St. Petertide

In honor of yesterday; 'poem selection' for the week -- "St. Petertide":

Impulsive master of misunderstanding
You comfort me with all your big mistakes;
Jumping the ship before you make the landing,
Placing the bet before you know the stakes.
I love the way you step out without knowing,
The way you sometimes speak before you think,
The way your broken faith is always growing,
The way he holds you even when you sink.
Born to a world that always tried to shame you,
Your shaky ego vulnerable to shame,
I love the way that Jesus chose to name you,
Before you knew how to deserve that name.
And in the end your Saviour let you prove
That each denial is undone by love.

-- Malcolm Guite

From the author:

"The 29th of June is St. Peter’s day, when we remember the disciple who, for all his many mistakes, knew how to recover and hold on, who, for all his waverings, was called by Jesus “the rock,” and who learned the threefold lesson that every betrayal can ultimately be restored by love. It is fitting therefore that it is at Petertide that new priests and deacons are ordained, on the day they remember a man whose recovery from mistakes and openness to love can give them courage. So I post this poem not only for St. Peter but for all those being ordained this weekend and in memory of my own ordination as a priest on this day 26 years ago."

This poem comes from my collection Sounding the Seasons published by Canterbury Press.

Thank you, Jim, for forwarding this one.

Trees

Nature:  

Trees give peace to the souls of men.

-- Nora Wain

Used To

I've noticed...that I have to get used to things, before I become familiar with them.

What Is A Leader?

As part of my on-going Tuesday posts on leadership (follow the 'leader'-related links in each), I find myself asking what being a leader is.

A thought recently was crowding my mind -- "I'm not a good leader".  So, I couldn't avoid asking what is a good leader?  Who decided what leadership even is, not to mention what makes one a good or bad leader?  Recognizing that such things are heavily influenced by the culture that informs our thinking about them, who does it say leaders are?  And, perhaps more importantly, why does it select who it does?

Is God a leader?  Somehow that doesn't feel quite right, as a description of God (at the very least in the 'CEO' sense of leadership things).  Yet, most would say God does lead them.  So, how does God lead us?  Should that be what we look to, in response to such questions as above?  Should I assess my 'leadership' more through that grid, than the one imposed by the systems of our world?  I'm leading the witness now, so back to my question....

Most Difficult Thing

​The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.

-- Amelia Earhart

Even In Our Disobedience

​God honors us, even in our disobedience, by letting us experience the natural consequences of going our own way, letting us walk away from Him...though He is always offering a way back.


He that prays and does not faint will come to recognize that to talk with God is more than to have all prayers granted -- that it is the end of all prayer.

-- George MacDonald

Power Causes Brain Damage

A scientific take on the fairly observable problem of power:

If power were a prescription drug, it would come with a long list of known side effects. It can intoxicate. It can corrupt. It can even make Henry Kissinger believe that he’s sexually magnetic. But can it cause brain damage?

When various lawmakers lit into John Stumpf at a congressional hearing last fall, each seemed to find a fresh way to flay the now-former CEO of Wells Fargo for failing to stop some 5,000 employees from setting up phony accounts for customers. But it was Stumpf’s performance that stood out. Here was a man who had risen to the top of the world’s most valuable bank, yet he seemed utterly unable to read a room. Although he apologized, he didn’t appear chastened or remorseful. Nor did he seem defiant or smug or even insincere. He looked disoriented, like a jet-lagged space traveler just arrived from Planet Stumpf, where deference to him is a natural law and 5,000 a commendably small number. Even the most direct barbs—“You have got to be kidding me” (Sean Duffy of Wisconsin); “I can’t believe some of what I’m hearing here” (Gregory Meeks of New York)—failed to shake him awake. 

What was going through Stumpf’s head? New research suggests that the better question may be: What wasn’t going through it? 

The historian Henry Adams was being metaphorical, not medical, when he described power as “a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.” But that’s not far from where Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, ended up after years of lab and field experiments. Subjects under the influence of power, he found in studies spanning two decades, acted as if they had suffered a traumatic brain injury—becoming more impulsive, less risk-aware, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view. Continue here....

-- Jerry Useem

Hope

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

always the hopeless asked to give others hope
the ones pushed up against wall after wall

when you’re done unpinning yourself
from the wall, please give hope

those who work twice as hard to seem half as good
being asked to do one more thing

we need to be seen
because things are not going well
and the crows are up to no good

--  Ali Liebegott

From the author:

“I often think of the expression, ‘You have to work twice as hard to be viewed half as good,’ used for women and people of color. Marginalized people are often asked to be the patient educators to non-marginalized people. I think this poem wrestles with the intrinsic unfairness of that.”

Worth Being Afraid Of

We're pretty good at finding demons to be afraid of.

• The other
• The one in the shadows
• Change
• The family member we can't possibly please
• Competition
• Critics
• The invisible network of foes conspiring against us and what we stand for

It turns out, though, that the one who usually lets us down is us. Our unwillingness to leap, to commit, to trust our own abilities. It's the internal narrative that seeks disaster just as much as it craves reassurance. That's the one we ought to be vilifying, fortifying ourselves against and frightened of.

It gets less powerful once we are brave enough to look it in the eye.

-- Seth Godin

Willing To Work At

​I've noticed...we can come to love what we are willing to work at. In the end, we work at what we love.


Oh, and, welcome to summer -- we were treated to quite the show last night:

...not to mention the double-rainbow!  More here....

Not Leading

We are not leading when we are in charge. We lead when we are willing to let others take charge.

-- Simon Sinek

Approval Through Disapproval

​One way or another, we seem to have all come from one kind of model of disapproval or another -- generational, social, cultural, ethnic, even spiritual.  We have been so immersed in them that we can hardly stop our own selves from perpetuating them, because it is not only the lens through which we have been conditioned to see others, but also the one through which we see ourselves.

Perhaps, we are emerging from this mentality of control. Compensating for it, we can feel the collective swing around us to a model of hyper-approval.

What is it that we are really looking for...in either model?

The Delay Would Give Me Wisdom

When people came and told me, when I was going through my [hard] times, ‘You are being blessed’—I knew that they were right. but I was resentful. It sounded like a cliché. I knew I was being blessed, but I wanted to see it right now. I didn’t realize that the delay would give me wisdom.

There’s wisdom that you gain with age. When I was twenty, I knew God was faithful, but I didn’t have my own history of God’s faithfulness. Now, I can look back on my own book. I don’t have to look anywhere else, because I know he’s been faithful.

-- Carl Ellis


Prayer is the spirit speaking truth to Truth.

-- Philip James Bailey

The Ways Your Brain Manages Overload, and How to Improve Them

Information overload is everywhere, from non-stop news to rat-a-tat email inboxes. At the receiving end of this deluge of verbiage is the human brain—your brain— metaphorically endowed with a vacuum cleaner that sucks up information; a container for short-term memory; a blender for integrating information; a memory bank for storing long-term information; a garbage disposal for getting rid of information; and a recycling machine extraordinaire. Using each of these functions effectively is critical if one wants to manage information overload ̶ simply using your brain for crossing items off your to-do list is poor use of a very sophisticated machine. Yet few people build the habits and lifestyles that allow for their brains to function at their best.

At the core of managing information overload is the ability to know which function to use, and how and when to use it. The six principles below can serve as a guide to the proper brain hygiene for managing information overload on a busy work day.  Continue here....

--Srini Pillay

...time for some brain management -- a long run!

Beauty and Beauty

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Beauty and Beauty":

When Beauty and Beauty meet
   All naked, fair to fair,
The earth is crying-sweet,
   And scattering-bright the air,
Eddying, dizzying, closing round,
   With soft and drunken laughter;
Veiling all that may befall
   After—after—

Where Beauty and Beauty met,
   Earth’s still a-tremble there,
And winds are scented yet,
   And memory-soft the air,
Bosoming, folding glints of light,
   And shreds of shadowy laughter;
Not the tears that fill the years
   After—after—

-- Rupert Brooke

Hard Things

Are hard things in life the things that keep us humble? It is not too difficult to spot even the slow creeping nature of arrogance that grows within us. Just look at the things we despise - what do they tell us? What if things that are hard are actually invitations to remind us of important things, like what we are not capable of? Of the ways that we are dependent, not independent? Of how we are not better than other people after all?

Easy things have an odd way of making us feel something about ourselves that often makes other people feel like something less (than us). Hard things remind us that this is not true.

Uncomfortable

​I've noticed...we all seem to have a line, past which we are mostly uncomfortable. Much of the time that line, overt or not, is conditioned by what we have or have not experienced.

Is there a domain (physical, emotional, spiritual, etc.) where this does not seem true?

Really Means

The 3 in front are old and sick, they walk in front to set the pace of the running group lest they get left behind. The next 5 are the strongest and best, they are tasked to protect the front side if there is an attack. The pack in the middle are always protected from any attack. The 5 behind them are also among the strongest and best; they are tasked to protect the back side if there is an attack. The last one is the LEADER. He ensures that no one is left behind. He keeps the pack unified and on the same path. He is always ready to run in any direction to protect and serves as the 'bodyguard' to the entire group. Just in case y'all wanted to know what it really means to be a leader.

-- Clare Watkins

Failure To Change

​Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be.

-- John Wooden

Wrigley!

Another great day at Wrigley!  More pics here....

Love & Fear

IF Jesus died for the whole world (Jn 3:16, et al), this passage has some pretty broad implications for how we see and treat anyone, not just believers; everyone is our brother and sister:

​And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

-- 1 John 4:16-21


The path of prayer is taken by those rare people who consciously and slowly let go of their ego boundaries, their righteousness, their specialness, their sense of being important.

-- Richard Rohr

As Far As Possible

And as a project for conservatives, it must ultimately be understood as a civic labor of love, not a political fight to the death. It should aim, as far as possible, to uproot the disposition toward alienation and despair in American life and to plant in its place the essential conservative tendency: to love the good more than we hate the bad. That means looking to improve more than to scorn, to build on what works more than to tear down, and to understand our inadequacies by looking at them in light of what they keep us from being more than what they make us into.

-- Yuval Levin

The Owner of the Night

'Poem selection' for the week -- "The Owner of the Night":

interrogates whoever walks
this shadow-lane, this hour
not reserved for you: who

are you to enter it?
Orion’s head over heels
above the road, jewel-belt

flinting starlight
to fuel two eyes looking
down from the air:

beacons in reverse,
since light pours in
toward her appetite

until she wings her noiseless outline
between our rooftop and the stars,
over this door and all the doors

hidden in the grass:
dreaming voles,

firefly province,

wasps in the palace
they’ve hollowed under the hill.

Mole resting his face against his splayed hands.

Perch, blink. Pose
the evening’s question
to the sleepless

while the moon if there is one
scatters islands
on a field of ink. Who

maps this? The owner
of the night looks down
to mirror and admit the hours

before the upper vaults
begin to lighten and recede.
Did you hear what I said,

a face looks down from the night?
Did who hear me? Who
reads this page, who writes it?

-- Mark Doty

From the author:

“I spend about half my time in the city, in a built landscape where one knows the name of just about everything; in this way it’s a city of language, a world mediated by words. The rest of the time I live in a place where sky and weather, plants and animals are as present as sidewalks and vehicles are in town. My inner process of narrating experience in words slows down there, even vanishes for moments at a time; then I’m just raking, or weeding, or looking at the sky not supplying words for what I see. Thus it’s startling, at twilight, or deep in the night, when the dark itself seems to say a word: who. It seems the right question, the one the owl asks; as Stevens said of the harbor lights in Key West, that sound arranges, deepens, and enchants the night.”

Not Getting What You Want

​Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.

-- Dalai Lama

Luck...or something else.  Either way, a gift.  It's happened to me, more than once.

History

​We must hold on to history.  But we must also let it go.

This is often a tearing tension for us, as history so informs how we understand and go about our present realities.  But, if I hold it too tightly, over time I am crushed under the weight of what all I know and feel. I must learn to be honest, but also open and trusting to something bigger than my history-laden present.

Worth It

​I'm not telling you it's going to be easy - I'm telling you it's going to be worth it.

-- Art Williams

This is what a leader does.

U2 - Joshua Tree 30th Anniversary Tour, Soldier Field 2017

The U2 concert was incredible -- a 'beautiful day' and evening.  Amazing music, show, and truth...relevant 30 years ago and today.  ...not to mention how much joy there was for me in sharing the experience, at his initiative, with my son.  I am blessed in so many ways.

That many people singing at the top of their lungs about something they still haven't found is quite a collectively moving experience.  ...more here.

God Isn't An Editor

The Holy Spirit is God's very own life shared with us and residing within us (see John 20:22). When we pray, we are steadfastly refusing to abandon this Presence, this True Self, this place that already knows we are beloved and one with God.

-- Richard Rohr

Instagram: bobgoff

God isn't an editor, He's a creator.
He's not looking for the typos in our lives;
He sees the beauty in them.

-- Bob Goff

Q&A: Disapproval

​Q&A:  

Q:  We seem to have come from such a model of disapproval -- generational, social, cultural, ethnic, etc. Perhaps, we are emerging from that mentality of control. We can feel the swing to a hyper-approval way, compensating for the prior way. So here's a question -- what is it that we are looking for...in either model?  Are we looking for the very thing we think we're gaining by doing its opposite to each other?

A:  We disapprove of some, in order to gain approval of others...as we desperately search for acceptance.

Sonnet VI

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Sonnet VI":

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore—
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

It is amazing to me how sometimes something can be so unclear and evocative, at the very same time.

Never Change

So it's searchable:

You'll never change your life until you change something you do daily.  The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.

-- John Maxwell

Politics

​Among the problems with politics is that there is too much talking and not enough listening AND that it is embedded in a belief that government can solve for some things that it really can't.

Looking After

Weak leaders have the luxury of looking after themselves. Great leaders have the honor of looking after others.

-- Simon Sinek

Remembrance

On Memorial Day, what are we memorializing?

Illusion

What we call sins are actually symptoms of the illusion that we are separated from God.

-- Richard Rohr


Prayer consists of Attention.

-- Simone Weil

Bloom

...who thinks up stuff (beauty) like this, much less creates it?

They Ate the Bulbs of Tulips

'Poem selection' for the week -- "They Ate the Bulbs of Tulips":

I’d have to hear it spoken in mind somehow,
my father said, of the Frisian word for hunger,
but I’d settle for memory, or grief, under
the category things that undo me. It’s a funny
thing to think. Who would be the speaker
if not him? His mother, maybe,
holding hands in the hospital with his father
after 76 years. Married the day after the war,
when the stores had no windows—the Nazis
took the glass. The mourning doves
might have the right vowels, or the red belly
in the leafless dogwood, now winging
through the sunlight peplummed through
the pines, blue tarp peeled back
on the cotton bales in the field beyond,
Merry Christmas spraypainted in blue
upon the white. Snowless, starless,
a man goes on trial in France for helping
refugees. Could’ve been your grandparents,
my father says, your Pake hid in barns, woke
once to mouse feet scrambling across his face,
but in France it was a 2 year old in a ditch,
dying of dehydration, & when I look down
I’ve pulled the petals from the bouquet,
& as I’ve neither French nor Frisian nor
courage, all I can do is sweep the body
of petals into my palms, & pour them into
the cathedral of water in front of me.

-- Mark Wagenaar

From the author:

“‘They Ate the Bulbs of Tulips’ casts its line between a speaker who is hearing a piece of familial history—a grandfather who hid in barns from the Nazis—and one of the more pressing problems of our time, the plight of Middle Eastern migrants who are fleeing war, at Christmas time. I hope the poem asks big questions of us—what is a just and merciful response to this crisis? What risks are we willing to take for the sake of the most vulnerable?”

Q&A: How to Begin the Journey to What You Want

Q&A: 

Q: What is the most difficult, overwhelmingly insurmountable obstacle that prevents most people from getting what they want?

A: They don't even try.

If I ask you what you want, you are likely to tell me what is #4, #7, or even #12 on your list of the things that you want.  But most people hide deep inside what they really want.

Let's face the facts.  Lack of talent, money, or time isn't your biggest obstacle.  It's the fact you don't believe.

Your skepticism is a greater obstacle than that of everyone else in the world.   Continue here....

-- Bruce Kasanoff

Something Different

I've noticed...that many times, you have to look for something different in order to see something different.

None Of Us

None of us are as smart as all of us.

-- Ken Blanchard

So, we should lead accordingly.

Aren't Aware Of

A healing path opens by realizing you can't change what you aren't aware of.

-- Deepak Chopra

O Gracious and Holy Father

O gracious and holy Father,

give us wisdom to perceive Thee,

intelligence to understand Thee,

diligence to seek Thee,

patience to wait for Thee,

eyes to behold Thee,

a heart to meditate upon Thee,

and a life to proclaim Thee;

through the power of the Spirit

of Jesus Christ our Lord.

-- St. Benedict of Nursia

​The greatest tragedy in life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer.

-- F. B. Myer

www.youversion.com

So that it's searchable:

Pray in the power of the Holy Spirit.

-- Jude 1:20

What Is Youth?

I tend to save things that strike something in me that I want to think more about.  Sometimes I have an immediate thought or connection.  At other times, I want to explore it further.  Still others, I don't really know why...I like it, but I do.

The above, for example, makes me wonder what the essence of youth is.  Is it merely physical?  Is youth a thing of the mind?  Or, the heart?  Or, is youth a state of being - whether our body (or anything else) keeps up with it or not.  I'm guessing now, but I'm wondering if there is something about these people, aged as they appear to be, that is still quite young about them.

So, what is youth anyway?

Instructions on Not Giving Up

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Instructions on Not Giving Up":

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

-- Ada Limón

At The Center

​At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

-- Lao Tzu

Your Body

​If you disrespect yourself with your body, you make it very hard for your body to respect you.

The better you treat your body (one way of respecting yourself), the more you will be able realize who you are and what you are capable of.

Any Room?

Curiosity is essential for progress. Only when we look to worlds beyond our own can we really know if there's room for improvement.

-- Simon Sinek

This is worth not brushing off too quickly and worth contemplating its implications, in a number of realms.  Curiosity is a way to countermand assumptions; assumptions can be good and they can be bad.  Room is critical, for growth to occur.

Curiosity is the doorknob to open opportunities for change. If we don't turn it, we can become hostage to our assumptions.

Correlation?

Meet Those Who “Love Jesus but Not the Church”

The Hottest Thing at Church Is Not Your Pastor or Worship Leader

Is there a correlation between these two?  Could it be that there is a group of people who are less interested in more talking and more interested in more doing? 

Mothers Day

"I love this tree," I told my wife recently.  And, this got me thinking about why -- certainly a thing of beauty, but not all that unusual.  Or, is it?  As I've reflected a bit further, I've realized that part of my affection is connected to something more historical; something, in fact, from by childhood.  I remember visiting on occasion a section of Marietta, GA, where my Mom's mother lived.  I can still vividly recall the street she lived on, which was lined from one end to the other with white dogwood trees that seemed to hang underneath a canopy of old, large and stately trees overhead.  The sight was a bit magical to me, like Christmas lights in May.

I've come to realize that some of beauty's arrow that has so pierced me so much in life has come from such experiences.  My mother's heritage is there and it's like something from another place and time.  I have also heard my mom say, on several occasions, that her best memories of Mothers Day during the years we were growing up were when she would receive her Spring flowers for the summer.  I remember her working with them on one embankment in particular, as well as throughout the rest of our yard.  While I don't recall helping her as much as I likely should have during those years, I now do something very similar every year at this time.

More important than the flowers (though I hesitate to diminish the power of flowers in this life), I think I received so much more from my mom through those experiences.  It was the time spent together that gave me so much of who I am.  And, for that, I will be ever grateful to her, who in some ways, simply shared her own life with me through these kinds of times together.

And such gifts have a way of keeping on giving, as this has allowed me to recognize similar kinds of beauty in the mothering of our own kids by my wife.  Today our youngest daughter is struggling with some hard decisions, due to circumstances where others had clearly let her and others down.  I saw my wife say to her, ​"I'm praying for you. That you may be truthful and gracious."  These could be, perhaps, some of the most simple and beautiful flowers a mother could give to her daughter.


We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.

-- Oswald Chambers

#OpenYourWorld

The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face

'Poem selection' for the week -- "The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face":

The glory of the day was in her face,
The beauty of the night was in her eyes.
And over all her loveliness, the grace
Of Morning blushing in the early skies.

And in her voice, the calling of the dove;
Like music of a sweet, melodious part.
And in her smile, the breaking light of love;
And all the gentle virtues in her heart.

And now the glorious day, the beauteous night,
The birds that signal to their mates at dawn,
To my dull ears, to my tear-blinded sight
Are one with all the dead, since she is gone.

-- James Weldon Johnson

When I consider the idea of 'glory', I can't help but include things like the eastern sky this morning around 6am -- just...glorious!  So the juxtaposition of this with the reality of a friend of ours hovering near death today makes the affect of this poem even more startling and compelling -- an odd, disorienting holding of two seemingly contradictory things, that at a whole other level are not completely disconnected.

Life and death...are one.

Forgiveness

A friend shared a beautiful story of a local, attorney friend of his who posted this on his FB page yesterday (thanks, Jim):

Yesterday I went into the courtroom because I needed to talk to Deputy Prosecutor Jack Roebel and Judge Joe Sutton. They were conducting a sentencing so I decided to watch and wait.

An Amish family sat behind the defense table where the defendant, an Amish young man, sat with his lawyer.

On the other side of the aisle was an African American man in a wheel chair with two boys next to him.

The story was simple and tragic. The young Amish man had gone to a Notre Dame tailgate party and gotten drunk. He then drove back home. On the way he ran a stop sign and hit a car driven by the African American man with some kids in it. The man nearly lost his leg, suffered a collapsed lung and endured other pretty severe injuries. For a long time he was placed in a medically induced coma. One of the kids suffered an orbital fracture and frankly I missed who else was hurt and how badly.

The arguments were made by the lawyers and it then came time for the victim to speak. Clearly he was now disabled and his life is forever changed. And what he did was incredible--he completely forgave the offender. He looked at him and talked about how he had gotten off the right path earlier in his life. He told the defendant that he believed that the young man was a good person and could get back on the right path if he followed what his family taught him. He exhibited a grace, mercy, and forgiveness which I cannot remember seeing in 36 years of criminal law. And after the hearing the Amish family embraced him and all broke down in tears.

I came away realizing that my resentments and grievances are largely petty and am inspired to embrace and display as much forgiveness as I am able.

Cracks

​I've noticed...things can grow in the smallest of places, in the tiniest of cracks.  Perhaps, this is because things in cracks are often held in tight confines and are somewhat protected from being washed or swept away.

This is not unlike some things inside of me - good and bad - that grow in the tightest of places, even the cracks in my own heart.

People's Weaknesses

No man should be appointed to a managerial position if his vision focuses on people's weaknesses rather then their strengths.

-- Peter Drucker

Didn't Know You Could

There's something kind of amazing about doing something you didn't know you could do - like running a mini-marathon. So happy for the kids, who dedicated themselves to the idea and worked for months to prepare for the Indy Mini-Marathon, 2017. They did it!  A wonderful example of the merits of setting a goal and persevering to accomplish it; it was thrilling to watch them 'finish' - made me tear-up, just thinking about it (well, yes, and wishing I had done it with them!).  More pics here....

Peacemakers

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.

-- Matthew 5:9

This Beatitude follows as the logical consequence of all that has been laid out so far. When our hearts are gentled and single, when we’ve tamed the animal instincts, we become peacemakers. We are no longer wielding the sword of the binary operator that divides the world into good guys and bad guys, insiders and outsiders, winning team and losing team. When the field of vision has been unified, the inner being comes to rest, and that inner peaceableness flows into the outer world as harmony and compassion. This is what we mean by contemplative engagement: right action in the world stemming from inner attunement. Only from the unified perception of the heart can we discern what action is required of us to lovingly and effectively serve our hurting planet.

-- Cynthia Bourgeault

Instagram: bobgoff

So it's searchable:

Tell people who they are.
Not what they want.

-- Bob Goff

#EatTogether

​
Unrelated (or maybe not):

TG: Is it possible to have a more mindful relationship with technology?

JKZ: You can be more mindful of how addicted you are, but unless you impose behaviors on yourself, it’s like heroin. It’s not like you can live without technology — I own an iPhone. But you can’t live with it unless you find some kind of way to not lose yourself in digital reality to the point where you forget that your body is analog. Continue here....

Freedom

​I am caught sometimes, somehow
between two kinds
of freedom:
real and unreal

So compelled
by the moment
sabotaging what is beyond
the now

Availability to moments
I can't yet see;
Affected by openness
I can choose now

Desire of two kinds
to be free:
One real
One fantasy

What I Didn't See

​The people who have taught me the most in my career are the ones who pointed out what I didn't see.

-- Sheryl Sandberg

Hard Things

​I've noticed...that many hard things end up making you better, more capable of helping others.

This is the staggering loss of avoiding difficult or challenging things.

What Got You Here

What got you here won't necessarily get you there.

-- Marshall Goldsmith

Great Minds

​Great minds discuss ideas;
average minds discuss events;
small minds discuss people.

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Hungry for God

A man may study because his brain is hungry for knowledge, even Bible knowledge. But he prays because his soul is hungry for God.

-- Leonard Ravenhill

ubuntu

Regarding 'ubuntu', Eze summarizes it this way:

​'A person is a person through other people' strikes an affirmation of one’s humanity through recognition of an ‘other’ in his or her uniqueness and difference. It is a demand for a creative intersubjective formation in which the ‘other’ becomes a mirror (but only a mirror) for my subjectivity. This idealism suggests to us that humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual; my humanity is co-substantively bestowed upon the other and me. Humanity is a quality we owe to each other. We create each other and need to sustain this otherness creation. And if we belong to each other, we participate in our creations: we are because you are, and since you are, definitely I am. The ‘I am’ is not a rigid subject, but a dynamic self-constitution dependent on this otherness creation of relation and distance.

-- Michael Onyebuchi Eze

The Fool’s Song

'Poem selection' for the week -- "The Fool’s Song":

I tried to put a bird in a cage.
                O fool that I am!
         For the bird was Truth.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
                 Truth in a cage!

And when I had the bird in the cage,
                 O fool that I am!
          Why, it broke my pretty cage.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
                  Truth in a cage!

And when the bird was flown from the cage,
                  O fool that I am!
            Why, I had nor bird nor cage.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
                   Truth in a cage!
             Heigh-ho! Truth in a cage.

-- William Carlos Williams

Risks

Change happens because ideas compel people to take risks.

-- Tom Goodwin

Instagram: bobgoff

Great love
leaves little doubt.

-- Bob Goff

Experientially

​I've noticed...that what I know the most, I know experientially.

I go for a run nearly every day. Because I do, I have come to know certain things about myself - about my mind, my emotions, my body - particularly as it relates to running.  In other words, some of the things I know in this way, I would not know about myself, if I didn't run.

I know some things (not enough) about photography.  But, while I know about them cognitively, I really don't understand how they work together.  I have found that mostly I just have to try things with my own camera before I can figure out how it works. Once I do this and how the concepts inter-relate with each other, then I start to know photography, not simply about it.  But, this doesn't really happen, at least at any deep level, until I spend time doing it.

If this is true, imagine what the implications are for other, perhaps more significant, domains of knowing something; like relationships or God. Some, for example, believe this is the only kind of knowing one can really have with God - an experiential knowing of him.

We most often know, what we know experientially.

Authentic Interest

The single greatest people skill is a highly developed and authentic interest in the other person.

-- Bob Burg

Who are we seeking to become?

Who are we seeking to become?

We get what we invest in. The time we spend comes back, with interest.

If you practice five minutes of new, difficult banjo music every day, you'll become a better banjo player. If you spend a little bit more time each day whining or feeling ashamed, that behavior will become part of you. The words you type, the people you hang with, the media you consume...

The difference between who you are now and who you were five years ago is largely due to how you've spent your time along the way.

The habits we groove become who we are, one minute at a time. A small thing, repeated, is not a small thing.

-- Seth Godin

Before

The sea enters the rivers before the rivers can run into the sea. In like manner, God comes to us before we go to Him; and heaven enters into our souls before we can enter into heaven.

-- Peter Drelincourt


Be sure to pray much, that is, to keep your inner eye focused on Jesus.

-- Henri Nouwen

How Great Thou Art

To Connect

The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

One Choice

More often than not,
it only takes one
simple
choice
to start things
heading
in the opposite
direction.

Each moment
provides us
with one
opportunity
to make one simple
choice.

Choices all together
do add up.
But, it's still
just one choice
each time;
the next one.

No Further

​As long as we’re filled with ourselves, we can go no further.

-- Cynthia Bourgeault

We must learn how to empty ourselves, particularly because we have learned to keep ourselves perpetually full.

Insignificant

​I've noticed...that I am surprised sometimes at the significance of the smallest of things. Someone recently asked about my brother and whether or not I would see him soon. I had, frankly, forgotten about our recent plans to visit each other. One small comment reminded me to do something that otherwise I might have just missed. This kind of thing seems to happen regularly. Too regularly.

The other day I noticed the slightest tinges of pink lacing the edges of what otherwise looks like just some white flowers on the shrubs in our front yard. Who would have thought of adding a dash of pink, especially if most wouldn't notice it anyway?  A friend recently wrote Tami a note about the care she had observed Tami giving a student in real need.  One perspective might be that she was just doing her job.  But this person noticed how much more it really was.  A small thing, but not really...for any of those involved.

I am grateful for such seemingly insignificant things and encouraged to pay attention to them. Small things are not insignificant -- insignificant things are rarely insignificant.

Diversity

Leaders...must believe that diversity is necessary for future innovation and growth. Only then will...an organization...be willing to take the unnatural steps needed to effect change. If there isn’t buy-in from the top, it is impossible...to drive a shift in culture or mindset.

-- Mallun Yen

Where To Look

​Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.

-- Jonas Salk

Lives In You

Our old history ends with the cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.

-- Watchman Nee

www.youversion.com

So it's searchable:

The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.

-- Romans 8:11

Healed

By His wounds we are healed.

-- Isaiah 53:5

www.youversion.com

...even on a long, hope-crushing Saturday like this one during the Holy Week. What else could have been felt after the dashing devastation of yesterday? Some thoughts here....

Not A Religion

Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is the proclamation of the end of religion, not of a new religion, or even of the best of all religions. If the cross is the sign of anything, it’s the sign that God has gone out of the religion business and solved all of the world’s problems without requiring a single human being to do a single religious thing. What the cross is actually a sign of is the fact that religion can’t do a thing about the world’s problems—that it never did work and it never will.

-- Robert F. Capon

A prayer on this Good Friday:

God of the cross, your power is hidden
in a weakness that quietly overcomes the world.
Open our eyes to see this power at work.  May we walk

in it as we live out your alternative vision
for the world.  Amen.

-- Walter Brueggeman, A Way Other Than Our Own

Aware

As I contemplate the significance of this day of Holy Week, relative to Lent and to the next 3 days, I find myself aware of several things:

• There has been something significant about 'doing' Lent this year - it seems related to having participated in this more collectively (with a group of guys), rather than just by myself
• I tend to want such times, like this weekend (consider this perspective), to feel more transformative than it does
• I have a sense of anticipation, which is going simultaneously in seemingly opposite directions - I have a slight expectation or desire for something to crescendo a bit AND I feel myself resisting that very desire...a pre-emptive move, perhaps, to avoid some kind of disappointment
• What I do, with regard to the import of Easter, is increasingly like a call to something - something with more implications for the poor and needy, something that has more to do with a collective effort than just an individual one (though I'm not sure how separable those really are)
• There is something wildly subversive about the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus - this feels more apparent to me as our culture continues its seeming rotation away from the socialization of the church and religion
• A significant part of this subversiveness goes well beyond the typical evangelical perspective of atonement regarding our status before God and deeply into the impact it should have on my daily life, particularly as it relates to our cultural anxieties and on how I see and function in my relationship to the world and all that inhabit it

What will the next 3 days add to the mix for me this year?

​
As we walk the walk from Palm Sunday to Easter through the Thursday arrest and the Friday execution and the long Saturday wait in the void, imagine all of us, in the wake of Jesus, changing our minds, renewing our minds, altering our opinions concerning self and neighbor and world. The clue to the new mind of Christ is emptying of our need to control and our anxious passion for security. And as our minds change, we come to new freedom.

-- Walter Brueggeman, A Way Other Than Our Own

Ransom

www.youversion.com

The son of man came not to be served, but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.

-- Matthew 20:28

Everything New

If we get attached to computers and other machines, we get far more attached to the traditional ways in which we have organized and run our lives. And though we all know that things could be better, we all hope that we can simply add the better bit on to the way we do things at the moment, so that we won't have to change too much, if at all. This is a challenge every generation has to face, but for Jesus and his contemporaries it was massive. They had lived for many centuries with a traditional way of life. They assumed, naturally enough, that if and when their God came back to rescue them he would support and vindicate that way. And Jesus was telling them that something new was happening. God was indeed doing what he'd always said, but the old machines they had been working with — the things they'd expected to happen — simply weren't adequate for this new moment.

In particular, he was replacing an overall mood of sadness and longing with an overall mood of celebration and hope. They used to fast regularly, to remember the times long ago when their nation had suffered awful disasters. Jesus was coming to do something that would always be remembered with celebration — so fasting wasn't appropriate! That was revolutionary. But it was appropriate.

We today fast during Lent, to remind ourselves of the sorrow and sin that still abounds in the world and in our own lives. But we do so as a people whose basic mode of life is celebration. God has brought the new world into being in and through Jesus. Don't try to put the new cloth on the old coat, or the new wine into old bottles. God is making everything new, and he's inviting us to the party.

-- N.T. Wright