NRH2018
- Wireless, noise-cancelling headphones are often heavy & bulky. Weight and size are the enemy of traveling light. Traveling light is great because it makes the travel experience easier and more flexible, and thus, more fun.
- Wireless, noise-cancelling headphones have to be charged. Again, having to charge lots of stuff while in transit is just less than ideal. Running out of power on the go is huge bummer!
- They're affordable. I mean. Less than $20 online. Incredible considering the next points.
- There're lightweight and comfortable. Compared to my wireless headphones, these feel so light! I easily wore them for hours without discomfort.
- They offer ok noise-isolation. This is just means the block some outside noise. Not a lot, by any means, but I was able to hear my music and podcasts just fine on the airplane, and in my house with three noisy kids.
- They provide fantastic sound quality. I really cannot get over the quality of sound I am getting from these cheap heaphones. I listen to all kinds of music, and it all sounds good. Bass is punchy, but natural. Highs are clear. Vocals are warm. I LOVE the sound.
- They are reasonably compact. The ear pieces fold flat and inward for easy packing. This was also huge for me.
What can wash away my sin?
What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus; What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Refrain: Oh! precious is the flow That makes me white as snow; No other fount I know, Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
For my pardon, this I see, Nothing but the blood of Jesus; For my cleansing this my plea, Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Nothing can for sin atone, Nothing but the blood of Jesus; Naught of good that I have done, Nothing but the blood of Jesus. This is all my hope and peace, Nothing but the blood of Jesus; This is all my righteousness, Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World - New book from Cal Newport
Cal Newport is releasing a new book called Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World . I loved his book Deep Work, so you can be sure I’ve already pre-ordered this one.
The brain drain of your smartphone
Your cognitive capacity is significantly reduced when your smartphone is within reach — even if it’s off — suggests new research. — Read on www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170623133039.htm
Why I am not a determinist
It is sometimes asserted that evil is not simply allowed but “ordained and guided” by God for the purposes of a grand narrative; it serves the “story” he is telling in creation. I think I get where people that hold this view are coming from, and I agree that the system (usually connected with Calvinism) has a high degree of explanatory power if you grant all of the inherent assumptions and interpretations of the biblical text.
That said, I find the deterministic view quite unsatisfying from biblical, theological, and pastoral points of view. Unfortunately I think the “God as author” metaphor (often very useful) is usually pushed to the breaking point and beyond.
This ESV Journaling New Testament could be a game changer for study and sermon prep
The Productive Pastor, Chad Brooks, just posted a pic of his study notes on Instagram. I had to ask him what Bible he was using. Turns out it was the new ESV Journaling New Testament, Inductive Edition.
I sometimes create my own version of this via copy & paste and Word, but this bound version of the New Testament text with wide margins and super-generous line spacing could really facilitate meditation, lectio divina, observation notes, definitions, etc. As such, it could also be a great volume to preach from if you wrote your notes directly in the text below each verse…certainly something to think about!
This is where I do ministry
This is the neighborhood where I do ministry–Sunnyslope in Phoenix, AZ. A place of striking beauty, intense need, and full of amazing people.
Why Christians are always talking about the blood of Jesus
This week we were listening to Spotify in our home and the song “Sunday Bloody Sunday” by U2 came on. My son Jensen wanted to know if it was about Jesus ? It was a reasonable question, because Christianity talks a lot about blood. And it’s weird, let’s be honest. We talk about being “washed in the blood” and we sing songs with words like “there’s power in the blood,” and my personal favorite: “there is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins.” It’s a little gross.
Have you ever wondered what’s up with the whole “blood of Jesus” thing?
Amazing lightweight, compact, great-sounding headphones for travel. For under $20.
Wireless headphones are all the rage these days, as they should be. There’s delightful freedom in being able to start your music, podcast, or audiobook and roam about the house unteathered. Working out without wires is a true step up in terms of the quality of the experience. Add to this wireless freedom active noise canceling that can quiet ambient sounds like air conditioners, airplane engines, and the neighbor’s lawn mower, and you have a recipe for audio technology that deserves as be ubiquitous as it is. Bose, Beats, and Senheiser all deserve their place in the high-end headphones landscape.
However, these kind of headphones start at about $200 for a great experience. You can find some brands like Cowon selling similar headphones for about $50-$80, which can provide a good (though perhaps not great) experience. I have been pretty happy with some wireless, noise-canceling headphones in that price range. The thing is, wireless, noise-canceling headphones aren’t necessarily the best headphones for travel in every situation. I found myself looking for something different for a recent trip I took. Why?
So, I found myself on the hunt for a compact, lightweight, wired pair of headphones that offered good sound, decent noise-isolation, and acceptable comfort. I had a budget of $25. I wondered if it was even possible, but then I found exactly what I was looking for in an unassuming pair from Sony.
Sony has distilled the essence of over-the-ear headphones into their MDRZX110 model, a minimalist marvel of sonic wonder.
It comes in one color (black), and has only the features you need in a solid pair of headphones. Everything you need, nothing you don’t. Here’s why I ended up loving my Sony MDRZX110 headphones:
A Christian perspective on Halloween
This is “a” Christian perspective not “the” Christian perspective in today’s world, and there’s plenty of grace to go around on how to observe (or not observe) All Hallow’s Eve. Hopefully it’s helpful to some to understand how many Christians have understood the holiday over the centuries.
Biblical thinking
If the biblical story does not control our thinking, then we will be swept into the story that the world tells about itself.-Lesslie Newbigin
Fr. Thomas Keating has passed away
It's with great sorrow I found out today that Fr. Thomas Keating has passed away.
His writing taught me to understand how prayer can be about being with God, enjoying his presence, and not only asking God for things. He taught the Bible is meant to be prayed and to expect God to speak through it.
He taught me that one can cultivate an attitude of submission to God’s will, and understand that’s not scary because God’s will is always for my good and for greater communion with him.
For me, this was and is profound stuff in terms of deepening my communion with Christ.
May he rest In peace, and may his memory be eternal.
Statement from his organization, Contemplative Outreach
Father Thomas Keating, OCSO
March 7, 1923 - October 25, 2018
“To the worldwide community of Contemplative Outreach,
It is with deep sorrow that we share the news of the passing of our beloved teacher and spiritual father, Thomas Keating. Fr. Thomas offered his final letting go of the body on October 25, 2018 at 10:07pm at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. He modeled for us the incredible riches and humility borne of a divine relationship that is not only possible but is already the fact in every human being. Such was his teaching, such was his life. He now shines his light from the heights and the depths of the heart of the Trinity.
The monastic community from St. Benedict’s Monastery will join together with the Contemplative Outreach community for a memorial service in Denver, Colorado. The location, date and time of the memorial service will be announced shortly. The Center for Action and Contemplation will live-stream and record the service so that anyone who wishes may join remotely.
Details will be forthcoming for a 24-hour, worldwide prayer vigil, as well as suggested schedules and enrichment for local gatherings.
Please respect the privacy of St. Benedict’s Monastery and St. Joseph’s Abbey and do not call with questions.
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Fr. Thomas was born in New York City in 1923 and remembers having an attraction to religious life from a young age. He started college at Yale University and then graduated from an accelerated program at Fordham University. While in college, a spiritual director at a camp where he worked took the counselors to Our Lady of the Valley Trappist Monastery in Rhode Island, which he ultimately joined in 1944. He was ordained a priest in 1949. He first came to Snowmass, Colorado in 1958 as the appointed superior to help build and run the new monastery, St. Benedict’s. In 1961 he was called back to St. Joseph’s Abbey and served as the abbot for 20 years. During that time, he was invited to Rome in 1971, following the Second Vatican Council where Pope Paul VI encouraged priests, bishops and religious scholars to renew the Christian contemplative tradition. As an answer to this call, Fr. Thomas, along with William Meninger and Basil Pennington, drew on the ancient practice of Lectio Divina and its movement into contemplative prayer, or resting in God, to develop the practice of Centering Prayer. The initial idea was to bring the contemplative practices of the monastery out into the larger Christian community by teaching priests, religious and ultimately, laypersons. After 20 years as abbot, Fr. Thomas resigned and returned to St. Benedict’s Monastery. He became more fully immersed in bringing the contemplative dimension of the Gospel to the public by co-founding Contemplative Outreach in 1984.
Another outgrowth of Vatican II was that Catholics were given permission and encouraged to acknowledge the work of the Spirit in other religions. In God is Love: The Heart of All Creation, Fr. Thomas states, “No one religion can contain the whole of God’s wisdom, which is infinite.” One of Fr. Thomas' lasting legacies is that for over 30 years, he convened inter-religious dialogue at St. Benedict’s, which became known as the Snowmass Conferences. It was an attempt to dialogue with and understand the contributions of the spiritual traditions of all religions and put to rest the cultural attitudes that lead to separation and violence.
As many of you know who have met him over the years, Fr. Thomas traveled worldwide to teach us about the Christian contemplative tradition and the psychological experience of the spiritual journey. He once told Mary Clare Fischer, a reporter for 5280 Magazine, that he thought the hardest thing about his commitment to monastic life would be the separation from the outside world because “I felt a great desire to share the treasures I had found in the way of a deeper relationship with God.” His seminal work on the Spiritual Journey Series is testament to his desire.
Within the last decade of his life, Fr. Thomas said, “I am at the point where I do not want to do anything except God’s will, and that may be nothing. But nothing is one of the greatest activities there is. It also takes a surprising amount of time! What time is left each day is an opportunity for God to take over my life more completely on every level and in every detail.” (God is Love: The Heart of All Creation).
Pat Johnson, a long-time friend and one of the founders of the retreat ministry at St. Benedict’s Monastery, had a recent conversation with Fr. Thomas wherein he expressed his gratitude for her service to Contemplative Outreach over many years. She says, “Here is this man at the end of his life, in pain, and still giving his all back into the universe. If ever I had an example of what it means to love unconditionally, this moment in time was one huge example. The greatness of his giving, the greatness of his humility, left me with nowhere to go, nothing to do, and the recognition that doing nothing takes a long, long time. … What an amazing model he is for all of us as we attempt to move through our lives with grace and strength!”
Fr. Thomas is now entrusting us to bear his message of love and transformation, to continue to pass on the wealth of the contemplative dimension of the Gospel and the method of Centering Prayer to the next generation. Just before Jesus was taken up from the disciples after his passion and resurrection, he said to them:
“It is not for you to know the times and the seasons,
which the Father has put in his own power.
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you:
and you shall be my witnesses … to the ends the earth.
And when he had said these things, while they beheld,
he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight.”
- Acts 1: 7-9
Fr. Thomas is now taken from our sight. Let us open ourselves more than ever to the indwelling presence of the Trinity as we deepen our unity in prayer and service. Let us continue to persevere in our consent to the presence and action of God within us and among us and allow the inspiration and the breath of God to move us and guide us as we seek to embody and pass on the gifts we have been so privileged to receive.
With deep gratitude and hearts broken open,
The staff and governing board of Contemplative Outreach, Ltd
Copyright © 2018 Contemplative Outreach, All rights reserved.
Debunking the 81%
Many of the 81 percent [of white Evangelicals that voted for Trump] were not influenced by church leadership. The data tells us that most American evangelicals are not looking to their pastors for political guidance, and most pastors are not willing to touch the subject lest they get burned. Only 4 in 10 respondents told us they wanted advice from their pastor on political issues. And only 4 in 10 told us their pastor uses Scripture to address political topics at least once a month or more. Put another way, many evangelicals are likely turning to culture—and often the most outraged voices—rather than the church for political discipleshipSource: Why Evangelicals Voted Trump: Debunking the 81% | Christianity Today
Social Media is designed for division
The way AI is designed will have a huge impact on the type of content you see. For instance, if the AI favors engagement, like on Facebook and YouTube, it will incentivize divisive content, because divisive content is very efficient to keep people online.7 — Guillaume Chaslot – Helped develop YouTube’s recommendation system — Read on prodtodolist.com/pages/why-you-should-quit-social-media
When I look into the face of my enemy I see my brother
Let us call ‘brothers’ even those who hate us and forgive all by the Resurrection.-The Doxasticon of Pascha
Just don't get political, though
All issues of any importance are both political and moral: for morality is simply the inside, and politics the outside, of every human problem.SOURCE: Brian Wicker, “Morality and Politics,” Manchester Guardian Weekly (January 4, 1968). Stott, J. (2018). The Preacher’s Notebook: The Collected Quotes, Illustrations, and Prayers of John Stott. (M. Meynell, Ed.). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
Don’t rock the boat, they said.
Nothing like a midday run to clear the mind. I just came to grips with the fact that—as an idealist, not a pragmatist—I will always be a thorn in someone’s side.
As a confirmed people-pleaser it’s not a fun realization, but there’s a certain freedom in being fully aware of the situation.
Effort Is Not the Opposite of Grace
Richard Foster, author of The Celebration of Discipline:
There’s a back and forth—there is a role that we play in our relational life with God. That role is, as Paul puts it, that we are to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice.Source: Richard Foster: Effort Is Not the Opposite of Grace | Christianity TodayNow, how do you do that? I’d say primarily—not exclusively, but primarily—through the classical disciplines of the spiritual life. That’s how we offer the mind, the heart, the spirit, the body before God. Then, at that point, the disciplines have come to the end of their tether. There is no righteousness in them at all—none. They just allow us to place ourselves before God. The grace of God steps into that and begins to do work we can hardly imagine.
The point of this is that I cannot change my own heart. I cannot change anybody else’s heart. That isn’t my business—that’s God’s business.
I believe in angels
Today, we celebrate St. Michael and all angels. In a particularly dark, challenging time in my life as a child, I had a vision of an angel. It was a split second, hardly even a moment, but I remember it vividly. I was doing homework, alone in my family’s apartment living room. I felt that feeling of someone watching over your shoulder, so I glanced up and caught a glimpse of a figure in a white robe (much like an alb) with long, curly black hair and face so bright and bursting with light that I couldn’t make out any features.
I can’t explain the assurance I received from that God had not abandoned me, that he was with me, and was watching over me.
From The Book of Common Prayer:
Everlasting God, you have ordained and constituted in a wonderful order the ministries of angels and mortals: Mercifully grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment they may help and defend us here on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
8-Point Checklist for Pastoral Body Care
Photo by Todd Quackenbush on Unsplash
8-Point Checklist for Pastoral Body Care - Charles Stone
This is important.