Creating Leaders

To successfully create more leaders you must have an open mind, a small ego, a humble heart....

-- John Eades

Maintenance

​A lot of life is maintenance. There is wisdom in recognizing that life shouldn't primarily be about the reduction of work. Taking care of, caring for things, is a kind of goodness.

Not Only

​The truth of the one God—as opposed to all the divinities invented by men—is seen in Jesus Christ in the fact that he is free not only to be exalted but also to be lowly, not only to be remote but also to be near, not only to be God in himself in his majesty but also to be God outside himself as this One who is infinitely less than God....

The error of man concerning God is that the God he wants to be like is obviously only a self-sufficient, self-affirming, self-desiring supreme being, self-centered and rotating about himself. Such a being is not God.

-- Karl Barth,  Church Dogmatics IV I, pp. 417 and 422

SM Brunch 15: Punished, Racial Bias, Show, Spiritual Dimensions, and 21

Another Saturday Mornings Brunch:

In the end, we aren't punished as much for our sins as we are by our sins.

-- Nadia Bolz-Weber

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We are biased.  And, we can change.

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​We must show people how.

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Faith is resurgent, while dogma is dying. The spiritual, communal, and justice-seeking dimensions of Christianity are now its leading edge. . . A religion based on subscribing to mandatory beliefs is no longer viable.

-- Harvey Cox

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It was a joy this week to celebrate our youngest's (Makenzie) 21st birthday!  She has wonderful friends, who helped us throw her a party!

Winter Trees

Time has developed an affection in me for both the existence and idea of trees.  There are, perhaps, many 'roots' to this interest as it strikes me that they exhibit many characteristics that are among the best of things human beings can be as well.  Sometime soon, I will itemize those; among those being their resilience, pace, and brilliance.  But, for now, simply following the link to my posts on 'trees' over the years will suffice.

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Winter Trees":

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

-- William Carlos Williams

Foundational Key

​Action is the foundational key to all success.

-- Pablo Picasso

Completely Happy

I've noticed...there is a part of me that is not completely happy until everyone is. Or, putting it this way, I do not seem to fully enjoy, knowing that others are not able to enjoy what I get to enjoy.

It is almost like there is something about goodness we must all share.

Sacrifice

​The best leaders are those that understand the meaning of service, those who are willing to sacrifice for their own people.

-- Simon Sinek

Shaping

​We often presume that things are primarily about their affect on us, and then about what or who is doing that 'affecting'. I wonder if the reality is that things are more about how they shape us, than simply how they affect us.

When we enter or persist in times of discomfort, what if we could carry this likelihood with us?  Perhaps we can ask, who are we becoming through this?  It could very well be that most of the time, we cannot know the answer to this kind of thing until well down the road.  But, I do wonder what could be different if I lived with an awareness of it along the way.

Funerals

I told my wife yesterday that I love a good funeral; a bit of a strange thing to say, I'm sure. But, a healthy sense of my own mortality relieves something in me.

Some stand out to me, like such services for Harriet Decker, Elsie Eisenbraun, Kathy Abbitt, Clint Bolton.  I tend to enjoy summary reflections of things, especially lives.

The Lord is good,
  a refuge in times of trouble.
He cares for those who trust in him,

-- Nahum 1:7

​This verse was shared at a memorial service I attended yesterday.  It was presented, in part, as a summary of what the life of the deceased, Barbara Manahan, valued in her life.  It is interesting how death creates such opportunities to reflect on life.  I wonder if such things are the way the dead speak to the living, about what is important in life.

Funerals (honest ones anyway) can connect the realities of life and death, to life and death, in good ways.  They remind us that the two are not as fitted to either / or, and good / bad, as they are to both / and.  We need a deeper understanding that life and death are not competing with each other, they are working together, as parts of reality ((Jn 12:24)  They show us the connection between our humanity and the divine.  In other words, neither one of these cannot be fully experienced without the other.

Funerals are often like a 'reset' of these truths for me.  They whisper a kind of peace to me about the hope we have in the goodness of God that extends beyond our physical lives.

SM Brunch 14: Conspiracies, Unfamiliar Territory, Travel, Knowing, and U2

Another Saturday Mornings Brunch:

I am generally a skeptic when it comes to conspiracies, except when they apply to me (grin).

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​I must be willing to live, at times, in unfamiliar territory (perhaps even willing to choose it). Otherwise, I risk becoming unhealthy, even sick, from a diet of the familiar I can so naturally maintain.

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Perhaps 'the road less traveled' is not really the one others don't take. Perhaps it is really the one I don't take, the less familiar one...the one less traveled by me.

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​The first step to any goal is to know what you want.

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My son announced to me this week that he bought tickets for he and I to attend U2's concert, as part of their 'Joshua Tree Anniversary' tour, this June.  Though certainly grateful for the opportunity itself, I am even more overwhelmed by his heart towards me -- his generosity, his sensitivity, his expression of love.  Love is a humbling thing, isn't it?

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An Accounting

If you can't talk about something, you can't think about something.

-- Eula Biss

So, here's my 'Poem selection' for the week -- "An Accounting":

In this room, hours pass, a slight
corruption of each previous
allotted time block—and probably
confirm failure and humiliation,
which though not ideal, I accept
as historically accurate. I’m sick
of lifestyle music, the thing between
awe and detachment which Hazlitt
defines as adrift. I clear my throat
remind myself, doors are locked,
the ashtray half-full. Unless otherwise
noted, light falls from the television—
accompanies night, any available
other-worldly knowledge. What else?
I’m unhappy even at the edge of rivers,
conversations regarding weather,
any manner of appointment. All comfort
requires another voice. Ditto delusion.
For instance, these shadows imposed
from trees bent by wind and other forms
of predictive behavior, may or may
not contain consciousness. I’m still
working it out. A glass of water grows
warm. I have done terrible and middle
class things for money. This is not
necessarily an acceptable conversation.
Things are good. The serotonin
reuptake inhibitor fades another winter.
If there are things we need, there are
things we need less. I face the mirror
to say it again with feeling. Understand
this is me applying myself.

-- Brett Fletcher Lauer

Looking Back With Gratitude On Obama

Getty Images

This reflection on the the significance of Obama Presidency is worth listening to.  It reminds me of the importance of how what is going on around us makes us feel about life, especially for those whose starting-points in life are different than mine.  We need to see and hear others, from their point-of-view, because it helps us more accurately understand our own.

We All Deserve Styrofoam Cups

​Entitlement is so easy to spot...in others, and, not so much in ourselves. Perhaps it is a grace when our sense of it is 'forced' on us, often through circumstances that don't work for us as we would have hoped -- simple every-day circumstances like getting a certain kind of job, getting married, having a baby, etc.  When one of these is prevented, our sense of entitlement  -- whatever we believe we deserve -- is not too slowly revealed.

This may not be as much a criticism, as just a simple reality.  And, the beauty is that we can learn to let it go -- a good reminder, from Smon Sinek:

Why

​Being an effective leader starts with knowing how to inspire people — to transform individual self-interest to shared collective interest. This happens most often by clearly defining the “why” of the organization – it's the common purpose.

...people are motivated when they are contributing to something bigger than themselves — something with purpose and meaning. They derive more satisfaction when they know they belong, that they matter.

-- Gary Burnison

MLK Day: Towards Justice

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

By What We Are

How we receive him must be determined not by what he is but by what we are.

-- Father John, The Hardest Thing To Do

SM Brunch 13: Wonder, Separation, Inaccurate, Real?

More Saturday Mornings Brunch:

We often wonder, in whatever context we're in, whether what we are doing is making any real difference.  And, if what we are doing is hard, we wonder even more.  Besides, what if I am just making things worse?  This leads to another question, is it worth it? I think of the story of a friend this week, or of what it was like for the ladies in the story Hidden Figures (a movie really worth seeing, by the way), or of work I am doing with one of my employees.

One thing seems true, we should learn to not only use the current time as a means of evaluating these things.  Time has a way of deceiving us.

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As social psychologists Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson argued now almost 40 years ago in a widely cited paper, people have limited and often inaccurate introspective access to their own (let alone others’) mental processes. This means that people are often unaware of the existence of the stimulus that caused a response and frequently even unaware of the response. Instead, people use widely available and plausible causal theories to infer the causes of their own behavior. The implication: when stimuli are either not salient or are not plausible causes of the response those stimuli produce, people will be quite inaccurate in their reporting about why they behaved as they did.  Continue here....

-- Jeffrey Pfeffer

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There is something about separation that can enlighten and clarify.

What we get connected to shapes our identity, particularly our sense of ourselves. This can certainly be good. But, it also can become something else...something along the lines of my identity being distorted or lost, without that connection.

Separation can, often painfully, clarify this for us.

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Photo by Tiina Tormanen

This doesn't even seem real until you see other images from this artist.

Good Taste

When you appeal to the better nature of a specific group, you're doing something with good taste. Just barely ahead of the status quo, in sync but leaning forward.

The key understandings are:

• It is never universal. Good taste is tribal, not widespread.

• It's momentary. The definition changes over time.

• And it's aspirational. When we encounter good taste, it makes us feel as though we can and will be better.

Because it's not universal, being seen as having good taste is not up to you. It's up to the recipient. You can't insist you're right.

Good taste is an incredibly valuable skill, and you can acquire it with practice.

-- Seth Godin

Growing vs Surviving

​He who is not busy growing is merely surviving.

-- Cameron Sepah

Someone else we know, put it this way:

He who is not busy living is busy dying.

-- Bob Dylan

From the Side

I've noticed...​that it seems more and more like I have to come at things from the side.  That is, when I try to grab something straight-on...some kind of flow in me slows down or freezes up. I am wondering about what all is at work here.

Team Sport

Good leadership is a team-sport.

Divine Overdose

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Divine Overdose":

We are even more modern
we are free
not to know
pining pining
til the trees are in
their autumn beauty
who knows why
we are free
an LP of poetry
left on in the apartment
while I walk my love
to the subway
she turns to gold
in the light banking off
the ball-fields
and to have to think
of that small
pale body asleep
I return I take the stairs
3 at a time
and now my heart is sore

-- Matthew Rohrer

Speaks To God

Who one believes God to be is the most accurately revealed not in any credo but in the way one speaks to God when no one else is listening.

-- Nancy Mairs

SM Brunch 12: Bitter, From Cage Fighting to a Hut, Complacency, and Growth

More Saturday Mornings Brunch:

The sweetest things become the most bitter by excess.

-- Democritus

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Growing up, I faced pretty severe bullying. Maybe it’s because I was chubbier and had pimples on my face. Maybe I was too nice and let other kids walk over me. At 13, I was diagnosed with clinical depression, and I battled suicidal thoughts.

Luckily, I had a loving home and my parents did everything they could to help me improve my self-esteem. They encouraged me to get involved in athletics. And that’s what started me on the trajectory to professional cage fighting.  I’ve loved the sport of wrestling since the moment I stepped onto the mat. It took my focus off my struggles. I didn’t start off as a great wrestler. In fact, I was terrible. But a coach saw something in me and he never gave up. Eventually I became one of the best and won multiple state and national championships.

After graduation, I moved to the Olympic Training Center to pursue my dream of wrestling in the Olympics. In a match with a world champion, I ended up in a bad position. Rather than give him the point, I let him gut-wrench me against the mat, twisting my arm the wrong way. In a freak accident, my arm snapped like a twig...continue here.

-- Justin Wren

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It’s biologically and psychologically proven. I remember learning about it in animal behavior in college: we scan and surround ourselves with what we grew up with and know. We all do it.

You can’t change anything unless you become aware of it, accept it, and then you can take action. One of the biggest gifts of this film for me is that it made me so aware of my own unconscious biases. It was really uncomfortable, but things that make you grow tend not to happen in cozy complacency.

-- Alysia Reiner

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​Discomfort is growth. To constantly improve, and to be more resilient and adaptable, whenever there is a fork in the road, choose discomfort over comfort and you will grow.

We're used to choosing comfort. We're used to choosing the easy way. Yet all our success and growth comes from choosing the hardest and least comfortable way.

Choose the hard path. Choose something that makes you uncomfortable. If you do that every single day, you will grow every single day.

We never grow when we're comfortable.  Continue here...

-- Tyler Grey

For or Against

It seems to me that, before it's all said and done, you have to decide what you are for, rather than simply what you're against.

Inferiors

If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

-- J.K. Rowling

Never Know

You never know who your boss may be...or whose boss you will be.

What You Become

​What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. 
​
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Absence

It’s in absence, most especially, I find poems.

-- Layli Long Soldier

New Year or Another Year?

I've been thinking about a new year and the significance of such mile-markers.  I wonder about periods of time when, presumably, people did not have the benefit of a sense of time, at least the way we do now.  How was their life different because of it?  How is mine different because of my sense of time?  Last year, at this time, I had a sense of something coming.  I didn't know what it was, but I felt mindful of it.  Looking back, things did come.  Some were expected; some weren't -- but, 2016 was fulfilling...and a year of letting go.

So what about this year? How will it be marked -- as a new year or just another year?  What will it bring?

For some reason, my mind has gone to the story of David and Goliath.  There are many facets to it, to be sure.  But, one that has been sitting with me has to do with the notion of what faithfulness with the many small things of life, the things that take up a lot of time, has to do with what happens when the big things come.  I think it is likely that David moved in his big moment with Goliath the way he did because of what he learned through the much longer periods of time in his life.  The times where much smaller things were going on, where he learned to believe what he did, probably significantly shaped who he was and what he did in the big one.

When we were in Colorado over Christmas, I was struck by the passion of Tami's Dad for some of the people in the family who are really struggling with life.  He prayed for them, in a deep and groaning way.  It seemed like he thought it mattered that he did so.

What about me?  Why do I pray when I do?  Truth be told, it is often over similar things.  I wonder about the significance of being willing to pray for some of these people this year.  Would it be like the many small things that David learned to do over a long period of time?  Would it matter for who I am praying for?  Would it matter for me?  Would it matter at the moment of an unforeseen big event...because I had been choosing to regularly pray for them?

Perhaps, this year, the significance of 2017 is not because it is new.  Perhaps, the significance of it is that it is just another year...where it really matters how I do the smallest of things of life faithfully.  I think it does matter, somehow.  And, if it does, I want to do it.

2016

The last few years, I have enjoyed reviewing Saturday Mornings entries from throughout the year. Did what we wanted in the year happen?  I'm surprised at the affection I have for so many of the ideas and events that shaped the year and us.  Here is a short list of some of my 2016 favorites:

December: Living It Two Goals of Religion	June: How Big Deepest Agony
November: Leonard Cohen Dead at 82 Chicago Cubs...World Series Title	May: Enneagram, Con't Value of Vulnerability
October: Bearings The Power of A Dinner Table	April: 2nd College Graduate Tend To Flowers
September: Process of Subtraction SM Brunch 7: Damage, Getting Even...	March: Grand Canyon Hike More
August: Wholeness vs Perfection  Compassion	February: The Gates of Hope Silence
July: Saturday Mornings Brunch Compare & Compete	January: Choices Reflect Winter

It Must Ensue

Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.

-- Viktor E. Frankl

Colorado: Skiing

Another great Colorado day -- what beauty!  More pics here....

Colorado: Hiking

Clear air and blue skies at Mt. Herman, Colorado, with family:

No Matter How Familiar

No matter how familiar, initially space is so often like an unmet friend-to-be.  You have to get used to it all over again.

Evergreen

'Poem selection' for the week -- "Evergreen":

I whisper to the tree, the tree,
the murmuring Tree
“I might take action”

Is romantic
Snow sun melts into streams increasing in volume
I control with my lips

Around History. Our eyes meet. White ancient
Roar I hear stream-
Side, my invisible dress threatening

A slow death. The rest I want to carry
So I listen
For the tree, and its never quite obsolete magic.

-- Rob Schlegel

From the Author:

“‘Evergreen’ raises a lot of questions for me, in me. With an ambivalent nod to Emerson, the poem reflects my uneasy relationship with Romanticism. But the poem is also about how the imagination is like magic; it can get you into trouble, but also get you out.”

Living It

The birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it.

-- Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.”

-- Luke 2:10-11

Angels, from the realms of glory,
Wing your flight o'er all the earth;
Ye, who sang creation's story,
Now proclaim Messiah's birth:
Come and worship,
Come and worship
Worship Christ, the new-born King.

Shepherds in the field abiding,
Watching o'er your flocks by night,
God with man is now residing;
Yonder shines the infant Light:

Sages, leave your contemplations,
Brighter visions beam afar:
Seek the great Desire of nations;
Ye have seen his natal star:

Saints before the altar bending,
Watching long in hope and fear,
Suddenly the Lord, descending,
In his temple shall appear.

Lord Himself

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

-- Isaiah 7:14

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

Moving up my Christmas favorites list:

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear

O come, O come, Thou Lord of might
Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai's height
In ancient times didst give the law
In cloud, and majesty and awe

Thine own from Satan's tyranny
From depths of hell Thy people save
And give them victory o'er the grave

O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death's dark shadows put to flight

O come, Thou Key of David, come
And open wide our heavenly home
Make safe the way that leads on high
And close the path to misery

O come, Thou Wisdom from on high
And order all things, far and nigh
To us the path of knowledge show
And cause us in her ways to go

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel

Why Hope?

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

-- Romans 12:12


It doesn’t take long to look around the world, into the present darkness and evil that surrounds us, and conclude that we have little reason to hope. We all experience pain and suffering. Peace and safety are hard to come by. Injustice, sorrow, sickness, poverty and violence are all alive and well.

But The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). When Jesus stepped onto the scene, hope was made possible. The advent of Christ ushers in hope.

When we trust the work of Christ on the Cross for salvation, we are saved by faith (Ephesians 2:8). Given that hope is faith in the future tense, we, as believers, have hope, we possess it and it is ours for the taking. It is at the root of our saving knowledge, understanding and belief in Christ. And if we believe that Christ bore the weight of our sin on the cross and defeated death in His resurrection, Peter says that we are born into a living hope, a hope in Jesus’ victory on our behalf, no matter the trials and tribulations of this world.

Having been justified, we rejoice in the hope of God’s glory, even in the midst of suffering. In fact, as believers, suffering produces hope, because we know that despite our present troubles, God’s love has been poured out on our behalf in Christ. As His followers, life will be difficult, but our hope is not at the mercy of our circumstances and our perspective is not limited to what is seen, but is wrapped up in the truth of the Gospel for all eternity. We have hope and can hope because it has been given to us in Christ.

-- www.121cc.com

Emptied Himself

When ultimate glory is involved, one can do anything for its sake:

Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, 

who, existing in the form of God, 

did not consider equality with God 

as something to be exploited. 

Instead he emptied himself 

by assuming the form of a servant, 

taking on the likeness of humanity. 

And when he had come as a man, 

he humbled himself by becoming obedient 

to the point of death — even to death on a cross. 

For this reason God highly exalted him 

and gave him the name that is above every name, 

so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow 

— in heaven and on earth and under the earth — 

and every tongue will confess 

that Jesus Christ is Lord, 

to the glory of God the Father. 

-- Phil. 2:5-11

...the most beautiful hymn in Scripture?  Continue here....

Waking Us Up

God, we are sleeping:

O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight

For Christ is born of Mary
And gathered all above
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love
O morning stars together
Proclaim the holy birth
And praises sing to God the King
And Peace to men on earth

How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us, we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born to us today
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell
O come to us, abide with us
Our Lord Emmanuel

- Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem

...thank you, God, for coming to us and waking us up to you!

Spirituality is about consciousness.

-- Deepak Chopra

Coming

Perhaps in a Spirit of Advent, I found myself waking this morning looking for (wanting) something.  Perhaps it is something I want to feel, to find again.  Or, perhaps, it is something I want to know, that I haven't yet discovered.

Under the unusual blanket of cold this particular morning, it seems like a kind of silence has descended.  A silence over me, in me.

...almost like something is coming, but not quite here. And, yet, as I reflect with the benefit of several passages of Scripture, I realize that what is coming has, in another way, already come.  It is in such a silence as this that I am able to know...His coming IS.

Preparing the Heart: To Wear Our Skin

'Poem selection' for this last week before Christmas -- “Preparing the Heart: To Wear Our Skin”:

To wear our skin
is to know our frailty:
our bruises and callouses,
our sunburns and warts,
our tears and our bleeding,
our spasming backs,
and toothaches.

To pulse within our hearts
is to know our temptation
for self-promotion,
knowing our desire
to fill our own emptiness
rather than love and serve others first.

To inhabit our souls
you have humbled yourself
to pull together
our million broken pieces,
becoming the adhesive
to glue us back whole,
loving us by becoming us
as we crumble to dust.

Humble and Human, willing to bend You are
Fashioned of flesh and the fire of life, You are
Not too proud to wear our skin
To know this weary world we’re in
Humble, humble Jesus

Humble in sorrow, You gladly carried Your cross
Never refusing Your life to the weakest of us
Not too proud to bear our sin
To feel this brokenness we’re in
Humble, humble Jesus

We bow our knees
We must decrease
You must increase
We lift You high

Humble in greatness, born in the likeness of man
Name above all names, holding our world in Your hands
Not too proud to dwell with us, to live in us, to die for us
Humble, humble Jesus

We bow our knees
We must decrease
You must increase
We lift You high

We lift you high

Humble
You are humble
Make me humble like You
We lift You high

-- Audrey Assad

SM Brunch 11: The Third, Boredom, Imagination, Forgiveness, and Fear

More Saturday Mornings Brunch:

There are three things that are real:  God, human folly and laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do what we can with the third.

-- The Ramayana

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​I have heard that there is no word for boredom in ancient languages.

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Imagination is like magic; it can get you into trouble, but also get you out.

-- Rob Schlegel

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​If we don't own our mistakes, we forfeit our opportunity for forgiveness (of ourselves and from others), which is our path to healing.

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Through

The best way out is always through.

-- Robert Frost

...such a beautiful and succinct rendition of this week's posts.

Example, Not Opinion

The world is changed by your example not your opinion.

-- Paulo Ceolho

Cannot Be

Our greatest joy cannot be in being right.

More Leaders

True Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.

-- Tom Peters

Breakage

'Poem selection' for the week -- “Breakage”:

I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the
       moisture gone.
It's like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
       full of moonlight.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

-- Mary Oliver

Grateful Joy

So it's searchable:

No amount of regret changes the past

No amount of anxiety changes the future.

Any amount of grateful, joy changes the present.

-- Ann Voskamp

Alone?

​Our most natural fear is of being alone.

We will do a lot in an attempt to prevent it. We often fear change primarily because of the risk we feel of being isolated, of losing something we have. When I made a significant decision recently, this was the one thing I anticipated that felt worse, once the decision was made. In other words, this is where I went first, wondering if I'd made a bad decision, what it might cost me in terms of relationships.

But, I am not alone...and it's really something else that is going on:

The wounds to our ego are our teachers to be welcomed. They should be paid attention to, not litigated or even perfectly resolved.

Whenever we’re led out of normalcy into sacred, open space, it’s going to feel like suffering, because it is letting go of what we’re used to. This is always painful at some level. But part of us has to die if we are ever to grow larger (John 12:24).

-- Richard Rohr

Womb

Uncertainty is the womb of creativity.

-- Deepak Chopra

Change

Sometimes the only way for change to occur is to make space for it.

Attained

Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.

-- Thomas J. Watson

Seeing

I've noticed...once things become familiar, I start to see new things I hadn't noticed before.

But, I also can stop seeing things when they become familiar... because I so easily tend to see what I expect to see.

The Map

'Poem selection' for the week -- "The Map":

The failure of love might account for most of the suffering in the world.

The girl was going over her global studies homework  

in the air where she drew the map with her finger


touching the Gobi desert,

the Plateau of Tiber in front of her,


and looking through her transparent map backwards

I did suddenly see,

how her left is my right, and for a moment I understood.

-- Marie Howe

Let It Snow!

There's something nearly magical about snow....

Two Goals of Religion

Ken Wilber sees religion as having two primary functions. The first is to create “meaning for the separate self.” The second and mature function of religion is to help individuals transcend that very self.  Great religion seeks full awareness and expanded consciousness (often called “holiness”) so that we can, in fact, both give and receive in equal measure. For me, this is the simplest sign of emotional and spiritual health. Things can be both received and also let go of—exactly as it is between the three persons of the Trinity. Remember, I believe the Trinity sets the pattern for all creation and all growth into Love. Trinity is the ultimate code breaker!

Although the majority of religions and individuals remain at the first stage of creating meaning for the separate self, I continue to find people inside every religion and profession who are on the true further journey. These are the ones who have “died before they die,” who have let great love, suffering, or prayer lead them beyond their small self into the Big Self. They have let go of who they thought they were, or needed to be, to discover who they always were in God.

The second function and goal of religion, Wilber says, “does not fortify the separate self, but utterly shatters it.” Mature spirituality offers “not consolation but devastation, not entrenchment but emptiness, not complacency but explosion, not comfort but revolution.” Rather than bolster our habitual patterns of thinking, it radically transforms our consciousness and gives us what Paul calls “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).

The mind of Christ is not binary, either/or thinking. The mind of Christ can live with paradox, uncertainty, and mystery. This way of not knowing, and not even needing to know, is precisely what we mean by Biblical faith. In the first half of our lives (not strictly chronological!), we are largely not ready to understand what faith is, because we still cling to naïve beliefs and false certainties. We need them to get us started! In the first half of life we are still afraid of darkness and “the cross.”

In time, through trials, suffering, and prayer, we will allow ourselves to be broken open to the Larger Knowing that can hold everything in love, grace, and freedom.   Only at that point do we move from mere religion to the beginnings of a spiritual journey that will help us and the world.

-- Richard Rohr

The Way You Think About Willpower Is Hurting You

​Fundamentally, we give up on tasks that don’t engage us.

-- Nir Eyal

Not so long ago, my post-work routine looked like this: After a particularly grueling day, I’d sit on the couch and veg for hours, doing my version of “Netflix and chill,” which meant keeping company with a cold pint of ice cream. I knew the ice cream, and the sitting, were probably a bad idea, but I told myself this was my well-deserved “reward” for working so hard.

Psychological researchers have a name for this phenomenon: it’s called “ego depletion.” The theory is that willpower is connected to a limited reserve of mental energy, and once you run out of that energy, you’re more likely to lose self-control. This theory would seem to perfectly explain my after-work indulgences.

But new studies suggest that we’ve been thinking about willpower all wrong, and that the theory of ego depletion isn’t true. Even worse, holding on to the idea that willpower is a limited resource can actually be bad for you, making you more likely to lose control and act against your better judgment.  Continue here....

A Lot

A lot of what we got, we got from the swirling tides of culture around us. But, a lot of what we got, we also got right from ourselves...right from the middle of our own hearts.

Don't Really Matter

​Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.

-- Francis Chan

Holding On

​I used to think...that you needed to learn how to hold on tighter to what you wanted. Now I know that letting go is necessary.

Early Success

​Early success is probably the worst thing that can happen in life.

-- Satya Nadella

So?

'Poem selection' for the week -- “So?”:

So you aren’t Tolstoy of St. Francis
or even a well-known singer
of popular songs and will never read Greek
or speak French fluently,
will never see something no one else
has seen before through a lens
or with the naked eye.

You’ve been given just the one life
in this world that matters
and upon which every other life
somehow depends as long as you live,
and also given the costly gifts of hunger,
choice, and pain with which to raise
a modest shrine to meaning.

-- Leonard Nathan

How Does One Reconcile...?

​How does one reconcile these two things: that the heart is deceitfully wicked (above all things) and that God has placed His Spirit in our heart?

Prayer.

'The Game' 2016

It never really comes down to just one play...or does it?

Sooner

​The sooner you start living for something else, the sooner you will start receiving something else.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.

-- Edward Sandford Martin

www.youversion.com

Be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

-- Colossians 3:15-17

...because one could easily almost begin to vibrate at the extent of goodness we have received from God.

Thanksgiving Day is an opportunity to turn of our faces away from fear and negativity, from sorrow and loss, from control and lack, and turning toward the simple graces in which we are surrounded.

-- Wm. Paul Young

Developed

Muscle has to be developed. Every muscle, real or metaphorical, needs exercise to grow.  ...even the muscle of gratefulness.

Being Grateful

How is gratitude developed? Does it just happen?  Is it a state of being?  What are the conditions that generate our giving of thanks?

I am thankful for things like ease and comfort, but I am often the most grateful for what the hardest things in my life have taught me, given me.

Praise Song

'Poem selection' for the week -- “Praise Song”:

Praise the light of late November,
the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.
Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;
though they are clothed in night, they do not
despair. Praise what little there's left:
the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,
shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow
of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,
the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky
that hasn't cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down
behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves
that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,
Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy
fallen world; it's all we have, and it's never enough.

-- Barbara Crooker


Fall Tree Of The Day:

No Idea Where I Am Going

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

-- Thomas Merton

SM Brunch 10: Mindfulness, Change, and Dream Peace

More Saturday Mornings Brunch:

Improve your character through mindful striving or let your character worsen through negligence and obliviousness.

-- Buddha

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The human mind is a lot like the human egg, in that the human egg has a shut-off device. One sperm gets in, and it shuts down so that the next one can’t get in. The human mind has a big tendency of the same sort. According to Max Plank, the really innovative and important new physics was never really accepted by the old guard. Instead, a new guard came along that was less brain-blocked by its previous conclusions.

-- Charlie Munger

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We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.

-- Sheryl Sandberg

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