Consent v. Effort

"The chief act of the will
is not effort
but consent."

Thomas Keating uses these words as he talks about comtemplation, and what to do when confronting difficulties in prayer: Will I accept (consent) difficulties or will I fight (effort) them?

I wonder what would happen if we took this approach to life in general. Certainly there are particular things we should not accept, perhaps letting the crisis in Darfur go on or preventing people from getting emergeny food or housing assistance.

Yet far too often we are prone to disagree with people and as a result remain stagnant in our own preconceptions. Nicholas Kristof's recent article does a wonderful job explaining how people tend to interpret the same information to solidify their positions and buttress their preconceived notions... often with the effect of reinforcing prejudice.

What if we were more inclined to accept the difficulties in understanding one another, rather than reeling out of control with every bump in the road?

This past weekend I had a wonderful retreat with my Trinity community house members. As part of our time together, we made an "affirmation circle," where we chose one person at a time to affirm, giving them positive feedback to what they mean in our lives and to the life of the house. It was an incredibly powerful and moving time... and without criticism.

Let us be more prone to consent to the things we cannot change, and use effort only when their is a clear injustice. In this way, let us promote unity rather than disunity, and peace rather than conflict.

Roasting Marshmellows

Getting our hands & minds ready to roast 'mellows

Luke was not only a Doctor, but also our Examiner of Marshmellows

Talitha: Burn Baby Burn
Notice the angle of her elbow - so precise

Burned 'mellows Galore

Trinity House Retreat

This weekend Talitha, Elizabeth, myself, Andrew, Erin and Luke (from L to R)
all took a retreat to Mission Springs, CA (about 1.5 hours away).

There we relaxed in the sun and spent time together, reflecting on the past year
and affirming what each of us mean to the house and each other.

We prayed, too: Luke the "Imam" as Erin just laughs...

On our way up to the firepit, where we had "hobo-packets" for dinner:
foiled packets with all kinds of goodness inside.

Calvin and Faith

Today in Theology we talked about what John Calvin's answer was to the question of the semester: What is faith?

For Calvin, faith is the knowledge of God's good will in our lives (primarily through Scripture and Tradition); the trust or confidence in this knowledge that God is love and loves us; and, the boldness of action to respond to our belief in the knowledge of God.

In the Age of Information, I think too often we stop short of going beyond the first element. We receive new knowledge everyday, especially through the news cycle. But do we really believe it, especially when there are contradicting perspectives? And when do we ever take action?

NPR has a wonderful program series called This I Believe, where people give their various perspectives of what they believe. I have yet to hear one that did not talk about how what they believe affects how they live.

What do you believe? I'm not asking what you think, but what do you put your trust in, and how do you act based on this trust?

In this sense, we all act based on the belief in something - that the ground will not fall out beneath us, that the economy is (not) in a recession, that we will be around to withdraw from our IRA or Social Security accounts...

We all live by faith. Now let us live out our faith consciously.