Norman Doidge is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, researcher at the University of Toronto, and author of "The Brain that Changes Itself." He tells Anne Strainchamps about so-called "wobblers" - people whose balance mechanism in the brain has been destroyed and how the brain can rewire itself to repair all kinds of damage. To the Best of Our Knowledge, Section 1 of THE MALLEABLE MIND, Program 07-08-05-A

I caught the tail end of this interview where he finally says "everything we do changes our brain." That is what they have discovered with meditation so the moral is "Keep it up." It is funny that the LSD guy follows this on the radio show. I think this is much more profound.

Apologists

"So we see that as the culture and ideas changed, so too the apologists adapted their method and their goal. First apologists seek to describe Christianity accurately, then to contend for it philosophically, and finally try to prove it unequivocally."

I saw this in the blog entry Apomogetics by Steve Knight from Emergent Village. I found it an interesting quote because we have a person from our congregation seeking eventual ordination. He sometimes emphasizes certain points that come close to attacking some of the theological ideas I find valuable to me.

"McLaren begins this book in his usual way - Christianity is broke and needs fixing. He paraphrases a quote by Dr. Peter Senge, that Christianity has become a system of belief in a world that is searching for a way of life. Brian also expresses one of his familiar dismays with the modern church - the emphasis on life after death at the expense of life on earth." Finding Our Way Again by Brian McLaren by Tom McCool in Oubache Cohort

These are themes that are familiar to me from Marcus Borg, nice to find them here. More ideas for reading here and in the blog sidebar.

At the end of each chapter, Brian offers the reader some spiritual exercises that can be used individually or in a group. For instance, after the chapter titled Practicing The Way Of Jesus, Brian asks the reader, "To what degree would you describe yourself as a 'Jesus-y' person? What is the story behind your answer?"

Interesting, maybe I will end up doing some of these exercises at church one day.

"When you see a fly flitting around your hair, or your potato salad, you might see an annoyance," Michael Dickinson says. "But in my lab you really see a marvelous machine, arguably the most sophisticated flying device on the planet." from NPR Morning Edition, August 29, 2008, Flies In Danger Escape With Safety Dance, by Joe Palca

I was reminded once more what an amazing world we live in. These annoying creatures have to be studied with high-speed cameras to be able to understand what they do. All like is sacred.

Dictionary.com comes up with some great "Words of the Day." I liked today's word, "peregrination." That is similar to another favorite word, peripatetic, that was an earlier title of this blog (scroll to bottom).

Wendell Berry's 1977 book, The Unsettling of America, had an lifelong impact on me. I have wanted to mention the influence of mentors/authors in this blog. I saw this old article in Grist so I am adding it here. I will try to write more about the specifics of why I found his writing so compelling. It was just about a year ago, I blogged about this interview.

Being religious today often entails actively and purposefully building or rebuilding a community, not simply joining the one you were born into. Against The Grain by Dick Meyer, Community, Choice And Faith, NPR.org August 7, 2008

Another interesting article from NPR. I am thinking about our church as we seek to be welcoming and more faithful. How much of a community is there?

Found another online dictionary,
your dictionary.com with a more complete definition of "afflatus."
June 24, 2008
Afflatus (noun)

Pronunciation: [ê-'fley-tês]

Definition: A strong creative impulse from a muse or higher power, divine or supernatural inspiration.

Usage: The adjective for today's word is "afflatitious" but it has also inspired a more regular family with essentially the same meaning: afflate "to blow upon or inspire" and its noun, afflation "inspiration from mysterious higher powers."

Suggested Usage: An afflatus is usually divine, "Collette played the Bach fugues under divine afflatus as we all sat in awe." However, the ultimate test of an afflatus is simply whether it springs from the supernatural, "Arlene must have been under a Satanic afflatus when she agreed to host her husband's office party."

Etymology: Latin afflatus, the past participle of afflare "to blow on" from ad-, (up) to + flare "to blow." The same connection between blowing and inspiration is seen in "inspiration" itself, based on a Latin word meaning to blow in or inhale. The Proto-Indo-European root from which "flare" derives is *bhle-/*bhlo- which shows little change in Modern English "blow." The same root, though, underlies "bladder," perhaps because of the Celts' proclivity to blow into bladders to make music (as in bag-pipes). Nor is it coincidental that blowhards blather—the stems share the same origin. In Latin, however, the initial [bh] became [f] and this root ended up in a word (flare "to blow") that marks blowing at both ends: as in today's word and, again, in "flatulent."