Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Families and Fatherhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Families and Fatherhood. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

A Love Song from a Father to his Daughter




EDDIE VEDDER OFFERS GORGEOUS NEW SONG
‘SKIPPING’ FOR COMPILATION
http://antiquiet.com/music/2012/04/eddie-vedder-offers-gorgeous-skipping-on-new-compilation/

9:21 AM Sunday, April 29th 2012


We have a beautiful new song from Eddie Vedder this morning, called Skipping. The track is featured on the new compilation Every Mother Counts, the namesake of a foundation dedicated to addressing the issue of maternal mortality during pregnancy.

The love letter from a parent to a child is a delicate, complexly personal yet gorgeous composition, a conveyance of unquenchable adoration between souls that may be entirely lost on those without children of their own – or at least a true depth of love with which they can relate.

Framed by the sounds of his own daughter playing and gentle acoustic guitar tones, the Pearl Jam frontman delivers a heartfelt performance full of gorgeous self-harmonizing that does a fine job of encapsulating the tenderness, fragility, pride, joy and immersive love of a bond between a father and child, wrapped in the metaphor of skipping along with her. He knows that the moment and innocent joy can’t possibly last forever, and the song is a conveyance of cherishing that fleeting purity of a childhood connection with a parent.

Listen to Skipping here, or below:

Eddie Vedder - Skipping



It’s a deeply personal track, once which doesn’t fit the single cycle or the hype headline machine. So it’s with a warm feeling that I’m able to post this on a quiet Sunday morning.


Lyrics

I didn't have to ask you, just took my hand
Off we went skipping throughout the land
The sky was blue and the blood filled my head
Me and you skipping throughout the land
All of my life from beginning to end
What I remember is holding your hand
And all that I'll cherish is that time that we've spent
Me and you skipping throughout the land.

All the loves lost and the one that I found
You lifted my gaze up off of the ground
Forever we'll talk and forever we'll drown
In each other skipping around.

Gravity pulls so many men down
The atmosphere breathes but not in this town
You took me away and you held me so proud
Skipping, skipping, skipping around.

All the king's horses and all the king's men
Could not keep me from holding your hand
When all that I wanted was something to protect
And all that I needed was your voice in my head
And all I remember from this life that I lived
Is me and you skipping throughout the land.

- Eddie Vedder



Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Do Father's Matter? by Paul Raeburn


Photo: Shutterstock

Do Fathers Matter? A connection that's deeper than we realize
http://nypost.com/2014/05/31/do-fathers-matter-a-connection-thats-deeper-than-we-realize/

May 31, 2014

When Jay Sullivan was 5 years old, his father had a “bipolar breakdown” and was sent to a psychiatric hospital. What Sullivan remembers from the days and years that followed are violent outbursts, putting his father to bed drunk, late-night calls when his father had nowhere to stay and bailing him out of jail.

“When he died in 1992, I put his ashes in my closet and put him behind me,” Sullivan wrote on his website.

But it wasn’t that simple. Three years ago, Sullivan, a professional photographer in Red Bank, NJ, began producing a series of images he calls “Glove” to try to reconnect with his father.

Sullivan photographed articles that had linked or divided the two of them — a baseball glove, his father’s shaver and black wingtip shoes and a prescription bottle containing lithium.

As Sullivan continued the project, the dark images of his father’s illness were gradually replaced by more positive ones — of his father’s successful business career, of the two of them going fishing together, and of trips to Yankee Stadium.

“Three years into this process and 20 years after his death, I have found the father I always wanted and in many ways always had,” Sullivan wrote.

---

Paul Raeburn is the author of “Do Fathers Matter? What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We’ve Overlooked.”

Many of us understand the deep emotional connection Sullivan has with his father, even decades after his father’s death. But now a new body of research is explaining why we have that connection. Fathers, it turns out, contribute far more to their children than many of us realize.

Those contributions begin during pregnancy, before fathers and their children have even met. Studies show that the death rate of infants whose fathers were not around during pregnancy is nearly four times that of those with engaged dads. And depression in fathers during their partners’ pregnancies — which is more common than most people realize — can increase the child’s lifelong risk of depression.

After birth, children whose fathers play with them, read to them, take them on outings, and care for them have fewer behavioral problems during their early school years. And they have a lower risk of delinquency or criminal behavior as adolescents.

Some of fathers’ contributions are surprising. One might guess, for example, that mothers have more influence than fathers on their children’s language development. Despite the growing number of women in the workforce, mothers still spend more time with children in many families than fathers do.

But that turns out not to be the case. Lynne Vernon-Feagans of the University of North Carolina, who studies language development, has found that when it comes to vocabulary, fathers matter more than mothers.

In middle-class families, she found that parents’ overall level of education — and the quality of child care — were both related to children’s language development. But fathers made unique contributions to children’s language development that went beyond the contributions of education and child care.

When fathers used more words with their children during play, children had more advanced language skills a year later. And that is likely also linked with later success in school.

And when Vernon-Feagans looked at poor families, she found much the same thing. She visited families when a child was 6 months old, 15 months old and 3 years old. She found that fathers’ education and their use of vocabulary when reading picture books to their children at 6 months of age were significantly related to the children’s expressiveness at 15 months and use of advanced language at age 3.

This held true no matter what the mother’s educational level was or how she spoke to the children.

“I do think our children see it as very special when they do book reading with their fathers,” Vernon-Feagans says. “They may listen more and acquire language in a special way.”

---

Several studies suggest that fathers also have a powerful influence on their daughters’ sexual behavior during adolescence.

This became clear in 2011 when Frayser High School in Memphis, Tenn., attracted national attention for its high pregnancy rate: About one in five of its female students was either pregnant or had recently given birth.

One local official blamed the high pregnancy rate on television shows such as MTV’s “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom.” The official worried that these shows were encouraging Frayser’s female students to have unprotected sex earlier and more often.

That explanation seemed to make sense. But when psychologist Sarah E. Hill of Texas Christian University examined the situation, she noticed another striking fact: One in four households was headed by a single mother. Studies have revealed “a robust association between father absence — both physical and psychological — and accelerated reproductive development and sexual risk-taking in daughters,” she wrote.

The fathers’ absence in so many families was likely more important than what their daughters watched on television.

These are just a few of the many, many studies in recent years that have demonstrated a powerful link between fathers and their children.

They underscore what many of us experience — that our fathers are important in our lives, as photographer Sullivan discovered after his father’s death. And it underscores the hope that many fathers have — that they, in turn, will be important in their children’s lives.

Paul Raeburn is the author of “Do Fathers Matter? What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We’ve Overlooked” (Scientific American), out this week.


* * * * * * * * *


Amazon link
Product Details

Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux (June 3, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0374141045
ISBN-13: 978-0374141042

Amazon Book Review

For too long, we’ve thought of fathers as little more than sources of authority and economic stability in the lives of their children. Yet cutting-edge studies drawing unexpected links between fathers and children are forcing us to reconsider our assumptions and ask new questions:

  • What changes occur in men when they are “expecting”?
  • Do fathers affect their children’s language development?
  • What are the risks and rewards of being an older-than-average father at the time the child is born?
  • What happens to a father’s hormone levels at every stage of his child’s development?
  • Can a child influence the father’s health?
  • Just how much do fathers matter?

In Do Fathers Matter? the award-winning journalist and father of five Paul Raeburn overturns the many myths and stereotypes of fatherhood as he examines the latest scientific findings on the parent we’ve often overlooked. Drawing on research from neuroscientists, animal behaviorists, geneticists, and developmental psychologists, among others, Raeburn takes us through the various stages of fatherhood, revealing the profound physiological connections between children and fathers, from conception through adolescence and into adulthood—and the importance of the relationship between mothers and fathers. In the process, he challenges the legacy of Freud and mainstream views of parental attachment, and also explains how we can become better parents ourselves.

Ultimately, Raeburn shows how the role of the father is distinctly different from that of the mother, and that embracing fathers’ significance in the lives of young people is something we can all benefit from. An engrossing, eye-opening, and deeply personal book that makes a case for a new perspective on the importance of fathers in our lives no matter what our family structure, Do Fathers Matter? will change the way we view fatherhood today.


Thursday, February 13, 2014

"Hey, What's It Like Being a Dad?"


What is it Like Being a Dad?




Published on Jun 16, 2013
"How much time do you have?"

St. Mark Lutheran Church, De Pere, WI
Facebook: StMarkDePere
Twitter: @StMarkDePere 

"You matter and you are loved."




Saturday, September 28, 2013

Of Dads and Daughters, of Parenting and Love: "Wakefulness in a Night of Fireworks"


Inspiration is as much about theology as reading long words and even longer explanations behind complex and complicated ideas. But tonight, let's step back a moment and simply reflect on the wonders of God's creation in this special moment recorded between a dad and his daughter when she couldn't sleep thinking she was hearing fireworks outside her home.
 
R.E. Slater
September 28, 2013
 
 
Tonight You Belong to Me (Cover) - Me and my 4 y.o.
 
 
Published on Sep 17, 2013
She thought she kept hearing fireworks and couldn't sleep,
so we sang to keep her mind preoccupied. In the end,
nothing competes with fireworks.


* * * * * * * *


A Daughter Poem
 
A daughter thanks her dad for his love. 
 
A Dad's Love
by Samantha R. Almodova
 
On sunny days and dark nights,
in troubled times and pointless fights,
you've been right there through it all,
you've stood your ground when you could have taken the fall.
Many times my mouth has slipped free,
but you were always there to put it back where it was supposed to be.
You've taught me a lot, and a lot I have learned.
You've given me the tables and many I have turned.
You deserve the world, but only a poem I could give,
but another gift I have given is to learn,
that the life of a father is an awesome life to live.
Thank you dad for your love.
 
 
* * * * * * * *
 
 
The cutest video ever? Quite possibly.
Duet between a father and his daughter
 
by John Jalsevac
Wed Sep 25, 2013 10:08 EST
 
Being a parent has its challenges. But as a young dad with three kids (Four, really. But the fourth is keeping a low profile for the time being.), I know that there are joys associated with parenthood that surpass just about anything else I've ever experienced.
 
It's quite simply impossible to put into words that feeling you experience as you watch your children quietly playing with their toys, or reading a book, or tearing through the house chasing one another amidst peals of laughter, or sleeping peacefully after a long, hard day of play.
 
Non-parent outsiders often see nothing but the diapers, the tantrums in the grocery stores, the insistent demands for food at inopportune moments, and the squabbles, and conclude that parenting is simply hard. Well, it's true, parenthood is hard. But that's not the whole story. What they can't fully understand is the sheer awesomeness of these little people, who give back 1000 times over in love and hilarity whatever they demand from us in energy and patience.
 
Anyway, all that is simply a prelude to this video that is making the rounds on Youtube which, by focusing on one of those awesome moments experienced by one dad as he tried to soothe his unutterably cute daughter back to sleep, has made me feel even more lucky to be a dad, and to be able share such moments with the miracles that are my own kids.
 
 
* * * * * * * *
 
 
Another Daughter Poem
 
A mother writes to her daughter letting her know how much she loves her.
 
As I Watch You Grow
by Kay Theese
 
Do you know how much you mean to me?
As you grow into what you will be.
You came from within, from just beneath my heart
it's there you'll always be though your own life will now start.
You're growing so fast it sends me awhirl,
With misty eyes I ask, Where's my little girl?
I know sometimes to you I seem harsh and so unfair,
But one day you will see, I taught you well because I care.
The next few years will so quickly fly,
With laughter and joy, mixed with a few tears to cry.
As you begin your growth to womanhood, this fact you must know,
You'll always be my source of pride, no matter where you go.
You must stand up tall and proud, within you feel no fear,
For all you dreams and goals, sit before you very near.
With god's love in your heart and the world by its tail,
You'll always be my winner, and victory will prevail.
For you this poem was written, with help from above,
To tell you in a rhythm of your Mother's heartfelt Love!

 
*Written and dedicated to my precious daughter - Tammy in 1990