Holyagnostic

The Church Report

Welcome once again to the friendly confines of The Church of Transcendental Hesitation, the fastest growing congregation in the world. If you are new to us, where have you been? Feast on the theological wisdom of The Right Reverend Doctor Tweedle, D. D.

Archives of our past services and the matchless messages of our pastor can be relived by clicking on The Church Report in the Categories section of the blog.

And now...there is a kind of hush all over the world as The Right Reverend Doctor Tweedle, D. D. approaches the pulpit...

By request...

How Do You Handle Your Guilt?

One of the most powerful words in the Bible is the word "remember". Old Testament writers used the word to point readers to their belief in the action of God in their history. "Remember" is one of the last words to be uttered by Jesus to his disciples. The occasion is one of such importance to the Christian community that it is enacted again and again. "Do this to remember me." The Roman mass and the Protestant communion are each a dramatization of the death of Jesus. Over and over and over again in our ecclesiastical rituals we are told to "remember". And we need it. We tend to forget God's actions to give us freedom.

Hebrews 12:1 "...let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,.."

Florence and the Machine: "...it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off..."

How do you handle your guilt? Carlyle Marney used to say we are fooling ourselves if we think the matter of our innocence has not been settled. That condition disappeared a long time ago for all of us. How we are responsible in the face of our guilt is the only real question left for us now.

For some the weight that hinders is heavy. Listen to two stories.

It had been a rough week at work for Robert. He was enjoying a Saturday football game for relaxation. A word hit him wrong from his wife and in anger he decided to get away to watch his sports in a bar. While backing quickly down his drive he failed to see his young son behind the car in the driveway. The car crushed the son's life. He was gone. Guilt came to visit in his place.

For Janet, the busy life and feelings of resentment toward her mother gave her the excuse to stay away. She hadn't seen or talked to her mother in years. Her mother fell sick with what Janet thought was a temporary medical condition, She was completely unprepared when her mother suddenly died. Before Janet could have another conversation, her mother was gone. Guilt came to visit in her place.

In our lives the stories may not be as shattering, but we all know the uneasy feelings that come when we have done something that we "wish to goodness" that we had not done, or have left undone something that we wish we had done. The weight and ensnarement can be debilitating. In order that we not forget, the church again and again in its rituals repeats the message of Jesus, "Remember me. Remember my death. You are forgiven"

Some ways in which many handle guilt lead down unproductive paths.

Internalizing or stuffing it. Self loathing and depression can result.

Externalizing or throwing it. Finding and punishing other people's evil is the strategy .

Reparations or paying for it. How much is enough becomes the issue.

Redemption or being set free. Here is "the more excellent way."The communion table is the symbolic representation of this journey and what Jesus wanted the disciples to "remember." You have been forgiven.

Listen--He against Whom we have ultimately sinned, does not condemn us, but rather is willing to give us a second chance at life on the same terms that He gave us our original chance; namely, apart from our deserving it. God's love is not reward-love, but gift-love. What he feels for us is not created by what we do or fail to do, but rather by what He is as Gracious Giver.

There is nothing I can do to make God love me any more than He already does.There is nothing I can do to make God stop loving me. Once we realize that He Who gave us our first chance to live out of grace is willing to give us second, third, and fourth chances, then the weight of guilt is removed and we are freed to "go and sin no more." We can live differently.

Robert did. A boys baseball league in Atlanta exits now because of his energy. It bears the name of his son.

Janet did. A pastor told her of one who had needs and no family. Janet's care for her helped heal the pain of her own loss.

Forgiveness is the realization that God takes our sin seriously, but not ultimately.

Remember...will you? You are being set free.

Benediction: Depart now in the fellowship of God the Father, but as you go, remember...By the goodness of God, you were born into THIS world; By the grace of God you have been kept all the day long, even to this very hour; and by the love of God, fully revealed in the face of Jesus Christ, you are being redeemed.

Recessional Music: Florence and the Machine

Growing Money (part three)

If one constructs a lazy portfolio and re-balances occasionally the rates of return over time will be substantial. Here is Holy's variation on the theme.

Holy uses both a shotgun and rifle in the design of his lazy investing in stocks. In addition, he keeps 15% in short term bonds and cash as a buffer. Now that he is retired this latter segment becomes an income supplement as well. It allows plenty of liquidity to ride through the kind of roller coaster ride that the market can be. There is no need to sell equities as the markets tank.

The shotgun segments of the construction include two index funds. The first is Vanguard's Total Stock Market Index. It tracks the market value of 1000's of US companies. This fund constitutes 50 percent of Holy's investable assets. The second fund is Vanguard's Total International Stock Market Index with a target percentage of 10 percent. It reflects the market value of 1000's of companies outside of the United States.

The rifle part of Holy's lazy portfolio consists of specific sectors of the market. Real estate (10%), energy (5%), gold (both bullion {2.5%} and miners [2.5%]), and technology (5%) are the focus.

With two sessions remaining in October 2010, both the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 were poised for their largest monthly percentage gain in a quarter century. The first six weeks of 2012 has seen 7%+ upward movement.

If one got out in July of 2010 or July 2011, as my two digital minister friends, was there a point where they reentered? Holy doesn't know. He IS glad that he had substantial assets in the markets.

At the end of February, the trailing total rates of return for Holy's lazy portfolio have been:

3yrs--15.1% per year

5yrs--12.5% per year

Over the past few years the 3yr ROR has been as high as 20.8% per year and as low as 4.6%. The 5yr ROR has been as high as 18.7% and as low as 6.5%.

Historically, the asset allocation has returned 9.6% over decades and decades. Holy's goal is an average of 11%.

This performance was done without any need to make emotional decisions in timing the market. Both ministers thought timing was right for them. It probably has not worked out all that well.

If you did your homework from part two, you probably ran across this quote from Ted Aronson— a $20 billion professional manager who puts his family money in a Lazy Portfolio of 11 index funds — he said that if you have a well-diversified portfolio cashing out would be costly in the long run: “For good reasons and bad, I’d hold tight. The good include my faith in capitalism and its ability to weather a storm, even one of biblical proportions. The bad reason is, I have no faith in my ability to time this sort of thing. Even if I got out in time, I probably wouldn’t be able to correctly time getting back in!”

Growing Money (part two)

There are many ways to grow money. Timing the market is one of them. But that strategy's champions have batting averages that are so low that timing doesn't make the cut on Holyagnostic's team.

His "more excellent way" is by no means anything more than A way to make a money garden grow. It is not THE way. His way has some powerful research and statistical evidence to demonstrate its effectiveness, but Holy reveals here for the very first time the primary reason for his choice of this method. Holyagnostic is lazy.

When Holy started reading Scott Burns in the Dallas Morning News and saw the phrase Couch Potato Portfolio, it was a Damascus Road experience. It was a way to use only two Vanguard mutual funds with an occasional re-balance of the percentages in each to consistently outperform over 80% of the thousands of managed funds in the universe. Burns added a third fund and called it the Tequila Portfolio.

Evolution of the concept can be found in a proliferation of what MarketWatch.com calls Lazy Portfolio's.

Google and digest all of that and Holyagnostic will reveal his variation of the theme in the next post.

Growing Money

For twenty five years Holyagnostic was professionally in the money growing business. He began with Presbyterian Ministers' Fund, a company that at the time was the oldest life insurance company in America (1711). Benjamin Franklin did their printing. Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were clients. The Harvest Fund was their one and only mutual fund. The company worked exclusively with ministers and only hired reps who were ministers as well.

After seven years, Holy formed his own company, Minister's Financial Services, in order to expand the investment options for his ministerial clients.

The last seven of the twenty five years were spent as a National Manager of an estate planning company and Financial Consultant with Merrill Lynch Private Client Group.

The one constant throughout the career was that most of the folk for whom it was Holy's job to grow money were ministers. And he was very comfortable in that world. Being a preacher's kid and spending twelve years getting the finest education that Texas Baptists could provide while pastoring or serving in other church staff positions created a confluence of experience that enhanced his ability to work in an ecclesiastical world in a secular capacity.

With that kind of background and training Holy's ears perked up when reading a minister's blog in July of 2010 that contained the announcement that the Rev. was getting completely out of the stock market. One year later another minister blogger reported that he was doing exactly the same thing.

Holy has tremendous respect for both of these pastors. They have both taken on Baptist establishments, one with what we used to call the Foreign Mission Board and the other with what was known as the Baptist General Convention of Texas. They both confronted and challenged intrenched bureaucracies without losing integrity or making fools of themselves. Their endeavors, examples, and styles have made them heroes in Holy's eyes.

But investment gurus they are not. Holy expressed his disagreement in the comment section of their blogs. One has cut off comments which removed Holy's response and the other deleted his post Hopefully, neither removals were done in response to Holy, but the action took from the net Holy's brilliant :) rebuttal of their investment decisions.

Let's analyze the decisions and recreate Holy's advice.

Both decisions were made on the basis of fear. In investing, that emotion is as poisonous as its polar opposite, greed. At the beginning of July in 2010 the market had been in correction mode for a bit. That is the professional's euphemism for the fact that the market was down. The first investor didn't want to lose anymore. He was going to bonds instead of stocks. The second investor in July 2011 had some profit, but was reading headlines that sounded ominous. He too was afraid of loss, but was not specific where he was going to park his stock exit money.

Both decisions are an attempt to time the market. The most exceptional professionals cannot do this well. While there is a bell that rings on the New York Stock exchange at the beginning and close of each day's trading, there is no such signal at the top and bottom of the market's cycles. And one has to make two correct decisions--when to get out (the one already made by our minister investors) and when to get back into the fray. Then they must continue to make their moves again and again and again...

After a year we now have performance numbers that enable us to evaluate whether the decision to exit at the end of June 2010 was a good one. Almost to the day he posted his blog, the market (as measured by the Wilshire 5000 index) was reaching its LOW for the year and over the next 12 months would blast upward by 26.6%. The only way we can completely gauge his timing prowess is to know if he got back in at some point during that year, but the fact that he has already blown the first decision, does not bode well for his abilities to make the second decision with any success.

Our second minister wrote of his exit around July 6 and the market is up 2.3% since, an annual pace of 68%. The numbers do not look good for him either. But it is early. He too will have to make the 2nd timing decision in the future.

As the Apostle Paul liked to say, "There is a more excellent way."

To be continued...

The Technology Hour Part II

Holyagnostic was stunned today when a phone call was made to another one of those HUGE banking institutions. The toll free number was answered on the third ring by a REAL person who was located in the United States and spoke easily understood English. There was not a computer digitalized voice anywhere to be found.

The call was generated by the need to have info that is usually given with a contact to their web site. That source was down for maintenance. Holy, with the residual fear and trepidation remaining from his earlier wrestling with a telephone tree that originated from at least the fourth ring of Dante's Inferno, dialed the number found on the back of his credit card.

Diane's greeting included her wish that the bank's card was the one that Holy would prefer to use whenever there was a choice. When Holy mentioned that he was calling because the web site was down, Diane added "reward points" to his account because of the inability to provide the web service to him. She quickly provided the information Holy wanted and took the action that he needed to be made.

All of this comes from a company that gives Holyagnostic an interest free loan for a month and the convenience of never having to carry cash. Holy almost asked Diane to marry him.

The Technology Hour

There have been some wonderful additions to Holyagnostic's hacienda over the last few months. One of them was a new roof. The process for THAT addition has been a nightmare. Contractors, insurance company, mortgage holders, schedule juggling, vacation delaying, and herds of people who said they would do something and didn't are a few of the things that have peopled and propelled the last six months. It is not over yet.

One of the largest names in the banking business "services" Holy's mortgage. Last Friday, he had a fight with the tar baby that is their phone contact system. An innocent looking toll free telephone number in small print on the payment coupon opened the door of the rabbit hole into which Holy fell and wallowed for a solid hour. The reason for the call was to find out how to get an endorsement from them on the insurance check.

Here is a shorthand diagram of the events of an hour in telephone torture Hades.

Dial #, connection made with a computer voice offer to talk in Spanish.

Request for account #.

Account # keyed into system.

System got the account # wrong.

Spoke the account #.

Computer could not "read" voice to get the account #.

Began again

Punched "0" several times and said, "Holy wants to speak to person!"

Kelly becomes the first real live person to arrive on the line.

A couple of password questions to confirm Holy is the one talking to Kelly.

Transfer to Insurance Claims Department.

Got voice mail box message, "If you want immediate attention, call..." which took Holy to--

Another voice mail box message, "If you want immediate attention, call..." which took Holy to--

Another voice mail box message, "If you want immediate attention, call..." which took Holy to--THE VERY FIRST TELEPHONE NUMBER IN THE SEQUENCE! Talk about vicious circle!

Began again.

Connected to computer voice that proceeded to read the entire coverage of Holy's homeowner insurance policy.

Began again.

Got a person, Christie, who transferred Holy to the "correct" department.

Tomica comes on the line. She cannot hear Holy's responses. "I will stay on the line for two minutes as required when there is no response," she said as Holy yelled on the other end of the line.

Began again.

Computer voice, "Can't complete number as dialed." Holy's fingers were getting fatter while his blood pressure was getting higher.

Began again.

Finally got Summer on the line who promised Holy that she would not disconnect until there was a "live" person on the line in the correct department for providing the information desired.

At last, Rachel was on the line with instructions on how she would contact inspectors for my roof. Holy would need to sign a couple of affidavits and place them along with the insurance check to another wonderful organization of competence, the Postal Service.

When the bank gets all of that, Rachel said that the bank would endorse the check and return it immediately to Holy.

Wanna bet?

Labor Day

Holy has learned from life and religion the importance of ritual.

Every LABOR day, he and his family gather to celebrate by Bar B Qin' a three toed SLOTH.

Recipe proviso: Remember, the ONLY cooking method for this creature is Bar B Qin'. Too many cooks boil the sloth.

Just reportin'

The Church Report (continued)

Who Is Your Audience? Part Quatre

There is one undeniable fact that can be drawn from the words of Matthew six. The Jesus that Matthew knew, believed that there was a father in heaven in front of whom one could live his life.

Imagine an actor being chosen for the lead role in a play that would eventually win her a Tony Award as best actress. She credits in her acceptance speech the experience of having the playwright present during all the rehearsals. He was a constant provider of information about the character that had been created by his mind. He had brought her to life on paper and now was able to describe and inform the shaping of a performance on the stage.

The actress reveals that at the end of the performance, the playwright said to her, "You have played that role exactly as I imagined when I created it."

For those who believe in a creator/God, there is a powerful ethical motivation to live into the role that was in mind when they were chosen to exist. Imagine that creator/God saying, "You have lived exactly what I had in mind when you came into being."

Places everybody. The audience is in the house. The curtain is about to go up...

The Church Report (continued)

Who Is Your Audience? (Part Trois)

Hang on to your seat. It looks like we have moved to a completely different movie theater.

"I thought we were exploring the question, 'Who gives you your grade?'"

The question and the image that it inspires is different, but the conclusions that we can draw about living are exactly the same. The Bard of Avon was powerfully on target when he said, "All the world's a stage". The picture that we see in our minds when Jesus is teaching about Jewish piety can easily be seen as a drama with "the hypocrites" staging their actions to an audience in the synagogue.

Living one's life with others as the audience in Jesus' example is a no-no according to Matthew. But there are times outside the temple in which it not only is appropriate, but necessary.

An employer can make us dance for our supper, but at least there is the thank you note that comes in the form of a paycheck. The owner of a restaurant or business must play to the audience of his customers or she will soon join the ranks of failed and unemployed.

But blessed is that person who works in a situation where there is freedom to act in a way that pleases you. You are able to set your own goals and ways of achieving them rather than having them come from on high. Only a person who is interested in escaping from freedom would chafe in such an environment.

I know a person who worked for himself in the brokerage business. He had spent twenty years working that way, but decided he wanted to join a monster brokerage house to play with the big boys.

My friend said that the company gave him about a dozen different objectives that he was expected to meet. When he had reviews by the manager he discovered another set of expectations that were related to the goals that the brokerage had set for the manager.

The friend quickly learned that he was used to playing for an audience of one, himself. The lesson for him was that high performance was achieved by having the goals chosen from the depths of who HE was rather than coming from some complex heartless bureaucracy that knew little of what motivated him.

But there is another audience brought to our view in the images described by Jesus.

To be continued...

Quote of the Day

"Spare me from unloving critics and uncritical lovers."--The Right Reverend Doctor Tweedle, D. D. (while adroitly converting an 8-10 split).