Ms. Tippett: … I wonder — and I pose this to you, Rabbi Sacks, it seems to me that the Hebrew Bible, let’s say the Psalms, really wallow in sadness and suffering and anger as a way through those human experiences. So I wonder how do you respond to this idea [pursuing happiness] and how might you see it differently or what might you add to that approach to sadness? And, Rabbi Sacks, I know that you have just finished sitting shiva at the death of your mother. So you’ve been in a period of grief and mourning, which is very much lived and embodied.
Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: Yeah. It is true that if you read the Jewish literature and you read Jewish history, happiness is not the first word that comes to mind [laugh]. We do degrees in misery, post-graduate angst, and advanced guilt, and we do all this stuff, you know. And yet somehow or other when all of that is at an end, we get together and we celebrate. And where I love what His Holiness has just said, how he himself has lived a story that I resonate with, the story of suffering and exile, and yet he has come through it still smiling. And that to me is how I have always defined my faith as a Jew. The definition of a Jew, Israel is at it says in Genesis 34, one who struggles, wrestles, with God and with humanity and prevails. And Jacob says something very profound to the angel. He says, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” And that I feel about suffering. When something bad happens, I will not let go of that bad thing until I have discovered the blessing that lies within it.
When my late father died — now I’m in mourning for my late mother — that sense of grief and bereavement suddenly taught me that so many things that I thought were important, externals, etc., all of that is irrelevant. You lose a parent, you suddenly realize what a slender thing life is, how easily you can lose those you love. Then out of that comes a new simplicity and that is why sometimes all the pain and the tears lift you to a much higher and deeper joy when you say to the bad times, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
Author: Allen Bingham
I am a follower of Jesus, husband, father, and pastor of Haymount United Methodist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA.
Several untold stories from Doris Taylor’s stem cell research shared with Krista Tippett (via On Being)
Stem Cells, Untold Stories
September 30, 2010
Using stem cells, Doris Taylor brought the heart of a dead animal back to life and might one day revolutionize human organ transplantation. She takes us beyond lightning rod issues and into an unfolding frontier where science is learning how stem cells work reparatively in every body at every age.
Buried in this marvelous interview is the following conversation:
Dr. Taylor: Finally, our knowledge has caught up with — or is catching up with biology. We don’t understand it all yet. We don’t understand what makes them decrease but we know we can begin to move people backwards. And can I tell you some cool stuff? We believe that things that decrease stress actually increase the number of stem cells that you have in your body and in your blood. And we know that men and women have different numbers and different kinds of stem cells. And so for the first time, we think we can begin to understand why it is that men develop heart disease earlier than women — because they lose their stem cells faster.
So wouldn’t it be fabulous if we could say, “Wait a minute. We can move you backwards on that continuum of disease.” And I think that’s the future. The future is really using nature’s tools to promote our body’s ability to heal itself, whether we do that with traditional medical approaches, giving you cells, giving you molecules that increase the number of stem cells in a controlled way, or whether it’s about teaching you tools that let your body do that.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Dr. Taylor: Meditation, whatever.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah. And in that context — so here’s a paradox that strikes me in your work when I read a description of your laboratory where you have a number of hearts beating, right? So there’s something about this idea of disembodied hearts that then starts to make me worry about then how we define what we are.
Dr. Taylor: Absolutely.
Ms. Tippett: Right? But then the irony is that one of the things you’re discovering is that one of the ways our whole organism has to increase this capacity, this efficiency of stem cells, are through what I call these spiritual technologies like meditation. So, in fact, you take the things apart and then see how they fit together again.
Dr. Taylor: You know, it’s interesting because when we were first doing the guys in the lab would sleep in the lab to check on these hearts every half-hour or hour and a half. And when one of my folks who’s in my lab now came into the lab and was learning this process, Thomas — who was in the lab before — said, “You’ve just got to love it enough to keep it going.”
Ms. Tippett: Was he talking about the hearts?
Dr. Taylor: He was talking about the hearts …
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Dr. Taylor: … that we were growing in a dish. And, you know, we joke about that but at the same time, I think part of what we’re doing is learning about regenerating heart at a lot of different levels. And I think as we learn more about transplanting these hearts, what makes what we’re doing a little bit different than what exists out there already is we would — if we wanted to build you a heart, we would take a cadaver scaffold from a pig or from a human that couldn’t otherwise be used as a transplant. But we would take your stem cells, and we would use your cells to grow that heart. So it’s really about putting your body’s ability to heal you back in place.
Ms. Tippett: And then the way I understand it is you also see part of what you would want me to learn in terms of nurturing …
Dr. Taylor: Right.
Ms. Tippett: … that repair forward would also — there would also be a spiritual component to that.
Dr. Taylor: I mean, I personally have to believe that there’s a spiritual component to all of this. What we think impacts who we are. We know that. We know that, whether it’s what we think makes us grumpy or what we think makes us happy. And we’re learning that those have an impact on our physical body. Stress ages your stem cells. There’s science out there from some of the best laboratories in the world showing that the way a cell knows how old it is, is it has a little piece of DNA, chromosome, right? On the end of that chromosome is a little piece of DNA called a telomere. And every time your cell divides, that gets shorter. And when it reaches a certain point, it says, “Oops. I’m old. Time to die.” Well, stress makes that piece of DNA get shorter. So stress literally ages your stem cells. If you believe that’s true, and it is, it also ought to be possible to reverse stress and make your cells younger.
Xavier Le Pichon talks with Krista Tippett about fragility and the evolution of humanity (via On Being)
Fragility and the Evolution of Our Humanity
October 7, 2010Xavier Le Pichon is one of the world’s leading geophysicists, and his pioneering research on plate tectonics revolutionized our understanding of how the Earth works. He has also spent decades living in community with people and families facing disability and has emerged with a rare perspective on the meaning of humanity — a perspective equally informed by his scientific and personal encounters with fragility as a fundament of vital, evolving systems.
From Le Pichon conversations we should pay attention to the how materials closer to the core of the earth deform and slide along each other easily. On the other hand, material at the crust is cooler and often only move violently. This is a great metaphor for talking about organizational change. When we are close to the core (vision and mission) change is made easier by our warmth of purpose. When systems become cooler (and the way we have always done it) then the change may be violent and revolutionary.
Ms. Tippett: I think that also you draw analogies between how a whole community works, which is incorporating that fragility as part of its living being and even what you know about how the earth works.
Mr. Le Pichon: Yeah. It’s true that I was very, very impressed by one of these things, which is the way earthquakes are fabricated, which is in the lower layer of the earth where the temperature is high. Then the defaults that are within the rocks are activated, and the rocks are able to deform without fracture, become what we call ductile. You know, they flow.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Le Pichon: But when the temperature is low and cold — it’s cold like in the upper few miles of the earth — then they are rigid. These weaknesses cannot be expressed, and as a result the rocks are much resistant, much more rigid, and they react by reaching their limit of resistance and suddenly, bing, you have a major commotion and an earthquake.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. Le Pichon: And so the difference is that in one case, the defaults play a role in putting weakness in that and making things much more smooth, you know?
Ms. Tippett: Mm-hmm.
Mr. Le Pichon: And in the other case, it’s very rigid. And I find in the society it’s very often the same thing in the community. Communities which are very strong, very rigid, that do not take into account the weak points of the community, the people who are in difficulty and so on, tends to be communities that do not evolve. And when they evolve, it’s generally by a very strong commotion, a revolution, I would call them in French.
Richard Mouw discusses political civility from an evangelical perspective with Krista Tippett (via On Being)
I especially appreciate Mouw’s invitation to see other people as an exercise in art appreciation.
Ms. Tippett: So here’s another statement from you about just an essential Christian truth, which is, “In affirming the stranger, we are honoring the image of God.”
Mr. Mouw: Yeah, yeah. That’s right. I mean, going back to that Aristotle idea that, you know, we all understand kinship and then we understand friendship, but then there’s this person who is neither kin nor friend, but we have encountered them. And what is it that links me to them if it isn’t just a lot of good feelings that I have about people like that? What the Bible teaches is that every human being is created in a divine image. And this means that every human being is — you know, this is where I’ve been thinking more about this lately — is a work of art.
Seeing other people is a kind of exercise in art appreciation. I find that very powerful. I come across a person who isn’t just a stranger, but maybe represents a strangeness to me that initially I might feel very alienated from that person, and then to think this is a work of art by the God whom I worship, that God created that person. And it doesn’t come easy. I’m kind of aesthetically deprived, so I have to work at it, but it’s a very important exercise to engage in.
Restoring Political Civility: An Evangelical View
October 14, 2010
Richard Mouw challenges his fellow conservative Christians to civility in public discourse. He offers historical as well as spiritual perspective on American Evangelicals’ navigation of disagreement, fear, and truth.
Change: the fearful loudly resist, the hopeful quietly disbelieve, inertia results (via Seth Godin)
People who fear they will be hurt by a change speak up immediately, loudly and without regard for the odds or reality.
People who will benefit from a change don’t believe it (until it happens), so they sit quietly.
And that’s why change in an organization is difficult.
Ed Stetzer reminds Christians that the world does not need our moral arrogance. The world needs Jesus.
Eric Bryant recently wrote Not Like Me and Ed Stetzer contributed the insights below. Learning humility before the world and engaging unbelievers as people in relationship and not objects to be won is our work.
The past few decades have seen American Christians going in two different directions. One group in the church regularly pits scorched-earth, “come out and be separate” teaching against another group proposing the “love your neighbor as yourself” command of Jesus as paramount. Some what to save America, while others want to save Americans. Many believers have been taught that we should shun nonbelievers, since any friendship with them might cause us to stumble and fall into sin ourselves. The response is to construct a protective boundary that keeps us at a safe distance from those “living in sin.” It results in a subculture of churched people who are the equivalent of evangelical Amish.
While it is important for Christians to have and proclaim the moral standards as we have received them in God’s Word, our challenge is to avoid arrogance. Becoming prideful of our standards can have the inadvertent side-effect of us thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought to think.
via edstetzer.com
Steven Johnson reminds us that hunches and collaboration is where good ideas come from
via youtube.com
Sometimes laughter is the best medicine. Colbert, Stewart, and Maher on politics (via TheDailyBeast).
Stephen Colbert testifying in front of Congress. Bill Maher serving as a one-man opposition research division against Wingnut Queen Christine O’Donnell. Jon Stewart hosting a pre-election “Rally to Restore Sanity” on the Washington Mall.
It’s no joke: Comedians are driving the political debate this year. Consider it a sign of the times – laughter and satire is the only sane response to the sickening spin cycle we’re subjected to on a daily basis.
Sharon Hodde Miller shares her sense that the overshare on social networks is not God-honoring.
I am grateful for persons who state better something I have been thinking. I am trying these days to share the learning adventures I have without airing the family laundry (both biological and church family). Read the full post at EdStetzer.com and follow Sharon at SheWorships
I want to examine a particular “abuse” of tweeting/posting status updates. It is the practice of posting at (what I would consider to be) inappropriate times. No, I’m not trying to be the Emily Post of social media etiquette here to lecture you on the rudeness of tweeting during a meeting or meal. The kind of “inappropriate” I’m referring to is one that not only impacts the quality of Christian discipleship but the authenticity of our church leaders.
I began to notice this misuse of social networking when friends updated their statuses while on dates with their spouses, or even on their wedding nights. Such an anti-social by-product of social media is ironic, to say the least. Yet out of those habits emerged a more troubling one: Tweeting about deeply personal, intimate moments. Although I understand the desire to share one’s life with community, Twitter has gradually become a window into private moments and experiences that, in the past, would have been reserved for God and family.
via edstetzer.com
Jesus told us to make disciples and often as leaders we take the easy way out.
Heather Zempel, the discipleship person at National Community Church, shares an important reminder about making disciples. We have to work at making disciples just like a farmer has to work to bring forth a crop. Grabbing a “pre-ripened” disciple and showing others the fruit of your efforts is a short-cut. Do the hard work!
The last command Jesus gave his disciples was “go make disciples.” There are many things we focus on in church leadership- vision, communication, relevance, preaching, programming, etc. But if there is anything we must get right, it’s discipleship. The problem is that it’s often easier to focus on other things because discipleship is so stinking hard.
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We often look for disciples. We look for a potential leader. We hope to find someone with maturity and gifts that we can raise up. We forget that Jesus told us to go make them. Not find them. If you can’t find a potential leader in your group, in your ministry, or on your team, it’s not their fault. Don’t blame them for being immature or needing to grow. It’s your fault. It’s my fault. We are supposed to make disciples. And making disciples is long, hard work.
Front Porch Reflections 
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