The Woman Who "Felt No Fear"

From the March edition of Harper's, an interesting bit about a woman who, like all of us, feels a morbidly interesting compulsion towards those things which most terrify her. A telling chunk:

"For many years, SM has repeatedly told us that she 'hates' snakes and spiders and 'tries to avoid them.' To test her real-life behavior, we took her to an exotic pet store. Upon entering the store, SM was spontaneously drawn to the snake terrariums. A store employee asked SM whether she would like to hold a snake, and she agreed. She rubbed its leathery scales, touched its flicking tongue, and watched it slither through her hands. SM displayed a compulsive desire to 'touch' and 'poke' the store's more dangerous snakes, even though the store employee repeatedly told her that those snakes were not safe and could bite. She also attempted to touch a tarantula and had to be stopped because of the high risk of being bitten. When asked why she would want to touch something she knew was dangerous, SM replied that she was overcome with 'curiousity'."

Mark Borchardt Confronts The Senselessness

From the brilliant, brilliant, brilliant American Movie doc:

Alvin Wong: The Happiest Man in America

Fun little article in this past weekend's NY Times:

The New York Times asked Gallup to come up with a statistical composite for the happiest person in America, based on the characteristics that most closely correlated with happiness in 2010. Men, for example, tend to be happier than women, older people are happier than middle-aged people, and so on.

Gallup’s answer: he’s a tall, Asian-American, observant Jew who is at least 65 and married, has children, lives in Hawaii, runs his own business and has a household income of more than $120,000 a year. A few phone calls later and ...

Meet Alvin Wong. He is a 5-foot-10, 69-year-old, Chinese-American, Kosher-observing Jew, who’s married with children and lives in Honolulu. He runs his own health care management business and earns more than $120,000 a year.

For the "happiness map," click here.

Burn, Babywise, Burn!

Perhaps, it’s just a product of sleep deprivation. Maybe it’s my tendency to use hyperbole. Possibly, it’s accumulated stress of four months with an infant. But let me just say this with a straight face: if there is actually fire in hell, my wife and I have some books about infant sleep habits, and I’m more than willing to let them be the tender of the flames of infernal Hades.

Certainly, there are people who embrace their BabyWise or Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby in the same way they hug their precious child, but I’d be more than happy to spend my Friday watching interstate traffic drive over these books....from dawn to dusk.

While I am sure that these books are written by nice people with impressive educations and that their message certainly intends to help young parents, in our experience, the books encapsulate the Law in its ugliest form. As with all things related to the Law, the seduction lies in the myth that you legitimately have control over your world, that the peace (and quiet) you long for can be attained on your terms by your means.

Every young parent wants their infant to sleep from 7:00PM to 7:00AM without a whimper. These books promise to have the miracle cure for a full night of sleep for parents and baby, if you do all the right things. Some of the myths we’ve bought include:

* Regular naps during the day equate to great sleep at night: sleep begets sleep

* Maintaining a rigidly consistent schedule means baby sleeps better

* Avoiding “over-stimulation” by committing your baby to a monastic lifestyle makes for quiet nights

* Adopting the mindset of a Guatanamo Bay prison guard with regard to letting your child “cry it out” will lead to twelve hours of sleep within a week

On the other hand, you have another corpus of books that say precisely the opposite of these books for healthy sleep habits.

Underneath these “help” books lies the Law’s best friend: Accusation. If you deviate from the plan, your child will experience permanent damage and all sleep progress has been lost. It’s back to square one. If your child is not sleeping twelve hours at three months, then it’s because you’re a failure as a parent. The formula of the Law is pure and transparent in the world of infant sleep literature: control, performance, judgment, fear. It’s a combo as sweet as breast-milk, or so they say.

In four months of parenting, we’ve read the book and adopted the ultimate sleep plan. With all of the methods applied, I am pretty sure you could give seventeen pound Baby Cameron Ambien, chased with a glass of wine, and he still would bring out his 2:00AM (and 3:00AM and 4:00AM and 5:00AM) war-chant without any impediment. Cameron is the cutest, sweetest, plumpest thing in the world, and homeboy is just not ready to sleep through the night. In time he will; that time is not now.

One of the many great blessings Cameron has brought us is the brutal recognition of how little control we have in the world. He has reminded us of the gentle call of the Father, which moves us from the cruel burden of a life of a control to the freeing release of all things to His kind embrace. Christ calls us to the relief of trusting in His wisdom and love. The deepest things we need come, not out of rigid performance but out of humble submission. Thanks be to God that the way of Christ diametrically contrasts the way of neurotic, sleep habit building.

That's Bound To Help

Over at Slate.com, there is a fascinating look into the lengths people will go to protect themselves against, well, themselves. In an article entited: The Odyesseus Option: How "precommitment devices" will force you to lose weight, stop drinking, and not sleep with that jerk on the first date, we are introduced to a future where the myth of human progress will finally become too expensive to maintain. I can't think of better reading in preparation for our upcoming conference, because whatever the practical (and sometimes, no doubt, safety) benefits to "precommittment devices," this can't be our only hope. Here are a few excerpts: 

If you agree—and only if you agree—Progressive Insurance will give you a device to install in your car that will rat you out for jack-rabbit starts and slamming on the brakes.* It's a small thing that plugs into your on-board diagnostic system, and it transmits as you drive. If your little minder shows that you don't act like Dale Earnhardt Jr. behind the wheel, you'll save up to 30 percent on your auto insurance. Although there's no official penalty for letting the company find out that you regularly lay down rubber, in fact you'll pay more for coverage than will tamer drivers. You'll also be acting to tame your own behavior by raising the price of recklessness. Progressive's driving spy is a sneaky example of the "precommitment device," a technique that people use to bind themselves to their preferred desires, and a subject I have been studying for my new book about the problem of self-control, We Have Met the Enemy.

But of course you could still ignore the salad on the desk and go out and drink your lunch, or you could take the radioactive sister-in-law to a concert. Most commitment techniques—including marriage—are just too easily circumvented. That's why truly binding precommitment devices are so interesting. The first known practitioner of such voluntary bondage was wily Odysseus, en route home from the Trojan War. As his ship approached the Sirens, he was determined to hear their song without, well, going overboard. Necessity being the mother of invention, he invented history's first precommitment device. "You must bind me tight with chafing ropes," our hero instructs in Robert Fagles' translation, "so I cannot move a muscle, bound to the spot, erect at the mast-block, lashed by ropes to the mast. And if I plead, commanding you to set me free, then lash me faster. …" . . . 

Most of us really ought to make more use of such techniques, as Dean Karlan and John Romalis did. The two economists each agreed to lose 38 pounds in six months or forfeit half his annual income to the other. They made a similar deal to keep the weight off afterward. This all worked well enough that Karlan later went on to found stickK.com, a Web site that allows you to provide a credit card number and make a legally binding agreement to do (or not do) a certain thing. If you fail—and you can appoint a referee to decide—then you forfeit the money, which the site will give to a friend or enemy you've chosen. (You can also choose a charity you like—or one you hate, such as the George W. Bush or Bill Clinton library, which might be even more motivating.)

As a libertarian-leaning Democrat, I've tried to think of ways the government might help us with precommitment. Some states and Canadian provinces already allow gamblers to bar themselves from casinos for a period of years. In British Columbia, some gamblers on the self-exclusion registry got in anyway and lost several hundred thousand dollars. They sued the province and the casinos for failing to do what Jenny Holzer said: "Protect me from what I want."

What if we took this kind of thing further? One possibility might be to let people sign up to pay extra taxes based on the change in their weight. Health costs are largely socialized anyway, and there is precedent in the private sector, where insurers setting term-life premiums often take account of smoking, cholesterol, and other factors that individuals can influence. Another idea would be to require a driver's license or other I.D. for the purchase of cigarettes or alcohol. The state would offer to emblazon these "NO TOBACCO," for example, until the next renewal, perhaps three years later. During that time stores couldn't sell you the stuff.

Modern life is a wonderful thing, rife with freedom and opportunity, but it comes with the problem of self-control. That's a nice problem, since I can't think of anyone else I'd want to be in charge. Yet most of us are probably kidding ourselves if we think willpower alone can do the job. Much better to make like Odysseus and face the music in safety.

MGM Behind the Scenes!

A little bit of fun from youtuber swoozie06, a former employee at Disney's MGM studios. It's definitely worth a smile if you have 11:26 to watch the whole thing. Swoozie deconstructs a bit of the Disney theme park "magic" by sharing how employees will "snap" from all the forced smiles and fake joy their jobs demand of them. And like our friend from JetBlue Airlines, swoozie works hard to make his exit from Disney employment memorable. It just goes to show you, the command to smile and make magic for the tourist does not provide the ability to smile and make magic, but instead incites rebellion to do the opposite.

A few excerpts for those who don't have the time to watch it all:

"Now the people I didn't like working with: 'the snitches,' and lemme tell you, Disney snitches are the worst! Their sole objective when they come to work is pretty much just to rat and snitch on everybody else."

"One day, I came into work, and they put me outside my ride, and I wasn't in a particularly smiley mood, and out of the corner of my eye, I see the other greeter there, tapping his foot, his hands on his hips, and he's all like 'humf,' and I watch him go over to the phone, and a few minutes later, a manager shows up. Anyways, I got reprimanded that day"

"Disney knows what they're doing- they kind of brainwash their employees- and it's not a natural thing. I mean, to smile for eight hours a day, every day? and to listen to that same [It's a Small World Theme] every single day? There's gonna be some side effects..."

"I started showing up late. On purpose... and nobody would notice! Then I had to step it up a little bit... I start stealing. Nothing too crazy, I don't want to get into any serious trouble, so what do I steal? Pencils (I'm Disney brainwashed right? So stealing pencils is a big deal!) and obviously nobody noticed... In front of the Indiana Jones Show we have a magnetic clipboard where they post the show times- no more 8:30 shows. I stole all the 8:30 show magnets."

Narrative and the Grace of God: The New ‘True Grit’

Stanley Fish is doing our job for us over on the New York Times Online OpEd Section. Fish, an academic known for his postmodern literary criticism (think interpretive communities) and guest writer for the NYT, wrote a piece entitled Narrative and the Grace of God: The New ‘True Grit’ which sounds like something Nick Lannon would write about here at Mockingbird. Be Warned: Dr. Fish's article contains spoilers though this post does not!

I haven't seen the new Coen Brother's movie yet, but rest assured that will be remedied in the next few days. Until then, I figured I'd post a few of Fish's comments to hold us over:

"The springs of that universe are revealed to us by the narrator-heroine Mattie in words that appear both in Charles Portis’s novel and the two films, but with a difference. The words the book and films share are these: “You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free with the exception of God’s grace.” These two sentences suggest a world in which everything comes around, if not sooner then later. The accounting is strict; nothing is free, except the grace of God. But free can bear two readings — distributed freely, just come and pick it up; or distributed in a way that exhibits no discernible pattern. In one reading grace is given to anyone and everyone; in the other it is given only to those whom God chooses for reasons that remain mysterious...

...A third sentence, left out of the film but implied by its dramaturgy, tells us that the latter reading is the right one: "You cannot earn that [grace] or deserve it." In short, there is no relationship between the bestowing or withholding of grace and the actions of those to whom it is either accorded or denied. You can’t add up a person’s deeds — so many good one and so many bad ones — and on the basis of the column totals put him on the grace-receiving side (you can’t earn it); and you can’t reason from what happens to someone to how he stands in God’s eyes (you can’t deserve it).What this means is that there are two registers of existence: the worldly one in which rewards and punishment are meted out on the basis of what people visibly do; and another one, inaccessible to mortal vision, in which damnation and/or salvation are distributed, as far as we can see, randomly and even capriciously."

I can't wait to see what the Coen Brothers do with this world they've created: especially with this last line about random and capricious grace. If you've seen the movie, what did you think? Did Stanley Fish get it right? What are your thoughts?

Social Science Round-Up: The Chemistry of Self-Control, Giving > Receiving, Truth & Repetition, and Upperclass (non-)Empathy

A bunch of relevant recent studies:

1. David Brooks put together a fascinating little survey of recent social science findings in his column this past week, including this nugget about self-control being as much a matter of nutrition as willpower:

"Self-control consumes glucose in the brain. For an article in the journal Aggressive Behavior, Nathan DeWall, Timothy Deckman, Matthew Gaillot and Brad Bushman found that research subjects who consumed a glucose beverage behaved less aggressively than subjects who drank a placebo beverage. They found an indirect relationship between diabetes (a disorder marked by low glucose levels) and low self-control. States with high diabetes rates also had high crime rates. Countries with a different condition that leads to low glucose levels had higher killing rates, both during wartime and during peacetime."

2. Then, there's Jonah Lehrer explaining the science behind the timely saying 'tis more blessed to give than to receive' on public radio:

"There is typically more "reward-related" activity when we donate money than we receive an equivalent amount. Giving is literally better than getting, at least from the perspective of the brain. But this generosity comes with a catch. Yes, we have altruistic instincts. Still, these instincts come with some real blind spots.... our emotions can't comprehend suffering on such a massive scale. This is why we are riveted when one child falls down a well, but turn a blind eye to the millions of people who die every year for lack of clean water."

To read the Mbird year-end appeal (hint hint, nudge nudge), go here.

3. Next, an in turns challenging and encouraging report on PsyBlog about truth, simplicity and repetition, esp for those of us who believe in the power of all three:

People rate statements that have been repeated just once as more valid or true than things they've heard for the first time. They even rate statements as truer when the person saying them has been repeatedly lying.

And when we think something is more true, we also tend to be more persuaded by it. Several studies have shown that people are more swayed when they hear statements of opinion and persuasive messages more than once. 

If something is hard to think about then people tend to believe it less. Naturally this is very bad news for people trying to persuade others of complicated ideas in what is a very complicated world.

4. Finally, an amusing if fairly 'duh report about the troubles the privileged have in reading other people's emotions:

"People of upper-class status aren't very good at recognizing the emotions other people are feeling. The researchers speculate that this is because they can solve their problems, like the daycare example, without relying on others -- they aren't as dependent on the people around them. A final experiment found that, when people were made to feel that they were at a lower social class than they actually were, they got better at reading emotions."

Ira Glass on Wrongness, Failure and Creativity

A major recent find is The Wrong Stuff blog over at Slate, in which author Kathryn Schultz (of the forthcoming Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error) interviews people about, well, being wrong about things. In October, for example, she interviewed Chuck Colson (of Watergate and Prison Fellowship fame) and found more than her fair share of great soundbites. It's really worth reading. Then in June she spoke with Ira Glass, the host of NPR's This American Life. Glass offers some characteristically interesting thoughts on hermeneutics, creativity and failure. Shades of a theology of the cross? (ht AZ)

Why is there such a big payoff for the listener in stories about wrongness? What makes it so pleasurable?

Well, if the story works, you become the character, right? You agree with their early point of view, and then when it gets shattered, you are shattered with it. So in the storytelling, you want to manipulate the evidence and the feelings so that the audience is right there agreeing with the person who's about to be proven wrong. When that happens, if it's done right, you as the audience get flipped upside down.

The experience of being wrong can be so emotional—it can involve feeling humiliated or confused or losing an organizing principle of our life in a way that can sometimes be devastating. What's it like as an interviewer to bring people through that kind of experience all over again?

[He thinks a long time.] I'm not sure what to say. If any story is going to be good, whichever one of us is working on it, we have to go through the feelings of the story ourselves. Nobody's going to feel it if we don't feel. It's honestly not worth making a story if you're not going to have strong feelings about it, if it's not going to create empathy. I walk the person through "What did you feel at each stage of this?" and if somebody's telling you about some moment of incredible vulnerability and emotion, if you're normal, your heart goes out to them. So if it's going well, that's what happens. But it doesn't go well every time. We kill half of the stories we try, because not everything can live up to that.
[CONTINUE READING]

The 20-Ton Shield of Perfection(ism)

From cnn.com, a surprisingly smart look at the subject of perfectionism by Brene Brown entitled "Want To Be Happy? Stop Trying To Be Perfect". Although the "solutions" section definitely veers into self-help land, her discussion of the mechanics of the Law is pretty spot-on/convicting. Speaking as someone who "struggles with" this issue, I find that most people talk about it as a pseudo-badge of honor, i.e. "You'll have to forgive him - he's a perfectionist", "I know she's hard on you, but she just has really high standards" etc. It would appear to be one of those unsanctified modes of thinking that is particularly susceptible to the American blessing. And not to sound overly pious, but perfectionism should probably be spoken about in hushed tones, something to be confessed and repented of, to be saved from. ANYWAY:

The quest for perfection is exhausting and unrelenting, but as hard as we try, we can't turn off the tapes that fill our heads with messages like "Never good enough" and "What will people think?"

Why, when we know that there's no such thing as perfect, do most of us spend an incredible amount of time and energy trying to be everything to everyone? Is it that we really admire perfection? No -- the truth is that we are actually drawn to people who are real and down-to-earth. We love authenticity and we know that life is messy and imperfect.

We get sucked into perfection for one very simple reason: We believe perfection will protect us. Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. We all need to feel worthy of love and belonging, and our worthiness is on the line when we feel like we are never ___ enough (you can fill in the blank: thin, beautiful, smart, extraordinary, talented, popular, promoted, admired, accomplished).

Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be our best. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth; it's a shield. Perfectionism is a 20-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it's the thing that's really preventing us from being seen and taking flight.

Living in a society that floods us with unattainable expectations around every topic imaginable, from how much we should weigh to how many times a week we should be having sex, putting down the perfection shield is scary... Why are we so paralyzed by what other people think? After studying vulnerability, shame, and authenticity for the past decade, here's what I've learned.

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don't function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

There are certainly other causes of illness, numbing, and hurt, but the absence of love and belonging will always lead to suffering.

As I conducted my research interviews, I realized that only one thing separated the men and women who felt a deep sense of love and belonging from the people who seem to be struggling for it. That one thing is the belief in their worthiness... The greatest challenge for most of us is believing that we are worthy now, right this minute. Worthiness doesn't have prerequisites. [ed. note: add "in light of the Cross" and the sermon has been written!]

“A Life Well Planned”: What Might Flannery Say?

Raymond James Financial recently put out this commercial lionizing the “precisely organized retirement,” and it’s a pretty adept depiction of how we Americans so often view life anyways, having “a place for everything,” the self-ordering of life—you can do it, too! Immortality! And not just immortality, but a ceaseless mastery of life through rigorous activities of self-improvement and accomplishment: our figure has “planned for every eventuality,” to be beaten by nothing but her own limitless gaze into the future, at the spritely age of 187! What vigor, what pizzazz! “Despite her years, she had the means to live on as she saw fit.” What’s the secret? A strong plan, of course! Who is in control here? Apparently we are!

The urge was too strong to fight; it’s the perfect beginning to a post-mortem Flannery O’Connor story, without the ending! And yet, the ending’s been written, in her terrific story “Greenleaf.” It depicts a successful Southern woman, Mrs. May, trapped in her privatized conception of how ordered, how grand she is, who “thought the word, Jesus, should be kept inside the church building like other words inside the bedroom. She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.” She puts everyone in their place, including the landworkers, the Greenleafs, whom she disdains. They are attempting to kill a bull, while she waits in the car, and she begins to get impatient, as her plans seem to be falling out of sort, so she decides to take things into her own hands. Watch the video first, then read this excerpt, as the violence of grace interrupts her.

“Here [the bull] is, Mr. Greenleaf!” she called and looked on the other side of the pasture to see if he could be coming out there but he was not in sight. She looked back and saw that the bull, his head lowered, was racing toward her. She remained perfectly still, not in fright, but in freezing unbelief. She stared at the violent black streak bounding toward her as if she had no sense of distance, as if she could not decide at once what his intention was, and the bull had buried his head in her lap, like a wild tormented lover, before her expression changed. One of his horns sank until it pierced her heart and other curved around her side and held her in an unbreakable grip. She continued to stare straight ahead but the entire scene in front of her had changed…"

Don't Throw Rhat . . .

Romans 5:20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass . . . .

Overheard last night during debate between ESPN college football analyst Mark May and former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz about South Carolina's play call late in its game last Saturday versus Kentucky, which resulted in a game ending interception:

May: I totally disagree. You're Steve Spurrier, you're on the road in a hostile environment. They called a timeout before the play. You tell your quarterback they're two things you cannot do.

Holtz: No! No!

May: (1) fumble the ball, (2) throw an interception.

Holtz: No! No!

May: You have the field goal try in the bag. What does he do - he underthrows the fade and throws an interception. You can't turn the ball over.

Holtz: No! No!

May: Turn the ball over you lose. What does he do? Turns the ball over - they lose.

Holtz: You don't ever say "Don't do this!" Because it will happen every time! We're playing Penn State. I've got Tony Rice at quarterback. We put in Jeff Graham. We've got the ball on the 3 yard line. I say to Jeff Graham: "I've got three points on the board. Don't take them off. Don't throw an interception." Guess what happens. Boom! He throws the interception! I put the thought in his mind. You don't say don't do this. . . .

Host John Saunders: It's like standing on the [golf] tee and saying don't hit it in the water. It happens every time.

A Mini-Conference Preview, Pt 4: Paul Zahl's New Persuasive Words, Talk 2

As part of the preview for our upcoming mini-conference in Pensacola (Nov. 19&20), we are pleased to offer the second talk from Paul Zahl's wonderful New Persuasive Words DVD. Dr. Zahl will be speaking in Pensacola on the subject of "Revisiting the Gospel Message: Grace Again" and "Connecting With the Gospel In and Through the Culture Around Us." Believe it or not, these are the only public speaking appearances Dr. Zahl will have made (or will be making) in 2010! He will also be leading a pre-conference seminar on preaching.

Talk two happens to be our favorite in the five-talk series, a real humdinger, and not just because he plugs Mockingbird so hard at the beginning. You don't really have to have seen the first talk to benefit (though you can, by clicking here). The presentation is broken up into five youtube-friendly segments:



Continue viewing: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 (Q&A).

To register for the mini-conference - the reduced "early bird" price of $65 only applies until November 1st, after which it increases to $75 - go here.

To order a copy of the New Persuasive Words DVD ($20 suggested donation), go here. After selling out in August, we were fortunately able to produce more copies, so supplies are no longer limited.

David Sedaris on Air Travel & Whit Stillman on Shakespeare

A priceless quote from Sedaris' characteristically hilarious "Standing By" in this week's New Yorker (ht BE):

"We're forever blaming the airline industry for turning us into monsters: it's the fault of the ticket agents, the baggage handlers, the slowpokes at the newsstands and the fast food restaurants. But what if this is truly who we are, and the airport's just a forum that allows us to be our real selves, not just hateful but gloriously so?"

Very much in tune with that brilliant scene toward the end of Whit Stillman's Last Days of Disco:

Held up at Gun Point

Witnessing to criminals isn't new, yet I'm always surprised when I hear about it. This is grace and understanding in the face of an actual criminal, leading to confession and repentance.

Strange Warning Label...

I found this book (with it's curious warning label) yesterday at Books-A-Million:

Could this be a reaction to a rash of returns from unwary Protestants? Did those Protestants list "Didn't know it was a Catholic book" as the reason for return?

Or could it be something more disquieting than the merely comical: could it be that because of the currently blurred focus of the modern evangelical movement, a title like "The Imitation of Christ" just seems to fit right in with "What Would Jesus Do", such that the message of evangelicals has now become utterly vague and indistinguishable.

At any rate, I wasn't aware that anyone needed to be warned that The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis is "Catholic" (the title AND the author would seem to give that away), but I would love to have a roll of "Heretical" warning stickers and an afternoon to use them on some of the other selections on that same aisle (which includes plenty of Osteen and McLaren, but not any Zahl).

Do any of you frequent used bookstores? I love to peruse their religion aisles because I find it's a great way to find out which heresies du jour are losing popularity. A while back the "Prayer of Jaebez" was piling up, and lately "The Celestine Prophecy" and "The Purpose Driven Life" have done the same thing. Would anyone care to guess which might be the next "religious" book that will find itself relegated to the used book aisles en masse? Perhaps Osteen, or maybe McLaren...

Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy

For a dose of laughter on an otherwise dreary hump-day:




Oh, and I saw this preview for The Adjustment Bureau in the theater the other week. Free-will is now officially Hollywood-endorsed. Unreal:

How Well Are You Sleeping?

I find it almost universally true that the quality of one’s sleep is a direct reflection of one’s present state of mind. When I have a deadline looming, I always have trouble falling asleep and I unconsciously have a desire to watch awful late night talk shows (yes, even Jimmy Fallon). When I am upset or fearful about something, my dreams arrest my attention for what seems like an eternity. Though we may try to blame my lack of sleep on everything we can (the pillow, the spouse, the weather, pets, the mattress, etc.), the truth is that our quality of sleep is a barometer of our internal life. The accumulated sins and anxieties of the day are all paid for at night in restless sleep.

I find sleep to be a seamless analogy for what it means to be justified by faith. We can try to be justified by works and attempt to will ourselves to sleep. Surely more exercise is the answer to poor sleep? However this widespread believe is, it is entirely untrue! A recent study highlighted in the NY times found no correlation between activity level and quality of sleep. “Wearing yourself out physically is not the same as being sleepy. The two are easily mistaken, but they seem to affect various bodily systems at the same time in different ways. Hard, long workouts or severe over-training may be just as likely, in fact, to lead to wakefulness and sleep problems than to better sleep.” Even the Bible agrees: “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep” (Psalm 127:2). We may buy that latest and greatest space-age mattress, but the sleep we need lays always beyond out reach.

To be justified by faith is to have restful sleep. It is the epitome of the passive life before God. As Arcade Fire says “Sleeping is giving in, no matter what the time is.” Sleep cannot be willed or forced, but is found by “giving in” and the release of control. It is a trust that the troubles of the day and worries of the future will be taken care of. To restfully fall asleep is to be released from those lists of things that consume and captivate me. I think this is a small picture of what Jesus means when he says “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

A Quick One from Doghouse Diaries

Ht JD. For more, visit The Doghouse.