This Week in Church: Obligation, Fascination, and Responsibility

Welcome to the series wherein I share my take-aways from church. The things that, I think, are beneficial to all of us to know or think about, whether or not we believe in any church-related things.

This week in church, we talked about obligation vs. fascination.

What is the difference between a person who is obligated and a person who is fascinated? What does a fascinated person do? How do they stay fascinated

Fascination is all curiosity, focus, and joy. Obligation is compliance and resentment.

How can we try to live lives where we are experiencing more fascination than obligation? We can start with Mary Oliver's instructions for living a life: "Pay attention / Be astonished / Tell about it."

This week in church we talked about responsibility.

This is the second time this theme has come up for me in the past week: that there are some things that only I can be responsible for in my life.

Some things that only I can do for myself: eat healthier food, get out of bed in the morning, read poetry, slow down/speed up.

I want to spend more time thinking about this.

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a weekly digest and bonus content!