Meanderings, 10 August 2024

The Olympics were wonderful. I loved the Track and Field events, including the women’s and men’s 100 meters, the Pole Vault, the men’s and women’s 1500, and the amazing Sydney McLauglin-Nevrone, who begins today’s Meanderings.

U.S. track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who broke her own world record and won the gold medal in the 400-meter hurdles event at the Olympics in Paris on Thursday, has often credited her success to God.

After having dominated the competition in the U.S. Olympic trials earlier this year and qualifying for the Paris games, McLaughlin-Levrone shared both her amazement in and gratitude to God.

“Honestly, praise God! I was not expecting that, but he can do anything,” she shared at the time. “Anything is possible in Christ. So yeah, I’m just amazed, baffled, and in shock.”

McLaughlin-Levrone, a devout Christian who attended Union Catholic High School in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, often references Scripture and gives thanks to God in interviews and across social media.

Sister Percylee Hart, McLaughlin-Levrone’s former principal at Union Catholic, spoke with CNA in 2022 about her pride in her former student, stating that the track star had “stepped up to the call to be that instrument for faith on the biggest stage in the world.”

“Her spontaneity at the end of her victory when she praised God and gave all the glory to God translates to me that she is God’s instrument for being a power for good worldwide,” Hart continued. “We are all called to become all God calls us to be, and be good people, and Sydney models that, and affirms that with her messages about faith.” …

McLaughlin-Levrone shared how she glorifies God on the track by “running with all my mind and body,” because running “was the gift God gave me to use, and by using it to the best of my ability and humbly redirecting the attention to him, he would be glorified.”

Decades:

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A Tampa volunteer is committed to helping the city’s homebound, disabled and elderly.

Veronica Sanchez has been delivering food for Meals on Wheels for two decades. Every Thursday, she loads food into her car and drives one of the 112 local routes. The organization prepares 2,000 meals every day.

The 20-year volunteer takes pride in helping community members stay strong, healthy and independent.

“It’s the difference we make in the lives of seniors and the homebound, people in our community who are some of the most vulnerable and also, who helped build this community. To be able to give to them in their time of need, for me, is very important,” explains Sanchez.

Meals on Wheels is constantly recruiting new volunteers to help accomplish their mission. Information about volunteering is available on the organization’s website: Meals On Wheels of Tampa (mowtampa.org)

Why people don’t retire:

We found that making the retirement decision means grappling with three psychological issues. First, identity issues can loom large for any deeply engaged professional. Even a small step away from their career can make them wonder who they are without it. One interviewee felt a disturbing identity loss after reducing his work week by just one day: “Now it’s like… I’m only four-fifths of a software engineer. So, is this changing my identity?” Many study participants successfully navigated this challenge by “identity bridging,” finding a way to retain some essential pieces of their career identity into retirement – like a company leader who took up a leadership position in his religious congregation after retiring.

Second, many older professionals resist leaving meaningful work, where each day brings a sense of purpose, contribution to something that matters, and progress toward important goals – especially if they lack a clear sense of what’s next. Several of our interviewees used phrases like “leaping into the void” or “jumping off a cliff.” One who struggled with the decision for years said, “I’ve always been, like, ‘What’s next, what’s next, what’s next?’ And I feel that what’s next is finally not about work. But I don’t quite know what the ‘what’s next’ is.” People who made the decision more easily could at least envision an appealing way to spend their time post-retirement.

The third big psychological issue is dread of losing the strong relationships that accumulate over the course of a long, successful career. Such relationships often carry a heady sense of being needed and respected by hundreds, thousands, even millions of people. A senior manager at a tech company, who’d left a likely promotion to business unit leader when she decided to retire, described the shock of that transition: “I went from being the center of attention and everything for a lot of people, and a little bit the entertainer of an audience, to invisible. That’s a big jump.”

Yes, a thousand times Yes, and it was Kris’s grandmother who got me identifying and naming birds (and the author might love Israel’s version of the kingfisher):

It was my great grandmother who started it all. One Christmas, when I was a young boy, she gave me a little green bird book with a pair of cheap plastic yellow binoculars: a beginner’s birdwatching set. I was immediately captivated by this gift. A new world of discovery had been opened up in front of me and I grasped the opportunity with both hands. Thus began the journey I am still on, a journey that has taken me far and wide in God’s magnificent creation: the journey of identifying – naming – every bird that I see.

Early in my explorations, one bird enthralled me like no other: the kingfisher. Perhaps it was because this species featured prominently on the front cover of my bird book, but I prefer to think that this enchantment was kindled simply by beauty. The kingfisher, with its electric blue and rich orange plumage is arguably the most stunning of all British birds. In any case, I had to see it. My earliest childhood memories consist of riverside walks with my parents, searching for the elusive bird. Time and time again, I came home disappointed. The kingfishers were, apparently, doing their best to hide from me. In the meantime, though, I added many species to my ever-growing repertoire of sightings and filled my bird guide with satisfying check marks next to the species names. But the page with the kingfisher remained empty.

I still have that little green bird guide, filled with its misshapen childhood check marks and illegible hand-scribbled notes, hidden safely away inside my memory box. Although I have now moved on to more advanced field guides, replete with many more species, this first guide will always hold a special place in my heart. For it was this book that taught me a precious skill – a skill that I am still developing as I walk in the woods, estuaries, and fields near my home in the south of England. It is the skill of identification, the skill of naming.

This skill requires keen powers of observation. Slight differences in wing pattern or eyebrow color may differentiate a rarity from a more common cousin. You need a good memory, too, to be able to hold the names and distinctive features of any of the hundred or so species that can be encountered on a day out in the British countryside. Whereas many of my companions on a walk are content with enjoying the view, my eyes are constantly darting back and forth, instinctively seeking out every flight between the trees and every speck in the sky, my ears attuned to every rustle in the bushes. I ask each bird the same question: “What is your name?” My hobby has opened new worlds of discovery that make every walk in the countryside unique, for who knows what rarities might turn up on this walk?

Riffing on Renita Weems, one of whose books shaped my thinking about the image of women in the Bible, Aimee Byrd quotes Weems and then ponders:

“Injustice in our lands relies upon the perpetual alienation of women from one another and upon relentless hostility between women. Indeed, our estrangement from one another continues to compromise the integrity of our witness as God-fearing women.”

Because:

“If we don’t, who will?”

I just wanted to clap after that chapter. And yet I fall so short of keeping my eyes on the very beauty I discover. So much of my work has focused on the meaningfulness of woman. Our sexuality points to the peace of the final sabbath, of people and place: Zion, God’s beloved. God’s dwelling place with his people. When will we know this in our bones? When will we understand our own power to love? And when will we know the privilege of sisterhood? Women, how do you feel about being a woman?

God revealed this to Hagar. She is the first person to name God in Scripture, the only person in the Hebrew Bible who gives God a name, El Roi, “The God who sees me” (Gen. 16:3).

What if we can know this beholding? What if we can look at ourselves and one another like this: seen by God? What if that is what it feels like to be a woman? What if we are just a sister away from healing and love? What if you are that sister today?

There’s a lot in this thread by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, so here it is:

Which is to say, I’ve been thinking about truth and integrity in conservative evangelical spaces long before Basham’s book came out. Over the weekend, I decided to put some of my thoughts in a thread on X. It’s already garnered around 150k views and is clearly speaking to many people’s experience, so I thought I’d share it here as well.

There is much more to be done to uncover the history that has brought us to this place. But here’s a sense of the basic contours:

For decades, conservative evangelical power brokers defined "truth" in terms of what advanced their idea of Truth--which neatly aligned w/ their own agenda.
They founded institutions, organizations, publishers, & media platforms to advance, defend, and perpetuate this Truth.

They platformed writers who amplified pre-determined narratives. They shunned, de-platformed, and cast out those who questioned these Truths. They educated kids to debate, feeding them pre-established talking points. They replaced disciplinary expertise with in-house apologetics.

They denounced "postmodernism," "situational ethics," and relativism of all types while advancing "presuppositionalism" and its derivatives and contrasting the "Christian worldview" with "secular" error. Since all Truth was God's Truth, only Christians* had access to that Truth. To all Truth.

*(Not all Christians, of course. Just Christians who alligned with their views on everything they deemed significant.)

They elevated "inerrancy" & kept tight control over which verses got "inerrant" treatment, which got explained away, & who got to decide. They concocted a "biblical" brand to end inquiry before it began. They built entire industries propagating Truth, vigilantly manning the gates.

All was (mostly) well and good as long as these tactics were wielded against outsiders: "secular humanists," liberals, feminists, Democrats, the "gay agenda," "the Left," "the woke," etc.
When you have Truth on your side, the ends will always justify the means. Any means.

Many well-meaning, truth-seeking Christians grew up in this system. Many perpetuated it. Many still do. Many well-meaning, truth-seeking Christians ran up against it. Often inadvertently. Many were stunned to find themselves demonized, shunned, cast aside. For telling the truth.

Now we're watching these tactics turned against conservative evangelicals themselves. No, those leading the charge aren't taking on "the Left." It's a page out of the classic authoritarian playbook: attack "in-group moderates" (fellow conservative Christians), neutralize them, shift the center, seize power.

The problem is, after decades of embracing propaganda at the expense of rigorous truth-telling, careful reasoning, and good faith engagement, conservative evangelicals now under attack are ill-prepared to fight back.
This is the fruit of the scandal of the evangelical mind.

Conservative evangelicals now targeted are by no means the first to feel the brunt of this system. Many, many others bear wounds.

What we're watching is a battle for the hearts & minds of evangelicals. But truth & integrity probably won't win it.