The Modest Miracle

Some people say they like spirituality but not religion.   Some people say they're spiritual, but they don't believe in God.   I don't think they realize what that means. Yes, that's right.   I'm here to tell you that some people believe in God more than they think they do. The first question to consider isn't, "Do you believe in God?"   It is, "Do you believe in love?" The answer may seem obvious to the point of ridiculousness, but for many groups of people it isn't.   I should first clarify what I mean by love.   Love is wanting another person's wellbeing, interests, and happiness more than you want your own. There was (and still is) a group of Psychologists in the United States called the Behaviorists that basically rolled off the altogether real human tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain.   The problem was that they believed that that was all humans did.   They were simply input-output machines th

A change is a decision that a person makes. No one can force them to change.   Other people can only make them adjust their behavior to respond to the circumstances they thrust upon them.   People only truly change because they want to.   They want to change because the object of their love inspires them to seek transformation.   Their seeking leads them to think and act in different ways. When people think and act in new ways long enough, it changes what they want.   Their new desires lead them to love what they love more deeply.   People transform because of what they love. Love builds up.   When it reprimands, it prunes.   It destroys only in a way that creates.   Any effort to convince others to improve without love is doomed to failure.    EXAMPLE:   if a person sees someone acting intolerantly towards a member of another ethnicity, gender, or religion, it is completely ineffective to pressure them, angrily if necessary, into shaping up.  

The absolute deepest life experience is giving up one's life for someone else.   This isn't merely a more extreme version of normal experiences, a stretching of familiar emotions to unfamiliar magnitudes; it is another creature entirely.   It is to go from carving out sturdy, well crafted anthills of customary kind words or actions to forging mountain ranges on other planets.   Technically both deal with the same material, but the difference between the two is so great that using the same terminology interchangeably no longer makes sense.           There is a significant difference in importance between what exists at the core and periphery of a person's life.   A person may be calloused and rough around the edges but hide a heart of gold.   Another might choose a career devoted to the wellbeing of the vulnerable but deeper down be fixated on their own personal interests.   When the core of our lives is not focused on others, we are trapped

I'm not an artist.   But one day during the final months of high school, I tried to be.           More on that later.           We commonly tell people to "believe in themselves."   But "believe in yourself" is a phrase that doesn't mean anything without context.   Believe that your can do what?   Succeed in life?   Accomplish your dreams?   Certainly.   But to me that kind of belief is a kind of first stage, a stepping stone to something higher.             The limitation of the aforementioned goals is that they are centered on the person undertaking them and thus are, in one stretch of the definition, self-centered.   They aren't selfish, necessarily, but they focus entirely on the individual and so lose the soul-expanding opportunity to reach outward to others.           No, to me belief in myself is tied to my ability to help other people in meaningful ways.   We don't see much of the full impact of our actions on other people,