This is an audio version of Mike Murphy‘s Friday rumblings. This is a regular post on Facebook that I’ve turned into a podcast. I decided Mike’s words needed a wider audience. You may agree or disagree with what he says, but there is certainly much food for thought contained here. You can friend Mike on Facebook for the printed version or read it below.

Rumblings. 10.21.22 

1. “The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a [person’s] life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he/she presents to the world, and to bring out his/her inner spiritual freedom, his/her inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his/her soul.” ~ Thomas Merton

I do spiritual direction. I go to a spiritual director. We all need help going beyond the facade that all too often defines our lives. Self honesty needs to be encouraged. Confession needs to be normalized. Freedom needs to be found. The likeness of Christ in our soul needs to be coaxed out.

2. “Francis of Assisi came to know the God of humble love by meditating on and imitating the poor and humble Christ.” ~ Ilia Delio, CAC

It’s important that we don’t succumb to the temptation of molding Jesus into our image and likeness. Unfortunately, that’s often what happens. That Jesus often demands next to nothing and validates, all too often, every step we take, even when it is rude and crude. There is, however, something life giving that happens when we grow close to the real Jesus. It changes us.

3. The cartoon by Dave Waymond was of a mother and two daughters walking. They were dressed in Handmaids Tale garb. The oldest of the two daughters asks her mother: “But why didn’t you vote against them? Why didn’t you try to stop them from taking it all away?”

Mom responded: “Well, back then gas prices were quite high honey …?”

Mike Ditka (hard to believe I’m quoting him) once said: “You get in life what you’re willing to tolerate.”

So, what are you willing to tolerate or not tolerate? 

My answer is simple. Despite feeling an economic pinch I won’t lose my mind about it. And because I’m choosing to remain sane, my precious vote this year is going to be cast against those with authoritarian goals. I won’t vote for the contrived  ‘grievances’ of that crowd which is hell bent on eroding confidence in our form of governance and believe that anointing a leader is far better than electing one. I can’t tolerate such things 

4. Satirist Andy Borowitz nailed it with this headline.

“Tucker Carlson Warns That Alex Jones’s Billion-Dollar Penalty Will Have Chilling Effect on Lying.”

And then this punchline. “The Fox News host called the jury’s decision a “direct attack on the lying lifestyle.”

Alex Jones is still telling lies and fundraising off of those lies. That’s who he is. That’s what he does. What I can’t get my head around is that people are still giving him boatloads of cash? Who are these people and when and how did they lose their moral compass? And why do I think they all watch FOX News?”

5. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” ~ Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

6. “At the last meeting of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, as Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) showed that former president Trump both recognized that he had lost the election and intended to leave the White House, he noted that on November 11, just four days after Democrat Joe Biden had been declared the winner of the 2020 election, Trump had abruptly ordered U.S. troops to leave Somalia and Afghanistan by January 15 … Kinzinger’s point was that Trump clearly knew he was leaving office because he was deliberately trying to create chaos for his successor.” ~ Heather Cox Richardson

Creating chaos for his successor is nothing to applaud. How many lives were lost and how much instability was thrust upon people all over the world? And it’s all because one very immature man couldn’t accept the fact that the American people didn’t choose him to be president again. 

Will #45 honor the subpoena the January 6 Committee issues? Of course not. Why? Plain and simple. He lacks the courage and maturity to honestly face both his words and the consequences of his actions. Don’t forget people died on January 6. He doesn’t want any part of that guilty verdict. 

7. “The prophets were always these wonderful people who went to wounded places. They went to where the suffering was, to the people who were excluded from the system. They saw through the idolatries at the center of the system because those who are excluded from the system always reveal the operating beliefs of that system. Speaking the truth for the sake of healing and wholeness is then prophetic because the “powers that be” that benefit from the system cannot tolerate certain revelations. They cannot tolerate the truths that the marginalized—the broken, the wounded, and the homeless—always reveal.

Are we willing to take the risk and become prophets ourselves? It’s not that we get to preach or speak hard words and then feel justified and righteous when we are excluded. It’s that we experience some level of exclusion or heartbreak, and then we have the inner authority to preach what may sound like hard words. Sadly, they will sound like very harsh and even unfair words to people who have never been on the edge, or the bottom, or who have never suffered. The prophets always bring the sufferers to the center.” ~ Center for Action and Contemplation

What a deep and penetrating question. Are we willing to take the risk and become prophets ourselves?

8. The GOP candidate for Governor in Arizona has indicated she will accept election results only if she is elected. There are 298 other election deniers on ballots throughout the land. 

What could possibly go wrong? 

9. Great prayer. Linger a bit in each pause.

Be still and know I am God. (pause)

Be still and know I am (pause)

Be still and know (pause)

Be still (pause)

Be (pause)

Be still (pause)

Be still and know (pause)

Be still and know I am. (pause)

Be still and know I am God. (pause)

10. “I became, during my fourteenth year, for the first time in my life, afraid – afraid of the evil within me and afraid of the evil without.” ~ James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

I can’t name the year but somewhere along the line (much later than it should have been) I was forced to come to grips with the depth of the dysfunction within my own life that was showing itself and it scared me and I worried that it scared others.

At various times, this current political moment being one of them, I have felt afraid. I shiver a bit just thinking about it.

It’s a good thing to come to grips with our own tendencies toward evil (I prefer the word dysfunction, even though evil is probably the better word). It’s even a better thing to wrestle with those tendencies and subdue them. 

The “evil without” is something else altogether. It’s a bit unwieldy. One person, alone, can’t wrestle it to submission. But I’m betting that together we can.