The Way We Look At Struggle

God never promises to remove us from our struggles. He does promise, however, to change the way we look at them.

-- Max Lucado

Notice where Job got to and where he ended up. Suffering changed his point-of-view at least twice...like it does to us. I'm glad for where we, too, will end up.

The King's Speech

 







What a marvel study in the dynamics of our humanity...love, family, history, expectations, fear, friendship, wisdom, courage, voice. I would highly recommend this one to you!

Men Grow Silent - Cont.

Not exclusive to men, we all want to speak (which explains why this kind of silence is so unnatural...and so conspicuous).  I suspect we all want to speak because we all want to be heard.  And, we all want to be heard because we all want to be known.

...because we all question our worth and want others to validate it.  Which takes us back to the first half of the story.

So, if even a decently accurate description of the 'way things are', the obvious thing to lean towards is the asking of what can be done about this.  What is the answer to this 'unnatural and conspicuous' destination?

Men Grow Silent

It is often reported that men grow silent.  For example, among other times, men have the reputation of going silent when they're mad.  I suppose this cannot be disputed from even casual observation.

Does anyone ever ask why?  ...the reason I ask is, in fact, one of the reasons.  Men often feel they don't want to be heard, based on responses to their efforts to 'speak' (is that why they aren't often asked, 'Why?').  So it becomes quite natural to simply 'be quiet'.

I think it worth considering why men often feel like they don't want to be heard.  I have sensed this within myself at times.  Often it is accompanied by an anger...at the notion of not being worth being heard.  Of course, it would be wise not to reach this conclusion.  But, nonetheless, the feedback, intended or not, seems to be quite tempting along the lines of, "I don't want to hear your side of the story, just listen to mine...and shut up."

Hmmm, I wonder why men grow silent....

(And, for any female readers out there, I'm not putting this all at the feet of the women in mens' lives...though men may feel it there, I think men feel this in a lot of places in their relationships).

...more to follow on this one; it seems wrong to leave it only here...as this is only half the story.  The sad thing is, both halves (of the story) seem too often to be skipped.

Iron & Wine's New Album - Kiss Each Other Clean

Some of you may appreciate this review of Iron & Wine's new album.

Flowering Hearts

I read them slow, pondering both the meaning and the medium.  What a joy to peek into another person's heart when it blossoms like a flower!  I feel like a kid with a flashlight under the covers, turning each page with anticipation.

They are freshly passed to me from a dear friend for review.  It makes me wonder who else's pages I'm rushing past.

When and How - Cont.

So why does it seem to work this way?  Why does it take suffering for us to be drawn to God?  I’ve said to myself (more than once), that “It’s not personal, until it’s personal.”  Another way to say it, might be, “He’s not personal until He’s become ‘personal’ with us, to us.”

Perhaps we just don't need Him, until we see that we need something more than ourselves. ...perhaps suffering, more than anything else, gets us to see...our need.

When and How

We rarely know when and how God will draw someone to Himself.  But what we do know is that many times (more often than not?), he seems to do this work through the suffering in our lives.

Wrong Conclusion

We are almost always headed towards a wrong conclusion when we are not living community. ...not just in community, but living in communion with others.

In other words, isolation more often than not leads us away from the truth.

Dreams

"...just talking about our dreams starts to move us towards them. He noticed that employees were being transformed before his very eyes. They still had all the problems they'd had just a few short months ago, but now they had hope."

-- The Dream Manager, pg 60

How does hope work in your life? ...what have you noticed about yourself when you have it and when you don't? In the long run? In the short run?

Losing & Gaining

The soul renounced shall abide in the boundlessness of God's life. This is liberty, this is prosperity. The more we lose, the more we gain.

-- Watchman Nee

I love the terminology of 'other' times. It helps me refine my thinking behind our current terminology. It also exposes different eras of emphasis, which I find very valuable as I test what is emphasized in 'my' time.

We've been talking about freedom in high-school Sunday School class...as part of our on-going discussion on the under-pinnings of our Creed. Distinguishing things is an important exercise. For example, distinguishing the working definition of freedom in our culture versus how freedom is described in the scriptures. So Nee's observation that renouncing the soul is liberty, gives me good opportunity for pause and contemplation. His follow-up with losing and gaining is helpful candle-light to what he is getting at...regarding true freedom and true prosperity.

The Company

Contrary to unwritten management theory and popular practice, people do not exist for the company.  The company exists for the people.  When a company forgets that it exists for people, it quickly goes out of business.  Our employees are our first customers, and our most influential customers.

-- Matthew Kelly, The Dream Manager

Be Yourself - Not an excuse, an aspiration

I thought this one was interesting, particularly as a counter-point to the often-used dumb-downer of excusing everything in our lives.  Perhaps being ourselves is a greater aspiration than we have allowed ourselves to imagine.

So, we can stop trying to be like someone else and just be...who we are.

Creatures of Habit - Cont.

Why would this be?  Why do we stay so close to our routines?

I suspect we are highly oriented to the familiar. Things that are familiar to us are just easier to stick with. They appeal to many of our sensibilities as human beings.

Creatures of Habit

Perhaps this late discovery simply underscores the point -- that human-beings seem to be highly-tuned creatures of habit.   Whether intentionally or not, we work long and hard at the habits we develop.  No wonder change is rarely quick.

Money - Revisited

Regarding the post on money below, I suspect I may be floating back through this topic from time to time.

Today, for example, I noticed that the 'distance' I referred to there may stem more from what I can do with money when I have it.  For example, when I don't have it, my sense of my need remains un-medicated.  I am more aware of it.  And, when I am more aware of my need, my sense of dependence on God heightens.

I wonder if, actually it might be better to say 'how', I use money to medicate (dare I say, anethesize?) my sense of need.  I often don't even recognize that this is what I am doing (note the video referenced in this post, especially at about 15.25) for the substantial ways I join my culture in doing this.  So perhaps the distance I feel is really a result of the opportunity offered to me by money to get away from the feeling my 'need' creates in me.  Therefore, my turn to God in my need lessens.  ...no wonder my observation that often when I have money, I feel more distance with God.

The Power of Vulnerability

Watch this powerful video on 'vulnerability'.  I think vulnerability leads us to a place unknown to us...one where the outcome feels too unpredictable and is why, therefore, we avoid it.  As Brene Brown so candidly demonstrates, letting ourselves be seen deeply is simply terrifying; we only need to look around to see the many ways we are committed to avoiding this unfamiliar place.  

She talks earlier about our worth.  I think she is trying to get at something related to value -- something like, we are valuable.  She ends, unfortunately in my view, with the notion that we just need to believe that we are enough and that will take care of it.  But something is lacking:

It is impossible for a person not to be puffed up by his good works unless he has first been deflated and destroyed by suffering and evil to the point that he knows that he is worthless and that his works are not his but Gods.

-- Martin Luther

I think we know we are not enough, but the problem is that we are quite active about not acknowledging this.  Perhaps, doing so -- being vulnerable -- is the surprising, wonderful path to the One who is enough for us...more than enough...and to the One who helps us identify our truth worth (versus the one Luther is talking about above).  By avoiding our vulnerability, however, we are endlessly avoiding Him.

Not necessarily related (but not necessarily not-related either):

"To be whole, let yourself break.
To be straight, let yourself bend.
To be full, let yourself be empty.
To be new, let yourself wear out.
To have everything, give everything up.

Knowing others is a kind of knowledge;
knowing yourself is wisdom.
Conquering others requires strength;
conquering yourself is true power.
To realize that you have enough is true wealth.
Pushing ahead may succeed,
but staying put brings endurance.
Die without perishing, and find the eternal.

To know that you do not know is strength.
Not knowing that you do not know is a sickness.
The cure begins with the recognition of the sickness.

Knowing what is permanent: enlightenment.
Not knowing what is permanent: disaster.
Knowing what is permanent opens the mind.
Open mind, open heart.
Open heart, magnanimity."

-- Tao Teh Ching

Texting

...not so innocent an activity.

Compassion

Compassion means that if I see my friend and my enemy in equal need, I shall help both equally

-- Mechtild of Magdeburg

Finally?

 

Money

I have noticed over time that the more money I have, the more distance I feel with God.  Or, from the opposite angle, the less I have of it, the closer I feel to God.

What Can We Assume

We can safely assume that our 'problem' is often not what we think it is (or, what we feel it is).

And, we should assume that the 'problem' we think (or feel) it is ... is often the doorway to some place really important to go (whether it turns out to be a 'problem' or not).  So, we should walk towards it...especially together.

Gulp of Sadness

Sometimes we gulp when we get more in our mouth than we expected. I had a gulp of sadness today...with my daughter heading back to college.

-- Dad

Father, I want right now what is coming to me.

'Father, I want right now what's coming to me.'

-- Luke 15:12

As our pastor spoke on this passage recently, I found myself staring at these words from The Message.  What a powerful translation of the more commonly read version, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’

'I want right now what is coming to me.'  A couple of things struck me as my mind meandered over what I was reading.  I want stuff, AND I want it right now.  This is happening less and less for me, but I still recognize a strong legacy of it from earlier days in my life.  It is interesting that when we are younger, we have our whole life ahead of us ... and yet we still want things 'right now'.  We don't want to wait.  As we age, we have much less yet ahead of us ... and we seem, perhaps in some form of maturity, to recognize more of our need to wait.  How does that work?  What is going on in us when we are younger?  What is going on in us as we age (and, hopefully, mature)?  It is that we come to realize that most of what we really want won't really come now?  Is it that things we think we want (which do come 'now') don't typically satisfy us?  Perhaps it takes a 'few round-and-round we go' in life to start to see this truth.  The difference between what we want and what we need.  And perhaps the hidden (and greater) truth is that we discover the things that can truly satisfy us are not in the things we thought they were and that they are largely 'coming', but often not yet here.  So a life-long transfer is underway, one which we don't often recognize until we are well through it.  A transfer of a demand for satisfaction now to a longing for a different kind of satisfaction, that we somehow become more willing to wait for. 

The other thing that surprisingly stuck out to me is that the younger brother used the words, 'I want ... what is coming to me'.  He had an innate sense that something would be given to him, even as he asked for it in the moment.  The older brother knew what 'was coming' as well and apparently, at least at the time, chose to stay where we was in order to get it.  He, too, knew something of 'what was coming' to him.  I have never noticed these words of the younger brother, perhaps because of the often translated terms like estate or inheritance and the physicality of those descriptions.  What struck me in this interpretation of the phrasing was that something much broader than the inheritance of physical things was revealed.  He wanted 'what was coming'.  He thought he knew something of what that was, largely due I suspect to his immaturity.  But in one sense, what he really wanted was to 'own the farm'.  He knew, in fact, that he would someday.  So why did he want it now, if he already knew he would be getting it? 

Because, from time to time I recognize this spirit within myself,  I think he wanted the privileges of this ownership and he didn't want to have to wait for it.  This likely reveals that he thought he knew what such privileges (and the power to have them) would provide for him ... rather than what such privileges are really there for.  He wanted the rights and benefits of his perception of the power and wealth that ownership would provide.  We all want this don't we?  I have wanted it.  At times, I still do.  But what I often have not realized is that such aspirations were quite self-serving and rarely designed for the good of anyone else but me.  This is often terribly difficult to decipher in the moment.  But it is striking how clear it can become in retrospect. 

The father is way ahead of his sons on this, just as God is way ahead of us on what is good for us when we are young and as we get older.  When I'm younger, I'm not trusting my father that much.  I'm eager to prove myself and to get whatever benefits I might achieve from it.  When I'm older, I'm less impressed with my own potential, and much more aware of what all I need to be protected from, what all I need to learn, how dependent I am on so many things outside of myself, how much of anything I ever am able to enjoy is really provided to me, not unlike an estate.  And the inheritance I am receiving as I learn to wait for the deeper things will allow me to truly be in a position to function as an owner, one who provides goodness to others ... most largely through the goodness I have learned to recognize, that I have received from my Father.

I want to live more out of what is coming to me ... and to learn to wait for it and to stop asking for it now, knowing that the natural order of things is being used by God to make me able truly understand what power and privileges are really about ... the opportunity to serve others, in God's good name.

In other words, I want my version of Luke 15:12 to be something like:

'Father, I want what's coming to me.  Whatever that ends up being.  I am willing to wait for it, by trusting you in the work you have given me to do today.'

Pain's Instruction

Pain is a faithful instructor.  Or, from the other end of things, I seem to learn more from him (pain) than I do from other things.

Lust

Lust provides opportunity to learn to turn to God for the needs driving what it seems lust will satisfy.

I wish I knew this as a younger man, so that I could have 'learned' sooner where and how to turn with the forces behind what was so strongly represented in lust.

Should God be Understood?

If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshiped.

-- Evelyn Underhill

The Humblest Way We Know How

"Heavenly Father, we come before thee, knee bent and body bowed, in the humblest way that we know how."

-- Denzel Washington's favorite prayer

2011 - Desires

Once you start a list like this, it's hard to stop...our desire is so much, for so many things.

Among those at the top of my list (at least today) are:

• Less of me, More of Him ... in particular, less self-preservation and more freedom to move out of He is doing
• To move deeper into relationships with others, my wife, my kids, my friends, the kids at church
• To pray more for others, to judge them less
• To become fascinated with one more thing about this world and the Creator of it
• And, yes, to see Michigan get back on track in football

Do Not Be Anxious

Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

-- Matthew 6:31-34