What You Are...For

I've noticed...that a key to emotional health is to determine what you are for, rather than just what you are against.

LT: Confidence to Trust

​Confidence in leadership is the confidence to trust others.

-- Simon Sinek

Reflection of Ourselves

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

-- Thomas Merton

The Unlikely Crackup of Evangelicalism

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has written recently about what he sees as a possible “crackup” that may be coming in the evangelical community. He sees a quiet version of that split already happening among the younger generation, many of whom seem to be moving in other directions: mainline Protestantism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy.

The more dramatic gap, as Douthat sees it, is between, on the one hand, the elites—“evangelical intellectuals and writers, and their friends in other Christian traditions,”—and those millions of folks, on the other hand, who worship in evangelical churches. It may be, he says, that these elites “have overestimated how much a serious theology has ever mattered to evangelicalism’s sociological success.” It could be that the views and attitudes on display in the recent support for rightist causes have really been there all along, without much of an interest in the kinds of intellectual-theological matters that have preoccupied the elites. If so, then the elites will eventually go off on their own, leaving behind an evangelicalism that is “less intellectual, more partisan, more racially segregated”—a movement that is in reality “not all that greatly changed” from what it has actually been in the past.

Douthat hopes he is wrong about this, and I think that he is. But his scenario has some support by increasing voices in the evangelical academy who are saying that they can no longer identify with a grassroots evangelicalism that has become regrettably “politicized” these days.

One problem with the Douthat scenario is that it suggests that there is a significant gap between the vast majority of “ordinary” evangelicals and a much smaller band of “evangelical intellectuals.” To see whether that picture is really accurate, we have to fill in some specific detail.  Continue here....

-- Richard Mouw

Net Neutrality - Explained With A Burger King Whopper

Gitanjali 35

Poem for the week -- "Gitanjali 35":

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
     Where knowledge is free;
     Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow 
          domestic walls;
     Where words come out from the depth of truth;
     Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
     Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the                          
          dreary desert sand of dead habit;
     Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening                                
          thought and action—
     Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

The Buddha wasn’t A Buddhist

The Buddha wasn’t a Buddhist. A religion grew around his community. His realizations were universal realizations about suffering, the nature of suffering and the nature of the human mind.

-- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Too Long

I've noticed...​that trying to hold on to anything for too long, at some point is counter-productive, if not destructive.

LT: Power

​Many common concepts about leadership are entrenched in issues of power. Power to consume things, protect interests, and control others.

The irony is that leadership IS, in fact, about power. But, the purpose of leadership power is to liberate, not consume and control. This is why the power of service is so important in leadership.

It's not about the needs of the leader, it's about the needs of the followers.

Controversy

​In a culture that is prepared to sell (literally) anything, selling controversy is easy. What may be more disturbing is that, unlike our misgivings about the selling of some things, we all are buying controversy. Not substance, controversy. What would happen if we just stopped? What would happen to TV, to the Internet? To us?

Mountains

You don’t have to climb mountains named I Will Perform.

You don’t have to climb mountains named I Will Produce.

Jesus flattens that mountain before you with His Grace: The Lord will Provide. With enough strength. With enough wisdom. With More Than Enough of Himself.

More important than you trying to muster up sufficient grit and determination for the new year — is that you simply accept His sufficient grace and liberation every day.  Continue here....

-- Ann Voskamp

How will you transform in 2018?

From a rather beautiful essay here....

...the work of transformation – it’s not matching ourselves to roles that reflect exactly what we did before. It’s metamorphosing into a future state. 

I imagine your mind – like mine - is alight with the apt metaphors of this metamorphosis. So was the Radiolab journalist Molly Webster when she reported this story. She said it provoked in her the following thoughts: “It’s not just what we carry forward from our past into the future. It’s the idea, what of my future self is in me right now?”

To truly transform, we don’t have to fully fall apart – though part of it requires descent into a state that looks and feels like goo. What really happens is that there are parts we keep, parts we create or grow, and parts that we must leave behind. There are some hard parts we remember. And all the while, we have the biological means to breathe through it all. 

What we let go is as important as what we take on.

That line really strikes me, as does this thought here:

To me, the most amazing part of the story of metamorphosis is that the caterpillar comes with everything it needs to become something else. It is equipped to let the past dissolve and prepared to engineer its own future parts.  I like to think, so are we.  

-- Katya Andresen

Time to be the fine line of light

Poem for the week -- "Time to be the fine line of light":

between the blind and the sill, nothing
really. There are so many things

that destroy. To think solely of them
is as foolish and expedient as not

thinking of them at all. All I want
is to be the river though I return

again and again to the clouds.
All I want is to stop beginning sentences

with All I want. No—no really all
I want is this morning: my daughter

and my son saying “Da!” back and forth
over breakfast, cracking each other up

while eating peanut butter toast
and raspberries, making a place for

the two of them I will, eventually,
no longer be allowed to enter. Time to be

the fine line. Time to practice being
the line. And then maybe the darkness.

-- Carrie Fountain

The lesson I learned in my 30s that changed how I live my life

As children, we were told by our parents when we were good and when we had done something wrong. At school, our teachers and their dreaded red biros told us if we got it right or wrong. At first, we’d get gold stars and then we’d start getting alphabetical grades and exact percentage scores to tell us how right (or wrong) we were. When we did science experiments, we always knew the correct results ahead of time – and when the dots didn’t line up along that diagonal line, we adjusted the data to make it fit. There was always a right answer, and our job was to find it.

The problems start when we go out into the real world...continue here....

--  Anna Lundberghttps

Menial Tasks

I've noticed...that there is nothing quite like menial tasks to allow for opportunities to consider truths about things in my life.

Truths like this one:
​
People with a high need to control others are generally doing it as a way of dealing with the lack of control they’re experiencing within themselves.

-- Rob Bell

LT: Stop Talking, Start Listening

​Leaders who take organizational conversation seriously know when to stop talking and start listening. Few behaviors enhance conversational intimacy as much as attending to what people say. True attentiveness signals respect for people of all ranks and roles, a sense of curiosity, and even a degree of humility.

-- Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind, Leadership Is A Conversation

MLK Day: Peace On Earth

​If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Not God Himself

​Those who believe that they believe in God, but without any passion in their heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the idea of God, not God himself.

-- Miguel D'Unamuno

Follow These 8 Steps to Stay Focused and Reach Your Goals

Accomplishing a goal can be hard work. 

Check out these eight steps to help you prioritize and clear your mind.

1. Stop multitasking
2. Block out your days
3. Get your blood pumping
4. Help your technology help you
5. Meditate
6. Change up what’s in your headphones
7. Streamline your communication
8. Find an environment with the right kind of noise.

More detail here....

-- Nina Zipkin

Evergreen

In light of this 'Poem for the Week -- "Evergreen"', the image above (from our recent trip to Glacier National Park) seemed fitting.

What still grows in winter?
Fingernails of witches and femmes,
green moss on river rocks,
lit with secrets... I let myself
go near the river but not
the railroad: this is my bargain.
Water boils in a kettle in the woods
and I can hear the train grow louder
but I also can’t, you know?
Then I’m shaving in front of an
unbreakable mirror while a nurse
watches over my shoulder.
Damn. What still grows in winter?
Lynda brought me basil I crushed
with my finger and thumb just to
smell the inside of a thing. So
I go to the river but not the rail-
road, think I’ll live another year.
The river rock dig into my shoulders
like a lover who knows I don’t want
power. I release every muscle against
the rock and I give it all my warmth.
                                    Snow shakes
onto my chest quick as table salt.
Branches above me full of pine needle
whips: when the river rock is done
with me, I could belong to the evergreen.
Safety is a rock I throw into the river.
My body, ready. Don’t even think
a train run through this town anymore.

-- Oliver Baez Bendorf

Corruption

​I suspect that corruption hasn't really changed all that much, given the nature of it. What has changed is the ability to expose it, via things like the capacity to store information, the Internet, etc.

Rarely

I've noticed...​we are rarely rejected personally as much as we feel we are -- people tend to be too absorbed with themselves to be that intentional.

LT: Capable

Being capable is one thing, but that is primarily for your benefit.  Inviting incapable people into things with you is the real value of your capability, because that is for them.

Weapons

To know what they can do, you have to get comfortable using weapons - literal or emotional ones - in order to limit careless damage, to be effective with their purpose.

Settle

Instagram: bobgoff

We won't figure out what's sacred in our lives
if we settle for what's safe.

-- Bob Goff

Whitefish, MT: Something Unbelievable

There is something unbelievable about the combination of snow, pine, and silence.  You think and feel and see things you otherwise wouldn’t:

We so enjoyed our time at The Treehouse in Whitefish, MT this week:


...more pics here.

Barter

Poem for the week -- "Barter":

Life has loveliness to sell,
   All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
   Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder in a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
   Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
   Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
   Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
   Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstacy
Give all you have been, or could be.

-- Sara Teasdale

Un-becoming

Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.

-- Paulo Coelho

Pay Closest Attention

I've noticed...​it does me well to pay closest attention to what people are inviting me toward, especially when they're persistent.

LT: Action

​Words may inspire, but only action creates change.

-- Simon Sinek

New (Year)

Yearning for a new way will not produce it. Only ending the old way can do that.
You cannot hold onto the old, all the while declaring that you want something new.
The old will defy the new;
The old will deny the new;
The old will decry the new.
There is only one way to bring in the new. You must make room for it.

-- Neale Donald Walsch

Perhaps this is why we have times of renewal, that are seemingly built-in -- like New Years Day, the seasons, or that restlessness we all have somewhere within us to begin again.  Everything moves and changes, whether we like it or not, because it is how growth happens.

As I leave 2017 and enter a new year, I recognize that this is happening in me.  It is, in fact, making room in me for something new.  And, I don't want to resist it, because it is the necessity of regeneration in me, as in all of us.

Born Again

Everything is moving, everything is changing; everything must die, and be reborn.  This seems fitting as we face the prospects of a new year:

Strange as it may seem in this time of cultural anxiety, economic near collapse, terrorist fear, political violence, environmental crisis, and partisan anger, I believe that the United States (and not only the United States) is caught up in the throes of a spiritual awakening, a period of sustained religious and political transformation during which our ways of seeing the world, understanding ourselves, and expressing faith are being, to borrow a phrase, “born again.” Indeed, the shifts around religion contribute to the anxiety, even as anxiety gives rise to new sorts of understandings of God and the spiritual life. Fear and confusion signal change. This transformation is what some hope will be a “Great Turning” toward a global community based on shared human connection, dedicated to the care of our planet, committed to justice and equality, that seeks to raise hundreds of millions from poverty, violence, and oppression.

Exponential change creates exponential fear along with exponential hope. Massive transformation creates the double-edged cultural sword of decline and renewal. Exponential change ends those things that people once assumed and trusted to be true. At the same time, upheaval opens new pathways to the future. Change is about endings and beginnings and the necessary interrelationship between the two.

In his Letter to the Romans, Paul has a marvelous line: “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). In so many places, there are signs of the Holy Spirit working at all levels of society. The church might well have done its work as leaven, because much of this reform, enlightenment, compassion, and healing is outside the bounds of organized religion. Only God is going to get the credit.

The toothpaste is out of the tube. There are enough people who know the big picture of Jesus’ thrilling and alluring vision of the reign of God that this Great Turning cannot be stopped. There are enough people going on solid inner journeys that it is not merely ideological or theoretical. This reformation is happening in a positive, nonviolent way. The changes are not just from the top down, but much more from the bottom up. Not from the outside in, but from the inside out. Not from clergy to laity, but from a unified field where class is of minor importance. The big questions are being answered at a peaceful and foundational level, with no need to oppose, deny, or reject. I sense the urgency of the Holy Spirit, with over seven billion humans now on the planet. There is so much to love and embrace.

I am convinced that the only future of the church, the one Body of Christ, is ecumenical and shared. Each of our traditions have preserved and fostered one or another jewel in the huge crown that is the Cosmic Christ; only together can we make up the unity of the Spirit, as we learn to defer to one another out of love.

-- Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion

Permanent Process

Conversion is a permanent process, in which very often the obstacles we meet make us lose all we had gained and start anew.

-- Gustavo Gutierrez

Spoken For

Poem for the week -- "Spoken For":

I didn’t know I was blue,
until I heard her sing.

I was never aware so much
had been lost
even before I was born.
There was so much to lose
even before I knew
what it meant to choose.

Born blue,
living blue unconfessed, blue
in concealment, I’ve lived all my life
at the plinth
of greater things than me.

Morning is greater
with its firstborn light and birdsong.
Noon is taller, though a moment’s realm.
Evening is ancient and immense, and
night’s storied house more huge.

But I had no idea.
And would have died without a clue,
except she began to sing. And I understood

my soul is a bride enthralled by an unmet groom,
or else the groom wholly spoken for, blue
in ardor, happy in eternal waiting.

I heard her sing and knew
I would never hear the true

name of each thing
until I realized the abysmal
ground of all things. Her singing
touched that ground in me.

Now, dying of my life, everything is made new.
Now, my life is not my life. I have no life
apart from all of life.

And my death is not my death,
but a pillow beneath my head, a rock
propping the window open
to admit the jasmine.

I heard her sing,
and I’m no longer afraid.
Now that I know what she knows, I hope
never to forget
how giant the gone
and immaculate the going.
How much I’ve already lost.
How much I go on losing.
How much I’ve lived
all one blue. O, how much
I go on living.

-- Li-Young Lee

Truest

When we seek what is truest in our own tradition, we discover we are one with those who seek what is truest in their tradition.

-- James Finley

Coasting

I've noticed...that I don't want to coast the rest of the way.  I want to take advantage of the opportunity of these days to help me grow and be more prepared for the days ahead, whatever they may bring.

Holy Ignorance: Like the Shepherds?

I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place. We are a motley crew, distinguished not only by our inability to explain ourselves to those who are more certain of their beliefs than we are but in many cases by our distance from the centers of our faith communities as well. Like campers who have bonded over cook fires far from home, we remain grateful for the provisions that we have brought with us from those cupboards, but we also find them more delicious when we share them with one another under the stars. 

-- Barbara Brown Taylor

My Joy: I've Got This

​Joy is the true gift of Christmas, not the expensive gifts that call for time and money....  Let us pray that this presence of the liberating joy of God shines forth in our lives.

-- Pope Benedict XVI


On a day like Christmas, it is as if God were smiling as he says, "I've got this!"

We may reply, "then why don't you stop all the bad stuff going on?"  And God leans forward and asks, "Can you repeat that?"...not condescendingly, but with utmost gentleness and strength.  "Why don't you all stop the bad stuff from happening?"

With a twinkle in his eye, and knowing now that he has our full attention, God might then say something like , "...because you have to learn to stop hurting each other and my world; you have to."

He goes on, "But, just so you know, I AM helping you.  I'm redeeming what you're doing, in spite of how you treat each other.  I'm healing anyone who wants to be healed.  I'm doing way more than you know.

On a day like Christmas, I'm coming to you personally to let you know that all will be well again...I've Got This."


I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

-- John 15:11

Noel: Christmas Eve 1913

A frosty Christmas Eve 
   when the stars were shining
Fared I forth alone 
   where westward falls the hill,
And from many a village 
   in the water’d valley
Distant music reach’d me 
   peals of bells aringing:
The constellated sounds 
   ran sprinkling on earth’s floor
As the dark vault above 
   with stars was spangled o’er.
Then sped my thoughts to keep 
   that first Christmas of all
When the shepherds watching 
   by their folds ere the dawn
Heard music in the fields 
   and marveling could not tell
Whether it were angels 
   or the bright stars singing.

Now blessed be the tow’rs 
   that crown England so fair
That stand up strong in prayer 
   unto God for our souls
Blessed be their founders 
   (said I) an’ our country folk
Who are ringing for Christ 
   in the belfries to-night
With arms lifted to clutch 
   the rattling ropes that race
Into the dark above 
   and the mad romping din.

But to me heard afar 
   it was starry music
Angels’ song, comforting 
   as the comfort of Christ
When he spake tenderly 
   to his sorrowful flock:
The old words came to me 
   by the riches of time
Mellow’d and transfigured 
   as I stood on the hill
Heark’ning in the aspect 
   of th’ eternal silence.

-- Robert Bridges

There is something so loud about silence, especially on a day (night) like this. Can you hear it?

After, Not Before

Instagram: bobgoff

Be patient when it gets weird.
The angels explained things to Joseph
after he'd talked to Mary, not before.

-- Bob Goff

Snow

Poem for the week:

...thanks, Lori, for sharing this snow.

Not Your Destiny

​Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are part of your history, but not your destiny.

-- Steve Maraboli

Instinct & Context

​I've noticed...that my wife seems to be more able to move out of what she feels, on a daily basis -- do this today (or not).
I move more out of what I think things look like over the long-term - how things should be and what that means for today. This means I can tend to disregard what I feel today because it doesn't (shouldn't) matter in light of the greater goal...yes, some real flaws here -- do this everyday (or not at all).

She seems to be more instinctual.
I seem to be more contextual.

I love the freedom of her instinct.
I'm guessing she appreciates my more contextual orientation (at least, at times).

We both are both, but perhaps we each work from more of one than the other.
The beauty of it is that we borrow from each others' more, as we continue to both merge and differentiate ourselves at the same time.

LT: Environment

​The responsibility of leadership is not to come up with all the ideas. The responsibility of leadership is to create an environment in which great ideas can thrive.

-- Simon Sinek

Extra Baggage

​In order to take flight...you need to assess your extra baggage.

-- Elle Kaplan

Space for More

Letting go is basically making space for more—and for all otherness—inside of my small self. Jesus made this point in his very opening line in his first sermon: “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (see Matthew 5:3). We do not live in a culture that appreciates letting go or “poverty of spirit.” We are consumers and capitalists by training and by habit. Yet, just as in the Trinity, all infilling must be preceded by a necessary self-emptying—or there is never room in the inn!

-- Richard Rohr

This reflects a bit of a break-through for me of late; a natural progression, perhaps, of letting go.  I cannot experience more by trying to put more in.  I can only experience more by emptying myself.  As Rohr puts it, our (my) desire to pack things a bit more tighter or more efficiently seems intuitively true, but as I have experienced it, it doesn't work.  The metaphor of a cup of coffee works for me here -- using my thumb to try to jam more liquid into it is useless -- things only spill over the rim.

I am one size, no bigger.  But that doesn't mean I don't have capacity to grow.  My capacity to grow, however, is not achieved by becoming bigger or more dense, it is about becoming more spacious and letting more flow out of me.  I can stop trying to retain what I have and start learning to empty myself, so that more can come in.  It, too, will need to flow out, which will allow the process to repeat.  This is the way I can grow - in and out, in and out...like breathing.  Holding more, carrying more, simply is not the way.

So, what does self-emptying look like?

Science says to stop buying your kids so much crap

You won’t spoil the holidays if you don’t spoil your kids.

Meghan Brunson, a Phoenix mother of four girls ages 2 to 10, worried her two oldest would be disappointed four years ago when she pared the pile of presents down from around 10 apiece to the “rule of 4” being adopted by many parents: One gift they want, one gift they need, one gift to wear and one gift to read.  Continue here....

-- Nicole Lyn Pesce

...reminds me that there can be a difference between gifts and presents.  Presents aren't necessarily bad, but true gifts can be better.

The Mystic’s Christmas

'Poem for the week -- "The Mystic’s Christmas":

“All hail!” the bells of Christmas rang,
“All hail!” the monks at Christmas sang,
The merry monks who kept with cheer
The gladdest day of all their year.

But still apart, unmoved thereat,
A pious elder brother sat
Silent, in his accustomed place,
With God’s sweet peace upon his face.

“Why sitt’st thou thus?” his brethren cried,
“It is the blessed Christmas-tide;
The Christmas lights are all aglow,
The sacred lilies bud and blow.

“Above our heads the joy-bells ring,
Without the happy children sing,
And all God’s creatures hail the morn
On which the holy Christ was born.

“Rejoice with us; no more rebuke
Our gladness with thy quiet look.”
The gray monk answered, “Keep, I pray,
Even as ye list, the Lord’s birthday.

“Let heathen Yule fires flicker red
Where thronged refectory feasts are spread;
With mystery-play and masque and mime
And wait-songs speed the holy time!

“The blindest faith may haply save;
The Lord accepts the things we have;
And reverence, howsoe’er it strays,
May find at last the shining ways.

“They needs must grope who cannot see,
The blade before the ear must be;
As ye are feeling I have felt,
And where ye dwell I too have dwelt.

“But now, beyond the things of sense,
Beyond occasions and events,
I know, through God’s exceeding grace,
Release from form and time and space.

“I listen, from no mortal tongue,
To hear the song the angels sung;
And wait within myself to know
The Christmas lilies bud and blow.

“The outward symbols disappear
From him whose inward sight is clear;
And small must be the choice of days
To him who fills them all with praise!

“Keep while you need it, brothers mine,
With honest seal your Christmas sign,
But judge not him who every morn
Feels in his heart the Lord Christ born!”

-- John Greenleaf Whittier

Conscious Relationship

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

-- John Welwood

Iteratively

​I've noticed...that one of my personal fears is choosing self.  I think this is the case because it feels like I am choosing self over others; it sounds selfish. But, I suspect that this is a limitation of viewing things through an either / or type of lens.

Perhaps, only a few things can be fully held at the same time. Perhaps, the way things really work is more spirally - iteratively - rather than simultaneously. It is the ability to keep moving, rotating through and back through things we have discovered before, even as we discover something different or new, that is important. A few things are left behind (perhaps they should be), but mostly things are acquired, enriched, expanded. We might call this growth.

So, there are times when I need to choose something for self, as there are times when I need to choose the needs of others first.  While one is not blind to the other, choosing one doesn't mean the other is not true or needed.  Perhaps, it is just not the prevailing thing in this moment.

Fear distort things; in fact, these things.  At least it seems to for me.

LT: This 10-Year Study Had 1.5 Million People Rate 122,000 Leaders - Said A Lot About Culture

Diversity in business is easy to measure. Inclusivity is much more difficult--and most leaders don't know how inclusive they are (or aren't).

Creating an inclusive culture should be one of the main objectives for all leaders. Inclusive cultures make team members of all races, sexes, and ages feel more valued, welcomed, and heard within the organization. The more inclusive the workplace, the healthier it will be, the more productive your team will be, and the better you'll be as a leader.  Continue here....

--  Jordan Scheltgen 

Impediments

I need this reminder today:

Instagram: bobgoff

Sometimes what seem like the 
impediments
are actually the path.

-- Bob Goff

Source of Holiness

​Embrace the present moment as an ever-flowing source of holiness.

-- Jean Pierre de Caussade

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

Nature's Christmas lights in the snowy woods were calling me today!

Fletcher liked it, too!

Threw this one in, from our yard:

Christmas On The Edge

Poem for the week -- "Christmas On The Edge":

Christmas sets the centre on the edge;
The edge of town, the outhouse of the inn,
The fringe of empire, far from privilege
And power, on the edge and outer spin
Of  turning worlds, a margin of small stars
That edge a galaxy itself light years
From some unguessed at cosmic origin.
Christmas sets the centre at the edge.

And from this day our  world is re-aligned
A tiny seed unfolding in the womb
Becomes the source from which we all unfold
And flower into being. We are healed,
The end begins, the tomb becomes a womb,
For now in him all things are re-aligned.

-- Malcolm Guite

What You Look At

​It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

-- Henry David Thoreau

What I Do

I've noticed...that a lot of what I do, I do because I know I can do it.  And, I primarily know what I can do it, because I have done it.

Makes me wonder what I could be trying to do right now, so that down the road I am able to do something I don't do today.

LT: One Behavior Separates The Successful From The Average

A certain farmer had become old and ready to pass his farm down to one of his two sons. When he brought his sons together to speak about it, he told them: The farm will go to the younger son.

The older son was furious! “What are you talking about?!” he fumed.

The father sat patiently, thinking...continue here.

-- Benjamin P. Hardy

Lens

Unless we come to recognize the lens through which we filter all of our experiences, we will not see things as they are but as we are.

-- Richard Rohr

Glory Of The Lord

To Close A Monastery

"Peace is in the heart already..."

"There's a monk in everybody, because there's a desire for completion, for fulfillment."

"There's an emptiness that calls out to be filled."

May Perpetual Light Shine

Now in a season of lights, perhaps this, and subsequent poem selections, can be...illuminating.

Poem for the week -- "May Perpetual Light Shine":

We have encountered storms
Perfect in their drench and wreck

Each of us bears an ornament of grief
A ring, a notebook, a ticket torn, scar
It is how humans know their kind—

What is known as love, what can become 
the heart’s food stored away for some future
Famine

Love remains a jewel in the hand, guarded
Shared fragments of earth & air   drift & despair.

We ponder what patterns matter other than moons and tides:
musical beats—rumba or waltz or cha cha cha
cosmic waves like batons furiously twirling
colors proclaiming sparkle of darkness
as those we love begin to delight
in the stars embracing

-- Patricia Spears Jones

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.