Negative Influence

When one lives just a few miles west of our Nation's capital, the term "influence" has a different meaning than in more "normal" parts of the country and world. Within the Beltway, the term influence is usually employed to connote the power of money to move the political wheels. Lobbyists influence the House and Senate, the power of the DoD influences budgets, etc. Today I want to talk about a different kind of influence - that of negativity and its pervasive presence where we live, work, play and pray (to coin the phrase from the health initiative of the same name). It would be hard to argue that we are living in a stressed out and highly negative time. One only has to review the lead stories in the news cycle, pick up the newspaper and scan the headlines, watch the "breaking news" reports, listen to most "popular" music, watch the halftime show at the Super Bowl, suffer through the political campaign rhetoric...the list seems endless. All of the noise which competes for our attention is negative - constantly telling us how bad things are and then turning around and telling us to get our share of the good while it still exists (time's running out, buy now!!). Even in our mainline churches the conversations are about how many members we're losing, how big our deficits are, how few people we're bringing to G-d, how our children are walking away from church because they don't hear the message above the distractions in their lives. The negative influence is winning - no doubt about that. Or is it?! I was blessed this weekend, however, to witness to an age old passage rite - the Bar Mitzvah. The ceremony in which a young boy begins the transformation to responsible adulthood within the Jewish faith. Our neighbor's son who we've watched grow to this point, celebrated this event during the Shabbat service on Saturday. The scripture that he had learned dealt with the dimensions of the Tabernacle and the details of how to build it. (For those who wish to find it, it begins in Exodus 35.) The young man was honest when he said he was disappointed with his scripture (he wanted something with deceit or miracles) but as he stayed with the text, it worked on his showing him the importance of the Tabernacle within the community of faith. It was the centerpiece of the life of the community - the first thing they saw when they rose and the last thing they saw as they went to sleep. At one point, all faith communities had this place in our lives - now what is the first and last things we see as we rise and fall? This week, take a long look at the negative influences on your life and in the lives of those around you. Take a fast from those negative influences that you find during these 40 days of Lent. Watch for the transformation of your worldview and of your attitudes. You might be quite surprised at what can come from a more positive influence. Peace for the journey, Dan

Land of the Lost

Not sure what I'll do when my teenaged boys grow up and become human again...I guess I'll have to find some other stimulating material for my Blog posts. ;-) Though my children have stimulated this posting, it is really a much more pervasive problem - everyone seems affected by a sense of groping through life. We are so overwhelmed by the amount of noise and information that we run blindly from one "to-do" to another. There appears to be no ability to plan or to foresee a future - just running from one distraction to another. We see this in politics, in the news cycle, in the lack of knowledge of many of history and its implications, it permeates all aspects of our lives. There's an adage that states "if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything!" We seem to be in that untethered state - not knowing who or what to believe or to cling to. We've lost our hold on both our personal and communal narratives and without them we have no sense of direction. We have also reached an almost historic low in the number of persons attending faith communities - thus we've lost a spiritual narrative and tether as well. Last night began the liturgical season of Lent - out of a congregation of 1400, about 80 persons came to the service. Granted, it was at 7 pm on a weeknight in the greater Washington, D.C., area and traffic can be a nightmare, but that's a really low percentage. My doctrine in Christian and we have a number of persons who openly profess that they don't believe in sin and the resurrection. Hmmm, kind of key components to following the theology!! It seems to me that we are living in the land of the lost primarily because we've forgotten about our role in community. Everything nowadays is "the world according to me" - this goes for church as well. We hear over and over again statements like, "Don't hand me that liturgical mumbo jumbo, I don't believe in miracles (or grace, or forgiveness, or...). Just get me in and out in an hour so that I can get on with my day." It could be that we're in an Old Testament time and that we're supposed to wander for 40 years in the desert. Unfortunately, we don't have a Moses (apparently) to interceed on our behalf with G-d. Thus, we're just wandering around looking for some GPS heading that will get us going in the right direction (whichever way that is). This week, think about whether you've lost your way. The season of Lent is 40 days of journey that offer the opportunity to reconnect with G-d. There are many ways to do this. The quickest might be to walk into a faith community this weekend and ask G-d to help you find your way. Peace for the journey, Dan

Healthy Connections

It's yet another holiday in the world surrounding Washington, D.C. We have a great many of them - more than others who live a ways outside of the Beltway. It does give my wife and I a chance to connect - she's just coming off 10 days of travel. She has spent some time today moving through her e-mail in-box and she just commented that she has a Linked-In request from someone she knows is dead! ;-) It got me thinking about how being connected has gone from something nice and even professionally necessary to something that is just another competitive game. I can't tell you how many requests I get from on-line counterparts to connect to them through this portal or that portal. I can't even really manage my Facebook page and Twitter account, to say nothing of keeping current with Linked-In and the like. When are connection healthy and when are they a source of our individual and communal dis-ease? It seems to me that anything good can become diseased as it progresses from a tool to an idol. That is, when it stops being used by us for a purpose and begins using us for its own ends. Once the latter occurs, we find ourselves becoming more and more enslaved by the thing that was supposed to be for our benefit. My 18 year old lives for his phone (as a texting platform, not to talk through) and his I-Touch. He is permanently attached to both and I noted again this morning that things were going undone that he needed to accomplish. He's been struggling with the latter device and I asked him what was on his docket for the day. Without hesitation, he stated that he needed to get ahold of Apple to get the problem with the device resolved - so that he could go on and "waste" (my word) his day and not accomplish anything for his near term future. Technology can serve or enslave - my son has been enslaved and he doesn't realize it. He's competing for number of "friends" on Facebook and playing Facebook games, etc, yet his Math grade is languishing and his need to get some exercise, which is paramount for him to be a successful Army or National Guard officer, will be done tomorrow. The technology so rules his life that his ability to plan and execute a real-life plan is nonexistant. Are his connections healthy? Are your connections healthy? Healthy connections should foster an improved sense of self, an understanding of my place in the world, they should energize me to want to do more and to be more, etc. Does having a thousand or more Facebook "friends" or Linked-In contacts do that for you? Sacred texts offer us a view of healthy connections. They show us ways to go about connecting and staying connected in life-giving relationships with G-d and with each other. Certainly the on-line world offers new ways to be in touch with one another, but if we let them be the only platform that we interact as humans, then we won't have the connections we need when our lives are beset by problems and losses. Real community built on shared experiences and a doctrine of faith, gives us the ability to weather "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and come out the other side blessed and a blessing. Evaluate your connections this week - lessen the influence of those that are unhealthy. Peace for the journey, Dan

Unrealized Potential

The title of today's blog post comes from a quote by former President Calvin Coolidge, "The most common commodity in this country is unrealized potential." My father-in-law used to have this and other Coolidge quotes around his house. He talked about the truth of them as he reflected on his life growing up in the Great Depression. He was a "self-made" man who always worked very hard (played hard too) and achieved much more than would have been predicted based on his scholastic apptitude. He would talk about the people he knew with more education or financial resources that ended up "bums". I'd have to agree with President Coolidge and my father-in-law, unrealized potential is rampant in our country, same as it was 80 years ago. The untimely death of Whitney Houston, a prodigious talent in the 1980's prior to well documented struggles with addictions to marijuana and cocaine (and likely other substances), brings this problem to light. Certainly, she is not the first celebrity, especially musician, to succumb to the lure of drugs/alcohol, but I find myself deeply saddened by the loss of such talent to make the world a little brighter. While the difficulties of too much money and not enough grounding are commonplace, there is a new and more subtle addiction afoot that I predict will lead to even more unrealized potential in our next couple of generations. That addiction is the lure of the virtual world. I'm engaging in this struggle with my oldest child. He will spend hours on Facebook and YouTube looking at how others are living, laughing at the inane videos, remarking about all the "stupidity" that's out there, etc. Yet, those hours that he spends are hours that he will never get back. Oscar Wilde stated that "youth is wasted on the young" - and this is another example. My son's life is passing him by as he spends time in a world of unreality - it's my generation's day dreaming taken to a potentially cataclysmic extreme. How can we get a generation to re-engage in their own lives and actually live them? How can we help them re-connect to each other? There was a fascinating article (in a recent Christian Century) on how little the current generation knows about the basics of connecting with another person on a date. There is research going on and classes being taught for young people to learn how to talk to one another. The world of texting, Twitter'ing, etc., has lead to a world of people who communicate in short-hand. They've forgotten (actually they've never realized) that technology is there to serve them, not the other way around. Religion has always shown another path - a path of being in the world but not of the world. In order to engage a generation that is not engaged in their own lives, it will take some truly revolutionary thinking. It will take short messages and chats and probably coffee (!) in order to hold their attention. It will take some research to show how the generation is not realizing its potential. It will take the older generations to re-engage in helping the younger among us find their way out from under the technology burden that we have created. Something to consider - something to do. Peace for the journey, Dan

A Sense of Entitlement

Musing today about the prevalent world view which goes something like, "I deserve this" or "because I work hard I should get to..." or "I make enough money that I deserve..." Now I'm not talking here about the average kid who knows that the world revolves around their every waking moment (like a couple of teenagers in my house) I'm talking about the average adult worldview here a few miles outside Washington, D.C. It is a sense of entitlement that because someone is successful at their given job/career, they should be able to enjoy the "finer things in life". It doesn't matter that those finer things in life come at the expense of someone else; and doesn't provide a younger and more impressionable person a decent role model. As long as it works for me, then it must be ok. A recent survey of college aged kids found that this world view was rampant. Do anything you want to do as long as no one gets hurt (or gets hurt real bad). I find that folks much older than this age are still inhabiting this world and using it to guide their lives. It is one of the reasons that healthcare in America is so out of control. We have the money, we have the technology, therefore we shouldn't have to die until we're darn good and ready. Since we have so much money, we should be able to spend both ours and everyone else's to keep us or our loved ones alive as long as we can. A sense of entitlement...how did we get so far from the need to be equitable and fair and use resources wisely and well? It's been well detailed the long slow demise of organized religion and the loss of community. With these losses, we are fed a steady diet of "just do it" and other mantras which tell us outright that others are less important than us. We are told that our successes are due to our own intellect and energy, not a G-d given gift and a steady diet of grace. We focus on ourselves and we lose focus on everything else. The fact that our GDP is higher than most other nations just puffs us up more. We send short term missionaries to war torn and destroyed areas of the world. This helps us think that we are doing something to help - we pat ourselves on the back. Nothing changes, neither the world nor our worldview. This weekend, seek to shed your sense of entitlement. Find those areas where your vision is a bit fuzzy or you feel you're owed something from someone else. Examine the situation and see if there's another view that is more reasonable and equitable. The more you look in this way, the more you will see. Remember, G-d created each of us in G-d's image and breathed into each of us the breath of life - therefore, all 7 billion of us are G-d's children. Different gifts, same spiritual parent. Peace for the journey, Dan

Right Spirit

Yesterday I was given the great good fortune to spend an hour with a group of 14 year olds. This select group was the confirmation class at my church. I was tasked with helping them grapple with the concept of the Holy Spirit. Interestingly, one of our older members (past 90) walked by one her way to her own Sunday School. She saw me and asked what I was doing in a different class than normal. When I explained my task for the day, she said, "Gosh, I don't think I really understand the Holy Spirit at my age!" It helped the kids know that some things are mysterious and beyond our ability to grasp - and that we all struggle with some things for the whole of our lives. So it is with many large issues in the secular world as well. My musings and preparatory work for my teaching on the Holy Spirit took me far and wide. I read some treatises by scholars, I spent time with the Bible (different versions), and reflected on my own understanding and the areas that I still haven't wrestled into comfort. I found mself reflecting on King David's Psalm 51 and the phrase "...and renew a right spirit within me...." It is clear to me that a source of much of our current dis-ease is a spirit which is not set right with the Creator. We are off doing our things and keeping G-d at bay; calling G-d in for a consult when we get really stuck - but not really following what we might hear. Healthcare has also lost its right spirit. Healthcare used to be about service to others. It used to be seen as a higher calling, similar to being set aside for ministry. It used to be about being in relationship with the persons being served - being in community with them (in both a literal in figuartive sense). Most large institutions and private practice groups are only nominally connected to the communities they are housed in. Sure, they'll do some outreach and they'll care for the poor, but it is mostly marketing photo opp's rather than a meaningful return to relationship. The relationships that are tended and fed are those of payors, not of persons served. Now, Accountable Care Organizations might have a role in changing this, but only if the healthcare reform law gets fully implemented and enforced. We have lost the spirit of altruism and love for fellow humans that once drove the creation of these entities. So this week, look to your own spirit. In the words of John Wesley, founder of Methodism, "How is it with your soul?" Ask yourself how it is with your relationships with your health and healthcare providers. Are these relationships doing what is right for you? Are they helping you get in better shape in mind, body and spirit? If not, seek the counsel of someone who can help you find your way back into a right spirit. Peace for the journey, Dan