Best Football Play of All Time

Since there probably won't be much to cheer about in Ann Arbor today; this should give anyone something to cheer about:



...well, after seeing the last play of the Alabama vs Auburn game:



...I'm not sure which is the best now (too bad this one couldn't have happened for Michigan), but the first one above is still a wonderful story.

Give Up Being Worried

You must once and for all give up being worried about success and failures. Dont let that concern you. Its your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite quietly, to be prepared for mistakes, which are inevitable, and for failures.

-- Anton Chekov

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
  for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
  great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
  therefore I will wait for him.”
The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
  to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
  for the salvation of the Lord.

-- Lamentations 3:22-26

 

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

-- G.K. Chesterton

Essence...is Gratitude

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Transformation and Thankfulness

Transformation is the natural consequence of thankfulness for the understanding of who you really are.

No Person Can

No person can consistently behave in a way that's inconsistent with the way he perceives himself.

-- Dr. Neil Anderson

Not Some Holy Huddle

The should be no walls of defense towards God or each other, even if we have been hurt. The pain we experience in life can be overwhelming, but we aren't meant to go through it alone. We are here on earth to be a home and a refuge for the lost and broken, but first we must learn the art of togetherness and celebration.

...to be on a journey -- suffering and laughing together, not some holy huddle where we all pretend that everything is OK, but a real community who believes not only in the God of miracles, but in the God of trials.

-- Rend Collective Experiment, CAMPFIRE

The Mind Is Everything

The mind is everything. What you think you become.

-- Buddha

Certain traditions would dismiss this observation, simply because of the source. But, if another source was named (which certainly seems like it could be), this would quickly be deemed as true.

This statement is worth both pause and serious consideration.  I think it is true. The mind is a wonderful and terrifying thing, especially in its influence over our being. Redemption makes the difference.

No Negatives Friday

I am fascinated by the dynamics of the human mind and brain (more to follow on this):

Like it or not—although this one’s really hard to like—we all have a natural bias towards negativity. While we appreciate positive experiences, we are much more finely attuned and give much greater weight to negative experiences like fear, threats, or even just bad news.

According to neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, our "brain is like Velcro to negative experiences and Teflon to positive ones.”

Or as my non-neuropsychologist father used to say, “It takes five pats on the back to make up for one, ‘Ah, (crap).’”

Read more

-- Jeff Haden

Not Abstinence

It is not abstinence from pleasures that is best, but mastery over them without being worsted.

-- Aristippus

Boring Romance

Romance isn’t measured by how viral your proposal goes. The internet age may try to sell you something different, but don’t ever forget that viral is closely associated with sickness....

The real romantics imagine greying and sagging and wrinkling as the deepening of something sacred.

-- Ann Voskamp, A Holy Experience

Continue Reading...it's worth your boring time.

Best Things Are Nearest

The best things are nearest:  breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of God just before you.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

As If Nothing Ever Happened

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick  themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

-- Winston Churchill

Worship and Terror Are Leadership Bedmates

As a kind of liturgy, I stand before our five-year-old church every September and ask a question: “Should we continue to exist as a church for another year?” You can hear pins drop every time.

The entire community—new comers, old comers, elders, parents—are always caught off guard by my question. Surveying the faces, I can see their intuitive responses. I enjoy the awkwardness. They think that something tragic has happened. Is he quitting? Is he rejecting the Trinity? Is there some glaring moral failure we’re about to hear?

Of course the answers are always no. But it’s that immediate, guttural reaction of uncertainty that I’m after; even if for a moment everyone imagines worst-case scenarios. For me, there’s intention and rationale behind simply asking the “should we?” question about our future.

As the pastor, I never want to assume that we should keep our ministry going just to keep it going. I desire Jesus to breathe freshly into us each year. Now, I certainly hope that our folks affirm our existence. I hope that they say yes, we should continue for another year. But it appeals to me to ask if God wants the same thing.  Continue Reading...

-- A.J. Swoboda

Moscow Subway Ticket Machine

Being Honest - I Need Help

I often take things for granted -- things like being honest.

But it is helpful to be honest with one's self.  In fact, it is needed.  I think this is true because it puts us back in touch with our needs.  Often honesty becomes simply an effort 'not to lie'. But, being honest is more than just 'not lying'.  It is also an effort to face something that is true.

I had to communicate difficult decisions to people at work today.  It was hard to do.  People's lives were affected.  I knew going into it that I needed some kind of help.  A selfish kind, to be sure, but also a kind that would allow me to be in the moment and truly offer myself to the situation, not just the decisions I had to deliver on behalf of the company.  I knew my role.  But, I also needed to be more than that.  I needed help, to be myself, to be fully human in the situation - to be reminded of the kind of things that often recede in these kinds of moments.

I needed to be honest...to acknowledge the truth that I needed help.  So, I prayed...half unsure of what I was praying for and half sure that I needed to do it.

The anticipated situation came.  I did my job.  And, at the very end, I stopped and said a very human thing, "I'm sorry.  I'm sorry that we have to do this."

Later, one of the people affected mentioned to me how significant it was to her when I completed my task, but then acknowledged the human element of it through my apology.  Though the pain of the situation was still quite evident, something was released through the simplest act on my part.

In retrospect, I am kind of startled that I nearly missed that final moment.  I am even chagrined that it had nearly escaped me.  I wonder about my prayer earlier; about what it had done.  Had it been answered, in that 'moment'?  I suspect so.  Perhaps, even more significant is the notion that if I had not been willing to be honest, with myself, I might not have prayed for the help I surely needed.

I need to be more regularly honest; in part, so that doing so can lead me to acknowledging my need...and not mine only, but also those of others.

Honesty

The single most important element in any human relationship is honesty -- with oneself, with God, and with others.

-- Catherine Marshall

What is the key to leading people?

"No one cares how much you know until they first know how much you care about them.

When they know you care, then they will listen to you... and then they will do anything for you."

...Continue Reading

-- Jeff Haden

Crisis

When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters.  One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.

Leader?

A brilliant leader will recognize the limits of his or her tenure and will continue in leadership only by remaining sensitive to and aware of his or her personal strengths and weaknesses and align with the changing needs of the time. Such a leader will adapt and learn in order to remain in leadership. But the question is put -- does the situation still require leadership or has it become an issue of personal desire?

Someone who does not adapt to the situation but insists on his or her own way is not a leader but an autocrat, a dictator, perhaps a tyrant.  Continue Reading....

-- Jim Sniechowski

Desires

God speaks to us through our desires. Then as we lay them at his feet, he helps us sort them out and quiets our hearts to accept what he has already prepared.

-- Rosalind Rinker

Measuring Stick

Walk through life with a measuring stick – and your eyes get so small you never see God.

-- Ann Voskamp, A Holy Experience

Sleep On It

While we need no science to tell us sleep matters, science can enhance our understanding of all the reasons why. Over recent years, no doubt due largely to our preoccupation with the epidemic obesity we keep choosing to lament rather than fix, the links between sleep and weight have received particular attention.

Lack of sleep tends to mean lack of energy, which is apt to discourage exercise. Sleep deficiency also tends to produce irritability, and all the wrong foods tend to provide, albeit briefly, all the right comfort to dull this pain.

There is an important argument here for approaching our health holistically. Perhaps you want to lose weight, or avoid diabetes- you could decide, reasonably, to focus on diet and exercise. But if you ignore other aspects of your health, such as sleep, your own daily routine may conspire against your objectives. A culture widely prone to both obesity and sleep deprivation may be a quintessential case of meeting the enemy, and finding it is us.

I have seen just such patterns in my practice over the years, and a holistic view of health, orchestrating into a logical sequence of tweaks, can be just the fix. Often, with the requisite insights and skillpower, you can oversee just such troubleshooting on your own – no docs or drugs required.

Continue Reading

-- David L. Katz, MD, MPH

Road to Truth

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth - not going all the way, and not starting.

-- Buddha

This Isn’t Capitalism — It’s Growthism, and It’s Bad for Us

Has capitalism failed? Or, if you like, is it failing? Let me be clear. I don’t mean: is capitalism useless, awful, worthless? I do mean: is capitalism failing at being the best possible means of organizing human work, life, and play?

Maybe what’s practiced in the USA isn’t capitalism at all. It seems to be a toxic admixture of capitalism for the poor, who are ruthlessly whittled down, in brutal Darwinian contests; and socialism for the rich, for whom there appears to be no limit to bailouts, subsidies, and privileges. It’s a lethal cocktail of cronyism for the powerful; and endless struggle for the powerless. It’s neither fish nor fowl; but a chimera.

So what is this system that is faltering, precisely, if it’s not quite capitalism?

I’d call it “growthism.” It’s not just a system or a set of institutions. It’s a mindset; an ideology; a set of cherished beliefs. And one that’s hardened into dogma. A dogma which is palpably failing; but can’t be dislodged—because it’s become an article of faith, the central belief of a cult, whose priests and acolytes threaten mysterious, terrible, divine revenge whenever their authority is questioned.

Growthism says: growth must be achieved at all costs. When growth is achieved; societies are said to be successful; when it is not, they are said to be failing.

...

The truest wealth of life is having lived a life that matters.  

Continue Reading

-- Umair Haque

Fall 2013

2013's Fall is now competing with the best of them:

 

Standardized Test Scores

"My daughter's new elementary school principal sent this message to all students as they received their state standardized test scores:

'We are concerned that these tests do not assess all of what it is that makes each of you unique. The people who create these tests and score them do not know each of you the way your teachers do, the way I hope to, and certainly not the way your families do. They do not know that many of you speak two languages. They do not know that you can play a musical instrument or that you can dance or paint a picture. They do not know that your friends count on you to be there for them or that your laughter can brighten the dreariest day. They do not know that you write poetry or songs, play or participate in sports, wonder about the future, or that sometimes you take care of your little brother or sister after school. They do not know that you have traveled to a really neat place or that you know how to tell a great story or that you really love spending time with special family members and friends. They do not know that you can be trustworthy, kind or thoughtful, and that you try, every day, to be your very best. The scores you get will tell you something, but they will not tell you everything. There are many ways of being smart.'

"My daughter, who did well on the test, shrugged about her scores, but read the letter over and over and held it close to her heart announcing, 'I really love this.'"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

NOTE: This message originated with a group of principals from several districts, who worked together to write it and get it out. They want to remain anonymous so that any attention the message receives will focus on children and their needs, not on praise for the principals. They hope that other educators will convey a similar message to the children in their care.

More here

-- Parker Palmer

Swords vs Prayer

Where we, like Peter, tend to grab for our swords, Jesus turned to prayer.

Finding God in Silence

It's a long listen; I did it in chunks over several weeks.

Lot's of 'nuggets' - here's a few I've found:

• Silence is primordial.
• The foundation of being itself is silence. It creates a sypathetic resonance with what's right in front of us.
• You can only appreciate something that you've already begun to experience.
• The ego uses words to get whatever it wants. We pull out the words that give us power, that make us right.
• The soul doesn't use words. It surrounds words with space - silence.
• ...if we're not willing to sit in the poverty of our silence.
• Beauty emerges from the silence around it.
• Time increases inside of silence - from chronological time to kyros.
• Whenever emptiness becomes its own kind of fullness, you've just experienced silence.
• Dualistic thinking is making things about sides (where you separate everything) and you pick one, and reject the other. We call this being educated. (min 40)
• Arguments are more often not love of truth, but love of victory (min 1:04)
• The dualistic mind loves to exaggerate the differences.
• The psychological defect...the need to exaggerate differences.
• Non-dualistic thinking is contemplation. The contemplative mind is being rediscovered.
• In the Christian tradition, knowing and not knowing are balanced - they are put together...it is called faith. (min 41)
• Enlightenment has come to mean rational. We've lusted after certitude.
• The paths to contemplation are great love or great suffering.
• Trinity (min 52)
• Faith and silence are practicing for death.

What We Care About

Motivation is just a word to describe the natural energy boost that people get when they're connected to their own power source (which can be different for each of us).

When we're at home, do we worry about being motivated? We do the next thing that we need to do, whether it's fun (cuddling the baby or having sex, for instance) or not-so-much-fun (like paying bills, unless you're into that). The motivation is baked into the activity. If we don't pay bills, they turn off the lights eventually. If we don't cuddle the baby, we won't get our baby-cuddle vitamins for the day and neither will our precious baby.

It's no different at work. We've constructed a whole realm of pseudo-science that tries to tell managers they can dial motivation up or down through incentives and penalties. This is one of the most counterproductive and insulting substructures in the Godzilla machine that rules modern-day business, government and academia. We follow a motivation model that features a donkey as a leading character (the donkey is that put-upon creature who chases that carrot and fears the stick). We've forgotten how humans get motivated - how we motivate ourselves, for instance.

We care about things that are interesting and fun, and when we get the voltage we need from our power source at work, no one has to fiddle with carrots or sticks to get us to heave-to. The carrots and the sticks are unnecessary and distracting when we're in the zone where working people naturally go when barriers to passion and creativity come down.

-- Liz Ryan