This is better than you realize

This week a friend and I are writing Psalm 23 as though it were written from the Lord to us (which of course it is, but we are switching the vantage point). This is for the sake of deeper meditation and deeper personalization--to plumb more deeply what is being said and that it is being said to us.

After a few miscues with my erratic fountain pen, I was able to pen my version.

Because of the familiarity of this Psalm, I won't enter it here. You can click on the link above and it will magically open in a new window using technology, electricity and the "world wide web". 

Enjoy!

When Do We Get Smaller?

I was listening to a wonderful episode of This American Life called Kid Logic (you should listen to it). It featured a number of stories about the unusual conclusions kids come to as they seek to make sense of life. 

For example, a little girl gets on an airplane and sits next to an older lady. The plane accelerates and begins to lift off, and the girl looks at the woman and asks, "When do we get smaller?"

She'd seen enormous planes shrink into specks as they flew away. The only explanation was that they (and all those in them) became infinitesimal. I remembered an especially infuriating conversation with my daughter on this exact subject when she insisted that the plans flying over our house were teeny. 

This whole episode made me think of the adage, 

"Kids are amazing observers and terrible interpreters." 

The incredible thing is that some of our childish conclusions follow us stubbornly and subconsciously into adulthood.

This is what psychiatrist M. Scott Peck describes as transference ("The Outdated Map"):

Transference is that set of ways of perceiving and responding to the world which is developed in childhood and which is usually entirely appropriate to the childhood environment (indeed, often life-saving) but which is inappropriately transferred into the adult environment. (The Road Less Traveled) 

I thought about this, and came up with 5 myth/reality couplings to help us distinguish between what is real and the muddled impressionistic holdovers from our childhood. Hope they shed light for you.