The Daily Edify

Today's episode is about two German words and how to cultivate one instead of the other. Schadenfreude has entered the cultural lexicon here in the U.S. and can be defined as our tendency to take a cruel pleasure in the misfortune of others. Freudenfreude, however, is the something we can cultivate in its place - it means  to take joy and happiness from the success of others.  I read an article about Freudenfreude a few months ago and have been chewing on it ever since. How might we practice this today? 

Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!

Today's episode is about resume virtues vs. eulogy virtues, something David Brooks heard from his rabbi years ago and which he talks about in his book, The Road to Character. 

Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!

Today's episode is about the Japanese art form of kintsugi, which means "golden mending." I learned about this art form from a friend a few years ago and have returned to it often as a metaphor for faithful and generative living.

Kintsugi repairs broken pottery by mending the cracks with a gold lacquer. The breakage is viewed as part of the history of the object and not something to disguise.  that doesn't .

Makoto Fujimara has written a recent book, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making, in which he devotes an entire chapter to kintsugi. He also speaks about it at length in the commencement address he gave a few years ago.

Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!

Today's episode is about an early church tradition known as risus paschalis - the Latin phrase translates to "the Easter laugh" or "God's joke." If the best definition of a joke is one of exaggeration – the difference between what we expect and what we get – then the “joke” God played on the devil on Easter morning by raising Jesus from the dead is in a league of its own.

Often celebrated on the second Sunday of Easter, today many churches honor the risus paschalis tradition by holding a "Holy Humor Sunday." As Karl Barth, the towering 20th century Swiss theologian once said, "Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God."

Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!

Today's episode is inspired by the suddenly gorgeous spring (summer?) weather we've been having in Chicago this week. It's also about developing a "play ethic" (as opposed to merely a "work ethic), and reflecting on how playfulness is fundamental to a generative spirituality.

Dr. Stuart Brown is a psychiatrist and the founder of the National Institute for Play. He defines play as engaging in an activity for enjoyment, rather than for a serious or practical reason. Play has seven properties:

1. it is apparently purposeless;
2. it is voluntary;
3. there is an inherent attraction to it;
4. while doing it there is freedom from time;
5. it diminishes the consciousness of self;
6. it has improvisational potential (open, not ridged); and
7. it has a continuation desire which makes you want to do it more.

I also mention the thoughtful and new-ish book by Brian Edgar, The God Who Plays: A Playful Approach to Theology and Spirituality. If I ever take a sabbatical, I want "play" to be the theme I focus on!

Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!

Today's episode is about a snippet or two from the ministry of Jesus: (1) when the disciples were arguing about which one of them was the greatest and he welcomes a child to his side to teach about true greatness; (2) when the disciples were shooing away children, but Jesus is having none of it, and instead says if all of us don't receive the kingdom of God like children we will never enter it. A study by O.M. Bakke, "When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity," was helpful in making sense of how countercultural Jesus was in his intentional welcome of children and the way he treated them as whole people. 

Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!

Today's episode is about a spiritual practice I learned from Thomas Keating, the Trappist monk (1923-2018) who was a pioneer in the Christian contemplative prayer movement. For the past couple of years, I've started most days by reciting Keating's simple "welcoming practice" and offer it to you as a way to be grounded in God's love.

"Welcome, welcome welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today
because I know it's for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and God's action within.
Amen."

Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!

Today's episode is about Holy Week, the most important week in the Christian liturgical calendar. (It also a holy time for our Muslim friends who are practicing Ramanda, and our Jewish friends who are about to begin celebrating Passover.) It begins on Palm Sunday and ends on Holy Saturday, right before Easter. The four canonical gospels devote an extraordinary amount of space to the events of Holy Week, which suggests how crucial they are for seeing the face of God, which is suffering love and boundless compassion.

I share a couple of my favorite Holy Week spiritual practices: (1) reading the Passion account in one of the four gospels (I'm going to read Matthew's account this year); and (2) listening to sacred music (Handel's "Messiah" is a favorite - I love this recording by Voces8 from 2019).  

Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!

Today's episode is about "rule number six," a concept coined by Benjamin and Rosamund Zander in their thoughtful book, "The Art of Possibility." I first learned about this book about ten years ago on a clergy retreat, but was drawn to the wisdom of its practices to promote the "art of possibility." "Rule number six," one of the practices, is simple: don't take yourself too seriously. 

Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!

Today’s episode is about the practice of "awe walks" - which is just like it sounds. Taking a walk to cultivate awe. It doesn't cost anything - could be indoors or outdoors, though outdoors is better if you can manage it. It’s about unselfing the self, getting a wider perspective than the thoughts running through your own head. 

Dacher Keltner’s new book on Awe is all over the place these days, and I plan on doing an episode on it once I finish reading it. 

Feedback? I'd love to hear from you at [email protected]. Thanks for listening, friends. You are loved and never alone!