Counted

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

-- William Bruce Cameron

Physical

​Faith now, for me, has become more physical.

Quit Waiting

Instagram: bobgoff

Quit waiting for an invitation.
Go live your life.

-- Bob Goff

Original Hope

Poem for the week -- "Original Hope":

One borrows time not to be left out.

Been in the pattern of sun—secure, re-creating.
One needs one thing.

One father is left with new limits, but one
father is left. This repeat is filled with above and below.
(Do you understand that it won’t cease?)

Every hour compared to dozens of previous
hours and angers, and the daughters post pictures
of vanishing. Such is a comfort.

One agrees to ask for nothing.

Under time lives silence.

-- Lauren Campi

Bozeman, MT

Whether with silence or noise, nature makes its voice heard -- Palisade Falls (Hyalite Canyon).

More pics here....

Speaks In Silence

​No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied -- it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.

-- Ansel Adams

Pace

Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yellowstone

In the end, nature reveals we encounter a pretty small patch of the truth.

More pics here....

Let Nothing

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

-- St. Teresa of Avila

Everything Is Accomplished

​
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

-- Lao Tzu

Looking at My Father

Poem for the week -- "Looking at My Father":

It’s the inside which comes out, as I contemplate
him there half in sunlight, weeding diligently
a Midwestern lawn. On my persons, I have only notes
and a drying pen, the memory of onion blossoms
scenting in a window. Reflection is my native medium.
I am never arriving, only speaking briefly on material
conditions between myself and others. My country
inoculates me lovingly, over time. My country grasps me
like desire. I will show you my credentials, which is to say
my vivid description, if you ask. Here we are, my father
and I, never hostile, a small offering: pointless cut flowers
appear on the kitchen table when one finally arrives
into disposable income. Still possible. Am I living? Do I
accept revision as my godhead and savior?
I do and I am, and in the name of my Chinese father now
dragging the tools back inside, brow shining but always
a grin, faithless except to protect whatever I still have time 
to become, Amen.

-- Wendy Xu

Glacier National Park

I must say how grateful I am for the vision of those who, years ago, helped create the protection of such natural places like this -- Hidden Lake (GNP).

More pics here....

Long Walks

​Long walks in the woods are good - it takes some time to start seeing things.

Banff

Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.

-- Nemann Buhl

More pics here....

Pine and Silence

​There is something nearly magical about the smell of pine and silence. Throw in some campfire smoke, a lake, more silence and you are into something nearly impossible to describe.

Whole

​The true spiritual quest is not that I become whole. Informed by the belief that the world is birthed by God and is precious and sacred and one, the true spiritual quest is that the world become whole—and we along with it.

-- Jack Jezreel

Resilience Is About How You Recharge, Not How You Endure

Headed 'west' today on a family vacation, hopefully to do some 'recharging':

As constant travelers and parents of a 2-year-old, we sometimes fantasize about how much work we can do when one of us gets on a plane, undistracted by phones, friends, and Finding Nemo. We race to get all our ground work done: packing, going through TSA, doing a last-minute work call, calling each other, then boarding the plane. Then, when we try to have that amazing work session in flight, we get nothing done. Even worse, after refreshing our email or reading the same studies over and over, we are too exhausted when we land to soldier on with the emails that have inevitably still piled up.

Why should flying deplete us? We’re just sitting there doing nothing. Why can’t we be tougher — more resilient and determined in our work – so we can accomplish all of the goals we set for ourselves? Based on our current research, we have come to realize that the problem is not our hectic schedule or the plane travel itself; the problem comes from a misunderstanding of what it means to be resilient, and the resulting impact of overworking.

We often take a militaristic, “tough” approach to resilience and grit. We imagine a Marine slogging through the mud, a boxer going one more round, or a football player picking himself up off the turf for one more play. We believe that the longer we tough it out, the tougher we are, and therefore the more successful we will be. However, this entire conception is scientifically inaccurate.

The very lack of a recovery period is dramatically holding back our collective ability to be resilient and successful. Research has found that there is a direct correlation between lack of recovery and increased incidence of health and safety problems. And lack of recovery — whether by disrupting sleep with thoughts of work or having continuous cognitive arousal by watching our phones — is costing...continue here.

-- Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan

Kind Of Space

Poem for the week -- "Kind Of Space":

​Silence;
a kind
of space.

Emptying;
trains ears
to listen.

Do What You Are Afraid To Do

​Always do what you are afraid to do.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Caught Looking

​It is hard to see one another, when we're busy trying not to be caught be looking at them.

Assumptions

​Monitor your assumptions about people, because they tend to drift. Keep yourself focused on what you know about who they really are.

Power & Energy

A lot of good leading is a good understanding of this:

Identify your problems, but give your power and energy to solutions.

-- Tony Robbins

This Is What You Shall Do

​This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men — go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families — re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

-- Walt Whitman, preface to Leaves of Grass

Changing Our Questions

God has a way of using life to change our questions.

It Is

​It is hard to let go, when you're holding on.

It is difficult to be open and receive, when you're resisting.

It is impossible to be free, when fear is controlling you.

Serenade

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Serenade":

Three paces down the shore, low sounds the lute,
The better that my longing you may know;
I’m not asking you to come,
But—can’t you go?

Three words, “I love you,” and the whole is said—
The greatness of it throbs from sun to sun;
I’m not asking you to walk,
But—can’t you run?

Three paces in the moonlight’s glow I stand,
And here within the twilight beats my heart.
I’m not asking you to finish,
But—to start.

-- Djuna Barnes

Palette

​The palette of truth is very wide.

Most certainly, it is wider than we think.

Perhaps this is a clue to the answer to this morning's question -- a sense of timing, perhaps more than a blend.

Being Positive AND Honest

When it comes to big concepts or ideas, we often generalize and then reduce. Take positivity, for example. We seem to equate positivity with optimism or being an 'optimist'. People who aren't optimists tend to be skeptical because they believe optimists have some degree of trouble being honest, optimistically rushing past realities that are wrong or bad. And so, it has become easy to view the value of positivity through the lens of the same logic structure.

What we really need is a blend, don't we? Something that accommodates, if not includes, both -- the ability to avoid getting bogged down by endless negativity, to which there is ample evidence to support its many embedded problems, while at the same time not being so 'positive' that we dismiss the significance of real problems. I believe, it's possible. So, how do we maintain an appropriate blend of being both honest and positive?

Lived In

I've noticed...even when a place is lived in, it can at times appear very much uninhabited, un-alive. But when it is (lived in), you can still feel the life in it...even if it is unobservable in the moment.

The Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence -- The Want, Will, and Hopes of the People:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.


Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.

-- Leonard Tolstoy

Mentoring

Ways to think about leading others:

You Only Know

​You only know as much as you do.

-- St. Francis of Assisi


Prayer is about changing you, not about changing God.

-- Richard Rohr

Ways To Create Your Own Happiness

Happiness comes in so many different forms that it can be hard to grasp. Unhappiness, on the other hand, is easy to identify; you know it when you see it, and you definitely know when it’s taken ahold of you.

And let’s face it, happiness and work do not always go hand in hand. A 2013 Gallup study, which reported data from more than 180 million people, found that just 13% of us consider ourselves to be “happily engaged at work.”

Those who do rate themselves as happy are 36% more motivated, six times more energized, and twice as productive as their unhappy counterparts.

Happiness actually has less to do with your circumstances than you might think. A University of Illinois study found that people who earn the most (more than $10 million annually) are only a smidge happier than the average Joes and Janes who work for them, and psychologists from the University of California found that genetics and life circumstances only account for about 50% of a person’s happiness. The rest is up to you.

So, we went digging until we found some great ways that emotionally intelligent people create their own happiness:

• They don't obsess over things they can't control. 
• They choose their battles wisely. 
• They get enough sleep. 
• They exercise during the week. 
• They have a growth mindset. 
• They clear the clutter. 
• They lend a hand. 
• They let their strengths flow. 
• They believe the best is yet to come. 

Life circumstances have little to do with happiness because much happiness is under your control—the product of your habits and your outlook on life. Happiness is synthetic—you either create it, or you don’t.  Continue here...

-- Travis Bradberry