Everything

There is a communion with God that asks for nothing, yet asks for everything.

-- George McDonald

Awareness

Awareness of others can lead to self-awareness.

But, many times it doesn't seem to.  Something blocks the otherwise natural transition from what I see in others to what I see in me.  In our day and age, it seems that endless activity inhibits that process.  We, as a culture, often just don't stop long enough to let it this process happen.  And, our affluence often seems simply provide both the opportunity and the boredom to allow this default mode to perpetuate.

Awareness of others can lead to self-awareness.

And, self-awareness can lead to God-awareness.

God-awareness leads to others-awareness.

To Serve

...to serve.

Enables Us

And, it is love that enables us...

Habit Change

The basal ganglia plays a key role in the formation of leadership habits, both the good ones and the bad ones. As we keep repeating a routine of any kind, the brain shifts its control of the habit from areas at the top of the brain to the basal ganglia at the bottom. As this switch occurs, we lose awareness of the habit and its triggers. The routine springs into action in response to a trigger we don’t notice, and does so automatically. We lose control.

To change the habit we must first bring it into consciousness again. That takes self-awareness, a fundamental of emotional intelligence.

-- Daniel Goleman

Continue Reading

Character and Power

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

-- Abraham Lincoln

What You Have

Many people seem to think you have what you can get.  The secret, however, is that whatever you have has been given.  ...and that changes everything.

Even Greater

Our capacity to hurt another person is great.

...our capacity to love another person is even greater.

Law and Freedom

Very few Christians have been taught how to live both law and freedom at the same time. Our western dualistic minds do not process paradoxes very well. Without a contemplative mind, we do not know how to hold creative tensions. WE are better at rushing to judgment and demanding a complete resolution to things before we have learned what they have to teach us. This is the not the way of wisdom.

Primitive and native societies might well have held this tension better than we do today. I have seen this myself among indigenous and “undeveloped” people in India, the Philippines, and Latin America. They often seem much less neurotic and anxious than we are, and can deal with failure or loss far, far more easily than we can.

In the western world, it seems we cannot build prisons fast enough or have enough recovery groups, therapists, or reparenting classes for all the walking wounded in this very educated, religious, and sophisticated society -- which has little respect for limitations and a huge sense of entitlement.

-- Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

To Love

...to love.

Frees Us

And, it is our endurance that frees us...

To Understand

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

-- Stephen Covey

Operation Barnabas

 

Click here for more details.  I know that girl in the middle!

Well Done

There is no room for criticism on the training field. For a player – and for any human being – there is nothing better than hearing 'well done'. Those are the two best words ever invented in sports. You don't need to use superlatives.

-- Sir Alex Ferguson

Wise Father

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.

-- Theodore Hesburgh


Heat of Departure

Ninety degrees of thick, rude heat — a summer guest
we can’t get rid of — hovering over our city,
our brick house. Yet our son, who’s leaving home
tomorrow, we wish would stay. No ac in his room,
but a window unit in ours for wicked waves like this.
He’s almost eighteen. Can’t sleep, he says, and, though
he’s refused our offer before, now he quickly slips
his mattress onto the floor in our room and plops
down: Six foot five, a man turned back
into a boy before us. The heat, we all keep
saying, it’s awful. In the morning I rise early
and shut off the ac just to hear him breathing.

-- Jim Daniels

It is a wise father that knows his child.

-- William Shakespeare

When I first read the poem above, I didn't realize it was written by a man. When I noticed that, it changed something for me. It tapped something, like the door of my heart, and I realized I am feeling some of the same things.  Sneaking up on me, I too am feeling the 'heat' of departure. Though I've barricaded this door with my mind, the thief is still stealing my heart. I am slowing watching my children fade into their adult lives and it is creating a 'missing', even the smallest of things...like breathing.

Seven Nation Army

So smoove!  ...nothing like good 'live' music.

Got me snappin'!

To Endure

...to endure.

Strengthens

And, it is obedience that strengthens us...

You Are The Average...

 

You are the average of the fivee people you spend the most time with.

-- Jim Rohn

I am so grateful that my 'average' is elevated by the good friends God has put in my life. What an accumulation!  I started the evening with an unannounced walk with Tami and Makenzie, only to discover that the further we went, the more the friends that joined us.  We had quite a crowd by the end of the 'walk'.  Kind of symbolic, in many ways, of all that has been added over the years and of a shared and joyous destination.  Wouldn't rather be anywhere else.

I enjoyed a wonderful surprise celebration of my 50th birthday with dear friends last evening. We had great 'old' food, lots of laughs, and enjoyed wonderful music performed by Phil Peugh. I will enjoy the cards, letters, and gifts for years to come.  A deep 'thank you' arises within me for your generosity in all these gifts of God to me through you.

To each one: YOU have increased my average!

...for more hilarious pics, click here.  Thanks, Cliff!

Rigor

Many were what I call "Guru Books". Call them MBA-lite, loaded with can-do spirit about how you too can change your life. Just read my 223 pages of inspiration about blah, blah, blah.... Everyone gets a blue ribbon.

There are great exceptions in the Land of Mediocre Guru Books. Start with Clayton M. Christensen's iconic The Innovator's Dilemma. Consider Michael E. Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed The Three Rules. It is loaded with some serious math on what companies actually do.

What is missing in the cheerleading of these books and in most discussions about "getting ahead" is rigor. There is simply no substitute for gut courses combined with gut general reading.

Continue Reading...

I must say that this describes my experience as well. That is, the things I have learned the most have often come when I have applied myself the most.

Begins In The Dark

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don't give up.

-- Anne Lamott

See God

It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.

-- C.S. Lewis

Farther Away

The farther away we are from something, the less we understand it and the less we understand something, the more likely we are to judge it.

...this can be especially problematic with regard to people.

To Obedience

...to obedience (right thinking / living).

Compels

And, it is our hope that compels us...

Judging

Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves. 

-- Romans 14:22


Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

-- Romans 2:1

Resilient

When you are doing what you love to do, you become resilient.

-- Dick Costolo

What We Repeatedly Do

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.

-- Aristotle

Discernment in Solitude

The Spirit works deep within us, so deeply that we cannot always identify its presence. The effect of God’s spirit is deeper than our thoughts and emotions. That is why setting aside a special time and place for prayer is so important. Often we do not feel like praying and our minds are distracted. The lack of motivation and difficulty focusing make us think that our prayer time is useless and wasted time. Still, it is very important to remain faithful to these times and simply stick with our promise to be with God, even if nothing in our minds, hearts, or bodies wants to be there. Simple faithfulness in prayer gives the Spirit of God a real chance to work in us, to help us be renewed in God’s hands and be conformed to God’s will. During these sacred times and places, we can be touched in deep, hidden, and tender places. We can become more fully aware of the divine presence and more open to God’s guidance as we are led to new places of love.

-- Henri Nouwen

Unconditional Love And...

I know this is not the correct version of what is psychologically 'correct', because we all seem to think we need nothing but unconditional love. Any, law, correction, rule or limitation is another word for conditional love. It is interesting to me that very clear passages describing both God's conditional love and also God's unconditional love are found in the same Scriptures, like Deuteronomy and John's Gospel. The only real biblical promise is that Unconditional love will have the last word!

The most effective organizations, I am told, have both a 'good boss' and a 'bad boss', who work closely together. One holds us strongly while the other speaks hard truth to us and sets clear goals and limits for us. Our naive sense of entitlement and overreaction against all limits to our freedom are not serving us well as parents and marriage partners, not to speak of our needs skills as employees, students, conversationalists, team players, or citizens. It takes the pain of others to produce a humane and just civilization, it seems.

It seems we need a foil, a goad, a wall to butt up against to create a proper ego structure and a strong identity. Such a foil is the way we internalize our own deeper values, educate our feeling function, and dethrone our narcissism. Butting up against limits actually teaches us an awful lot. "I would not have know the meaning of covetousness, if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet'," says St. Paul.

-- Richard Rohr, Falling Upward