Forest and Trees

Tea Partiers disdain the government as a consistent and continual waste of money, except in areas of government that benefits them… my dad’s a cop, my wife’s a teacher, I sure enjoy driving on this road and flushing my toilet. Progressives (it seems both parties have rebranded) disdain whoever has scored higher than them in life, claiming as rights what are more accurately privilege (and not always that), all the while aiming to advance to the heights of the very people they hold in contempt. Surrounding our eyes and ears with the like-minded, we create bogeyman of people through isolation and distance. We define them as ‘they’, and they as ‘them’. Marginalize. Stereotype.

Blacks. Rednecks. Unions. Wealthy. Homosexuals. Christians. Skinny-Jeans-People (well, maybe that one is pretty accurate). Groups containing people we don’t know, defined by inaccurate notions of our own strengths against their weaknesses.

We would do well to meet these people, separate the individual from the pack, and break down our own walls. Real people are, well, real. Their presence reveals an identity in contrast to our notioning, initiates comprehension, distances her from them, separates him from they. And maybe in such an encounter veils are lifted from both sets of eyes. Lest ye forget, to others, you are in one of these ill-defined groups as well.

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.