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

Disconnected

​We are so disconnected, aren't we? This should be rather obvious by the appetite we seem to have culturally for trying to be connected. But, nearly everyone acknowledges that whatever this type of connectness seems to portray, it is largely not real. At the very least, it is mostly unsatisfying.

The irony is that despite the variety of its chaos, the universe practically screams about its inner-connectedness. Maybe that's proof right there, we want what it has - wild, abandoned, and still connected...everywhere.

We could learn a lot, if we would just pay attention to what is already -- what is all around us. The Aspen tree is actually like a vine that grows underground in an inter-connected web that sprouts up in the form that we would call trees (lots of imagery here...). Perhaps, this is emblematic of a much larger vine that all things feed from as they relate to the world.

I recently heard the end of a clip on NPR about Tolkien's interest, even affection for plants and in particular trees. He was very interested in this idea of connectedness and the need we have to participate in it, as the real world. His 'underworld' was really a call-out to reality and he used the forces of nature to illustrate it.

The truth is...we are all connected, to everything. The problem is...that we're seeking something we already have and that has actually created disconnection. From our world, from each other, from God.

Old Selves

Poem for the week -- "Old Selves":

Ok, I no longer want them,
the many selves I had to manage

that once exhausted friends. I believed

in angels then, thought I might be
an angel—that was me, flying off

on a tangent, just so we could land
on one of my many balconies

so we could look down on everyone.

-- Ira Sadoff

Paralyze

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.

-- Bernice Johnson Reagon

Increasingly Illusive

​I've noticed...that overall meaning gets increasingly illusive, for me, when the requirements of performance persist.

LT: Vision

​The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully.... You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.

-- Reverend Theodore Hesburgh

At Best An Imposter

Before we can become who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person who we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger.

-- Thomas Merton

Someone Else's Life

Instagram: bobgoff

God's first priority
isn't for me to understand
what He's doing in someone else's life.

-- Bob Goff

Place In The World

​I admire, or at least am drawn to, someone who seems to just know their place in the world - the spot they occupy, what they offer to the context they are in. Why? Among other things, perhaps it provides a kind of comfort, when someone is comfortable with where they're at, how they fit, where they fit.

This doesn't mean that they are perfect, nor does it mean that they aren't aware of anything uncomfortable or less than what is needed about themselves. In fact, they are very aware of these things. But, they don't try to hide them or pretend -- they acknowledge them, even bring them to light. This actually reinforces their sense of ease about themselves -- they know themselves, what they are good at, what they aren't good at. And this gives you space to be with them...maybe, even, to be yourself.

I have often wondered about my 'place'. Do I know what it is? What do I fill? What do I offer?  I think I am growing more and more into who I am -- becoming like the description above (though I'll leave the attractiveness of that up to someone else to determine).

Perhaps some people see me, like I see someone like this. Which makes me wonder if they see themselves the way I can easily see myself...not fully embodying being comfortable with who I am (and am not) -- occupying my own space, with contentment and peace.

Pomology

Poem for the week -- "Pomology":

I will eat the apple
read Stephen’s note this morning.
He is volunteering to play Eve.

He wrote, I will eat the apple
—but there are no apples in the house.
We have no lascivious Honeycrisp,

no bonny Braeburn, no upright Baldwin.
We’re out of spry Granny Smiths,
the skulking Northern Spy,

or the mysterious Pink Lady.
Stephen does have an Adam’s apple
and I have an Apple computer,

but you can’t compare apples and oranges.
The note said, I will eat the apple.
Perhaps Stephen’s chasing out the doctors.

Perhaps he’s not falling far from the tree.
Or he’s already eaten from the tree of knowledge:
in Latin, malum means both apple

and evil. I think Stephen is sending a warning.
He means, I will protect you.
He writes, I will eat the apple.

-- Kim Roberts

Will You Still Like Me?

​If I don't do things that help you look good, will you still like me?

Whether they (we) realize it or not, how far off is this from the core question which under-girds much of what people are operating from?

Assimilate

We must all assimilate other lives in order to live.

-- W.H. Auden

LT: Belittle and Freeze

Our country is in desperate need of servant leaders, of men and women willing to kneel and embrace those who are not like them. Everyone seeking the presidency professes great love for our nation. But I ask myself, how can you be a genuine public servant if you belittle your fellow citizens and freeze out people who hold differing views?

-- Howard Schultz

Attractive People

​Attractive people—people who attract others—keep moving and growing; they don't just 'hang on'...especially to the past. The are alive right now.

Right Now

​Both Jesus’ and Paul’s notion of faith is much better translated as foundational confidence or trust that God cares about what is happening right now.

-- Richard Rohr

Immortality

​We seem to long for something along the lines of immortality, wishing that we could abate the physical declines that come with aging. Yet, it also seems true that we experience more of life, with different faculties, as we do so.

I wonder if we go through this experience this way; when we are young we experience much of life with our bodies; in the middle of life, with our minds; and, towards the end through our spirit.

All three are in play during each phase, as our spirit is growing throughout.

It is ironic then that in some ways we become alive to more things as we approach our death -- inferring perhaps that there is something more, for which we are being prepared.

Ancient Sunlight

Poem for the week -- "Ancient Sunlight":

Shame on you for dating a museum:
Everything is dead there and nothing is alive.
Not everyone who lives to be old embraces
the publicity of it all. I mean, you get up and folks
want to know, How did you get here? What makes you
go? What is the secret? And there is no secret except
there are many things that build the years out.
They are not vegetables every day and working out
but a faith that all of these things add up
and lead us to some sum total happiness
we can cash in for forever love in the face
of never lasting. That people along the way
keep disappearing in a variety show of deathbed ways
is also the sheer terror that it may not hold for us too.
That we may outlast everything and be left
alone to keep going, never Icarus with wax melting,
never the one whose smoke & drink undid
the lungs that pull our wings in then out and the liver
that keeps chugging the heft of Elizabeth Cotten’s
“Freight Train” with her upside down left hand guitar still
playing in videos past her presence. I have become a person since
I reorganized my face in the mirror and the world is my inflation.
But this testament offers no sound or silence since
nothing is proven yet and you are still here,
the dead stars’ light landing on your rods and cones
in a vitrine of cameos building—blink.

-- Amy King

From the author:

“‘Ancient Sunlight’ is a consideration of the ways in which we attempt to preserve aspects of ourselves via identity, via material existence (hence the physics aspect) and in seemingly ironic conflict with the idea that we must die in order to achieve immortality. That is, the conservative definition is ‘to live forever,’ but since death is a transition necessary to appreciate the shifts and cycles of being, the larger scope of immortality is often conflated with a desire to be remembered, so would it be a disaster to go on living forever, inevitably forgotten?”

Order

​We all have a need for order - the question may be about the degree to which we will become obsessed with keeping it.

One way to observe your commitment to order by how you feel about people who seem to disrupt it.

The More You

​The more you give, the more you get.

    The more you get, the less you'll have.
    The more you take, the less you'll have.

The less you have, the more you give.

LT: Experience

​What we have to offer is largely born from our experience.

How To Live

​As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

-- Seneca

Be awake.

Answers

Instagram: bobgoff

More from a series on faith...here.

Wanting to have all the answers
now isn't bad,
it just isn't faith.
Stay the course.

-- Bob Goff

The Moon & Identity Crisis

From one morning earlier this week:

The full moon, brilliantly speaking from its place just moments before, waved goodbye as it sunk silently into the cool of the lake's rising mist.

It was as if it was signaling me about something....


​I inadvertently discovered this week that I've fallen - fallen into an identity crisis. Perhaps, crisis is a bit over-stated (but, perhaps not!). I realized that I have fallen into the common trap of relying too heavily on external perceptions to define my identity. There seems to be a very incremental nature to such falls, even when they're rooted in specific events or interactions. One little indicator after another, borrowed and stowed away without overt knowledge, creep up on you - often adding up without realizing it. Even my wife had to come right out and ask me.  Like one of the prior generations one-liners, "I've fallen and I can't get up!", I had landed in a funk and didn't know why. Some of it, I'm sure, was related to a combination of encounters with other people. But, this question crawled out from under the pile, "why am I letting some of these things, that don't normally affect me, bother me so much right now?

And that lead me to acknowledging that I have once again (its happened before multiple times) slipped into the mode of using other people's perception of me dictate how I see myself. This was most obvious by the anger I felt towards them, again over how I thought they were perceiving me. My perceptions of their perceptions my not even have been true, but even if they were...I am still left with the fresh awareness of what I am using to define who I am, who I think I am.

Re-Discovery: I am not actually defined by what others think of me, nor even completely by who I think I am. I am defined by who God says I am. From there, all true identity freedoms spring forth. But, managing the dams of others' perceptions is a dicey enterprise - one that often ends up either in defeat or hatred.

I need to return again and again to who God says I am and let that define my self-view.

Obviously, all of the external things, like the perceptions of others, are 'in the mix' when it comes to self-awareness (or we likely end up living in some strange, contorted form of denial). Nonetheless, we need to return to the true definer of things - to the One who created us, in the first place, for our sense of real identity.

I needed this to recognize anew one of the basic realities of my so human existence.  The voice of the moon invited me to do it...to stand up and be my true self again.

The Voice of Things

Poem for the week -- "The Voice of Things":

Forty years—aye, and several more—ago,
      When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ,
The waves huzza’d like a multitude below, 
      In the sway of an all-including joy
              Without cloy.

Blankly I walked there a double decade after,
      When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me,
And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter
      At the lot of men, and all the vapoury
              Things that be.

Wheeling change has set me again standing where
      Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide;
But they supplicate now—like a congregation there
      Who murmur the Confession—I outside,
              Prayer denied.

-- Thomas Hardy

True Belonging

​True belonging doesn't require that we change who we are. It requires that we be who we are.

-- Brene Brown

Change Me

​I've noticed...most things of interest to me are things I believe or hope could change me.

LT: Do Your Work Well

​Just do your work well; and don't stop...doing it well.

It doesn't matter whether your peer is doing their work well or not, at least in terms of what you should do.  Do yours well; without complaint or finger-pointing...be humble.  Work is a gift to receive and to give.

Healing From Silence

​There can be something so healing to the spirit about silence. We seem to grow into this knowledge of serenity, particularly as we age.

I Am

Instagram: bobgoff

Skepticism & Nature

​I am reading a book about skepticism and belief. I was reading the book on my way to some extended time away from my normal context for life and into the natural world (outdoors). I awoke one day there thinking it is difficult to be too skeptical when you're out in nature.

I then wondered how true this would be for the earliest settlers in the natural world. Nature, in spite of all its beauty and splendor, can also seem quite harsh at times - indifferent even - to our more human concerns (ask many of the earliest settlers to North America).

I wonder if my experience of nature is often conditioned by a participation in it from the position of comfort. I go and visit it, but I don't live in it. I go out in it, but come back to a warm shower, prepared food, and a comfortable bed. Even the wood we enjoyed in our fireplace that night before was already cut (and neatly stacked). What if all the effort of food and comfort, even survival, were up to me? What would my disposition to nature be then? What, in that arrangement, would my level of skepticism be?

I guess I just don't know. But, I have thought since about what seems to be a way in which our world (as opposed to the natural one) operates on the premise that we can control for many things -- comfort, convenience, predictability, etc. It seems to me that life in the natural world would require something else of me -- cooperation with the natural order of things...me joining it, rather than it joining me, etc.  Is that orientation part of my reaction to it now...the compelling forces of its beauty, strength, order (even in its own chaos), longevity, quietness, pace, etc.

And, how would all of that affect something like skepticism? I tend to wonder if a lot of skepticism is related to the problems that come from human-beings, rather than nature. I could be wrong about this, but I wonder....

Both And

Poem for the week -- "Both And":

It is almost always
more
both / and,
than
it is
either / or.

Preclude Thought

​We use what we call reason to preclude thought.

-- Marilynn Robinson

Than We Think

​What if we are actually more free to do what we are afraid to do than we think?

LT: Most Productive People

The most productive people learn first to interpret the messages from their own emotions, and secondly, pay more attention to the motivational style of key people around them to be less annoyed and more synergistic with their efforts.

-- Mary C. Lamia

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