Monthly Archives: January 2010

In Praise of Wasted Time

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My wife and I stopped at our Internet provider to change our service package. We have finally succumbed to the lure of broadband. While we sat off to the side filling out paperwork, a UPS driver bustled in the room with a large package. He set it on the floor with a thud and bounded over to the receptionist for her signature. As she signed the electronic device, I noted he took out his key ring in his left hand and got the key ready for when he returned to his brown truck.

“They teach him to have his key ready like that,” I thought later. If he saves only three seconds by not fumbling for his key when he gets back to his truck, after 100 stops he will have gained five minutes. UPS drivers make hundreds of deliveries each day, and their training must teach them not to waste a second of time. All for the sake of efficiency.

Lest I imagine this a feature only of the business world, the incident reminded me of John Wesley. He urged his network of itinerant preachers always to be employed and never to waste any time. He followed his own rule too. The great sage Samuel Johnson once looked forward to meeting Wesley, but he was disappointed when he received only ten minutes with the founder of Methodism. It was all the time Wesley would alot him. I’d have been thrilled to waste an hour or a week with Samuel Johnson. My first question of him: “So what was it like to write the dictionary?”

With all my respect for capitalism and Methodism, I wonder if either has discovered the fruitfulness of waste. Eugene Peterson defined Sabbath as wasted time — as good a definition as I’ve seen. Even God wasted the seventh day in this way. Wasted time, I believe, is like a margin on the edge of the page. I can write in the margin, but then the paper gets so cluttered I can’t read it well anymore. Life without a margin — wasted space — makes me nervous, scattered and sad.

My Sabbath happens on Fridays. On the best Fridays, I waste as much time as possible.

Mid-Life Conversions

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Paula Huston on the radical spiritual changes than can happen in mid-life, which she calls the third conversion:

Despite my upbringing as a level-headed Lutheran and my later allegiance to a church that locates the source of spiritual growth primarily in the sacraments and liturgical worship, I’ve become convinced that we experience the most surprising spiritual wake-up calls at the most inconvenient times. When we do, we are faced with a choice: we can avoid or ignore them, or we can close our eyes, hold our noses and take the plunge into disruption.

Her “plunge into disruption” took the form of leaving her teaching job and her marriage for a time and going on a pilgrimage to shrines around the world.  Hers is a powerful story, offering insight to those of us passing through gentler forms of mid-life conversion.

Partisanship as Heresy

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Richard Mouw on Carl Henry and social ethics: 

In the months immediately preceding my telephone conversation with Henry, he had taken up this theme at some length in Christianity Today’s pages. In a feature article, along with an accompanying editorial in the September 15, 1967, issue, Henry praised Princeton University ethicist Paul Ramsey for the way he had criticized ecumenical Protestantism in his recent book, Who Speaks for the Church? In particular, Henry praised Ramsey’s critique of ecumenical Protestantism’s way of issuing what Henry describes (paraphrasing Ramsey) as “a staggering number of resolutions that support particular positions.” And the issue for Ramsey was not just the sheer number of pronouncements, but also a methodology that flowed from a defective theology. Henry quotes Ramsey’s harsh verdict: “Identification of Christian social ethics with specific partisan proposals that clearly are not the only ones that may be characterized as Christian and as morally acceptable comes close to the original New Testament meaning of heresy.”

Ouch.  The whole essay merits reading.

Presidents Don’t Create Jobs

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Neither do Congresses… although they can foster an environment helpful for job creation.  And surprisingly, businesses don’t create jobs either — at least, not on their own.  So says Mark Lange.

Workers create jobs.

When we imagine that government – and even companies – “create” jobs, we’re missing half the story: the crucial part. The part that most of us can actually influence, right now.

It’s a paradox, but job seekers are actually job creators. People… focus on how many employers happen to be hiring. But an overlooked tenet of labor economics says that what’s equally vital to creating jobs is the presence of an adequately skilled workforce capable of filling them.

In other words, when the workers are ready, the jobs appear.

We create our own reality, and opportunity and innovation rise from the ground up.  Striking to me in his comments were the importance of optimism, hard work and believing in yourself.

Born Again Is Hard

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She lies in her bed each day at the care facility, her muscles slowing regaining the ability to move.  She’s learned to manipulate the TV remote — a good skill since she watches lots of TV now.  Her ability to speak has improved.

It’s been nearly two months, and her rehabilitation will take many more.  Her physical therapist promises to get her on her feet next week.  But it’s lonely and frustrating, more than I can imagine.

We talked about how it’s like becoming a baby all over again — learning to move, eat, talk, sit, stand and finally walk.

Me:  “It’s like being born again.”

Her:  “Yeah… I’d never thought of it that way.”

Watching her, I’ve learned that being born again is a hard thing to do.  They didn’t mention this part at the Billy Graham rally… then it sounded easy.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

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A local man went to jail last week for an 11 month sentence.  He had confessed to putting a camera in a women’s restroom at work.  It is a felony to “capture the image of an unclothed person.”  Apparently, he set up the camera twice.

We who know him have been as supportive as possible.  When the topic comes up in conversation with others we say, “He’s a good man who did a bad thing.”  And apart from this sad incident, he has been a good and decent man.  But when I said my stock phrase to a woman I know, her response was, “If this is what a good man does, what does it say about all the other men?”  I had no answer.

Someone once called Jesus a good teacher.  Jesus responded, “Why do you call me good?  No one is good, except God alone.”  Jesus cared about who deserved the adjective good.  It makes me wonder now if I’m too quick to call someone good, or think I am good myself.  Maybe a good man — or a good woman — is harder to find than we know.  There’s a difference between not breaking any laws and being genuinely good.  Who among us is wholly and fully good?

In his ethics Jesus noted that bad actions rise from bad thoughts.  He saw little distinction, for example, between hatred and murder — they differ in degree, not in kind.  Seen in this light, none of us is good.  On the other side, the Bible still exhorts us to do good.  “Turn from evil, and do good,” says the Psalms.  “Seek peace, and pursue it.”  We are capable of doing good… and as my friend in jail reminds me, capable of doing bad too.

Another knot I cannot untie.  If this is what a good man does, what does it say about all the rest? I don’t know.  Who among us is genuinely good?  No one is good but God alone.

I am sad for the man in jail… and for his family.  I’ve visited prisoners in jail enough to see how it takes away pieces of a their humanity — their freedom, their dignity, even their own clothing.  I guess it’s all part of the punishment.  When my friend is released, I hope he’ll be able to make a fresh start.

And if someone passes judgment on him in jail, or on anyone in jail, I’ll side with Jesus:  “Let the one without sin be the first to throw a stone.”

John Polkinghorne

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Tim Stafford first interested me in physicist/priest John Polkinghorne, who turns 80 this year.  Polkinghorne has written extensively on the relationship between science and theology.  I have finished his book Exploring Reality:  The Intertwining of Science and Religion.

The word intertwining in the subtitle describes Polkinghorne’s mind as he blends a scientific and theological outlook.  Here is one sample:

Just as physicists had to struggle with the duality of wave and particle because that was the task that nature had imposed on them, so the theologians have had to struggle with trinitarian insight because the encounter with the one divine reality is inexorably shaped in a way that demands triadic understanding.  It forces upon us thinking stranger than we could have thought.  (p. 104)

He sees “strange thinking” at work in quantum physics and relativity on the one side and the doctrine of the Trinity on the other, because the nature of the data forces us in that direction.  Truth is a strange thing, Polkinghorne reminds us, and often it is not simple.

I’ve read none of his other books, but I suspect Exploring Reality is a good introduction to his thinking.  The chapters are short, each a meditation on a particular topic:  science, human nature (including evolution), Jesus, the Trinity, time, evil, and ethics.  I didn’t always understand him, but what I grasped I profited from.

His treatment of time stood out.  Typically Polkinghorne is orthodox, but here his thought comes closer to process theology, which sees God intertwined in time, so to speak, rather than above and outside of time.

One of the benefits of reading is that I can learn things from people who are smarter than I am.  I’ll be reading more of John Polkinghorne.

Sermon On Jesus at the Synagogue in Nazareth

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Feel For the Power
Luke 4.14-21
January 24, 2010

“And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee.” He’s been away, starting his new work. Preaching, teaching, healing, calling followers. He’s become famous too. He’s the hot new act. Today he’d be on Oprah or Good Morning America.

But now he’s come home, where he was raised, where he is known. Little Yeshua all grown up. He goes to the synagogue and sits on the stone bench. He takes part in the worship. He recites the Shema, says the prayers and listens to the Torah reading.

When the time comes for the reading from the Prophets, the Nevi’im, he stands and takes the scroll himself. He holds it with reverence and kisses it. He unrolls it to Isaiah the prophet and reads a passage.

Then he sits down to teach. All the eyes in the synagogue are fixed on him, waiting in expectation for what he will say. You see, he has a reputation. His teaching, people say, is exciting. He teaches with authority. He has clearly been touched by the Spirit to speak with power. So the people wait to listen.

+++++

Last week I mentioned Francis Asbury, the founder of Methodism in America. He traveled around the country preaching and supervising a network of preachers. They took the gospel message everywhere, and they spoke with power.

Early Methodist worship was a passionate affair. People in worship services would cry out and scream and fall down shaking. These were shoutin’ Methodists. And Methodist preaching then was passionate too. Asbury himself loved passionate preaching.

At a meeting one day Asbury was sitting next to the man who was going to preach. As the man stood, Asbury tugged on his sleeve and said, “Brother, feel for the power.” Feel for the power… I like that.

Early Methodists felt for the power of the Spirit. They believed the same Spirit that inspired Jesus could inspire them too. So they sought the Spirit’s anointing in their lives.

Do you feel for the power? Do you look for the energy of the Spirit in your life? I hope you do. You can’t achieve anything as a Christian without it.You have to ask for it. “Lord, fill me with your Spirit.” Make that part of your daily prayers.

A practice I find helpful here in finding the Spirit’s power is singing. When we sing praises, a power, an energy is released in our lives. I often wear this yellow band around my wrist… it says “PraisePower”. It reminds me that when I sing praises, the Spirit invades my life in a fresh way, and I have power.

The Spirit invaded Jesus’ life. He was anointed by the Spirit. So he spoke with power, and the people waited eagerly for his words.

We don’t know a lot about what he said that day, but we do know his choice of scripture. The scripture he selected says a lot about Jesus’ priorities. The passage he read speaks of bringing good news to the poor, freedom to captives and sight to the blind.

These are the people Jesus cared about. People at the edges of life, the hidden people, the despised, the people without status. He focused on them and brought good news to them.

In Disciple Bible study there is a phrase for this. Jesus came to seek the least, the last and the lost. It’s easy to remember. And the idea has become so familiar to us that it doesn’t have the shock value it did at first. It was radical.

Have you ever walked outside on a summer evening. And you see a window with the curtains pulled back… a light is on inside, and you see furniture, a TV, and people. That window gives you a glimpse of life inside that house.

In a similar way, Jesus is a window that gives us a glimpse into the very life of God. And Jesus’ priorities tell us about God’s priorities. God is active in our world now seeking the last, the least and the lost.

+++++

Her family lived in Costa Rica. They had no money. When she was four years old, they sold her into sexual slavery. While other children went to school, she worked at a brothel. She sent all her earnings home to her mother. Some men will pay a lot to have their way with children.

She felt ugly and ashamed. She began abusing drugs and alcohol at an early age. And this was her life, year after year.

When she was a teenager, she had two children. Her mother took them away from her and said, “You’re too filthy to raise them.” Then she worked that much harder to support them. It was the only way to show her love. Sometimes she would work a double shift, seeing 100 men in a day.

One day a customer got angry with her. She wouldn’t do what he wanted her to do. So he split her head open with a baseball bat. She went to the hospital. She made plans to kill herself. She wondered what would happen if she pulled out all the tubes.

But she didn’t kill herself. Instead, she slipped down to the floor on her knees. And she prayed. “God, help me escape prostitution. Help me become a real mother to my children.”

It was then she saw the vision. A real vision. She saw letters spelled out. They said, “Look for the Rahab Foundation.” She had no idea what it meant. “Rahab” wasn’t a Spanish word. But a nurse helped her find the number for the Rahab Foundation in the phone book. She called the number.

It rang and rang. She prayed, “God, if you exist, make someone answer.” Finally someone answered. Her name was Mariliana. She was the director of the Rahab Foundation, which was an organization that helped people escape prostitution. The Rahab Foundation was closed that day. Mariliana had only stoppped in to pick up some papers.

The girl said to her, “Please help me. I’m dying. I don’t know what to do.”

Maraliana said, “God loves you. God will never leave you. I’ll help you leave prostitution. That’s what I do.”

She picked the girl up at the hospital, all bruised and bandaged. She took her to her own home, gave her a clean bed and fresh flowers and a promise that no men would harrass her anymore. She told her about Rahab, the prostitute in the Bible who became a heroine. Mariliana hugged her and said, “You’re safe now, Hilda.”

Hilda began to learn how to be a real mother, with Mariliana’s help, and she began to study for a trade so she could support herself and her children and live her life for the glory of God.*

+++++

Good news for the poor. Freedom for captives. Sight for the blind. It’s what Jesus did. It’s what Mariliana does. It’s what God is doing now in the world.

When we feel for the power, when we tap into the Spirit’s energy, we join God in this activity of seeking the last, the least and the lost. Amen.

*Story from Philip Yancey, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?

Gunsights

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Lots of religious folks are up in arms over biblical references on gunsights used by the US military:

In a letter to President Obama this week, the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance in New York, wrote: “Images of American soldiers as Christian crusaders come to mind when they are carrying weaponry bearing such verses.”

I agree it’s not appropriate to have biblical references on gunsights used by the US military, but I’m not indignant about the practice.  I don’t want to see John 3:16 splashed on tanks in large letters, but a tiny biblical reference on a rifle sight doesn’t trouble me.

The sights are “tritium illuminated,” allowing them to be used at night.  Tritium is a hydrogen isotope used in luminous paints.  This is where the reference (JN8:12) to Christ as light comes from.  Still, General Petraeus frowns on the references, and the Pentagon is embarrassed, so they are going to go away.  The sensitive souls at the Interfaith Alliance will be pleased.

The soldiers who use the sights may feel differently.  Maybe they’ll put another Bible reference on their rifles — PS144:1.   “Praise the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war.”

This Strange Jesus

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This week a verse from John has been much in my mind:

The sheep will not follow strangers.  They don’t recognize a stranger’s voice, and they run away.  (Jn. 10.5 CEV)

For a long time people have tried to get me to follow another Jesus — their Jesus.  But I don’t recognize his voice.  It’s such an angry voice… a Jesus who is angry at racism, capitalism, fundamentalism, nationalism, militarism, or some other ism.  He’s always angry, and he doesn’t like America.

Racism is a sin, one of many that afflicts the human heart.  I think it grieves more than angers God.  But a deeper sin is the moralism that constantly condemns racism.  This moralism is the more insidious evil because it masks itself as righteousness.

You see, it’s really these people who are the angry ones, and they’ve enlisted the name of Jesus for support.  They use him.  He sells books and supports policy positions.  Often he’s not even a real historical figure to them — only a fictional character.  All that matters is that he’s useful in combating the isms.

He’s not the Shepherd, though, or the Savior I have known and loved.  The voice of this strange Jesus is unfamiliar to me.  He is a stranger, and I don’t follow him.

The Gospel and Success

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Debra Dean Murphy believes the O’Brien/Leno debacle can instruct us:

But the late-night melodrama is instructive in a few important ways. It has reminded us of some correlated pathologies we seem to suffer from individually and collectively: our need for instant success, our lack of patience and disciplined persistance, an inability to see beyond the present moment.

She notes a thirst for success in churches too and sets in opposition to it “the strangeness of the gospel.”

I agree the gospel does not mesh well with success.  The least successful in worldly terms tend to understand the gospel best.

How the Fathers Read Scripture

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From David Neff:

At a time when many of our biblical scholars have essentially become historians, it is important to recover a theological way of reading Scripture. It is important to study the text in its cultural and literary milieu, but such study can easily stop short of helping us hear and respond to God’s Word as God’s message about God’s saving acts.

In November, to inaugurate Wheaton College’s new Center for Early Christian Studies, premier patristics scholar Robert Louis Wilken gave a lecture on how the Fathers read Scripture. Wilken, briefly: The books of Scripture do not bear their own significance. They must be united to something greater, which is Christ. The Fathers also understood the interpretation of Scripture to require the reader’s participation in the spiritual reality of the text. Thus, it is not enough to say that Christ was crucified. We must also say, “I am crucified with Christ,” and thus also, “I am raised with Christ.”

The whole article is here.

Emerson Is Overrated

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I’ve long suspected Emerson is overrated.  Two English professors at the University of Hartford have, thankfully, confirmed this view:

What a student finds [in Emerson], in fact, is a set of contradictory, baffling, radical, reactionary ideas that offer no practical guidelines for actual human behavior. And that’s the good news.

They note he also writes in “the prose of a crazy person.”  Yes!  Yes!  Now I don’t have to feel guilty for not being able to make sense of him.  Oh, I’ve tried… more than once. 

I loved Montaigne.  Page after page his essays flow like a mountain stream.  I never wearied of him.  But Emerson is more like sludge.  He’s too dense.  He tries too hard to be profound.  He loses me after a couple of pages.  Apart from Lincoln, I’d say the greatest 19th century American writer is Grant — compared to him, Emerson is a cricket. 

I’m being a literary snob, true, but I had to say it.  Now on to other things.

Tears and Song

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On Monday nine of us took the church van and drove 30 miles to Jackson to visit a parishioner in a rehab unit.  Right after Thanksgiving she got an infection, her fever rising to 106 degrees.  Doctors and nurses were able to save her life.  But the treatment necessary — I don’t understand all the medical issues — left her unable to move or speak.

She is regaining these abilities.  She spoke to us with the help of a little device plugged into her trache tube.  Some feeling is returning to her fingers too.

We sang to her.  Sanctuary, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus, Amazing Grace, and Shout to the Lord, among other songs.  Apart from me, all the visitors were members of our praise band Ascend.  This woman has often come to our praise service — her son is the drummer in the band.  They all decided to bring the praise service to her.

Her lip quivered as we sang, and tears dripped down her cheek.  Some of the singers wiped back tears too.  Tears and song… it was a holy time.  After our singing, we gathered around her bed and prayed for her continued healing.

Jesus visited a girl who had died — but to him she was only sleeping.  He stood by her bed, touched her hand and said, “Talitha koum.”  Little girl, arise.  So she did.  The event must have left an impression on the disciples since it’s one of the few places in the gospel where Jesus’ actual words remain untouched.

Our friend in Jackson has risen from the dead, or the nearly dead.  I’ve visited her six or seven times, and each time I see improvement. Our songs yesterday touched her and helped her spirit rise.  Before we left, she smiled and said, “I was homesick, but not anymore.  Thank you.”

3 Steps to Share Your Faith With Others

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29And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” 30So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” 31And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

Acts 8.29-31

Luke’s account of Philip and the Ethiopian provides a model for how believers today can share their faith with others.  This is difficult for us to do.  We are afraid to do this.  We’d much rather share the gospel with our actions than our words.  But words are necessary too — people around us are searching for God, just as the Ethiopian was, and they need a guide to help show the way.

Sharing faith with others can be done well or poorly.  We’ve all probably known bad experiences with wandering evangelists who inflict their message on us.  But Philip in the above scripture offers an example of how to do this the right way.  There are three basic steps:

1.  Be sensitive to the Spirit’s leading.  God leads Philip to the Ethiopian, and Philip cooperates with this divine initiative.  God will provide opportunities for us to share our faith, and it’s up to us to be on the lookout, aware of God’s activity in our lives and relationships.  Pray for opportunities to share your faith, and they will present themselves.

2.  Gently take the initiative.  Philip asks a simple question, “Do you understand what you are reading?”  It’s a perfect beginning.  He starts gently, slowly… right where the person is.  So also, when you sense an opportunity to share your faith, ask an open question to start a conversation.  You may be surprised where the conversation leads.  Even an innocent statement such as “I’ll be praying for you today” might open a door to further dialogue.  The key is to be natural and authentic.

3.  Wait for an invitation to go further.  Philip doesn’t jump in the Ethiopian’s wagon uninvited.  He waits until he is asked, and then he joins the man on his journey.  This is a critical thing — initiative balanced with patience, waiting for the other person to invite further conversation.  Then there is the opportunity to share with the other person what Jesus means to you and how your faith has helped you in difficult times.

After you’ve shared your faith with another person, they may smile politely and change the subject.  Or their life may be changed by your words and witness, as the Ethiopian was, and they may go “on their way rejoicing” as never before.  You will have helped make that possible.

The great growing edge in many churches, especially mainline churches, is witness — sharing our faith in God with others in gentle, authentic ways.  Philip shows us how.

Order and Disorder

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The interlacing of order and disorder is precisely what seems to be needed for the creative emergence of novelty.  New things happen in regimes that we have learned to identify as being “at the edge of chaos.”  Too far on the orderly side of that frontier and things are too rigid for there to be more than a shuffling rearrangement of already existing entities.  Too far on the disorderly side, and things are too haphazard for any novelties to persist.  ~ John Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality, p. 27

Shuffling rearrangement of already existing entities… that describes the life of an institution.  Institutions fear disorder and exert control to keep it at bay.  But disorder, according to Polkinghorne, is needed for new life to emerge in the system.  On the other side, order is necessary for new life too.  Apart from the stability order brings, new life will not thrive for long.  Neither a rage for order or a rage for disorder will do.

I find lately that a life of prayer benefits from order and disorder, repetition and spontaneity.  Prayer blends the regular and the random to sustain itself.

How to Write Well

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William Zinsser spoke to international students at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.  He told them how to write well in English.  He urged them to choose short Anglo-Saxon words instead of long words derived from Latin.

He thinks Latinate words, which are more abstract and have more syllables, hinder good writing.

How do those Latin words do their strangling and suffocating? In general they are long, pompous nouns that end in -ion—like implementation and maximization and communication (five syllables long!)—or that end in -ent—like development and fulfillment. Those nouns express a vague concept or an abstract idea, not a specific action that we can picture—somebody doing something.

Instead, he counsels the use of old, earthy Anglo-Saxon words:

The good nouns are the thousands of short, simple, infinitely old Anglo-Saxon nouns that express the fundamentals of everyday life: house, home, child, chair, bread, milk, sea, sky, earth, field, grass, road … words that are in our bones, words that resonate with the oldest truths.

I see the value of using the word rain instead of precipitation.  But I think there is a place in writing for longer, Latinate words.  Zinsser himself uses four of them in his talk when he says good writing has clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.  His other ideas show good common sense:  use active verbs… give each sentence only one point… a period is your friend.

This blog gives me a place to write.  I try to write simple, clear sentences.  I use the dash and the ellipsis too often – but that’s okay… it’s only a blog.

The Limits of Evolution

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Tim Stafford has completed his survey of physicist/priest John Polkinghorne.  Polkinghorne accepts evolution, but he believes evolutionists have overreached themselves, much as physicists did in earlier centuries. 

Polkinghorne thinks that evolution explains a lot, uncovering “an astonishing drive to fruitfulness” in the world God has made. Polkinghorne does not, however, think that evolution tells the whole story. For one thing, it struggles to explain phenomena like consciousness, beauty, ethics, literature, art, religion, and science. Survival does not seem enhanced by any of these. Evolutionists may attribute them to accidental impulses left over from some primitive survival tactic, but that hardly seems like an adequate explanation for Van Gogh.

The rest of the post is here, with a couple of additional ones nearby.  Stafford’s summaries are well worth reading.  He notes an information site about John Polkinghorne here.

When Clergy Are Like Smokers

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These words from Quaker Thomas Kelly are on my mind today:

Some of the most active church leaders, well-known for their executive efficiency, people we have always admired, are shown, in the X-ray light of Eternity, to be agitated, half-committed, wistful, self-placating seekers, to whom the poise and serenity of the Everlasting have never come.

I often have an uneasy relationship with other clergy.  I’ve met many good pastors and priests — kind, gracious, spiritual men and women.  But I also come across the ones who aren’t, who lack the “poise and serenity of the everlasting.”

Interacting with other ministers, particularly online, can be like walking through the smoking section at a restaurant.  They exhale things, out of long standing habit and necessity, and then the smell lingers on me the rest of the day.  They don’t notice the odor, of course, because they live with it constantly.  But I do… and I have to leave the room in search of clean air.

I avoid restaurants that aren’t non smoking — I’m too sensitive to cigarette smoke.  In a similar way, I’m learning to avoid certain gatherings of clergy because the contagion in the air makes it difficult to breathe.

I’m also more attentive to what I exale myself — whether or not my own words benefit those who listen.