Explore Alternatives

Perhaps my greatest disappointment with the tradition I consider my "home" is that it wasn't and still isn't a safe place to ask questions, explore alternatives, launch creative ideas of a political or social orientation. It is often overrun by a mindset that puts people in a box after just a few words are said that don't sound safe and familiar.  

More here...

-- Gordon MacDonald

I’m guessing that this problem is not limited to any one tradition, but I must concur that I have encountered many of the same things in mine.

It is hard not to notice how often belief becomes tethered to safety.

Strength Lies

Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.  
​
-- Yuval Atsmon

Unless

Eventually we realize that the value of what we have isn’t very much, unless we share it.

LT: Clear Sense

When we have a clear sense of where we're going, we are flexible in how we get there.
​
-- Simon Sinek

...a helpful reminder for leaders.

Something Is Wrong

I've noticed...when the means becomes the end, something is often wrong.

Call To Discover

A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes, but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and, having found out what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.

-- Ernest Hemingway

Referring to Hemingway...

So whether he was writing about an old fisherman on small boat in the ocean or a Spanish bullfighter, he communicated the realities he’d found. I was struck by how his comment also applies to pastors, whose call is to discover God's truth and the realities of the gospel and God’s kingdom, and to present them in ways that allow listeners and observers to experience that truth .

-- Marshall Shelley

Perfectionism

Most people think of philosophy as a system of ethics or an explanation of the purpose of life, so they miss its most practical aspects. Ancient philosophy was a way to create mental clarity — to clear the mind of what psychologists today refer to as cognitive distortions.

Epictetus, the Stoic slave-turned-philosopher, told his students that the place to “begin in philosophy is this: a clear perception of one’s own ruling principle.” He meant that people became philosophers when they began to question what guides their thinking and analyze their thoughts. Epictetus wanted to help his students break out of the exaggerated thinking patterns that have a destructive impact on the life of the thinker. Patterns like negative self-labeling, catastrophizing, disqualifying the positive, emotional reasoning, and other cognitive distortions.

Today, one of the most common destructive thought patterns is all-or-nothing thinking (also referred to as splitting). Examples of this include thoughts like:

If you’re not with me, you’re against me.
He/She is all good/all bad.
Because this attempt wasn’t a complete success, it is a total failure.
In other words, perfectionism.

We often hold up perfectionists as models, but psychologists know that this sort of extreme thinking is associated with depression and frustration. It’s a miserable, unproductive way to live. How could it not be? Perfectionism rarely begets perfection, or satisfaction — only...continue here.

-- Ryan Holiday

Visual: Patient

Visual - "Patient"

St Anne's Catholic Church - Mackinac Island, MI

Enter With Thanksgiving

Enter His gates with Thanksgiving.

-- Psalm 100:4

Six Words

Instagram: bobgoff

Someone once asked me what I would write if I only had six words for my autobiography.  Here's what I came up with:  What if we weren't afraid anymore?

-- Bob Goff

What would your Six Words be?  I'm working on mine....

LT: Suspicious

When you lead from a position of fear and control, people become suspicious.

What If: Only Capacity That Really Grows

What If...the only capacity that really grows as we age is the capacity to increasingly carry the tension of this world...by releasing it to God.

Oh, and speaking of being awake....

Awakening

Awakening is the expression of that grace in which we see through our apparent separation and notice that we are already one with divine Presence and with all that is. All that is missing is awareness.

-- David Benner

Hey, it's snowing! I gotta go...for a run.

Dear Daughter: Leave When You Are Not Valued.

Dear Daughter,

Unfortunately, in life there are times you will not be valued. Do not stay where you are not valued. Do not waste time in self-pity because someone did not value you. Your value, your worth, comes from your heart, not from someone else.

Today you were rejected by someone. Your heart felt broken, it was not. You even trusted the person who did not value you. They led you to believe they valued hard work, passion, off-season dedication, and attitude. They led you to believe these qualities were important to them when in fact to them they are not. Your heart hurts because you believed the words of someone who let you down. You are better leaving when you are not valued.

It is ok and normal to grieve when you close a chapter in your life and start another. Do not confuse self-pity for grief. Grief is part of celebrating what was joyful and good, grief is sadness to saying good-bye, grief is leaving to move onto the next journey. Self-pity is subjecting yourself to another person’s power. Self-pity is allowing imperfect people’s errors to consume your energy. Continue here....

-- Sara Johnson

I feel increasing aware that nearly all positions have some merit and that they are often mixed with other things, too.  In this case, I like admonition to consider the source of value, especially under the circumstances involved.  But, I'm not sure leaving every time you feel you aren't, is the best advice. 

Each situation is different and perhaps that is the point.  Knowing that something might be helpful but that it also may not be in every situation is, too.

Sometimes

Poem for the week -- "Sometimes":

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

-- Mary Oliver

There really isn't enough space to record everything that is significant or even good. So what should we do with this limitation? Get better at selecting what is worth recording? Or, just get closer to your version of it and tell that.

We Will Transmit It

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it — usually to those closest to us.

-- Richard Rohr

Speaking From Power or Freedom

How often do we say what we say when we feel we have the advantage when saying it? In other words, if we didn't feel we had some basis for proving that we are right (and that the other is not), would we just not say it (if there's nothing to be gained)?

Speaking intentionally from a position of power, especially as a premise, can be a dicey proposition.

So, what would the opposite look like?  I'm guessing it's much closer to speaking from a position of freedom — not from one of imposing something, but rather from a position of true humility, curiosity, and wondering.  The effect of which is the more desirable one of inviting another person towards something, rather than trying to control them with power.

LT: Striking Example

On leadership:

Yahoo! — a striking example of not listening, not understanding, and not being interested in changing.
​
-- Fred Kofman

Few Things Are Like Pain

I've noticed...there are few things that get my attention like pain.

...which can be a giver of the many gifts that awareness brings.

Why Christian?

Instagram: bobgoff

Jesus doesn't turn people into Christians.  He turns them into love.

-- Bob Goff

The Perils Of Pushing Kids Too Hard, And How Parents Can Learn To Back Off

On New Year's Eve, back in 2012, Savannah Eason retreated into her bedroom and picked up a pair of scissors.

"I was holding them up to my palm as if to cut myself," she says. "Clearly what was happening was I needed someone to do something."

Her dad managed to wrestle the scissors from her hands, but that night it had become clear she needed help.

"It was really scary," she recalls. "I was sobbing the whole time."

Savannah was in high school at the time. She says the pressure she felt to succeed — to aim high — had left her anxious and depressed.

"The thoughts that would go through my head were 'this would be so much easier if I wasn't alive, and I just didn't have to do anything anymore.' "

Looking back Savannah, now 23, says the pressure started early.

She told us her story as we sat at the kitchen table of her childhood home in Wilton, Conn., a wealthy community near New York. Her dad commutes to the city where he works in finance.

From the outside, Savannah's life may have appeared picture-perfect: two well-educated, loving parents; a beautiful home; siblings and lots of friends.

From an early age, Savannah says, she was considered one of the smart kids, and when she arrived at Wilton High School, she was surrounded by many other high achievers. Lots of kids take a heavy load of Advanced Placement and honors courses. They play varsity or club sports and are involved in lots of extracurricular activities.

But by sophomore year, the high expectations began to feel like a trap. Like many kids at her school...continue here.

-- Allison Aubrey, Jane Greenhalgh

Visual: Fall Tree Of The Day, 2018

Visual - "Fall Tree Of The Day, 2018"

Warsaw, IN

Autumn is like a second Spring when every leaf is like a flower.

-- Albert Camus

Hate

Hate is just a bodyguard for grief. When people lose the hate, they are forced to deal with the pain beneath.

​-- Sarah Fields

Religious People Try To Control What You Think

Why does it seem like religious people often try to control what you think?

OK, it's not just religious people...makes me wonder when I'm being 'religious', in this way.

Why Women Leaders Are Outperforming Men

Women leaders:

• place a high value on relationships,

• have a bias for direct communication rather than following the chain of command,

• put themselves at the center of the people they lead,

• are comfortable with diversity, and

• are skilled at integrating their personal lives and their lives at work rather than compartmentalizing.

Continue here....

What If: True Color

What If...like the color of autumn leaves, our true colors aren't apparent until the end of our season of life either?

Jesus Has This Effect On Dead People

This week out at the prison Bible study we were studying the healing of Jairus' daughter in Mark 5.

Casey was discussing the story, sharing his observations, and while he was sharing he said this:

"Jesus has this affect on dead people."

Casey was connecting the raising of Jairus' daughter with the healing of the woman with the issue of blood.

Both women are dead, one physically, the other socially and ritually. Jesus comes into contact with both, bringing...continue here.

-- Richard Beck

“She Really Thinks For Herself”

Megan Phelps-Roper didn't start "thinking for herself" -- she started thinking with different people.  To think independently of other human beings is impossible, and if it were possible it would be undesirable.  Thinking is necessarily, thoroughly, and wonderfully social.  Everything you think is a response to what someone else has thought and said.  And when people commend someone for "thinking for herself" they usually mean "ceasing to sound like people I dislike and starting to sound more like people I approve of."

This is a point worth dwelling on.  How often do we say "she really thinks for herself" when someone rejects views that we hold?  No: when someone departs from what we believe to the True Path our tendency is to look for bad influences.  She's fallen under the spell of so-and-so.  She's been reading too much X or listening to too much Y or watching too much Z.  Similarly, people in my line of work always say that we want to promote "critical thinking" -- but really we want our students to think critically only about what they've learned at home and in church, not about what they learn from us.

-- Alan Jacobs, How To Think

Playlist: 11 Weeks

Poem for the week -- "Playlist: 11 Weeks":

1. lush field of shadows, static
    hush and radial itch, primordial

2. goo of the sonogram's wand
    gliding across my belly

3. my daughter blooming
    into focus, feathered

4. and fluttering across the stormy
    screen, the way it rained

5. so hard one night in April
    driving home from the café in Queens

6. where we’d eaten sweet tamales
    I thought we might drown

7. in the flooded streets
    but we didn’t and I want to say

8. that was the night she was conceived:
     husk and sugar,

9. an apartment filled with music,
    hiss of damp clothes

10. drying on the radiator,
      a prayer made with a record’s broken needle

11. to become beaming
      and undone.

-- Kendra DeColo

Think We Know

The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions.

-- Madeleine L’Engle

Don't Use

Instagram: bobgoff

We're not held back by what we don't have, but by what we don't use.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Preparation

We rarely ever perform to a capacity greater than our preparation. In other words, if we don't prepare, we're often not ready and, therefore, just not as capable as we could be.

We also often don't seem to prepare to a greater degree than our leaders challenge us to. Perhaps, this is due to our limitations at times in recognizing the connection between preparation and performance on our own.

Thinking About

I've noticed...I often wake up thinking about what I went to bed thinking about.

Eugene Peterson (1932–2018): Tidbits

Eugene taught me that the pastoral vocation was a call to be relentlessly personal. It meant unhurried conversations marked by listening. It meant preaching to people, not an audience. It meant loving people, not using them. It meant hours of prayer for people and with people.

-- Jamin Goggin

Anyone seeking to have a long obedience in the same direction needs a regular rhythm of stopping. Otherwise, we won’t make it. I’m grateful Eugene gave me a vision of what faithful pastoring could be.

-- Rich Villodas

...more from some of those he impacted here.


Here are some (unrelated) tidbits from Eugene Peterson:

...the goal of reading Scripture was not to know more, but to become more.


There can be no maturity in the spiritual life, no obedience in following Jesus, no wholeness in the Christian life apart from an immersion in, and embrace of, community. I am not myself by myself. Community, not the highly vaunted individualism of our culture, is the setting for living the Christian life.


Sabbath:

• Uncluttered time and space to distance ourselves from the frenzy of our own activities so we can see what God has been and is doing.
• Quieting the internal noise so we hear the still small voice of the Lord.
• Uncluttered time and space to detach ourselves from the people around us so that they have a chance to deal with God without our poking around or kibitzing.

If we pray without listening, we pray out of context.  

-- Eugene Peterson

Year Of The Mountain

An amazing experience for our son, Conner.  We are thrilled  for him and how nature speaks to who he is.

His very talented friend and fellow hiker, Cam Hershberger, made this beautiful video of their most recent trip.

Visual: Carving

Visual - "Carving"

Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, New Mexico

Our Conveniences

Authentic love will not allow us to continue to ask the rest of the world to put itself at the mercy of our conveniences.

-- Richard Rohr

Focus

The achievement of challenging things requires focus, often intense focus.

Often Uncomfortable

Bad leaders may edit the truth for fear of causing discomfort. Good leaders accept that the truth is often uncomfortable.
​
-- Simon Sinek

What If: Unwillingness

What If...I thought someone’s unwillingness was really a matter of ability? What if the majority of situations are really more a function of ability, than will?  I can easily assume that things are primarily a matter of will — why?

I think it is because I believe that ability can grow — that it can be overcome with the aid of things like will.  For example, when is awareness a matter of the will?

Nonetheless, what if...?

It's Easy When

Instagram: bobgoff

It's easy to trust God when He does what we want; it's the other times when we grow.

-- Bob Goff

We Are All Accumulating Mountains of Things

An article in The Atlantic titled, "We Are All Accumulating Mountains of Things" noted "how online shopping and cheap prices are turning Americans into hoarders."

In 2017, Americans spent $240 billion—twice as much as they'd spent in 2002—on goods like jewelry, watches, books, luggage, telephones, and related communication equipment. Spending on personal care products also doubled over that time period. Americans spent, on average, $971.87 on clothes last year, buying nearly 66 garments, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association. That's 20 percent more money than they spent in 2000. The average American bought 7.4 pairs of shoes last year, up from 6.6 pairs in 2000.

All told, "we are all accumulating mountains of things," said Mark A. Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business. He sometimes asks his students to count the number of things they have on them in class, and once they start counting up gadgets and cords and accessories, they end up near 50. "Americans have become a society of hoarders," Cohen said.

At the same time we are amassing all this stuff, Americans are taking up more space. Last year, the average size of a single-family house in America was 2,426 square feet, a 23 percent increase in size from two decades ago. The number of self-storage units is rapidly increasing, too: There are around 52,000 such facilities nationally; two decades ago, there were half that number.

-- Alana Semuels

Things You’ve Never Seen

Poem for the week -- "Things You’ve Never Seen":

When I tell it, the first time
I saw hail, I say
it was in a desert and knocked

a man unconscious
then drove a woman into my arms
because she thought the end was near

but I assured her
this wasn’t the case.

When he tells it,
he smiles, says the first winter
after their exodus
was the coldest.

Rare snow
came down, and his mother,
who knew what the fluff was

but until then had never seen it,
woke him and said, Look outside,
what do you see?

She called his name twice.
It was dark. Snow fell
a paragraph to sum up

decades of heat. He had
no answer. She said,
this is flour from heaven.

When he tells it,
he’s an old man returning
to his mother.

-- Fady Joudah

Bad Judgment

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

-- Rita Mae Brown

Draw Us Away

So much in the culture, structure, and organization of our lives is designed to draw us away from ourselves.

If we're honest, we are so relieved at the very notion of returning to our true selves — to discovering and just being who we really are — not who we're expected to be.

See Things Differently

Leaders are curious.  They want to know more than they already know.  And this helps leaders respect others and their perspectives.  In fact, real leaders pursue those that see things differently because they believe that others have key insights and contribution that is needed for the good of the whole.

Collaboration

I've noticed...more people seem less able to collaborate.

Is this true?  Or, is it just that this is a phenomenon that particularly describes the aging?  Is it the case that the older we get, the more entrenched we become in our assumptions?  The more we believe the effort to collaborate is unproductive — I just want to do it, the way I want to do it.  Am I just more aware of this because I am aging, too?

Or, perhaps, this is a current societal-climate thing.

Either way, is the skill or mindset of collaboration in decline?

We Live In A Moment Of Grace

We live in a moment of grace. Through the hedges of our divisions we are beginning to glimpse again the beauty of life’s oneness. We are beginning to hear, in a way that humanity has never heard before, the essential harmony that lies at the heart of the universe. And we are beginning to understand, amidst the horror and suffering of our divisions, that we will be well to the extent that we move back into relationship with one another, whether as individuals and families or as nations and species. . . .

[Newell reminds us of the Holocaust and how Germany, under Hitler’s command, murdered millions of Jews in Poland.] The German nation was not alone in this. Some of our worst inhumanities as nations, including Britain and America, have been perpetrated on foreign soil and kept at a distance, as if to hide from our own soul the sacrilege of what we are doing. . . . Something in our collective psyche has pretended that the families of another land are not as sacred as the sons and daughters of our own. . . .

Think of the hubris of our lives. Think of our individual arrogance, the way we pursue our own well-being at the neglect and even expense of [others]. . . . Think of the hubris of our nationhood, pretending that we could look after the safety of our homeland by ignoring and even violating the sovereignty of other lands. Think of the hubris of our religion, raising ourselves up over other wisdom traditions and even trying to force our ways on them. Think of the hubris of the human species, pretending that we could look after our own health while exploiting and endangering the life of other species. . . .

[This] is opposite to the way of Jesus, who taught the strength of humility, of being close to the humus, close to the Ground from which we and all things come. The humblest, says Jesus, are “the greatest” (Matthew 18:4). Not that following Jesus’ path of humility is straightforward. Constantly there is tension—the tension of discerning how to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, how to honor the heart of another nation as we honor our own homeland, how to revere the truths of another wisdom tradition as we cherish our own inheritance, how to protect the life of other species as we guard the sanctity of our own life-form. Jesus knew such tension. He was tempted to use his wisdom and his power of presence to serve himself, to lift himself up over others. But to the tempter, he says, “Away with you, Satan!” (Matthew 4:10). Away with the falseness of believing that I can love myself and demean others.

-- John Philip Newell

Danger of a Single Story

Visual: Flagrant Finale

Visual - "Flagrant Finale"

Bozeman, MT

In Diversity

In diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

-- Maya Angelou

We need to read that again, slowly....

Merely Informed

Instagram: bobgoff

People grow where they're truly accepted, not where they're merely informed.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Not Their Equals

The true measure of a leader is how they treat their employees, not their equals.

-- Oleg Vishnepolsky

What If: Better or Worse?

What If...you thought you were making things better, when actually you were making them worse?

Preaching & Pastoring

Preaching and pastoring are not the same thing.  Overlap, to be sure.  But, it seems that over time, it is easy to substitute pastoring with just preaching.

Americans Aren’t Practicing Democracy Anymore

Democracy is a most unnatural act. People have no innate democratic instinct; we are not born yearning to set aside our own desires in favor of the majority’s. Democracy is, instead, an acquired habit.

Like most habits, democratic behavior develops slowly over time, through constant repetition. For two centuries, the United States was distinguished by its mania for democracy: From early childhood, Americans learned to be citizens by creating, joining, and participating in democratic organizations. But in recent decades, Americans have fallen out of practice, or even failed to acquire the habit of democracy in the first place.

American government’s most obvious problems—from its dysfunctional legislature to Donald Trump himself—are merely signs of this underlying decay. The political system’s previous strength and resilience flowed from Americans’ anomalously high rates of participation in democratically governed organizations, most of them apolitical. There is no easy fix for our current predicament; simply voting Trump out of office won’t suffice. To stop the rot afflicting American government, Americans are going to have to get back in the habit of democracy.

In the early years of the United States, Europeans made pilgrimages to the young republic to study its success. How could such a diverse and sprawling nation flourish under a system of government that originated in small, homogeneous...continue here.

-- Yoni Applebaum

Madonna del Parto

Poem for the week -- "Madonna del Parto":

And then smelling it,
feeling it before
the sound even reaches
him, he kneels at
cliff’s edge and for the
first time, turns his
head toward the now
visible falls that
gush over a quarter-
mile of uplifted sheet-
granite across the valley
and he pauses,
lowering his eyes
for a moment, unable
to withstand the
tranquility—vast, unencumbered,
terrifying, and primal. That
naked river
enthroned upon
the massif altar,
bowed cypresses
congregating on both
sides of sun-gleaming rock, a rip
in the fabric of the ongoing
forest from which rises—
as he tries to stand, tottering, half-
paralyzed—a shifting
rainbow volatilized by
ceaseless explosion.

-- Forrest Gander

Much More Exciting

The challenge of our unknown future is so much more exciting than the stories of our accomplished past.

-- Simon Sinek

Do I Trust Them?

As I traveled across country this summer, several things jumped out at me. Among those was the amount of trust people have to have. Take, for example, the services we utilize — we trust that the plane we are flying in is built well and to specifications. We trust in the pilots; that they are prepared and ready to work. We trust that the equipment air traffic controllers are using is functioning properly and that they are paying attention.

Or, what about the places where we stay, did the cleaning crews really cleans thing well or just go through the motions and say it doesn’t really matter?  Do I trust them?

When I travel, I sometimes wonder about the people I see.  How are they different; how are they the same? How does their 'place' in life work for them, like mine does for me?  Do I trust them? ...because, in fact, I do already, all the time.

LT: Themselves

Followers smell it when a leader is in it more for himself than for them.

Many followers will still follow that leader, though, if they think they too can still benefit by doing so.

Who They Are

I've noticed...it is harder to love people for who they are than for who we prefer them to be.

Most Creative Expressions

Instagram: bobgoff

We weren't just an idea God hoped would work out some day.  We were one of his most creative expressions of love, ever.  He doesn't grimace at our failures.  He delights in our attempts.

-- Bob Goff

Bias

Until the top orchestras in the US started to use blind auditions, it was almost impossible for women to pass them, but adopting the practice immediately increased women’s success rate by 300%.
​
-- Yuval Atsmon

We need to do more than just acknowledge bias, we need to really think about it.  If we don’t, we likely, at the very least, are perpetuating it.

Is it inate?  Is it cultivated?

Visual: Non-Atomic

Visual - "Non-Atomic"

Tropic, Utah

Reframe Aging

We need to reframe aging as a passage of discovery and engagement, not decline and inaction.

-- Parker Palmer

Exceptional & Deficient

It seems that people who are exceptionally good at something can also be significantly deficient in other things. Athletes are sometimes examples of this. Or, exceptionally smart people...who can often have rather poor 'people' skills.

Where does this leave us?  Hopefully somewhere compassionate (rather than just jealous).  Truth be told, this is probably true of everyone.

LT: Beyond Polarities

Good leaders must have a certain capacity for thinking beyond polarities and tapping into full, embodied knowing (prayer). They have a tolerance for ambiguity (faith), an ability to hold creative tensions (hope), and an ability to care (love) beyond their own personal advantage.

-- Richard Rohr

What If: Not About Me

What If...something I was sure had to be about me, wasn't.

Do Not Matter

Our identity distinctions do not matter to God (except when we use them to harm each other).

God seems to care about our humanity.

Pre-Wedding Advice That Actually Helped Our Marriage

Here are four pieces of advice that we were given before our wedding day that I would, in turn, now give to others getting ready to walk down the aisle:

1. Communicate your expectations.
This was the number one piece of advice that I was given before our wedding that I believe has served us very well. While my husband and I have never had terrible arguments, our biggest moments of frustration, hurt or confusion have come from unmet expectations.

2. Use "The Number System."
Some friends shared a little system (a rating system of 1 to 10 to demonstrate their personal desires to the other for any given thing) with us before our wedding that might seem silly, but has proven to be surprisingly effective! These friends explained to us that as a couple, their personalities and needs are not always in line as one is an introvert and the other is an extrovert. While one might really need alone time, the other is ready to accept every party invitation they receive.

3. Be transparent.
To “be transparent in your marriage” is simple advice but sometimes hard to carry out. When you’re dating, it’s easy and natural to want to put your best foot forward and hide those personality quirks, struggles or challenges that you’re not proud of, or have a hard time sharing openly.

But marriage can’t thrive on secrecy and acting.

4. The little things matter a lot.
The first time I went to the freezer and got a bowl of ice cream and didn’t bring two spoons back to the couch to share with my husband, his disappointment and hurt was real. Now, this may seem silly to others, but for him, the fact that we had always shared one bowl was a little gesture in our relationship that was obviously cherished, even if I didn’t know to what extent.

Read the rest here....

-- Jessica Crooke 

Untitled

Poem for the week -- "Untitled":

Dear Empire, I am confused each time I wake inside you.
      You invent addictions.  
Are you a high-end graveyard or a child?
      I see your children dragging their brains along.
      Why not a god who loves water and dancing
   instead of mirrors that recite your pretty features only?

You wear a different face to each atrocity.
You are un-unified and tangled.
      Are you just gluttony?
      Are you civilization’s slow grenade?

I am confused each time I’m swallowed by your doors.

-- Jesús Castillo

Disconnected

Living life without being connected to something is...no way to live.

We each have something to give to others. And, by the way, what we have to give is not primarily information.  It is, rather, what we know — know in the sense of our presence in the world.

Ever feel like you worked hard at preparing something or doing something, all to no real effect? The question may be not so much did I give anything, as it is, did I give of myself (as opposed to just disembodied information)?

What we have to give comes from what we are connected to; usually, who we are connected to.  Disconnection inhibits real living.

Quit Letting

Instagram: bobgoff

Quit letting who you were talk you out of who you're becoming.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Fear

The essence of good leadership — it is not controlled by fear.

A Little + X = A Lot

I've noticed...nearly everything that we experience changes us a little. So, over time, we can change a lot.

Hear Him

The value of consistent prayer is not that God will hear us, but that we will hear Him.

-- William McGill

The News

Be aware of 'the news' these days.

When I was a kid, I had the impression that the news could be trusted.  Other things, maybe not so much, but at least there was something called 'the news' and it was pretty close to the truth.

Or, so it seemed....

Whenever there is motive behind news (a light-hearted example), especially when it is tied to ratings ($$), there is likely a skewing effect involved.

Skewing, in this context, seems like a tendency to see more of one side of things than another, including a temptation to simplify complexity — for a reason or purpose.

Each of these elements can be effectively be used to leverage news.

So, the question can't be avoided; what, in fact, is 'the news'?

Visual: HooDoos

Visual - “HooDoos”

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

Why is this so mesmerizing?  It is because it looks like something more than just what it is?  ...more of this here.

Can't See From The Center

...out on the edge you can see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

-- Kurt Vonnegut

Just One Thing

Nothing is just one thing.

Or, perhaps better, no thing is just one thing.

In order to develop understanding, there seems to be tendency within us to try to determine what something is. Often we do this with the assistance of determining what something isn’t.

Either way, we try understand it and then we try to maintain that understanding of it. Because it is more effort to reconsider things. But, herein lies the problem. No thing is just one thing. Each thing is actually many things.

A rock is...a rock. But, when put in a puddle, a rock is also a stepping stone. Or, it may also be a weapon, jewelry, an impediment, or....

So, it can be a misplaced notion to think of something as just one thing.  In fact, in can be hurtful to do so.  In fact, it could be really helpful to see something for more than just what it appears to be.

...really helpful, even, when considering people, who also aren't—despite our tendency to label them—just one thing.

LT: Conceal the Truth

If our leaders seek to conceal the truth or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom.

-- Rex Tillerson


 ...consider the relationship between truth and freedom.

What If: Wasn't There

What If...because something was so big:

You thought something you couldn't see, wasn't there.

Get A Lot Closer

Instagram: bobgoff

For a long time, I saw Jesus from a distance and thought we'd met...What I've come to realize is if I really want to 'meet Jesus', I have to get a lot closer to the people He created.

-- Bob Goff

The Mind Is a Difference-Seeking Machine

"A father and his son were in a car accident. The father dies at the scene. The boy, badly injured, is rushed to a local hospital. In the hospital, the operating surgeon looks at the boy and says, 'I can’t operate on this boy. He’s my son.' How can this be if the father just died?"

Continue here for the answer from a fascinating discussion on the mind....

Grasses

Poem for the week -- “Grasses”:

Who
would decry
instruments—
when grasses
ever so fragile,
provide strings
stout enough for
insect moods
to glide up and down
in glissandos
of toes along wires
or finger-tips on zithers—
   though
   the mere sounds
   be theirs, not ours—
   theirs, not ours,
   the first inspiration—
   discord
   without resolution—
who
would cry
being loved,
when even such tinkling
comes of the loving?

-- Alfred Kreymborg

Poetry can be such an alternate way of knowing, can’t it?  And, what it can speak to — my, oh my!

Trust Emerges

Trust emerges when we have a sense that another person or organization is driven by things other than their own personal gain.
​
-- Simon Sinek

Spin Class & the Flood of Emotion

Towards the end of 'spin class' this morning, I was flooded with emotion.  This has happened before, when physical exhaustion is in play.  But, today it happened as we finished up when they played a song that my daughter used to sing — with a blinding mixture (tears) of tenderness and strength.

She left yesterday, to live in Colorado.

What exactly is it that I am feeling?  Is it sadness? Is it change? Is it an emotion that often comes along with change?

Words seem unusually thin right now; they evaporate over what I feel.

I am glad for her; for her courage, for the stability from which she can 'go'.
I will miss her — her presence, her singing in the shower, her spontaneous laugh, her magnetism to those around her, the way she even pursues me at times.

I don't want her to stay home. But, there is a sense of losing something — a being a part of her daily existence, of hearing & knowing about her goings-on.

Fear is not her primary driver. She assumes things relationally — we want to be around people who assume (in healthy ways) relationally, don’t we?

She, like each of our kids — each in their unique ways, anticipates me (I don't feel that from very many people any more):

She knows me.
She listens to me.
She talks to me.
She treats me like a human-being, not a role.

I feel connected to her, like I do with all my kids.

Will that change? Yes.
Will it be better? I suspect it will be; growth usually is.

You know it when you’re around someone who draws you to be your better self.

I feel good emotion around people like that...like good waters to spin in.

LT: Cynical

Culture is not what anyone says, but what everyone understands.

Nothing makes people in organization more cynical than when a leader says one thing and does another.

-- Fred Kofman​

Comforts of Approval

I’ve noticed...that I need to rely less on the comforts of the approval of others.

Dynamic

Faith is dynamic. This may be one of its most basic ingredients. To say that it doesn’t change misses a core element of faith, because faith is something that grows.

Public Intellectuals

After ten years as a national correspondent, Ta-Nehisi Coates is leaving The Atlantic. In a memo to his staff, Coates’s editor Jeffrey Goldberg explained that “the last few years for [Coates] have been years of significant changes. He’s told me that he would like to take some time to reflect on these changes, and to figure out the best path forward, both as a person and as a writer.”

Coates’s writing for The Atlantic in “The Case for Reparations” and “My President Was Black”—along with his books—has shaped our national conversation on race. Although he's been surprised to find himself famous, his departure from The Atlantic is about much more than unease with sudden fame. Instead, it reflects a growing crisis for public intellectuals in the digital age.

We’re forced to ask: Is our hyper-connected culture driving to extinction the most thoughtful among us? Put otherwise, are the conditions of our times intemperate to the work of public thinkers like Coates?

...

Coates fits the description, even if he rejects the moniker. In an interview with podcast host Krista Tippett at the 2017 Chicago Humanities Festival, he explained his particular hesitations with being a public intellectual. First, he wants to demarcate the boundaries of his expertise. “One of the things that annoys me is that people act like they know everything,” he told Tippett. “You don’t know. Be clear about what you know and what you don’t.” Second, he rejects the activism expected of the public intellectual. “I’m a writer. I prefer solitude,” he explained, speaking of his preference for a certain “distance from the struggle.”

With these statements, Coates put his finger on two key concerns: It’s not simply the haste with which public intellectuals—including Christian thought leaders—are asked to speak, it’s also the breadth of their expected expertise.

...

In the context of our finite humanity, the work of public intellectuals is by nature “creaturely” work: limited in scope, limited in effect. Ta-Nehisi Coates is only one of many public figures struggling to live within these boundary lines. In knowing his own limitations, he can demur, as he did at the Chicago Humanities Festival, on questions of the “single most important legal challenge facing us in the next five to ten years” or the most reliable pedagogical methods for teaching history accurately. “I don’t know,” Coates responded. For a man (however wistfully) dismissive of Christian faith, his answer is perhaps the most Christian of responses.

As believers, we affirm one of the paradoxes of the human condition put this way by G. K. Chesterton: We are “chief of creatures” but creatures nonetheless. We are called to do good work courageously and faithfully, and part of our courage and faithfulness involves admitting the responsibilities that do and do not belong to us.  Read the rest here...

-- Jen Pollock Michel

Visual: Details

Visual - "Details"