How Do I Exercise My Free Will?

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I said in my post last week on Joseph Luzzi’s new book In A Dark Wood that I’d be writing more posts about his ideas.  Here’s the first of those.

One of the most vexing topics we face, whether coming at it from a secular or a religious viewpoint, is the question of the limits, or even the possibility, of free will.  Modern scientists have postulated that there is no such thing; that the existence and location of every particle in the universe is the result of random chance and is therefore (somewhat counter-intuitively) preordained.  As I sit here writing this post, my ideas arise only from the purposeless chemical interactions that are occurring down there within my brain.  (There’s a great discussion of this concept in the book I wrote about back in the very first post on this blog.)

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Unconscious Consumption

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Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink (2009-07-06)Mindless Eating:  Why We Eat More than We Think by Brian Wansink, Ph.D., Bantam Books, 2006, new editions available along with new resources.  Check out Dr. Wansink’s website at mindlesseating.org.   You can even get a free refrigerator magnet!

I can’t believe that I haven’t written about this book before now.  There are later editions, but I made sure to use the cover image from the version I have because I love the use of the pitchfork and shovel as eating implements.  Once you read this book (read this book!) you will never again think that we eat only because we’re hungry.

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Looking Ahead . . . and Missing the Present

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We’re always told to plan ahead, look to the future, and keep our eyes on the goal.  For me, though, that’s pretty terrible advice.  I tend to be like the guy in the picture.  There I am, up on the ladder, gazing into the future, and my feet aren’t on the ground of the present.  I can imagine myself having lots of speaking engagements, or selling lots of books, or whatever.  I have what I would call goals, but I’m not very good at being sure that TODAY, right now, I’m doing what needs to be done that will move me along the way to the desired result.  As I say in the chapter on “Motivations, Goals and Desires” in my book (see sidebar for ordering information), “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

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An Affecting but Erudite Memoir

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What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love In a Dark Wood (Hardback) - CommonIn a Dark Wood:  What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love by Joseph Luzzi, HarperCollins, 2015.

Joseph Luzzi had just started teaching his mid-morning class at Bard College in November 2007 when he saw a security guard standing at his door.  “Are you Professor Luzzi?  Please come with me.”  As Luzzi reached the outside of the building, he heard the words that would forever change his world:  “Joe, your wife’s had a terrible accident.”  

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“Let Me Burn Out for Thee, Dear Lord,”

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Burn and wear out for Thee.  Don’t let me rust, or my life be a failure, dear Lord, for Thee.”  Bessie F. Hatcher, 1957.

This song is part of my spiritual DNA.  I grew up hearing it at my church and later on at the Christian university I attended.  I always found it to be affecting . . . and daunting.  However sincere the author may have been–and I’m sure that she was– her words induced more guilt than inspiration, for me at least.

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What Are Your Limits?

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At 9:00 last night I told Jim that I was going to take a look at a documentary that was airing on our PBS station but that I thought I probably wouldn’t watch much of it, as it sounded pretty depressing.  The title of the film was “The Overnighters” and was described as telling the story of a Lutheran pastor in a small North Dakota oil-boom town who opens up his church to let men sleep there who have come to find work and have nowhere else to go.  Usually these films in the series “POV” are an hour long, but it was clear at 10:00 that we had a ways to go, and I was fading fast.  When I turned off the TV last night I figured that I knew pretty much what was going to happen to Jay Reinke and his program; today I went online to watch the remainder and found out the rest of the story.

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Are Good Deeds Their Own Reward?

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I wrote last week about John Piper’s book Desiring God and said that I had just started reading it and was excited about its ideas.  I’ve been chewing over it–a better description than “reading it”–and realizing more and more how much it would have helped me back when I was a college student and struggling with the question of what God wanted me to do with my life.  But hey–I’m still struggling with that question.  So it’s still helpful.

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Can “Serial” Add to Your Happiness?

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image from Serial website

Just in case you don’t know what “Serial” is:

In 1999 an 18-year-old Baltimore girl named Hae Min Lee was murdered and her body found in a park not far from her high school.  Her ex-boyfriend, a Pakistani Muslim named Adnan Syed, was arrested and charged with the murder; no other suspect was ever considered.  The first trial ended in a mistrial; the second trial ended in a guilty verdict and Syed has been incarcerated in a supermax prison ever since.  A family friend and lawyer tried to get attention paid to the poor job done by the defense and the many inconsistencies in witness testimony, but she was unsuccessful in her efforts until she decided to try bringing the story to the media in some way.  She contacted a journalist named Sarah Koenig who became interested and ended up doing a 12-part podcast on the case, titled “Serial.”  This series exploded in popularity, with 68 million downloads on iTunes alone.

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