Craig D. Lounsbrough's Blog: Simple Truths

We live in a world spiraling in a confounding kaleidoscopic of shoddy opinions, self-serving biases, vacillating cultural mandates, clarion calls for whatever politically-correct notion might be trending at the moment, and the elusive lure of all things vogue and trendy.  We’re frantically chasing some perpetually shifting norm that’s nothing of a norm but everything of a culture hell-bent on justifying everything it wishes to justify.

Values are no longer the premise by which we shape our lives.  Rather, they have become the pitifully abhorrent and wholly illegitimate obstacle to our desires. We have labeled them as some dusty set of antiquated ideals.  These ideals served a generation that lived out its days in the backwaters of an ignorance fed comatose by intellectual stupor.  Therefore, their value rests only in their removal so that hitherto unexplored horizons can be freely ascended.  The problem is that we have yet to discern a horizon from a cliff.

Convictions

Convictions born of opinions, biases, cultural mandates, politically-correct notions, and all things vogue and trendy are not convictions.  Their focus is uniformity to a larger social agenda.  As such, they do not have an adherence to something bigger than themselves that keeps them from destroying themselves.  Rather, their agendas are themselves.  And an agenda based on self will destroy the very ‘self’ that we are seeking to liberate.  Such is the insanity of them.  And such is the evidence that they are not convictions.

Convictions give no voice, much less any space to these lesser things, for these things are contaminated by the selfish agendas that constructed them.  Convictions are grounded in principles irrefutably larger and infinitely bigger than the grubby pabulum of selfish mandates and self-serving trends.  Convictions rest in things that superseded our waffling culture, and they are sustained by things that will exist long after that culture finds its demise at the hands of these lesser things.

Convictions are those things that we will stand on even when the culture exerts phenomenal effort to have us stand-down.  We would rather die by them than die by the culture that defies them.  They are the timeless values that did not somehow exhaust their time in some other time, but are in fact not bound by time at all.  They are those ethics, morals and values deemed born of ignorance by a self-aggrandizing culture.  Yet, it is the ignorance of a culture slogging around in the myopic throes of selfishness that makes such values appear ignorant.  In fact, in our culture the litmus test as to the value of our values may be found in the degree to which they are rejected by the culture.

Cost and Rewards of Convictions

Convictions are not convenient.  Neither are they popular.  They call us out when such an action is branded as punitive and unacceptably constrictive to the permissive liberties that we have ascribed as our due.  They call us apart from everything that they are not, which means we may find ourselves quite alone at times.  They are the principles that God has woven into this existence in order to preserve that very existence.  At times they are by nature contrary to everything that we want, but they are perfectly crafted to perpetuate everything that we are.  In fact, convictions are our liberties for they safeguard us against all the lesser things that would seek to destroy us, including ourselves.

Conclusion

Could it be that we are the generation that is living out its days in the backwaters of an ignorance fed comatose by intellectual stupor?  Are we what we have said others to be in order to give ourselves permission to be what we should not be?  Are the disjointed efforts of opinions, biases, cultural mandates, politically-correct notions, and all things vogue and trendy an effort to write ourselves sweeping permission to justify sweeping behaviors that will in time sweep us away?

And if this is so, are we ready to abandon selfish agendas for timeless principles so that we might save ourselves from ourselves?  Are we ready to stand on convictions and refuse to wallow in trends?  Are we brave enough to acknowledge what we have done or will we bend to the cowardice that denies the fact that anything has been done?  Are we in fact ready?  I have the conviction that time itself will most certainly tell.

The post Convictions – The Lack Thereof appeared first on Craig Lounsbrough.

Decisions. Life is quite literally jam-packed with them. We make them all of the time; literally one after another after another. Hardly a single minute passes where we’re not thinking through and making some sort of decision. Some decisions are huge and sweeping, amply possessing both the power and scope to impact our lives for the rest of our lives. Others are small and passively demur, doing little more than impacting the few brief moments that follow the decision.

Some decisions follow a predictable and patently obvious course, being crisply and closely dictated by the laws of nature, or cultural expectations, or a set of values, or the tutelage of a mentor, or an established tradition of some sort. These decisions are frequently more reflexive than thoughtful as they have naturally established boundaries that provide an automatic guiding function. Other more complex and intricate decisions may not as easily adhere to such established boundaries, demanding degrees of accommodation, various levels of modification, or some measure of generous reassessment that calls on reasoning, thought processes and wisdom rarely accessed. Regardless, we all make decisions and we make tons of them.

Missing the Impact
However decisions come, we make so many decisions that they can become reflexively habitual. And in becoming habitual, we often pay them little mind. Or we may view decisions as part of a general progression that serves only to move us to the next place. Therefore it is our sense, either conscious or unconscious, that both the value and the impact of the decision ceases to exist at the point that it has moved us to that next place. Or at times we may view decisions as necessary evils, and we therefore make them so as to get them off of our backs. Once we have removed ourselves from them or them from us, we leave them behind with little thought as to what impact they might have now that they are behind us. Or we may be forced to make decisions we’d prefer not to make and therefore we readily defer any negative consequences because circumstances or situations forced us to make decisions that we would have not otherwise made.

In whatever way we do it, we somehow dispose of decisions as some sort of consumed article bereft of life and wholly expended because they have served their purpose. We errantly assume them to be spent because they have achieved their goal, or we imagine them neutralized because the task for which they were determined has been completed. Yet, decisions remain very much alive.

The Impact Outside of the Decision
Regardless of the manner in which they are made, we often make decisions not nearly comprehending the full impact of the decision beyond the decision. Too often decisions are made for the sole purpose of making the decision and in making the decision, bringing whatever the situation is to a conclusion. We may consider the long-term implications, but we typically do so as they apply directly to the decision.

Seldom do we consider the broad and far-reaching implications that lay out beyond the decision and the situation that prompted the decision. We take too little time to realize that the biggest and most potent impact of our decisions are often not related to the decisions themselves or the situations that demanded those decisions. It seldom dawns on us that a decision holds to no walls, has no boundaries, and it will linger in ways both passive and bold long after the decision has been rendered.

The biggest impact of any decision is often the repercussions felt outside and far beyond those situations and corresponding decisions. Life is not so rigidly cloistered as to be confined to a single space or a solitary place. Such is the case with every decision that we render. In fact, it is often the case that others entirely unassociated with our decisions can be dramatically impacted by our decisions without knowing who or what or where the repercussions came from. Situations that seem entirely unrelated and that lie so far out on the horizon of life that we can’t even see them from our vantage point can be unalterable effected. Even time itself can be impacted for all time. Eons after the decisions are made and the situations that demanded them have fallen deep into the catacombs of history, the implications of our decisions can remain potent and impactful.

Little do we realize that decisions made over situations now long dead may in fact demand other decisions that would be entirely unnecessary and wholly irrelevant if more care had been taken in making the original decisions in the first place. We so myopically focus on the moment, the perceived needs of the moment, and our desire to rid ourselves of some problem that we render decisions without considering the frequently cataclysmic implications of those decisions for the future. Indeed, do we dare to understand the power and reach of our decisions, and out of that understanding do we begin to approach each decision with much more caution and much less ambivalence?

Decisions to Thwart Decisions
Often we have to make decisions to thwart previously made decisions, most of which were poor conceived and even more poorly executed. If we were sufficiently brave to inventory our decisions we would quickly discover that many of our decisions were made to thwart decisions we had previously made. It may well be that the incessant busyness and increasingly demanding nature of our lives may be a direct result of all of the decisions we are currently forced to make that serve to counter other poor decisions that we previously made. It would behoove us to understand that one bad decision can spawn a hundred other decisions that serve to correct the original decision. And so in order not to heavily frontload our future we would be wise be judicious in back-loading our present.

Deciding About Our Decisions
We need to understand that in making a decision today we are creating a legacy for tomorrow, and that no decision is bound solely to the moment within which it is made and the people for whom it is made. We can touch lives that we will never meet and impact situations that we don’t even know exist by a single decision that we feel is limited to the single moment that we make it in. Likewise, we cannot be so remiss as to miss the reality that what is done in the present is capable of geometrically amplifying itself in the future, leaving our lives consumed and taxed with making decisions that only serve to counter other poor decisions that we made.

Our decisions cannot be reflexively habitual. They are far more than decisions that simply serve to move us to the next place. They are not necessary evils, and we therefore make them so as to get them off of our backs. Nor are they things we’d prefer not to make and therefore we readily defer any negative consequences because circumstances or situations forced us to make decisions that we would have not otherwise made. Instead, decisions are the shapers and crafters of our moments and our lives. They will add to our lives if we made them wisely, or they will demand everything we have to correct them if we made them poorly. And finally, they are never isolated to us alone, therefore every decision must be made understanding our responsibility to larger humanity. Should we persist in such terribly limited notions that have defined our poor decisions, we are certain to hurt ourselves, handicap others, and negatively load our future.

The post To Decide or Not to Decide – The Impact appeared first on Craig Lounsbrough.

An unknown author wrote, “Real treasure lies not in what that can be seen, but what cannot be seen.”  We possess this strangely cockeyed perception that we must be able to see something in order to treasure it.  More than that, we think that we have to be able to somehow hold it in our hands.  And then, in far too many cases we think we have to be able to own it in order to treasure it.  But we rarely consider that we can treasure what we can’t see.  In fact, it may well be that to treasure something in a truly treasured manner it must be entirely elusive; it must be something that we can’t see, that we can’t hold and that we can’t own.  When we possess something, the fact that we can possess it diminishes its worth.  Being unable to possess something suggests that it has a value beyond us or beyond anyone else for that matter.  Real treasures are elusive because if they’re not, they don’t have the value inherent within them to genuinely be categorized as treasures.

 

Sparrows and a Clapboard Garage

Every spring the sparrows came back to the old garage; something like coming back to a comfy, old friend.  Upon their return their boundless energy and contagious enthusiasm seemed wildly intoxicating; vibrant, vibrating and filled with all the energy of spring.  I often wondered if they had spent the cold, gray months of winter in a nearly uncontrollable anticipation of greeting their old friend once winter had rolled off the horizon of spring.

Sometimes in life there seems to be a subtle yet wonderfully warm camaraderie of sorts that develops between things you’d never think would or could be connected like that.  That seemed to explain the quiet, entirely unspoken kind of relationship that existed between the old garage and the sparrows.  They seemed like long seasoned friends that didn’t need to say much because the bond that they shared spoke more than words ever could.  The old clapboard garage and the house sparrows were each warmed, gently magnified, and beautifully enhanced by the other.  Each was a treasure embraced as a treasure.

The sparrows would glide up between the heavy wooden doors and slip by the sturdy steel tracks that they ran on; seemingly nestling into the garages soft, clapboard embrace.  Every spring the sparrows would settle in and nest right above the heavy wooden doors, tucked just inside, at the thin edge of the garage attic.  There was too much love and warmth in the old garage, so there were usually two or three nests tucked above the wooden doors.  You could see the sparrows incessantly coming and going, but you couldn’t see what they were doing.  They were tireless; transporting bits of straw and brown grasses into the garage; building a place to birth the treasures of the next generation.  Within moments they would poke out elated heads, and then burst into flight with empty beaks.  In no time they would return with more strands of grass, or bits of weed, or cottony fibers, or discarded pieces of string . . .  over and over.

Within weeks the sound of new life could be heard coming from above the old, wooden doors.  Their chirps and peeps would be shushed when anyone approached; mother’s teaching their little ones that life is a treasure, but it can also be filled with danger.  These little, hidden treasures would become ever louder as they grew, strengthened and eventually sought the independence of flight.  Before the close of spring they would be launched in a gangly kind of flight.  They would explore the places close to the garage, bursting into uncoordinated flight but never wandering too far way.  Life called them out ever further from the clapboard garage until they were gone in summer’s embrace.

 

Treasures

Unobtrusive

Treasures are hidden away in quiet places.  They speak in soft tones and often become silenced as we approach.  They don’t beg to be found, but embrace us if we do happen to find them.  They are the product of completely ordinary circumstances unfolding in wonderfully extraordinary ways.  They are found hidden in the nooks and crannies of our existence; all around us if we quit allowing our attention to be captivated by that which is noisy and listen for that which is quiet and still.

 

The Product of Unexpected and Loving Camaraderie

Treasures are a product of treasures.  Real treasure is the product of lives shared, experiences intermingled, roads merged into single lanes, sacrifices jointly experienced, the soulful laughter of two hearts in beat with each other, and lives expended in unity.  Treasures are the step-child of lives lived out in shared experiences that dramatically multiply both the experience and persons in a manner geometrically beyond anything the persons could hope to experience alone.  Treasures rise out of the relationship of people who are intimately woven together by the threads of time and the needle of experience.

 

Always Creating and Never Preserving

Treasures are not stagnant.  They’re not to be preserved as in the preserving they will most certainly wither and they will perish.  Real treasures begat other treasures.  Real treasures are designed to perpetuate other treasures.  Sometimes the perpetuation involves the replication of the original treasure, and sometimes the replication is something entirely different but just as wonderful.  Treasures are ingenuously and deliberately crafted to enrich the world.  If one thing is for certain, they are not designed to be encased in the lifeless museums of our making, or the vaults we create to keep them to ourselves.  It’s in their multiplication that the cold of life’s winters are forced off the edge of the calendar.

 

Sown to the World

It’s our natural inclination to preserve treasures; to corral them and box them and seal them tight.  We assume that unless they’re preserved they’ll be lost, which is entirely contradictory.  In fact, they are designed to be launched and thrown out to the horizons of each of our lives regardless of whatever the season is that we might be in.  Authentic treasures permeate our world; they gain wings of their own and they disburse so that they might reproduce in other places and in other lives.  The stuff of treasure is irrepressibly infectious and prudently wild; intent on enrichment whenever and wherever it can.  We must work against our own inclinations and toss treasures out to the world around us.

It would be tremendously wise to rethink the concept of treasure in your own life.  What you may be holding onto may not be treasure at all.  In fact, if you’re “holding” onto it, it’s not.

The post Sparrows in the Garage – Little Treasures appeared first on Craig Lounsbrough.

Too often we are repetitively reactionary and little more.  Life becomes something more of obligatory duty rather than gifted privilege.  Our days become stale, methodical routines that hammer out another empty twenty-four hours on the incessant assembly line of our lives, rather than being an astonishing adventure that could peel off in a hundred different glorious directions at any time.  Living becomes banally rote, the day-in and day-out devolves to stale routine, blandness leaves us forgetting that flavor exists at all, and habit seizes the reins with both hands.  Left unchecked, habit strangles individuality by imposing sameness, and it crushes creativity by demanding adherence.  Habit takes that which might have been mindful and makes it entirely mindless.  If we are not diligently careful, habit will come to define the whole of our existence, leaving the fluid magnificence of who we are and what we could accomplish wholly dissipated in the backwash of lack-luster procedure and irreversibly dispersed in heartless protocol.

Yet, we are exceedingly more than the bland amalgamation of habit, even though we incessantly permit its lifeless rubrics to press the life out of us.  The outliers of our essence extend leagues out beyond our own vision, and our depth is past plumbing despite whatever discipline we might bring to the plumbing.  And it is altogether impossible that the whole of this essence can be packed tidily into the asphyxiating rubric that habit constructs.  Habit might indeed be unswerving and fixed, granting us a steady direction and a secure course when all becomes unsteady.  Yet, given unbridled rein to freely propagate the rubrics that make habit what it is, we would die the death of character asphyxiation.

 

Who We Are

We are an potently composite collection of experiences, wounds, failures, successes, relationships, genetics and a wholly incalculable array of other things that press together and then settle into some sort of uniquely amalgamated compilation that makes us, us.  The nature of these things and the manner in which they have each jostled for position and eventually fall into place lends us a uniqueness that sets us apart from everyone else in all of existence, while concurrently creating both adoring and sometimes irksome similarities with everyone else.

From the core of this place that makes us who we are, there emerges a refined proliferation of beliefs, values, opinions and perspectives that both drive and dictate the manner in which we engage life in ways both large and small.  Indeed, this core place becomes the sturdy helm from which the ship of our lives is faithfully navigated.  In time, this place becomes sagely informed, sharply intuitive and shrewdly instinctual.  This proficient compilation of assets lends itself to great things beyond even the scope of our dreams and fondest aspirations.

 

The Helm Commandeered by Habit

However, this helm can become insidiously commandeered by habit.  It is our choice to let that happen, and the choice is most often based on the curse of ease and the ignorance of our abilities.  Over time, we surrender to the reflex of habit.  Habit is easy.  Habit demands nothing cognitively.  Habit subdues mindfulness, and reflex ousts wisdom.  It blunts creativity and undercuts innovation.  In time we react without knowing why we’re reacting, and when we reach that point we’ve devolved to mindless automatons living out the staleness borne of a reactionary existence.  Habit has its place, but we habitually grant it every place.

In time, habit is confused with intelligence and wisdom.  We deem ourselves to be quite astute, overtly mindful, shrewdly insightful and rigorously thoughtful.  We commend ourselves for the tact with which we engage life and the wisdom that exudes from us with ever increasingly depth.  Yet, this is often little more than the redundant repetition of habit that we’ve taken for something far more than habit.  We ascribe to habit brilliant ideas, epic decisions and colossal achievements that are in reality nothing of habit, all the while allowing the grander part of ourselves to atrophy in the decay of life lost.

 

Habit as Ease

Sadly, it seems that we create habit so that we don’t have to create.  Habit provides us a soulfully soothing sense that we’re being amply responsible and sufficiently judicious in living out our lives while permitting us to pay as little attention as possible to the living out of our lives.  It’s the autopilot that we engage so that we can turn our attention to the endless other things that are pounding at the door of our lives.  In time, we craft some sort of habit to deal with each of these demands as we grant them entrance into our lives.  We then develop habits about developing habits, rendering each habit something of all the others before it.  Our lives take on the redundancy of the habitual habits that we now apply to everything.  Soon, staleness becomes our lot and the apathy of redundancy becomes our trademark.  Despite the dankness of it all it is easy, and the habit of ease repeated habitually is the pallor of death.

 

The Habit of Getting Out of Habit

There might be a bit of wisdom in doing a little, or possibly a lot of introspective inventorying in order to determine the extent to which the decay of habit has infiltrated the fabric of our lives.  We can fall to the mindless repetition of habit and live out our lives as a series of encoded reflexes rather than digging down, getting our hands marvelously dirty, and being mindfully engaged in a grand adventure that we’re on the verge of throwing away.  We can ferret out the scourge of ease and confront the debilitating messages that ease has bribed us with.  We can get into the habit of getting out of the habit.

Getting into the habit of getting out of the habit means that we need to be brutally honest with ourselves.  Ferreting our habit can be overtly frightening due to the fact that it is often habit that has created the very framework that binds our lives together.  If we abandon habit, we fear that will cause our worlds to implode beyond recognition or hope of recovery.  Habit is the tightly cinching framework that binds the precarious parts of our lives together in a manner that allows our lives to hold together when life assails us.  Habit retains a soothing familiarity when all becomes jarringly unfamiliar.  Indeed, it may restrain us from great things at times, but in excess it also insulates us from falling into terrible things.  It is a sure course when the course to adventure is unsure.  Habit is a certain passage that is certain to keep us safe, but too much of it is certain to keep us safely at a distance from greatness and goals both grand and glorious.

 

The Benefit of Habit

It is both responsible and important to point out that habit has an important and terribly critical place in our lives.  Habit provides consistency to areas of our lives while we concurrently push out into other areas that have yet to be consistent, or may never be consistent.  They can be a series of strategic boundaries that intentionally set the stage for us to safely step outside of those boundaries to new ones.  Habits can keep rather rogue and rowdy behaviors in check while giving more responsible behaviors ample room to flourish and grow.  They can provide a framework until those parts of lives have matured sufficiently to stand on their own.

Yet, this brand of ‘habit’ is carefully crafted of wisdom, sown supple with flexibility, evenly tempered by vision, and held to places where it is needed while being withheld from places where it is not.  These kind of habits are designed to pave the way for the next step rather than insulating us from the next step.  They are the progressive not regressive.  Visionary and not visually blind.  Progressive habits frame our lives to advance our lives for the whole of our lives.  And it is these kinds of habits that will habitually keep us from the death knell of destructive habits.

We need to get into the habit of recognizing our habits.  Once we have, we need to develop the habit of evaluating our habits even though we have a habit of not doing so.  And it is this piercing acumen that will allow us to bend habit so that it does not bend us and become our death knell.

The post Habit – Servant or Dictator? appeared first on Craig Lounsbrough.

Isaac Newton’s Third Law states that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”  Or more simply put for the lay-people among us, there’s a consequence to the stuff that we do.  We all know that.  Norman Cousins wrote that “a human being fashions his consequences as surely as he fashions his goods or his dwelling.”  We clearly fashion our consequences by making the choices that we make.  It naturally follows that when we make a choice, we’ve also set up a consequence.  Consequences are an inevitable and utterly non-negotiable part of our lives.  It doesn’t matter who or what it is that makes a choice, there will be “an equal and opposite reaction,” or what we call a consequence.

The Problem of Consequences

Yet, there’s a problem.  A rather big problem.  We have long embraced the ethic that we are entitled.  We are owed.  The gospel of greed as pounded out on the pulpits of a culture gone mad, and the crazed notions spawned of entitlement preached from the self-same pulpits ignorantly declare that our want of something justifies our having it.  Yet, there’s this pesky phenomenon that we call ‘consequences’.  And because we adamantly believe that we’re entitled to have whatever we want, we also believe that we’re entitled to be free of the consequences that are a part of getting whatever we want.

To our chagrin, we’ve discovered that we can’t deny the existence of consequences.  We’ve found out that we can’t just blithely wave them off or somehow hope that they’ll vanish on their own.  Realistically, none of those things are going to happen.  And because they’re not, we’ve come to believe that we’re entitled to eliminate them.  And we attempt to do that by merely redefining them.

Removal of the Consequences

Legislate It and Legalize It

Sometimes the consequences are due to the fact that the action is illegal, or at least partly illegal.  So, why not make it legal?  There are many instances where our culture has moved to legalize an entire array of actions and behaviors so that the consequences are legislatively removed.  We can bring the heavy hand of legislative bodies to bear.  The legislation is signed, the gavel is dropped, it’s entered into the record, and in a less than a nanosecond what was wrong has now been rendered legislatively right.  The consequences are gone.

Ignore It

Ignoring a consequence is based on the somewhat shaky and rather dim hope that the consequence will go unnoticed and simply go away.  If we just set out to ignore something long enough it’s likely to simply dissipate and eventually vanish with no one being the wiser.  And it is our hope that if it vanishes, the consequence will be deemed as not having been all that significant in the first place, for if it was it would not have dissipated so easily.  The consequences are gone.

Change Our Values

If some set of ethics or morals or values makes something wrong, then we can either rewrite our ethics or rid ourselves of them altogether.  Our value-neutral culture has led us to believe that an action is neither right nor wrong in and of itself.  Rather, it is the view that our culture or our communities or our belief systems have taken of it that defines it as right or wrong.  Therefore, we can redefine an action or a choice in whatever way we please.  The consequences are gone.

Lean on Technology

We can create some cutting-edge procedure, or develop some sort of next-generation medication, or devise some kind of advanced algorithm.  We can find ways to circumvent the natural processes of the body, or suspend the laws of nature.  We can eradicate or manipulate or decimate at the hands of science and technology.  And while these things can bring a great good, harnessed in the service of greed they are certain to bring a great evil.  The consequences are gone…or so we think.

The Repercussions of Removing Consequences

Despite these efforts, we as a culture have made a large number of questionable choices that have resulted in utterly devastating consequences.  We have yet to learn that consequences will not abate nor will they be circumvented simply because we change the rules.  The foundational principles from which these consequences stem are embodied in and woven through our very existence.  We would be wise to understand that we have neither the power, the acumen, the argument, the ethics, nor the ability to change any of those principles even though our greed has played us the fool and led us to believe that we can.  These principles will stand, and so will the consequences of ignoring them.

So we might ask, how many more schools will face the onslaught of terror?  How many church members or concert-goers or innocent shoppers in some mall somewhere will have to die?  When will we realize that we have crafted a culture borne of our greed, and that in the crafting we have foolishly attempted to side-step the horrendous consequences that have bred such behaviors as these?  In all the carnage, I would suggest that we are doing nothing more than observing the outcomes of our choices.  This is of our design.  This is what we have permitted.  This is the stage that we have set.  As the cartoonist Walter Kelly said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

And So…

I would suggest that it is time to take serious stock of where we are.  Honest stock.  Painful stock.  It is time to look in the mirror instead of pointing the finger.  It is time to ground our lives in principles that we long abandoned in the lesser pursuits of self.  It is time to walk away from the pulpits of a culture gone mad and seek truths gone abandoned.  It is time to realize that the greatest good imaginable occurs at the point that we make the person standing next to us our priority.  It is time to realize that this is a matter of the heart and not a matter of legislation or political leanings.  It is time to realize that this is an issue of timeless principle and not the lobbying of shallow agendas.  It is time for change.  And while this kind of change might cost us dearly, not changing may cost us the people that we love dearly.  For if we don’t reclaim principles long lost and embrace ethics ignored, the only question I know to ask is “Who’s next?”

The post Consequences – We Are the Cause appeared first on Craig Lounsbrough.

“The End.”  There’s something definitively final about those two simple words. Those two, three letter words appear on the screen when the last words of the actors have fallen into an irretrievable silence and the screen has been swept barren of images.  They pen an irrefutable and final ‘period’ on the last page of novels beyond which sentences and syntax utterly cease to exist.  These two simple words bring down the final curtain at the end of every play with everything behind the curtain now entirely exhausted and utterly spent in the performance.  “The End.”

The implication is that something is over.  But far more than over, these words imply that something has run the full length of its course and that no other course lies beyond it.  The words “The End” suggest that the story has been told to outright completion and that not a single line or scant syllable is left to the tale to tell at some future time.  “The End” seems to indicate that whatever has transpired has completely rolled over into lifeless annals of history without any ability on our part to reach out and resuscitate it, leaving nothing in our hands but a shadowy memory of what no longer is.  And more despairingly, it all leaves us without any sense that whatever has ended will somehow show up on the horizon of the future to be enjoyed yet again.  “The End.”

The End?

Despite the finality of it all, we have this terribly tenacious proclivity to fight against the notion that an end is an absolute end.  There seems to be such a ruthless totality about it all.  Something within us adamantly objects to the finality of an end; something that senses that life is somehow far too grand and immensely too resilient to ever be held captive to endings of any kind despite the magnitude or ferocity of them.  There is some possibly primal or likely spiritual sense that shouts that life is far too magnificent to have even the minutest part of it irreparably shut down with such an abrupt finality.  It is nearly inconceivable to step up to the line where something expired and to see nothing but ‘nothing’ beyond the line.

Quite to the contrary, we are swept up in limitless possibilities that infuse endings with the stuff that birth beginnings.  We have that unflinching sense that something else always lies out beyond whatever it is that has transpired, copiously prepared and wholly readied to step in in some nearly anointed fashion.  We see life as a unrelenting progression rather than a blunted termination.  Things give way to other things which in turn gives way to yet other things in some undefeatable cycle that stretches eons beyond our imaginations and reaches far beyond the span of our years.  In the deep habitations of our souls, there is no “The End.”

Spring and New Beginnings

Anything created meticulously and quite ingeniously mirrors even the most subtle attributes of that which created it.  The throbbing heart and most intimate soul of anything that has ever been created was intimately shaped by the hands of some creator that birthed it.  And in the birthing, every stroke of every creator’s hand was dictated by the nature of their heart and the character of their soul.

Therefore, could it be that the relentlessness of the world around us, bolstered by the passionate hunger to survive even in the face of the most heinous and potent threats mirrors the heart of that which spun all of creation into existence?  Could it be that the inability to embrace the absolute finality of an end simply rests in the fact that there is no end to that which created all that there is?  And if that is indeed the case, then the purposed defense of hope and the sterling promise of a future stand without interruption or threat.  If that is the case, the horizon will always be filled with droves of that which will fill, heal and restore the places and spaces left by that which has departed.

That is the vitalizing message of spring and the sterling promise of Easter.  And that message means that “The End” is nothing more and nothing less than a beginning infused with great promise and fresh start laced with irrepressible hope.

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{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org\/","@id":"https:\/\/craiglpc.com\/being-thankful-attitudes-that-enliven\/#arve-vimeo-137843745","type":"VideoObject","embedURL":"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/137843745?dnt=1&app_id=122963&html5=1&title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&autoplay=0"}Being thankful stands in stark and debilitating contrast to entitlement. If we sense that we are entitled to something, it is then presumed to be ours by right. If it is ours by right, then there is no legitimate need to be thankful for it. Our overriding mentality and our general orientation to life becomes marked by a sense that we are owed, and because we are, anything we receive is only what life is obligated to grant us.

When we embrace this unbearably diminishing mentality, we lose the sense that life is thoughtful gift and the opportunity to live it is a rich privilege. We carelessly trudge through life in a rather slovenly manner, taking what we will out of a sense that all of this is rightfully ours rather than understanding that all of this is entirely a gift that we are privileged to enjoy.

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We’ve forgotten who we are. We’ve forgotten who we’ve been called to be.  We’ve forgotten the privilege of having the liberties that were handed down to us by people who sacrificed for those liberties in ways that make our abuse of them shameful and inexcusable.  We’ve abandoned all that is good in a thoughtless trade-off for all that is not.  Oh yes.  We’ve forgotten.

Lesser Agendas

We’ve become engrossed in political panhandling and party posturing.  We’ve immersed ourselves self-serving agendas and self-aggrandizing policies.  We’ve run roughshod over the ethics and morals that granted our society any sense of civility, that preserved a respect for our shared humanity, that kept our lesser selves subservient to our better selves, that kept the malignancy of injustice pinned under the sure and steady arm of justice, and that repeatedly kept the evil of tyranny at bay.  We’ve blindly and arrogantly crushed truth because it has no qualms about pointing out our ignorance, or calling out our selfishness, or rendering the toxicity of our greed exposed, or demanding the surrender of the evil that we use as a means of pleasuring ourselves.

Blinded

We have been blinded.  We’ve been blinded to everything that made us great as a nation, and in doing so we have set a sure and certain course that will lead directly and decisively to our own destruction.  We’ve forgotten who we are.  We’ve forgotten who we’ve been called to be.  We’ve forgotten.

And until we refuse to stoop to the duplicity of political panhandling, until we refuse to allow party posturing to be the stuff that defines our legacy, until we refuse to be self-seduced slaves to our self-serving agendas, until we refuse to be duped by the arrogance of our self-aggrandizing policies, until we are sufficiently brave to step up and restore the ethics and morals that will demand everything of us, until we reinstate truth despite what it is certain to reveal about us…until we do all of that, we will continue to forget who we are, and who we’ve been called to be.  And the consequence of that kind of forgetfulness is irreversible.

Rejecting Foolishness

And should we be foolish enough to think that we can forget those things and somehow survive the forgetting (or even somehow flourish in it), we as a nation will perish in our foolishness.  Our time as a nation will be no more.  And should we believe that forgetting doesn’t matter, that these permissive behaviors will somehow build a greater nation, if we are foolish enough to believe any of that, we will eventually find ourselves standing in the ashes of who we used to be, and we will find ourselves willing to do anything to undo the horror of what we will have done.  But the greatest horror of all is that at that point, it will be too late to do anything.

And so, let’s not forget who we are, and let’s not forget who we’ve been called to be.  Let’s not forget before it becomes too late to forget.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

The post We Forget – Remembering Who We Are as Americans appeared first on Craig Lounsbrough.

“Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’”
– Isaiah 30:21

A detour that holds itself out as the road from which it deviated is a path to regret.  Yet, it seems that we embrace such deceptions and spend more time on the detours of life than the road of life itself.  Many of those detours lure us down their path with promises of ease and self-gratification that the road doesn’t offer us.  In some instances we believed the detour to be a strategic shortcut that would position us ahead of the fools who decided to stick to the road.  It may have been that the detour was easier to walk and more permissive in the walking.  Perhaps it was the path of the gullible that appeared to be the path of the wise simply because so many were heading down it.  However it happens, we walk them.

The Consequences of the Detours
Therefore, we betray our conscience and spend our lives fleeing from a regret that we can’t outrun.  We make self-serving choices that we end up serving until the best of everything that we are is expended in the serving.  The love that breathed life into a precious relationship is smothered to a death from which we cannot resuscitate it.  Careers collapse in a heap of passion turned to ash with decades of sacrifice dissipating as smoke in an insensitive wind.  We plummet into the cold abyss of isolation.  Addictions take root.  Hope becomes a myth.  Depression a companion.  Faith elusive.

Detours As the Necessity of Easter
Detours are paths to regret.  Therefore, detours taken necessitated Easter happening.  Easter is the answer to the fall-out of our foolish choices.  It is the redemption of the detours that we should have never taken and it is the sole remedy to the irreversible consequences of taking just such journeys.  Easter is regret hamstrung so that it can no longer give chase.  It is liberation from serving our mistakes.  It is relationships resuscitated. It is being thrust out of the abyss.  It is ash and smoke becoming nothing more than the stuff of fires long extinguished so that we can light fresh fires that give life instead of kill it.

Easter does not change history.  Rather, it transforms what history does to us and what the future can do for us.  Easter is addictions ripped out at the roots, hope as reality, depression as foiled, and faith as a brilliant actuality.  It is the incontestable reversal to everything that every detour ever did to us.  It is the impact of our history reversed irreversibly.  And if that weren’t enough, Easter is the empowerment to run the road of life at a pace so rigorous and joyous that detours become the hindrances that are stripped of their appeal.  Easter is our worst mistakes turned to our greatest assets because of a God whose commitment to new beginnings was so immovable that He sent His Son to die so that we could have them.

Easter is our mistakes mercilessly slain.  It is hope actuated by the fact that this man named Jesus was Himself mercilessly slain.  Yet, He reversed His own murder by walking out of a tomb in a colossal reversal of everything that had defined mankind’s existence.  Because of that historically defining reversal, nothing in the whole of this existence of ours is held hostage to that which it has been held hostage to.  No detour is irreversible.  No consequence is permanent.

This is Easter
Easter is Jesus’ walking down the detours of life, not as some gullible fool bent on some haphazard agenda as we had been.  Rather, He walks as the rescuer of those who are lost in the morass of the detours that they have stumbled down.  This Jesus’ brings us out, sets our feet squarely on the road, points ahead and says, “This is the way; walk in it.”  And that first step is a radical yet entirely pure redefining of everything that our detours have done to us and what the future will now be for us.  This is the glory, the majesty, and the privilege that Easter holds out to us.  This is the road upon which detours die and consequences find no footing.  This is the road of liberation and restoration.  This is the road that was made for us and us for it.  Easter is this road.  So walk it, for you will find none better.

 

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Over the years I have written an extensive array of books, articles, blogs and quotes. During special times of the year, I search these writings for quotes to both enrich and enlarge our celebration of that particular season.

For Father’s Day, I have selected a handful of quotations that express the power and importance of being a father.  In a culture that has too often forsaken the role of parents in the lives of their children, these quotes dutifully and unashamedly reassert those roles.

May father’s everywhere be emboldened, enriched and encouraged in their vitally important role as fathers.

Father’s Day Quotes

“If a father does not altogether embrace a life of uncompromised sacrifice as the core of all principles by which he nurtures his children, he is a father by birth only and no power on earth can ever or will ever make that sufficient.”

“To lead solely on the behalf of those being led is the utter pinnacle of fatherhood, and it is sad that so few ever stand on the summit.”

“A parent holds within their hands the gift of a child to which they must expend the gift of themselves. And in such a monumental outpouring, the parent will lose both the child and the gifts given, but they will possess the far greater gift of knowing that they gave both.”

“A father teaches his children that the battle is not determined by the enemy that stands around them, but by the God Who stands within them. And that lesson can only be driven home as they watch their father stand around them, while God stands within their father.”

“Every parent is an artist, for the bared canvas of a newborn’s soul begs for the artist’s touch. And because this is so, a parent must prepare the palette with the utmost care, choose the brushes with poised caution, and mindfully attend to every brushstroke regardless of how slight. And such caution is utterly imperative for the emerging rendering will be both a legacy borne of the parent, and a life lived by the child.”

“The father who has selflessly poured himself into the life of his children may leave no other monument than that of his children. But as for a life well lived, no other monument is necessary.”

“The child you hold in your arms is your gift to a future that you will not see. Therefore, we must turn a blind eye to ourselves and selflessly pour the best of ourselves into our children while rigorously sifting out the worst of ourselves. And once we are utterly spent by such daring gestures, we will shockingly discover the resulting emptiness as astonishingly filled.”

“A ‘good’ father will tenderly cultivate his children. But a ‘good’ father who is also a ‘brave’ father will let the children without cultivate the child within.”

“If we fail to instill a fixed sense of confidence in our children, we will raise handicapped children who have no handicap other than the conviction that they believe they do.”

“If as an adult I have scolded and then silenced the child within me, I contend that I am neither an adult nor a child. Rather, I am just plain ignorant.”

“The clash is born of the fact that the child within me sees with undiluted clarity what the adult within me is incessantly working to deny. And in these most vexing moments, to be the adult is to defer to the child.”

“The difference between a ‘man’ and a ‘father’ is that the former shares his genes, but latter gives his life.”

The post Father’s Day Quotes to Enrich Your Holiday appeared first on Craig Lounsbrough.