For so many years this site was more a resource than a traditional blog with daily, or at least weekly, thoughts/updates being posted from me its host.

So here, under this menu category of “Weekly Thoughts” will be just that.  These will certainly be of less import than the other two authors listed beside me.  But because of what these two, along with similar sojourners, have taught me, I feel I have some thing to offer.  Namely, what a common person discerns and struggles with in doing a personal practice of an integrated life.

I coined an expression awhile back that seems like one of those “well dah” expressions.  It is, “We do what we do until we do something different.”  We don’t change until we change.  Commit as we may, the shift doesn’t happen until it does.  Yet it seems this, more than not, is a coming to awareness on our part rather than a dramatic alteration that re-categorizes what we do and/or who we are.
My spiritual life has shifted and I have “suddenly” realized I’m at a different place than sometime back.  At that time in the past I wished to do/be different.  But it wasn’t going to happen until it would/could.
It seems like changes in our lives often involve a co-creative aspect.  We need to lean into the direction we want to be going, a faith of sorts, and then time, bit by bit, adds to our intention to bring us into a new location.  But it all starts with that realization that we don’t want to be where we are, followed by intention, and subsequently nurtured (and reformed) by time.  Otherwise we do what we do until we do something different.
9/29/11
 
Continuing on this “doing what we do”, I just read an insightful article by David Brooks.”The Limits of Empathy” speaks specifically to how we can merely feel “with” someone, yet lack an intention coupled with action.  In the area of moral compulsion, a desired component of our spirituality, empathy onlycan lend itself to us continuing what we do, which may amount to nothing.Here are a few excerpts.

“The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.”

In fact, “empathy often leads people astray.”

“People who actually perform pro-social action don’t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes.”

“The code isn’t just a set of rules. It’s a source of identity. It’s pursued with joy. It arouses the strongest emotions and attachments. Empathy is a sideshow. If you want to make the world a better place, help people debate, understand, reform, revere and enact their codes. Accept that codes conflict.”

The Limits of Empathy
By David Brooks
Published: September 29, 2011
New York Times
10/01/11
 
My life is to journey with truth and kindness,
which will require courage,
while keeping an eye toward beauty and joy,
which will necessitate clarity.
5/24/12