Jon C. Swanson's Blog, page 316
April 10, 2014
Learning how to love.
What do I do with what I am learning?
That’s a significant question. We consume immense amounts of information. We read. We hear. We converse.
But then we have to live.
Some of us are very comfortable keeping the input and the output separate. Some of us avoid the hard work of taking the interesting ideas we hear and the fascinating role models we read about and working to understand how all of that would work in real life, in our lives.
But you know what? Most of us actually are trying to make...
April 9, 2014
On not reviewing movies.
I won’t be writing a review of “Noah”. Or of “Son of God” or “God’s Not Dead.” Just like I won’t be writing a review of “300: Rise of an Empire.” Although I am thinking about what it would be like to see myself on the big screen: “He started with 300 words a day and created a spiritual social media empire.”
I won’t write those reviews because I won’t see those movies, and it hardly makes sense to review what you haven’t watched. And I won’t watch them because I watch about one movie a year. Th...
April 8, 2014
Small conversations with Jesus
Jesus spent time with crowds and had compassion for multitudes and children. But he often took his disciples away from the crowds so that he could teach them and talk with them. When we map parts of his journeys, it looks like he lost his compass and led his disciples aimlessly in the wilderness.And often, he went away from other people to talk with his Father. Just the two of them for hours on end.
I was thinking about solitude today. And about Jesus going off alone. And how hard that is for...
April 7, 2014
As best as we know how
I’ve been thinking about the amount of time that I have to make a difference in myself and in others. I’ve been thinking about three amounts of time.
1. What can I do today?
2. What can I do in the next thirty days?
3. What can I do in the next 25 years?
Behavior happens one action at a time. If I am going to love God with all my heart and soul and mind and strength, and love my neighbor as myself, I will look at the next thing on my to do list and ask, “How could I make this more intentiona...
April 6, 2014
Hope walks.
It was a foggy morning. Nancy and I were waiting for Hope our daughter (who turned 23 yesterday). She was riding on the Lake Shore Limited from New York City. She’d only been away for a week. She’s been gone much longer before, but we were looking forward to seeing her, hearing her stories. We find hope in Hope.
We went to the station in Waterloo, Indiana. It’s more of a shelter than a station. There’s more of street than a parking lot. With fifty people getting on the train, and fifty people...
April 4, 2014
More about distractions
Jon and I both struggle with distraction. His recent post on being distracted got me thinking further (once I focused a little and pushed a few distractions out of the way).
What did Jesus do? He had to deal with a lot more distraction than I do, since he was extremely popular. Three incidents show his struggles with trying to get something done and being pulled away.
Jesus was on his way to heal a man’s daughter. A sick woman reached out to touch his robe. She felt that would be enough to brin...
April 2, 2014
a blessed life.
(First published July 13, 2014)
When you pick up a book of poetry or a book of song lyrics, you have to work.
You cannot read Gerard Manley Hopkins or W.H. Auden or Bono the same way you read Malcolm Gladwell or Donald Miller. With poems, you have to stop often, read out loud at times, look in your heart for images and understanding.
The book of Psalms is a book of poetry. It takes time to read and reread. But that what keeps people going back.
Here’s a reflection onthe first of the psalms.
April 1, 2014
The hugless morning.
I wanted to give her a hug.
We were at a leadership team meeting, three women and I. One of the others was leaving after the meeting to travel home for the funeral of her grandmother. As often happens in early April, it was going to be a snowy time. And she was grieving her grandmother.
The meeting was good, I’m assuming. I don’t actually remember. What I do remember is standing outside after the meeting, wishing that I could give her a hug. But I didn’t know her well enough. And it would have...
March 31, 2014
Being an April fool.
I should have guessed that starting a new job on April 1 wasn’t a good idea.
I’m not sure who picked that date. I can imagine that it was my own choice. It gave an opportunity for a laugh when I told people. In the middle years, when I was trying to figure out how to escape, there was a sense of fatalism. What should you expect from a job started on a day characterized by jokes, by mocking, by pranks? But now, a couple of decades on, I’m a bit more comfortable with the humor.
I took the job wit...
March 30, 2014
Monday morning reflections
Do you ever get to Sunday evening full of thoughts and lacking the energy to develop them? Yes, me too.
Here are a weekend’s full of thoughts. Feel free to develop them yourself.
In class on Sunday, I asked a question that I have often asked in discussion settings: “Who is your favorite member of the Trinity?” It’s always an interesting conversation.
I was thinking about the characteristic of God that is most compelling, at least as a way to being talking about God. Without thinking too much, I...