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