is good that there are words sanctified by ages of worship, by the honesty and love of generations. If it were left to ourselves, who would know what word is right to be offered as praise in the sight of God or which of our perishable thoughts is worthy of entering eternity?
Prayer is the microcosm of the soul. It is the whole soul in one moment; the quintessence of all our acts; the climax of all our thoughts. It rises as high as our thoughts. Now, if the Torah is nothing but the national literature of the Jewish people, if the mystery of revelation is discarded as superstition, then prayer is hardly more than a soliloquy. If God does not have power to speak to us, how should we possess the power to speak to Him? Thus, prayer is a part of a greater issue. It depends upon the total spiritual situation of man and upon a mind within which God is at home. Of course, if our lives are too barren to bring forth the spirit of worship; if all our thoughts and anxieties do not contain enough spiritual substance to be distilled into prayer, an inner transformation is a matter of emergency. And such an emergency we face today. The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God. One cannot pray unless one has faith in one’s own ability to accost the infinite, merciful, eternal God. Moreover, we must not overlook one of the profound principles of Judaism. There is something which is far greater than my desire to pray, namely, God’s desire that I pray. There is something which is far greater than my will to believe, namely, God’s will that I believe. How insignificant is the outpouring of my soul in the midst of this great universe! Unless it is the will of God that I pray, unless God desires our prayer, how ludicrous is all my praying.
We cannot reach heaven by building a Tower of Babel. The biblical way to God is a way of God. God’s waiting for our prayers is that which lends meaning to them.
Source: Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man’s Quest for God: Studies in Prayer and Symbolism Copyright ©️ 1954 by Abraham Joshua Heschel. www.plough.com/en/topics…
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The Senator’s Shorts and America’s Decline
Great article from the great Peggy Noonan on why dressing respectfully matters in the Senate (and I think universally). ….
That is the thought I want to express: We want to be respected but no longer think we need to be respectable.
We are in a crisis of political comportment. We are witnessing the rise of the classless. Our politicians are becoming degenerate. This has been happening for a while but gets worse as the country coarsens. We are defining deviancy ever downward. … It was within this recent context that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did something that isn’t in the same league in terms of shock but nonetheless has a deep institutional resonance. He quietly swept away a centuries-old tradition that senators dress as adults on the floor of the Senate. Business attire is no longer formally required. Mr. Schumer apparently doesn’t know—lucky him, life apparently hasn’t taught him—that when you ask less of people they don’t give you less; they give you much, much less. So we must brace ourselves.
His decision is apparently connected to the desires of Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who enjoys parading around in gym shorts and a hoodie. Why would his desires receive such precedence?
Because he has political needs. He must double down on his brand. He imagines that dressing like a slob deepens his perceived identification with the working class. But this kind of thing doesn’t make you “authentic”; it just makes you a different kind of phony. Mr. Fetterman, born into affluence and privilege, reacted to criticism of Mr. Schumer’s decision with an air of snotty entitlement. He mocked critics, making woo-woo monster sounds to reporters and telling a House critic to “get your s— together.” He said Republicans were “losing their minds” and ought to have better things to do.
Here are reasons John Fetterman, and all senators, should dress like an adult.
It shows respect for colleagues. It implies you see them as embarked on the serious business of the nation, in which you wish to join them.
It shows respect for the institution. “Daniel Webster walked there.” And Henry Clay, “Fighting Bob” La Follette, Arthur Vandenberg and Robert Taft. The U.S. Senate is the self-declared world’s greatest deliberative body.
It shows a mature acceptance of your role, suggesting you’ve internalized the idea of service. You are a public servant; servants by definition make sacrifices.
It reflects an inner discipline. It’s not always easy or convenient to dress like a grown-up. You’ve got to get the suit from the cleaners, the shoes from the cobbler. The effort means you bothered, took the time, went to the trouble.
It reflects an inner modesty. You’d like to be in sneaks and shorts but you admit that what you’d like isn’t the most important thing. It shows that thoughts of your own comfort aren’t No. 1 in your hierarchy of concerns. Also, you know you’re only one of 100, and as 1% of the whole you wouldn’t insist on officially lowering standards for the other 99.
It bows to the idea of “standards” itself, which implies you bow to other standards too, such as how you speak and what you say.
It shows you understand that America now has a problem with showing respect. We can’t take a seat on a plane without causing an incident, can’t be in a stadium without a fight. You would never, given that context, move for standards to become more lax.
It shows you admit to yourself that you’re at an age and stage when part of your job is to model for the young how to behave, how to be. It shows you’re not a selfish slob who doesn’t know what time it is.
It shows you don’t think you’re better than others or deserving of greater rights. News reporters outside the hearing room operate under a general dress code; citizens who testify before Congress do so in business dress. The old dress code still applies to Senate staffers. They don’t show up in torn undershirts and sandals. Why are you better than they are? Conversely, why would their dressing like you make anything in America better?
It shows, finally, that you understand that as a high elected official of the United States you owe the country, and the world, the outward signs of maturity, judgment and earnestness. That isn’t asking too much. It is a baseline minimum.
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How people bear themselves has implications greater than we know. It’s not about “sartorial choice.” It’s about who we need you to be—and who you asked to be when you first ran.
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"Intensity" in relationships
What do you think is more useful for a kid—having a parent who is very anxious about getting it right, or one who is working on being in charge of themselves?
And whom would you rather have at work—a boss who’s concerned they’re not supporting you enough, or one who’s trying to managing their anxiety in a more responsible way?
There’s no right answer to these questions. I ask them simply to help people think about how the intensity of their relating, not just their intentions, affect a relationship. So much of what we label as “trying our best” is really an attempt to manage our own distress. **So much of what we label as “trying our best” is really an attempt to manage our own distress. **
-Kathleen Smith
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"Seasons of refreshment"
“When you cannot see your way, be satisfied that He is your leader. When your spirit is overwhelmed within you, He knows your path; He will not leave you to sink. He has appointed seasons of refreshment, and you shall find He does not forget you.” - John Newton, in a letter www.reformedreader.org/rbb/newto…
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Mindset for art and creativity
These 12 ideas and supporting references from austin Kleon really resonate with me.
https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/old-notes-to-myself?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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Where do we seek ultimate meaning?
“If you become the sort of person who seeks, you will find. And if you give up the expectation of a controllable world, you will find yourself less anxious about a world that seems all the more uncontrollable. If you don’t seek ultimate meaning in your career, politics, your relationships, or your culture, you will find that you are less enraged when those things don’t deliver the results we demand. And you will find the freedom to pursue that which truly resonates.” -Russell Moore
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