The Shack: A tale

The following is a blurb about a book I recently read titled, The Shack. It’s a really good read, provokes and/or questions what people (Christians) believe about God. Its story is not complex or deep but rather involves a simple tale about a man telling a story about his missing daughter and a call into the woods. The fact that it is so simple is, for me, part of its charm. It brings to light and questions our preconceived ideas about who/what God is.
The Blurb:
Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant "The Shack" wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to read this book!
After I read the book I gave it to my Mom to read. While she enjoyed it, many members of her Sunday school class didn’t. The portrayal of God as he/she is depicted in the book goes beyond what they can open up their minds to. On the other hand, several black women I know read it and loved it. Guess why?

I’ve included some reviews that I thought summed up the book rather well:

When the imagination of a writer and the passion of a theologian cross-fertilize the result is a novel on the order of The Shack. This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did for his. It’s that good!
Eugene Peterson, Professor Emeritus Of Spiritual Theology,Regent College, Vancouver, B.C.
If God is all powerful and full of love, why doesn’t He do something about the pain and evil in our world? This book answers that age old question with startling creativity and staggering clarity. By far one of the best books I have ever read.
James Ryle, Author Hippo in the Garden
The Shack is a one of a kind invitation to journey to the very heart of God. Through my tears and cheers, I have been indeed transformed by the tender mercy with which William Paul Young opened the veil that too often separated me from God and from myself. With every page, the complicated do’s and don’t that distort a relationship into a religion were washed away as I understood Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for the first time in my life.
Patrick M. Roddy, Emmy Award Winning Producer of ABC News
Finally! A guy-meets-god novel that has literary integrity and spiritual daring. The Shack cuts through the clichés of both religion and bad writing to reveal something compelling and beautiful about life’s integral dance with the divine. This story reads like a prayer—like the best kinds of prayer, filled with sweat and wonder and transparency and surprise. When I read it, I felt like I was fellowshipping with God. If you read one work of fiction this year, let this be it.
Mike Morrell, Zoecarnate.com

Granted it is not a book for everyone. I’m assuming that most students in this class wouldn’t find it very interesting or thought provoking. But to me, it’s simplicity and short length goes directly to the point.

JOY: a favorite word

Referring back to Tom Morris’ book, The Stoic Art of Living: Inner Resilience and Outer Results, I’ve been thinking about what Seneca states about joy. I think this section caught my eye because up until lately ‘joy’ had been one of my alltime favorite words and was an emotion that I felt almost daily. I never took it for granted and knew that one day my sense of joy would be tested. When my Dad died my joy went with him. I knew it would leave me. I knew this by watching my many extended family members (cousins) bury their parents and observed how they changed. It's like a certain lose of innocence. It's a scar or wound that penetrates straight into your heart. The death of a loved one alters everything. Like my brother, I thought that if I grew old enough the death of my parents would be less painful. That's so not true.

But anyway, Seneca, who seems to be a great advisor on working ethics, has a few things to say about the feeling of joy. Seneca believes that a wonderful attitude to develop is one’s ability to enjoy the journey toward success and not fixate on the end result so much. In a letter to a friend who Seneca feels is moving into the fast lane and fears is becoming a driven workaholic , he advises: “Above all, my dear Lucilius, make this your business: learn how to feel joy”. In another area of the letter he states, “Joy is an elation of spirit—of a spirit that trusts in the goodness and truth of its own possessions”.

To experience joy, is an important part of living a happy life and feeling contentment and satisfaction. To me, joy coming mostly from an internal awareness of how sweet and delicious life can be.I hope that one day I will again feel joy. I have a sneaking suspicion it will occur once I have accepted the mortality of all things...which includes myself.

I enjoyed reading the following and thought I’d share:

Feeling Joyful
Meditation by Orin and DaBen

I allow myself to feel good right now.I feel my soul all around me,sending me its joy.I open to receive my soul's joy.
Joy is flowing into me.Joy is streaming into my cells and atoms.As joy flows into me I expand.I feel free.
Joy flows out from me,touching everyone around me.My thoughts are positive.I feel happy.
I think of my life.I imagine what would be differentin the next few hoursif I expressed my soul's joy.I now do it.
When I encounter someonewho is less joyful,I draw in the quality of joy,I fill myself with joy,then radiate joy to the other.
I now ask my soul and higher self,to send me a clear visionof the next steps of my path.I ask for greater clarityabout my higher purpose.
I ask myself each hour,"What am I doing next thatis part of my higher purpose?"
I create my higher purposefrom moment to moment.As I do, I feel joy,for joy comes from living in the flowand creating my higher purpose.
I let go of power struggles.Whenever I encounter power strugglesor people who are negative,I connect with my souland draw in its joy.I stay centered in my own energyand feel my soul's joyradiating through me.
I expand my potential for joy,I live in a rhythm of joy.I radiate joy to others.I am becoming more joyfuleveryday.
As I wake up tomorrowI connect with my soul's joyand let it radiate through meand out to others.
I am a source of joy to others.My joy lifts others andmakes their burdens easier to carry.I bring light to everyone around methrough my expression of soul joy.

Living a Life of Joy
May 13th, 2006 by Steve Pavlina

How do you know when you’re living your purpose?
When your present moments begin to feel perfect.
When you live on purpose, your relationship with time changes dramatically. You’ll no longer be looking for happiness somewhere in the future. You’ll stop saying to yourself, “Once X happens then I’ll be where I want to be. Then I’ll be happy.” Instead you will look to your present and say, “This is exactly where I want to be right now… and nowhere else. Nothing could be more perfect than this precise moment.”
The emotion that accompanies this state is joy. Joy results from total acceptance of your present moment. Whenever you project your consciousness away from the present moment and seek happiness in another time or place, you leave joy behind. When all parts of your being fully embrace where you are right now, you can’t help but feel joyful.
Most likely you haven’t reached this state yet. But it’s well within your capability to do so. You can reach it by following your internal compass. By assessing your current emotional state and comparing it to the state of joy, you can get a sense of your distance from this state. You can pinpoint where you are at any time along the levels of consciousness scale. Inner peace is right next to joy. Neutrality is a little further out. Far beyond that lies anger. And really far away is fear. The more powerless you feel, the further you are from joy, and the more you’re resisting what is.
If you are far away from joy, you cannot simply jump to this state immediately and stay there for long. You might be able to experience it temporarily, such as through meditation, but the circumstances of your life will soon pull you back to your previous level. But with conscious intent, you can eventually reach this state and make it your default. And the way you do this is to keep re-pointing your life in the direction of joy by making better decisions.
Whenever you’re faced with a decision, even a seemingly mundane one such as what to eat for your next meal, choose the option that brings you closest to joy. That will be the option that makes you feel the most powerful. It will not necessarily be what makes you feel joyful, especially if you are currently in a very negative state. If you’re currently depressed, you may have zero choices that will produce joy in this moment. But you will have some choice that makes you feel more powerful and alive than the others, and that is the choice that will turn your life in the direction of joy.
If you are feeling fearful and worried, perhaps the best action you can find is one which makes you feel greedy or angry. That is perfectly fine. Greed and anger are both higher states than fear; they are closer to joy. It is better to act out of anger than out of fear, since it will turn you in the direction of joy. And soon you’ll be able to progress beyond anger. Do not beat yourself up if a seemingly negative state like anger is the best you can muster at this time in your life. You cannot expect any more from yourself than your best. The anger will pass, and you’ll soon be able to climb the ladder towards more positive states. If you are in a deep negative state such as depression, you will have to pass through higher negative states first before you can reach the positive ones. So going from depression to anger is a very positive step in the right direction.
If you proceed in this manner with every decision you can, eventually you will reach the state of joy. It may take some time, but you will eventually reach it and make it your default state.
Joy is in fact your natural state of being. Babies enter this state very easily because they are fully in the present moment. They do not seek themselves in the past or future.
When you are joyful, your life flows with ease and lightness. Existence is no longer a struggle. Why? Because when you stop resisting the present moment, you stop creating problems for yourself. Resistance creates internal problems like stress, fear, and disease, but it also creates external problems like conflict, scarcity, and injustice. When you learn to choose the direction that creates the most joy in your life, your life will become a joyful experience in each and every moment. And of course it is easy to accept and embrace any present moment in which you feel joyful, so the state will naturally perpetuate itself. Joyful feelings create joyful actions which produce more joyful feelings.
The state of joy enables you to stop worrying about your survival, to stop fearing what may or may not happen, and to stop fighting your present moments. You’ll find it easier and easier to satisfy your needs. This will allow you to direct your consciousness outward and interact with the world without fear. People will seem much less threatening to you. Even strangers will smile at you more because they’ll pick up on your joyful state. Positive people will be drawn to you like a magnet, and you’ll soon find your life filled with empowering relationships. All the support you need will come to you. And this in turn will give you the energy and drive to embrace your true purpose.
Simply make decisions that bring you as close to joy as possible, even if it seems very distant at first, and soon you’ll find your life becoming more joyful. You have free will though, so in any moment you can decide to move towards joy or away from it. The choice is yours.
"Joyfulness is being filled with happiness. It is a peaceful sense of well-being. Joy is inside us all. It comes from an appreciation for the gifts each day brings. Joy comes when we are doing what we know is right, and when we laugh and see the humor in things. Joy is the inner sense that can carry us through the hard times even when we are feeling very sad."(The Virtues Project)

Pond in Winter

While reading Thoreau’s Pond in Winter I kept thinking of my father’s side of the family who resided in the upper peninsula of Michigan during from the mid-1860’s on. The community in which my Dad resided was declining during his childhood but was once a large and productive fishing/logging/hunting community. Ice fishing was not just a past time but was a requirement. One of my uncles iced fished up until he died (mid-70’s) and loved the long and cold winters. In addition he loved to sleigh, skate and toboggan too. I really don’t know how he kept at it, life in the Upper Peninsula isn’t a piece of cake for anyone but it seems like it would be really rough on the older among us. But anyway, the ice fishing was what Thoreau would call “basic needs”. You want to eat? Then fish. Or hunt. Either way it took skill, time and patience. In this chapter Thoreau expressed a certain awe at the skills of the ice fisherman. Thoreau compares these men, who instinctively follow other fashions and trust other authorities than their townsmen to another group he later observes; a group of ice cutters who stockpile layers of ice for export and then watches it melt back into Walden Pond. He notes the difference between functional labor performed on behalf of our basic needs and those that are based on greed.
While reading sections of this book, my mind kept wandering back to my last trip to Michigan. There is something about being in the woods and observing nature that is really spiritual to me. And this book has struck a similar chord for some reason. The next time I go to the UP, I’ll remember to take this book.

Baker Farm

While roaming the countryside, Thoreau is enraptured by the beauty of the landscape. He travels of the drap, dismal hut of John Field, an Irish immigrant and common laborer. John is a bogger who works from sunrise to sunset. He and his wife work long hours but dream of improving their conditions one day but for now they concentrate on making ends meet. Thoreau to help the Fields by explaining his methods of economy and how they can make life more enjoyable but with no success. John Fields explains that they came to American because of the luxuries he could not get in Ireland. Thoreau realizes that the Fields are in a vicious circle and will probably remain so and gives up trying to convince them of their self-destructive state. Thoreau returns to his concerns for his own happy life.
He expresses exuberance as he "ran down the hill toward the reddening west….determined to enjoy the land, but own it not.” For him life will be an adventure; he refuses to be penned into the dull round of conventional living like those who live like the Fields.
The chapter reflects Thoreau’s sense of spirituality. He expresses his happiness, stating: “Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rainbow’s arch, which filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere, tinging the grass and leaves around, and dazzling me as if I looked through coloured crystal. It was a lake of rainbow light, in which, for a short while, I lived like a dolphin.”


Thoreau describes his sublime contentment in three ways:

-he stood at the rainbow’s end and was thus the lucky mortal who found the “pot of gold”

-being flooded in resplendent light symbolizes an experience of spiritual illumination

-he compares himself to a dolphin, which is a traditional symbol of immortality

He makes sure that readers are aware of his spiritual state by declaring, “As I walked on the railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the halo of light around my shadow, and would fain fancy myself one of the elect.”

Washington Post-A reader reflect on Montaigne's essays

I found this article and wanted to share it:

washingtonpost.com -serif;
Of Montaigne: Straight Talk Goes Unbent Through Time's Prism
By John BrunsSpecial to The Washington PostMonday, November 8, 2004; Page C10
My father-in-law often speaks to Joan and me, though he has been gone for years. He was an inveterate writer of letters, composer of sermons and maker of notes. Even in the small things he left a record.
We still find his words, written in tiny, careful script on the backs of photographs, taped to the objects he left us and in the boxes of papers that remain. It's as if he's found a way to pop up and say hello now and then. In a dusty album there's a photograph of three little boys and their pet, circa 1911, when he was 9 years old. On the back of the photo, he'd written, in a child's hand, "Theodore, Ridgeway, me and the dog." At the bottom of a shoe box I found a snapshot of him 65 years later, with two little children -- my children. The three of them are staring at an overgrown shrub. On the back of the snapshot he'd written, "Teddy and Susannah and I search for raspberries, 1976."
My children have children of their own now. The years have gone by and I've been wondering how to speak to the little ones when they're grown. My newfound friend, Michel de Montaigne, whom I first encountered in Western Civ when I was 18, has come back to help me.
I had no use for Montaigne in college. His portrait revealed to me a severe-looking French guy in a ruffled collar, bald, with a pencil mustache. I thought his essays, full of Latin quotations and rarely to the point, were as boring and impenetrable as he seemed.
Forty years later, in aching awareness of time passing, I've taken another look at Montaigne's essays. "I have had no thought of serving either you or my own glory," he says, in an introductory note to the reader. His sole aim is to reveal himself honestly to his family and friends, "so that when they have lost me (as soon they must), they may recover here some features of my habits and temperament, and by this means keep the knowledge they have had of me more complete and alive." In these few words he's suggested to me what I must do.
I've wondered lately how I could have missed so much about Montaigne in college. Perhaps I had a bad translation. More likely, I was just too young to appreciate him. When you're 18 there are activities more urgent than rumination.
Now I'm more patient, and things seem very different. Of course I couldn't handle Montaigne: I had no time to think. There would be a quiz, and I was trying to absorb every word, every paragraph and every quotation in such a way as to expeditiously complete my assigned reading before the Midway Inn, a few miles down the road, stopped serving beer.
It's not that I couldn't see the forest for the trees in that first reading, though I didn't. It's as if I marched purposefully through the forest, keeping my eyes on the path, and missed not only the forest but also the strange and wonderful creatures I might have seen from the trail if only I'd taken a few moments and looked around.
Montaigne writes about anything he pleases, large or small. He writes Of Smells; Of Prayers; Of The Art of Discussion; Of Cannibals; Of Glory. On and on he goes, to speak of women, thumbs, nakedness, cripples, liars and books. These topics don't seem to have been part of a grand design -- he appears to have just sat down and written about them as he felt the urge. Montaigne considers topics at his own pace; circles around them, pokes at them, goes where his curiosity leads. He speculates.
As I wrote that last paragraph I picked up my copy of the essays, turned to a random page and read this sentence, from his essay, "Of Drunkenness": "The pleasure we want to reckon on for the course of our life should occupy more space in it." In such observations lies much of what I love about Montaigne. Cannibals and drunkenness are simply tools for him, ways to get at the one real topic: Montaigne, the man, and how he should live.
When Montaigne writes he's not telling us what we should think, or what he claims to think. He's thinking. He's allowing us a peek at all the twists and turns of his thought, the quirks, the flaws, the flip-flops. He writes, "I may indeed contradict myself now and then; but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict."
We're bombarded, as Montaigne must have been, by the exaggerations and lies of people seeking political favor, financial reward, the admiration of others. As it has ever been, many people are so thoroughly seduced by these treasures that without shame or apology they will say and do anything to attain them. By the time he wrote his essays Montaigne had said goodbye to all that. He craved straight talk, and he found it in candid observations about a host of small things.
Montaigne's essays were a substitute for Etienne de La Boetie, who had died, leaving Montaigne without a confidant. I try to keep that in mind when I read his essays: They're letters to a lost friend. When I read them, I'm the friend. I read them now and then, one per sitting, as if they'd just arrived in the mail, postmarked Chateau Montaigne, Bordeaux, 1580.
If you're very lucky you reach a point in life when you recognize, as Montaigne must have, that spin won't work forever; that no matter what you say and do the truth about you will become apparent to anyone who cares to reflect about you. My friends and family are well aware of my imperfections; they catch me in my exaggerations with ease. There seems no way but Montaigne's -- the way of candor and curiosity -- to be remembered well by the people I care about.
My grandchildren are tiny now, but as I write I can see them as young people, perhaps graduating from college, getting married, raising their own families, reading what I've written and remembering me. Or possibly, as has been my experience with Montaigne, rapport will come slowly. Some cold evening in their middle age, when no letters have come in the mail, perhaps a grandchild or two will sit by the fire and read something I've written.
In this way, the way of words and imagination, we'll cross time and space together.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Machiavellian Business

In regard to our last reading The Prince and Machiavelli, I have to say that I was somewhat put off by his writings during the first round of reading his discourse. It was with my second reading that I started putting the pieces together and appreciating at least some of his thoughts. When I first opened the book, I thought he appeared tyrannical and as cold as metal. During the second reading I resisted putting more into his words than what was already there.
Considering yesterday’s class and my team’s assignment about building a business utilizing the Machiavellian perspective, I wanted to think about it a little further. Would the Machiavelli approach work in building a business? He does have some good advice and makes valid observations. He does use strategy void of any morality or ethics in advising how to lead and/or move up the ladder. Out of curiosity I googled “Machiavellian Business” and found an amazing amount of ideas and concepts that incorporates his strategy and/or makes comparisons. For instance it is quite common for the third generation of any family business to make decisions which results in the folding of the company. Machiavelli states something very similar when discussing hereditary principalities, “From cobbler to cobbler it is success that kills the family business. The more successful each generation is, the less each one will want to work”. It may be the 3rd generation is spoiled, pampered and weak thus lacks the fortitude to work and succeed. In order to get a business loan one is required to formulate a business plan which requires product and consumer knowledge. In chapter 14 of his discourse, Machiavelli recommends preparation by “thinking and doing”, “spare no effort to become acquainted” with your territory (product).
In regard to moving up the ladder in the corporate world, Machiavelli mentions hard work in chapter 8, “If you consider Agathocles’s bold achievements, you will not find much that can be attributed to luck; for as I have said, he did not come to power because he had help from above, but because he worked his way up from below, climbing rank to rank…." Modern businesses do not engage themselves with the moral or ethic values of employees or customers nor do they focus on the general well-being of the community. And they usually pass on the unpleasant duties to insubordinates such as Machiavelli suggests in Chapter 19: Rulers should delegate responsibility for unpopular actions, while taking personal responsibility for those that will win favor.
Truly, there are many quotes and ideas that Machiavelli discussed that could be used in initiating a business plan or in operating a modern day business. For that matter, I wonder if this discourse is required reading for military officers in training, sort of like the “Art of War” by an Asian author that fellow students were talking about yesterday.

Morals, Reason and Ayn Rand

I spent a portion of this last weekend thinking about Epictetus and Epicurus and how they attempted (& succeeded) in engaging their peers and later generations in pondering life, morality, death, reason etc. While they are of no fault, I believe that societies have used the idea of a moral code to provide a checklist of “you ought not do” or “shall nots”. Like so many other things, teaching morality has been taught using negative concepts. As long as you don’t commit any of the acts on the list, then you’re okay. Anything else goes. For true success, a means needs to be readily available in order to choose the best course of action and this requires a positive concept in regard to morality. To teach and practice good moral conduct/values should be a positive way of being and of living a life. A moral code shouldn’t be a heavy weight on one’s shoulders but an affirming, guiding principle that assists in showing the way; it should be like a beacon of light. And one should form a habit of referring to his/her moral code in present tense. I believe to keep in all current and present in one’s mind as in “I am honorable” is in itself a meditative practice of sorts.
Once the concept of moral conduct becomes ingrained it sets forth a pattern of ethical conduct. While there are indeed some ethical and moral concepts common to all people, it may be that still other ways and means of conduct are particular to each individual in each time and place. By careful examination of one’s nature and experiences, one can ultimately recognize and cultivates an ethical goal which suits his needs.
The following quote by Ayn Rand is applies:
Man’s essential characteristic is his rational faculty. Man’s mind is his basic means of survival—his only means of gaining knowledge---
In order to sustain its life, every living species has to follow a certain course of action required by its nature. The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort. Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.
Further on she writes:
The virtue of rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one’s only source of knowledge, one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide to action…It means a commitment to the principle that all of one’s convictions, values, goals, desires and actions must be based on, derived from, chosen and validated by a process of thought.
It’s true that one either act on reason or whim. Personally, I’ve done both and do believe that the times I acted on whim and everything turned out okay was a struck of luck on my part. Most of the time the action based on whim took up a lot of valuable time and put me off my planned path. Unfortunately, it sometimes took years to get back to what I believe matters.
One important example of using your own rationale, wisdom or whatever you want to call it concerns medical advice and/or decisions. Logic told me a few years ago that my thyroid was malfunctioning even though my doctor told me everything was fine. It was not. I had a diseased thyroid and it really needed to come out. How did I find this out? By reading medical books and paying attention to what my body was telling me. So although a physician stated one thing, I used my own mind and reason to figure out what was wrong. It went to another doctor who valued my intuitiveness and persistence.