The American nones

Reconciling the overwhelming sense of life’s importance with the universe’s ostensible indifference to human suffering is hard.

Although belief in God is no panacea for these problems, religion is more than a theism. It is a bundle: a theory of the world, a community, a social identity, a means of finding peace and purpose, and a weekly routine. Those, like me, who have largely rejected this package deal, often find themselves shopping à la carte for meaning, community, and routine to fill a faith-shaped void. Their politics is a religion. Their work is a religion. Their spin class is a church. And not looking at their phone for several consecutive hours is a Sabbath.

American nones may well build successful secular systems of belief, purpose, and community. But imagine what a devout believer might think: Millions of Americans have abandoned religion, only to re-create it everywhere they look.

Derek Thompson writing in The Atlantic 

to make a man covet a thing

In order to make a man covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. -Mark Twian

The path to sainthood

The path to sainthood goes through adulthood. There are no quick and easy shortcuts. An identity must be established before it can be transcended. One must find one’s self before one can lose it.   

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

one step

If you're running a 26-mile marathon, remember that every mile is run one step at a time. If you are writing a book, do it one page at a time. -Charles Swindoll

It's over

What you knew, what you understood, and what you trusted about everything is OVER. Because everything’s changed. It’s over. That’s the first truth.

The second truth.. is that it’s just beginning—if you choose to be remarkable. Why not choose to show up in your life and then your profession with a kind of engagement and energy and commitment and passion that says, “I can do it again! And I can’t wait.” Why wouldn’t you choose that?

If you say, “I don’t know,” then look at your beliefs. Because chances are someone told you long ago that you couldn’t do it. You weren’t tall enough. You weren’t smart enough. You weren’t rich enough. You weren’t the right color.

Don’t pay a bit of attention to that. You are in the process every day of becoming. Take your hand off the doorknob and say, “Now.”

Roger Fransecky, The Apogee Group

a dog barks

If you stop every time a dog barks, your road will never end. - Arabian Proverb

Why couples start to look alike

It’s folk wisdom that couples in long and happy relationships look more and more alike as the years go by. Peer closely at those old photographs, and you’ll see that the couples haven’t actually grown similar noses or chins. Instead, they have reflected, each other’s expressions so frequently and so accurately that hundreds of tiny muscle attachments to their skin have reshaped their faces to mirror their union. How this happens gives us a window on one of the most fascinating recent discoveries about the brain, and about how we come to “feel felt” by one another. 

 Daniel J. Siegel, Mindsight

Carl Jung's patients

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among [those] in the second half of life-that is to say over 35—there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. –Carl Jung

Celebrating what is right

If we celebrate what is right in our lives, we gain the perspective to deal with some of the things that are wrong in our lives.

Take a Closer Look

This lovely furniture looks like cozy quarters.  But you won't findthe furniture taking up space in someone's living room. The trees in the background offer a hint that something's amiss. These items are tucked away in a Seattle park. They're made of solid cement. And while you can take a seat on the sofa, cozy wouldn't be the best word to describe the experience.

Today you will come across a situation that will look quite different--if you would only take a few small steps toward it. A closer look can change your whole perspective.. when you take the time to go deeper.

Stephen Goforth

Speech & Silence

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence. -Xenocrates

Choosing Your Plan

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

braver

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies. –Aristotle

The Doctor’s Prescription

A physician gave some rather whimsical advice to a patient, an aggressive businessman. Excitedly he told the doctor what an enormous amount of work he had to do. "If I write you a prescription will you follow it?" asked the doctor, realizing his state of mental tension. 

This, believe it or not, was the prescription: The patient was to take off two hours every working day and go for a long walk. He was to take off a half-day a week and spend that half-day in a cemetery. 

In astonishment, the patient demanded, "Why should I spend a half-day in a cemetery?"  

"Because," answered the doctor, "I want you to wander around and took at the gravestones of men who are there permanently. I want you to meditate upon the fact many of them are there because they thought even as you do, that the whole world rested on their shoulders. Meditate on the solemn fact that when you get there permanently, the world will go on just the same and, important as you are, others will be able to do the work you are now doing." 

Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking

Two mind lessons

Two mind lessons stand out for me. One is that becoming open to our body’s states—the feelings in our heart, the sensations in our belly, the rhythm of our breathing—is a powerful source of knowledge. The second lesson is that relationships are woven into the fabric of our interior world. We come to know our own minds through our interactions with others. 

Daniel J. Siegel, Mindsight

I began to have an idea

I began to have an idea of my life, not as the slow shaping of achievement to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual discovery and growth of a purpose which I did not know. -Joanna Field

The Secret to an Exceptional Life

Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliners suggests context and hard work are more critical than raw talent when it comes to achievement. 

Gladwell offers Christopher Langan as an example of how the range of opportunities presented to us can make a significant difference as to whether we gain traction in life. 

Einstein's IQ was 150. Langan’s IQ was a blistering 195. But Langan spent his days working on a horse farm in rural Missouri. Why didn’t he rise to exceptional achievement?  According to Gladwell, there was no one in Langan's life to encourage and help him develop his exceptional gifts. He grew up in a small town in Montana with an abusive stepfather in abject poverty. 

Gladwell writes, "He had to make his way alone and no one--not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses--ever makes it alone."

You didn’t rise alone. Is there someone to whom you should show gratitude? Someone who poured themselves into making you who you are? Is there someone who you could cultivate, radically altering the kind of person they become?

Stephen Goforth

How many cares

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be someTHING, but to be someONE. -Coco Chanel

Falling into old ditches

Have you ever had someone bait you when your family gets together?  “Come on. Join me, and let’s relive those old patterns you’ve tried to shed.”  You try not to let the person get under your skin, but somehow, you end up behaving in a way you believed you had left behind long ago. You can't stop yourself. You stumble backward into old dysfunctional patterns.

“Why does the other person say these things?” you wonder. Perhaps they want to feel superior to you. Maybe that unhealthy relationship is in their comfort zone.

You could try being passive—that might allow you to avoid conflict, put off the problem, and set it aside for the sake of peace. But the goal should be a healthy relationship rather than the absence of conflict. On the other hand, you could make yourself vulnerable, rising and falling with the other’s approval and rejection. This will mean spending a lot of your life bouncing between working hard to prove you are worthy of respect and resenting the need to prove it. 

Stephen Goforth

The Core of a Problem

When God wants to give you something of great value, how does he go about it? Does he wrap it up in a glamorous and sophisticated package and hand it to you on a silver platter? No, more than likely he buries it at the heart of a great big tough problem and watches with anticipation to see whether you have what it takes to break the problem apart and find at its center what might be called the pearl of great price.

Stephen Goforth