Counted

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

-- William Bruce Cameron

Physical

​Faith now, for me, has become more physical.

Quit Waiting

Instagram: bobgoff

Quit waiting for an invitation.
Go live your life.

-- Bob Goff

Original Hope

Poem for the week -- "Original Hope":

One borrows time not to be left out.

Been in the pattern of sun—secure, re-creating.
One needs one thing.

One father is left with new limits, but one
father is left. This repeat is filled with above and below.
(Do you understand that it won’t cease?)

Every hour compared to dozens of previous
hours and angers, and the daughters post pictures
of vanishing. Such is a comfort.

One agrees to ask for nothing.

Under time lives silence.

-- Lauren Campi

Bozeman, MT

Whether with silence or noise, nature makes its voice heard -- Palisade Falls (Hyalite Canyon).

More pics here....

Speaks In Silence

​No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied -- it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.

-- Ansel Adams

Pace

Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yellowstone

In the end, nature reveals we encounter a pretty small patch of the truth.

More pics here....

Let Nothing

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

-- St. Teresa of Avila

Everything Is Accomplished

​
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

-- Lao Tzu

Looking at My Father

Poem for the week -- "Looking at My Father":

It’s the inside which comes out, as I contemplate
him there half in sunlight, weeding diligently
a Midwestern lawn. On my persons, I have only notes
and a drying pen, the memory of onion blossoms
scenting in a window. Reflection is my native medium.
I am never arriving, only speaking briefly on material
conditions between myself and others. My country
inoculates me lovingly, over time. My country grasps me
like desire. I will show you my credentials, which is to say
my vivid description, if you ask. Here we are, my father
and I, never hostile, a small offering: pointless cut flowers
appear on the kitchen table when one finally arrives
into disposable income. Still possible. Am I living? Do I
accept revision as my godhead and savior?
I do and I am, and in the name of my Chinese father now
dragging the tools back inside, brow shining but always
a grin, faithless except to protect whatever I still have time 
to become, Amen.

-- Wendy Xu

Glacier National Park

I must say how grateful I am for the vision of those who, years ago, helped create the protection of such natural places like this -- Hidden Lake (GNP).

More pics here....

Long Walks

​Long walks in the woods are good - it takes some time to start seeing things.

Banff

Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.

-- Nemann Buhl

More pics here....

Pine and Silence

​There is something nearly magical about the smell of pine and silence. Throw in some campfire smoke, a lake, more silence and you are into something nearly impossible to describe.

Whole

​The true spiritual quest is not that I become whole. Informed by the belief that the world is birthed by God and is precious and sacred and one, the true spiritual quest is that the world become whole—and we along with it.

-- Jack Jezreel

Resilience Is About How You Recharge, Not How You Endure

Headed 'west' today on a family vacation, hopefully to do some 'recharging':

As constant travelers and parents of a 2-year-old, we sometimes fantasize about how much work we can do when one of us gets on a plane, undistracted by phones, friends, and Finding Nemo. We race to get all our ground work done: packing, going through TSA, doing a last-minute work call, calling each other, then boarding the plane. Then, when we try to have that amazing work session in flight, we get nothing done. Even worse, after refreshing our email or reading the same studies over and over, we are too exhausted when we land to soldier on with the emails that have inevitably still piled up.

Why should flying deplete us? We’re just sitting there doing nothing. Why can’t we be tougher — more resilient and determined in our work – so we can accomplish all of the goals we set for ourselves? Based on our current research, we have come to realize that the problem is not our hectic schedule or the plane travel itself; the problem comes from a misunderstanding of what it means to be resilient, and the resulting impact of overworking.

We often take a militaristic, “tough” approach to resilience and grit. We imagine a Marine slogging through the mud, a boxer going one more round, or a football player picking himself up off the turf for one more play. We believe that the longer we tough it out, the tougher we are, and therefore the more successful we will be. However, this entire conception is scientifically inaccurate.

The very lack of a recovery period is dramatically holding back our collective ability to be resilient and successful. Research has found that there is a direct correlation between lack of recovery and increased incidence of health and safety problems. And lack of recovery — whether by disrupting sleep with thoughts of work or having continuous cognitive arousal by watching our phones — is costing...continue here.

-- Shawn Achor and Michelle Gielan

Kind Of Space

Poem for the week -- "Kind Of Space":

​Silence;
a kind
of space.

Emptying;
trains ears
to listen.

Do What You Are Afraid To Do

​Always do what you are afraid to do.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Caught Looking

​It is hard to see one another, when we're busy trying not to be caught be looking at them.

Assumptions

​Monitor your assumptions about people, because they tend to drift. Keep yourself focused on what you know about who they really are.

Power & Energy

A lot of good leading is a good understanding of this:

Identify your problems, but give your power and energy to solutions.

-- Tony Robbins

This Is What You Shall Do

​This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men — go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families — re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

-- Walt Whitman, preface to Leaves of Grass

Changing Our Questions

God has a way of using life to change our questions.

It Is

​It is hard to let go, when you're holding on.

It is difficult to be open and receive, when you're resisting.

It is impossible to be free, when fear is controlling you.

Serenade

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

Three paces down the shore, low sounds the lute,
The better that my longing you may know;
I’m not asking you to come,
But—can’t you go?

Three words, “I love you,” and the whole is said—
The greatness of it throbs from sun to sun;
I’m not asking you to walk,
But—can’t you run?

Three paces in the moonlight’s glow I stand,
And here within the twilight beats my heart.
I’m not asking you to finish,
But—to start.

-- Djuna Barnes

Palette

​The palette of truth is very wide.

Most certainly, it is wider than we think.

Perhaps this is a clue to the answer to this morning's question -- a sense of timing, perhaps more than a blend.

Being Positive AND Honest

When it comes to big concepts or ideas, we often generalize and then reduce. Take positivity, for example. We seem to equate positivity with optimism or being an 'optimist'. People who aren't optimists tend to be skeptical because they believe optimists have some degree of trouble being honest, optimistically rushing past realities that are wrong or bad. And so, it has become easy to view the value of positivity through the lens of the same logic structure.

What we really need is a blend, don't we? Something that accommodates, if not includes, both -- the ability to avoid getting bogged down by endless negativity, to which there is ample evidence to support its many embedded problems, while at the same time not being so 'positive' that we dismiss the significance of real problems. I believe, it's possible. So, how do we maintain an appropriate blend of being both honest and positive?

Lived In

I've noticed...even when a place is lived in, it can at times appear very much uninhabited, un-alive. But when it is (lived in), you can still feel the life in it...even if it is unobservable in the moment.

The Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence -- The Want, Will, and Hopes of the People:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.


Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.

-- Leonard Tolstoy

Mentoring

Ways to think about leading others:

You Only Know

​You only know as much as you do.

-- St. Francis of Assisi


Prayer is about changing you, not about changing God.

-- Richard Rohr

Ways To Create Your Own Happiness

Happiness comes in so many different forms that it can be hard to grasp. Unhappiness, on the other hand, is easy to identify; you know it when you see it, and you definitely know when it’s taken ahold of you.

And let’s face it, happiness and work do not always go hand in hand. A 2013 Gallup study, which reported data from more than 180 million people, found that just 13% of us consider ourselves to be “happily engaged at work.”

Those who do rate themselves as happy are 36% more motivated, six times more energized, and twice as productive as their unhappy counterparts.

Happiness actually has less to do with your circumstances than you might think. A University of Illinois study found that people who earn the most (more than $10 million annually) are only a smidge happier than the average Joes and Janes who work for them, and psychologists from the University of California found that genetics and life circumstances only account for about 50% of a person’s happiness. The rest is up to you.

So, we went digging until we found some great ways that emotionally intelligent people create their own happiness:

• They don't obsess over things they can't control. 
• They choose their battles wisely. 
• They get enough sleep. 
• They exercise during the week. 
• They have a growth mindset. 
• They clear the clutter. 
• They lend a hand. 
• They let their strengths flow. 
• They believe the best is yet to come. 

Life circumstances have little to do with happiness because much happiness is under your control—the product of your habits and your outlook on life. Happiness is synthetic—you either create it, or you don’t.  Continue here...

-- Travis Bradberry

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....