What You Are...For

I've noticed...that a key to emotional health is to determine what you are for, rather than just what you are against.

LT: Confidence to Trust

​Confidence in leadership is the confidence to trust others.

-- Simon Sinek

Reflection of Ourselves

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

-- Thomas Merton

The Unlikely Crackup of Evangelicalism

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has written recently about what he sees as a possible “crackup” that may be coming in the evangelical community. He sees a quiet version of that split already happening among the younger generation, many of whom seem to be moving in other directions: mainline Protestantism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy.

The more dramatic gap, as Douthat sees it, is between, on the one hand, the elites—“evangelical intellectuals and writers, and their friends in other Christian traditions,”—and those millions of folks, on the other hand, who worship in evangelical churches. It may be, he says, that these elites “have overestimated how much a serious theology has ever mattered to evangelicalism’s sociological success.” It could be that the views and attitudes on display in the recent support for rightist causes have really been there all along, without much of an interest in the kinds of intellectual-theological matters that have preoccupied the elites. If so, then the elites will eventually go off on their own, leaving behind an evangelicalism that is “less intellectual, more partisan, more racially segregated”—a movement that is in reality “not all that greatly changed” from what it has actually been in the past.

Douthat hopes he is wrong about this, and I think that he is. But his scenario has some support by increasing voices in the evangelical academy who are saying that they can no longer identify with a grassroots evangelicalism that has become regrettably “politicized” these days.

One problem with the Douthat scenario is that it suggests that there is a significant gap between the vast majority of “ordinary” evangelicals and a much smaller band of “evangelical intellectuals.” To see whether that picture is really accurate, we have to fill in some specific detail.  Continue here....

-- Richard Mouw

Net Neutrality - Explained With A Burger King Whopper

Gitanjali 35

Poem for the week -- "Gitanjali 35":

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
     Where knowledge is free;
     Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow 
          domestic walls;
     Where words come out from the depth of truth;
     Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
     Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the                          
          dreary desert sand of dead habit;
     Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening                                
          thought and action—
     Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

The Buddha wasn’t A Buddhist

The Buddha wasn’t a Buddhist. A religion grew around his community. His realizations were universal realizations about suffering, the nature of suffering and the nature of the human mind.

-- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Too Long

I've noticed...​that trying to hold on to anything for too long, at some point is counter-productive, if not destructive.

LT: Power

​Many common concepts about leadership are entrenched in issues of power. Power to consume things, protect interests, and control others.

The irony is that leadership IS, in fact, about power. But, the purpose of leadership power is to liberate, not consume and control. This is why the power of service is so important in leadership.

It's not about the needs of the leader, it's about the needs of the followers.

Controversy

​In a culture that is prepared to sell (literally) anything, selling controversy is easy. What may be more disturbing is that, unlike our misgivings about the selling of some things, we all are buying controversy. Not substance, controversy. What would happen if we just stopped? What would happen to TV, to the Internet? To us?

Mountains

You don’t have to climb mountains named I Will Perform.

You don’t have to climb mountains named I Will Produce.

Jesus flattens that mountain before you with His Grace: The Lord will Provide. With enough strength. With enough wisdom. With More Than Enough of Himself.

More important than you trying to muster up sufficient grit and determination for the new year — is that you simply accept His sufficient grace and liberation every day.  Continue here....

-- Ann Voskamp

How will you transform in 2018?

From a rather beautiful essay here....

...the work of transformation – it’s not matching ourselves to roles that reflect exactly what we did before. It’s metamorphosing into a future state. 

I imagine your mind – like mine - is alight with the apt metaphors of this metamorphosis. So was the Radiolab journalist Molly Webster when she reported this story. She said it provoked in her the following thoughts: “It’s not just what we carry forward from our past into the future. It’s the idea, what of my future self is in me right now?”

To truly transform, we don’t have to fully fall apart – though part of it requires descent into a state that looks and feels like goo. What really happens is that there are parts we keep, parts we create or grow, and parts that we must leave behind. There are some hard parts we remember. And all the while, we have the biological means to breathe through it all. 

What we let go is as important as what we take on.

That line really strikes me, as does this thought here:

To me, the most amazing part of the story of metamorphosis is that the caterpillar comes with everything it needs to become something else. It is equipped to let the past dissolve and prepared to engineer its own future parts.  I like to think, so are we.  

-- Katya Andresen

Time to be the fine line of light

Poem for the week -- "Time to be the fine line of light":

between the blind and the sill, nothing
really. There are so many things

that destroy. To think solely of them
is as foolish and expedient as not

thinking of them at all. All I want
is to be the river though I return

again and again to the clouds.
All I want is to stop beginning sentences

with All I want. No—no really all
I want is this morning: my daughter

and my son saying “Da!” back and forth
over breakfast, cracking each other up

while eating peanut butter toast
and raspberries, making a place for

the two of them I will, eventually,
no longer be allowed to enter. Time to be

the fine line. Time to practice being
the line. And then maybe the darkness.

-- Carrie Fountain

The lesson I learned in my 30s that changed how I live my life

As children, we were told by our parents when we were good and when we had done something wrong. At school, our teachers and their dreaded red biros told us if we got it right or wrong. At first, we’d get gold stars and then we’d start getting alphabetical grades and exact percentage scores to tell us how right (or wrong) we were. When we did science experiments, we always knew the correct results ahead of time – and when the dots didn’t line up along that diagonal line, we adjusted the data to make it fit. There was always a right answer, and our job was to find it.

The problems start when we go out into the real world...continue here....

--  Anna Lundberghttps

Menial Tasks

I've noticed...that there is nothing quite like menial tasks to allow for opportunities to consider truths about things in my life.

Truths like this one:
​
People with a high need to control others are generally doing it as a way of dealing with the lack of control they’re experiencing within themselves.

-- Rob Bell

LT: Stop Talking, Start Listening

​Leaders who take organizational conversation seriously know when to stop talking and start listening. Few behaviors enhance conversational intimacy as much as attending to what people say. True attentiveness signals respect for people of all ranks and roles, a sense of curiosity, and even a degree of humility.

-- Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind, Leadership Is A Conversation

MLK Day: Peace On Earth

​If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Not God Himself

​Those who believe that they believe in God, but without any passion in their heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the idea of God, not God himself.

-- Miguel D'Unamuno

Follow These 8 Steps to Stay Focused and Reach Your Goals

Accomplishing a goal can be hard work. 

Check out these eight steps to help you prioritize and clear your mind.

1. Stop multitasking
2. Block out your days
3. Get your blood pumping
4. Help your technology help you
5. Meditate
6. Change up what’s in your headphones
7. Streamline your communication
8. Find an environment with the right kind of noise.

More detail here....

-- Nina Zipkin

Evergreen

In light of this 'Poem for the Week -- "Evergreen"', the image above (from our recent trip to Glacier National Park) seemed fitting.

What still grows in winter?
Fingernails of witches and femmes,
green moss on river rocks,
lit with secrets... I let myself
go near the river but not
the railroad: this is my bargain.
Water boils in a kettle in the woods
and I can hear the train grow louder
but I also can’t, you know?
Then I’m shaving in front of an
unbreakable mirror while a nurse
watches over my shoulder.
Damn. What still grows in winter?
Lynda brought me basil I crushed
with my finger and thumb just to
smell the inside of a thing. So
I go to the river but not the rail-
road, think I’ll live another year.
The river rock dig into my shoulders
like a lover who knows I don’t want
power. I release every muscle against
the rock and I give it all my warmth.
                                    Snow shakes
onto my chest quick as table salt.
Branches above me full of pine needle
whips: when the river rock is done
with me, I could belong to the evergreen.
Safety is a rock I throw into the river.
My body, ready. Don’t even think
a train run through this town anymore.

-- Oliver Baez Bendorf

Corruption

​I suspect that corruption hasn't really changed all that much, given the nature of it. What has changed is the ability to expose it, via things like the capacity to store information, the Internet, etc.

Rarely

I've noticed...​we are rarely rejected personally as much as we feel we are -- people tend to be too absorbed with themselves to be that intentional.

LT: Capable

Being capable is one thing, but that is primarily for your benefit.  Inviting incapable people into things with you is the real value of your capability, because that is for them.

Weapons

To know what they can do, you have to get comfortable using weapons - literal or emotional ones - in order to limit careless damage, to be effective with their purpose.

Settle

Instagram: bobgoff

We won't figure out what's sacred in our lives
if we settle for what's safe.

-- Bob Goff

Whitefish, MT: Something Unbelievable

There is something unbelievable about the combination of snow, pine, and silence.  You think and feel and see things you otherwise wouldn’t:

We so enjoyed our time at The Treehouse in Whitefish, MT this week:


...more pics here.

Barter

Poem for the week -- "Barter":

Life has loveliness to sell,
   All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
   Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder in a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
   Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
   Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
   Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
   Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstacy
Give all you have been, or could be.

-- Sara Teasdale

Un-becoming

Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.

-- Paulo Coelho

Pay Closest Attention

I've noticed...​it does me well to pay closest attention to what people are inviting me toward, especially when they're persistent.

LT: Action

​Words may inspire, but only action creates change.

-- Simon Sinek

New (Year)

Yearning for a new way will not produce it. Only ending the old way can do that.
You cannot hold onto the old, all the while declaring that you want something new.
The old will defy the new;
The old will deny the new;
The old will decry the new.
There is only one way to bring in the new. You must make room for it.

-- Neale Donald Walsch

Perhaps this is why we have times of renewal, that are seemingly built-in -- like New Years Day, the seasons, or that restlessness we all have somewhere within us to begin again.  Everything moves and changes, whether we like it or not, because it is how growth happens.

As I leave 2017 and enter a new year, I recognize that this is happening in me.  It is, in fact, making room in me for something new.  And, I don't want to resist it, because it is the necessity of regeneration in me, as in all of us.