I prefer “how” to “why” for a number of reasons. I guess I need to feel like life has some sort of ultimate purpose. Then again, the chance of this being just a series of cosmic accidents is more than remote. I would rather be haunted by “how” than “why.” Life is an art. If I thought that life was only an accident, I would be less patient about it and really not have any real reason to continue this thing called “life.” It is just too hard to find meaning in a series of accidents.

We are too complex and the planet is too well suited to us for this to be random. Also, I am a person of style. “How” is cool. “Why” is sophomoric. I have an eye for the arts and a healthy suspicion that I am being observed by some perfect Being. I even have the ego to think that the Being involved cares what happens to little old me.

If you have settled the “why” then the “how” is not such a big deal. Anything this grand and creative would have to be loving and forgiving. Apparently life is some sort of gift. Meaning is not hard to find if you are an optimist — if you trust Life for what it seems to be in all of its apparently bizarre forms.

One question leads you through life with a frown — the other with a smile. I am haunted by “how” as if coming to know a mysterious Friend.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think Freud was wrong about humans being pleasure seeking beings. We are more likely to passively numb-out by routine and the spiritually cowardly choice to live predictably. By the approval of the state, we allow ourselves to drift into working robots instead of finding our anger about the need to work too much for too little financial reward. Worse yet, our religious lives become encouragements to go along with the madness of it all — rather than calling all things into question.

You want to feel brave? Do something daring! You want to find love? Do something loving for someone else! We feel what we do — not what we think. Feelings follow actions. Get out of town. Make a call. Do whatever you have to do from a long-unused motive.

Repeating the same day over and over is not living. Real life carries risk. Deep feelings require courage. Being fully alive means living on the edge. “Taking up your cross” is not an invitation to merge into a world of pseudo-security.

I have no idea what all I am doing today, but I know for sure I will say and do some things that I have never said or done before…and be totally alive for at least those moments.

I teach courses that include a lot of political science. Political science is boring because it only has two themes: power and control. No matter what the theory, the end results are the same: power and control. It is all a big yawner but an academic necessity. I am with C.S. Lewis “Christianity is the only really interesting thing in history.” The rest is predictable.

“The world” is one trance. It repeats its narrow themes endlessly. The faces change, but the purposes remain. Boring! It is all about the pyramids of power and control. Whether it hides behind elections or in secret smoke-filled rooms, it is the same game plan.

Spiritual renewal is about turning the pyramid upside down. The servant becomes the master. God is on the side of the marginalized. “The last become first.” (Jesus of Nazareth).

There is good news here. When you grasp the renewal concept you come out on top — even if it looks like you are on the bottom. It is all about perspective. The human world and God’s world are not the same. When you catch the vision of the latter, you are free from the former.

The repeated reference points from the world never change. They are as predictable and as dilapidated as the pyramids of ancient cultures. A select group of people watch in amusement as it is repeated time and again.

Yawn!

The world is at it again, but a few of us are finding real life in another perspective.

Never forget that it is a fallen world being redeemed. It is between the two paradigms of lost and found. Getting stuck in the negatives is pretty miserable. You are not going to balance the scales. There will always be more negatives than positives, so you just remove the negatives from the scale. Simple. Turn it all loose and let it go. “Forgiveness” is a term that essentially means to “toss away.”

Toss it. Forget it. Let it go. Dragging whatever the slight might be is a way of being masochistic. Feeling bad is a habit of not filling the emotional trash can. Carry out the trash. Cleanse the soul. Lighten the load. There is no value in punishing yourself via your memory. Drop it.

Healthy religion is about being whole. It is a way of cleansing your inner psyche so that you can be fully human and truly in the image of God. Look around the room. Is the injustice still there? No! It is gone. You are the one hanging onto it and it strokes the power/ego. Have a bite of humble pie and savor the moment of being free. Mercy trumps justice.

Therapists talk about a “shadow bag” that people carry. It is like a trash bag of inequities and injuries that we use to attempt some sort of self-definition. It is filled with all sorts of smelly things. Carrying it takes work and at least one emotional/spiritual hand. Toss it.

Be free. Forgive. Live.

The ideas that matter most are the ideas you have about yourself. In counseling, I sometimes ask people where they got this or that idea about themselves. When they trace a painful idea backwards, it often leads to a childhood experience of some sort. The person is then free to change the idea. Our self-concepts begin early. When teased as a small child, you may spend half a lifetime with a humiliating feeling before you realize the history of that particular thought pattern.

Change what you think about yourself. Question the source of all ideas — especially the ones you that you use to habitually describe yourself. You are free to keep or toss any idea about your self-worth. Somewhere along the way in life, you need to own your personal ideas about reality. If you passively accept whatever you have been told in any arena of ideas, you may merely be a parrot instead of a person.

Find the roots to how you feel by tracing the history of ideas, and then change them for the better. You are the one most able to bestow these gifts to yourself. When you change what you think you will change how you feel. The pain you feel has become self-inflicted by habit. The good news is that you can change the habit.

I am more inclined to look at my being human in the traditional way of a physical being learning how to be spiritual or a spiritual being learning how to be physical. We are the half-angel/half-animal part of creation. We seem to be the best and worst of both. Getting a dual nature to work together is not easy. The Apostle Paul talked about himself as having this conflict. We humans are both carnal and spiritual. Pitted against ourselves, we do some really crazy things sometimes.

Getting mind, body, and soul together takes a lifetime and a lot of help. By the time we are in junior high school, we are pretty split. The journey from innocence to transcendence is certainly interesting — with a trail of laughter and tears along the way. I am not sure what God is doing with us, but I hope it is working. Creation has taken a lot of time to set the stage for our arrival. I hope God is not disappointed.

I don’t know about you, but I am twenty-some-thousand days into this and am still a bit ambivalent about it. About all I can do is trust God and anticipate the next life as I learn from this one. In all due respect for my astrology friends, I do not think I want to come back to this one. I would prefer to get the lessons the first time around and go to a greater level.

Apparently all I have to do is be human while being a human being.