This story from Ambrose Worrall’s The Gift of Healing[*] illustrates that not all prayer, however well-intentioned, will necessarily bring about the desired results. Some prayer may even interfere with obtaining the desired results.
Ambrose Worrall had been asked to intercede for a six-year old girl named Kay, who had developed encephalitis following measles. At the time he began, she was completely paralysed.
At least, not for people like me.[*]
 Ashley Olsen |
 Grace Park |
 Ciara |
Decisions, decisions.
Continue reading * Choosing what to want isn’t a no-brainer, either.
A few days ago, in the “smoke pit” awaiting entry to the homeless shelter where I stay, I sat facing a choice of whether to feel good or feel bad. I allowed myself to stay in that state for some time so as to examine it. As I’ve observed many times in the past, it proved to be, apparently, a completely arbitrary choice.
This really puzzled, and puzzles me. Choosing to feel good creates light. Choosing to feel bad creates darkness. There is so much “darkness” in the world, and I want to understand how it comes about. Can it really be as simple as a wholly arbitrary choice? Continue reading * Choosing to feel good is not a no-brainer
From my diary for Friday 2015-05-01:
Ta-Nehisi Coates has had two “provocative” HuffPost columns in two days. Wednesday she decried calls for calm in Baltimore. Yesterday she used the incident of Toya Graham’s confrontation of her son, to blame white people for every incident of violence among blacks. [P.S. 12:00. Correction: The latter was by Stacey Patton.] I may yet respond to the latter, but it’s best I not do so today. I need to direct my thoughts and choose my feelings, and I feel immeasurably better when I focus on my own affairs than when I allow myself to get engaged with her turmoil. Today’s task is to prepare materials for the prayer course; and it will be no excuse if I tell my students I came unprepared because she distracted me.
Reblogged 2021-08-12.
In recent weeks it has been a matter of some chagrin to me that my Yahoo! News feed keeps bringing articles from major outlets that prove in my estimation to have far less merit than my own; while my own work continues to be ignored.
Frankly, it seems to me that my work is on a par with that of the Washington Post columnists. I see myself as in that league. If I can find my way there, my goal would be not so much to set forth my own views, as to alter the direction of public discourse; to influence, perhaps even at a national level, the way people talk about the great questions of our time.
“Embracing what is,” a four-part series:
• As seen on TV: The new, improved hubris
• Belief: The unforgivable sin
• Rationalism cannot save us.
• Hell has an exit.
———— ♦ ————
Connect the dots however you like. Can you connect them all?
The Serenity Prayer does not depend on belief in God, but rather expresses basic principles of life:
God, grant me
the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
This pertains to where one directs one’s attention, how one chooses to feel, and where one focuses one’s desires. These are acts not of the mind, but of the will.
Jeffrey Tayler says, “Given the possibility that terrorists may acquire weapons of mass destruction and nuclear states with faith-based conflicts may let fly their missiles, religion may be said to endanger humanity as a whole. No one who cares about our future can quietly abide the continuing propagation and influence of apocalyptic fables that large numbers of people take seriously and not raise a loud, persistent, even strident cry of alarm.”[15]
Fact: those who direct Iran’s nuclear program aren’t likely to listen to an atheist American Islamophobe.
In a blog post of July 19, 2014, I declared my ambition to become the “Nemesis of the morning glories” in the garden out behind my church. My plan was to spend four hours per week specifically weeding the morning glories in that garden.
On Monday, October 20, 2014, I wrote, “The morning glories are vanquished. As of today, they are under control throughout the entire garden.”
Cornel West channels Martin Luther King Jr. to criticize Obama
Friday 2014-12-26
Learning happiness can take you out of your comfort zone.
So, there can be a learning curve as one comes to tolerate and manage greater degrees of happiness and prosperity than one has been accustomed to.
Some time ago, this short, very thin Korean immigrant with shoulder-length gray hair began coming to the shelter. When he first came here, he was in bad shape; he appeared to have no resources at all.
Here is a short list of things I can be grateful for.
| ✓ | A clean sheet every night* |
| ✓ | A clean pillow case every night* |
| ✓ | A blanket every night* |
| ✓ | A pillow every night* |
| ✓ | A hot shower every night |
| ✓ | Clean clothes available every day |
| ✓ | A good supper every night |
| ✓ | Financial resources: At this time, anything I want, I can get. (Anything I can’t get, I don’t want.) |
| ✓ | Moral support from my family, my friends and my church. A ton of people are pulling for me, hoping for my prosperity. |
| ✓ | The best problems in the world. (See next Wednesday’s post.) |
*(To my knowledge, no other shelter in Baltimore City provides these things. If you don’t bring your own, you sleep on a bare mat. A change in that situation is something to earnestly hope for.)
Reblogged 2020-09-10.
The Homeless Blogger 