2015

Wow, what a year 2015 has been!  The last few, I have enjoyed reviewing Saturday Mornings entries throughout the year -- I am grateful for the reminder of some of the distances traveled, physically and in the heart. Here are some of my 2015 favorites:

December: Why I Like Taking Pictures I Wanted Peace Stop Chasing	June: The Speech Of The Sky One Father Week Of The Bride, Pt. 6
November: Gratitude: Thru the Imperfect Desperate Bravery	May: Not What's Really Important Unrequited Love You Think You Know
October: Space Readies Us Disappointment Liberates	April: UN- Does Sexual Orientation Equal Identity? Good Friday
September: Surrounded By Love Caine's Arcade No Real Substitute	March: Hatred And The Holocaust How We Lose Our Way Interior Stability
August: Perils Alone  Delight? Other Way Around	February: Chicago:  The Ribbon Begins To Die Neglecting Time
July: What Is Love? Largely Through What Happens Natural Response	January: Who We Really Are Silence:  Fear Of What It Has To Say Instead

Duty To Act

​Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.

-- Albert Einstein

I Used To Think: Extend Goodness

On our recent Christmas Cruise, I read parts of a couple of books.  One was, Love Does, by Bob Goff.  What a wonderful read.  He would start most chapters with the phrase, "I used to think..." and then go on to talk about something that he has learned.

I was running early this morning and was, ironically, feeling a little sorry for myself.  How could I feel this way, coming off of our great week last week?  I started talking to God about it and I believe he pointed me to my own, "I used to think...".

I used to think that I needed to receive goodness and keep receiving goodness, now I recognize that what I really need is to extend goodness.

We have had chances to do that a few times in the last few months and I can see that in so doing I have received all the goodness I need...by extending it to others.

Most Recognizable

Sometimes, gifts from God are most easily recognizable through the hands of people.  Perhaps this is why he asks us to give them.

Election

Election of one is not the rejection of the rest, but ultimately for their benefit. It is as if a group of trapped cave explorers choose one of their number to squeeze through a narrow flooded passage to get out to the surface and call for help. The point of the choice is not so that she alone gets saved, but that she is able to bring help and equipment to ensure the rest get rescued. “Election” in such a case is an instrumental choice of one for the sake of many.

In the same way, God’s election of Israel is instrumental in God’s mission for all nations. Election needs to be seen as a doctrine of mission, not a calculus for the arithmetic of salvation. If we are to speak of being chosen, of being among God’s elect, it is to say that, like Abraham, we are chosen for the sake of God’s plan that the nations of the world come to enjoy the blessing of Abraham (which is exactly how Paul describes the effect of God’s redemption of Israel through Christ in Gal. 3: 14).

-- Christopher J. H. Wright, "The Mission of God's People"

...thanks, Jim, for passing this one along.

Christmas Cruise

Speaking of gifts...my parents are turning 75 in 2016 and decided to celebrate by taking all of us on a cruise!  We are so grateful, not only for the opportunity to receive so lavishly from them, but for their lives of love towards us over all these years.  We are blessed beyond our knowledge and grateful for the goodness God has given us through them.  Some pics here....

Is There Any Room?

A Christmas prayer:

Stir up thy power, O God and Father,
and with great might come among us;
and because we are solely hindered by our sins,
let thy bountiful grace and mercy
speedily help and deliver us;
teach us your joy
and may the Spirit find room
to produce your joy in our hearts.
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
with Thee and the Holy Spirit, one God
be honor and glory forever.
Amen.

Is there room in my heart this Christmas...for the Spirit to work?

A Hallelujah Christmas

Gifts vs Presents

This Christmas, I want to give more gifts than presents.

Take a listen to these reflections on gifts.

You Are Not Alone; A Sermon on Mary, Elizabeth, and Being Given One to Another

A delightfully human sermon for us all, this time of year

You Are Not Alone; A Sermon on Mary, Elizabeth, and Being Given One to Another

Thanks, Vicky, for sending to me!

As Human

​Great leaders don't see themselves as great; they see themselves as human.

-- Simon Sinek

Angels We Have Heard On High

This Proves How Wrong Leaders Can Be

Don’t be fooled.

Throughout history, every generation believes it understands how our world works. And yet we look back and realize that many conventional beliefs were wrong. Today I’d like to share a story that makes my skin crawl because it illustrates just how wrong our leaders can be, even when their own personal safety is at issue.  

George Washington was President of the United States from 1789 to 1797. On December 12, 1799, he was back to private life and spent about four hours on horseback supervising farming activities. The weather went from rain to hail to snow, and Washington was wet when he returned home. By the next morning, he had a sore throat. 24 hours later, the throat infection was so severe that he was having trouble breathing.

This was when Washington asked George Rawlins, an overseer at Mount Vernon, to bleed him...continue here....

-- Bruce Kasanoff

Lullaby for Anyone

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week -- "Lullaby for Anyone":

Excuse me, lover. I’m busy foretelling
and protesting your end. Whether I hunt,
gather, barter, or sell, what I worry over

is the order: live oaks, shorelines,
wide-eyed and flammable
creature I adore. By day, I admit

no shadow as backup: crow, please keep
your clever forensics. What would I do
with a cardboard guitar, a map of the planets,

and a box of building blocks,
alone? Another bereavement
I haven’t unlearned: to bury one hope

inside another, and I, having made a home
of limbo (I keep a black hole more spotless
than cozy), once traveled through time

at will, invisible. Now, not so free. My beloved
grows heavier, hardier, heavenward.
Certain grief pre-scorches me.

-- Stephanie Ford

We Will Change

​We will change when it hurts bad enough not to.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Got me again (even if a bit enhanced this time).

Last Thing

The last thing we learn about ourselves is our effect.

-- William Boyd

All Problems Stem

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

-- Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Mary, Did You Know?

...adapted from one my favorite songs on the significance of the Christmas Story, Mary's Song in Luke 1.

Depression: The Struggle None of Us Want to Talk About

There can be a great collision this time of year...where the Christmas-card version of the lives we may want smash up against the realities of our deeper aches in life. I was grateful to find this:

I don’t like talking about depression much, because I want my life to look together. I want to sound smart and my kids to obey the first time and for my marriage to be a beacon for all others who follow in my marriage’s glorious light.

I’m scared to let anyone in on the secret because then the gig would be up.  Continue here....

-- Lisa Gungor

I am grateful for this quote from the reading referenced above:

We don’t know what to do with our own weakness but pretend it doesn’t exist…how can we welcome fully the weakness of another if we haven’t welcomed our own weakness?

-- Jean Vanier

I Wanted Peace

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week -- "I Wanted Peace":

​I wanted peace
without pain,
but it is through the pain
that I crave Your presence
and therein lies peace

-- Lynelle Watford

At a time when it seems there is so much fear, it seems fitting that we acknowledge what was announced to us long ago:  PEACE.

Of all the things that could have been said by heaven to earth, why this?  We have acquired a new nature, not one designed by God, and it is fear.  We are almost now even naturally afraid.  We are afraid even of our fellow man, not to mention the times when man encounters the supernatural like they did in this story.  Man seems to be almost always instinctively afraid of God.  And, so, God seems to pretty regularly announce himself first with words designed to off-set our fear.

Perhaps he knows the energy of fear is to act, in self-protection inwardly or by striking outwardly.  Perhaps he also knows that this nearly instinctive response is really what perpetuates the very energy of fear itself.  Fear in fact is nothing substantive, it is the object of our fear that grips us.

So God simply pre-empts our actions-of-fear by proclaiming something in front of it, before we can react, by announcing 'peace'.  And, perhaps, this is the greatest gift we have as well, to announce and live peace to those around us -- to live in good will to men.  As God's presence is experienced in us, as peace, so we can be present with others.

Stop Chasing

​When you stop chasing the wrong things you give the right things a chance to catch you.

-- Lolly Daskal

Fundamental Turn

Big parts of life will take a fundamental turn once we stop trying to get harmful things to make us feel better and turn our attention to God, taking how we feel to him instead.

This is not to imply a guarantee that by doing so, things will get better...though they certainly might.  But the significant part is the turning, on our part, the entrusting of ourselves to God, because we learn best about ourselves in relationship with the one in whose image we are made.

Thief of Time

Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.

-- Charles Dickens

When It Isn't Shared

What is the value of something when it isn't shared?

Noel

What a voice! What a song for the heart of this season...what a truth!

Why I Like Taking Pictures

Rujida, a friend of mine, said she was thinking about why she likes to take pictures.  She asked me why I like taking pictures.  Thinking about her question, I saw this photo by Eastlyn Bright.

I think my answer to her question is a bit difficult to describe...because there is a kind of mystery to it.  Just like a photograph itself, describing something doesn't capture the whole of it.  For me, a photograph captures something.  It slows something down about life.  It creates a moment, lifting it out of all the surrounding moments that often just end up running together.  A photo is always, in fact, something that has already happened.  And, perhaps because of that, it teases us with the possibility that the captured thing might happen again...even though it, in an of itself, is over.  A photograph is an attempt to preserve something, a memory.  

A photo, like the one above, can create a longing for its content, or something like it, to happen again.  A photo can create hope (future), in an ironic way, from a memory (past).

I am drawn to beauty.  I have encountered a quality of beauty that almost always makes me want to share it with someone else.  Taking photos is a way I enjoy of doing this.

Permanence

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week -- "Permanence":

Permanence we have already,
 Though we act as if we don’t;
 And miss many a gratitude
 To honor the Body loan’t

-- Tim Koshnick

Productivity Killer

Avoid multitasking. It's a real productivity killer. Research conducted at Stanford University confirms that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time.

-- Travis Bradberry

Without Feedback

One function of feedback is that it can be used to shape how you want to be.  This can be a helpful strategy for navigating life.

But, there comes a time when you have to learn to trust something, without the benefit of feedback to reinforce your sense of things.  You are forced to rely on something else, within yourself -- to live with the consequences of your own choices...to learn from them, rather than relying tentatively on feedback to move forward.

It seems to me like I am in one of those 'times'.

Do To Yourself

​Education is what others do to you 
while Learning is what you do to yourself.

-- Joichi Ito

Illiterate

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

-- Alvin Toffler

Outside

I need times in the morning outside, to settle into myself, into the things around me. To claw my way past the debris that seems to collect around me, to open myself up to words, to hear afresh from a source within me. It is a time that reminds me who I am. ...like an internal clock, a rhythm within myself, a kind of following God, in a uniquely Dana (personal) way.

I am learning a new way of knowing life, not as much anymore from the things I do, but from something else. My times outside help me listen for the voice of my new teacher.

"No Game More Important!"

...and Conner and Blake will be there!

Our Pocket Opens

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week -- "Our Pocket Opens":

Our burdens are our rocks, 
and rocks come in different sizes 
just as our burdens do. 

When we  carry a rock 
around all day, we try 
to put it in our pocket. 

Our hearts have pockets 
for our rocks, our burdens. 
The bigger the burden 
the bigger the pocket
in our heart. 

Every time we tell someone 
our burden, our pocket opens.

-- Gynnae Hochstetler

Gratitude: Through The Imperfect

So it's searchable:

Trying to be perfect
  ends in burn-out.
Being grateful
  though the imperfect
    lights hearts on fire.

-- Ann Voskamp, A Holy Experience

...let this one settle into a deep spot and juice a bit (like today's Turkey). It might be true that perfection is almost always a thief of thankfulness.  In fact, our imperfection only seems to illuminate our sense of gratitude.

Gratitude: Turns What We Have Into Enough

Gratitude turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity...it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

-- Melody Beattie

Gratitude: A True Measure

Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.

-- W.T. Purkiser

Gratitude: Beauty

Quite a gift to us all this weekend...I am so grateful for beauty and the pleasure of enjoying it.  It can just as easily bring us to our knees as anything else.  What a way to start Thanksgiving Week!

Desperate

Pain is a gift. It puts us in a position where we’re quicker to be desperate for God. When we seek him, we will find him.

-- Lauren Scruggs

The tragically short half-life of online empathy

Everything’s accelerated these days, and the same must be said for grief online. The Internet cycles through all five stages in as many tweets. We find it hurtling toward us: unavoidable, wall-to-wall.

And then, before we’ve processed it, the grief’s already gone.  Continue....

-- Caitlin Dewey

MY PATH FOR YOU

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week -- "MY PATH FOR YOU":

Though rocky and steep
and sore at times, 
this is my path for you.

Though the winds are
fierce and chill the bone,
this is my path for you.

Keep your eyes on me
and not your dreams
or other paths some trod

Affirm your trust 
in all my ways,
this is my path for you.

-- Lynelle Watford

Not Failure, But The Belief

It is not failure that stops most people, but rather the belief that failure is permanent.

-- Jake Ducey

Your Past Becomes Your Present

Where you focus your attention determines your emotional state. When you fixate on the problems that you’re facing, you create and prolong negative emotions which hinder your ability to reach your goals. When you focus on the actions you'll take to better yourself and your circumstances, you create a sense of personal efficacy that produces positive emotions and improves performance.

Failure can erode your self-confidence and make it hard to believe you’ll achieve a better outcome in the future. Most of the time, failure results from taking risks and trying to achieve something that isn’t easy. Success lies in your ability to rise in the face of failure, and you can’t do this when you’re living in the past. Anything worth achieving is going to require you to take some risks, and you can’t allow failure to stop you from believing in your ability to succeed. When you live in the past, that is exactly what happens, and your past becomes your present, preventing you from moving forward.

-- Travis Bradberry

It is easy to presume that such things apply to other people (not me).  I'm asking myself today where I have let a sense of failure over something in the past prevent me from choosing something again now.  Are there things I want that I am avoiding now, simply because it didn't turn out exactly as I had hoped it would?  What if I just need to try again?  What if I can learn something of value each time I simply try again?  What do I really have to lose anyway?

​If You Want Something

​If you want something, you often have to focus in order to get it.

Make Me

What I need is someone who will make me do what I can.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Kills All Others

The fear of God kills all other fears.

-- Hugh Black

Fully Applying

​There may be no greater joy than that which comes from fully applying (giving) oneself to something...or someone.

When I am stuck in a (joyless) loop, could it be that I'm not really giving myself to anything?  That I'm not taking any risks?  That I'm waiting on everyone else to do something?  Such cycles are self-encapsulating.

Want joy?  Go give yourself to something, besides yourself.  ...so what if you get hurt, you're hurting anyway (in your loop), right?  You may find a surprise or two...or many (even if it still hurts a little).

Cheerfulness Taught by Reason

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week -- "Cheerfulness Taught by Reason":

I think we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God’s. Had we no hope
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
Of yon gray blank of sky, we might be faint
To muse upon eternity’s constraint
Round our aspirant souls. But since the scope
Must widen early, is it well to droop,
For a few days consumed in loss and taint?
O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted,—
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road—
Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
To meet the flints?—At least it may be said,
“Because the way is short, I thank thee, God!”

-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Minimum Wage

I don't know exactly how I feel about the current $15 / hr minimum wage debate — lots of ramifications economically and socially.  As an employer of minimum wage employees, $15 / hr would substantially affect our margins.  If I were an employee, I would think it very difficult to exist on current minimum wage levels.

The sides of the current debate about this seem to be highly influenced by where you are starting from.  How do wages impact our views of life?  Would more money for the same work be better?  Or, would it disincentivize a person from growing and becoming capable of more contribution?  How is value monetized?  How should it be?  How does what executives make relative to minimum wage workers impact these questions?

We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamp-post — for support, but not for illumination.

-- David Ogilvy

The Tyranny of Financial Insecurity

Within six months, we lost the beautiful house on 2 and a half acres on a hill overlooking a valley, where we had lived for 17 years. We lost our cars. We lost virtually every material thing we had, moved to a small rental way out in the woods (where I began writing The Shack) and six months later into the smaller rental in Gresham where we live. Most of this time I have worked at least three jobs (jobs that Papa brought along) just to put food on the table and pay the bills.

This is the time of our lives when we learned that the opposite of “more” is “enough.”

But today I am free! Our time in Gresham has been one of the greatest times of spiritual growth in our family. Our kids had to make huge changes and they did with open hearts. I have no fear of money or financial security anymore. The imaginations of the future are gone and I have learned to live in the truth of the present, where Jesus dwells with me. There is nothing like losing everything to heal you of the fear and to learn that you have enough, each day. My life is full of joy.

-- Wm. Paul Young

This observation stands out to me: "There is nothing like losing everything to heal you of the fear and to learn that you have enough, each day."  More here....

Ready

​I seem to be much more ready retroactively, than I am proactively.

...there is something contradictory in this statement.

Arrogance

Does arrogance have a scent? I smell something....

If I Wanted To Tell You...I Would Have

From Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It.

Bravery

Bravery is for the people who have no choice, people like Chesley Sullenberger and Audie Murphy.

Bravery is for the people who are gifted, people like Ralph Abernathy, Sarah Kay and Miles Davis.

Bravery is for the people who are called, people like Abraham Lincoln,  Rosa Parks and Mother Theresa.

Bravery is for other people.

When you see it that way, it's so clearly and patently absurd that it's pretty clear that bravery is merely a choice.

At least once in your life (maybe this week, maybe today) you did something that was brave and generous and important. 

The only question is one of degree... when will we care enough to be brave again?

-- Seth Godin

This, coupled with the brilliance of this crisp Fall morning, makes me want to be brave again today.

After The Disaster

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week -- "After The Disaster":

A picnic in the sequoias, light
filtered into planes, and the canopy
cut through. Fire raged in that place
one month ago. Since I’d been there,
I’d have to see it burning.
Nature of events to brush
against us like the leaves
of aspens brush against each
other in a grove full of them
carved with the initials
of people from the small weird town
hikers only like for gas. Messages
get past borders—water
across the cut stem of the sent
sunflower alive with good
intentions. People who mistake
clarity for certainty haven’t learned
that listening isn’t taking
a transcript, it’s not speech
the voice longs for, it’s something
deeper inside the throat.
Now, from the beginning, recite
the alphabet of everything
you should have wanted, silverware,
a husband, a house to live in
like a castle, but I wanted
fame among the brave.
A winter night in desert light:
trucks carving out air-corridors
of headlight on the interstate
at intervals only a vigil
could keep. Constellations
so clean you can see
the possibilities denied.
Talking about philosophy
might never be dinner
but can return
your body to a state
of wonder before sleep.
The night reduced us
to our elements.
I wanted water, and whatever
found itself unborn
in me to stay alive.

-- Katie Peterson

"...mistake clarity for certainty...",
"...listening isn't taking a transcript...",
"...so clean you can see the possibilities denied.",
"...whatever found itself unborn in me to stay alive."

...SO much to bask in, in this one.

Places

I seem to be more my right size when I am out in nature.  I can see that more clearly in such places.  When I am not there, I often seem to feel a need to be something bigger...in the other places, where the economies of man seem to be more in play.

Fall Tree Of The Day

Attention is the beginning of devotion.

-- Mary Oliver

...and a reminder that it is often from the forced-attention of the unfamiliar that some of the best surprises (and devotions) come!

More pics from this stunning Fall here....

Something Unfamiliar

​There is nothing like deep, extended travel into something unfamiliar to illuminate a new understanding .

Running In the Dark

I seem to be in a season now where things feel tome like trying to run in the dark -- like I did this morning, along a familiar, but very unlit route.  I was often feeling like I was going to run into something, to the point where I actually had to stop a couple of times.  Occasionally, I even feared something jumping out at me...despite that it never has before.  It is interesting what deep darkness does to the senses...and our internals.

Like the familiar aroma of the season of Fall, I smell the one that comes from an internal disquiet I feel these days. It is unfamiliar; I am uncertain...unilluminated.

When

So it's searchable:

When I said, "My foot is slipping,"
  your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.
When anxiety was great within me,
  your consolation brought me joy.

-- Psalm 94:18-19

Somebody Else

You don't find peace 
until you love somebody else.
-- Ben Rector, Note To Self

Listen to Me

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week, entitled "Listen to Me":

Listen to me, please, I need to talk to you;
Give me only a few minutes;
Accept what I experience, what I feel,
Without reserve, without judgement.

Listen to me, please, I need to talk;
Do not bombard me with questions, advice and opinions;
Do not feel obliged to settle my difficulties,
Could it be that you lack confidence in my competence?

Listen to me, please, I need to talk;
Do not try to entertain or amuse me,
It would make me think you fail to understand the importance
Of what I am going through.

Listen to me, please, I need to talk;
Do not feel it your duty to approve, if I need to tell my story
It is simply to be set free.

Listen to me, please, I need to talk;
Do not interpret and try not to analyse;
I would feel misunderstood and manipulated,
And could no longer tell you anything.

Listen to me, please, I need to talk;
Do not interrupt me to question me;
Do not attempt to force me to reveal what is hidden,
I know how far I can and will go.

Listen to me, please, I need to talk;
Respect the silences which help me to make progress;
Be very careful not to break them;
It is very often through them that things are clarified.

So now that you have let me have my say,
I beg you, now you may speak;
Attentive and at your disposal,
I, in my turn, will listen to you.

-- Author Unknown

Space Readies Us

Rushing makes spaces small.  Being still in a space can reveal to us just how big it is.  How could we have scurried right by it, without noticing?  I have not only done that emotionally at times, but also physically...speeding down some oft-driven road, I haven't seen what you see when you just walk by it.  Matters of the heart may work in similar ways.

Recognizing this, a thought has dawned on me.  What if something isn't so much getting away from me as much as the possibility that something is coming to me?  What if, in fact, it has been waiting for me?  To wait for it?

'Getting away' often feels like losing something.  But, if that is not really what is happening, then it would seem possible that something else is being readied, to be gained, rather than lost.  I am often stuck in the loop of my own expectations.  And, as a result, I may not recognize that something is about to be given.  Perhaps, I just need to be readied to receive it.  Not recognizing this could end up with me missing it altogether.

I admit I am a bit apprehensive, but also a bit fuller of wonder, too...what is coming?  Will I wait for it...or rush on?

Cannot Truly Listen

​You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.


-- Scott Peck

Getting Away From You

​Do you ever feel like something is getting away from you?  Even when you feel preoccupied with finding it?

I feel like this is happening to me.  But, I don't know what it is...that is getting away.  But, it feels like something is.

And, it appears that the only way to find it, is to stop being so busy about doing so. Running-busy inescapably seems to becomes a circle, rather than a straight line to anywhere. I have to stop trying so hard and slow up enough to find something in the space I occupy, rather than the one I strive to get to. It is around me, but I am rushing past it again and again. I need to wait in a space for it to come, rather than scramble-searching for it...perhaps the wind from my own scurry pushes it away.

I have to stop, in order for what I am looking for to be...with me.

Look For The Fear

Fear will push you to avert your eyes.

Fear will make you think you have nothing to say.

It will create a buzz that makes it impossible to meditate...
or it will create a fog that makes it so you can do nothing but meditate.

Fear seduces us into losing our temper.
and fear belittles us into accepting unfairness.

Fear doesn't like strangers, people who don't look or act like us, and most of all, the unknown.

It causes us to carelessly make typos, or obsessively look for them.

Fear pushes us to fit in, so we won't be noticed, but it also pushes us to rebel and to not be trustworthy, so we won't be on the hook to produce.

It is subtle enough to trick us into thinking it isn't pulling the strings, that it doesn't exist, that it's not the cause of, "I don't feel like it."

When in doubt, look for the fear.

-- Seth Godin

Human Experience

We are not human beings having a human experience, we are spiritual beings, having a human experience.

-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Citizens

Perhaps it is we, who live rarely with such displacement, who suffer the most...because we don't recognize where our citizenship really is.

TODAY

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week, entitled "TODAY":

Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must.
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness.  One of the doors
into the temple.

-- Mary Oliver

Silent

The word listen contains the same letters as the word silent.

-- Alfred Brendel

Inner Signals

Emotional self-awareness is a leadership competency that shows up in model after model. These leaders are attuned to their inner signals, recognizing how their feelings affect them and their job performance. They integrate their guiding values into their work. They can deduce the best course of action. They see the big picture and they’re genuine.

Studies also suggest that your experiences with your parents can generate the kind of reflective competencies upon which self-awareness depends.

Keep in mind that self-awareness isn’t just navel-gazing. It’s the presence of mind to actually be flexible in how you respond. It allows you to be centered, and know what your body is telling you.

The physiological state of your whole body can drastically affect how you respond in a given situation if you don’t pay attention to it. (For example, a study in 2011 indicated that judges hand down stricter sentences when they’re hungry.)

This is also true when we’re threatened or challenged at work: The brain quickly judges people who are not like us in one certain way, and those like us in another way. If you’re not aware of that as a leader of an organization, you may find yourself making all sorts of gut-based decisions that require more reflection.

-- Daniel Goleman

Muscle

​The soul is a muscle, and it needs to be exercised a little every day. Say a morning prayer just to say something.

-- Catherine Hicks

She seems to be saying what he said this way:

But we who would be born again indeed, must wake our souls unnumbered times a day.

-- George MacDonald

Disappointment

Disappointment.  It rings like a smallish word; easily dismissed.  We don't appreciate its inconvenience.  We move on.  We tell others to do the same.

Truth is, I was pretty disappointed this last Saturday when Michigan lost their football game to Michigan State on the last play.  But, I wouldn't acknowledge it that way initially.  I fumbled around for at least two other options; one, was to look for a silver-lining.  The second was to over-state something, to choose victimization (by the refs earlier in the game), to be angry.  Lot's of things other than just simple disappointment.

I don't like disappointment.  It's irritating.  I don't like to disappoint others.  It risks something in me.

It took a good run yesterday to sort out the things above and to realize I was just disappointed.  I had wanted something to happen.  I looked it was going to happen.  But, it didn't.  I was disappointed, but my habitual response wanted to make it something else.

...and, of course, the deeper reality is that we live with disappointment about things that are much more significant than the outcomes of football games.

Being disappointed, in simple ways though, allows something else to occur.  Something good, in fact.  Disappointment is like space.  I need to be in a space...unfilled, uncluttered by a bunch of other stuff to see other things that are true.  To see that there is more going than just what I want to happen.  More going on, that is more important.  More about myself that I need to see.  More in someone else that I need to embrace.

Disappointment gives us this opportunity -- where would we be without it?  Where are we without it?  ...too quickly somewhere else, too numb a place, or worse, too often in too violent a place.  There is more and disappointment can give it to us, can bring us to space in our life that allows us that more.  Disappointment is not small after-all; it shouldn't be dismissed...it is, in fact, a healthy more.

I am disappointed.  There, I said it.  And, thank God for the gift it is.

Girded

Take your burdens, and troubles, and losses, and wrongs, if come they must and will, as your opportunities, knowing that God has girded you for greater things than these.

-- Horace Bushnell

Francine's Interview

October

The season of Fall has long had a special grip on me.  Something exhaling, because it is over.  Something coming, that isn't yet.  I have often wondered if this time taps into something inherent within me or is simply something of nostalgia.  Either way, the signals of the transition are resplendent -- color, coolness, and crunch. I am alive.

My 'Friday Poem' selection for the week, entitled "October":

Bending above the spicy woods which blaze,
Arch skies so blue they flash, and hold the sun
Immeasurably far; the waters run
Too slow, so freighted are the river-ways
With gold of elms and birches from the maze
Of forests. Chestnuts, clicking one by one,
Escape from satin burs; her fringes done,
The gentian spreads them out in sunny days,
And, like late revelers at dawn, the chance
Of one sweet, mad, last hour, all things assail,
And conquering, flush and spin; while, to enhance
The spell, by sunset door, wrapped in a veil
Of red and purple mists, the summer, pale,
Steals back alone for one more song and dance.

-- Helen Hunt Jackson

Seeds, Mistakes, Sleep, and Now

I like these 'habit' recommendations:

Plant seeds:
Many people have ONE GOAL in life. And they aim their lives for that one goal. Good luck with that.
The real key is to plant many seeds. 1% of the seeds planted will turn into 50% of the flowers.
That's Garden Math.
What are some seeds?
Send a thank you letter. Send an intro letter. Send ideas to people. Exercise. Eat well. Surprise your spouse. Make a website. Come up with an idea. Write an article. Read a book. Think of 100 more seeds.
Every day plant some seeds.

Mistakes:
I was teaching my daughter to serve harder. She had a good consistent serve. She never missed. But it was too soft. Easy to return.
So I said, "hit it so hard you have to grunt".
She started missing. She was getting depressed. Every shot came in about 6 inches to the left of the box.
But then she adjusted. The shots started to hit in the box. And they were harder.
I asked her, "what was going on in your head?"
She said, "I saw I was hitting too much to the left so I moved it over."
If she kept hitting her safe easy shot, she never would have improved.
Only mistakes made her improve. ONLY MISTAKES.

Sleep:
Your brain is most active 2-5 hours after you wake up. Do your productive passion work then.
Stay away from people who claim they only need 3-5 hours a sleep a night. They are evil.

Right Now:
Every time I've had a problem in the future, it never came true.
Every time I've had a regret in the past, the regret kept me glued to the mud.
Right now you are dealt cards. No other hand before or after will help you right now.
So this is the only moment to focus on. Right now is best predictor of Right Life.

-- James Altucher

...more here.

Dreams and Fears

Sooner or later, important action taken comes down to this.

Fear: Of being ashamed, feeling stupid, being rejected, being left out, getting hurt, being embarrassed, left alone, dying.

Dreams: Of being seen, being needed, becoming independent, relieving anxiety, becoming powerful, making someone proud, fitting in, seen as special, mattering, taken care of, loved.

Marketers put many layers atop these basic needs (horsepower, processor speed, features, pricing, testimonials, guarantees, and more) but it all comes down to dreams and fears.

-- Seth Godin

Failure Is

Failure is information -- we label it failure, but it’s more like, 'This didn’t work, and I’m a problem solver, so I’ll try something else.'

-- Carol Dweck

We put too much stock in concepts related to success and failure -- achieving those like results, and too quickly. Those are, perhaps at best, partial and retroactive descriptions of something...not tests along the way.

We need more tenacity, more grit, because there is more to discover than relatively arbitrary definitions of success or failure...and the unfortunate, preemptive conclusions they offer us.

Would I Feel Better?

Would I feel better?
Would I feel better if my team had won?
Would I feel better if I knew
the ones I love are really ok, are better than ok?
Would I feel better if I knew
answers to questions which move between niggling and haunting me?
...if I knew I could make a difference or see how?
Would I feel better if...?
Perhaps I should just acknowledge
that I don't feel better today.
And, with patience, not probe too deeply for a why.

When HotChurch Came to Town

In my jealousy and self-righteous anger toward HotChurch's pastor, I now see that I was becoming like him. I was driven, obsessed not with God, but against HotChurch. It was a hard truth to face. Sifting can reveal what's inside. 

Yes, know God. And keep on, Friend, even with dust in your teeth.  Continue here....

-- Keith Mannes

What Julia Roberts Can Teach Us About Creation

"I've been here for over four and a half billion years, 22,500 times longer than you; I don't really need people, but people need me." And "I have fed species greater than you; and I have starved species greater than you." And "my oceans, my soil, my flowing streams, my forests -- they all can take you or leave you."

I've often thought that nature is rather indifferent...to us.  It will do what it does regardless of our response to it, regardless of our even noticing it.  It seems to live, have purpose for something else, besides human approval.  A friend and I talked about this years ago; he even wrote a poem about this...which I now want to find again.

Continue the quote above from in this article by Robert Barron here....

Geode

My Friday Poem selection for the week, entitled "Geode":

The plagues we wished upon ourselves
With aloe juice and cayenne
The planets we strained to reach
That was how being young tasted
Each of us a geode looking to be cracked open
And to crack each other open
Over and over
I am no longer young except to those who are older
In the way that youth moves along
The conveyor belt
At a consistent distance
I drink water now
I try to be gentle
The years crack you open enough

-- Alicia Jo Rabins

LETS GO CUBBIES!

From here....

Imagination For

​Have we so little imagination for others at times, because we have so little for ourselves?

The More Human He Is

 

"It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness." 

Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself -- be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself, by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love, the more human he is.  More here....

-- Viktor E. Frankl

Everything I Learned About Leadership Was Wrong

Everything I learned about parenting is leadership and everything I learned about leadership was wrong.

-- Bob Chapman

Vast Strength

Couldn't find the version, but I like the rendering of this verse. Because of our weakness, we can only be truly strengthened by God's strength.  It is through gratitude that we have access to His strength..

So it's searchable:

Be strengthened by the Lord
  and his vast strength.

-- Ephesians 6:10

Forgiveness and Faith

What if everything in life really did happen for a reason? What if everything really did have a purpose and it always served us in the long run? What if life was always happening FOR us, not TO us? What if even the pain and problems had a higher purpose in the growth and evolution of our souls?

If you were to look back on your life, I would be willing to bet you’ve had some painful experiences that you would never want to experience again, AND yet, some of those horrible past experiences – you may already have realized ­ that while you would never want to experience them again, thank God you did because it caused you to develop a depth of insight or caring, or a level of inner strength that to this day shapes who you are and the greatness of what you can give to others.

Our power is in our problems as they unleash our resourcefulness and cause us to grow in order to respond consciously and compassionately to them. Radical forgiveness and faith in guidance or a higher meaning in our experience is the answer.

-- Tony Robbins

Dear Millennium, Inadequate Witness

To end the week, a poem entitled "Dear Millennium, Inadequate Witness":

Say we no longer bear witness to a body-politic of trauma
after revolution
            by anesthesia or erasure. Say we cover our eyes
to crossed olive-wood beams on a hill.  Modes of witness  
expose our inadequacy, the human.  Forgetting
is a sign—yes, a thing once existed. Say we are unworthy
of witness, internal or external—
                    our damaged wisdom, for instance,
our diminished capacity for empathy
         and heightened apathy to torture
mingled with doves    
                 of unfettered desire
                               or an eclipsed divine.

-- Karen An-hwei Lee

Liberates

Forgiveness liberates the soul.  It removes fear.

-- Nelson Mandela

Disruption

Disruption is a gift. It breaks the habits we otherwise would become so content with and smaller by. We need disruption to look up, to look out, to look at things differently. Without it we would be swallowed up by ourselves; by our tendencies to refine, reduce, eliminate.

Good & Bad

Good leadership is powered by love.  Bad leadership uses fear.

Imprisoned

It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

-- Graham Greene