Chad Gates🚢

I talk about Urantia Book spiritual principles in everyday life | Practicing Jesusonian for 30+ years | Husband, father, engineer, philosopher

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

@lora_losso Both parts, that’s me today. Thank you from the bottom for this ray of light. I can’t love it enough.

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

@janegrismer Love this Jane. Courage is many things, including the will to face danger head on. But there's one thing it is isn't, and that's the absence of fear. Love and fear - forever coexistent inside of us- play a terrible tug of war. When love wins, we call it courage.

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

@dschwertfeger Love their speed.

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

Art can't constrain itself to formulas like science.

Why?

Science operates in a reality governed by predictableness. This enables formulaic repeatability, perfection even (at least in human terms).

Art inhabits a reality that forever shifts, morphs, and evolves: human experience. Yesterday's beauty is today's cliche. Everyone is searching for the current version of genuine beauty, given all that's gone before.

No formula withstands humanities restless search for the expression of the divine.

And will we ever express it all? Of course not.

But that's OK.

As limited factors in an infinite universe, we sample only a tiny bit at a time. But we are future-eternal, and that infinity represents an endless adventure of sharing and discovery.

Your search - and mine - contribute the grand play of millennia.

Keep searching, keep creating.

What you find informs and lifts us all.

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

This resonates so much. I read recently (somewhere) that if children are treated badly by their parents, they won't love their parents less. But they will love themselves less. And these opposite-states teach us meaning. What does it mean to win if you can't lose? What does alone feel like if you've never been together?

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

An insight from my 5 AM journal (that I don't even remember writing):
"To begin, understand you're a beginner. Make a plan for a beginner, knowing you'll get severely disrupted along the way."

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

@LilaGhim Merci beaucoup!!!!

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

As I walk into this Band Board meeting, please God speak through me to help bring peace to all sides.

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

@LilaGhim It presented 1000 chances to practice! Lol!

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

Last night's Board meeting was the most intense I'd ever lead. And I failed at the crucial moment.

But I learned 1 lesson:
Emotionally heavy events sap your energy the most.

How to persevere and succeed?

Learn to relax. With enough practice you can do it when it counts.

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

@LilaGhim Thank you Lila! It was that board meeting. Despite contention, strong feelings pulling on the seams, we did not rip apart. Victory heralded by quiet peace.

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

In our rah-rah culture, we expect every victory to come with fanfare.

It's not always like that.

Spiritual victories are often quiet. They arrive and move us deeply. They're more real than your morning coffee. Nothing is the same after.

And you're the only one who knows.

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

The best stories present the most impossible problems to solve.

Once you like the characters, hero or anti-, you’re in till the very end.

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

@LilaGhim There is more any of us than we dare to imagine. Becoming is the never-ending adventure.

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

@TaylinSimmonds @dschwertfeger Playbook

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

@janegrismer I've never read Anne Frank. But after hearing this one quote, I see she traveled more spiritual miles in her few years than most with a long life. I'm going to read her every word.

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

“In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.” - Anne Frank

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

@LilaGhim Oh yes, parts of your life have been hard, and even cruel. No question. The spirit of that quote isn't so much seeing that life is hard, but rather adjusting yourself to the difficulty. It reminds me a little bit of Bruce Lee's quote, "Don't pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one."

If you don't adjust yourself to the reality of struggle here in our short, intense life, you'll suffer twice. Once when reality shatters your illusions, and again when life submerges you into the depths. By adapting to sober reality, you preserve your psychological state and essential energy for the inevitable struggle.

Then - maybe, just maybe - you can rollerskate without bruises. You can see the stars without stubbing your toe.

The Woelverine remark is a cryptic reference to Marvel lore. Tony Stark is a brilliant genius. He has neural tissue all over his body (like a distributed brain). It's why he can do so much so fast. It's his superpower.

Wolverine's a regular guy. Not particularly bright, not rich, not from a distinguished family. But he's anti-fragile in the physical sense. Can take unlimited bodily punishment, heal, and keep motating. His superpower is healing, but it only kicks in after a wounding. From a psychological/spiritual standpoint, we're way more like Wolvie than Stark.

We often don't realize just how strong we are, just how well we can recover, how much light we have in us, until after the sword blow. This realization isn't instant, but it is certain, given enough time.

"The wound is the place where the Light enter you." - Rumi

And you, dear Lila, are full of light.

[Chad Gates🚢 @_chadgates]

We all want to be Iron Man.
• Exceptional
• Rich
• Safe from harm

But we're not. We're Wolverine.
• Normal
• Vulnerable
• Harm-activated superpower

We're made to get up again. Forever. But only after the wound.

"Life is hard. The sooner you realize this, the easier it will be." - The Urantia Book