Retirement

Buechner has an interesting take on retirement... actually I think it is worth considering no matter what your stage in life. -- drs

Somewhere around the age of sixty-five, many people decide it's time to stop working and start just enjoying life. The trouble, of course, is that they're apt to discover that with nothing much to do except play golf, travel, catch up on their reading, watch TV, and so on, life isn't all that enjoyable. They need something to give themselves to the way they once gave themselves to their jobs. The question is, give themselves to what? Maybe they could do worse than give themselves to the world that needs them as much as they need the world.

This may involve things like volunteer work at the hospital or delivering meals on wheels or heading the library-fund drive, but the place where giving yourself to the world starts is simply paying attention to the world — to the people you've been saying hello to for years without really knowing them, to the elementary-school kids hanging upside down on the jungle gym, to the woman taxi driver with the face of a Boston bull and no teeth to speak of who waits for fares at the bus stop, to the old vets marching down Main Street on Memorial Day.

If retirees just learn to keep their eyes open, the chances are they will find themselves more involved, fulfilled, challenged, and nourished than all the years they spent with their noses to the grindstone. And enjoying themselves more too.

- Originally published in Beyond Words

Jesus as Lord

Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

We do not gain much by just accepting that Christ died and rose again. Many people believe this, but nevertheless go to hell. This belief is of no help unless you and I experience Jesus as Lord. It is not the worst if some people are unable to believe that Christ rose from the dead – at least they still regard it as something tremendous, too tremendous to glibly confess. The sad thing is that so many people today claim to believe it, and yet it means so little to them. It has no effect in their lives.

Easter - Buechner through Plough

Frederick Buechner:

Anxiety and fear are what we know best in this fantastic century of ours. Wars and rumors of wars. From civilization itself to what seemed the most unalterable values of the past, everything is threatened or already in ruins. We have heard so much tragic news that when the news is good we cannot hear it.

But the proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well. And as a Christian, I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time when all was not well but as one who has faced the cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God. In the end, his will, not ours, is done. Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. Christ our Lord has risen.

Source: Bread and Wine

Abraham Maslow life Quote

"It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes,  to plunge in, to do the best one can, hoping to learn enough  from blunders to correct them eventually."  -- Abraham Maslow

From “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”

 This poem fits really well with my contention regarding the necessity of being broken... drs

Oscar Wilde:

And thus we rust Life’s iron chain
Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,
And some men make no moan:
But God’s eternal Laws are kind
And break the heart of stone.

And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the unclean leper’s house
With scent of costliest nard.

Ah! happy those whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?

Source: Bread and Wine

Mine and Yours

Saturday night the wife came home raving about the sermon Vicar Richard delivered.  Here is his sermon-connect summary.  

 

Romans 12:3-8 “Mine and Yours”

Generous living is not about sharing what is MINE with others.  Generous living begins as we stand before God and confess, “God, all I have is YOURS.  The only thing I confess to be MINE is my sin.”  God has given us time, resources, and abilities to enjoy, to care for our families, and to love the world around us – all in the Name of Jesus.  I dare not call anything in my possession MINE since it is all GIFT from the Lord.    

This is not easy for me.  Actually it’s impossible because of that thing I must claim as MINE (sin).  But here is the Good News.  Christ came to us when we were dead in our sin.  He reached out, took hold of my sin and yours – took it upon himself and said, “That is MINE!”  Then he took his perfect holy life, his very own name, and applied it to us and said, “This is YOURS!” “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.” Isaiah 43:1b

Atheism

Buechner again.... always making you think with a twist of the artistic....

A true atheist is one who is willing to face the full consequences of what it means to say there is no God.

To say there is no God means among other things that there are no absolute standards. For instance, if you are an atheist who believes with all your heart that murder is wrong and you run into somebody else who believes with all her heart that murder isn't wrong as long as she can get away with it, there is no absolute standard by which it can be shown that one view is better than the other, just as there is no absolute standard by which it can be shown that vanilla is better than chocolate.

If you are an atheist who says that murder is wrong because it works against the good of society in general, then you are saying that the good of society in general is gooder than the good of the murderer in particular, and, having thrown out all absolute standards, you can't say that. All you can say is that vanilla is better than chocolate because you like it better and so do most of your friends.
If you say, "In the absence of absolute standards, I declare that murder is wrong in the name of common sense" then you have simply made common sense your absolute standard. What is in accord with common sense is right and what isn't is wrong.
What is American is right and what is un-American is wrong. What is ethical is right and what is unethical is wrong. What works is right and what doesn't work is wrong. These all bring God back under different names: nationalism, ethics, pragmatism. To be a true atheist is to acknowledge no rule except the rule of thumb.
Thus many an atheist is a believer without knowing it, just as many a believer is an atheist without knowing it. You can sincerely believe there is no God and live as though there is. You can sincerely believe there is a God and live as though there isn't. So it goes.

Lots of the time atheism isn't bad fun. I do what seems right to me and you do what seems right to you, and if we come into conflict with each other, society has human judges to invoke human laws and arbitrate between us. Who needs a Divine Judge and a Cosmic Law? We can learn to live in lower case.

Except sometimes. Sometimes it's almost as hard to believe God doesn't exist as to believe he does. I don't mean a baby's smile, which is probably gas. I don't mean the beauty of nature, which is always soon followed by the indifferent cruelty and ugliness of nature. I mean an atheist is about as likely as anybody else to walk into a newsstand someday and pick up a copy of the National Enquirer or some such paper. On the front page is a picture of a dead child. The bare back is covered with welts. The eyes are swollen shut. Both arms are broken. The full story is on page three if you have the stomach for it.

To be consistent with the atheistic creed, the atheist can say no more than that to beat a child to death is wrong with a small w. Wrong because it is cruel, ugly, inhuman, pointless, illegal, and makes the gorge rise. But what is apt to rise along with the gorge is the suspicion that it is wrong also with a capital W — the suspicion that the law that has been broken here is not just a human law, but a law as immutable as the law of gravity, one by which even if there were no children in the universe and no grown-ups to beat them, it would be written into the very fabric of reality itself that such an act is wrong.

The atheist holds the tabloid in hand and asks the question, "Why should such things happen?" Atheism can reply only, "Why shouldn't such things happen?" But the atheist keeps on asking.

What makes it hard to be an atheist is the feeling you sometimes get in the pit of your stomach that there must be after all, mad as it seems, an absolute good in terms of which such an act as this can be denounced as absolutely evil. Thus the problem of good is a major stumbling block for atheism, just as the problem of evil is a major stumbling block for religious faith. Both must learn how to live with their doubts.

A true atheist takes human freedom very seriously. With no God to point the way, humans must find their own way. With no God to save the world, humans must save their own world if it's going to be saved. They must save it from themselves, if nothing else. A true atheist does not dance on the grave of God.

The laughter of faith in God is like Abraham's laughter when God says his ninety-year-old wife is in a family way. The laughter of faith in no-God is heard in Sartre's story "The Wall": A man is threatened with death if he doesn't betray the whereabouts of his friend to the enemy. The man refuses to do this and sends the enemy on a wild goose chase to a place where he knows his friend isn't. By chance it turns out to be the very place where his friend is. The friend is captured and executed and the man given his freedom. Sartre ends the story by saying that the man laughed till he cried.

- Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words