Unnecessary Test Prep

We do an awful lot of preparation for exams that will never be given.

Integrity At Risk

If you determine the value or decide what will be at risk, you will hopefully notice your integrity is not at risk in very many instances.

A Proposal for Reincarnation

He has decided reincarnation would make sense if people had to come back as the person he least liked in the previous life and he would have to keep it up until there was no one he did not like.  It made as much sense as some things and more than a few others that have become more popular.

When Life Is Mostly Memories

There is, I suppose, a time when life becomes mostly memories, a time when the present holds less interest, less satisfaction, than recalling what used to be.  This could seem a sad time, but only to the observer.  The rememberer, even though he might sometimes cry, is not in so sad a place.  In memory live those important people and sacred moments, the ones that make right now less essential.

At Home On Vacation

They went away and all they brought back was a tan.  They went to a foreign land to stay with Americans at an American hotel in a distinct area, a segregated area isolated from the people in whose country they stayed.  Too bad, but no surprise.

The Need To Talk

Not everyone needs to talk as much as we may need (or is it want?) to listen.

God's Continuing Concern

Although we can experience it as abandonment or the withdrawal of God's active concern, such is not the case -- not even in those frightful times when we can see so little in which to secure our hope.  I think we can believe in his continuing concern and if it were not available through faith we would have to call it despair.

Prayers For All

There is a tendency to give global significance to what is more personal in nature, and so we can think all creation is focused upon or reliant upon us, as though the sun shines or it doesn't because this day is significant to me; and because of what I do, the events of the world can be altered.  This thought has a part to play in our prayer as we ask that phenomena of nature be placed at our disposal, that it rain or not, as though it were to be ours alone.  In prayer such requests are perhaps less appropriate and inclined to overstate our will, as though we should know and ought to judge how events beyond us should evolve.  There is less consideration given to the well-being of the population than is reasonable.  In prayer it might be better to ask that all be as well as it might be and that God's care reach into all lives in the manner God would wish, even though so doing might call for more trust than we have on hand.

Wisdom From "Harvey"

"No one ever brings anything small into a bar."

"For thirty five years I struggled with reality, and finally won out."

-- Elwood P. Dowd (in "Harvey")

An Awareness of the Promise

The Promised Land is less predictable.  It may change and in its lushness there can be a settling, a lulling of the soul, so that the enthusiasm of first believing might become dulled.  But the desert, for all its barren harshness, stays constant.  It offers no distraction and so there can be an awareness again of the promise.

Doing Nothing

There are any number of things about which we can do nothing at all.

The Place Where Intimacy Is Found

The people are not brought from Egypt into the land they had expected, but into the desert which is not a trial to be endured.  It is instead an aspect of their salvation as real as anything that might follow.  It is perhaps in the desert that they will be most certainly God's people.  They have stopped being Pharaoh's and as time goes by they will be less God's, unless they can return to the desert, the place where the intimacy is really found.

Remaining Anonymous

For better or worse most seem intent upon remaining anonymous and so to offer them an occasion to lead or to be in any way prominent -- the best at something where they are not being part of a team, or better yet a group or an even grander collective -- is to drive them farther inward.

Factors Beyond Our Control

What can be done depends upon more factors than are available to our control (the setting, the clients, the expectation and orientation of agencies), and so goals in treatment are necessarily limited -- especially long-term.

Advice Not Given

He was feeling so terribly depressed and wanted to know how to get through this day.  All that came to mind was:  avoid Western music.  It was not what I said.

Belief Before Change

Knowing was unavailable but to know would have been of little value.  Only when there was believing could there be change.

Learning Forgiveness

They brought the adulterous woman expecting he would say what was so obviously so, that she had made a mistake, but it was just too obvious to say and no one would be better for hearing it again.

The Cost of Inaction

Knowing something may not mean a person will act upon that knowledge, only that there is one less place to hide; but sometimes things can seem whatever they might cost and so pretending ignorance is not an option.

A Certain Kind of Freedom

If I could trust them to be themselves, believing they truly do know themselves better than I ever could, then I too would have greater freedom.  It would be that freedom we acquire by giving up judgments not our own to make, only to be anxious about.

My Sadness, My Pain

People sometimes seem annoyed that I do not "share," that I do not offer them my sadness or my pain so they might respond to it.  I do not wish I could do what they want, and in a sense they would not appreciate I have no interest in how they might acknowledge what I feel.  There is none of this "sharing" in part because I do not want what they would offer; and in part I want my feeling to stay my own, something about which I might tarry but which is available to no one else.

Trust In Others

I would very much like to decide to stop worrying about any number of people and all sorts of things, to trust them more, or believe they will be themselves, as they understand they should be, and in time -- but only when it is time -- they will become as complete as can be and as faithful to themselves as it is within their power to be.  Of course, I have yet to begin this since trust is so often beyond me and too I may think, or like to thing, they need what I might offer as much as I sometimes need to offer it.

Overlooking The Essence

Anytime we begin to feel we have uncovered the one, unique, only or absolute anything at all we can assume we are in error, that something essential has been overlooked or minimized.

Another Paradox

One more paradox:  the darkness is the light.

Giving It All Away

If I could give it all away then I would not have to worry about what to do with it.  I would instead be free.

Staying Free

The slavery ended as they crossed the Red Sea and in the desert was their freedom.  Whether they again surrendered it when they came into the land is a separate question.

Places We Might Go

I was reading Yankee and thinking there is a place to go or something we might see.  They are the places that do not interest the boys and things they would see only out of politeness.  If I ask they do not say "no," but the most enthusiasm they can muster is "maybe," or one of those psychologist-sounds signifying they heard, but can offer no commitment beyond that.  It is all right since they are not so often the "we" of these thoughts.  It is instead "we" as I wish it might be -- as I assumed it would be all those years ago when we were together and what seemed only a beginning had the end already in sight.

Awareness is the beginning of choice

Not So Important

It is after a while less of a surprise to say of more and more that it is not so important.

Faith And Belief

The response of faith is the believing.  Anything else is separate from it.

Teaching And Learning

If you came only to teach, not realizing also and more so your need to learn, you have misunderstood what was expected.

Another Dream

In the dream I said I wanted us always to be us, to be together, not just be you and me.  When I awoke it was not that way, not really.  The "us" we have is of wish and memory and whatever one might call the way I talk to you in a way more real than most prayer.  It is not at all as we had planned when we expected always to be us, growing into a very old us before we would have to think it might end.  At least today, the dream was the better part.  Waking could not compare.