“We stay so busy that the truth of our lives can’t keep up” – Brené Brown https://youtu.be/_UoMXF73j0c

This is a great reminder for why sabbath is at the heart of a faithful life. If we don’t take the time to breathe, we will never experience the breath of God that brings contentment and joy. It’s easier to stay busy than to be vulnerable and risk the possibility that we truly aren’t enough.

Facts live on top of feelings.

Inner brain emotion
Outer brain language
Interaction relationship
Society culture

Emotional awareness vivifies fact
Linguistic framing creates worlds
Relational vulnerability breeds trust
Cultural story grounds truth

Experience only in emotion.
Words only in language.
Truth only in relationship.
Narrative only in culture.

Truth is only truth inside the story in which it is told.

Emotion is the raw material of rationality.

Culture is the emotion of a society.

Emotions are the physical manifestation of story.

Community is more basic than individuality.

Truth is not relativistic; truth is relativtastic!

A body is not made up of parts; the body is the precondition necessary for a part to be what it is.

Before we are a person, we are the product of a people.

The extent to which Christians can state clearly what it means to do wrong (sin) but not what it looks like to live right (love) is indicative of the extent to which we think only of symptoms (brokenness) and never much about reality (relationship).

Story is the shape of culture. Culture is the emotion of community. Community is the birthplace of individuality. Individuality is the acceptance and rejection of the stories we are given. The stories we are given are the shape of our emotion. Emotion is the raw material of life. Life is the intersection of story, culture, community, individuality, and emotion.

Soil only bears the fruit of the seeds that have been sown.

Faith and reason are not opposed. Faith is the context in which reason is capable of operating. Faith is more a lens handed down than it is a decision we can make. This is not to say that the faith which is given to make me what I am is determinant of of who I will always be; nor is it to say that there is an I who exists apart from the stories that have written me. The point is simply to say that the agency capable of reason is neither separable from nor determined by the lens of faith that is already given.

Perhaps the main reason so many modern Christians fall away from the church is because they have fallen out of love with God. The radical emphasis on knowledge is a manifestation of our gnostic tendencies to seek out information about God rather than to experience and share the pervasive love of God. As in any relationship, love does not deepen by finding out any amount of information. Love only develops as trust deepens and emotional intimacy grows.