This is today's meditation from "24 Hours a Day," published by Hazelden but derived from material developed earlier by the Oxford Group. I try to start every morning with a quiet time during which I read from this book and a couple of other sources.
Daily Recovery Readings: "Meditation For The Day
Avoid fear as you would a plague. Fear, even the smallest
fear, is a hacking at the cords of faith that bind you to
God. However small the fraying, in time those cords will
wear thin, and then one disappointment or shock will make
them snap. But for the little fears, the cords of faith
would have held firm. Avoid depression, which is allied to
fear. Remember that all fear is disloyalty to God. It is a
denial of His care and protection."
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
The Fiendish Genius of Credit-Card Minimum Payments - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com
This may not come as news to many other folks in Delaware, the credit-card capital, but I found it enlightening.
The Fiendish Genius of Credit-Card Minimum Payments - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com
The Fiendish Genius of Credit-Card Minimum Payments - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Left Brain v Right Brain Test
No dount in my case; I'm a right-grainer, if not a right-winger!
Left Brain v Right Brain Test | The Courier-Mail
Left Brain v Right Brain Test | The Courier-Mail
Monday, October 27, 2008
Faith and Politics
Here is a little piece I wrote for The Communicator, a publication of Christ Church Christiana Hundred:
The Rector has asked me, as a one-time political writer, editor and commentator, to write a few words about faith and the political process for publication as the seemingly endless election campaign draws to a close.
Will I be putting my faith to work when the curtains of the voting machine close behind me Tuesday? My faith in God? My specifically Christian faith?
I’m humbled by the assignment. I have been a political junkie ever since I marched in a demonstration for New York’s Gov. Thomas E. Dewey at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia 60 years ago. An active Episcopalian since marrying into the church, I remain a theological babe in the woods; the more I study, the less I seem to know.
Perhaps that is an illusion. “Change” seems to be the watchword of this election, and I have learned enough to ask for God’s guidance in matters involving change. In the words of a prayer that has served me well:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
“Thy will, not mine, be done,” I like to add when saying the prayer myself. They are words I have seen appended in only one published version of the prayer, the one in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, by Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I will be remembering that prayer – especially the final words -- when I cast my vote Tuesday at Lincoln Towers, around the corner from the condo Maggie and I are blessed to share in Wilmington’s Trolley Square beighborhood. I will be praying for God’s guidance, as I try to do in any big decision, and many small ones.
But I am not so naïve as to believe that God will direct me to vote for Candidate A as against Candidate B, or Party X versus Party Y. And I have difficulty with the idea that the outcome of the election – any election – is necessarily reflective of God’s will.
I figure God wants me to vote, but that he expects me to use such intelligence and information as he has given me in doing so. He expects me to be, as Jesus commanded, wise as a serpent even if I am also gentle (and innocent) as a dove. I pray that what I choose to do may reflect God’s will, but in the end I suspect that it will be my own too human, willful self that makes the choices.
As for the election’s outcome, I am mindful of Joseph Stalin’s observation: Those who cast the vote decide nothing; those who count the vote decide everything. Cynical, yes. But, as experience has shown, sometimes all too true. It strikes me as anything but un-Christian to have childlike confidence in the system, but serpentine skepticism toward it as well.
After all, the Kingdom of Heaven is hardly a constitutional monarchy, let alone an Athenian democracy or a republic such as we Americans have inherited. It was Moses, an authority figure if there ever was one, who with God’s help led the Israelites out of Egypt. And when Moses turned his back, it was the people themselves – the people! -- who decided that they owed their freedom to the leadership of a golden calf, not Moses, and not his God.
The people’s judgment is the people’s judgment, neither more nor less. The system is what it is. Imperfect as it may be, it seems to be the best that man has ever devised, and I have faith that I am doing God’s will in doing whatever I can to help preserve and enhance it. And that means voting Tuesday – thoughtfully, prayerfully, and, in the Reinhold Neibuhr’s words, courageously.
It means accepting the outcome, as well. There will be losers as well as winners this week. As the winners celebrate, good people who have staked a lot on the election will be nursing bitter disappointment. The wounds of an especially bruising, unpleasant campaign will still be painful.
In Delaware, we have a special way of bringing reconciliation to this ugly divisiveness. As surely as there will be an election Tuesday, there will be a Return Day Thursday in Georgetown. Winners and losers will ride together in horse-drawn carriages and antique automobiles. They will join in the solemn Burying of the Hatchet. It is a ceremony that goes back more than 200 years. It is our way of celebrating the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, not to mention the courage to have changed the things we changed.
The Rector has asked me, as a one-time political writer, editor and commentator, to write a few words about faith and the political process for publication as the seemingly endless election campaign draws to a close.
Will I be putting my faith to work when the curtains of the voting machine close behind me Tuesday? My faith in God? My specifically Christian faith?
I’m humbled by the assignment. I have been a political junkie ever since I marched in a demonstration for New York’s Gov. Thomas E. Dewey at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia 60 years ago. An active Episcopalian since marrying into the church, I remain a theological babe in the woods; the more I study, the less I seem to know.
Perhaps that is an illusion. “Change” seems to be the watchword of this election, and I have learned enough to ask for God’s guidance in matters involving change. In the words of a prayer that has served me well:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
“Thy will, not mine, be done,” I like to add when saying the prayer myself. They are words I have seen appended in only one published version of the prayer, the one in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, by Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I will be remembering that prayer – especially the final words -- when I cast my vote Tuesday at Lincoln Towers, around the corner from the condo Maggie and I are blessed to share in Wilmington’s Trolley Square beighborhood. I will be praying for God’s guidance, as I try to do in any big decision, and many small ones.
But I am not so naïve as to believe that God will direct me to vote for Candidate A as against Candidate B, or Party X versus Party Y. And I have difficulty with the idea that the outcome of the election – any election – is necessarily reflective of God’s will.
I figure God wants me to vote, but that he expects me to use such intelligence and information as he has given me in doing so. He expects me to be, as Jesus commanded, wise as a serpent even if I am also gentle (and innocent) as a dove. I pray that what I choose to do may reflect God’s will, but in the end I suspect that it will be my own too human, willful self that makes the choices.
As for the election’s outcome, I am mindful of Joseph Stalin’s observation: Those who cast the vote decide nothing; those who count the vote decide everything. Cynical, yes. But, as experience has shown, sometimes all too true. It strikes me as anything but un-Christian to have childlike confidence in the system, but serpentine skepticism toward it as well.
After all, the Kingdom of Heaven is hardly a constitutional monarchy, let alone an Athenian democracy or a republic such as we Americans have inherited. It was Moses, an authority figure if there ever was one, who with God’s help led the Israelites out of Egypt. And when Moses turned his back, it was the people themselves – the people! -- who decided that they owed their freedom to the leadership of a golden calf, not Moses, and not his God.
The people’s judgment is the people’s judgment, neither more nor less. The system is what it is. Imperfect as it may be, it seems to be the best that man has ever devised, and I have faith that I am doing God’s will in doing whatever I can to help preserve and enhance it. And that means voting Tuesday – thoughtfully, prayerfully, and, in the Reinhold Neibuhr’s words, courageously.
It means accepting the outcome, as well. There will be losers as well as winners this week. As the winners celebrate, good people who have staked a lot on the election will be nursing bitter disappointment. The wounds of an especially bruising, unpleasant campaign will still be painful.
In Delaware, we have a special way of bringing reconciliation to this ugly divisiveness. As surely as there will be an election Tuesday, there will be a Return Day Thursday in Georgetown. Winners and losers will ride together in horse-drawn carriages and antique automobiles. They will join in the solemn Burying of the Hatchet. It is a ceremony that goes back more than 200 years. It is our way of celebrating the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, not to mention the courage to have changed the things we changed.
A Battle To Win
Daily Recovery Readings: "All of us have our own battle to win, the battle between the material view of life and the
spiritual view. Something must guide our lives. Will it be wealth, pride, selfishness, greed
or will it be faith, honesty, purity, unselfishness, love and service? Each one has a choice.
We can choose good or evil. We cannot choose both. Are we going to keep striving
until we win the battle? If we win the victory, we can believe that even God in His heaven
will rejoice."
This is a meditation from the little book, Twenty-Four Hours a Day, which many recovering alcoholics like me read daily. I believe that most of the meditations, like many AA precepts, originated with the Oxford Group.
spiritual view. Something must guide our lives. Will it be wealth, pride, selfishness, greed
or will it be faith, honesty, purity, unselfishness, love and service? Each one has a choice.
We can choose good or evil. We cannot choose both. Are we going to keep striving
until we win the battle? If we win the victory, we can believe that even God in His heaven
will rejoice."
This is a meditation from the little book, Twenty-Four Hours a Day, which many recovering alcoholics like me read daily. I believe that most of the meditations, like many AA precepts, originated with the Oxford Group.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Starting Down Memory Lane
I've been keeping things to myself.
It's been six months since anything got posted here, and I'm running out of time.
Maybe it was my sister's notebooks. Betty died in March. She had been in an "assisted living" facility -- one step shy of a nursing home -- for six years. She kept a journal all that time, writing in it whenever the spirit moved her, telling it whatever came to mind.
She wrote down things she remembered from when she was a little girl in Connecticut. She wrote about her teen-age days in northern New York, where the family moved after our father's business fell victim to the Great Depression.
She wrote about getting engaged to one of my brother's Annapolis classmates, accepting his sapphire class ring. And she wrote about breaking that engagement when that new ensign went off to war. "Unforgivable," she wrote.
But it wasn't unforgivable at all, as things turned out. She was only 18, and one can understand; she didn t know her own mind, as they say. Perhaps her rejected suitor understood, too. She wanted to return his ring, but he wouldn't take it back.Some 70 years later they were both back in her life -- the ring and the now-retired Navy captain.
There is much more to this particular story, but I am going to save it for another day. Right now, I just want to draw a little inspiration for myself by thinking of my sister Betty, still beautiful in her late 80s, alone with her memories in the little room that was her last earthly home.
Alone with her memories and with a pen and paper, too. She was not a blogger. She never worked a computer. She was never -- would never be -- at home in the digital world. Hers was the world of ink on paper, words penned with increasing difficulty as her eyesight failed.
I think of her now in her loneliness and pain, and I think if she could do it I can, too. I am more than a decade younger -- a different generation, actually --- and if I begin now and stick to my last with half the resolution she showed, perhaps God will grant me time to compile a memoir like hers that will interest my kids and grandkids, if no one else.
I hope so. Surely it won't hurt to try.
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