Same Spot

I've noticed...I try to consistently put certain things in the same spot—otherwise I end up wasting too much time and energy trying to find them.

Common Identity

It is a first-class human tragedy that peoples of the earth who claim to believe in the message of Jesus whom they describe as the Prince of Peace show little of that belief in actual practice.

-- Gandhi


The primary problem is that our identities are too small. We tend to rely most on our smaller, cultural identities and ignore our larger, common identity as members of the body of Christ. . . . Indeed, adopting a common identity is the key to tearing down cultural divisions and working toward reconciliation.

-- Christena Cleveland

Everyone's Approval

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If our lives are filled with purpose, we won't be distracted looking for everyone's approval.

  -- Bob Goff

When will we learn?

When will we learn?

It’s essential that we make new mistakes.

We don’t make nearly enough of them. Not enough original effort, not enough generous intent, not enough daring in search of something better.

But at the same time, we need to stop making the old mistakes again and again. What did you expect to happen when you did the very same thing that didn’t work last time?

For some of us, it’s more frightening to do something new than it is to retry something that failed.

-- Seth Godin

Not Trying To Convince Them

The art of loving each other well is letting people be where they are and not trying to convince them to be where I am.

-- Kathy Escobar

Doesn't Matter

We should never believe that what we are doing right now doesn't matter.

Even if it looks like no one is being impacted, I am.

At any given moment, I may be asked to respond to something, to give something, to be something—whether I was expecting it or not.  I never know who that may be or what all may be going on for that person or group.  It could be someone I know or someone I've never met—either way, my assumptions about my current state impact my availability to myself and, thereby, to others.

Nothing is ever not happening, in me or someone else.  It is important to know that we are always inter-connected to everything else—whether we have current, direct evidence of that or not.

All We Have Left

We must find a purpose or cause to pursue, otherwise all we have left are our imperfections to focus on.

-- Simon Sinek

Just One Thing

I've noticed...when I am procrastinating, the best thing I can do—is just one thing.  It is often the size or scope of the whole thing that slows me down.

But, if I just do one thing—take one step; that seems to make taking the next step easier.  And, that accumulates more quickly than it otherwise would.  In other words, 3 small (one each day?) steps towards something often gets me further than waiting a week for a time when I can do the whole thing at once.  All I really need to do is just one thing—not the whole thing—just one thing.

Wisdom Frees Us

Wisdom frees us to hold our thoughts about God, life, and the universe with an open hand, rather than a clenched fist, to face our question and fears with the unflinching focus of an intrepid explorer.

-- Peter Enns

Electricity

Down By the Carib Sea (VI: Sunset in the Tropics)

'Poem for the week' -- "Down By the Carib Sea (VI: Sunset in the Tropics)":

A silver flash from the sinking sun,
Then a shot of crimson across the sky
That, bursting, lets a thousand colors fly
And riot among the clouds; they run,
Deepening in purple, flaming in gold,
Changing, and opening fold after fold,
Then fading through all of the tints of the rose into gray.
Till, taking quick fright at the coming night,
They rush out down the west,
In hurried quest
Of the fleeing day.

Now above where the tardiest color flares a moment yet,
One point of light, now two, now three are set
To form the starry stairs,—
And, in her firefly crown,
Queen Night, on velvet slippered feet, comes softly down.

-- James Weldon Johnson

Poetry says what prose sometimes can't.

Real Power of Love

Instead of looking to a relationship for shelter, we could welcome its power to wake us up in areas of life where we are asleep and where we avoid naked, direct contact with life. This approach puts us on a path. It commits us to movement and change, providing forward direction by showing us exactly where we most need to grow. Embracing relationship as a path also gives us a practice: learning to use each difficulty along the way as an opportunity to go further, to connect more deeply, not just with our partner, but with our own aliveness as well.

By contrast, dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of love—which is to transform us. For our relationships to flourish, we need to see them in a new way—as a series of opportunities for developing greater awareness, discovering deeper truth, and becoming more fully human.

-- John Welwood

Really Teach? Do It.

The only way you can really teach well is to do what you’re saying.  Otherwise, you are mostly just telling—creating some conformity, but not the resonance that comes from true learning.  Do it with them.

LT: Feeling Used

People don't like to feel used.  Bad leaders don't recognize this.

Need To Be Needed

Ever noticed...some people seem to need to be needed?

And, if they’re not (needed), they don’t need you.

Stirs In You The Desire

It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.

-- Pope John Paul II

What is it that makes something feel alive?  Context.

Context seems to be the ingredient that makes something, otherwise just there, felt.  Take the observation above; pretty strong on its merits, but much more leveraged in the context of this:

The Secret Language of Trees

My affection for the nature of trees...just grows and grows and grows.

Visual: Burst

Visual - "Burst"

Denver, CO (photo by Makenzie)

Not Knowledge

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.

-- Albert Einstein


To leave the world a bit better, whether by healthy child, a garden patch, or redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you live—that is to have succeeded.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love Trusts You

Love trusts you.  Not naively so, either.

Love says I love you, first—before you love me back—which reveals the true nature of love, because it is possible that you won't love back.  It knows that; but, it loves anyway.  Love lets you choose...love.

And, love knows that once you've discovered this, often only after becoming aware of how deeply you have misunderstood it, you will become love itself and capable of loving others.  So, then, love grows.

This is because love trusts something deeper in another person, than the other person knows.  It has been trusted; so, it knows it can trust.  Love—trusting the deepest part of some else, even before they do.

Unauthorized Views

Unauthorized views are, in effect, punished by incomprehension.

-- Alan Jacobs, How To Think


Ever heard something like, "I just don't understand what you're saying"?  The point isn't that that shouldn't ever be possible (communication is often challenging, especially when we're in a hurry or working with complexity).  The point is, what would be the natural response to something that is not understood?  Wouldn't asking about it, being curious about it, pursuing it further...be the most natural response to something we don't understand?  Yes, it would.

...unless the person (or group) really doesn't want to understand, in the first place.  Ah, so that's when the statement above in effect.

It's just so much easier to not really think about things, isn't it?

Drop Something

I’ve noticed...when I try to carry too many things at the same time, I tend to drop something.

Still Being Created

On the whole we are not conscious of evolution, and we do not act as if our choices can influence the direction of evolution. . . . What will it take for us to realize that we are unfinished creatures who are in the process of being created? That our world is being created? That our church is being created? That Christ is being formed in us? . . . The good news of Jesus Christ is not so much what happens to us but what must be done by us. The choices we make for the future will create the future. We must reinvent ourselves in love.

-- Ilia Delio

A few years ago, I noticed a version of song lyrics referencing the Creator. It was in present tense and read, "The Creating One...". I have never forgotten it.  There is something that rings true about the notion that a creator is someone that continues to create.  And, it doesn't take much to notice that a lot of language and metaphor in the Bible (transformation, all things new, etc.) indicates that this is exactly what God is doing—has done AND continues to do.  We are participants in this creation through things like choices, influence, and love.

F-bomb

Using the f-bomb doesn't automatically make you more authentic.

The Coddling of the American Mind

The NYU Stern professor noticed something happening on college campuses in 2014. Students began protesting speakers, equating speech with violence, and calling for safe spaces. 

So he wrote a book. In The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan and his co-author Greg Lukianoff argue that Gen Zers are engaging in cognitive distortions and objecting to so many small things, they're actually making themselves weaker. Now, those problems may be graduating to the workplace with them.

There are two separate trends. One is the rise of anxiety and depression—that's happening at nearly all schools in the U.S. and Canada, as far as we can tell. Students are more fragile and easily discouraged. They expect more protection. Something really happened to kids born in 1996 and after.

Part of the problem is we began overprotecting kids in the 1990s from threats, mistakes, things that upset them. At the same time we let them on social media too young, which seems to cause many of them chronic stress about their social presentation. 

The second trend, which is not nearly as widespread, is that fragility and anxiety get converted into political demands about speech as violence.  Continue here....

-- Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff 

Bridge Called Water

'Poem for the week' -- "Bridge Called Water":

I wrote hard
on paper

at the bottom
of a pool

near a canyon
where the stars

slid onto their bellies
like fish

I wrote:

      …

I went through
the mountain

through the leaves
of La Puente

to see the moon
but it was too late

too long ago
to walk on glass.

     …

Near those years
when the house fell on me

my father told me
draw mom

in bed with
another man—

          …

From a plum tree

the sound of branches
fall like fruit

I’m older
no longer afraid

my voice like water
pulled from the well


where the wind had been buried
where someone was always

running into my room
asking, what’s wrong?

-- Diana Marie Delgado


From the author:

“In most of my poems, the structure comes last and that was the case for this one: an inverted narrative that begins with a denouement and ends with an experience of unspoken fear. The title, ‘Bridge Called Water,’ is connected to a dream I had in which on a bridge at the bottom of a canyon I met a man, who, in conversing with me, gave me an overwhelming sense of peace. However, that peace, although I did not realize this in the dream itself, was, I realized later, only attainable because I had died. The portion of the poem in which I sit with my father at a kitchen table actually took place and has stayed with me like a splinter; this poem presented me with the opportunity to take it out.”

False Life

We bury the faint crackling of our inner fire underneath other safer noises and settle for a false life.

-- David Brooks

...we're loss averse. People hate losing something we already have more than we enjoy gaining something new. 

-- Jessica Stillman

It is not only possible, but imperative, to fall through fear into love because that is the only way we will ever truly know what it means to be alive. 

-- Cynthia Bourgeault

Don't Let Not Knowing

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Don't let not knowing how it will end keep you from starting.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Create the Conditions

Leaders create the conditions where people choose new actions.

The choices are voluntary. They’re made by people who see a new landscape, new opportunities and new options.

You can’t make people change. But you can create an environment where they choose to.

-- Seth Godin

Nature Of Existence

I'm wondering...about the nature of existence—why have I imagined it the way I have?  What has enculturated my imagination?  What context, socially constructed influences, has shaped my understanding of existence?

It may be easy to downplay such ideas as mere contrivances, or even consider them as wrong; but, what else do we have or know without these contexts?  Good or bad, they give us what we have and are the means by which come to know anything.  Perhaps, there is more to learn from them (than there is to avoid) about the nature of existence.  After all, we really do wonder about many things, don't we?  We really don't have most of the answers.  I think it is healthy to acknowledge what we wonder about, in part, so we can do more of it.  Wonder has such a beautiful disposition built into it.

I've been reading more of Peter Wohlleben's book, The Hidden Life of Trees, this morning and perhaps this section is like some of the context of my thoughts above:

They Wake Up

When the Spirit is alive in people, they wake up from their mechanical thinking and enter the realm of co-creative power.

-- Richard Rohr