The Other 167 Hours

life outside the session

Archive for the tag “Christianity”

this path to lose

In my profession, I work with people making their way through the circumstances of life. They are mostly, in my experience, good people, even honorable people, and very often people I come to respect greatly for the persistent work they have done in the making of their way in life. But, they also, without exception, are hurt people.

Hurts come

  • from others,
  • from the self,
  • from pervasive, systematic evil, and
  • from sources we will never be able to name.

The hurts come

  • by accident,
  • through ignorance,
  • in carelessness,
  • out of malice,
  • as an artifact of growth,
  • from profoundly inaccurate mental images of basic things such as the self, the world, God and how He works Read more…

Someone to speak our words

We all have some days that are longer than others. And not in a good way! Thoughts of giving up, giving in, backing down, come at us again and again… even into the night hours. In days (or months) like those, we need to speak words of commitment to our God and to what He is trying to build in us and in the world.

Sometimes these words of commitment to keep going… we can’t even get ourselves to say.  They die on our lips. They won’t come out even though in our heart we want to be able to say them. We believe them. But maybe speaking them seems to strain that belief too much.

We need someone else to say them for us. We may even need someone else to believe them for us.

Read more…

I love the ocean

An article from a guest writer:

Sometimes it’s a gentle pull, other times the force is enough to lay you flat on your face. The undertow. The pull of the ocean. Ever since I can remember the ocean has been as much of my summer as popsicles, watermelon, and long drives. I have run down the same path to the Atlantic Ocean from our family’s house in South Carolina for years.

I grin as my feet remember the ocean floor, much like a reunion of best friends. The hard sand grows a little softer, the wetness and unknown creatures greet my feet like a handshake. One that lasts only as long as needed. It serves as a mere formality; a simple avenue to the real embrace: catching a wave. It’s simple: give in to the pull, enjoy the first wave, taste the salt, feel the sticky, cool ocean, and repeat. A relationship that never gets old.

Read the complete post here.

Should we still be reading James?

I’ve liked the book of James since college. For some reason it has been a section of scripture that I return to again and again. I even remember trying to memorize the whole book once. (It’s one of the shortest books and I’m not sure I ever finished the goal of memorizing the whole thing. Don’t be too impressed.)

So, I was in chapter 2 today and decided I want to ask something of my readers.

Should we still be reading James?
Read more…

S.A.D. Seasonal Agnostic Disorder

Depression
Image via Wikipedia

The agnostic believes that the existence of God cannot be known for sure. It’s unknowable. Of course, that position is incompatible with Christian faith. We believe God is knowable because he has made himself known. He lets us know him and reveals himself to us.

But, still there are seasons…

Psalm 13

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?

How long, O LORD ? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?

Look on me and answer, O LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;

Have you ever been there?

Read more…

Motivation: If I don’t yell, how will anything get done?

Yell
Image by Clover_1 via Flickr

Yes, we can motivate people by yelling at them. (How else would we explain the existence of Little League?) It does motivate people to do something, but it may not be their best. It may motivate them to hide. It may motivate them to do what it takes to get us to stop yelling. If our goal is to help cultivate a lasting and positive change in someone, we don’t want to start with showing them that we are out of control ourselves. Remember that no matter what the words are that come out, the message of yelling is, “Please, someone calm me down because I can’t calm myself down.”

Read more…

It’s not like I need it.

How’s that get-o-meter working? You know, that thing that measures how much you are getting from your spouse, church, job, friends, children, relatives, the “Relationship”… You know that thing you check every now and then just to make sure you’re not being taken advantage of? …just before you say,”All I do is give, give, give and never get anything back!”

Yeah, that thing. You better make sure it’s handy because Christmas is just a few days away and you would hate to be caught without it! Things might not be fair. You might be asked to do something for someone who hasn’t really carried their fair share. I mean, fair is fair! Right? Come to think of it, Christmas seems to be the time when many of us got our first get-o-meter as a child. (Ooh, that means mine is getting pretty old.) Yours is still working fine, just like when you where a child? Isn’t it? Exactly like when you were a child? Read more…

At least believe me!

When someone close tells us something that evokes uncomfortable feelings, it can be very easy to convey “that just couldn’t be!” Now, if they have told you that a conspiracy is underway to personally target your trash bags so that they always rip open just as you are taking them across the carpet, then… okay. But when your spouse is telling you something about herself, for example, how disappointed she was that you didn’t notice her new hair style… no.

That can’t be! You knew how tired I was last night. That’s crazy!” or a similar statement by you, could almost be misconstrued to be saying that what she said  is crazy and couldn’t be true.. to the casual observer.

As this type of interaction is repeated over time, your spouse will feel the frustration of not being believed. Then the ground is all prepared for resentment, confusion, or an emotional cut off. Read more…

A Glance at Faith as Creativity

In the 1950’s psychologists began to study creativity in earnest and today there are thousands of research projects to draw from if one is interested in the topic. I check in on the topic now and then out of curiosity but also for professional reasons because I always have a number of artists of one sort or another in my case load. Just as great wealth takes more time to manage, so also a person with exceptional creativity needs to see managing the creativity as a responsibility they dare not neglect.

I came across an article in Review of General Psychology* that presented a model of 4 types of creativity, called the four-c model. As I read the examples and definitions of each type it occurred to me that a developing faith and a growing relationship with Christ may have a meaningful overlap with these types of creativity. So, I’ve set out to briefly discuss here, the four-c model and what, at first glance, seems a useful way to think about faith development, especially as it relates to seeing Christian meaning in the world.

Read more…

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