Same Spot

I've noticed...I try to consistently put certain things in the same spot—otherwise I end up wasting too much time and energy trying to find them.

Common Identity

It is a first-class human tragedy that peoples of the earth who claim to believe in the message of Jesus whom they describe as the Prince of Peace show little of that belief in actual practice.

-- Gandhi


The primary problem is that our identities are too small. We tend to rely most on our smaller, cultural identities and ignore our larger, common identity as members of the body of Christ. . . . Indeed, adopting a common identity is the key to tearing down cultural divisions and working toward reconciliation.

-- Christena Cleveland

Everyone's Approval

Instagram: bobgoff

If our lives are filled with purpose, we won't be distracted looking for everyone's approval.

  -- Bob Goff

When will we learn?

When will we learn?

It’s essential that we make new mistakes.

We don’t make nearly enough of them. Not enough original effort, not enough generous intent, not enough daring in search of something better.

But at the same time, we need to stop making the old mistakes again and again. What did you expect to happen when you did the very same thing that didn’t work last time?

For some of us, it’s more frightening to do something new than it is to retry something that failed.

-- Seth Godin

Not Trying To Convince Them

The art of loving each other well is letting people be where they are and not trying to convince them to be where I am.

-- Kathy Escobar

Doesn't Matter

We should never believe that what we are doing right now doesn't matter.

Even if it looks like no one is being impacted, I am.

At any given moment, I may be asked to respond to something, to give something, to be something—whether I was expecting it or not.  I never know who that may be or what all may be going on for that person or group.  It could be someone I know or someone I've never met—either way, my assumptions about my current state impact my availability to myself and, thereby, to others.

Nothing is ever not happening, in me or someone else.  It is important to know that we are always inter-connected to everything else—whether we have current, direct evidence of that or not.

All We Have Left

We must find a purpose or cause to pursue, otherwise all we have left are our imperfections to focus on.

-- Simon Sinek

Just One Thing

I've noticed...when I am procrastinating, the best thing I can do—is just one thing.  It is often the size or scope of the whole thing that slows me down.

But, if I just do one thing—take one step; that seems to make taking the next step easier.  And, that accumulates more quickly than it otherwise would.  In other words, 3 small (one each day?) steps towards something often gets me further than waiting a week for a time when I can do the whole thing at once.  All I really need to do is just one thing—not the whole thing—just one thing.

Wisdom Frees Us

Wisdom frees us to hold our thoughts about God, life, and the universe with an open hand, rather than a clenched fist, to face our question and fears with the unflinching focus of an intrepid explorer.

-- Peter Enns

Electricity

Down By the Carib Sea (VI: Sunset in the Tropics)

'Poem for the week' -- "Down By the Carib Sea (VI: Sunset in the Tropics)":

A silver flash from the sinking sun,
Then a shot of crimson across the sky
That, bursting, lets a thousand colors fly
And riot among the clouds; they run,
Deepening in purple, flaming in gold,
Changing, and opening fold after fold,
Then fading through all of the tints of the rose into gray.
Till, taking quick fright at the coming night,
They rush out down the west,
In hurried quest
Of the fleeing day.

Now above where the tardiest color flares a moment yet,
One point of light, now two, now three are set
To form the starry stairs,—
And, in her firefly crown,
Queen Night, on velvet slippered feet, comes softly down.

-- James Weldon Johnson

Poetry says what prose sometimes can't.

Real Power of Love

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 exactly where we most need to grow. Embracing relationship as a path also gives us a practice: learning to use each difficulty along the way as an opportunity to go further, to connect more deeply, not just with our partner, but with our own aliveness as well.

By contrast, dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of love—which is to transform us. For our relationships to flourish, we need to see them in a new way—as a series of opportunities for developing greater awareness, discovering deeper truth, and becoming more fully human.

-- John Welwood

Really Teach? Do It.

The only way you can really teach well is to do what you’re saying.  Otherwise, you are mostly just telling—creating some conformity, but not the resonance that comes from true learning.  Do it with them.

LT: Feeling Used

People don't like to feel used.  Bad leaders don't recognize this.

Need To Be Needed

Ever noticed...some people seem to need to be needed?

And, if they’re not (needed), they don’t need you.

Stirs In You The Desire

It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.

-- Pope John Paul II

What is it that makes something feel alive?  Context.

Context seems to be the ingredient that makes something, otherwise just there, felt.  Take the observation above; pretty strong on its merits, but much more leveraged in the context of this:

The Secret Language of Trees

My affection for the nature of trees...just grows and grows and grows.

Visual: Burst

Visual - "Burst"

Denver, CO (photo by Makenzie)

Not Knowledge

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.

-- Albert Einstein


To leave the world a bit better, whether by healthy child, a garden patch, or redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you live—that is to have succeeded.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love Trusts You

Love trusts you.  Not naively so, either.

Love says I love you, first—before you love me back—which reveals the true nature of love, because it is possible that you won't love back.  It knows that; but, it loves anyway.  Love lets you choose...love.

And, love knows that once you've discovered this, often only after becoming aware of how deeply you have misunderstood it, you will become love itself and capable of loving others.  So, then, love grows.

This is because love trusts something deeper in another person, than the other person knows.  It has been trusted; so, it knows it can trust.  Love—trusting the deepest part of some else, even before they do.

Unauthorized Views

Unauthorized views are, in effect, punished by incomprehension.

-- Alan Jacobs, How To Think


Ever heard something like, "I just don't understand what you're saying"?  The point isn't that that shouldn't ever be possible (communication is often challenging, especially when we're in a hurry or working with complexity).  The point is, what would be the natural response to something that is not understood?  Wouldn't asking about it, being curious about it, pursuing it further...be the most natural response to something we don't understand?  Yes, it would.

...unless the person (or group) really doesn't want to understand, in the first place.  Ah, so that's when the statement above in effect.

It's just so much easier to not really think about things, isn't it?

Drop Something

I’ve noticed...when I try to carry too many things at the same time, I tend to drop something.

Still Being Created

On the whole we are not conscious of evolution, and we do not act as if our choices can influence the direction of evolution. . . . What will it take for us to realize that we are unfinished creatures who are in the process of being created? That our world is being created? That our church is being created? That Christ is being formed in us? . . . The good news of Jesus Christ is not so much what happens to us but what must be done by us. The choices we make for the future will create the future. We must reinvent ourselves in love.

-- Ilia Delio

A few years ago, I noticed a version of song lyrics referencing the Creator. It was in present tense and read, "The Creating One...". I have never forgotten it.  There is something that rings true about the notion that a creator is someone that continues to create.  And, it doesn't take much to notice that a lot of language and metaphor in the Bible (transformation, all things new, etc.) indicates that this is exactly what God is doing—has done AND continues to do.  We are participants in this creation through things like choices, influence, and love.

F-bomb

Using the f-bomb doesn't automatically make you more authentic.

The Coddling of the American Mind

The NYU Stern professor noticed something happening on college campuses in 2014. Students began protesting speakers, equating speech with violence, and calling for safe spaces. 

So he wrote a book. In The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan and his co-author Greg Lukianoff argue that Gen Zers are engaging in cognitive distortions and objecting to so many small things, they're actually making themselves weaker. Now, those problems may be graduating to the workplace with them.

There are two separate trends. One is the rise of anxiety and depression—that's happening at nearly all schools in the U.S. and Canada, as far as we can tell. Students are more fragile and easily discouraged. They expect more protection. Something really happened to kids born in 1996 and after.

Part of the problem is we began overprotecting kids in the 1990s from threats, mistakes, things that upset them. At the same time we let them on social media too young, which seems to cause many of them chronic stress about their social presentation. 

The second trend, which is not nearly as widespread, is that fragility and anxiety get converted into political demands about speech as violence.  Continue here....

-- Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff 

Bridge Called Water

'Poem for the week' -- "Bridge Called Water":

I wrote hard
on paper

at the bottom
of a pool

near a canyon
where the stars

slid onto their bellies
like fish

I wrote:

      …

I went through
the mountain

through the leaves
of La Puente

to see the moon
but it was too late

too long ago
to walk on glass.

     …

Near those years
when the house fell on me

my father told me
draw mom

in bed with
another man—

          …

From a plum tree

the sound of branches
fall like fruit

I’m older
no longer afraid

my voice like water
pulled from the well


where the wind had been buried
where someone was always

running into my room
asking, what’s wrong?

-- Diana Marie Delgado


From the author:

“In most of my poems, the structure comes last and that was the case for this one: an inverted narrative that begins with a denouement and ends with an experience of unspoken fear. The title, ‘Bridge Called Water,’ is connected to a dream I had in which on a bridge at the bottom of a canyon I met a man, who, in conversing with me, gave me an overwhelming sense of peace. However, that peace, although I did not realize this in the dream itself, was, I realized later, only attainable because I had died. The portion of the poem in which I sit with my father at a kitchen table actually took place and has stayed with me like a splinter; this poem presented me with the opportunity to take it out.”

False Life

We bury the faint crackling of our inner fire underneath other safer noises and settle for a false life.

-- David Brooks

...we're loss averse. People hate losing something we already have more than we enjoy gaining something new. 

-- Jessica Stillman

It is not only possible, but imperative, to fall through fear into love because that is the only way we will ever truly know what it means to be alive. 

-- Cynthia Bourgeault

Don't Let Not Knowing

Instagram: bobgoff

Don't let not knowing how it will end keep you from starting.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Create the Conditions

Leaders create the conditions where people choose new actions.

The choices are voluntary. They’re made by people who see a new landscape, new opportunities and new options.

You can’t make people change. But you can create an environment where they choose to.

-- Seth Godin

Nature Of Existence

I'm wondering...about the nature of existence—why have I imagined it the way I have?  What has enculturated my imagination?  What context, socially constructed influences, has shaped my understanding of existence?

It may be easy to downplay such ideas as mere contrivances, or even consider them as wrong; but, what else do we have or know without these contexts?  Good or bad, they give us what we have and are the means by which come to know anything.  Perhaps, there is more to learn from them (than there is to avoid) about the nature of existence.  After all, we really do wonder about many things, don't we?  We really don't have most of the answers.  I think it is healthy to acknowledge what we wonder about, in part, so we can do more of it.  Wonder has such a beautiful disposition built into it.

I've been reading more of Peter Wohlleben's book, The Hidden Life of Trees, this morning and perhaps this section is like some of the context of my thoughts above:

They Wake Up

When the Spirit is alive in people, they wake up from their mechanical thinking and enter the realm of co-creative power.

-- Richard Rohr

Nonviolence

What does it mean to be nonviolent? Coming from the Hindu/Sanskrit word ahimsa, nonviolence was defined long ago as “causing no harm, no injury, no violence to any living creature.” But Mohandas Gandhi insisted that it means much more than that. He said nonviolence was the active, unconditional love toward others, the persistent pursuit of truth, the radical forgiveness toward those who hurt us, the steadfast resistance to every form of evil, and even the loving willingness to accept suffering in the struggle for justice without the desire for retaliation. . . .

Another way to understand nonviolence is to set it within the context of our identity. Practicing nonviolence means claiming our fundamental identity as the beloved [children] of the God of peace. . . . This is what Jesus taught: “Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be called the sons and daughters of God [Matthew 5:9]. . . . Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors, then you shall be sons and daughters of the God who makes [the] sun rise on the good and the bad, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” [Matthew 5:44-45]. In the context of his visionary nonviolence—radical peacemaking and love for enemies—Jesus speaks of being who we already are. He talks about our true identities as if they propel us to be people of loving nonviolence. . . .

Living nonviolence requires daily meditation, contemplation, study, concentration, and mindfulness. Just as mindlessness leads to violence, steady mindfulness and conscious awareness of our true identities lead to nonviolence and peace. . . . The social, economic, and political implications of this practice are astounding: if we are [children] of a loving Creator, then every human being is our [sibling], and we can never hurt anyone on earth ever again, much less be silent in the face of war, starvation, racism, sexism, nuclear weapons, systemic injustice and environmental destruction. . . .

Gandhi said Jesus practiced perfect nonviolence. If that’s true, then how . . . did he embody creative nonviolence so well? The answer can be found at the beginning of his story, at his baptism. . . . Jesus hears a voice say, “You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased.” Unlike most of us, Jesus accepts this announcement of God’s love for him. He claims his true identity as the beloved son of the God of peace. From then on, he knows who he is. He’s faithful to this identity until the moment he dies. From the desert to the cross, he is faithful to who he is. He becomes who he is, and lives up to who he is, and so he acts publicly like God’s beloved.

-- John Dear

Visual: Layers of Life

Visual - "Layers of Life"

Bozeman, MT

Social Reconstruction

Single cases of unhappiness are inevitable in our frail human life; but when there are millions of them, all running along well-defined grooves, reducible to certain laws, then this misery is not individual, but a social matter, due to causes in the structure of our society and curable only by social reconstruction.

-- Walter Rauchenbusch

Look up when Rouchenbusch lived AND the context about which he was speaking.


The psalms remind us that the way we judge each other, with harsh words and acts of vengeance, constitutes injustice, and they remind us that it is the powerless in society who are overwhelmed when injustice becomes institutionalized. . . .

In expressing all the complexities and contradictions of human experience, the psalms act as good psychologists. They defeat our tendency to try to be holy without being human first.

-- Kathleen Norris

Where To Start

It is helpful to start with questions, especially the ones being asked.

So Little Empathy

We have so little empathy for what we haven’t experienced in bodily form, not to mention those who have.

Sometimes

I've noticed...sometimes I feel the rare, yet raw surge of life pulsing through me—everything is bright and alive.  I feel hyper-aware of the brilliance, power, and danger of being (and, I suppose, of being too much, if that is possible).  Is it chemical?  Biological?  Spiritual?  Whatever the cause, I feel quite alive.

At other times, everything seems laboriously slow, seems to hurt, feels devoid of meaning, without any legitimate prospect of hope—I feel dead.

Oddly, sometimes these rather contrasting times are not too far apart.  Other times these feel more like seasons, which will only end because they theoretically do.

Sometimes I wonder what this means.

Sometimes I don't.

Is this just me?  Are we dead and alive at the same time?

YHWH's Image

'Poem for the week' -- “YHWH's Image”:

And YHWH sat in the dust, bone weary after
days of strenuous making, during which He,
now and again, would pause to consider the
way things were shaping up.  Time also would
pause upon these strange durations; it would
lean back on its haunches, close its marble
eyes, appear to doze.

But then YHWH Himself finally sat on the
dewy lawn—the first stage of his work all but
finished—He took in a great breath laced with
all lush odors of creation.  It made him almost
 giddy.

As He exhaled, a sigh and sweet mist spread out
from him, settling over the earth.  In that
obscurity, YHWH sat for an appalling interval,
so extreme that even Time opened its eyes, and
once, despite itself, let its tail twitch.  Then
YHWH lay back, running His hands over the
damp grasses, and in deep contemplation
reached into the soil, lifting great handsful of
trembling clay to His lips, which parted to
avail another breath.

With this clay He began to coat His shins,
cover His thighs, His chest.  He continued this
layering, and, when He had been wholly
interred, He parted the clay at His side, and
retreated from it, leaving the image of Himself
to wander in what remained of that early
morning mist.

-- Scott Cairns, Recovered Body: Poems

God is in us.

% of Total US Stockmarket

...something we knew we didn't know.  What do we value?

Knowing vs Belief

I really shouldn't even frame it like this—knowing vs belief—because many parts of each concept overlap each other.

But, there are some unique things to each.

It seems to me, the difference between belief and knowing is participation.

I can claim to believe something.  But, if I don't actually participate with it, I don't really know it that well.  I mostly just know about it.

For example, regarding my relationship with my wife, I don't say, I believe she loves me.  Why not?  Because I know she loves me.

How do I know?

Three things stand out to me that embody the idea of love:

• Mercy
• Firmness (Integrity, or Strength)
• Forgiveness

It is my participation in these elements of love with Tami that have led me to know she loves me.

Perspective

Patience provides perspective.

-- Simon Sinek

Influence Us

Instagram: bobgoff

It will be people with the greatest love, not the most information, who will influence us to change.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Power & Relationships

You can tell where a leader is as a person—give them some power (or authority) and see what happens, particularly in their relationships.

Do they protect the people they serve or the institutions they represent?

Details

I've noticed...certain things about details.

Some don't tend to stick to me.  Unless there's a reason for them to adhere (like pain), it seems timing details for me tend to fall into a big pot somewhere.  They're there, they're around; but, they tend to melt into something rather indistinguishable.

On the other hand, there are also some details that seem to fasten themselves to me for years—these are often related to how something or someone made me feel.  Or, ones that make me wonder how I made someone else feel.

Self-Hatred

Self-hatred is also the hatred of God, because God and ourselves are united.

-- Thomas Keating


Just remember, on the practical level, the Christian Church was much more influenced by Plato than it was by Jesus.

-- Fr. Larry Landini

Besides, there is something (God?) about the beauty of things, like the wonder of this morning's good rain, that calls out to us not to (hate ourselves).

Till It's Gone

Visual: Pop

Visual - "Pop"

Torrey Pines State National Reserve, CA

How Bold

How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.

-- Sigmund Freud


All actual life is encounter.

-- Martin Buber

Perhaps we can not recognize the depth of either of these observations without awareness of their interdependence.

Grip

We can learn how to hold things with a firm, but also loose, grip.  An inability to do so often leads to damaging people and what they need.

Best Teachers

The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see.

-- Alexandra Trenfor

I love how my wife does this with her students—what wisdom, courage, strength!

Deep Recognition

Ever noticed...that deep growth usually only comes after deep recognition?

Can Make Him A Saint

Dismiss all anger and look into yourself a little. Remember that he of whom you are speaking is your brother, and as he is in the way of salvation, God can make him a saint, in spite of his present weakness.

-- St. Thomas of Villanova


Hope is openness to surprise.

-- Brother David Steindl-Rast

Childhood Neighbors Celebrate 7 Decades Of Love

On the lighter side—what do you hear?

A Certain Contempt

This seems fitting in light of this week's posts, especially in the context of the recent mass-shootings, because religion is often used to help bring and maintain sway to such things:

To those who need profound succor and strength to enable them to live in the present with dignity and creativity, Christianity often has been sterile and of little avail. The conventional Christian word is muffled, confused, and vague. Too often the price exacted by society for security and respectability is that the Christian movement in its formal expression must be on the side of the strong against the weak. This is a matter of tremendous significance, for it reveals to what extent a religion that was born of a people acquainted with persecution and suffering has become the cornerstone of a civilization and of nations whose very position in modern life has too often been secured by a ruthless use of power applied to weak and defenseless peoples.

It is not a singular thing to hear a sermon that defines what should be the attitude of the Christian toward people who are less fortunate than himself. Again and again our missionary appeal is on the basis of the Christian responsibility to the needy, the ignorant, and the so-called backward peoples of the earth. There is a certain grandeur and nobility in administering to another’s need out of one’s fullness and plenty. . . . It is certainly to the glory of Christianity that it has been most insistent on the point of responsibility to others whose only claim upon one is the height and depth of their need. This impulse at the heart of Christianity is the human will to share with others what one has found meaningful to oneself elevated to the height of a moral imperative. But there is a lurking danger in this very emphasis. It is exceedingly difficult to hold oneself free from a certain contempt for those whose predicament makes moral appeal for defense and succor. It is the sin of pride and arrogance that has tended to vitiate the missionary impulse and to make of it an instrument of self-righteousness on the one hand and racial superiority on the other.

That is one reason why, again and again, there is no basic relationship between the simple practice of brotherhood in the commonplace relations of life and the ethical pretensions of our faith. It has long been a matter of serious moment that for decades we have studied the various peoples of the world and those who live as our neighbors as objects of missionary endeavor and enterprise without being at all willing to treat them either as brothers or as human beings. I say this without rancor, because it is not an issue in which vicious human beings are involved. But it is one of the subtle perils of a religion which calls attention—to the point of overemphasis, sometimes—to one’s obligation to administer to human need.

-- Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited

The Means

The means justify the ends, not the other way around.

Rejecting ideas too often also means rejecting people.

Drug Of Choice

I think our drug of choice these days is knowing who we're better than.

-- Nadia Bolz-Weber

The answer is not more opinions and more talk; in the end, opinions and talk are not the same thing as action.  It’s the question that needs to change.  The question can’t remain, what do they (other people—congress, the communities of the people directly impacted, etc.) need to do about this?  

That IS the problem (drug?).  

This is not somebody else's issue—it's OUR issue.  The answer can only come from me questioning myself.  It needs to start with me—what do I need to do about this?

LT: Won't Take Responsibility

When leaders won’t take responsibility (i.e., jump into the problems surrounding their people), it is rare that the people they serve will either.

Impatience

I'm wondering...is impatience a function of being insecure?

Never Been Separate

I have never been separate from God, nor can I be, except in my mind. 

-- Richard Rohr

Visual: Forces of Nature

Visual - "Forces of Nature"

Yosemite National Park, CA

Little Use

You’re of little use to someone else (especially, but not limited to times of need), if you haven’t been taking care of your own self.

Health, of any kind, is often the result of one choice at a time (just as in unhealth).

Courage To Lose Sight

If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan.  And, guess what they have planned for you?  Not much.

-- Jim Rohn


You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

-- André Gide

Not By What We Know

Instagram: bobgoff

We're not limited by what we know, but what we can imagine.

-- Bob Goff

Many Things You Don’t Want To Do

Many things you don’t want to do are actually ways for you to get better or stronger.

Mowing The Grass

I've noticed...when I mow the grass, I sometimes complain and feel sorry for myself.

Maybe that's because I think no one will notice or hear me.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking that such things are bad.  But, I’ve been wondering if I need to do such things more often (no, I'm not referring to mowing the grass...).  Because complaining and feeling sorry for myself seems to lead me to other things—like being more honest about the impact life is having on me.  And, that seems to lead me toward compassion for the impact of life on others.  I need to feel life's impact on me; feeling things keeps me alive and attentive, to myself and to others.

I need to acknowledge the basic-ness of my humanity; that I feel things, too; that I don't live above the drama of life; that I'm fully in and fully feeling the fray of human existence.  Being human is what I need to most be.

Mowing the grass is really a first-world thing; so, perhaps it is really the physical labor that provides the opportunity, to complain AND to be more fully...human.

Have The Power

We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh. We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt. 

-- Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

Debt

"Houston, we have a problem...".

The Creative Drive

'Poem for the week' -- "The Creative Drive":

A recent study found that poems increased
the sale price of a home by close to $9,000.
The years, however, have not been kind to poems.

The Northeast has lost millions of poems,
reducing the canopy. Just a few days ago,
high winds knocked a poem onto a power line

a few blocks from my house.
I had not expected to lose so many at once.
“We’ve created a system that is not healthy

for poems,” said someone. Over the next thirty years,
there won’t be any poems where there are overhead wires.
Some poems may stay as a nuisance,

as a gorgeous marker of time.

-- Catherine Barnett


From the author:

“Thinking about literary influence, I wanted to write an ars poetica out of a day’s New York Times. I turned first to the Real Estate section, which would, I figured, be least poetic and therefore most challenging. It was a fortuitous mistake—there I found Ronda Kaysen’s thoughtful lament about the fate of trees in her New Jersey suburb; her article provided the raw material for this cento (with substitutions). I tip my hat to all of the Times reporters, to whom we are indebted for their excellent and very real reporting (along with environmentalist Mike Brick and forester John Linson, whose quotes also slip into the poem). I tip my hat to all trees, which, like poems, prove simultaneously fragile and resilient.”

Accurate Mirror

How we relate to someone we love . . . provides an extremely clear and accurate mirror of how we relate to ourselves.

-- John Welwood


We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

Generalizations

Some people seem to be easily pissed off by generalizations—perhaps because they don’t feel accurately represented by whatever is being generalized.  We live in a time when this is important to recognize because we have, in fact, over-stayed our welcome with our generalizations.

That doesn’t make all generalizations untrue (though, some truly are...untrue), it simply reveals that there are ranges to things; there is variety, there are alternatives and, yes, there are patterns that are true (generally).

LT: Questions They Ask

The quality of a leader cannot be judged by the answers they give, but by the questions they ask.

-- Simon Sinek

Often times, people in leadership roles just don't ask questions, because they don't really want to know.

Threats

I've noticed...that as they get older people tend to become preoccupied by potential threats in life.

My Work

My work is to free
myself of myself
so that You can be
born in me.

-- Meister Eckhart

A Privilege To Sleep With Someone

It's a privilege to sleep with someone.

OK, I might now have the attention of some.  It struck me the other day what a privilege it is to be able to have a relationship with someone for many years, not to mention the extent to which that is true about someone you sleep with (like a spouse) for that long, too.  Perhaps, another way to put it is, it is a privilege to love another person, especially over a long period of time.

When you consider what that involves; the vulnerability at so many levels, the risk, the imposition, the challenges, the forgiveness, the joy...loving someone is as much a wonder as being loved by someone.

Visual: Once

Visual - "Once":

Joshua Tree National Park, CA

More pics from a recent trip to San Diego here....

Not Understanding Ourselves

For the most part all [our] trials and disturbances come from our not understanding ourselves.

-- Saint Teresa of Ávila

See One's Self Pass By

How good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by! 

-- Howard Thurman

Thinking

Truth be told, there may not be that much great thinking going on—a  lot of thinking, perhaps, but not much of it great.

But, as indicting as that may sound, it usually takes a lot of thinking of one kind or another to get to great thinking, perhaps even to good thinking.

Like a river, it takes a lot of moving water to get downstream, to somewhere you haven't been before.  To see something you haven't seen before.  To think something you haven't thought before—perhaps even, something great.

Self-Imposed

So many (most?) of our fears are self-imposed.

Loyalty

Ever noticed...that those who preach loyalty often require much more of it than they are willing to provide?

And, how they often use a group of people to secure it, disguising it as loyalty to certain ideas, when it is really mostly just loyalty to them?

Tell God

Instagram: bobgoff

Each of us gets to decide every day whether to lean in or step back—to say yes, ignore it, or tell God why He has the wrong person.

-- Bob Goff

Belief Narratives

Consciously (or sub-consciously), some often try to keep people 'in' a group by constructing, and then maintaining, a belief narrative. And, often the same people try to keep others 'out' of the group by questioning or challenging what they believe (not believing the 'right' thing...that the group believes).

Using belief narratives this way is really just a way of avoiding something—like the hard work in a relationship of really dealing with the pain or the discomfort that is often involved between people, especially over time.  In that way, working on what people believe or saying (narrative) that 'they' don't believe the right (same) thing is a cop-out.  It is easier—but, it's really just avoidance, it's self-protective.

And, it certainly isn't love.  Which is a bit ironic because love is often the more compelling piece of what belief itself tends to call for.

A Skull

'Poem for the week' -- "A Skull":

is like a house
            with a brain inside. Another place
where eating
            and thinking
                         tango and spar—

At night
             you lean out, releasing
thought balloons.
             On the roof
                         someone stands ready

                         with a pin—

-- Dana Levin


From the author:

“A poem can sometimes feel like something hidden behind a door: the door opens and you are invited into something strange—maybe something confounding, disturbing—in some way that is felt, beyond intellect. The reader, the writer, tries to clothe the poem in interpretation, but such poems will not completely surrender to analysis, will prefer, always, to be naked and beyond. This is part of the intimacy of poetry, part of its stubbornness, part of its genius.”

Not How This Will End

At any given moment you have the power to say:  this is not how the story is going to end.

-- Christine Mason Miller

Women Who Fight

When men will only fight to protect their own comfort, women are left to fight for others alone.

Thank God they do.

LT: Stand Up For

Good leaders stand up for the people they lead when they don't view them simply as problems.

So Different

I've noticed...I can feel so different (physically, mentally, emotionally ...spiritually) in one part of a day than in another, not to mention one day from another.  So different, in fact, I sometimes wonder what happened.  Am I the same person, each time?

Wholiness

In very real ways, soul, consciousness, love, and the Holy Spirit are one and the same. Each of these point to something that is larger than the individual, shared with God, ubiquitous, and even eternal—and then revealed through us! Holiness does not mean people are psychologically or morally perfect (a common confusion), but that they are capable of seeing and enjoying things in a much more “whole” and compassionate way, even if they sometimes fail at it themselves.

-- Richard Rohr