Archive - Jan 2, 2016
Resolutions
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 01/02/2016 - 22:24Today was a quiet day with a bit of reading and writing. I still ended up with over a dozen tabs open in my browser at the end of the day, and I’m seeking better ways to organize my thoughts as well as my reading.
Several things I read today were about keeping New Year’s resolutions. Lifehacker had Top 10 Strategies for Making Your New Year's Resolution Stick. Underlying much of their suggestions is SMART criteria: Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant and Timebound.
I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with ‘SMART’. Are the goals that matter measurable? How do you measure awareness of God's presence? How does time-bound and achievable relate to the coming of God's kingdom? I often talk of about the goal of living each day more fully and more lovingly than the previous.
On Facebook, people talked about maintaining focus which promoted a discussion about the The Pomodoro Technique®. I must admit, I’m always a bit skeptical of any technique that has a registered trademark. One link to help people with this was My Tomatoes.
Another tool that people mentioned was Workflowy. I’ve started using this for note taking, building to do lists and tracking links. It has an ability to share lists. I’ve set up a Sample Shared List. I can imagine using this for Rhizome like activities, book study groups, etc.
I used Workflowy to gather my thoughts for this blog post, and figure I’ll keep experimenting with it, at least for a little while.
In the Episcopalians on Facebook group, Daniel Pigg posted an interesting thought about Nine Ladies dancing and relating it to Perichoresis and the dance between the persons of the Trinity. It fit nicely with the chapter of People of the Way by Dwight J. Zschieile about sharing communion. As I thought about this, I wondered about our shared communities online. I am particularly struck by this in terms of various daily devotions online, few of which seem to have much community around them.
What I’m Thinking 1/2/2016
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 01/02/2016 - 13:39Last January, I wrote several blog posts about what I was thinking. They fit with some of my current thoughts about Shaping Ava, Continuous Partial Discernment, and The Rhizome - Perhaps 2016.
So, here are things that I’ve been looking at over the past day, part of the rhizome, part of shaping Ava, as part of my journey. One friend on Facebook posted something which seems to me to follow a similar line of thought about trying to be more focused for 2016 and looking for tips. I responded, in part:
Write something every day. Do it digitally. Have a few things that you can fall back on. What did you read online that caught your attention? (If there are a few things, how are they related?) What was the most beautiful thing you saw today? What kind act or compassion did you experience, either as giver, receiver, or observer?
Try to connect with others making similar goals. If you post something on Facebook that I see on this line, I will try to respond. Try to find others to respond to in the same manner.
So, here are a few things that caught my attention. Somehow, I stumbled across the Spiritual Formation in the Episcopal Diocese of Western MA Facebook page. This led to their blog, Sharing the Season in the Episcopal Diocese of Western MA Reflections on Advent and Christmas.
One of the posts was about Barbara Crafton speaking at St. Francis Church in Holden, MA on January 27th. Another was about the possibility of a book study group around Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus. The Facebook page, the blog, and the book are on my reading list.
Also from Western Mass I found a link to The Awakening Conference. It is scheduled for April 28-May 1st in Holyoke. It looks interesting, but probably isn’t for me.
Someone, I suspect from an Episcopalian group on Facebook, shared a link to Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation. I’ll add these to my list of daily meditations.
Someone else mentioned Marcus Borg, another writer to explore. One final link for today is BEST OF RNS: Coloring books for grown-ups: A spiritual practice?
As an aside, I started looking at various daily meditations and poems I receive. I looked to see if I could organize them into a good RSS feed. Unfortunately, some of them are available only as emails. During my search I got back to my old RSS feeds, which I’ve used various tools to manage. Right now, I’m thinking I’ll use Digg’s RSS reader, and I’ve added a few new daily mediation blogs there.
Another blog I stumbled across over the past day or two is Between the By-Road and the Main Road. It has a tag line, “Exploring the intersections between art and learning”, and the most recent post includes Billy Collins poem “Forgetfulness”
For other daily reading, there is Poem A Day from Poets.Org and a word of the day email I get from The Society of Saint John the Evangelist.
