Shorter Presentations

A number of people are more effective in responding to questions than they are at presenting information, so maybe shorter presentations (maybe only the naming of a topic) would suffice.

In the Moment

If it is not complete in the moment, it will never be.

Fading Out and Settling In

So determined was the president to have an impact, but no sooner had his term ended than his fame and influence began to recede.  That is as it ought to be in the careers of presidents, and in the lives of others.  It would be unfortunate were we to pursue life so that our participation in it would require such memorializing.  No matter who he might be, or what he might say or do, no one is so much a part of life that he must extend beyond his moment.  Either gradually or more suddenly, everyone is expected to fade.

That is as it should be and so it becomes more importantly to live inwardly, settling into the satisfaction at the center of being, rather than outwardly in the hope that others might marvel or appreciate what was accomplished.  It is the distinction between doing and being, and it is trusting ourselves to recognize the value of life rather than hope someone in another time will say it was of value.

Party Savior

It was a party where each guest was expected to be scintillating enough to save the entire event and to have resources enough to engage and carry everyone else, and so as each person entered there was an excited greeting and expectant stare, with enthusiastic nodding as he or she displayed resources that never did prove adequate to the task.  As new guests joined older ones, sinking into the furniture, scrambling for the redeeming bit of conversation, all eyes turned to the door in anticipation of the next candidate for savior of the party.

More Data

When unsure what else to do or when threatened by the process, there is an inclination to respond by collecting more data.

God Is More Than Forgiveness

The emphasis on forgiveness is nice enough, but it assumes there must also be something to be forgiven, that we must be very busy at sin to keep pace with its remission, when in truth I doubt there is anyone in the congregation who can recall or anticipate doing sufficient wrong in a moment, much less on an ongoing basis.  Even were we to think in terms of a human condition of which sin may have been an aspect, we would not meet the standard.  There is too much forgiveness for what may require forgiving.

Either we are forgiven or we are not.  If we are, we should move on to a different topic.  If we are not, it makes no difference.  By considering only this aspect of God's relationship to us we may be overlooking, or diminishing the significance of, all else he does or what he might prefer to see as identifying traits.

The Consequences of Salvation

She has taken on that beatific appearance seen usually on the chronic care ward or on born again people.  She used to be nice but salvation, if that is her affliction, has instead made her so intensely sincere that I fear she has in the process become terribly dull.

Being unable to trust they instead made rules

Last Resort

It is sad when only war can bring the nation together.

Our Brothers' Keepers

We may wish we were our brothers' keepers, that we had a means of controlling their choices, and of keeping them from destructive choices, but the sometimes sad truth is that we have no choice, no control.  If we did, and could make our brothers be good and better people, we would have done so long ago.  If we had the capacity to take over their distress we would have, but that is not and never was ours to do.  We can offer and we might share.  We can listen and we can make some things available, but we cannot be them or alter their more essential selves.  Their choices are available to them.

Material assistance is all we sometimes have and while we can offer that it is not anything that will make whole the souls of our brothers.  Know that when we offer, they are free to decline and that what we offer entitles us to receive nothing in return.  The reward, if we needed one, was in the offering.

Power of Memory

Sometimes days long over seem so much more real than the moment can be.  Memory makes them so.

More Control, Less Trust

The more control we assume, the more do we demonstrate our reluctance to trust.

Being Remembered

If they really want the immortality that being remembered may imply, they are not alone.  Even if only a few people remember them, for only a little while, it promises a significance they were unaware of.  It is saying they really did live and their lives meant more than they had sometimes seemed.

Less Formal

Being old seems to limit the need for formality, maybe because there is no time for it.

Ballplayers Eating Breakfast

Where else but Spring Training do grown men and women act this way, feeling their day has been a success because they saw a ballplayer having breakfast, just like real people do.

Survival

Narrowing the focus of life to its most essential features enables them to survive and survival is their highest goal.  It is not the focusing of contemplation and not something for which others might strive.  It is more like the gathering in of oneself that we see among the wounded, the conserving of self that lessens the pain and permits the moment to be tolerable.  That same woundedness seems to follow the poor.

Moving Past Old Stories

Had he done what he thought God was asking, had Abraham killed his child, then no matter what might have been promised would have lost its value.  The victory Agamemnon achieved had lost its significance when at the outset he sacrificed his child.  He may even have welcomed the death that awaited his return, finding it more fitting than any celebration might have been.  I realize the Abraham story is intended as an example of faith, and maybe it is present in Agamemnon's story too, but faith or duty are not so clearly present.  To borrow another story from the Greeks, Odysseus is shown not to be crazy when he cannot kill his child, a more hopeful value of where values might better lie.

For Paul, it seemed a mark of God's love that he would not spare his child.  I think it could as easily be a basis not to trust since he who would love his son less might not love us at all.  I would rather believe the time for stories such as these is over and that whatever message they might have offered has been replaced by concern for one's own children and a reluctance to find hope in death of any sort.

This Little World

We spend so much time in this little world we begin to think it is big.

Our Limitations

There are things we cannot do and people we cannot help.  That it is so is only reasonable and sometimes so terribly true.  That we wish we could and that we feel badly about the limits of our response is perhaps what reflects our character.

Local Color

What passes for local color could as easily be called ignorance.

Wishes For Feelings

He wondered would it suffice to wish he felt what he wished he could feel.  It wasn't much, but it would have to do.

Competent

Only be being competent do we reinforce a sense of competence.

Second Guessing

Their rehearsal of what they should have said or what will be said next time dissipates some distress while inviting other anxieties.

Security

Few of us are as secure in reality as we are in our minds.

Our Discomfort

We cannot tell people to feel differently than they do.  The feeling is theirs, even though the discomfort with it may be mainly ours.

What Gets Shared

We share well the burden others might offer, but our own sadness and pain is only our own.  There never seemed much point in talking of it and less in sharing it.  It has stayed a solitary thing, which is all right, despite the wish of those who care for us and who would gladly divide the weight of it.

Diagnosis

Having to be saved at all implies there was something defective in the individual.  To have to be saved a second time is to imply it was worse than first thought.

Support Like Anger

They call it "supporting the soldiers."  The demonstrations of this support seem so terribly angry and seem meant to forestall dissent.  Perhaps this anger, like that arising in other instances, masks insecurity and fear.

Restraint

Do not tell what there is no need to hear.

Even Terrible Moments

Even the terrible moments pass, though we recall their having been.

Slipping Beyond The Moment

He has, he said, gained a power over time though it is a passive power, enabling him to slip beyond the moment.  It is the declining to focus in the present, an abandoning of contact with the moment, and when he returns to it there is awareness he was not in time, at least not this time, though where along the line of moments he has been is less certain, and even less is it a concern.  I suggested it seemed more like daydreaming, of a non-directive sort, but he was not inclined to think so and was thinking how he might next slip beyond space.