Happiness (Quotes)

Check out this page for some quotes on happiness. Here are a couple of examples:

"Joy is not a constant condition. Most people manage a settled cheerfulness, but this, no matter how admirable, has nothing to do with joy, which flashes suddenly on our darkness. Like the light in an El Greco painting, joy does not merely illuminate the landscape. It transforms it." Sr Wendy Beckett

"If what most people take for granted were really true?if all you needed to be happy was to grab everything and see everything and investigate every experience and then talk about it, I should have been a very happy person, a spiritual millionaire, from the cradle even until now?What a strange thing! In filling myself, I had emptied myself. In grasping things, I had lost everything. In devouring pleasures and joys, I had found distress and anguish and fear." Thomas Merton

How To Hold Onto It (By Michael Leunig)

Life, the planet, yourself, family and friends, body and soul, food, ... anything important really.

Not Just a Favoured Few...

A guest post from the Revd Ron Keynes. (Pentecost 23, Year B: Ruth 3:1-5; 4:3-17; Mark 12:38-44)

There is often a fairly strong reason why Christians are often charged with being ‘against the world’ and somewhat troglodytic. I have mentioned elsewhere something of the struggle even with my children, as they tend to belong to a later generation, not quite up to X. However, there has been some rethink by younger people as the World Financial Crisis has done its job in bringing some factors back to balance, and Global Warming perhaps adding to the rethink.

If there is one aspect of life that tends to be reflected in almost all cultures and countries, it is the determination of the powerful ones to advertise both their power and wealth and demanding all the best that the country has to give. Even some religious people fall victim (or demand the position) and become very much a part of the problem. As the Gospel reminds us, in Jesus’ day the practice was rampant. Today’s world tends to have it in terms of salaries and perks of CEOs, where the matter is totally beyond reality.

Contrast that, if you will, with the story of Ruth and Naomi, a beautiful and moving tale of tragedy and ill fortune, made remarkably more touching by the commitment of daughter-in-law (of a different race!) to a mother of her late husband. There is a story of quite lovely proportion, of self-giving quite beyond the norm. It was a most moving moment when, at our youngest daughter’s wedding, this passage was chosen as one of the readings. ‘There was hardly a dry eye in the house.’

I wonder whether the rich and powerful ever stop to ponder what is important in life, and what is marginal. I have to say that my experience of ‘pretty people’ is that such a title is a misnomer of the first order, and selfishness and refusal of ordinary human responses is obligatory. On the other hand, ordinary little people seem to have a far more balanced perception of what is important and what is not. And are not the basics of life really quite simple and uncomplicated? Or am I fooling myself?

The reason that Christians tend to be so against today’s life-style of self-aggrandizement is that it leaves almost every other person right out of the equation. Bugger you Jack, I am all right. And it does not need to be the ‘high and holy ones’ who have such a blind stare. Do you not meet, constantly, even little people who demand their priority with great rudeness and pomposity?

Life’s reality does have a habit of blowing down our proud houses of cards every now and again. And it all comes back to the business of what is true and just, for those capacities have a habit of returning from the dead. It is not all that long ago that the film ‘Greed’ was greeted with yells of delight. And it did not take long for the outcome of that pattern to blow up in everyone’s faces.

Life is for everyone, not just a favoured few. Faith is for everyone too, though there seem to be rather fewer takers, for some reason. Peace and even prosperity is far more likely to ensue when the gentler path is chosen by all. And there can be little fight against that!

Idolatry Instead of Faithful Discipleship

Kyle Strobel, over at Theology Forum has an excellent post on being a healthy church movement. His criticism below should not be directed at evangelicalism exclusively. See here for the full post.

"I have been thinking, as of late, about the various strategies in evangelicalism to navigate the marketplace of ideas. It seems to me that the typical evangelical strategy to “win” (sorry, I don’t mean this to be polemical (yet) but I can’t think of another word which is accurate), is simply to create something of a boys club. In other words, we surround ourselves with people who both agree with every word that comes our of our mouth and who won’t actually attack our views in any significant way. This is enough, in itself, to be idolatry, but it rarely stops there. The next step is to start a movement. A movement, in these terms, is nothing more than simply organizing leadership and adopting worldly strategies for kingdom building. Once teaching, leadership and dogma can be disseminated, there is a twofold turn outwards: First, a turn outwards to evangelize – not Christ as much as the movement itself - and, second, a turn outwards to attack anyone who thinks differently. The latter turn stems from the inherent fundamentalism in evangelicalism which equates difference with danger."

Getting Rid of the Dead Wood

I can't help thinking that the Pope's latest stab at church union by allowing dissident Anglicans to recognise his authority and cross the Tiber will, in reality, get rid of some of our dead wood. I know I shouldn't, but ...

Here is a very funny video (linked from Inhabitatio Dei) from a satirical US Show. It's very funny, and the points he makes are good. Like, how much sense it makes for the Pope to welcome into the Roman Church those who have trouble with their current authority structures. Someone is going to be in for a shock, either the ex-Anglicans (most likely) or the Pope (he'll just get annoyed and boot 'em out). Stay with the video even when the goosey Episcopalian priest comes on. The interviewer keeps on making the point.

And also from the same blog I picked up this comment by Hans Kung on Benedict's latest strategy for church union. Hans is not amused.

Friends of God

At a recent chapel cycle at St John's I made three points about friendship.

First, I used a picture (side) to remind us that Jesus was actually betrayed by a close friend. The pain Jesus must have felt by this betrayal is easily overlooked from our position of hindsight. The pain of betrayal by a friend is because we give something of ourselves to our friends. So I asked the question: how you going respecting that piece your friends have given you?

Second, I pointed out that Jesus was known as a friend of those everyone else hated (sinners and tax collectors). The usual practice is to befriend those similar to us or we like, or who might benefit us. Not Jesus. I spelt the implication out in chapel.

Third, to be a friend of Jesus is to be a friend of God. and remember, friends give something of themselves to those they befriend. So when God becomes our friend through Christ, God gives something of Godself to us. (Doctrinally, this is the same as saying that in the Incarnation and the giving of the Spirit God communicates Godself to us.)

See here for a great sandart video about friendship.