Posts Tagged: shortcuts

“Blaming and Shaming versus Reframing and Renaming”

On January 7, 2020 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

A wise young friend and I were talking this morning about why it is that we so often make bad choices.  A wise person not only says wise things, but also brings out the wisdom in others.  Something my friend said provoked me to say, “Instead of blaming and shaming ourselves, we need to be reframing and renaming.”

Sometimes, when we’re stuck, we just need to see things in a different light.  One way to see things differently is to reframe them.  In a sense, frames don’t change the picture.  However, they most certainly change how we view the picture.

And part of reframing is renaming.

Perhaps an example might help.  If I have framed and named certain questionable behaviors as “shortcuts” to significance or to feeling good, I might want to rename and reframe such “shortcuts.”  Perhaps I could rename such questionable behaviors as questionable behaviors.  (And, of course, if I have to ask too many questions about a particular behavior, I already know it’s wrong for me.  So, perhaps even “questionable behaviors” is not an adequate renaming.)

In a sense the renaming is the reframing.  And if I have correctly renamed and reframed something, I am more likely to see it as it truly is.

Renaming and reframing may not be transformation, but they may be steps toward transformation.  In any case, renaming and reframing are a darned sight better than shaming and blaming.

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“The Dailiness of God”

On December 28, 2018 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer


I was trying to find out how the word “daily” is spelled, so I did what everybody does these days: I went to Google, and typed in “Spell daily.”

In its nearly infinite algorithmic wisdom, Google took me to sites that advertised daily spells.  No, I didn’t click on any of the sites.  I am trying not to take shortcuts, since such critters don’t exist.

We probably all wish for some way to make our days better, preferably magically.  We want someone to wave a wand and weave a better day for us.  We probably feel as if there isn’t a lot of magic in our days.  We long to edit the dailiness of our days.

Yet, our days are stubborn.  They remain confoundedly daily.  What is I mean is this: We all long to be extraordinary, but day by day, we are not.  We long to be transformed, but day by day, we can’t see it.  Dailiness just seems too slow, too much the same, boring.  In 12-step work, we have a slogan: One day at a time.”  However, speaking for myself, I don’t really like that slogan.  I believe that the slogan is true.  I just don’t like it.

The Bible talks a lot about dailiness.  And thought of taking you on a tour de force of the Bible’s verses that speak of what God does for us daily, and how we are to live daily.  However, when I discovered how many occurrences of “day” and related terms there were, I quickly realized that I needed a more reasonable goal for today.

So, I chose one verse: Psalm 68:19.  “Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens.”

It is possible to translate the verse in a very different manner: “Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily loads us with blessings.”

The first possible translation seems more likely.  In either case, we have a God takes care of us on a daily basis, whether this means that he carries our burdens, or that he loads us down with blessings.

Who knows?  Maybe it’s both!

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