When you grasp that every­thing in this world is tem­po­rary you are free to live fully. All attempts at per­ma­nent secu­rity are an illu­sion. At best we have the moment. The vast major­ity of those moments are very good. The lesser ones pass. Life is a river. It is in con­stant motion. You can either go with it or exhaust your­self try­ing to swim upstream. Enjoy the ride. Learn as you go. What you expe­ri­ence is always a lit­tle bit novel. The harder you try to con­trol it the more out of con­trol you become.

This moment will pass — as will the next. In the pass­ing of these moments you will notice an inner observer that is eter­nal. Iden­tify with it. It is here for the soul’s edu­ca­tion. All mate­r­ial con­cerns are tem­po­rary. They come and they go. What remains is that one sense of expe­ri­ence that matures from stage to stage. It is intan­gi­ble but more real than what­ever you are touch­ing at this moment.

Once you dis­cover the tem­po­rary, you are free to pur­sue all within your grasp: an edu­ca­tion, a career, a fam­ily, an adven­ture — an eter­nal life. If you ever try to stay in one place, you will become a fool. There is no stop­ping. There is only life in motion.

C.S. Lewis said that hell is a place where noth­ing ever changes. It is death. It is the end of the road. Life ceases. All things stay the same. It is the oppo­site of what you are expe­ri­enc­ing right now. It is totally pre­dictable. It is totally secure. It goes nowhere.

On the other hand you have life: a body that changes; sea­sons that are ever in tran­si­tion; winds that shift; social forces that mean­der along; flow­ers that go from ugly seeds to beau­ti­ful blos­soms in a sin­gle short season.

You are alive. The stages are tem­po­rary but the expe­ri­ence is eternal.

Quan­tity and qual­ity are not the same thing. The two are eas­ily con­fused in a world over­sold on con­sump­tion. Style beats amount any day, but it hard to see that in con­tem­po­rary life. The most vio­lated of the Ten Com­mand­ments has to do with the Sab­bath. There are too many vested inter­ests in over-work and over-consumption. Econ­o­mists brag about the 24/7 econ­omy, but the results send us to hos­pi­tal emer­gency rooms and emo­tional ther­apy centers.

We were not designed for a non-stop lifestyle. With a loss of real time off comes a whole world of social mal­adies. Our time off becomes just another sched­ule of activ­i­ties — all under­writ­ten by insti­tu­tional “needs” and beck­on­ing per­sonal activ­i­ties. It is very addic­tive. “Sab­bath” is replaced by quick chem­i­cal substitutes…with very poor results in the long run.

Jesus made it very clear that “a man’s life does not con­sist of what he has acquired.” In prin­ci­ple, we humans are not so much about hav­ing as being. This is not to put down cap­i­tal­ism. It is just a reminder that we are Homo sapi­ens — mankind the wise — not human­ity the end­less doer/consumer.

Do noth­ing once in a while — and for a very long while. Just be! There is an art to tak­ing time off and get­ting time away. Done prop­erly, it enhances the work you do when you return. Here is an idea: instead of the sec­ond or third job, sim­plify your mate­r­ial exis­tence. Life is found in the liv­ing of it, not in col­lect­ing more paper and plastic.

Go through today med­i­ta­tively instead of acquis­i­tively and see if you do not feel better.

There is strength in diver­sity. Every orga­ni­za­tion that exists for very long starts hav­ing gate­keep­ers — peo­ple that selec­tively accept or reject oth­ers “for the good of the orga­ni­za­tion.” That was the very first prob­lem the early church encoun­tered. It over­came the prob­lem, but has had to over­come it again and again.

The Statue of Lib­erty is the mon­u­ment to open invi­ta­tions. Con­se­quently, there are major cities in Amer­ica that boast of nearly one-hundred first lan­guages. The con­flicts that are inevitable are resolved by hav­ing some sort of “meta-story” — a greater set of images and tales that bind diverse peo­ple together in the name of some higher calling.

God excludes the exclu­sivists. Sooner or later the gate­keep­ers find them­selves on the out­side. “The first become last and the last become first.” Per­son­ally, I do not join exclu­sive orga­ni­za­tions — not even polit­i­cal par­ties. My view of the church is an all-embracing uni­ver­sal one. Church growth works when peo­ple are allowed to share their tal­ents and where they can feel loved and accepted.

This is the oppo­site of how the world runs. Jesus told para­bles of ban­quets in which the invited guests snubbed the invi­ta­tion and their places were then filled with the peo­ple they had rejected. In short, God will have peo­ple if it takes scrap­ing them off the bot­tom (a sort of tongue-in-cheek para­ble). It has a W.C. Fields ring to it when he said he would not be a mem­ber of any club that would have him as a member.

The church belongs to the rejected. Its pri­mary mem­ber­ship require­ment is in not being wor­thy of being a mem­ber. You have to smile when you see God’s humor in this. For some rea­son, Deity is most at home with hon­est fail­ures than with pre­tend “good peo­ple” (what­ever those are). I cher­ish my church mem­ber­ship because of its grand para­dox: I don’t deserve to be in it, which is exactly what makes me feel most at home.

Reject­ing oth­ers is actu­ally a form of self-rejection. What­ever mon­ster I project onto oth­ers is appar­ently the mon­ster I have allowed to live inside of me. What­ever I reject about myself, I reject in oth­ers. In other words, I am my own worst gate-keeper.

So, open the door. Accept every­thing about your­self so you can accept oth­ers. That which gets on my last nerve is about my last nerve. You have to smile when you catch onto this…and then life gets a whole lot better.

Most of us drive our­selves mer­ci­lessly. We are crit­i­cal of our­selves and thus crit­i­cal of oth­ers. “Per­for­mance” is the hall­mark of our times. Only an A+ is accept­able. We praise the Gold but ignore the Sil­ver and Bronze. Flaw­less per­fec­tion has become an unrea­son­able god. No one really attains it, so deep down inside we crawl off in toxic shame.

Sel­dom do we take a kind moment for our­selves. We are a dri­ven peo­ple. At first it feels good, and then we exhaust and give up. The church is for sin­ners — fail­ures — hyp­ocrites that have learned the heav­enly bless­ing of accept­ing grace for all of our flaws. By it we hold our heads up and con­tinue on. We do not self-destruct over impos­si­ble stan­dards. “The meek inherit the earth” because they can live with a B or a C — or even in tak­ing the course all over again.

It is good to have high and wor­thy goals, but if you pun­ish your­self for imper­fec­tion you are in for a lot of unnec­es­sary pain. The gap between aspi­ra­tion and accom­plish­ment exists as part of inspi­ra­tion and desire. Long­ing is good for the soul. The quest for per­fec­tion helps us reach beyond the merely accept­able. It is not designed to be a humil­i­at­ing sign of failure.

Pick your­self up. Be good to your­self. All fac­tors con­sid­ered, you are prob­a­bly doing the best you can. Win­ning means not being your own worst critic. It means being your own best fan.