Improve Your I.Q.

We learned today that the rational mind is not the authority we wish it to be. Our confidence in collective human intellect has been shattered again and again. Human reason fails and it fails often. What's our response when this happens? We certainly don't lament the unreliability of our intellect. We simply chalk it up as an exception to rule and press on with our knowledge acquisition. Let me ask you, why does reason get so much credit in spite of it's repeated shortcomings? Why do emotions get so much flack when we know they can help move us in the right direction? I believe that emotional intuition has a noble track record. What about you? Any ideas on improving our I.Q. - our intuition quotient?

A New Way of Seeing

We completed our third week of our Soul Journey series on Sunday by looking at the long history of contempt associated with emotions and spirituality. The Enlightenment has strongly influnenced our viewpoint on how spiritual formation happens.

I'm interested in hearing how this new way of seeing spirituality has impacted your life. Are you beginning to see in ways you've not seen before? Are you connecting what you see to how you feel about what it is you see? What role has emotion played in your spiritual formation?

Of Journeys and Stuff

Back when John and I were a young family with young kids, we would take trips to New Mexico (10 hour drive) that went something like this:

"John could I stop for--"

VROOOOM.

"But I really need to--"

VROOOOOM. VROOOM.

"Wait, there's a--"

VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.

John told me years later that he had to reframe how he viewed the trip. Instead of viewing it as a goal to get to his parent's house in New Mexico it was a trip to have lunch in Sweetwater. With a stop for Dilly Bars in Amarillo. And a pause to check out the Allsups at....well, you get the picture.

Like John, I am typically goal oriented. Plot a course. Set trajectory. Focus on the destination.

But the Crosspointe thing has given me a different framework. Sometimes the best journeys are when you don't exactly know the destination. Oh, you may have a rough idea of the terrain, but there isn't a map. Just a sense of calling and a general idea of how to move forward. It occurs to me that those journeys are best shared with friends.

Last night, we went to the "Estate Sale" of all of the furnishings from Crosspointe's old space. I expected to feel sad, but didn't. In fact, it really struck me how much of it was all just "stuff."

What I did feel was a sense of belonging. As we walked through the rooms of "stuff" and laughed about things with Vicki, Kim, Jim, Nancy C, Angie, Margaret, Charity, Mark, Kylie, David...as we helped Jody load her car...as the Oxygen crowd drifted over to Steve's and made pizza in his kitchen chopping things and putting the pizzas on the grill (weird, but good)...I felt part. This was church. Not a building or "stuff" but living life and sharing faith with others.

Cultivate Sight

Each week of our Soul Journey series I will be creating and posting a Heuristic. A Heuristic is a technique of directing attention toward learning, discovery or problem solving. Some of you may be familiar with the concept if you enjoy solving complicated mathematic equations. I've adapted the concept by distilling our focus each week to an image along with a word or phrase. This week our phrase is cultivate sight. Our goal is to notice God at work in the world, at work around us and at work in us. I hope you will share your "seeing" moments here and at our Gathering Sunday. Happy sight cultivation!

Building God Boxes

I ran across this statement in my preparation for our new series Soul Journey: "God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes." Do you agree that we build boxes for God? If so, what are the boxes we tend to build in which God must fit?