Constant

​We want things to be constant, not ebb-and-flow. But, this cuts off a basic element of our humanity,  from the Spirit within us, who works best with us when we are aware of the nature of things -- always moving.  Emerge, recede.  Repeat.

I'm thankful for this awareness today. This is not something to fight, as much as it is something to work with; perhaps even, actively join.

Most Alive

​I've noticed...that I am most alive, when I do.

LT: How Can You Tell Someone Has True Leadership Skills? This Famous Study Narrows It Down to This 1 Rare Trait

The secret formula? Collins found they had exceptional leaders displaying a paradoxical mix of intense professional will and extreme personal humility. They were described as modest, with a determination to create results by shifting the focus away from themselves and continually recognizing the contributions of others.

1. They let other people talk.
2. They admit being wrong.
3. They rarely impose.
4. They seek input.
5. They give their people credit.
6. They speak their truth.
7. They are teachable.
8. They involve others.  Continue here....

-- Marcel Schwantes

Make Room

As I contemplate the notion of enough vs full, it seems to me that in the world (system) we live in, one of our tasks now may be to make room.  Perhaps, we need to make room, to create space, for the possibility of not just something different, but for something that can flow in and out of us again each day.  When we're constantly full, or seeking to stay full, not much gets into or out of our cup, the pouring just runs over the brim.

We need room or space within us to breathe with God for ourselves and for each other.  Otherwise, perhaps like at the time of Jesus' birth, He may just have to be born outside (of us).

Make room.  Where do I need to do that today?

Why Churches Lose Their Way

I used to be in really good shape. I ran a lot, and I was much lighter. And the result of being in shape was that I had a lot of freedom to do and to be what I’m supposed to do and be. I felt great! But over the years, I stopped running and I stopped eating well. Now I’m fat and tired and I have headaches all the time. And as I continue to age, my muscles atrophy. Many churches are like the out-of-shape me. They started out well, but they’ve lost their way. They get sidetracked by good issues that become their priority rather than the gospel and the task of making disciples. It’s easy to focus on secondary issues and lose sight of what’s most important. We all need to return to the basics again and again...continue here.

-- Joe Thorn

Mercilessly

​We are either a people who love, embrace, and enter into a caring posture with our family, friends, neighbors, strangers, and even enemies (real or imagined) or we will spend our lives mercilessly trying to define who is lovable and who is not, who is worthy and who is not, who deserves my attention and who does not. Inevitably, we will end up loving people who look like us, think like us, and pledge allegiance to the same flag—and we will exclude the rest. In this truly useless pursuit, we will separate ourselves from God (through tribal worship), from the world’s good (by avoiding healing and restoration), and from our very souls (through self-pre­occupation with ego).

In effect, the wisdom of Jesus describes the powerful, but often neglected, bridge between spiritual insight and social action/real compassion. In fact, the wisdom of Jesus seems to suggest that the link is even more intimate than a bridge; it is the collapse of the two categories altogether. The separation of spirituality from action is a false one. In other words, we are not called to do spiritual prac­tices—prayer, study, meditation, retreat, ritual—and then make our way, now inspired, to the work of mercy and justice. In fact, it might be argued that, if anything, it’s just the reverse: Love those who strug­gle with poverty and suffer abandonment and the effect is that we will find ourselves on a path that leads to maturity, prayer, wisdom, and Christ-likeness. If, however, we choose to avoid engagement and community with those who suffer, we will certainly live an incom­plete life, including an incomplete spiritual life.

To put it rightly, I think, the practice of prayer and the practice of compassion are both necessary and complementary spiritual practices. . . . We are called to be both activists and mystics, missionaries of love and contemplatives, great lovers and deep thinkers. And, in all of that, the spiritual journey can happen; in all of that, we can be made whole; in all of that, the world can be made whole. . . . Personal transformation and social transformation are one piece. . . .

-- Jack Jezreel

Merry Autumn

Poem for the week -- "Merry Autumn":

It’s all a farce,—these tales they tell
     About the breezes sighing,
And moans astir o’er field and dell,
     Because the year is dying.

Such principles are most absurd,—
     I care not who first taught ’em;
There’s nothing known to beast or bird
     To make a solemn autumn.

In solemn times, when grief holds sway
     With countenance distressing,
You’ll note the more of black and gray
     Will then be used in dressing.

Now purple tints are all around;
     The sky is blue and mellow;
And e’en the grasses turn the ground
     From modest green to yellow.

The seed burrs all with laughter crack
     On featherweed and jimson;
And leaves that should be dressed in black
     Are all decked out in crimson.

A butterfly goes winging by;
     A singing bird comes after;
And Nature, all from earth to sky,
     Is bubbling o’er with laughter.

The ripples wimple on the rills,
     Like sparkling little lasses;
The sunlight runs along the hills,
     And laughs among the grasses.

The earth is just so full of fun
     It really can’t contain it;
And streams of mirth so freely run
     The heavens seem to rain it.

Don’t talk to me of solemn days
     In autumn’s time of splendor,
Because the sun shows fewer rays,
     And these grow slant and slender.

Why, it’s the climax of the year,—
     The highest time of living!—
Till naturally its bursting cheer
     Just melts into thanksgiving.

-- Paul Laurence Dunbar

Thanksgiving - Indescribable

Thanksgiving Day:

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

-- 2 Corinthians 9:15

His gift frees us to live.

Enough vs. Full

Full vs. Enough

One of the lessons of Thanksgiving is that we eat too much. We eat until we're full, experiencing the sensation of too much.

It's easy to confuse our desire for that that feeling with the feeling of 'enough'. Enough doesn't feel like full, but that's okay.

Too often, we've been persuaded by marketers and other maximizers that the only satisfying state is 'full'. Not just in what we've eaten, but in what we own, control or receive.

In fact, full doesn't last and full isn't desirable. No thanks, I've got enough. It's better that way.

-- Seth Godin

The Secret

Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.

-- Anne Lamott

Deeply Awake, Grateful Awareness

All of us are here (wherever we may be), right here. But the degree to which each of us is here right now—in terms of a deeply awake, grateful awareness of the gift and miracle of being here—varies greatly from person to person. 

-- James Finley

What Kind Of A Church Would We Like To Be?

Vision is essential to a church. However, unlike the values, mission, and purpose, the vision is more subject to change. It is dynamic, not static. Over time, the vision must be renewed, adapted, and adjusted to the cultural context in which the congregation lives. The change takes place only at the margins of the vision, not at its core. The core—the Great Commission—does not change. The details of the vision and the words used to convey them will change. The vision provides us with a picture of what the mission will look like as it is realized in the community:

A Vision Encourages Unity
A Vision Creates Energy
A Vision Provides Purpose
A Vision Fosters Risk Taking
A Vision Enhances Leadership
A Vision Promotes Excellence
A Vision Sustains Ministry 

...continue here.

-- Aubrey Malphurs

Strengthen or Weaken

​I wonder how we are strengthened or weakened by the smallest of our choices.

Every once in a while, the implications of small choices become more clear. The smallest of decisions can really impact the course of a whole day. And, the course of a whole day can affect a week, and so on...until it becomes clear that such things are adding up in some kind of way. Sometimes our choices are so small, or so familiar, that we don't even detect them. I've noticed this particularly with food. A choice early in the day (conscious or not) about what I eat can set a whole chain reaction of 'hunger'  (bad or good) in motion throughout the rest of the day.

I suspect that thought patterns may not be too different. What I choose to think about or how I choose to dwell on something, may have far-reaching implications.

So, what kind of habits am I forming through awareness of my smallest choices?  And, how am I strengthening something later, when I say 'no' or 'yes' to something right now?

Epistemology

Poem for the week -- "Epistemology":

Mostly I’d like to feel a little less, know a little more.
Knots are on the top of my list of what I want to know.
Who was it who taught me to burn the end of the cord
to keep it from fraying?
Not the man who called my life a debacle,
a word whose sound I love.
In a debacle things are unleashed.
Roots of words are like knots I think when I read the dictionary.
I read other books, sure. Recently I learned how trees communicate,
the way they send sugar through their roots to the trees that are ailing.
They don’t use words, but they can be said to love.
They might lean in one direction to leave a little extra light for another
          tree.
And I admire the way they grow right through fences, nothing
stops them, it’s called inosculation: to unite by openings, to connect
or join so as to become or make continuous, from osculare,
to provide with a mouth, from osculum, little mouth.
Sometimes when I’m alone I go outside with my big little mouth
and speak to the trees as if I were a birch among birches.

-- Catherine Barnett

Some Do, Some Don't

​Some get it; some don’t.  The ones who do, seem to have joined the parts of life that are bigger than themselves.

Assumptions

​I've noticed...that I need to test my assumptions; at least, try to be aware of them.

LT: Not Any Harder

Most of the time, people will not do any more than their leader does.  But, if a leader works hard, literally or figuratively, they will, too.  Leaders set the pace by example, especially when it comes to effort because effort is often translated as evidence of vision, belief, and commitment.

Change The Ending

​You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.

-- C.S. Lewis

Mistake About God

Any mistake we make about creation will also be a mistake about God.

-- Thomas Aquinas

Entertain Me

​In our marketing-based economy, we seem to have moved into an 'entertain me' culture. Most of our lives look preoccupied with consuming content and evaluating whether or not we were adequately entertained -- good commercial, good show, good movie, good album, good game, good World Series, good sermon or "eh...it was OK, I guess".

Everything starts to feel like it has to out-do the prior version, be more awesome, etc. despite that we can almost smell the edges of all this entertainment as really not satisfying.

Joint Message of Pope Francis And Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on the World Day of Prayer For Creation

The story of creation presents us with a panoramic view of the world. Scripture reveals that, “in the beginning”, God intended humanity to cooperate in the preservation and protection of the natural environment. At first, as we read in Genesis, “no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up – for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground” (2:5). The earth was entrusted to us as a sublime gift and legacy, for which all of us share responsibility until, “in the end”, all things in heaven and on earth will be restored in Christ (cf. Eph 1:10). Our human dignity and welfare are deeply connected to our care for the whole of creation.

However, “in the meantime”, the history of the world presents a very different context. It reveals a morally decaying scenario where our attitude and behaviour towards creation obscures our calling as God’s co-operators. Our propensity to interrupt the world’s delicate and balanced ecosystems, our insatiable desire to manipulate and control the planet’s limited resources, and our greed for limitless profit in markets – all these have alienated us from the original purpose of creation. We no longer respect nature as a shared gift; instead, we regard it as a private possession. We no longer associate with nature in order to sustain it; instead, we lord over it to support our own constructs.

The consequences of this alternative worldview are tragic and lasting. The human environment and the natural environment are deteriorating together, and this deterioration of the planet weighs upon the most vulnerable of its people. The impact of climate change affects, first and foremost, those who live in poverty in every corner of the globe. Our obligation to use the earth’s goods responsibly implies the recognition of and respect for all people and all living creatures. The urgent call and challenge to care for creation are an invitation for all of humanity to work towards sustainable and integral development.

Therefore, united by the same concern for God’s creation and acknowledging the earth as a shared good, we fervently invite all people of goodwill to dedicate a time of prayer for the environment on 1 September.  On this occasion, we wish to offer thanks to the loving Creator for the noble gift of creation and to pledge commitment to its care and preservation for the sake of future generations. After all, we know that we labour in vain if the Lord is not by our side (cf. Ps 126-127), if prayer is not at the centre of our reflection and celebration. Indeed, an objective of our prayer is to change the way we perceive the world in order to change the way we relate to the world. The goal of our promise is to be courageous in embracing greater simplicity and solidarity in our lives.

We urgently appeal to those in positions of social and economic, as well as political and cultural, responsibility to hear the cry of the earth and to attend to the needs of the marginalized, but above all to respond to the plea of millions and support the consensus of the world for the healing of our wounded creation. We are convinced that there can be no sincere and enduring resolution to the challenge of the ecological crisis and climate change unless the response is concerted and collective, unless the responsibility is shared and accountable, unless we give priority to solidarity and service.

Why Incompetent People Think They're Amazing

Not Entitled

​I wonder sometimes, if we’re not all wanting something we’re a little bit not entitled to.

LT: Common Vision

​Part of leading is helping a group of people stay together.

Groups often disintegrate over time.  Helping them stay together is often best achieved through building and fostering a shared commitment to a common vision.

99

"Happy Birthday" will be on the lips of well-wishers around the world as evangelist Billy Graham celebrates his 99th birthday Tuesday.

"Nov. 7 will be a big milestone for my father as he turns 99 and enters his 100th year. As a family, we are just so very grateful that he is still with us. His mind is good but he's quieter these days. He can't see or hear well, but his health is stable," Franklin Graham, president, and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association said in a statement.

The elder Graham spent three-quarters of his life preaching the gospel to millions of people around the world. Although he has been out of the public eye, according to his website, he is still one of the most admired men in America.  Continue here....

For All Its Horror

This is the central Christian mystery. Life has, for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for.

-- Flannery O’Connor


If this 'Fall Tree Of The Day' could be included (in this worth):

...imagine what God sees in the human soul.

Successful Career Women Finish the Phrase ‘If Only …’

The next frontier of gender equality is tackling unconscious bias in organizational structures, processes and environments. Research shows that individual-level stereotypes and prejudices are incredibly difficult to eradicate.

More observations and wisdom here....

Rose of Jericho

Poem for the week -- "Rose of Jericho":

I’m not sure about this gift. This tangle
of dried roots curled into a fist. This gnarl

I’ve let sit for weeks beside the toaster
and cookbooks on a bed of speckled granite.

What am I waiting for? Online I find
Rose of Jericho prayers and rituals for safe birth,

well-being, warding off the evil eye.
At first I thought I’d buy some white stones,

a porcelain bowl. But I didn’t and I didn’t.
I don’t believe in omens. This still fist

of possibility all wrapped up in itself.
There it sat through the holidays, into the New Year.

Through all the days I’ve been gone. Dormant.
But today, in an inch of water,

out of curiosity, I awakened
the soul of Jericho. Limb by limb it unfolded

and turned moss green. It reminded me
of the northwest, its lush undergrowth,

how twice despite the leaden clouds,
the rain, I found happiness there.

From tumbleweed to lush fern flower,
reversible, repeatable. And what am I

to make of this? Me, this woman who doesn’t
believe. Doesn’t take anything on faith. I won’t

let it rot. I’ll monitor the water level. Keep the mold
at bay. I tend things, but I do not pray.

-- Cindy Veach

Nuanced and Multi-Dimensional

You are far far bigger, more nuanced and multidimensional than who you think you are, the story of you.

-- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Over Time

I've noticed...there seems to be kinds, even phases, of recognition - what and when I recognize things about life, the world, myself. And, it doesn't always seem to work in the same order or at the same pace. I might, for example, only be able to recognize something cognitively, before I feel it. At other times, it may be the other way around. The good news is that, over time, recognition seems to grow, occuring at multiple levels.

I am continuing to learn to trust the process.

LT: You Can't Lead

​The personal mission statement was important for me because I believe that you can’t lead others unless you have a strong sense of who you are and what you stand for.

--  Denise Morrison, CEO of Campbell Soup

Belonging Starts

​The truth is: Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you're enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect. 

-- Brene Brown

The Godness of God

More interesting to me is that the book contains themes that I believe are particularly relevant to evangelicalism today, one of which we’ll consider here: Karl Barth saw in Romans a complete refutation of the human-centered religion of his day. Describing “the characteristic features of our relation to God,” he wrote:

Our relation to God is ungodly. We suppose that we know what we are saying when we say “God.” We assign to him the highest place in our world: and in so doing we place him fundamentally on one line with ourselves and with things. . . . We press ourselves into proximity with him: and so, all unthinking, we make him nigh unto ourselves. We allow ourselves an ordinary communication with him, we permit ourselves to reckon with him as though this were not extraordinary behavior on our part. We dare to deck ourselves out as his companions, patrons, advisers, and commissioners. ...

Secretly we are the masters in this relationship. We are not concerned with God, but with our own requirements, to which God must adjust himself. . . . Our well-regulated, pleasurable life longs for some hours of devotion, some prolongation into infinity. And so, when we set God upon the throne of the world, we mean by God ourselves. In “believing” on him, we justify, enjoy, and adore ourselves.

Instead, Barth discovered in Romans “that the theme of the Bible . . . certainly could not be man’s religion and religious morality, nor his own sacred divinity. The Godness of God—that was the bedrock we came up against . . . God’s absolute unique existence, power and initiative, above all in his relationship to men.”  

In short, he was toppling the liberal pillars of experience, ethics, and history, showing that, when it comes to knowing God, we bring absolutely nothing to the table. ...continue here.

-- Mark Galli

Falling

The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.

-- Marcus Aurelius

 We enjoyed some R&R this week and this year's colors of Fall (more pics from Saugatuck State Park here...).

The concept of a path as a metaphor for the journey of life has grown on me over the years, so here are a few more contributions to this imagery.

Upon the Heights

Poem for the week -- "Upon the Heights":

And victor of life and silence,
I stood upon the Heights; triumphant,
With upturned eyes, I stood,
And smiled unto the sun, and sang
A beautifully sad farewell unto the dying day.
And my thoughts and the eve gathered
Their serpentine mysteries around me,
My thoughts like alien breezes,
The eve like a fragrant legend.
My feeling was that I stood as one
Serenely poised for flight, as a muse
Of golden melody and lofty grace.
Yea, I stood as one scorning the swords
And wanton menace of the cities.
The sun had heavily sunk into the seas beyond,
And left me a tempting sweet and twilight.
The eve with trailing shadows westward
Swept on, and the lengthened shadows of trees
Disappeared: how silently the songs of silence
Steal into my soul! And still I stood
Among the crickets, in the beauteous profundity
Sung by stars; and I saw me
Softly melted into the eve. The moon
Slowly rose: my shadow on the ground
Dreamily began a dreamy roam,
And I upward smiled silent welcome.

-- Yone Noguchi

What will you do with your surplus?

What will you do with your surplus?

If you have a safe place to sleep, reasonable health and food in the fridge, you're probably living with surplus. You have enough breathing room to devote an hour to watching TV, or having an argument you don't need to have, or simply messing around online. You have time and leverage and technology and trust.

For many people, this surplus is bigger than any human on Earth could have imagined just a hundred years ago.

What will you spend it on?

If you're not drowning, you're a lifeguard.

-- Seth Godin

Fraudulence

​I've noticed...that there seems to be something a little bit fraudulent in everyone.  And, as much as I hate to admit it, there is fraudulence in me, too.  Something imperfect, something inconsistent, something that tends to keep track of the ways this is true in someone else, even while I, myself, think and do many of the very same things.

Fraudulence is not mitigated very much by comparison either.

LT: Flawless Execution

​Success is not determined by flawless execution of a plan.  It is determined by how people react to failure.

-- Don Schmincke

Architect vs Victim

​You don’t have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it.

-- James Clear

Holy Now

​Everything is holy now. The only resistance to that divine flow of holiness and wholeness is our human refusal to see, to enjoy, and to participate.

-- Richard Rohr

In the end, silence has the loudest voice in combating our resistance.

Don't Let Pain

Instagram: mariagoff

Don't let pain keep you from going to deep places,
from doing some work on your hurts
so you can get on with the important business
of living the rest of your life.

-- Maria Goff

Strictly Speaking

Poem for the week -- "Strictly Speaking":

There is the question
of bearing witness, of being yourself seen
by yourself, & seen clearly, cleanly,
without weapon or bible in hand;
as this was the wish,
the sturdy & not-so-secret wish
of those who named us—

our parents wanted us to be
known to ourselves without confusion:
without judgment,
sans suffering. Never force it,
they said, always find it.

OK, strictly speaking, that’s not entirely true.
My particular, sole, insistent, moody mother & father
probably never thought much about it at all.
Those two anxious citizens,
they were never exemplars of patience.
The weightlessness of detachment & acceptance
as I think of it now
would have frightened them—
for good reason.

If you could see these words
I’m speaking to you tonight printed on a page
as typeface & magnified x 500
you would feel just how ragged & coarse
they really are, heavy.

Well, playing the part of a butterfly
must be tiring, right?
I’m happier being the old ox, right?

On some plane of existence
these two scraps are all my news:
where the mess is
that’s where my heart is.

-- David Rivard

Don't Let Other People

Instagram: bobgoff

Don't let other people
decide who you are.

-- Bob Goff

Unknowing & Recognizing

​I've noticed...that life seems to unfold in a series of periods; periods where I live with a lot of unknowing, followed by periods of recognizing what is going on or what has been happening all along.

I may not be able, in fact, to the have the latter without the former.  So, the times of unknowing need not be as disquieting as they seem.

LT: It Is My Job

​Being a leader means that it is my job to help others do theirs.

More Courage

​It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield.

-- W.B. Yeats

Work In The Soul

​God has to work in the soul in secret and in darkness, because if we fully knew what was happening, and what it will eventually ask of us, we would either try to take charge or stop the whole process.

-- Gerald May

The Age You Peak At Everything

After some consideration of this, it might dawn on us that such things are happening, as they were designed to happen.  Perhaps, the goal is not for all things to be present or happening at the same time.  Perhaps, we should see wisdom in not trying to adjust when things occur and let things occur when they are supposed to, when they occur most naturally.  Perhaps then, we can be more at peace with who we are, in our existence at any given moment.

In Autumn

Poem for the week -- "In Autumn":

When within ourselves in autumn we feel the autumn
I become very still, a kind of singing, and try to move
like all things green, in one direction, when within ourselves
the autumn moves, thickening like honey, that light we smear
on faces and hands, then touch the far within one another,
something like autumn, and I think when those who knew
the dead, when they fall asleep, then what, then what in autumn
when I always feel I’m writing in red pencil on a piece
of paper growing in thickness the way a pumpkin does,
traveling at fantastic speed toward orange, toward rot, when
in autumn I remember that we are cold-smitten as I continue
smearing red on this precipice, this ledge of paper over which
I lean, trying to touch those I love, their bodies rusting
as I keep writing, sketching their red hands, faces lusting for green.

-- Mark Irwin

From the author:

“What’s terrifying about autumn is not so much the end of things, but that there’s a hidden beginning in some middle you can’t yet see but feel, the way one feels the earth move when a bulldozer tears down a building while the world turns red and yellow.”

Humility

​Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.

-- C.S. Lewis

Anger

​I've noticed...that I need to feel my anger, but not hold on to it.

LT: Hard Workers

Leaders are hard workers. They never expect more out of the people around them than they are willing to give themselves.

-- Jim George

Impact

​It is interesting to observe how we feel -- how we see ourselves -- when we no longer clearly see our impact on others.  Though, at times disorienting, such periods are both good and clarifying.  They re-orient us to how we know ourselves and detach us from the addictions we can so easily form to our dependencies on feedback.

Relief

​More often than not, all we want from God is relief.... He's not too happy about that; not for His sake, but for ours.

God knows that we want a LOT more (even if we have no clue about that). And, in His infinitely loving way, He refuses to comply with our childish demands.

Dignity & Respect

The Sin of Pride

Poem for the week -- "The Sin of Pride":

turns out not to be a sin at all, but in the guise
Of self-esteem a virtue; while poetry, an original
Sin of pride for making self-absorption seem heroic,
Apologizes again and shuts the door. O Small
Room of Myself, where everything and nothing fits,
I wish the night would last forever as the song assures,
Though it never does. I make my way not knowing
Where it leads or how it ends—in shocks of recognition,
In oblivion deferred, too little or too late, consumed
By fears of the forgotten and of the truly great. Morning
Brings a newspaper and an ordinary day, the prospect
Of a popular novel, though it’s hard to read. I write to live
And read to pass the time, yet in the end they’re equal,
And instead of someone else’s name the name I hear is mine—
Which is unsurprising, since our stories all sound alike,
With nothing to reveal or hide. How thin our books
Of revelations, the essential poems of everyone
Mysterious on the outside, but with nothing to conceal—
Like the stories of experience I go on telling myself
And sometimes even think are true, true at least to a feeling
I can’t define, though I know what I know: of a mind
Relentlessly faithful to itself and more or less real.

-- John Koethe

Very Confining

​Possessions are very confining; pretty soon you don't own them, they own you.

...a quote from a recent episode of  Michiana Chronicles; unfortunately, I don't remember which one.

Attraction

I've noticed...you can't legislate attraction.

LT: Vastly Greater

Great leaders know that the total knowledge of those around them is vastly greater than everything they know alone.

-- Simon Sinek

Best In Others

​When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.

‪-- William Arthur Ward‬

Both Are Mercy

First the fall, and then the recovery from the fall, and both are the mercy of God.

-- St. Julian of Norwich


Here, perhaps, is another kind of mercy:

...taken today at Warren Woods in Three Oaks, MI.

Resevoir

If then you are wise, you will show yourself rather as a reservoir than as a canal. For a canal spreads abroad water as it receives it, but a reservoir waits until it is filled before overflowing, and thus communicates, without loss to itself, its superabundant water. 

-- Bernard of Clairvaux

Fledgling

Poem for the week -- "Fledgling":

I scare away rabbits stripping the strawberries
in the garden, ripened ovaries reddening
their mouths. You take down the hanging basket
and show it to our son—a nest, secret as a heart,
throbbing between flowers. Look, but don’t touch,
you instruct our son who has already begun
to reach for the black globes of a new bird’s eyes,
wanting to touch the world. To know it.
Disappointed, you say: Common house finch,
as if even banal miracles aren’t still pink
and blind and heaving with life. When the cat
your ex-wife gave you died, I was grateful.
I’d never seen a man grieve like that
for an animal. I held you like a victory,
embarrassed and relieved that this was how
you loved. To the bone of you. To the meat.
And we want the stricken pleasure of intimacy,
so we risk it. We do. Every day we take down
the basket and prove it to our son. Just look
at its rawness, its tenderness, it’s almost flying.

-- Traci Brimhall

From the author:

“Watching my son encounter the world has taught me a dynamic kind of joy. He wants to know the world with such a ferocious intimacy, and it makes me want to know the world that way, too. To be willing to look at the awful vulnerability of hatchlings. To risk my heart on foolish and necessary miracles like love.”

Best Thinking

The best thinking has been done in solitude.

-- Thomas Edison

Not The Only Thing

​Whatever I feel is not the only thing.

LT: Not Forgotten What It Was Like

Many people believe great leaders are charismatic, have a commanding presence, are visionary, and educated at elite schools. Almost all of the leaders of the high-performing companies that I studied had none of those traits. Instead, they are what I call servant leaders.

They were people-centric, valued service to others, and believed they had a duty of stewardship. Nearly all were humble and passionate operators who were deeply involved in the details of the business. Most had long tenures in their organizations. They had not forgotten what it was like to be a line employee.

-- Edward D. Hess

Always Looking

Truly self-aware individuals are always looking for ways to learn.

-- Justin Gray

Seeking & Finding

​The more I seek you, the more I find you.

-- M. W. Smith

Dangers of Stereotyping People

The central issue here is not political correctness, free speech, or affirmative action. It is relating to people as authentic human beings, not as representatives of a group or class. Great harm is done when groups of people are stereotyped as having certain characteristics, rather than looking deeper at the individual person.

Pichai correctly analyzed this as the issue, noting that Damore’s document “crosses the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.” This violated Google’s code of conduct, thereby triggering his termination.

In his manifesto, Damore asserted that women have more “openness directed toward feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas, a stronger interest in people rather than things, prefer jobs in social or artistic areas, extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness, and neuroticism, characterized by high anxiety and lower stress tolerance.” As the Economist magazine pointed out, he justified his assertions by cherry-picking research on gender differences.

The real risk of Damore’s generalizations, expressed in a business context, is that they give license to people to behave as if those beliefs are true. This can lead to hidden or overt discrimination against women in the workplace. Such stereotypes have been used for decades by majority groups to hold people back and put them down for their race, ethnic origins, sexual preferences, and religion, as well as their gender. The aftermath of the Charlottesville demonstrations by neo-Nazis, KKK, and white supremacists brought these once-hidden issues back to the forefront of social consciousness.

Stereotyping contributes directly to unconscious bias...continue here.

-- Bill George

The Weaver

Poem for the week -- "The Weaver":

My life is but a weaving
Between my Lord and me,
I cannot choose the colors
He worketh steadily.

Ofttimes He weaveth sorrow,
And I, in foolish pride,
Forget He sees the upper
And I, the underside.

Not till the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Shall God unroll the canvas
And explain the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful
In the Weaver’s skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned.

-- Grant Colfax Tullar

Deny Our Disappointments

​If we deny our disappointments, not only do we lose a significant opportunity with God, but we also risk establishing a stronghold of disillusionment.

Just Me

​I wonder sometimes, if certain things in me that just won't die are being kept alive somehow for some purpose or if it is just me and I can't let go.

LT: Leaders Who Serve

In Good to Great, Jim Collins sets up an interesting metaphor using a mirror in the corner office to explain the difference between a servant leader and a self-serving leader. When things are going well in an organization run by a self-serving leader, this type of leader tends to look in the mirror, beat on their chest, and declare, "Look at what I've accomplished." But when things go wrong, this leader looks out the window to see who's to blame for the failure.

Servant leaders approach it differently. When things go wrong, they look in the mirror and consider what they could have done differently. When things go well, they look out the window to see who they can praise.

What kind of leader would you rather work for? By combining equal parts serving and leading, a servant leader creates a balance that creates both great results and great human satisfaction. Leaders who serve are the leaders we need today.

-- Ken Blanchard

Not Until It's Done With You

​The truth will set you free, but not until it's done with you.

-- David Foster Wallace

12 truths I learned from life and writing

We are all living in the current chapter of the story of our lives.  The longer we go, the more we can see all that the prior chapters have given us.  It is helpful to see how each informs and contributes to our well-being, to what we come to know and recognize.  We can use these truths for the good -- of us and for others -- especially as I increasingly imagine that the current chapter of my experience fits into my larger story and that my story fits with the larger stories of human existence and, ultimately, of God.

Conspiracy

​Conspiracies seem to bounce back-and-forth between 'yeah, right...' and 'are you serious?'. What seems to move the dial is the sense of threat involved. Whatever works to convince us of a threat to something in life seems to work in getting our attention.

What if we were able to consider some of our life through an 'up against a conspiracy' lens? If it's true that a good conspiracy is potentially threatening, at either a literal or proverbial level, what if we looked at it as something conspiring against us? We can often get mired down in self-contempt and fatal-flaws (actually worth considering once in a while). But, what if a lot of what we face is actually something trying to deny us of a part of life? What is out to get me or keep me in a state where I am unable to embrace life around me? What keeps me unaware of reality or even deadened to it?

If I viewed such things through a lens of 'what is conspiring against me' to deny me life, would it help? We all have patterns or things that tend to draw us towards something and away from an ability to be available to life around or within us. Different things seem to work on different people. If we became aware of those things, and acknowledge that they are being designed to deprive us of an opportunity to be more alive, how would that motivate me differently? Usually, it seems to me, we just wish we could avoid these things that pull us away and we become a bit fatalistic about our prospects for success in overcoming them. But, if I saw these things not so much for what they are, as what they're trying to do, perhaps this could assist me in this consistent battle.

I am drawn to life; this thing or that thing (whatever it is for each of us), however, is drawing my attention away from life and towards something else. I want to remain aware and available to life around and within me. This thing denies me that opportunity, so I want to walk away from this, because it is conspiring against me.

Would this kind of re-framing help?

To Kathleen

Poem for the week -- "To Kathleen":

Still must the poet as of old, 
In barren attic bleak and cold, 
Starve, freeze, and fashion verses to 
Such things as flowers and song and you;

Still as of old his being give 
In Beauty’s name, while she may live,
Beauty that may not die as long 
As there are flowers and you and song.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Ah, the juxtaposition of flowers and poetry.  And, what connects the two...you. Here, in this one, there is both a dissonance to the idea and a beckoning harmony.

Does Not Preclude

​Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.

-- Flannery O'Connor

Yearning Won't Do It

​Yearning for a new way will not produce it. Only ending the old way can do that.

-- Richard Rohr

Where You Want To Go

When we romanticize - and focus exclusively on - the role of the individual, we deny - what allows that individual to succeed, which is - the power of us.

We don’t need more of 'me, myself and I'; instead, we need to understand how to create and navigate the uniting frameworks of ‘us, ours, and together’. 

Over and over we see the need for a new 'us' in the global tensions we’re facing. The Brexit dichotomy, where the cities seem to benefit from globalization while rural areas struggle. Long-hidden sexism becomes an actionable agenda as crowds demand that Uber, Fox, and Google fix their inequities. Tech media companies like Reddit and Facebook face mounting public pressure to reconsider their role in enabling the spread of hate under the umbrella of freedom of speech. These vividly remind us that we don’t need more people advocating for their individual interests, but a new way to recognize — and address — shared interests.

...the organizing principle is not where you’ve come from, but where you want to go.

-- Nilofer Merchant

Quit Being "Right"

Instagram: bobgoff

Quit being "right"
be humble

-- Bob Goff

The Centuries-Old Habits of the Heart

Deep down, I suspect many of us recognize the inadequacy of our past and present efforts to combat racism. Yet, as James Baldwin observed, “people find it very difficult to act on what they know.” We content ourselves with annual celebrations of our national independence without wrestling with the hypocrisy of a freedom declaration against the backdrop of slavery. We paint a picture of gradual progress on racial fronts since the Emancipation Proclamation but fail to acknowledge that the Compromise of 1877 injected new life in white supremacy, giving racists an unparalleled opportunity to execute violence against people of color for decades.

Events along these lines are not inconsistent with our national identity. In fact, they are a part of our DNA. They illustrate how our country has tolerated pervasive forms of racism—and even genocide—to gain power, wealth, and influence. The current fight to preserve positions of honor for Confederate monuments reflects an unwillingness to confront the vicious legacy of white supremacy. The goal of these removal efforts is not, as some argue, to whitewash the past, but to recontextualize it. Defense of an institution that legitimated forms of physical, psychological, and sexual trauma is not a cause to honor but lament.

Our history of accommodation has instilled in us what Princeton professor of religion Eddie Glaude labels “racial habits” in his recent book Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul. Racial habits surface in “the ways we [often unconsciously] live the belief that white people are valued more than others.” Our responses to current events often reveal these racial habits. We devote time, resources, and social media platforms to the precious life of Charlie Gard, but we fail to give the same sort of attention to the hundreds of precious people who perished during the same time period in Venezuela due to political unrest. The disparities in our engagement reveal a fundamental gap in how we value different lives.

Yet, in the midst of these painful realities, the church is called to speak boldly to the power of the gospel. This task requires pastors who faithfully preach against the sin of racism in its structural and individual forms. It demands congregations who refuse to sit on the sidelines as long as injustice is a norm in their community, becoming advocates for racial justice through advocacy, protest, and partnerships.

My prayer is that God will raise up a generation of his people who reject accommodation and embrace the struggle for racial justice as an outgrowth of the gospel. As Frederick Douglass observed, “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. … Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”  Continue here....

-- Theon E. Hill

UM vs Cincinnati, 2017

Another beautiful day in Ann Arbor:

Game story here....

Hummingbird

Poem for the week -- "Hummingbird":

I love the whir of the creature come
to visit the pink
flowers in the hanging basket as she does

most August mornings, hours away
from starvation to store
enough energy to survive overnight.

The Aztecs saw the refraction
of incident light on wings
as resurrection of fallen warriors.

In autumn, when daylight decreases
they double their body weight to survive
the flight across the Gulf of Mexico.

On next-to-nothing my mother
flew for 85 years; after her death
she hovered, a bird of bones and air.

-- Robin Becker

Unknowingly Surrender

​Most of us unknowingly surrender our lives to the messages that most perforate our beauty.

-- Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back To You

"Nothing matters more than results"

"Nothing matters more than results"

Except for:

Community, contribution and what our friends think

Trust

The perception of quality

How much we like doing business with you

Side effects

and self-esteem.

Also... doing work that matters, with people we care about.

It seems like almost everything important matters more than results.

-- Seth Godin

LT: Newness

​The most successful seem to regenerate — they keep coming up with newness. Perhaps this is because they actively try to free themselves from distraction and can stay focused and awake to new possibilities.

John Mayer, Noblesville 2017

What a night last night in Noblesville, a thing of beauty in so many ways:

The talent and artistry of musicians -- nothing short of amazing.





...and, my current, personal favorite of his:

Beautiful and Terrible

Here is the world.  Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don't be afraid.

-- Frederick Buechner