Posts Tagged ‘randy hasper’

Where Is God?

Posted: November 2, 2019 in god
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Ever wonder, “Where is God?” When scripture makes so many positive promises, and then you don’t see yourself experiencing them.

Here is one.

May the God who gives endurance and encouragement …

Romans 15:5

Or this one;

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

2 Corinthians 1:3

Endurance and encouragement — God gives it.

Comfort— God gives it.

Yesterday my daughter called and reminded me how tough and strong I am.

My friend Jerry texted me reminding me of his respect, care and love for me.

My wife sat with me and brought tender care. She held my hand. Patted my back.

God gives encouragement and comfort, but it may not be the voice in the night, even a sense of his presence in the day.

God and his comfort often come through others.

Leo Tolstoy illustrates this beautifully in his story Martin the Cobbler, and if you haven’t read it, find it and do. Martin lost his wife. He is so lonely but one day he senses a promise —- the Savior will come to his house

All day looks at his window watching. First, he sees Stepanitch shoveling away snow. Martin invites him in for a warm drink and they talked for a while.

Then he sees a woman with a baby who is cold and He invites her in for some food and gives her warmer clothes and money.

Then he sees a boy stealing an apple and he intervenes and pays for the apple.

That night while Martin wondered why God had not visited him, the three figures appeared in his home, the very ones he had showed hospitality to that day. They said that when he helped them he was helping God. Martin then realized that God had indeed visited him in those he helped.

When we comfort others we are God to them. When they comfort us they are God to us.

So at the end of time the truth will be known.

The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Matthew 25:40

God does come — in others, in us — helping others.

Let’s talk turkey!

Posted: October 26, 2019 in healing, the body
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Let’s talk turkey! Let’s talk about the real stuff. Let’s have a conversation about our bodies, our thoughts, our behaviors. Let’s be friends and talk openly.

Guilt, shame, regret, insecurity — over our bodies, over our thinking, over our behavior, over our eating — it’s a rough go

“I ate too much, I eat the wrong thing, I shouldn’t of said that, did that, thought that.”

Of course guilt over things actually done wrong and forgiveness for those are real and important, but so much of the negativity inside of us is not that — it’s just a crazy kind of insecurity, false-guilt and self-flagellation.

Our minds naturally go there, critique ourselves, and tend to be negative too much of the time.

I know. Lately I’ve been ill. I have needed to think differently about my body, about eating and about doing.

This happens to all of us at times. Life is not static. Our bodies and our circumstances and our success rates and our opportunities change over time. They change in pregnancy, they change in illness, they change as we age. They change with other people’s decisions. They change because the world changes.

Enough thinking that life is anything different than this. Enough thinking that we have to maintain some standard, some image in order to love ourselves and to be loved by others. Go to the grocery store. Watch the people. They come in all shapes and sizes, limping, running, with walkers, in their beautiful workout clothes, in their stained and old clothes, life rich, life weary and poor. You see it all. What should we think of it? How should we reflect on the change in circumstances of our lives and other’s lives? How do we navigate the vulnerability, changeability, the ephemeral nature of life?

Not by being self-negative.

God made us good! God built into us a sense of what to do. It’s called intuition. And he gave us a conscience. It knows right from wrong. And if we listen to scripture, the fact is that God is living within us, ready to guide and advise and encourage. He gives us who believe his Spirit.

Because of this I believe we often intuitively know what we need to do and not do, eat and not eat, think and not think, and instead of living by a pack of rules and a bunch of social judgments — a raft of diets, workouts, behavioral codes, and unrealistic expectations about body image, moral perfection and peer acceptability — we need to lighten up.

Seriously! Take it easy on yourself. Be kind to yourself. Trust yourself. Be intuitive. Live intuitively. Be an intuitive thinker, chooser, eater. Deeply care about yourself as a unique and special created being not like any other one.

Consider eating — it can be by the book, or by the hook and crook or by a simple sense of honoring the moment and your body.

We need freedom here! I need deliverance from old ways and old thinking here! We would do well to become intuitive eaters.

An intuitive eater has been defined as a person who, “makes food choices without experiencing guilt or an ethical dilemma, honors hunger, respects fullness and enjoys the pleasure of eating.”

Yea! I need that.

Freedom!

And intuitive lifestyle the same. Of course as you live apply the knowledge you have about health, about behavior consequences, about your limits and needs, and about morality, but live more by the Spirit, who gives you a built-in sense of what’s best for you.

Live intuitively by the idea that there is no “normal” when it comes to any part of us. Listen to your body and your heart and make the best decision given the unique circumstances you are in at the moment. Then be okay with yourself. Rest in what you’ve decided and don’t rethink it it

“Our life is what our thoughts make it,” said Marcus Aurelius.

If your thoughts are self-shaming they’re not from God. If you’re always trying to do what somebody else has done, you’ll only end up frustrated. If you don’t honor how God has made you or what he has allowed in you life that makes you who you are at any given moment, you will harm yourself.

Intuit the divine.

Intuit your life!

Be free my friends from law and from judgement — because you are!

For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-control.

2 Timothy 1:7

A Divided Nation

Posted: October 22, 2019 in Change, failure, relationships
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Our country is divided and not simply by the Mississippi.

Racism, political perspectives, gender, immigration, our President, religion, foreign policy, climate control  — we are even divided on how to fight about all this.

It’s a fight. So how do we fight?

Do we call each other out? Publicly, online, in social media? Or do we call each other “in,” privately, “Let’s have a talk,” then hug.

Loretta Ross wrote an article in August published in the New York Times,”I’m a Black Feminist. I Think Call-Out Culture Is Toxic.”

She wrote the following, “Call-outs make people fearful of being targeted. People avoid meaningful conversations when hypervigilant perfectionists point out apparent mistakes, feeding the cannibalistic maw of the cancel culture. Shaming people for when they “woke up” presupposes rigid political standards for acceptable discourse and enlists others to pile on. Sometimes it’s just ruthless hazing.”

“We can change this culture. Calling-in is simply a call-out done with love. Some corrections can be made privately.”

Karla Thomas writing  for Medium in an article called, ‘Mad About Call-out Culture?: Stop Centering White Cultural Norms & Feelings” disagreed. She says there is a clear need to publicly call out wrong, loud and clear, in order to reform our culture and move toward fairness.

“Interrupting racially offensive behavior, (or any other –ism,) in the same forum or elevated forum and at the same volume as the aggression was made, is paramount to ensuring that anyone from the oppressed group in ear or eye shot knows that those transgressions were seen and will not go unaddressed.”

“It is critical here to realize, that when an aggressor makes a transgression then is called out, and the rebuttal is, “well you could have told me in a nicer manner” or “it’s rude to call someone racist,” there is a clear and purposeful choice to avoid the message that points out their racism and to focus on the messenger.” 

Both make good points. The articles would be worth your time. They were published in August and are easy to find.

How do we heal our divide, particularly over what divides us the most.

Call people “in” and work together, that is for sure needed. Call out abuse, lies, hate, racism, gender inequality — that’s needed too. We must never silence oppressed, harmed voices.

Let’s talk about racism. The articles focused on that. For you who are white and think racism is not a big deal for you, I’d encourage you to read White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo. Her books are worth your time. School yourself! Open your minds.

What do you think?

I think racism is a huge problem in the United States and we need get to talking more and better about this soon. This is important. We better take some action to bring about change. This matters now!

What would Jesus have to say to us about all this. He sure did some publicly calling out of wrong. He was ruthless on the people who thought they were the best class, better than others, but then he defended the women called out for adultery. Jesus always defended the oppressed. He always confronted the powerful, privileged elite. What does that tell you?

Wisdom knows when to say what! And wisdom chooses the most powerful and effective way to say it.

Feel free to post a comment. Just click the talk bubble at the top of this post and comment there.

Thanks!

Hearing

Posted: October 19, 2019 in hearing
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This morning my wife corrected me, and she encouraged me to think differently. “Think less about yourself,” she said.

Perfectly fine.  She was correct. I’m too self-focused.

Yesterday on the phone my youngest daughter gave me some help by referring me to three good Ted’s talks. I listened to them and learned a lot.

Today I spent much of my day in silence. Not typical. It’s because I’m sick. It happens.

In the afternoon I sat in my backyard and listened with my eyes to the sun, then the trees and then I saw a hummingbird eat. A blur, a hard stop, a hover, a sip — gone!

I also spent some time silencing my mind. That seldom happens.

The following thoughts come to mind.

Which one speaks to you?

………..

To the watching ear the sun speaks of consistency; the trees speak of provisionality; the birds speak of dependency.

We need other’s ears to help us understand what we ourselves are saying.

We have trouble hearing because we won’t stop whispering — in our own ear.

We can hear without ears and speak without a tongue.

God gave us a powerful inner ear of empathy, and he gave us a powerful way to use it —  compassion.

The brain keeps hearing after the body stops speaking.

Silence heals the listening eye.

Nerves have loud voices; they need to shut up!

Nobody can keep a secret; what isn’t said is spoken by eyes, signed by muscles, articulated by hands.

Mindfulness has a gentle ear.

On New Ways of Hearing

Posted: October 17, 2019 in becoming, beginnings
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I’m particularly shocked by how bad our hearing is — all of us. People talk, we miss so much.

The environment speaks; we walk through it uninformed of what it is telling us.

What to do? Stop paying so much attention to words.

The numbers are debatable when it comes to communication, but all the experts agree that tone and body language communicate more than words do.

Words are a small part of communication in our world.

The wind is blowing the leaves my orange jubilee trees outside my window. This tells me the sun is at work heating the earth, and that warmer air is rising and cooler air is moving underneath. The dancing leaves are telling me that the consistencies of our solar powered planet are functioning well.

“Yea, says the plant, life will go on!” But there are no words.

This is consistent with scripture:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

Psalm 19

It is fundamental to the universe to communicate without words. Yet voices surround us from the stars, from the galaxies, from our sun. The earth itself is filled with unheard voices. Even the rocks will praise, said Jesus, if we don’t.

So much more hearing needs to take place, the nonverbal kind.

My wife came home from a medical appointment today where she waited for more than an hour to get a few stitches out and left with no help.  Her first words upon arriving home conveyed frustration. Her tone told me most of what she wanted to communicate.

People speak far more in feelings than in words. Look closely and you can hear.

Liars will often deliberately hold eye contact in an attempt to cover up the fact that they’re lying.

Raised eyebrows signal discomfort.

Exaggerated nodding signals anxiety about approval.

A clenched jaw, a tightened neck, or a furrowed brow are all signs of stress. Crossed legs or arms signal that a person is mentally, emotionally, and physically blocked off from what’s in front of them. It’s not intentional, which is why it’s so revealing.

We can hear what isn’t said; it’s spoken in the eyes, whispered by the muscles, shouted by tell tale legs and arms and hands. 

One can hear without ears, speak with no tongue.

I think of the deaf and hard of hearing community.  There are many in this community who resent that idea that to have a normal life, a good life, they need hearing, for example cochlear implants, small, complex electronic devices that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing. 

Some deaf find the pushing of cochlear implants on themselves and their children as  insulting, biased, discriminatory. We who think sounds and words rule need to listen to them.

Deadness is not a disability in need of an oralist’s prescription; it has created a fully-gifted culture of it’s own facilitated by sign language and sign culture. Oralism, the system of teaching deaf people to communicate by the use of speech and lip-reading rather than sign language is sometimes pushed on the deaf community. But sound is no more superior to sign than male is superior to female.  

Our biases may make this hard to understand, but we are so confused about disability and normalcy. What is normal is usually simply the way we live, but their are other normals. The signing community is a fully-gifted community. They are enriched. They have enough.

Why so much emphasis on words, talk, sounds. So much of the universe communicates in silence, in sign. We all need to learn the sign language.

I want to become a student of sign, universal sign, of silence, a listener to behavior, a watcher of movement, an interpreter of tone, being, essence, identity.

To do this I must open to listening with my mind, listening with my eyes, listening with my fingers, listening with my nose, listening with my taste buds. I must let the plants, the wind, the sun, the people who are different from me teach me. I must listen with my spirit. I must listen with my soul.

Everything and everyone is saying something. How exciting to begin to try to hear using different modalities.

Everything is speaking; are we listening?

Listen

Posted: October 17, 2019 in proverbs
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Today I wrote a few proverbial thoughts that came to mind about listening. I love short pithy truth. Hope you like a few of them too.

Listen before you leap.

All things talk; very few things listen.

Listen to words; act on body language.

Listening is not a art; it’s a choice.

Listen to those who disagree with you.

Invite criticism; edit yourself.

The most important thing to listen for is what’s not said.

Listen to them with your eyes; watch them with your ears; touch them with your heart.

Be wise; listen to silence.

About each moment, movement and memory your body speaks to you — listen.

Don’t let your listening stop your thinking.

Hang on words; swing on sentences; beware long speeches.

More like this at http://www.modernproverbs.net

It’s the Small Stuff

Posted: October 2, 2019 in beautiful, gratitude
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Beauty, fun, pleasure, good — look for this in the minutia.

Earlier today I was in a bad mood.

Tonight much better.

The difference?

Small stuff.

Forcing my self to get out of the house, just out, small, better.

Writing several emails that took care of needed business — small but relieving, stress-reducing.

Lying on  the back patio in the chase lounge talking to my brother and feeling the warm evening breeze blows across my legs and the sun on my face — small but comfortable.

Stopping at the taco shop mid-day for a treaty, a crunchy pollo asada taco, that last bite, with the corn and peppers and grilled chicken and peppers popping in my mouth on top of the crispy tortilla — small but pleasurable.

Making bread with my wife tonight — small but personal.

Getting the cat the right amount of food — small,  but it didn’t barf tonight!

We want so much, the best is found in so little.

Being

Posted: September 22, 2019 in friends, identity, wonders
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The bullseye of life — want to hit it? Don’t aim at me!

The bullseye is us! Shoot us!

“That they may all be one!” the wise one, Jesus, prayed, so there you go. He set up the goal of life, the ultimate movement and goal of history. The target is oneness!

My daughter called me this morning when I was still in bed. Her voice traveled out of the holes in the bottom of my mobile phone, hit the sheet, and bumped over my pillow to me: “How are you, dad?” — my ear said to me — from her.

What is precious in a life,  despite the fact that we have overused the word precious?

The small, microphone voice of my daughter in my ears is precious because it is her, her being connected to me, us there for each other, neither one alone.

The exact, perfect center point of all existence lies within us being together.

Exquisite — those not-doing moments, those being-moments — someone else’s existence allowed to come within ours. It has been said by a wise one, Paul “In him [God] we live and move and have our being.” Therefore, there really is no being alone! It’s impossible. Life is inside of another. All life moves within God!

My life isn’t me, or you. It’s us. Your life isn’t you, it’s us. Being is always plural. We go along together or not at all. If you could somehow get out of the divine presence and be alone, you wouldn’t exist.

I have long lived like the crux of my consciousness and my experience was me as an individual, my eyes, my actions, my choices, what makes me stand up and stand out. Silly! It was always all of us. Essential being is a pile of us. We were made to live like kittens drooped and draped and sprawled on each other sleeping and playing and eating together. Consciousness, being, life — it’s a pile of kittens; it’s a pile of presences.

I texted a friend yesterday and asked, “How are you doing?”

She texted back that she has been struggling with her sense of “worth on a deep emotional level.”

“Let’s call and talk on the phone tomorrow,” I said, “We can talk about our it.” So we arranged for the divine moment. And when we talked — bam — we came aware that we live in God for each other, two presences bonded in him with the glue of shared struggle, as it was always meant to be.

Being an individual is good. I love autonomy. My doing is good, but you’ll notice every doing hinges on being, and being requires beings, and good requires being present to each other. If I linger near you, and you listen to me, if I absorb bits of you, and you breath in what I feel, the mystery of our separated being crosses time and space and merges. It’s magic, the fusion. It’s supreme, matchless, nonpareil — when we apprehend the quintessential us and we!

It’s the “when two or more are gathered in my name I’m there.” Two creates a magnetic, drawing spiritual gathering, and three can conjure a whole community of oneness. This is the virtuosic movement of history that was always meant to be — a unified us.

Last night in the same room with my wife, I was writing, she was reading, breathing the same air. It was perfect being!

I “liked” a friend’s picture yesterday on Facebook. A “like” is a validation of existence. The social scientists say social media may raise our anxiety levels, looking for likes, addiction to likes, superficial social media likes, jarring hits of pseudo affirmation, or not, but this popular activity tells us a bit about who we are. We are ones with the need to be liked, to be known, loved, to have another person validate our being, to connect. That why 2 billion people use Facebook.

We always have and always will need each other’s validation of being in some form in order to be more aware that we are a presence.

I stopped on my walk last night to talk to a neighbor. This is better than Facebook. We did some lingering, listening, absorbing, merging. He talked about losing his wife last year, a tragic accident, how he has struggled to go on. We hugged three times before we left each other — and I wouldn’t say that before this we were close — but standing on his driveway in the dark we bonded over shared pain.

A moment together, a call, a text, a like, a love, a hand up to greet, a hand on a shoulder, a hand out to help — that is being. You and I can do nothing better with the time and space we have on this huge, distance-making planet than to be safely and warmly present to each other.

Present

Posted: September 21, 2019 in friends, people, politics
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Today I saw happened to be walking by the house of an old friend in my neighborhood as he drove up. I waited for him to get out of his truck. We greeted, then chatted about the landscaping remodel of his front yard, now half finished.

I brought it up, his wife, acknowledged his wife, what had happened last year, how she was tragically killed in an accident. He talked about her, how he is working at surviving, going to groups, going on, doing the landscaping she had wanted. We hugged — three times. We were present to each other. He mentioned the need for a new hairdresser. I gave him the name of my friend who cuts hair in a shop and told him, “This guy has this awesome personality and doesn’t charge too much. You’ll love him.” Then I texted him the phone number.

After I left and returned home, he texted me.

“Thanks for stopping by and for the hair contact. Pretty much available to stop and talk anytime (if no appts or nap pending)? Great to see you.”

What is precious? Presence. Another person’s presence — that is of the highest value. Being with, being near, being proximate — this is superlative! Stopping to talk, standing within another’s magical realm — this is nonpareil! Lingering, listening, absorbing, merging with another being — it is always a mysterious encounter with a stunningly significant life form. Such moments are exquisite! Not doing, being, not doing business, but letting someone else’s state of being be our business — transcendent!

You and I can do nothing better with our time and then be present with each other.

Loving Silence

Posted: September 19, 2019 in god, spirituality
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According to the Hebrew Bible, Solomon’s Temple, also known as the First Temple, was built in 10th Century in Jerusalem and dedicated by Solomon to Yahweh.  

One of the more fascinating historical notes about the construction stands out.

In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built.

 1 Kings 6:7

God, our God, often builds his temples in quietness, because God, despite all the hollering from Christians about him, is a quiet God. 

God dresses blocks in one place, so he he can quietly place them in another.

I called my dad one day last year. I was missing him. 

I caught him up on us, then I asked him what he had been thinking about.

He had been thinking about the “quietness of God’s presence.”

I asked him, “Dad, what does that mean?”

He said, “I often can’t sleep at night. I wake up. I don’t know what to do so I just enter the quietness of his presence.” 

“I don’t say anything. I don’t pray. I just silently worship.” 

“I’m dumb before him.”

Years ago, as I was finishing up at the University, I felt far from God. Lonely. Confused. Uncertain of my future. I began reading the Bible. I was drawn to Isaiah 30:15. This became a very personal word from God to me, speaking to exactly my issue.  

“This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength …'”

Lately I’ve suffered some serious health problems. As a result I’ve experienced some very significant levels of pain. At times there have been a whole nursery of babies crying inside of me.

I’ve done a lot striving to connect to God to fix my situation, to move my health forward, to get back to normal. This is something all praying people do. Rightly so, we are told in the Bible to bring our sickness and problems to God, to seek, ask and knock, but too often our approach to God isn’t healthy or helpful. We don’t knock on his door. We bang on his door. We pound it down. We break in in our demands for the life and body and health and activities that we want. We want God to enable our plans and then — although we won’t admit it much — step politely out of our way so we can get on with our work.

This isn’t just a personal issue. A lot of churches are set up this way. They are on a mission to control God for their own good, to enlist Him to help them win the culture wars, to use him to hammer the deviant, to chisel at God’s words as a way of promoting its own political agenda. This kind of blunt-force approach to the way forward is motivated by our efforts to  move the church up and to the right on the field of public success. It’s ecclesiastical egotism. The agenda is to get more people, to take in more money and to promote politics of privilege that protect the church while not worrying if any ones else around the world is protected. It’s political stealth, physical health, a bunch of wealth and get some for myself.

I’m not saying the church shouldn’t want to do well, be excellent, succeed.  I’m not saying the church shouldn’t look to God to guide us and to make us well. I’m not saying I shouldn’t ask God to help me.

But a bunch of begging, a lot of trying to force an our agenda on God, the big push for the quick fix, the big push for the big fix, looking for the perfect road map that makes all  road blocks go away — perhaps that is a recipe for being disappointed in God. There are are some big moments in life where God comes though for us and his church in big ways, but that isn’t the whole story or even the typical story.

Perhaps what I need, and we need, the most is the sound of “sheer silence” as God builds his temples the way he wants. The American church has lived the loud Christian life of the hammer and the chisel. We’ve lived pound, pound, pound, push, push, push. It may have done some good, certainly the church is God’s chosen way to love the world, even the imperfect church, but wow! Our passions are too often too selfish.  

What we need now, and maybe more back when too  — and what I need now —  is not more begging, more controlling, more work, more progress, more pushing, more kingdom building or more empire building.  Perhaps what we need is simply this: A quiet resting before the divine. What does God want to do? How does God want to build? Can we quietly wait on God for his quiet language, his silent leading?

Thomas Keating has said that in “order to understand [God’s silent language] we ourselves must learn to be silent and to rest in God.”

Yes.

In God’s loving silence there is perhaps much more than we know or expect —  his presence, healing, rebuilding, affirmation, care, his a way forward, his love.

Recently, in my physical struggles my wife has been present for me, holding me, patting me, just being in the same room with me. She has said some sweet things, but nothing has meant as much as her presence, her quiet loving presence there in the room.

God silent, loving presence — we all could use more of that.

 

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