daily life as life goes on . . .

It seems most people are wanting to live with an uninterrupted life.  You can count on your schedule to unfold – as you have planned.  Except when it doesn’t.  In that case certainty needs to be replaced with clarity.

Clarity is seeing where you are at, assessing the current situation, and with those understandings in place finding a way to move ahead.

Clarity will allow for planning ahead, as long as you remain flexible and continue to seek clarity as you go along.  Blinding sticking to a plan can land you in the ditch.  Working a plan with regular snapshots of where you are at can help you to stick to the road that ends at your destination.

Sharing space or enforcing boundaries.

This idea comes from a lecture by Ray Aldred given at Ambrose University.  The First Nations people work together with others to share space.  A treaty is a way to work together.  Where this is overtaken by the idea of enforcing a boundary rather than sharing space, we become individualistic and, I would observe, often so power based that we miss the ability to live with many others in peace.

Some interesting thoughts.  Still working them through.

Gluttony is hypocrisy of the stomach; for when it is glutted, it complains of scarcity; and when it is loaded and bursting, it cries out it is hungry. (St. John Climacus – “the Ladder of Divine Ascent”)

Thus we have one marvelous early church member react to overeating eating as though it were an addiction.  Another recent statement (undocumented in the paper I read, but put forward with some certainty) was that gluttony in the tradition of the desert monastics related to the matter of variety of food, not so much consumption of food (Christian Century – September 28, 2021 – “Vocational Gluttony”).  Gluttony thus becomes a matter of the pleasure of the eyes and of the taste buds.  Temperance and sameness, on the other hand, were to be preferred.

The King James Bible mentions in Philippians (3:18) that “their god is their belly”, contrasting them to those who have a citizenship other than here on earth.  Not only do these belly seekers place appetite first (and probably many different appetites), but they brag about shameful things, and think only about life here on earth.

More than needed does not mean you cannot partake of the “more”, just that the “more” may not be what is needed and may even be harmful and less than what we were created to eat!

BTW – I love how some people characterize the double quotes we use around words we want to emphasize.  They call them “scary” quotes. 

I’ve been struck with how we see our gatherings together.  Perhaps even more so now that we have endured restrictions of gathering and interacting.

For quite some time we have been satisfied to just say that we are present.  We showed up.  Most of us have reevaluated that social interaction – which came down to no interaction necessary.  Thus we have abandoned social groups, churches and clubs – not necessary.

Those who are the mingling type have a bit different take on restrictions to gathering.  They are eager to enter back into full on, face-to-face excitement.  Theirs is not a matter of abandonment but rather embracing. 

Let me take this one step further. 

Churches are experiencing an attendance slowdown.  Perhaps we need to reevaluate how we see church gatherings.  For years we have said God is present.  Is that enough?  When we gather do we just want a God who is present?

Or, are we open to stating, as we begin our gathering time, that God is mingling amongst us.  We’ll talk about God and sing about God – affirming his presence.  But we will also want to hear stories about what God is saying and doing while he is mingling amongst us. 

Might make for a lot more impactful gathering.