Greece, Day 1: Moving Closer to Pigeon Forge

I am 17 years old, a senior in high school, venturing with a group of church friends to a youth conference in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for a proper dose of Bible teaching, slushy skiing, and flirting. Which of these most sincerely motivated our attendance, I am not sure we know ourselves.
It is the last night there, the night where the musicians play "Just as I am" until every kid within 3 counties is pouring their hearts out to God and country and their nearest friend, I am there, praying, listening, and being called by God for His service.

Embedded in my cautious appraisal of this situation is a sincere heart and clear memory of God asking me to do for Him what he asked. What exactly that was, I couldn't say. A vision, hazy yet certain.

One year later, I declare “Civil Engineering”.
Four years later, I venture beyond our borders to discover the world I will one day save.
Two years later, I am a father, a future daddy of four, and completely out of control of my own destiny. I seek, pray, and search for opportunities to go with God somewhere, anywhere, to do something, anything.
And He is quiet. He certainly seems quiet.
Often I think of that night in Pigeon Forge, battling between one of the most real moments of my life, and the tumult of not doing what I am made to do, be what I want to be.
I love my wife.
I love my kids.
I struggle to prove that my longing for the breath of God in the grittier portions of His creation does not represent my feelings for her and the kids,
that I am not running away from them or the crazy-love life we have.
Many years later, the door begins to open.
A chance decision to escape for a weekend, see a friend, sit in the back of a conference and mind my own business, and I am asked to come to a desperate place with insurmountable challenges and use the most unlikely skills to help design a residential subdivision through the middle of a property so desperately unsuitable that the entire overpopulated community had avoided it for two hundred years of city sprawl.
4 months later, and I am there again, gaining clarity, sitting on the roof of an unfinished hospital on Ash Wednesday, the soot of Jesus' sacrifice marking my forehead, staring over a sea of desolation,
praying
and journaling
and listening.
And He continues His conversation.
He picks up where He left off 16 years before.
The beginnings of clarity.
One month later I am accidentally honest with a near stranger and find myself on a ledge, facing a decision, fear in my gullet.
Do I follow His voice? How do I know? How can I be sure?
And she walks to me, my faithful wife, while I am weeding and planting and generally wasting time in the garden. She walks up to me: "be the person I married."
And I do.
We do; she and I and God and a little bit of clarity, in a decision that brings me closer to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
Four years later, the journey to Pigeon Forge takes me the island of Lesvos, Aegean Sea.

Giving Up

It is not a command.

We have incredibly-few of these, and it does not make mention.

Directly, it is not of scripture, and is not a necessity of the Christian life.

Indirectly, however, it is a reflection and consideration of the principles of the life, essence, and reality of Jesus the Christ. 

And inasmuch, as we mimic Him, follow after Him, we do well.

In the past, I have given away 

Sweet Tea

then Iced Tea

then all liquids sans Water...

Internet

Reading.

Last year, as one who spends 2-4 hours a day driving, the most challenging of all, it was all sounds in the car.

Approaching Lent, I am thoroughly uninspired to give up the things of this world. Maggie, a voice of God, encouraged me to consider 'giving up' in a different light. 

Jesus,

in my vainglory attempt to honor you, 

to connect with you,

to hope to connect with you,

I spend Lent 2015

giving away

the parts of my life

that overcrowd my life.

This is almost completely CH2M-centric.

I take on

I am given

I am dumped on.

My shoulders are fully laden, my back is stooped. 

And I still go on. 

I pray for strength and wisdom and I still go on. 

In this Lent,

rather than put away some physical addiction,

stressing my body and then mind with the hopes that the spirit is expanded,

In this Lent,

I give away my superhero life, 

let go of succeeding, hyper-exerting, fixing, bailing out, being the man.

I will be challenged, as I leave holes in my life,

I hope to trust God to fill them, to be God,

to correct,

complete,

flourish

while I shrink away.  

Fingertips

Bowed head, eyes closed, in prayer, in confession. 

And there comes a hand on my left shoulder. Barely a hand. Fingers. Fingertips. Just barely registering. 

Eyes open, without turning my head a glance to the left, and see the right hand of my neighbor. Not hers. 

It matters not. Eyes close, confess. Confess. 

But who is it? Whose hand is that? 

It matters not. It is an angel. Return to prayer. 

But is it really an angel? Could it dare be. Do I really feel those fingertips. Is it just an illusion? A ghosting?

It matters not. Return to prayer. Confess. 

Physical or spiritual. real or Real. It matters not. The hand, the fingers, the fingertips of God rest on my shoulder. In this comfort, I am invited to return to prayer, to confession. 

Praise be to God, through whom all blessings flow. 

He is, Regardless

At times, life crashes.
               faith crashes.
We go through tough times and rough patches, and crash.

And we respond. Burn through, back out, seek help, go alone.
We experiences times of destruction: internal or external, self-inflicted or happenstance.
And we respond.

Rationally, if God is not in this, not in this world, not in our world, then seek a path through. Seek diligently, desperately. Find a means to get to the other side of the crash, to a point of future peace.

Rationally, if God is in this, in this world, in our world, He, being of a nature above and beyond our own, is in some form of control, a form we don't likely understand. We are to realize, to acknowledge, that we are not in control. And it is rational to embrace (rather than struggle) against this reality.
He is [in control], regardless [of how we act].
He is, regardless. 

Battling against His grain does not bring about our intended outcomes. If God is in it, He will bring:

• the Talent,
• the Brains,
• the Connections to make it happen, whatever it may be. 

The villain of the young professional years is the lack of margin. The go, go, go... 

crashing through life, getting things done.

from Gary Bottoms, Bottoms Group, speaker at Marietta Work Matters

But in these years, older than our youth yet young enough to be molded, we are still developing who we will be in:

• Leadership
• Career
• Family
• Community

Choosing God or not-god effects our reactions to the crashes, our actions in the moments, and in the days, weeks, months that follow.
How we act affects who we are to become. We are to some very real degree the product of our prior experiences and prior actions. We are being molded by our self, whether through our self-driven efforts or through our release to God, trusting in His efforts.

He is, regardless.
And we are not.

We Would Do Well

We would do well to recognize that it’s coming, life, bringing with it the good, bad, and all that is in between. Tragedy and failure arrive on the coattails of our own botches, from our proximity with others’, and from the seemingly random acts beyond our comprehension.

We would do well to prepare ourselves, body mind soul, for the imperfections of our life and the lives around us.

We would do well to wrestle with God over these issues and the questions that arise when we face them. Or in reality, the one question: why? He can handle it, the wrestling. We are not His first opponent. As our Creator, He is familiar with our struggles, knows where we came from, where we are, and where we will be.

When we walk through this life, ignoring our impending losses, suppressing previous pain and disappointment, lulled to sleep by the pretense of the good life, we are propagating shallow roots, like velvety-soft moss, easily lifted by outside forces.

Why, Lord, WHY!?! Dare God to prove His mettle in the days of darkness. Plead for His understanding, coming to grips with our past experiences of loss while preparing for life upcoming.

Our God, the God of good tidings and blessings, is too small. Search and find (be found by) the God of all time, place, and elements of life, the One who understands failure, tragedy, and death, who can bring peace to us amidst the full measure of life, who can deepen our roots.

We would do well to prepare ourselves in the days of plenty for the meagre moments, the times of tragedy, seeking answers to difficult questions before we desperately need them. 

He's earned the right to preach to me.

Sunday morning at a local church, 25% destroyed by the storm, but (seemingly) safe enough to meet in. The pastor, standing next to his backpacking tent, which he's living in because his house was destroyed: One of the most difficult parts of the Christian life is that being a Christian does not prevent life's tragedies. Surely if God loves us, He would not take away what we love, who we love.

He then opened the scriptures to 1 Peter, chapter 1, verses 6-7:

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

His response:   Therefore, as a believer, all trials and tribulations have for us a purpose:

To grow our faith...

To purify our character...

To encourage others with our testimony...

To rest in the knowledge that Jesus is Lord.

Our faith has value, endures through devastation. The pastor encouraged me with his testimony. 

This is my Faith

Because he loves me, I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.  He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.
Psalm 91:14-15

What does He expect of us?

Are we intended to continually want more of our Creator, His Redemptive Son Jesus, the Counselor Holy Spirit? Intended to essentially insist on being spiritually dissatisfied, knowing that each moment we look down we are not looking up? Chasing after an infinite God is in its essence a never-ending pursuit, and likely as not, an exhausting one.

We experience the powerful presence of God in points of time and try to extrapolate a continuum from them. Yet in each day, each moment that we forgetfully find ourselves centered in our natural world, the moments between the moments of God’s presence, we feel a spiritual failure.

We must pursue God, desiring Him and His activities. It is a high calling, one clearly given to us. However, may we temper our full-time God-centeredness, knowing that the God who created us knows our days and our minds, our capacity to witness Him as well as our tendency not to? While our pursuit of God honors Him and changes us, He is complete in Himself, regardless of our efforts. On one hand, we will never finish glorifying God, as He has no end. On the other, we just might bring Him glory by a life well-lived.

We cannot fully seek Him (or at least I cannot). We must find contentment in something less than full absorption in the presence of God. When we appraise each distraction as a failure, we judged ourselves harsher than our Father Himself does. 

Seek God in appreciation and respect for who He is, rather than to 'achieve' faith. God is fully complete and healthy without our efforts, and He is likely content with our God-honoring lives, knowing even before we do that we will turn our eyes away from Him.

If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.

II Timothy 2:13

Eat, Drink and Be Merry

My first experience with Communion (eating bread and drinking something 'grape-like' for the purpose of connecting with Jesus) was Spring Break 7th grade, at a camp I was invited to by a neighbor. My mom and I purchased my first bible at K-mart and off I went to Alabama to learn about God hang out with my friends.

I remember 3 things from that week: 

• snipe hunting, 
• rock slide in the creek, and 
• Communion.

Sitting in the back of the room, surrounded by teens and their leaders, the Preacher made it thoroughly clear that Communion was for the born-again Christian only, a very distinct and important litmus test. 

Only one boy in the room of 100+ kids dared to withhold from Communion that night, and he certainly wasn't me. I was completely unsure of what or who a Christian was, but was more weighed down at being singled out by not participating. In what is supposed to be one of the very few sacraments of the faith, I began my journey by lying to God and everyone within reach of my faith, or lack thereof.

This introduction (as well as my eternal struggle with grace) has had me approach Communion with dread, spending years to overcome the sin-hyperbole associated with standing before God. Of course we are to be pitied when before our Creator, embarrassed before our Forgiver, shy before the One who knows who we are. But not shamed to the point of avoidance, cowering in fear of retribution, of being placed where we deserve. The teachings of Jesus make this clear.

I respectfully disagree with that Preacher, and regret the leaders of our faith who build false doors to God, restitching the torn veil. It does no one any good in their faith or daily life to hinder their access to Jesus. In the context of youth camp, knowing the emotional challenges of each of us there, the Kingdom of God is not advanced by creating an atmosphere where an obviously large portion of the kids lie before each other and God to save face.

We will never be worthy of partaking in his flesh and blood, whether we are in or out of the faith. We accept Communion as a gift, not a remuneration for our efforts. We all begin this journey on the outside, and need to be welcomed in. I continue the struggle of feeling on the outside of God's grace. The redress for these times is to scandalously accept grace in the face of my own failures.

Communion is a remembrance of Jesus and His works, not a test of our bloodline or worthiness. 

Drink up, and fill your belly.

We scare me

Shared from a brother from a different mother...

God Made a Farmer

Screwtape Letters 29-31

• Letter 29: How to kick a man while he is down
• What do you do advice for one surrounded by stress filled (dangerous, even) situations?
• Cowardice - it works, but it's a bit of a dead end, doesn't lead to other vices. It does leave the patient with shame, which is a nice touch.
• Courage leading to Pride - this is a nice idea, but is dangerous. Love the pride, but you have to flirt with [the virtuous] courage in order to produce it. 
• Cynical Hatred - use the violent emotions inherit in the times to develop hatred for his enemies. To reinforce, let the patient excuse his hatred as 'acceptable, because it is on others' behalf'. Keep the patient blind to the forgiveness, lest he be tempted to forgive his enemies as he is distinctly taught to do.
• "In peace we can make many of them ignore good and evil entirely; in danger, the issue is forced upon them in a guise to which even we cannot blind them."
• The bad can lead us towards the good.
• COURAGE is the testing point of every virtue. Do I have the courage to do what I ought? A coward may be sweet, nice, gentle, friendly... but he will not be good.
• DESPAIR is the loss of hope, the absence of faith. It is a sin less visible but more deadly than others.
• Letter 30: Do or feel?
• The 'act' is of the highest importance. You may feel weak and full of fear, but doing your duty (whatever that may entail) is the high calling, regardless of how you feel.
• Emotions are valuable, and have their place in God's creation. In the personal interaction between God and man (generally in the form of prayer), emotions play a very real part. However, life is lived through our actions, and the Kingdom of God is effected by those actions.
• How to damage the tired soul?
• S/T distinguishes 'moderate fatigue' verses 'absolute exhaustion', preferring the former. 
• Continual, moderate fatigue doesn't overwhelm us. We continue on, establishing a time frame (I can handle this situation for this period of time), relying upon deliverance rather than endurance, establishing a sense of rights (and how ours are being trampled). 
• Develop Expectations
• Be Disappointed
• Feel Injured
• "Up to a certain point, fatigue makes women talk more and men talk less. Much secret resentment can be raised from this."
• There is confusion in the various realities of the 'real', be that physical, emotional, or spiritual. We struggle to know what is real and what is opinion, perception, physically apparent, etc. 
• Letter 31: The Cleansing
• Regardless of the lingering on this end of life, the delay we seek in the face of death, at the moment of death is instantaneous liberation. 
• This exchange (from this world to the next) is natural and intended. 
• "The gods are strange before mortal eyes, and yet they are not strange," as we were created to behold them.
• The delights, temptations, virtues and vices of this world go strangely dim, in the light of Jesus' glory and grace.

Screwtape Letters 25-28

• Letter 25: Rhythm vs Novelty

• the horror for us of enduring the same old thing
• We love change; we love permanence. These things are contrary, and are balanced through rhythm.
• Novelty, on the other hand, is the continued desire for the 'new', without the balance for the old. The continual desire for the new puts us at odds with the familiar, and distances us from the reality of our lives.
• The demand for novelty "diminishes pleasure while increasing desire", passing from innocent sources of pleasure to those forbidden
• Be careful of what we are chasing (the 'new' for the sake of the 'new'), as well as what we are cautioning ourselves against (the old, familiar, permanent, because it is old, familiar, permanent)
• When trying to determine whether or not to do something, keep it simple: is it kind? is it pure? is it loving? Steer clear from is it couth? is it relevant? is it fashionable?
• "We have trained them to think of the future as a promised land which favoured heros attain - not as something everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is"

• Letter 26: The selfishness of being unselfish
• Opening paragraph: a bit confused. Maybe Lewis is saying that by ignoring today's issues under the codeword of charity, you are just delaying the inevitable (that said issue must be addressed), and that you are giving opportunity across time for unhealthy seeds to grow between you and the other. Or maybe he isn't???
• Unselfishness -vs- Charity, which look similar. The latter is actually for another person's benefit; the former may be solely for your own. 
• The battle of who can be more unselfish, beyond reason... leading to frustrated discourtesy, as each party refused to be out-unselfished, an "elaborate and self-conscious unselfishness"
• From AeB: I'm inclined to think that this issue is much more 'British' in cultural context than 'American', although I may just be fooling myself.
• Letter 27: The Forbidden Question: Is it True?
• When we acknowledge (to God) our distraction away from God, we are in a good position to return before Him. Our movements towards and away from God are of ultimate importance to Him. If a sin in us awakens us to our state, and motivates us to repentance unto life, then in its own way, said sin has been turned on its head for the purpose of good.
• In the battle of daily prayer, keep it simple. Do not over-spiritualize.
• The challenge of the value of praying to an all-knowing God... why bother?
• God "does not foresee the humans making their free contributions in a future, but sees them doing so in His unbounded Now. And obviously, to watch a man doing something is not to make him do it."
• In reading from those who have come before us, we ought to focus on the eternal question "Is it true?", rather than the intellectually stimulating questions "Is it contextually appropriate, culturally sensitive, applicable to our frame of reference...."
• Screwtape's advice: Cut generations off from each other. Prevent the passing of wisdom, and the learning from mistakes.
• Letter 28: Ultimate Importance
• Our misperception: death is the ultimate evil; survival the greatest good.
• If Wormwood cannot overcome the active faith and reliance upon the Enemy of his patient in his youth, then be patient, and allow "the long dull monotonous years of middle-age prosperity or middle-aged adversity [to be] excellent campaigning weather", to dreary the patient's soul away from the Enemy.
• "Prosperity knits a man to the world". Are you finding your place in this world, or is this world finding its place in you?
• Youth has the godly advantage of a lust for life and a acknowledgement that nothing is permanent in this life. Age can forgo both of those opportunities, trading living for security, and clinging to each day, masked as 'maturity'.

Screwtape Letters 22-24

• Letter 22:

• The Patient's current girl: "one who looks as if she'd faint at the sight of blood and then dies with a smile.... who would find ME funny"
• Q: is there some level of maturity involved with being able to grin and smirk at the wiles of Screwtape and his kind?
• The Enemy has a bourgeois mind, filling the world with pleasures, which must be twisted before S/T can use them
• In the godly household, the mysterious odor of the Enemy permeates residents and guests. What secret lies behind the pretense the disinterested love.
• Noise ("the audible expression of all that is exultant") -verses- Music & Silence (a place of joy and contemplation)
• NOTE how exciting and passionate things change us (in this case, into a caterpillar).

• Letter 23:

• First Strategy: separate the patient from spirituality. Keep the cultural and social identity of the Christian intact, while ensuring that the internalized/personal dealings with a spiritual God always secondary.
• If the Patient insists on interacting with God...
• Second Strategy: corrupt his faith and spiritual walk...
• Theology
• Politics
• The interaction of community, social issues, and government
• (re-) define  Jesus based upon one's contemporary concerns
• Make Christianity a means to some perceived-value end
• "Believe this [faith] not because it is true, but for some other [perceived-value] reason"
• Definition: Characterizations are the product of suppression and exaggeration, with a touch of guessing (I mean, deduction) and wishful thinking.
• "All great moralists are sent by the Enemy not to inform men but to remind them to restate the primeval moral platitudes against our [Screwtape's] continually concealment of them."

• Letter 24:

• Screwtape encourages Wormwood to take advantage of people "who have grown up in an intelligent circle united by a clearly defined belief... that the outsiders who do not share this[their] belief are really too stupid and ridiculous [to understand]".... a combination of ignorance (reasonably forgiven) and pride (what you really want to capitalize upon).
• Spiritual Pride: the most beautiful of all vices, whereby
• we have "no notion of how much in him [any of us] is forgiven" as a basis of our daily relationships, and
• are confident in our own value within a relationship, 
• not cognizant of the necessary importance of forgiveness of our own indiscretions within a successful relationship, 
• rather than our intrinsic merit.
• Recommended method 1:
• Raise up your Christian circles and denigrate your non-Christian ones.
• Then separate the circles.
• Then separate from the non-Christian circles until you cease to have any spiritual effect outside the Church.
• Recommended method 2:
• I rightly belong within these Christian circles, rather than
• These folks have accepted me, warts and all
• Recommended method 3:
• Realize that you have been initiated into a select group,
• A group who has figured things out,
• Engaged by God to have a greater understanding of Him and this world
• Theocrats

A ‘follow’ in the hand is worth two ‘learns’ in the bush

It is a great challenge: to teach people to follow God rather than merely teaching them about God.
Typically, we acquire God-knowledge and habit ourselves with God-actions (act nice, talk nice, be nice), content with the transformation from a child of Adam to a child of God.
But God intends more than rebirth and adoption. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God on earth, dwells in His children as a guide, a leader for our lives in the big and the little, that we should follow Him.
As a teacher, this is very difficult to convey with words. It is more aptly conveyed through deeds.

"But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us." II Thessalonians 2:7-8

My Birthday Wish (part 2)

One year ago, I shared before my church my 35th birthday wish from God. He pulled through, and I am the better man because of it.
Again, I was singled out and prompted for what I desired from God this 36th year. Upon being asked, without hesitation, I shared my hope and request that God heal my jaw and the chronic pain associated with it, chronicled here:
what just happened, part 1?
what just happened, part 2?
and finally seeking advice.
God gave me grace last year, He truly did. He can do the same work this year, and I choose to hope for it.

Let me have the courage to revisit this and share what happens next, regardless.

Screwtape Letters 15-17

• Letter 15 - Tomorrow Never Comes
• The Enemy desires us to focus on the Present (where our actions are within our control) or Eternity (where clearly nothing is in our control, and where it is in the Enemy's control).
• Screwtape desires us to focus on the Past (either in our failures or our successes, as long as it keeps us self-focused and deadens our today) or more importantly, on the Future (the unknown and uncontrollable that overwhelms our today).  Focus on non-realities.
• "Nearly all vices are rooted in the future".
• The Future is the least like eternity - completely temporal - the extraction of our minds, whether in hope or fear.
• Letter 16 - Hopping
• The church congregation: a unity of place not of likings
• The mature are critical of the bad while still willing to accept the good (be that with ourselves, our friends, our family, church, political spectrum...)
• Factions stand in the way of charity (how we treat others) and humility (what we focus on)
• By playing it safe in the portions of Scripture and topics of life we are comfortable in, "We are safe from the danger that any truth not already familiar to him and to his flock should ever reach them through Scripture."
• The Modern Iconoclast Controversy, where we the Church meet anywhere under any condition without regard for any sense except our ears (worship first and foremost) and in a really good church, our minds (with solid preaching). Purposefully negligent of our eyes (the beauty of setting or art) and the other half of our minds (with any form of spiritual discipline). 
• Letter 17 - The Withering Glutton
• The determination to get what we want, couched in the confidence that what we want is relatively simple, so it is OK to want it.
• We hide our self-centeredness under the veil of some other perceived virtue (want of simple things, not wanting to be a bother or put someone out)
• Gluttony of Delicacy
• Every day, every meal, every moment spent thinking about the last or next meal, continually self-focused on our body.
• "The grand lie... that physical exercise in excess, and consequent fatigue, are specially favorable to this virtue"
• We create rules about what makes a person virtuous, and then pride ourselves at achieving, or judge ourselves at failing.

Screwtape Letters 11 - 14

 

1. Letter 11: Funny may not be not Funny
   1. What is the power of joy, music, fun? What in these things is inherently different than jokes, sarcasm, flippancy?
   2. S/T is enticed by jokes. What can they afford (do for) us? 
   3. S/T's highest value is in Flippancy, the best of all forms of humor, whereby a contented superiority in perception disconnects us from the rest of creation. This is the specialty of the:
      1. Hyper-educated,
      2. Cynic
      3. AM radio crowd
      4. Victim-minded
      5. namely, everyone but me;)
   4. Sarcasm is the extended arm of hell.
2. Letter 12: Trajectory
   1. S/T would rather us slip than fall. Why?
   2. The Enemy desires our sin to be a call to repentance and reigniting of relationship. S/T would prefer it hang around for a while, fester, sticky, to apprehend our lives. "He will want his prayers to be unreal, for he will dread nothing so much as effective contact with the Enemy"
   3. We hover in our rut, preferring the dark corner to the heat of the light, exchanging something for nothing: our time, opportunity to life, serve, laugh, give... for reluctance, half-conscious guilt, disengagement.
   4. "The safest road to hell is the gradual one"
3. Letter 13: Real Danger
   1. To S/T, grace is a defeat of the first order. What happens when we come to grips, come to peace, with grace?
   2. His advice: keep us away from positive pleasures. Why? What about positive pleasure connects us with the Enemy and distances us from Screwtape? What scares S/T about a wholehearted enjoyment of something, anything, regardless of its seeming eternal value?
   3. The Enemy seeks for the vermin to give up self will with the full intention of releasing a self that is more fully theirs in return.
   4. Misperception (which S/T capitalizes upon): we are not to change who we are in the pursuit of God. He is not asking us to do so. He seeks to complete us, not redefine us. 
   5. Our feelings and our actions are connected.
4. Letter 14: I have lots of Humility
   1. We cycle from virtue to pride at our virtue
   2. S/T: help them develop a self-contempt (a flesh-based humility that denies the intrinsic value of the Enemy's creation), and extend that self-contempt to others, developing a contempt for others (as dastardly as ourselves), society, the world, creation. I'm crap, and so are you.
   3. The Enemy desires you to love your neighbor as you love yourself, as well as loving yourself as you love your neighbor.
   4. Self-focus is Vanity, regardless of you self-opinion. Is it best to fix your mind or to lose it?

Screwtape Letters 6-10

1. Letter 6: Thy Will be Done
1. Submitting to the Enemy's will, where we seek to submit to some future potential state while toiling in suspense and anxiety in the moment, waiting for the future to fall upon us.
2. Group Question: how do you react to uncertainty?
3. S/T's strategy (which, if flipped on its head, may be the Enemy's as well??): In all things that support our cause, let him be un-self conscious, forgetting himself and concentrating on the object/activity of our cause. In all things which support our Enemy, focus on the self, bringing to mind how this activity affects the self. 
1. My translation, after reading this passage 5 times: from S/T's perspective, he desires us to be mindless when frolicking in sin, while self-absorbed when acting righteous.
2. My thought on flipping this: from God's perspective, be un-self conscious when acting godly, and mindful of sin.
4. Let virtues be a part of our distant fantasy realm, admired, cheered, but not a part of our core.
2. Letter 7: End or Means?
1. What is the practical long-term difference between FAITH as an end or a means to an end?
2. S/T strategy: Have him adopt an ideal, identify that ideal as a part of Christianity, regard it as of the most importance.... then, flip it, whereby Christianity is a part of the ideal, a mechanism to obtain towards that ideal. The world is the end, and faith the means.
3. Letter 8: There and Back Again
1. Undulation: "To be in time means change" - wowsers
2. The Trough, where "He [the Enemy] withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives," where the follower is challenged to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.
3. "Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks around upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsake, and still obeys"
4. Letter 9: Slippery Slope
1. Trough, where S/T can degrade pleasures into debauchery, increasing the cravings while decreasing the pleasurable results, getting "a man's soul and give him nothing in return."
2. Trough, where S/T encourages the Enemy-follower to recover "old feelings by sheer will-power"
3. Trough, where we start to wonder if the Peak was a phase, a life-experience to learn from, rather than a portion of reality.
5. Letter 10: Vanity of Vanities
1. Where Wormwood makes "good use of all his social, sexual and intellectual vanity"
2. Vanity, where our desire for social acceptance, or to not ruffle feathers, we betray our God and ourselves with our silence and laughter, giving great joy to S/T for both the incident and our decay. Above all, let them fear being puritanical.
3. The sick reality of two parallel lives, where "he will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he out to be silent"

Screwtape Letters 1-5

1. Letter 1: No Tall Poppy Here
1. Screwtape encouraged Wormwood to latch onto "how enslaved they [humans] are to the pressure of the ordinary." What are these pressures? How do they help Screwtape?
2. S/T warns Wormwood against engaging in argument? Why? What could go wrong for S/T and his purposes?
3. The power of distraction (I forgot what my question was)
2. Letter 2: Church Disappointment
1. We encounter the Church in all its crude, boring and hypocritical actuality. This encounter can enchant pride in our self and disenchant our self regarding others. How has the church been a snare?
2. How does the Enemy use our disappointment in the Church for His purpose?
3. What about the Church does S/T not want us to see?
3. Letter 3: Family Annoys Us
1. Prayer, where we separate spiritually minded thoughts from the physical actions and interactions with those in our lives.
2. Family, where we get annoyed, and justifiably annoy others because they first annoyed us. 
3. Challenge: who annoys you? why? what in them and their actions gets to you? Now ask: is there anything in you, in your view of yourself, in your view of them, which is to some degree responsible for the annoyance you are feeling?
4. Challenge: does any of our religious/church behavior annoy our family/close friends? Do we justify our actions because they are religious/church actions, regardless of the fact they annoy others (turn a blind eye, hide our actions behind the veil of God)?
5. What 'spiritual' acts do we partake in that could just as easily serve Screwtape's purposes as the Enemy's purpose?
4. Letter 4: Being Spiritual
1. Why does S/T like 'moods'?
2. S/T encouragement: create a god to help you concentrate, then concentrate on that god. Why is this dangerous?
5. Letter 5: War (hunh), what is it good for? (less than Wormwood thinks)
1. "Do not allow any temporary excitement to distract you from the real business of undermining faith and preventing the formation of virtues."
2. Spiritually speaking, why is war a strange mixture of good and bad?