Not By What We Know

Instagram: bobgoff

We're not limited by what we know, but what we can imagine.

-- Bob Goff

Many Things You Don’t Want To Do

Many things you don’t want to do are actually ways for you to get better or stronger.

Mowing The Grass

I've noticed...when I mow the grass, I sometimes complain and feel sorry for myself.

Maybe that's because I think no one will notice or hear me.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking that such things are bad.  But, I’ve been wondering if I need to do such things more often (no, I'm not referring to mowing the grass...).  Because complaining and feeling sorry for myself seems to lead me to other things—like being more honest about the impact life is having on me.  And, that seems to lead me toward compassion for the impact of life on others.  I need to feel life's impact on me; feeling things keeps me alive and attentive, to myself and to others.

I need to acknowledge the basic-ness of my humanity; that I feel things, too; that I don't live above the drama of life; that I'm fully in and fully feeling the fray of human existence.  Being human is what I need to most be.

Mowing the grass is really a first-world thing; so, perhaps it is really the physical labor that provides the opportunity, to complain AND to be more fully...human.

Have The Power

We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh. We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt. 

-- Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

Debt

"Houston, we have a problem...".

The Creative Drive

'Poem for the week' -- "The Creative Drive":

A recent study found that poems increased
the sale price of a home by close to $9,000.
The years, however, have not been kind to poems.

The Northeast has lost millions of poems,
reducing the canopy. Just a few days ago,
high winds knocked a poem onto a power line

a few blocks from my house.
I had not expected to lose so many at once.
“We’ve created a system that is not healthy

for poems,” said someone. Over the next thirty years,
there won’t be any poems where there are overhead wires.
Some poems may stay as a nuisance,

as a gorgeous marker of time.

-- Catherine Barnett


From the author:

“Thinking about literary influence, I wanted to write an ars poetica out of a day’s New York Times. I turned first to the Real Estate section, which would, I figured, be least poetic and therefore most challenging. It was a fortuitous mistake—there I found Ronda Kaysen’s thoughtful lament about the fate of trees in her New Jersey suburb; her article provided the raw material for this cento (with substitutions). I tip my hat to all of the Times reporters, to whom we are indebted for their excellent and very real reporting (along with environmentalist Mike Brick and forester John Linson, whose quotes also slip into the poem). I tip my hat to all trees, which, like poems, prove simultaneously fragile and resilient.”

Accurate Mirror

How we relate to someone we love . . . provides an extremely clear and accurate mirror of how we relate to ourselves.

-- John Welwood


We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

Generalizations

Some people seem to be easily pissed off by generalizations—perhaps because they don’t feel accurately represented by whatever is being generalized.  We live in a time when this is important to recognize because we have, in fact, over-stayed our welcome with our generalizations.

That doesn’t make all generalizations untrue (though, some truly are...untrue), it simply reveals that there are ranges to things; there is variety, there are alternatives and, yes, there are patterns that are true (generally).

LT: Questions They Ask

The quality of a leader cannot be judged by the answers they give, but by the questions they ask.

-- Simon Sinek

Often times, people in leadership roles just don't ask questions, because they don't really want to know.

Threats

I've noticed...that as they get older people tend to become preoccupied by potential threats in life.

My Work

My work is to free
myself of myself
so that You can be
born in me.

-- Meister Eckhart

A Privilege To Sleep With Someone

It's a privilege to sleep with someone.

OK, I might now have the attention of some.  It struck me the other day what a privilege it is to be able to have a relationship with someone for many years, not to mention the extent to which that is true about someone you sleep with (like a spouse) for that long, too.  Perhaps, another way to put it is, it is a privilege to love another person, especially over a long period of time.

When you consider what that involves; the vulnerability at so many levels, the risk, the imposition, the challenges, the forgiveness, the joy...loving someone is as much a wonder as being loved by someone.

Visual: Once

Visual - "Once":

Joshua Tree National Park, CA

More pics from a recent trip to San Diego here....

Not Understanding Ourselves

For the most part all [our] trials and disturbances come from our not understanding ourselves.

-- Saint Teresa of Ávila

See One's Self Pass By

How good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by! 

-- Howard Thurman

Thinking

Truth be told, there may not be that much great thinking going on—a  lot of thinking, perhaps, but not much of it great.

But, as indicting as that may sound, it usually takes a lot of thinking of one kind or another to get to great thinking, perhaps even to good thinking.

Like a river, it takes a lot of moving water to get downstream, to somewhere you haven't been before.  To see something you haven't seen before.  To think something you haven't thought before—perhaps even, something great.

Self-Imposed

So many (most?) of our fears are self-imposed.

Loyalty

Ever noticed...that those who preach loyalty often require much more of it than they are willing to provide?

And, how they often use a group of people to secure it, disguising it as loyalty to certain ideas, when it is really mostly just loyalty to them?

Tell God

Instagram: bobgoff

Each of us gets to decide every day whether to lean in or step back—to say yes, ignore it, or tell God why He has the wrong person.

-- Bob Goff

Belief Narratives

Consciously (or sub-consciously), some often try to keep people 'in' a group by constructing, and then maintaining, a belief narrative. And, often the same people try to keep others 'out' of the group by questioning or challenging what they believe (not believing the 'right' thing...that the group believes).

Using belief narratives this way is really just a way of avoiding something—like the hard work in a relationship of really dealing with the pain or the discomfort that is often involved between people, especially over time.  In that way, working on what people believe or saying (narrative) that 'they' don't believe the right (same) thing is a cop-out.  It is easier—but, it's really just avoidance, it's self-protective.

And, it certainly isn't love.  Which is a bit ironic because love is often the more compelling piece of what belief itself tends to call for.

A Skull

'Poem for the week' -- "A Skull":

is like a house
            with a brain inside. Another place
where eating
            and thinking
                         tango and spar—

At night
             you lean out, releasing
thought balloons.
             On the roof
                         someone stands ready

                         with a pin—

-- Dana Levin


From the author:

“A poem can sometimes feel like something hidden behind a door: the door opens and you are invited into something strange—maybe something confounding, disturbing—in some way that is felt, beyond intellect. The reader, the writer, tries to clothe the poem in interpretation, but such poems will not completely surrender to analysis, will prefer, always, to be naked and beyond. This is part of the intimacy of poetry, part of its stubbornness, part of its genius.”

Not How This Will End

At any given moment you have the power to say:  this is not how the story is going to end.

-- Christine Mason Miller

Women Who Fight

When men will only fight to protect their own comfort, women are left to fight for others alone.

Thank God they do.

LT: Stand Up For

Good leaders stand up for the people they lead when they don't view them simply as problems.

So Different

I've noticed...I can feel so different (physically, mentally, emotionally ...spiritually) in one part of a day than in another, not to mention one day from another.  So different, in fact, I sometimes wonder what happened.  Am I the same person, each time?

Wholiness

In very real ways, soul, consciousness, love, and the Holy Spirit are one and the same. Each of these point to something that is larger than the individual, shared with God, ubiquitous, and even eternal—and then revealed through us! Holiness does not mean people are psychologically or morally perfect (a common confusion), but that they are capable of seeing and enjoying things in a much more “whole” and compassionate way, even if they sometimes fail at it themselves.

-- Richard Rohr

Piano Forte

Another rather wonderful edition of Michiana Chronicles:

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to sit in on a singing lesson with a well-known voice teacher. It was like stepping back in time. The walls of her one-room studio were covered in posters commemorating performances around the world, each one boasting faded signatures and dedications in foreign languages. On the hardwood floor sat piles of sheet music, along one wall an overstuffed couch, and in its neighboring corner a bed covered in all manner of papers. From my perch on the couch, I contemplated the ceiling with its peeling paint, the result of who knows what disasters from upstairs neighbors over the years. But of course, the main attraction of this room was on the far side: taking up one whole end of the room, a fabulously appointed honey-colored grand piano, with seductively carved legs and scrolls in all the right places.

Teacher and student took their places...continue (or listen) here.

-- Andrew Kreider

"...value, not volume. Gentle AND strong."

Visual: Active

Visual - "Active":

Monterey Bay, CA

Freedom

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

-- Galatians 5:1

My how we humans use the Bible sometimes.  Of course, the statement alone should lead one to wonder something like, set us free from what?  I'm contemplating that today.

Though perhaps only indirectly connected, I am mindful this 4th of July of some of the wonderful freedoms I enjoy, we as a nation enjoy.  I know not everyone does or can.  That knowledge alone gives me pause....

As I ran trails near our house today, I met numerous people who were doing the same -- outside, freely walking, running, or biking simply for the enjoyment of it.  Almost completely without fear, at least when compared to many of our human brethren around the world who live nearly every minute in fear of one kind or another.

I have so much freedom.  I don't have to work today, because my employee is paying me not to work.  I have mobility to be out and about, exercising however as I wish.  I have emotional equilibrium to imagine the wonder of everything around me this morning -- the color, the coolness, the sound, the smell.  I even enjoyed food I don't normally eat because I had the freedom to eat it.  So much freedom.  So much to enjoy.  I am so grateful to be aware of a God who provides of all this and more.

"It is for freedom, that Christ has set us free..."

May I live and give out of the abundance of such freedom.

Without Fully Knowing

In the initial stages of our journey in life, we seek to understand the meaning of our reality by describing our experience with it.  This is necessary and normal—among other things, it is a function and purpose of language.

As we grow and develop, we become more aware of reality we can't fully describe, because of the limitations of our experience.  And, we continue to reach for experience to impute meaning onto what we can't fully describe, what we don't fully know.  Nonetheless, an ability to know without fully knowing grows within us.

Our Limits

The fears we don't face become our limits.

-- Robin Sharma

Clarity

I’ve noticed...I think with more clarity when I am doing something else.