A Gen X thinking she has something valuable to teach the world

A raging misogynist listens to people their utopian visions for a perfect society but has the impression to belong to the completely invisible generation, we also sometimes call the baby bust generation, or MTV Generation. Being part of the generation born between 1965 and 1980, after the baby boomer generation, she might feel somewhat ignored as a “middle child” generation or Gen X.

Her impression is:

Our parents were the boomers, our children are the millennials, and we ourselves have been written right out of the story. We don’t exist at all.

Crying In My Avocado Toast

It is true the baby boomers may look at the MTV generation (a reference to the music video channel) as the “latchkey generation,” which stems from those kids who returned from school to an empty home and needed to use the door key, or sometimes even not having a key to the frontdoor, having to wait outside until the parents came home, or climbing up to the first floor to enter the house.

Sometimes those kids were characterized as slackers, cynical, disaffected and listening to degenerative music such as punk, post-punk, heavy metal, grunge, grindcore and glued to cable television.

She probably lives in a country where the elder people having to take care of the kids had very strange ways to do that. Though we think it was probably by Gen X parents themselves that the younger Gen X-ers found concrete put under the play toys. Those young parents, having poured concrete under the swings, so their kids wouldn’t track mud into the buildings. Because the baby boomers would prefer their kids to play in the parks and sandbox, climbing trees, etc.. I can not see our generation to put sharpened bird spikes on teeter totters, so kids would not walk across the middle of them, or perhaps this might have been an American problem. Tthe article writer telling us:

Lawn darts were actually a thing, as in let’s give kids these heavy weighted darts to throw at one another in the backyard. {Crying In My Avocado Toast}

The writer of the article was actually nearly 50 yrs old before she learned adulting was actually something you do and not just a state of being. We have no idea why she seems to have spent years yelling at God for having abandoned her on a penal colony planet full of psychotic people. Perhaps she called for the wrong god.

Also that the person has the idea that she has been pushed out of the conversation, may be from a generation conflict, baby boomers thinking they as hippies got misunderstood by the next generation, which the baby boomers considered oh so conservative and swallowing everything the government chewed them up.

The “X” refers to an unknown variable or to a desire not to be defined, and that, not wanting to show a clear face, was something which annoyed the baby boomers who wanted to see people with a clear impression and strong voice. Perhaps the free choice of baby boomers having them divorced leaving Gen X as a weapon or as somebody to fight for, made them so silent.

An other problem of the women, still connected with a partner or coming to live on their own, or having changed partner, was those boomer women wanting to be more independent and going into the labour force, that began in the 1970s, and got marked by the confidence of many in their ability to successfully pursue a career while meeting the needs of their children, but putting their children next to their career. This perhaps made some Gen X children feel like they were not really wanted or neglected by their parents. Others, in turn, took advantage of this to make their divorced parents pay handsomely for them by pitting them against each other or outdoing them.

Gen X forms the demographic bridge between the predominantly white baby boomers and the more diverse millennials. They also fall in the middle of other demographic measures. For instance, their political attitudes also fit between those for what many consider the more conservative Baby Boomers and the more liberal Millennials.

Growing up in a time of two-income families and rising divorce rates we can see that several of the Gen X made a totally different world for them than their parents and grandparents.

There was no mother to provide lunch or tea and help them with their projects. They had to get on with things as best they could. These characteristics have translated into an appreciation for independence in the workplace preferring to do their work as they see fit and detesting micro-management.

Generation X questions authority. They prefer an informal work environment Gen X managers often create innovative workspaces like coffee lounges and coworking spaces for their workers. The work-hard-and-play-hard mentality is attributed to them.

They now shall have to struggle with the millennial generation or Generation Y, (meaning those born between 1981–96) and Generation Z, also called Gen Z, zoomers, iGeneration, centennials, post-millennials, or Homelanders.

A culture of “democratic cleansing” – Elders and youngsters versus respect

The generation born between 1930 and 1960 had no choice but to listen to father‘s law and do as we were told.

Father’s will is Law!

When we asked

Why?

We got a very short but very well to understand answer.

Therefore!

Now those generations from before the 1960s have become the “oldies”.

We live with the thought that we taught some good and interesting things to our kids, but sometimes seem to wonder what they did with what we taught them and what went wrong with the present generation.

What did we do wrong?

For sure, though we did not always agree with our parents, and dared to go on the streets in 1968 to question our way of living and our society, we always still showed respect for our parents and grandparents. In many cases, there were no great-grandparents. Our grandparents, to us, looked already

so old

at an age that we now already survived a few years.

Unlike our parents, we taught our children to dare to question everything and not just accept or consider everything.

John Humphrys in the Daily Telegraph of 26 December 2022 wonders if he perhaps had a ridiculous dream.

Well yes, and a bit of a nightmare too. I can’t think of anything much worse than my kids sitting in respectful silence while I bang on.

At home and at school we learned courtesy rules. But what is left of it? Some of the things we learned, such as keeping the door open for ladies, are not always anymore appreciated but are viewed as a sexist attitude.

Humphrys writes

If I’ve taught them anything at all – pretty unlikely I know – it’s that healthy scepticism beats the pants off reverence. Always has. Always will.

And yet… maybe just the teeniest smattering of respect might not come amiss? Possibly not boys doffing their caps to ladies in the street as my school ordered us do. After all, who wears caps nowadays? (And is ‘ladies’ sexist? What if they’re trans?)

But perhaps an acknowledgement that we oldies just might have picked up some useful stuff during our decades of experience on this planet that could come in useful? That’s tricky in today’s climate. Just that word “experience” is fraught. It has to be a “lived” experience now and I’m not sure I know what that is.

We have also been brought up to check the past and present and to seek the truth each time.

Our parents taught us that if we did not know something, we should go and look it up in the encyclopaedias provided. Those writers were expected to have undergone sufficient schooling and presented well-founded articles under editorial authority to inform the reader and provide further knowledge. We found it great to find such reference works that contained information on all branches of knowledge or that treated a particular branch of knowledge in a comprehensive manner.

For more than 2,000 years encyclopaedias have existed as summaries of extant scholarship in forms comprehensible to their readers. But in the last two decades, we saw several well-known encyclopaedias disappearing from the market.

At our house, the 1968 Encyclopaedia Britannica, as the oldest English-language general encyclopaedia, was just one of the many other encyclopaedias we could use daily.

The researchers and authors and publishers of encyclopaedias had to face technological changes, beginning in the 1980s with the development and spread of personal computers. It really became a world that opened up, making it possible to look up documents from all over the world. The computer business evolved so fast, quickening in the 1990s and 2000s through the Internet and widespread diffusion of broadband access, it radically altered the publishing world generally and the encyclopaedia business in particular.

The 15th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (1974), was designed in large part to enhance the role of an encyclopaedia in education and understanding without detracting from its role as a reference book. It represented very much the way we were brought up, finding it necessary to educate and to spread knowledge. Its three parts (Propædia, or Outline of Knowledge; Micropædia, or Ready Reference and Index; and Macropædia, or Knowledge in Depth) represented an effort to design an entire set on the understanding that there is a circle of learning and that an encyclopaedia’s short informational articles on the details of matter within that circle as well as its long articles on general topics must all be planned and prepared in such a way as to reflect their relation to one another and to the whole of knowledge.
For those who wanted to learn more or wished to delve deeper into a particular fact or topic, the Propædia became a great help for self-study. The propaedia was a reader’s version of the circle of learning on which the set had been based and was organised in such a way that a reader might reassemble in meaningful ways material that the accident of alphabetisation had dispersed.

In 1981, under an agreement with Mead Data Central, the first digital version of the Encyclopædia Britannica was created for the LexisNexis service. In the early 1990s Britannica was made available for electronic delivery on a number of CD-ROM-based products, including the Britannica Electronic Index and the Britannica CD (providing text and a dictionary, along with proprietary retrieval software, on a single disc). A two-disc CD was released in 1995, featuring illustrations and photos; multimedia, including videos, animations, and audio, was added in 1997.

John Humphrys seems to find it a waste of money that his parents scrimped to pay a weekly shilling to the Encyclopaedia Britannica door-to-door salesman so that they as kids would always have the world’s knowledge at their fingertips.

He gives the impression that those modern machines and the evolution of artificial intelligence is one of the many reasons why respect between the generations matters.

We do admit that many young people do not understand how the elderly can or cannot handle today’s modern gadgets.

Millennials (born 1981-1996) tend to put the boomers (born post-war) into a category. Specifically, men. Usually “old white men”.

How come that usage is tolerated? Substitute “women” for men and it wouldn’t be. It would be sexist. Substitute “black” for white and it would be racist.

He observes

Those who once wore the badge of old age with a certain pride must now carefully guard their tongues less they cause offence, even when it’s patently obvious that none was intended. Was it necessary to humiliate Lady Susan Hussey when she was seemingly too curious about the origins of a black woman who was wearing a vivid tribal dress? Her offence, it turned out, was being old.

Getting old happens to all of us. How we deal with it is very different. But it is also very different from how outsiders deal with elders.
Especially in recent years, there has been an unpleasant skew there, with many viewing elders as a burden.
Similarly, few can empathise with the world of understanding of those elders who have been brought up with certain ways of thinking, some of which are also sometimes difficult to distance themselves from or continue to think stereotypically.

We all pursue dreams and shall one day be confronted with that older body, becoming aware that there is not only a tendency to forget people’s names, but having more than once looking for the right words, having forgotten (for a moment) certain things. And then in confrontation with the youngsters, they not always understand or want to give some time to get the memory back.

For some elderly it is also not evident to have to rely on others. And the children are not so pleased anymore to be a safety net for their parents, as we looked after our parents when they were already starting to reach a reasonable age. Some may be annoyued that those above 65 do not want to retire. It might be those in their 60s whose mind is fooling them in which case they will rely on others around them to let them know that it is time to retire.

How many times do those who passed the 50s have to hear from the youngsters that their ideas are old fashioned or that they are not anymore from these times? Many younger people find it not appropriate that the elderly are still pursuing ideas and aspirations. Is it a form of respect to accepting that they express their feelings as well as their dreams and aspirations?

Most young people don’t sense time as being a high-speed train, because for them it often looks ages, before there is another hour, another day. That makes them also to express their impatience so often. But then again, the fact that some elders become a bit too slow bothers those younger ones, in that it seems that that time is taken up by that elder, who then keeps them from renewing moments. Some younger ones do not mind letting the older ones know that it is time to retreat, or to get silent.

At a certain age, it can be that we feel that there has come a time we need to withdraw from the hurly-burly of the life we once knew. But it does not always feel so nice, when those younger people say it in our face. (We never would have dared to say such a thing to our elderly.)

In his book, The War On The Old, English literature professor John Sutherland wrote about what he called a culture of “democratic cleansing… a state-condoned campaign against the nation’s old”.

He describes an overwhelming sense of blame that younger generations attribute to “the wrinklies” who voted for Brexit, comfortable in the mansions they bought for a pittance. The once-dignified badge of seniority is becoming synonymous with “narrow-minded”, “outdated” and “incipiently senile”.
The elderly are bed-blockers, job-blockers, pension-drainers. {We used to respect our elders – whatever happened to that? by John Humphrys}

Normally, one went from one generation to the next with improvements, but today that no longer holds true. Today’s 30-year-olds have it much harder than their parents did. The age-old argument over which generation has had more advantages has been settled – at least where finances are concerned.

Adult life is harder to afford now than it was 30 years ago and it has forced today’s young to delay big life events, which tend to happen around this milestone age. Today’s generation are buying their first home two years later, having ­children three years later and getting married six to seven years later than they were in 1992. {Six reasons why boomers have it better than millennials by Jessica Beard}

Due to the pressures of the outside world, those in their twenties and thirties may have become a bit “shorter” in their statements, and it is not always easy for them to be patient with those older people who are, as it were, still watching them or ready with criticism.

Dependence on two earners can make taking time off to care for children ­trickier, and to care for older people, even more, trickier or not so wanted. So it should not always be viewed so negatively by the elderly when those young people now show a little less time than their parents who could make more time for their parents and grandparents.

Many today are so engrossed in their work and the expectations of fellow peers that they have little time left outside their work sphere for their own spiritual formation, religious pursuits and many family activities outside their own families.

It can well be that certain actions and reactions of youngsters are sometimes unjustly interpreted as respectless, or not showing enough respect. It must not be disrespectful, but just because of these other times with much more pressure on the youngsters, that the gap between young and old has widened somewhat today compared to previous decades.

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Preceding

A more recent discrimination: Old Age

A Cranky Old Man

Readers, likes and comments

Thought on the birthday of an encyclopaedia

Available information for the youngsters and readers of my websites

Redeeming Our World

The Way You Live Your Life

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan back with a bang

Mishmash of a legal code but importance of mitzvah or commandments

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Additional reading

1. Ageing and Solidarity between generations
2. Who is considered Old
3. Man in picture, seen from the other planets
4. Subcutaneous power for humanity 1 1940-1960 Influenced by horrors of the century
5. Justififiable anger or just anarchism
6. A trillion words
7. Looking at an era of international “youth culture”
8. Did the picture change for Working dads
9. Living in this world and viewing it
10. Hippies, a president, a damaged ozone layer and knights
11. This Week Twenty-Five Years Ago: The Velvet Revolution Succeeds, December 1989
12. Our brothers in Kyiv’s northwest suburb Irpin
13. Russia not wanting it neighbours countries to cooperate with the West
14. Left behind for economical emigration
15. 2014 Social contacts
16. 2014 Human Rights
17. Time to consider how to care for our common home
18. Welfare state and Poverty in Flanders #7 Education
19. Martin Luther King’s Dream Today
20. This fighting world, Zionism and Israel #5
21. Another Jewish Voice on Trump’s plan: No peace without equality and mutual respect
22. The truest greatness lies in being kind
23. Agape, a love to share with others from the Fruit of the Spirit
24. Approachers of ideas around gods, philosophers and theologians
25. Cleanliness and worrying or not about purity
26. Today’s thought “Teachers will be judged with greater strictness than others” (December 09)
27. Perspectives
28. Hungarian undermining of European freedoms

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Related

1. A reflective Morning
2. Time Hobbles On
3. Beautiful, she said
4. I am old.
5. Learning to be Old–5
6. The effects of just being you… Age.
7. When You Grow Old
8. The Age Old Question…
9. Ageism in the workplace
10. Life is Short
11. Pursuing dreams to stay young in mind
12. What We Need, in Order to, Age Gracefully
13. I Can’t Breath Through It All
14. Thirty Five Years and Old.
15. How to be Old
16. 75 And Counting
17. Age 90+
18. Stillness
19. Dealing with Age Discrimination: Workers’ rights and strategies
20. “The best gift you can give your children, is the love and respect you demonstrate for their mother.”
21. Respect for life…
22. … the taste of respect
23. life will teach you to honor and respect balance.
24. I do respect people’s faith
25. High recognitions . . . Honor and respect them, though you no longer worship them
26. Paris attacks darkning the world
27. Holidays break – Day 7

With the ear shut off from the world

Foto door Marcelo Chagas op Pexels.com

Walking down the street or in shops, one encounters many young people who have earphones on or wear earbuds and seem to be far from the world. On the street, it is noticeable because their attention is more on what is entering their heads through the speakers than what is happening around them.

There has been much talk of late about how the streetscape of our towns and cities, not to mention our workplaces, have drastically changed since lockdown. But the biggest change, despite footfall finally starting to rise and working from home slowly tailing off, is the silence.

Peter Stanford, from England, writes in the Telegraph

It is not that we have suddenly become a more reserved country, or even that we have been struck dumb by the slew of problems that are confronting the nation and the world right now. No, it is the ubiquity of a generation of digital natives listening to devices in their ears that put them at one step removed for everyone else around them.

Foto door Marcelo Chagas op Pexels.com

One could say that, as it were, the young have decided not to be too confronted with the real world. Even down to the restrooms or canteen(s) in companies, one finds a large proportion of workers glued to their smartphones, either following up with their digital friends or playing games but making no effort to make friends at work or in real life.

At the beginning of the smartphone, it was mainly the very young, but during the Corona period, many older people joined the younger generation.

Whether it be on public transport, in a shopping centre or in the middle of a bank of desks in the office, a sizeable slice of the 25 to 40-year-old working population is, thanks to their headphones, with us but not with us: no chatter in the sandwich queue; no rows over pushing in; not even a flicker of recognition and a meeting of eyes. For those like me whose heads are unadorned by any tech, it can feel like walking on to the set of some dystopian sci-fi drama.

Strangely enough, many of those youngsters are not aware of their asocial behaviour. Those millennials looking for flexible working opportunities in such cases do not see all the time the same faces, so they could have contact with different people all the time. Hot-desking and shared spaces with work benches, touchdown points or social hubs, where staff can work in a group or on their own in a more informal setting, are more attractive to millennials and generation X than old-fashioned rows of desks with fixed computers and telephones.

For those businesses that prefer to stick with a more traditional office layout, flexibility comes outside the building, by allowing staff to work from home or remotely. Such remote work gives even less opportunity to socialise with work colleagues. However, it should not be forgotten that social interaction is a very important element in being human and in providing well-being for the individual. Social interaction is something that gets pushed aside completely by those earbuds, earphones or headphones.

You may say a big start to that evolution was given by Apple’s chief executive officer, Steve Jobs, who recognised potential in the nascent personal media player market and commissioned Apple engineer Jon Rubinstein to create a product in keeping with Apple’s minimalist, user-friendly style. Small white earbud headphones became an iconic trademark of the product in Apple’s pervasive and award-winning advertising campaigns.

Those youngsters are not interested in older phones the workplaces offers. Millennials will expect to use high-quality, reliable and covetable products at work to match their home devices and choose to bring in their own favoured, newer and higher performing smartphones and laptops to use at work. Top-notch Wi-Fi is also a must for millennials, who will expect high-speed connectivity anywhere they choose to work, whether that’s at a set workstation, from a hot desk, outside in the grounds or in a meeting room.
With a very high connection speed, the younger generation hopes to be in touch with ‘them’ and what interests them directly all the time. Time does not play much of a role here, which is why we see several young people walking down the street while all the time we hear them talking on the air to someone unseen.

Alison DaSilva, executive vice-president of CSR Research & Insights at Cone says about the Millenials

“Millennials view social media as a place to curate and share content that reflects their values – and this generation is enthusiastic about showing how their work is making an impact in the world,”

Foto door Jess Bailey Designs op Pexels.com

Danger lurks – from the millennials cycling or e-scooting along with the headphones on, eyes open but minds firmly in another reality; or for the pedestrians halfway through a conversation relayed through pods or headphones and prone to stepping into the traffic at any moment because they are blanking out those finetuned skills an older generation has developed to listen out for traffic approaching from your blindside.

Looking at these young people, it seems as if we may assume that they have chosen to dwell in their own chosen lifestyle. Cristina Odone, head of the family policy unit at the Centre for Social Justice confirms

“When millennials spend so much time with these big headphones over their ears, it sends out a clear message that they are choosing to be in a world of their own.”

And that, she adds,

excludes everyone else, including their own families.

It is predicted that by 2027 half of the UK will own headphones, with current trends seeing half of that ownership concentrated in the 25 to 45-year-old age groups and just 12 per cent in the 55-plus demographic.

None of the users seem to think about the dangers of neither distraction nor hearing damage. The NHS offers official advice that such headphones used too much or with too much volume have the potential to damage hearing.

We each are born with around 15,000 auditory hair cells in each of our ears that are all we will have for the rest of our lifetime to transmit sound to our brains. And they don’t like being blasted out by headphones any more than they do being assaulted by massive banks of speakers at pop festivals.

If you follow NHS guidelines, you will wear your headphones for no more than an hour at a time, followed by at least a five-minute interval before putting them back on again. Yet with current research showing that the younger group of users in their late teens and 20s often have them on for up to seven hours a day.

Foto door Ju00c9SHOOTS op Pexels.com

Most important, though, the experts say, is selecting the right volume. It should not be above 60 per cent. Some models, aimed at cautious parents of younger children, have a built-in volume lock switch.

But we are convinced that a very different danger is also totally overlooked, namely the element of socialising. It is not just the physical damage to ears that should be worrying us.

It’s the less obvious cost of the social and human obstacles they are creating,

says Julia Samuel, psychotherapist, bestselling author and presenter of the Therapy Works podcast.

Headphones, she believes, have the potential to damage the emotional growth of those whose daily ritual as they leave the house is to put them on precisely at the moment when they could be engaging with the world.

“They are placing a barrier in the whole interactive and interweaving between mind and body,”

she says,

“because they limit the amount of input wearers are getting from outside.”

They can cause, she worries,

“a deficit of connection with those around you and leave you a little emptier and a little chillier”.

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Please find to read:

How millennials in the workplace are shaping today’s businesses

How headphone dependency is widening the generation gap

Beyond the Culture Wars

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Find also to read

1. Andrew McWilliams-Doty looks at evangelicals
2. How the term Evangelical has grown to blur theology and ideology
3. Which Christians Actually Evangelize
4. Is it Time to Abandon “Evangelical?”

Jared Stacy

This is the final article in a series reflecting on American Culture Wars & Christianity. Here are parts one, two, and three.

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Culture War Christianity must end. Christians should be the ones to end it. Like Moses, whose first attempt to bring about change left an Egyptian dead in the sand, so Culture Warring Christianity tends to create chaos and call it ‘change’.

Calling for the end of Culture War Christianity is not a call to stop working for change. But, I admit, it does sound a bit idealist. How do you end the culture wars anyway? Do we leave society for monastic communities? That is an option. Do we embrace with resignation a Christianity domesticated by secular idealogy? That is the fear of many. And, acting on that fear, many seek to defend Christianity.

But, what if the Christianity some aim to defend has already been…

View original post 1,064 more words

Earth’s pandemic and T-shirts for young people

We at the Belgian Christadelphian office have passed a certain age, so that it would not be appropriate to walk on the street with a T-shirt. As elders, we tell the visitors in our churches about the task we as human beings have when living on this planet. We talk about our responsibility and the task God has given us. But we do know the majority of inhabitants of this planet are not believing in God and are mostly concerned about gaining as much money as possible, whatever the cost may be.

The last few months, lots of people were very worried about the Covid-pandemic, but for years there has been another big virus circling around us, which most people seem to ignore. Though for more than a decade, several of the Boom generation with the millennials and the Generation Z have been writing essays, articles and making posters for awareness about global warming and cried out into the world to save our planet. Because that planet is getting very ill. People have used and wasted earthly resources, if nothing. In our so-called ‘civilised’ countries most citizens were and are not concerned about the pollution they cause.

For us the time of publicly protesting and going on the streets, protesting for this and that, may be gone or not so appropriate.
But for young people, we would like to introduce some very interesting clothing and tote bags with a different angle. We are namely very concerned about the world where we and our children and grandchildren but also next generations have to live in. Therefore, we do find it five past twelve to call on all the responsible people to use their senses and to do something against the horrible state we have brought our planet. We cannot sit still and do if global warming does not exist.

Everybody can use his own voice to bring awareness to others. A T-shirt is a wearable message board that can pull the attention to our planet and to what we have to do about it. The world needs to change as we are currently hurtling towards climatic changes that will alter the way the planet is configured. This will certainly be to the detriment of humanity if not cause its extinction. Crazy you may say but 99.99% of all species that have ever lived have gone extinct so just because we can walk and talk and use a smart phone does not mean that we will not go the same way.

Scientists and philosophers don’t in general want to be celebrities but it is important that we listen to what they have to say because they offer the only way out of this current crisis. So enjoy our range and change the world at least in one tiny way, an environmentally friendly piece of clothing. {Scientist and Philosopher}

It is not bad to have a look at their products to make others aware of this dramatic situation.

> A collection to highlight the need for us all to stop and think. > Think

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Find also to read

1. Weather, climate-change and man-made global-warmingGlobal WARming: An Overlooked Pandemic
2. Hot weather
3. Global Warming
4. Global Warming Was Explained in 1856. By a Woman
5. Environment
6. Climate explained: how the IPCC reaches scientific consensus on climate change
7. Rapid Climate Change Makes It Hard for Butterflies and Moths to Adjust
8. From CNN: Unprecedented heat, hundreds dead and a town destroyed. Climate change is frying the Northern Hemisphere
9. Time to write again, getting the word out, climate change is a reality
10. Too Dumb to SurviveThe Arctic’s last ice area
11. Last Ice…
12. Update on Climate Referendum in France
13. Julia Conley: ‘This Is Our Future’ Without Climate Action, Advocates Warn After Pipeline Causes Fire in Gulf of Mexico
14. IPBES/IPCC Report: Tackling the biodiversity and climate crises together
15. The Climate Crisis Is Accelerating – Now What?
16. An Actual Space Laser Shows How Devastating Sea Level Rise May Be
17. Climate Change & Joshua Tree National Park
18. Highest Ever Temperature Recorded In Finnish North
19. Why Polar Bears are on The Verge of Extinction
20. The monarch butterfly cab use our help to stay alive by Kalpana Sutaria, Austin American-Statesman
21. Seabird Salvation
22. Impeach Bolsonaro and Topic on Climate
23. global participation…

Are you having such days?

At last the sun is showing herself after a very long grey period.

As the Director of Missions at Centreville (Virginia) Presbyterian Church, Sharon Hoover probably encounters enough people who also feel that the days are pulling at their end. She too has to make her way on this planet, amidst the joys and struggles — and also sometimes at a glacial pace — toward maturity as a Christ-follower. Through God’s grace, she also has stumbled upon some wisdom in her five decades.

It’s my joy to share thoughts, raise questions, and explore doubts. {Life’s path meanders}

She managed to take beautiful photographs of the world which tries to give enough signs of the Hand of the Most High Divine Creator. There you can find a.o. God’s paintbrush dipped into all the colours when creating the Rainbow Hot Springs (Yellowstone National Park)
But you might also be confronted with the human beings making an impact on the planet. Some good, some not so good.

She is passionate about creating space where people can experience God. This drive motivates her to disciple new believers, speak, and encourage women in their faith journey.

In her region she has to face the same flight away from church like in our regions. She, like many pastors in West Europe, has struggled as people walk away from her home church.

Relocation for employment or family reasons have taken some members. Others have chosen to leave due to differences of opinion, theology, or purposes. Regardless of the reason, it hurts nonetheless. {Why Choose the Church?}

She is been on a church staff for more than 20 years and has heard many people’s stories.

Their faith journeys often include at least one unhealthy church encounter. In my discussions with leaders of other churches, I know this is not unique to my faith community. Church nomads travel into new places of worship every week. Discouraged from a previous church experience yet wanting to be part of the larger family of God, they consider the possibility of new church home. {Why Choose the Church?}

People may be restless. In some countries they may be lucky to find different denominations, having a choice of lots of churches. In the so called Catholic country Belgium every village had its own Roman Catholic church and in cities different Catholic denominations also could be found as well as different protestant churches. Today most Catholic churches are  most of the time empty. The protestant evangelical churches which attract youngsters with their shows and entertainment services still manage to get some few at the service, for which people are prepared to travel some kilometres.

In the United States, of which we so much think of the mega churches, according to Barna’s Trends 2017, church attendance is at an all-time low in that so called Christian State. A mere 35 percent of Americans surveyed reported attending church in the past week. Two-thirds of us chose activity other than being with a faith community. Barna researchers probed further asking why people no longer attend church. Millennials’ responses were especially telling. Their top three answers were:

•   the church is not relevant to them
•   they find God elsewhere
•   they can teach themselves

Sharon Hoover at the Redbud Post writes

Somewhere along the way, we have developed the shortsighted view that church is about our personal experiences. What is in it for me? Choosing to follow Christ is indeed a personal decision, but never was the journey meant to be a solo or private one. After our initial encounter with the Living God, continued growth depends on commitment to a local body of Christ. The church. Internet resources, best-selling books, and a walk in the woods can nurture faith, but it is in community where we learn to love, be patient, show kindness, receive correction, and so much more. {A Love/Hate Relationship with the Church}

Roman Catholic Eucharist (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today, lots of people have a quaint feeling about religion. Many have a love-hate relationship with God and with the church. Though lots of people still claim to be Christian, we can not see much of a Christian attitude.  You would think that as Christ-followers they would belong to the family of God. Today there is not much to see of them loving such an association with the Body of Christ. Though

God created us to be in community (Genesis 2:18; Ecclesiastes 4:9-12; 1 Corinthians 12:27). This universal Church, the one that includes all who call on the name of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, draws us into a most unique global space of connectedness. {A Love/Hate Relationship with the Church}

In this globalising world we are constantly confronted with world news and lots of languages. Lots of people can go to many places.

Friends and ministry partners allowed me to travel and experience new cultures. I heard languages I had never heard before, ate exotic foods, and found fellow believers in all corners of our planet.

My husband and I faced several life changing circumstances. We became empty-nesters when our daughter headed out for college. I broke my first bone (ouch, my ankle) and he graciously took care of me. Most profoundly, my precious father-in-law Bob passed on to glory. Bob was loved by all who knew him. We mourn our loss but know that Bob is dancing with the Lord and organizing car trips from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same. {Dipping into Memories}

She still can live with many memories, but for many life goes so fast and they are carried away by social-media and their workload, that they forget to live really and before they know the time is gone, and memories have faded by the overload of junk information.

We notice that there are lots of people who struggle but do not have it in them to write it off or to have positive contacts with others pulling them out of the gutter. When Mrs. Hoover struggles with something, she tend to write a lot.

My initial entry typically makes little sense. It’s an attempt to catalog the crisis. Anger or frustration or animosity emerge in my inability to string words into a legible sentence.

After a while — in some cases it’s the end of that day’s entry, but in other cases, it is weeks or months or years later — my thoughts flow more gracefully. I’m able to find the words. Although the hurt may still be present, I found the ability to grasp my emotions through my journaling. {Journaling: Healing through Private Words}

We may be lucky when we can surrendered emotions onto journal pages, however, the pain flows through the pen and somehow becomes validated.

Pain and confusion take on the form of words. Once we put words to the difficult undercurrents, we begin to move forward in the path of healthy grieving. Faith emerges. A sense of calm replaces the distant and empty feelings. {Journaling: Healing through Private Words}

We get some of those days we can miss like toothache and other days we wonder what we are doing here, whilst other days we would love to happen something here on this earth with us in the centre.

Another day to get dressed, go to work, make dinner, and do the dishes. Also another day to chat with neighbors, meet a friend for coffee, and curl up in my warm bed at night.

But it’s also another day with no burning bush moments like Moses, no Damascus Road experiences like Paul, and certainly no angels like Mary’s Gabriel declaring I had found great favor with the Lord. Again. {Finding Ordinary Perseverance}

Steam phase eruption of Castle Geyser in Yellowstone National Park. The steam from the geyser casting a shadow ot itself creating crepuscular rays. Français : Eruption de vapeur du Castle Geyser à Yellowstone. La vapeur créé un jeu d’ombres et de lumière rappelant des Rayons crépusculaires. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some may have their mantra of the day suggesting they ought to have tweetable thoughts throughout the day, sprinkled with Facebook-worthy posts of witty text message screenshots, along with at least one Instagram photo of their food (even if it’s a failed Pinterest attempt) or their outfit-while-standing-with-hand-on-hip-and-leg-slightly-bent. {Finding Ordinary Perseverance}

How many do not let their thoughts been carried away to dark alleys instead of letting them wander on sunny beaches. Either they find it is again a day they do not want to have any more, or they think it was again a day like any other one, wasted … just another day.

We make ourselves crazy when we feel like we have to “be brave and do something courageous” everyday, or face the pressure of “make today the first day of the rest of my life” everyday, or “be the change you want to see in the world” every moment. It’s exhausting. {Finding Ordinary Perseverance}

It is impossible to make of every day a marvellous day let stand an incredible day. It is also not possible to tackle every day on our own. Some days we need others around us to carry us through the day. Not every day can be totally new and different on all parts.

Sometimes, Friends, the bravest thing we can do is to repeat yesterday. The ordinary. One day at a time.

When we look for momentous events daily in our friendships, parenting, job, marriage, and even faith, we set the stage for disappointment. Contentment remains unreachable when the search for adrenaline rush moments becomes our source of significance and fulfillment. {Finding Ordinary Perseverance}

Let’s just work together to take care of our 3rd rock from the sun.

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Scepticals of the Bible

Most people do seem to forget that man does not live on bread alone. Material gain is for most the highest priority in their life. Though all that money and all those interesting gadgets do not seem to make them very happy. Contrary we can see much more unhappiness by those who should be lucky  and happy that they have so much.

In several countries where there is not much good food and not much good drinkable water, people not having good housing, they do find a way to enjoy life and not to worry to much. And there where there are fights going on, rebels making life very awkward, there are many who still manage in those bad conditions to find the straw for life. Mostly it is because they know where they can find the best treasure. Often they are convinced that they can find the best food for them by every word that proceeds out of the Mouth of God. In the industrialised world many have forgotten that they need daily spiritual nourishment from God’s Word in order to withstand the challenges and temptations that bombard us on a daily basis.

According to the fourth annual State of the Bible survey by the Barna Group there are just as many Americans sceptical of the Bible (19 percent) as there are engaged with the Bible. the 2014 research reveals six trends in Bible engagement: from the Bible’s continued role as a cultural icon, to increased digital Bible reading, to a rise in scepticism toward Scripture, particularly among Millennials.

The number of those who are sceptical or agnostic toward the Bible — who believe that the Bible is

“just another book of teachings written by men that contains stories and advice” —

has nearly doubled from 10% to 19% in just three years. This is now equal to the number of people who are Bible engaged — who read the Bible at least four times a week and believe it is the actual or inspired Word of God.

sign at front gate (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The trend of scepticism is even more pronounced among the Millennial generation (who range in age from 18-29), two-thirds are 48 or younger (28% Millennials, 36% Gen-Xers) 68% male opposite 32% female. According to the State of the Bible report, Millennials are

• Less likely to view the Bible as sacred literature (64 percent in comparison to 79 percent of adults),
• Less likely to believe the Bible contains everything a person needs to know to lead a meaningful life (35 percent in comparison to 50 percent of adults), and
• More likely to never read the Bible (39 percent compared in comparison to 26 percent of adults).

What we in Europe might find surprising is that those Bible sceptics are more likely to identify as Catholic than any other single denomination or affiliation (30%) and are the most-likely segment not to have attended church (87%) or prayed (63%) during the previous week. They are also most likely not to have made a commitment to Jesus that is important in their life today (76%).

From the surveys been taken last year we must not that lots of those trinitarians ( 71% of Americans) did not read the Bible and those who went to Sunday service or mass only heard those verses or quotes from Scripture given by the pastor or priest.  In many countries nearly a quart of those interested in religion watches religious programs on television,  (23% of U.S. adults said to have watched a religious TV program in the past week, 20% listened to religious talk radio).

In the United States 35 Protestant denominations may try to attract those interested in religion. Though with the Roman Catholic Church they may represent 45% of the U.S. population in 1968 and 35% in 2012, they are not able to get a 62% of non-Christian Millennials to read  the Bible.

The Americans seem to be not such passive Christians as the Europeans. From the Millennials there where  81% of practising Christians who posted Scripture online in the past year.

As can be found in the rest of industrialised countries almost 1 in 5 people under 40 in the U.S. now describe themselves as
spiritual but not religious.

Barna, like different Christian denominations are seeing how there is more need of teachers or preachers proclaiming the good News.

David Kinnaman of Barna contends Christians should be challenged to reach out to those who are searching. Those people, he says, are looking for a church that “makes a difference” in the community, including taking care of the poor.

“And a lot of churches are doing that,”

says Kinnaman.

“So part of that is getting outside the walls of the church and doing the things the gospel compels us to do.”

The study also reveals that a vast majority of churchless Americans have attended church but don’t embrace what it means to live out the Christian faith. the American Christians should be aware that they still need to make work to have some of the 10 percent who have never attended a church-service to have them come to look at such a service.

Kinnaman says the challenge is for people to make church more than a “weekly ritual” by making attending church an opportunity to participate in what God is doing in the community.

The churchless are primarily men and in America tend to be less educated, white and unmarried. Churchless confirms that the world has, indeed, altered in significant ways during the last few decades. It’s not just your imagination. Real data confirm how drastically the moral, social and spiritual lives of Americans have changed and are changing. Europe has the idea that most Americans are ‘over-religious’, but about 156 million U.S. adults and children are churchless which mean that churchless Americans = Bigger Than Canada, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa & New Zealand . . . Combined. Only China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the churchgoing half of the United States are larger.

When we look around us and see the youngsters their actions it is not surprising to hear that the younger the generation, the more post-Christian it is. Nearly half of the Millennials qualify as post-Christian (48%), compared to two-fifths of Busters or Gen-Xers (40%), one-third of Boomers (35%) and one-quarter of Elders (28%). Tracking data allows us to trace the increase of anti-church attitudes and behaviours over the past 50 years.

Those most aware of the necessity to do missionary work in the industrialised countries are the non-trinitarians like the Jehovah Witnesses and Christadelphians, though lots of the latter group become so disappointed by the reaction of trinitarians and non-believers that they give it up. After having disappeared from the scene for some time in Europe the Mormons are the other group which still does missionary work in the capitalist countries.

2015 findings of 2014 Barna Group study.
About 156 million U.S. adults and children are churchless in 2015.

The Bible has been making its way onto box office screens and home TV screens over the year 2014: from Noah to Son of God, people have been watching the Bible, but the 2014 research reveals six trends in Bible engagement: from the Bible’s continued role as a cultural icon, to increased digital Bible reading, to a rise in skepticism toward Scripture, particularly among Millennials.

 

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Additional reading:

1. When you don’t know what to do and hate yourself
2. A time for everything
3. Faith and trial
4. Faith is knowing there is an ocean because you have seen a brook.
5. Everything that is done in the world is done by hope
6. Tapping into God’s Strength by Waiting on Him
7. Suffering redemptive because Jesus redeemed us from sin
8. Determine the drive
9. Let me keep to “first importance” things
10. A Living Faith #5 Perseverance
11. God should be your hope
12. Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark
13. A new year with hopes and challenges
14. Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness
15. Be like a tree planted by streams of water
16. Better loaves when the heart is joyous
17. The thought of losing rekindles the joy of having
18. Joy: Foundation for a Positive Life
19. Joy is not in things, it is in us
20. Give your tears to God
21. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #4 Words in Scripture
22. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #6 Words to feed and communicate
23. Appointed to be read
24. Scripture alone Sola Scriptora
25. Building up the spirit of the soul
26. Daily portion of heavenly food
27. Bric-a-brac of the Bible
28. Accuracy, Word-for-Word Translation Preferred by most Bible Readers
29. The Metaphorical language of the Bible
30. Youth has difficulty Bible Reading
31. Do Christians need to read the Old Testament
32. Feed Your Faith Daily
33. We should use the Bible every day
34. The manager and Word of God
35. Evangelisation, local preaching opposite overseas evangelism
36. Be an Encourager
37. An ecclesia in your neighbourhood

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Please do find to read:

• Affliction and You: We have work to do
• I Don’t Know What To Do! Seek, you shall find.

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Related articles

• Excuse My Scepticism (pastorcharleschipere.wordpress.com)
  In our Christian Faith, we are taught to believe rather than to be a doubting Thomas. We are taught to trust rather than mistrust. We are taught to give a person the benefit of the doubt before we dismiss them. But my journey of faith has had some encounters with reality leading me to embrace some sceptical attitude towards some things I have observed in the land of the living.
• Cultural Fast Facts (garyrohrmayer.typepad.com)
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• The State of the Bible (reflectionsintheword.org)
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• Skeptical about skepticism (louisproyect.org)
  On Salon.com you can find an article titled “Bill Maher is right about religion: The Orwellian ridiculousness of Jesus, and the truth about moral progress” by Michael Shermer that is an excerpt from his book “The Moral Arc”. He draws a contrast between what some have called “the sky religions”, namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam that are tribal in nature rather than universal, and all those great conquests of Modern Civilization such as goodness, justice and truth.
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  Oddly enough, for an outfit so devoted to science and reason, there is little engagement with the science of genetic modification itself. This is not surprising since this intellectual current seems either totally innocent of ecological science, or determined to sweep it under the rug. The moniker Prometheus that Kurtz has given to his publishing outlet suggests an unreconstructed vision of 19th century Progress. Needless to say, this dovetails neatly with the kind of philosophical pragmatism he embraces, which appears totally at home with the agenda of US imperialism.The other big mover and shaker in the world of skepticism is Michael Shermer, who is much younger than Paul Kurtz and is the publisher of Skeptic Magazine. While targeting all the usual suspects (UFO’s, Bigfoot, ESP, etc.), Shermer has also investigated bogus history. He is the author of a book focusing on the libel case against David Irving, a holocaust denier.Just as with Kurtz, Shermer casts a wide net in his crusade against the forces of anti-scientific darkness. Such forces include those who believe that there is a Gulf War Syndrome and that silicone breast implants might be harmful.
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• Good News, Millennials: You Don’t Have to Save the Church (christianitytoday.com)
  We find ourselves facing into “millennial anxiety” as well as concern about the “rise of the nones” (those who do not identify with any religious tradition, a cohort that is apparently growing in the West). Like some reverse Paul Revere, many ride through the fiber optics of the Internet and into church basements shouting, “The millennials are leaving! Watch out for the rise of the nones!” Simply put, millennial anxiety—a concern shared by both mainline and evangelical churches—is the fear that those between ages 18 and 25 have little interest in the church, and that the church has failed to convince them to stay.
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• Did you hear? Millennials will overtake Baby Boomers in Population this Year (theposhboomer.com)
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• Fully Satisfied (culturalatheist.wordpress.com)
  It began about the time this age cohort reached adulthood, with the 1999 publication of Saving the Millennial Generation: New Ways to Reach the Kids You Care About in These Uncertain Times. It accelerated when some polls in the mid-2000s began to suggest millennials’ waning interest in church. Enter “millennials and church” into a search engine, and soon enough you are pointed to sites that proclaim, “Ten reasons churches are not reaching millennials,” or, “Why millennials are leaving church.” The latter article quickly garnered some 100,000 page views not long ago.This past October, the 2014 Alignment Conference featured Barna’s David Kinnaman and pastor and church planter Dave Ferguson talking about millennials, who present a “game changing moment” for the church. Gen2 Leadership Conference is meeting this month with the theme, “Fighting for the Heart of the Millennial Generation.”We find ourselves facing into “millennial anxiety” as well as concern about the “rise of the nones” (those who do not identify with any religious tradition, a cohort that is apparently growing in the West). Like some reverse Paul Revere, many ride through the fiber optics of the Internet and into church basements shouting, “The millennials are leaving! Watch out for the rise of the nones!” Simply put, millennial anxiety—a concern shared by both mainline and evangelical churches—is the fear that those between ages 18 and 25 have little interest in the church, and that the church has failed to convince them to stay.
• The Millennials Are All Right (blackchristiannews.com)
  Millennials are both high tech and high touch. They have less faith in religious and political institutions.  It extends to the private sector, too: 71 percent of Millennials would rather go to the dentist than step into a bank branch. As many one-third of millennials are willing to switch banks in the next 90 days. What would encourage them to join your organization or become a customer?