Calm Under Pressure

Love Letters

Poem for the week -- “Love Letters”

Every day, priests minutely examine the Law
And endlessly chant complicated sutras.
Before doing that, though, they should learn
How to read the love letters sent by the wind
and rain, the snow and moon.

-- Ikkyu

Wandering In Nature

We are in Montana and Utah for the next several days wandering around.

Wandering in nature is perhaps the most essential soulcraft practice for contemporary Westerners who have wandered so far from nature. . . .

The Wanderer allows plenty of time to roam in wild nature, and roam alone. Maybe you start out on a trail, but if the landscape allows, it won't be long before you wander off the beaten track. Because you are stalking a surprise, you attend to the world of hunches and feelings and images as much as you do to the landscape. 

. . . You will get good at wandering, good at allowing your initial agenda to fall away as you pick up new tracks, scents, and possibilities. You will smile softly to yourself over the months and years of wanderings as you notice how you have changed, how you have slowed down inside. 

Through your wanderings, you cultivate a sensibility of wonder and surprise, rekindling the innocence that got buried in your adolescent rush to become somebody in particular. Now you seek to become nobody for a while, to disappear into the woods so that the person you really are might find you.

-- Bill Plotkin

Pleasure

​Despite a bout with pain today (kidney stones), I’ve been thinking lately about pleasure.

Pleasure has its place (there's a time for everything — Ecclesiastes), so be cautious of people who try to universally deny that.

However.... There is something about pleasure that seems to seek perpetuation. You might say, as some do, that it is (or can be) addictive. Observe the things in your life that bring you pleasure and notice the tendency about them that draws you repeatedly back toward them — something like, I want that pleasure again...and again.

Pleasure can have the appearance of expanding you, but it is also possible that it begins to only expand itself. When we are drawn into something, like pleasure, we can also be reducing other things, other kinds of awareness — like replacing fulfillment with satisfaction or a filling of self, rather than others. I have found that many pleasures tend to reduce my overall capacity, in part, because of their addictive appeals. They can tend to narrow my focus or ability to see beyond the objects involved. True capacity seems to be increased more through the denial of self, than through satisfying the self.

It should be noted, that pleasure has many forms — of the mind, of the body, of effort, of the spirit, etc.

Because of the way it has been misused, I am hesitant to join all the naysayers to pleasure. On the other hand, it is also true, that it is so easy to worship an object, rather than a subject.

LT: Encourage Leadership

Good principles are often true in many contexts.  To encourage leadership, take these for example:

1. Have a compelling mission tied to your purpose
2. Create clear roles for everyone
3. Encourage people to make decisions
4. Promote teamwork throughout the organization
5. Be transparent with information

More here....

-- Peter Economy

It's worth considering how many things in life apply to relationships of all kinds — businesses, civic groups, churches, partners, families, marriages, etc.  In other words, truth is often not confined to certain arenas.

What If: Moving

What If...because something was so big:

you thought that something still, was actually moving.

Need

There are few things that draw people to God like their need.


More than just good theory, this recitation points out the many many ways people need God. It reminds me that my need for God is not just theoretical and leads me back to the question of ‘what is my need today?’

Justice & Mercy

My years of struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression, and injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments didn’t just illuminate the brokenness of others; in moments of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can’t effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it. . . .

I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion.

We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity. . . .

So many of us have become afraid and angry. We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we’ve pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we’ve allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We’ve submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible.

But simply punishing the broken—walking away from them or hiding them from sight—only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity. . . .

Embracing our brokenness creates a need for mercy. . . . I began thinking about what would happen if we all just acknowledged our brokenness, if we owned up to our weaknesses, our deficits, our biases, our fears. Maybe if we did, we wouldn’t want to kill the broken among us who have killed others. Maybe we would look harder for solutions to caring for the disabled, the abused, the neglected, and the traumatized. . . . We could no longer take pride in mass incarceration, in executing people, in our deliberate indifference to the most vulnerable.

 -- Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

Midlife: I'm Not Screwing Around

Instagram: brenebrown

Midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear:  I'm not screwing around.  All of this pretending and performing — these coping mechanisms that you've developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt — has to go.  Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts.  I understand that you needed these  protections when you were small.  I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy and lovable but you're still searching and you're more lost than ever.  Time is growing short.  There are unexplored adventures ahead of you.  You can't live the rest of your life worried about what other people think.  You were born worthy of love and belonging.  Courage and daring are coursing through your veins.  You were mad to live and love with your whole heart.  It's time to show up and be seen.

-- Brene Brown

Not From Willfulness

Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening...

-- Parker Palmer

Struggle or Adventure

We all struggle. Or, we are all involved in an adventure. Which way do you say it, to describe the challenges (or hardness) of life?

If we consider our struggle thru a lens of adventure, what does that change? What would need to change to view things through that lens?

I had an interesting conversation recently about the challenges we face in life. After discussing things a bit, we agreed that, at one point or another, we each have to face the question of who we want to be in challenging circumstances — whether the situation changes or not, whether somebody who should do something about it does or not, whether it is fair or not, whether we like it or not. Who do we want to be?

Viewing things that are challenging as an adventure can shift our sense of it from something (unnecessarily or unfairly) imposed on me to something that I can accept, work with, and determine how I can (want to) be in the middle of it. I can view it as something I can grow from, rather than as something that is stealing from me. In other words, the agency of the power involved can transition — from resentment and not asking the next question to acknowledging how powerless we feel and asking the next question.

"I have to pass an important test. I have so many bills. I don't know what my child needs. My relationships aren't working.  I don't know what is happening or why. I am so tired. I don't know what my future holds..." — things we all can catch ourselves saying.

So, who do I want to be? ...in whatever adventure I may be facing right now. Am I losing or growing?

Sometimes when you're in a dark place you think you've been buried, but actually you've been planted.

-- Christine Caine

LT: To Be Led, Too

The trick of leadership is allowing yourself to be led, too. 

-- Nelson Mandela

I couldn't agree more.  More thoughts on Mandela's leadership here....

Another

I've noticed...one thing leads to another.  And, that it can take a while.

A Father's Job

Instagram: bobgoff

I think a father's job, when it's done best, is to get down on both knees, lean over his children's lives, and whisper, 'Where do you want to go?' Every day God invites us on the same kind of adventure.  It's not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply invites us.  God asks what it is He's made us to love, what it is that captures our attention, what feeds that deep indescribable need of our souls to experience the richness of the world He made. And then, leaning over us, He whispers, 'Let's go do THAT together.'

-- Bob Goff

Why Your Brain Needs You to Read Every Day

Reading puts your brain to work.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to your body.

It gives us freedom to roam the expanse of space, time, history, and offer a deeper view of ideas, concepts, emotions, and body of knowledge.

Roberto Bolaño says, “Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people’s ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.”

As you read these words, your brain is decoding a series of abstract symbols and synthesizing the results into complex ideas.

The reading brain can be likened to the real-time collaborative effort of a symphony orchestra, with various parts of the brain working together, like sections of instruments, to maximize our ability to decode the written text in front of us.

Reading rewires parts of your brain. Continue here....

-- Thomas Oppong

Thirsting

Poem for the week -- "Thirsting":

It’s not that the old are wise
But that we thirst for the wisdom

we had at twenty
when we understood everything

when our brains bubbled
with tingling insights

percolating up from
our brilliant genitals

when our music rang like a global siege
shooting down all the lies in the world

oh then we knew the truth
then we sparkled like mica in granite

and now we stand on the shore
of an ocean that rises and rises

but is too salt to drink

--Alicia Ostriker

From the author:

“The thirsting described in this poem comes from the experience of aging. With age comes physical depletion but also, at times, mental and spiritual depletion. When we were young we thought we could change the world; we were self-confident to the point of arrogance. And now, even if we know that self-confidence was illusory, we still yearn for it—and the world still needs changing.”

Inferior

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Give To The World, But...

You should give to the world.

But just know, what you should give should come from the uniqueness of who you are (not from what is expected by others).  And, learning what this is can take a while, perhaps a lifetime.

In the meantime, your best route is to just start giving — which will lead you to learn about your gift...to the world, and to yourself.

After all, you can give something every day already.

LT: Truth, Not Greatness

Leaders seek truth, not greatness.

-- Oleg Vishnepolsky

What If: Flat

What If...because something was so big:

you thought something flat, was actually round.

Visible

Jesus did not come to make God’s love possible, but to make God’s love visible.

-- Unknown

Running Out Of Sand

​

Breaks My Trance

G is for gratitude. When I'm in gratitude, if I even stop and make a list of the things I'm grateful for, that's a form of prayer. It breaks my trance of misery or self-absorption.

-- Anne Lamott

What You Intend

[There are] moments when it is clear—if I have the eyes to see—that the life I am living is not the same as the life that wants to live in me. 

Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen to what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.

-- Parker Palmer

Midlife: Painful Irony

Instagram: brenebrown

So it's searchable:

Midlife is not about fear of death.  Midlife is death.  Tearing down the walls that we spent our entire life building is death.  Like it or not, at some point during midlife, you're going down, and after that there are only two choices: staying down or enduring rebirth.

It's a painful irony that the very things that may have kept us safe growing up ultimately get in the way of our becoming the parents, partners, and / or people that we want to be.

-- Brene Brown

LT: Direction

Directions are instructions given to explain HOW. 
Direction is a vision offered to explain WHY.

-- Simon Sinek

Leaders often have vision.

Faster = Less

I've noticed...the faster I keep moving, the less imagination I have for others.

Shouldn't Say Everyone's Invited

Instagram: bobgoff

We shouldn't say everyone's invited 
if we're going to act like they're not welcome when they come.

-- Bob Goff

Why Do You Look For What You Do?

Have you ever wondered about why we see what we see?  Or, isn't it a little conspicuous that we tend to only see what we're looking for?

At one level, it's just obvious.  Is this really news?

But, why?  Wouldn't it be important, even helpful, to consider why we look for what we do?  ...because it so obvious that we do it, whether we do this or not is hardly even the question.  So, why do we do this?

I'm going to make this post a little more 'live' today — like adding to it, as my contemplation on this question comes and goes:

• I often see something, especially when I look for it — that could be interesting, even good.  But, very problematic, too. (10a)

• Two people can see the same event, read the same book, be at the place...and see, perceive, and feel very different things.  How does that happen? (11:50a)

• Is there just one reality of something?  Only one 'real' occurrence, idea, or truth? (12:39p)

• What influences such perception?  Is it built-in, like gravity? (4:14p)

• Is it sociological, like air? (7:36p)

• Is it experiential, like muscle?  Mental, like memory?  Spiritual?  Conditioned? (8:54p)

• Do we look for certain things as a means of reinforcing our sense of identity?  As a mechanism for our credibility, our survival. (9:48p)

Or, is it more simple than all of this — humans just tend to look for what we're familiar with and not we're not?  So, just let me be; I like what I like, what I'm comfortable with.

The problem, though, is when our disposition to wonder stops looking for (and, therefore, seeing) anything different...and the challenges that differences bring to the table — the openness that is required — we also lose other things, like the capacity to genuinely imagine who someone else may actually be (rather than just how we see them or want them to be), not mention to love them in the differences they represent.

So, how can 'what do I look for' change...to 'what can I look for'?

The Seven of Pentacles

Poem for the week -- “The Seven of Pentacles”

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the lady bugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
      the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

-- Marge Piercy

What Is Best For You Depends

What is best for you depends on your nature, so you need to really understand yourself....

-- Ray Dalio

Just Because

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.  Just because it is physically possible, doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

LT: So Loud

What you do speaks so loudly that people in your organization will not hear what you say.

-- Fred Kofman, The Meaning Revolution

CUBS vs Giants, 2018

Beautiful 'full moon' night at Wrigley last night!

Conner's 'losing streak' was broken - CUBS won thanks to Baez 3-run HR:



Not to mention that we were famous for the first time...ever (from ESPN — note the 4 people in the middle!):

The 'Bleacher Seats' were awesome!

Never A Dead End

God’s full life, just like nature, is never a straight line and never a dead end.

-- Richard Rohr

Kairos Changes Lives

Humanity & Time

The humanity of humans is significantly shaped by the time they spend together, or don't.

Only Way To Endure

Everything that is tough and brittle shatters; everything that is cynical rots. The only way to endure is to forgive, over and over, to give back that openness and possibility for new beginning which is the very essence of love itself.

-- Cynthia Bourgeault

A powerful connection — there may be few greater evidences of truly being open than what is required of us to forgive.

Red Logos

LT: X-Factor

​The x-factor of great leadership is not personality, it's humility.

-- Jim Collins

Post-truth politics and why the antidote isn’t simply ‘fact-checking’ and truth

We live in an unfinished revolutionary age of communicative abundance. Networked digital machines and information flows are slowly but surely shaping practically every institution in which we live our daily lives.

For the first time in history, thanks to built-in cheap microprocessors, these algorithmic devices and information systems integrate texts, sounds and images in compact, easily storable, reproducible and portable digital form.

Communicative abundance enables messages to be sent and received through multiple user points, in chosen time, real or delayed, within global networks that are affordable and accessible to billions of people.

My book Democracy and Media Decadence probed the contours of this revolution. It showed why new information platforms, robust muckraking and cross-border publics are among the exciting social and political trends of our time. It proposed that the unfinished revolution is dogged by politically threatening contradictions and decadent counter-trends. The drift toward a world of “post-truth” politics is among these troubling trends.  Continue....

-- John Keane

Among the several ideas that stuck out to me in the article linked above:

...what mainstream white society usually forgets: that truth and trust are twins.

Another helpful article on truth in these times:

Truth Isn’t the Problem — We Are

A Negotiation

Instagram: bobgoff

If we only love people who love us back,
we make faith look like a negotiation.

-- Bob Goff

Royal Wedding: Rev Michael Curry's Full Sermon

Loving, Liberating & Life-Giving God:



Love is as strong as death.  It burns like a blazing fire.

-- Song of Songs 8:6

may my heart always be open to little

Poem for the week -- "may my heart always be open to little":

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile.

-- E.E. Cummings

Some honest recognition here; like:

"even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young"

Be open; stay open.

Don't Necessarily Nurture

It’s important to be heroic, ambitious, productive, efficient, creative and progressive, but these qualities don’t necessarily nurture the soul.

-- Thomas Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life

FWIW, I hear ‘laurel’.

Until

Keep doing it, until you get it right.

-- Dolester Miles, three-time James Beard Award finalist

LT: Confessions of an idea bully

...as the advertising company I founded struggled through a painful cultural crisis, I came to a shocking realization. One day, during a brainstorm with my team, I had a sort of out of body experience, observing myself as if from across the room. And I could see the company’s problem clearly. It was me. The way I was exercising my creative abilities was depressing the creativity of everyone around me. I had become an idea bully.

What made this realization so surprising was that in other areas of life and leadership, I’ve always focused on being gentle, self-aware and concerned for the well-being of others. I hate seeing people suffer and I’m fully bought in on the idea that companies should be run on strong values.

But give me a problem to solve in a group setting...continue here.

-- Jonah Sachs

Your Body Will

I've noticed...your body will tell you; treat it right and learn to listen to it.

Mom, Thank You For Changing My World

"Love is true, love is kind...keep going."  

Thank you, Moms, for your part in teaching us all the magnificence and the mundane of these timeless truths.

Spread of Lyme Disease

...more here.

How Trying to Be Strong May Be Blocking You From the Love You Want Most

This beautiful chain of love that had transformed more than one person’s soul all began when I let go of my white-knuckle grip on the situation, and turned my open palms upward to God in an act of surrender.

My sixth child, Joseph, had been born under difficult circumstances, and then a problem with his lungs landed him in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

I knew exactly how to handle this: I would be strong.

I spent all day at the hospital, then, at home, I’d stay up until the wee hours of the morning catching up on housework and other chores.  I stumbled through the NICU floor and through the rooms of my home exhausted and bleary-eyed, forcing myself to keep doing it all because that’s what strong moms do.

To help him heal, I wanted Joseph to be held as much as possible.

I tried extending my hours at the hospital, covering all the times of day that my husband couldn’t be there, but I didn’t last very long. With five children who needed me at home, I broke down under the pressure.

I sent out a desperate plea to all friends and family members, asking them to come hold my baby.

And you know what? I felt guilty as I typed those emails.  Continue here....

-- Jennifer Fulwiler

55 - Just Beginning

After 55 years, why does it feel like I'm only just beginning?

Is that an indictment?  Or, a sign of growth — the older we get, the closer we are to becoming our true selves?

God Sees Foundations

Instagram: bobgoff

God finds us in the hole we dig for ourselves.  
Where we see failures, God sees foundations.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Leadership Wisdom From The Jedi

How much of leadership starts with one's disposition with (awareness of) oneself?

• Let go of your fear
• Approach tasks with success in mind
• Be mindful of the present
• Don't let emotions cloud your judgment
• Believe in your cause

A variety of studies have demonstrated that people would prefer to avoid a loss than to acquire a gain...continue here.

-- Alex Knapp

I wonder how this tends to change as we get older, particularly if / when we have acquired too much.

Forge A New One

​Emma hadn’t given me my old identity, she had protected my ability to forge a new one.

-- Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

This comes from one of the more inspiring books I've read in a while — a strong 'recommend' from me (thanks, Phil, for bringing this to my attention).

It Is Enough

What if rich did not have to mean wealthy and whole did not have to mean healed?  What if being people of the gospel meant that we are simply people with good news?  God is here.  We are loved.  It is enough.

-- Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

Generations

In the Beginning God Said Light

Poem for the week -- "In the Beginning God Said Light":

and there was light.
Now God says, Give them a little theatrical lighting

and they’re happy,
and we are. So many of us

dressing each morning, testing
endless combinations, becoming in our mirrors

more ourselves, imagining,
in an entrance, the ecstatic

weight of human eyes.
Now that the sun is sheering

toward us, what is left
but to let it close in

for our close-up? Let us really feel
how good it feels

to be still in it, making
every kind of self that can be

looked at. God, did you make us
to be your bright accomplices?

God, here are our shining spines.
Let there be no more dreams of being

more than a beginning.
Let it be

that to be is to be
backlit, and then to be only that light.

-- Mary Szybist

Isn't So Common

I have known a thousand scamps; but I never met one who considered himself so. Self-knowledge isn't so common.

-- Ouida

Wits' End

​When I am at my wits' end, it seems mostly due to some form of loss of vision. When I can no longer see what I have been imagining, it is easy to lose my bearings. I tend to think I know who I am when I think I can see.

When I lose sight of that, I can feel lost. When I feel lost, I can feel terrified. So, I thrash about to see again.

But, I believe it is important for me to lose my vision from time to time. Because loss of vision seems to actually create more of it. Not immediately. But, this IS what stretches my imagination, both for what is true and for who I am in relation to it. I don’t welcome it, but I crave it at the same time. I am grateful for it — though mostly afterward — increasingly able to imagine that gratitude even during it.

LT: Something To Work Toward

Average organizations give their people something to work on. Great organizations give their people something to work toward.

-- Simon Sinek

Even If You're Dying

Even if you're dying, until the day you actually die, you're living.

-- Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

Fully Alive

The glory of God is a human being fully alive.

-- St. Irenaeus of Lyon

May we live with such divine imagination.

3rd College Graduate

So proud of Makenzie, our third (and last!) college graduate.  As we cross this milestone, I am struck by the notion that everything we have, has been given to us.  For example, we were given a college education; and, we have been able to help give that to Makenzie.  If the truth be known, perhaps everything we receive is just meant to be given away.  So, what are we giving?

We are so grateful for what has been given to Makenzie the last four years through her college experience; for what she gave and now has...to give to others.

Net Domestic Migration

Character Matters (if you let it)

Choosing to develop character is difficult, because it requires avoiding the shorter, more direct path. It can be slow, expensive and difficult work.

And rewarding character is difficult as well, because someone is probably offering you an alternative that's cheaper or faster. A sure road to a quick payday.

But...

Every time we avoid the easy in favor of what's right, we create ripples. Character begets more character, weaving together the fabric of our culture, the kind of world we'd rather live in.

-- Seth Godin, Character matters (if you let it)

Quit Something

Instagram: bobgoff

The battles for our hearts are fought on the pages of our calendars.
It's Thursday — quite something.

-- Bob Goff

Feature of Fear

One thing about fear; it seems to feature creating more fear.

LT: Regularly Set The Example

If you want your staff to act or react in a certain way, then YOU must set the example. You have to find your voice, clarify your personal values, and then regularly set the example. You must align your personal actions with the culture that has been established within your organization. In other words, you must proverbially, “talk the talk and walk the walk”....

-- Harry A. Strausser III

Leaders can't just say it, but then not do it.  The method IS the message.

Do It Now

​If it needs to be done and you can do it, do it now. You don't know what tomorrow will bring.

Imprint

When the feelings recede like the tides, they will leave an imprint.  I will somehow be marked by the presence of an unbidden God.

-- Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

Lagoon Nebula

I would recommend watching the movie 'Come Sunday' (trailer above). 

Is there any relationship between these two descriptions of...reality?

A Gate

Poem for the week -- "A Gate":

I have oared and grieved,
grieved and oared,
treading a religion
of fear. A frayed nerve.
A train wreck tied to the train
of an old idea.
Now, Lord, reeling in violent
times, I drag these tidal
griefs to this gate.
I am tired. Deliver
me, whatever you are.
Help me, you who are never
near, hold what I love
and grieve, reveal this green
evening, myself, rain,
drone, evil, greed,
as temporary. Granted
then gone. Let me rail,
revolt, edge out, glove
to the grate. I am done
waiting like some invalid
begging in the nave.
Help me divine
myself, beside me no Virgil
urging me to shift gear,
change lane, sing my dirge
for the rent, torn world, and love
your silence without veering
into rage.

-- Donna Masini

From the author:

“My sister was dead. During her illness I had prayed, or, rather, ricocheted from bargaining to demanding, to a kind of continual visceral begging. After her death, grieving, in despair, I found the world, its violence and destruction, unbearable. I was teaching Hopkins and Herbert. I was trying to learn how to drive. Driving and prayer seemed equally inscrutable. I paid lip service (good words for prayer) to The Cloud of Unknowing but I was lost. ‘Try to write a prayer,’ a friend said.”

No Matter How Slow

Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.

-- Plato

Barbara Bush Changed With Her Country

Your success as a family...our success as a nation...depends not on what happens inside the White House, but on what happens inside your house.

-- Barbara Bush

The former first lady was notably eager to learn about people she didn’t understand—and recognize she might have been wrong about them.  Continue here....

LT: Doesn't Happen By Accident

You get more ideas when you have a diverse workforce.  We all bring with us a whole set of experiences that make us unique, and when a group like that collaborates on new ideas, the power you get is amazing.

Studies have shown that for the most part, diversity doesn't happen by accident; they are usually the result of an intentional and methodical approach to building it.

-- Jeff Alvarez

In other words, good leaders both recognize this truth and work at it in their organizations, not because it is a business issue, but because it is a people issue.

Violence

​Violence is used as a means of control. It is a form of power.

But, it is ineffective in the long-run (which might be why it is used so much in the short-run) because it incites hatred and is smaller than love. Both hatred and love will overcome the perpetrator of violence — either with more violence or with something far more powerful. In the end, true peace (brought about by love) is more powerful than war — at both micro and macro levels.

Shouldn't Be Surprised

Instagram: bobgoff

We shouldn't be surprised when we don't understand 
what a God who says he surpasses all understanding is doing.

-- Bob Goff

Why you need to become an “elastic” thinker

Much has been written about the accelerating pace of change and the globalization and rapid technological innovation that have fueled it. What’s not often discussed: the new demands on how we must think to thrive in this whirlwind era—for as rapid change transforms our business, professional, political, and personal environments, our success and happiness depend on our coming to terms with it.

There are certain talents that can help us, qualities of thought that have always been useful but are now becoming essential. We must learn to let go of comfortable ideas and become accustomed to ambiguity and contradiction; to rise above conventional mindsets and to reframe the questions we ask; to abandon our ingrained assumptions and open ourselves to new paradigms. We must rely on imagination as much as on logic and generate and integrate a wide variety of ideas. And we must be willing to experiment and be tolerant of failure.

We use ordinary analytical/logical thinking to apply rules, but we use elastic thinking to...continue here.

-- Leonard Mlodinow

Brightest Light

​It is often out of our darkest wound that shines our brightest light of healing to others.

But, sometimes it takes a while to learn to recognize this.

No Longer A Luxury

​Lifelong learning is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity.

-- Joseph E. Aoun

Harmony

​Harmony is a bi-product, not a goal.

LT: Engage Discussion

It’s becoming more important than ever for leadership to engage in a discussion where new ideas are exchanged.

-- Rick Perr

Nearly everywhere I go, those making a constructive difference are saying nearly the same thing — engage discussion about ideas...so many good reasons for recognizing this.  Freshly articulated ideas are like fuel for living.

Opened Windows

I've noticed...that I continue to learn how many windows can be opened by our emotions. Acknowledging emotions — rather than trying to minimize them — can lead to unexpected places...places that are good for you.

The Bible

​The great — inspiring, wonderful, beautiful  — thing about the Bible is the description it gives of the human condition, and the rescue and invitation God offers in the midst of it. As a printed version of some of the oral traditions of one nation’s experience, it also describes something for all humanity. It captures a God that transcends this condition and who is doing something to offer hope to everyone — to redeem everything.

Garbage: Twice The Size of Texas

I don't know what to say...or do about this.  But, I'm going to continue to make personal choices to limit plastic usage wherever I can.  I hope it makes a difference.  It probably only does when we all make such choices.

Capable Flesh

Poem for the week -- "Capable Flesh":

The tender flesh itself
        will be found one day
—quite surprisingly—
        to be capable of receiving,
and yes, full
        capable of embracing
the searing energies of God.
        Go figure. Fear not.
For even at its beginning
        the humble clay received
God’s art, whereby
        one part became the eye,
another the ear, and yet
        another this impetuous hand.
Therefore, the flesh
        is not to be excluded
from the wisdom and the power
        that now and ever animates
all things. His life-giving
        agency is made perfect,
we are told, in weakness—
        made perfect in the flesh.

-- Saint Irenaeus of Lyon

​Not Without Death

Painful and frustrating things can actually be converted energy-wise by asking, what in me needs to die in this?  What can this make me more alive to?

There can be no transformation without some kind of death. I have to release what I am holding on to for life.


Before God, our wounds are our glory.

-- St. Julian of Norwich

Remembered For

Instagram: bobgoff

We'll be known for our opinions;
but remembered for our love.

-- Bob Goff

LT: My Ideas

​Good leaders are curious to hear ideas from others when solving a problem. Bad leaders care more that others hear their ideas.

-- Simon Sinek

Fuss About My Unworthiness

​If I cannot in honest happiness take the second place (or the twentieth); if I cannot take the first without making a fuss about my unworthiness, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

-- Amy Carmichael

No matter how you slice it, it's not about me.

I have a sensed a disconnection lately — from others and from myself...I wonder if those are related.  After the explosion of Easter, you'd think I'd feel the opposite.  But, by last night, I didn't.  I suspect it's related to something about the above.  I want to be a part of something.  I do, for my sake.  But, that's where the problem creeps in.  Because my being part of something is primarily about something else, besides what I get out of it.  That is the real explosion of Easter anyway — Calvary love — a connection to something far bigger, far deeper, than my sense of connection at any given moment.

It's not about me — my worthiness has never been more in tact.

Easter: Into The Same Image

​All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image that we reflect. This is the work of the Lord who is Spirit. 

-- 2 Corinthians 3:18

May we, today, recognize a fresh the true nature of what Easter is all about — a miracle of unparalleled reversal, the way of transformation, to becoming truly alive.

Awareness Is

Awareness is a process, not a destination.

I felt even more aware of this reality this week, during a conversation among friends.  It is really never about arrival.

This discovery, of course, is a bit disappointing because we are highly conditioned to expect some benefits of arrival; like reversal, making something right, relief, or peace.  But, in the end, we only really achieve these ideas when we recognize that they are already with us and that awareness of them is, perhaps, the highest good about them.  This is it.  It is all we need.  And, it is far better than we've realized.

It is not over there.  It is right here.  The current moment is all that is.  And, that's perfect because the future is the next moment and we get to do it again.

So we're free to embrace this moment, becoming aware of IT, and ask our next version of the question...about the process of what is.

Oh, and metaphorically speaking, when would we ever be more aware of this reality than at a time after a day like Good Friday and before a day like Easter?  On a Saturday that can feel lost between devastation and more hope than ever...on a day when something like transformation would seem totally imperceptible.

Good Friday: What Dostoyevsky’s Prostitute Can Teach Us About the Cross

The cross of Christ has sometimes been compared to the electric chair or other forms of execution, meaning we are wise to remember that it was an instrument of death in the ancient world. The cross is also often used to prompt us to give ourselves sacrificially for him and others. But comparisons to other forms of execution can miss the deeper biblical teaching about the cross. And the cross is much more than an object lesson in how we should live. It’s very shape, it turns out, is not incidental to its deeper biblical meaning nor to the very nature of God who hung there.

To get at the deeper meaning, we can turn to the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, especially one scene in the middle of Crime and Punishment. The lead character Rodion Raskolnikov had brutally murdered an elderly pawnbroker and moneylender, Alyona Ivanovna. When Ivanovna’s half-sister, Lizaveta, stumbled upon the scene, he murdered her as well.

Raskolnikov later meets a young woman, Sonia, who has been compelled by poverty to become a prostitute to support her family. He is immediately drawn...continue here.

-- Mark Galli