Waste So Much Time

When we waste so much time with things that numb us—things that keep us from being alive to ourselves and, thereby, to those around us—we have such a false sense of living.

Purposeful Life

Instagram: bobgoff

It's easy to confuse a lot of activity with a purposeful life.

-- Bob Goff

Desperation makes us believe (act) out of a kind of panic about what people think about us, if we:

• Aren't seen as the first one connected to this (idea or person)
• Don't get in front of that (issue or problem)
• Can't be somewhere that is socially (or even spiritually) approved

How often is all our activity really just seeking credibility or respect, not to mention just plain old acceptance?

LT: Controlling vs Engaging

When it comes to leading human-beings, we already tried controlling them—what they want is to be engaged.

Good Friends

I've noticed...good friends are those who remain interested in knowing you well enough to love you by encouraging—even challenging—you to keep growing toward:

• becoming who you really are
• offering who you are to others

Expanded Receptivity

[Contemplative] practices beckon earthbound bodies toward an expanded receptivity to holiness.... Receptivity is not a cognitive exercise but rather the involvement of intellect and senses in a spiritual reunion and oneness with God.... [The] contemplative moment is a spiritual event that kisses the cognitive but will not be enslaved to its rigidities. 

-- Barbara Holmes

Snowglobe

Our 'live' snowglobe is all shook up out there.  An hour of tromping around in the woods' blanket of white-silence was still not enough to satisfy our dog, Fletcher.

Me either.

The Four Mistakes We Make When We Talk About Technology

I think the way we talk about technology is in danger of repeating a mistake. It's a mistake that we made very recently and with catastrophic consequences, so it's particularly poignant that we may make it again.

The mistake we made was in the way we talked about globalisation... It was portrayed as an unstoppable force, something that there was no point trying to object to and you were stuck in the past if you did. "Globalisation is coming, there is no alternative".

Secondly, it was portrayed as something which would have winners and losers, but that there would be more winners than losers. So the losers just need to suck it up, realise they're on the wrong side of history and adapt.

Thirdly, it was argued that globalisation would mean some things that you cared about, like national sovereignty or defending certain industries, these were things you could no longer expect to control. Read on here....

-- Azeem Azhar

Seems to me we talk about other things this way, too. Like theology....

Visual: Contradictions

Visual - "Contradictions"

Winona Lake, IN

Not By Special Exertions

The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

-- Blaise Pascal

Capable

The point isn't what you're not capable of; rather, it is what you are capable of.

Deficiencies are a given, not an indictment—let that settle in.....

The good news is that is not the point. Focus on what you are capable of becoming, rather than what you're not.

LT: Where We're Going

Leadership...is the ability to focus on where we're going, not where we're coming from.

-- Simon Sinek

MLK Day: The Day We Become Silent

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ever noticed how death seems to clarify things? So often, we only seem capable of really listening after the fact, like after someone dies...because of what they lived for.  Then we see it, for what it was.

Contagion

What is the relation of [contemplation] to action? Simply this. He [or she] who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. There is nothing more tragic in the modern world than the misuse of power and action.

-- Thomas Merton

Mentally Strong

Raising mentally strong kids who are equipped to take on real-world challenges requires parents to give up the unhealthy — yet popular — parenting practices that are robbing kids of mental strength.

Of course, helping kids build mental muscle isn’t easy — it requires parents to be mentally strong as well. Watching kids struggle, pushing them to face their fears, and holding them accountable for their mistakes is tough. But those are the types of experiences kids need to reach their greatest potential.

Parents who train their children’s brains for a life of meaning, happiness, and success, avoid these 13 things:

1. They Don’t Condone A Victim Mentality
2. They Don’t Parent Out Of Guilt
3. They Don’t Make Their Child The Center Of The Universe
4. They Don’t Allow Fear To Dictate Their Choices
5. They Don’t Give Their Child Power Over Them
6. They Don’t Expect Perfection
7. They Don’t Let Their Child Avoid Responsibility
8. They Don’t Shield Their Child From Pain
9. They Don’t Feel Responsible For Their Child’s Emotions
10. They Don’t Prevent Their Child From Making Mistakes
11. They Don’t Confuse Discipline With Punishment
12. They Don’t Take Shortcuts To Avoid Discomfort
13. They Don’t Lose Sight Of Their Values

Continue here....

-- Amy Morin

Mary Oliver: “When Death Comes”

'Poem for the week' -- “When Death Comes”:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

-- Mary Oliver


Mary Oliver, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose work, with its plain language and minute attention to the natural world, drew a wide following while dividing critics, died on Thursday at her home in Hobe Sound, Fla. She was 83.

For her abiding communion with nature, Ms. Oliver was often compared to Walt Whitman and Robert Frost. For her quiet, measured observations, and for her fiercely private personal mien (she gave many readings but few interviews, saying she wanted her work to speak for itself), she was likened to Emily Dickinson.

Ms. Oliver often described her vocation as the observation of life, and it is clear from her texts that she considered the vocation a quasi-religious one.

Given its seeming contradiction — shallow and profound, uplifting and elegiac — Ms. Oliver’s verse is perhaps best read as poetic portmanteau, one that binds up both the primal joy and the primal melancholy of being alive. Continue here....

-- Margalit Fox


Here are a couple of perspectives about Mary Oliver from other traditions:

Mary Oliver, our devotional poet

Hidden pencils, urgent warnings and instructions Mary Oliver left the Church

Most Perfectly

​Love is most perfectly displayed when we give goodness to those who disregard us, especially to those who hate us.

More Eager

Instagram: bobgoff

You'll be able to spot people who are becoming love because they want to build kingdoms, not castles.  They fill their lives with people who don't look like them or act like them or even believe the same things as them.  They treat them with love and respect and are more eager to learn from them than presume they have something to teach.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Only Hear What You Do

After a while, people only hear what you do, not what you say.

Power

Ever noticed...that those with perceived power do not seem as capable of listening to others as those who are truly powerful because they listen to others and respond with action?

Good power is used for more than protection and perpetuation of what is (fear), it is used for liberation and discovery of what could be (freedom).

Simultaneous Discovery

The genius of Jesus’ ministry is that he reveals that God uses tragedy, suffering, pain, betrayal, and death itself (all of which are normally inevitable), not to punish us but, in fact, to bring us to God and to our True Self, which are frequently a simultaneous discovery.

-- Richard Rohr

Is this not true or what?  It certainly is descriptive both of my experience and a mode and mood of God that I am so grateful for.

Snow-Happy

Snow makes me happy.

I wonder why.  At some level, it doesn't matter.  But, at another, I wonder what snow triggers within me.  I have to go out into it...not just to see it, but also to feel it.  Is this a clue to my question about it?

One of the unique beauties of snow for me is knowing that it will both leave and return—like something that can only be enjoyed in the moment, that will also come again.

Guess you know where I'll be in a few minutes....

Intellectual Humility: the importance of knowing you might be wrong

Our ignorance is invisible to us.

-- David Dunning


For every sense and every component of human judgment, there are illusions and ambiguities we interpret arbitrarily.

Some are gravely serious. White people often perceive black men to be bigger, taller, and more muscular (and therefore more threatening) than they really are. That’s racial bias — but it’s also a socially constructed illusion. When we’re taught or learn to fear other people, our brains distort their potential threat. They seem more menacing, and we want to build walls around them. When we learn or are taught that other people are less than human, we’re less likely to look upon them kindly and more likely to be okay when violence is committed against them.

Not only are our interpretations of the world often arbitrary, but we’re often overconfident in them.

Chabris says. “We’re not all-knowing and all-seeing and perfect at our jobs, so we put [the data] out there for other people to check out, to improve upon it, come up with new ideas from and so on.” To be more intellectually humble, we need to be more transparent about our knowledge. We need to show others what we know and what we don’t.

And two, there needs to be more celebration of failure, and a culture that accepts it. That includes building safe places for people to admit they were wrong.

For a democracy to flourish, Lynch argues, we need a balance between convictions — our firmly held beliefs — and humility. We need convictions, because “an apathetic electorate is no electorate at all,” he says. And we need humility because we need to listen to one another. Those two things will always be in tension.

To be intellectually humble doesn’t mean giving up on the ideas we love and believe in. It just means we need to be thoughtful in choosing our convictions, be open to adjusting them, seek out their flaws, and never stop being curious about why we believe what we believe.
​
-- Brian Resnick

This one is packed with good stuff to consider...continue here.

A prayer for the New Year

'Poem for the week' -- "A prayer for the New Year":

Grant that I may pass through
the coming year with a faithful heart.
There will be much to test me and
make weak my strength before the year ends.
In my confusion I shall often say the word that is not true and do the thing of which I am ashamed.
There will be errors in the mind
and great inaccuracies of judgment…
In seeking the light,
I shall again and again find myself
walking in the darkness.
I shall mistake my light for Your light
and I shall drink from the responsibility of the choice I make.
Nevertheless, grant that I may pass through the coming year with a faithful heart.
May I never give the approval of my heart to error, to falseness, to vanity, to sin.
Though my days be marked
with failures, stumblings, fallings,
let my spirit be free
so that You may take it
and redeem my moments
in all the ways my needs reveal.
Give me the quiet assurance
of Your Love and Presence.
Grant that I may pass through
the coming year with a faithful heart.
​
-- Howard Thurman

Invocation

'Poem for the week' -- "Invocation":

Let us try what it is to be true to gravity,
to grace, to the given, faithful to our own voices,
to lines making the map of our furrowed tongue.
Turned toward the root of a single word, refusing
solemnity and slogans, let us honor what hides
and does not come easy to speech. The pebbles
we hold in our mouths help us to practice song,
and we sing to the sea. May the things of this world
be preserved to us, their beautiful secret
vocabularies. We are dreaming it over and new,
the language of our tribe, music we hear
we can only acknowledge. May the naming powers
be granted. Our words are feathers that fly
on our breath. Let them go in a holy direction.

-- Jeanne Lohmann

Don't Think Anybody Can Grow

I don’t think anybody can grow unless he is accepted exactly as he is.

-- Fred Rogers

Wealth

As much as anything else, wealth in our society seems to be a function of public policy.

On a related note (OK, not really...), I'm super-excited about the cold & snow today—beautiful!

LT: People You Serve

When the people we serve present themselves, when they offer us their attention and their trust, we need to work to see two things:

1. Who they are. What do they fear, what do they believe, what do they need?
2. Who they can become. Which doors can we open, how can we support them, what will they leave behind?

-- Seth Godin

Development

I've noticed...you really can’t orchestrate someone else's development.

A non-formulaic mixture of external encouragement, attention-getting circumstances, and internal desire seem to shape when and how someone grows.  Respecting this mystery in others is important.

Sin

Sin is a refusal to keep growing.

-- St. Gregory of Nyssa

I would love to have talked to this guy—I think he is really on to something.

"Let's Take This Outside"

...a beautiful winter evening of hockey at Notre Dame stadium - ND vs UM.

Ten Habits Of Incredibly Happy People

We’re always chasing something—be it a promotion, a new car, or a significant other. This leads to the belief that, “When (blank) happens, I’ll finally be happy.”

While these major events do make us happy at first, research shows this happiness doesn’t last. A study from Northwestern University measured the happiness levels of regular people against those who had won large lottery prizes the year prior. The researchers were surprised to discover that the happiness ratings of both groups were practically identical.

The mistaken notion that major life events dictate your happiness and sadness is so prevalent that psychologists have a name for it: impact bias. The reality is, event-based happiness is fleeting.

Happiness is synthetic—you either create it, or you don’t. Happiness that lasts is earned through your habits. Supremely happy people have honed habits that maintain their happiness day in, day out. Try out their habits, and see what they do for you:

1. They slow down to appreciate life’s little pleasures.
2. They exercise.
3. They spend money on other people.
4. They surround themselves with the right people.
5. They stay positive.
6. They get enough sleep.
7. They have deep conversations.
8. They help others.
9. They make an effort to be happy.
10. They have a growth mindset.

Continue here...

-- Travis Bradberry

Collectively

We don’t wake up until we do it collectively.

-- Unknown

I heard this recently, but didn't get the name of the author of it.  It struck me as innately true, since so much of our of sensibilities are conditioned by the social fabric we happen to live in.

Far Greater

We are members of one another. What binds us together is far greater than what separates us... because of our inter-connectivity, what happens to the least of us happens to all of us. Whatever you do for the least of us, you do for all of us.

-- Bennet Omalu

Being Held Down

There's nothing quite like the motivation that arises from being held down.

Saturday Mornings 2.0 - Generosity of Spirit

Like last year, I am anticipating what a new year may bring.  I feel aware of my desire for the following Generosity of Spirit:

Growing my awareness and understanding,
to expand my capacity 
for wisdom and love.

From its onset, Saturday Mornings has become a way of noting a bit of this process for me.

When I first started doing Saturday Mornings, the following seemed to capture its essence for me (I think this still holds true, so I don't want to forget it):

"I've been drinking (coffee)...and writing on Saturday mornings. I don't claim much, but am willing to share some of the stuff I encounter in this wonderfully, mysterious life. I appreciate more and more simple words from an old hymn, "Strength for Today, Bright Hope for Tomorrow". What more could I really ask for than these two things? Perhaps some of my thread can be a part of our tapestry."

The next phase (2.0), it seems to me, captures the natural expansion of what this has been saying.  More than just observation, reflection, and self-discovery, I want to grow further by extending it to others, increasing my capacity for love -- something that often seems to require wisdom.

Perhaps, as each day unfolds this year, it will continue to reveal God's Spirit in me and whatever this means for what I offer the world around me.

Travels of 2018

We began in Montana and are ending 2018 in Colorado:

...with a few places in between.  I’m grateful for the opportunity and exposure these geographical travels have afforded us, not to mention those of the mind and heart.

A Power Is Coming

A power from outside is coming, a power that is able to make a new creation out of people like us, stones like us, people who have no capacity of ourselves to save ourselves. The power that is coming is not our power—not the power of our deeds or our inner strength or our spiritual discipline or our faith or even our repentance. It is God’s power that gives good deeds and inner strength and spiritual discipline and faith and repentance. We are able to repent and bear fruit because he is coming.

We cannot trust any of the powers of this world to make us children of Abraham. We cannot presume to tell ourselves we have better genes or better morals or better theology or better attitudes or better humility or better repentance. It is God who is making children of Abraham—making people new for his kingdom, making them out of stones.

This means that we are being changed. It means we are going to be weaned away from our possessions and oriented toward being everlastingly possessed by the love of God. It means that we will become less interested in receiving personal blessings for ourselves and more interested in making Christian hope known to those “dwelling in darkness” (Matt. 4:16). It means that we will become more and more thankful as we become less and less self-righteous. It means that we will gradually become less preoccupied with our own privileges and prerogatives and gradually see ourselves more and more in solidarity with other human beings who, like us, can receive mercy only from the hand of God and not because of any human superiority.

These changes have political consequences as well as individual ones. Repentance will mean seeking after the good of all, not just the comforts of a few, and the knowledge of the coming of the Lord means that there will be hope—in the light of his power—of his intervention in the affairs of nations, that the efforts of the peacemakers will somehow, miraculously, be blessed.  Continue....

-- Fleming Rutledge

To What Degree?

To what degree will I proceed in something I believe, when others appear not to be interested?
To what degree will I proceed in advancing something I believe in, when others do not accept it?
To what degree will I proceed in doing what I believe when other people resist it?
To what degree will I proceed when others resist me because of what I am doing?
To what degree will I proceed when others reject me because I proceed?

I began 2018 a bit more intentionally.  I was looking to be willing to be more me and less of what others expect of me or prefer me to be.  As a result, I end 2018 with the question above -- to what degree will I...?

Departed Days

A poem as we end the year—“Departed Days”:

Yes, dear departed, cherished days,
   Could Memory’s hand restore
Your morning light, your evening rays
   From Time’s gray urn once more,—
Then might this restless heart be still,
   This straining eye might close,
And Hope her fainting pinions fold,
   While the fair phantoms rose.

But, like a child in ocean’s arms,
   We strive against the stream,
Each moment farther from the shore
   Where life’s young fountains gleam;—
Each moment fainter wave the fields,
   And wider rolls the sea;
The mist grows dark,—the sun goes down,—
Day breaks,—and where are we?

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

As we begin another segment of time, where are we?  Where am I?

To answer this question, I must be willing to ask what is going on around me?  What is going on within me?  How are the two related?

Don't Want To

We don’t want to let go of the past because that is how we learned how to live and be who we are.

-- NPR interview

Can't Be New Creations

Instagram: bobgoff

We can't be new creations if everything stays the same.

-- Bob Goff

Christmas in the Heart

Christmas in the Heart

The snow lies deep upon the ground,
And winter’s brightness all around
Decks bravely out the forest sere,
With jewels of the brave old year.
The coasting crowd upon the hill
With some new spirit seems to thrill;
And all the temple bells achime.
Ring out the glee of Christmas time.

In happy homes the brown oak-bough
Vies with the red-gemmed holly now;
And here and there, like pearls, there show
The berries of the mistletoe.
A sprig upon the chandelier
Says to the maidens, “Come not here!”
Even the pauper of the earth
Some kindly gift has cheered to mirth!

Within his chamber, dim and cold,
There sits a grasping miser old.
He has no thought save one of gain,—
To grind and gather and grasp and drain.
A peal of bells, a merry shout
Assail his ear: he gazes out
Upon a world to him all gray,
And snarls, “Why, this is Christmas Day!”

No, man of ice,—for shame, for shame!
For “Christmas Day” is no mere name.
No, not for you this ringing cheer,
This festal season of the year.
And not for you the chime of bells
From holy temple rolls and swells.
In day and deed he has no part—
Who holds not Christmas in his heart!

-- Paul Laurence Dunbar

Waiting Together For Wholeness

The disruption caused by God's coming and our alienation is too great for us; we cannot bear it alone. And so we gather together to light a candle in this fearsome time. We come here to find others who know something about darkness and yet dare to look for the light. We come here to wait together. The church might best be defined as the community of those who wait, who remember their losses, acknowledge their failures, their suffering, and their confusion, and yet continue to look for wholeness.

-- Ellen F. Davis

Christmas Eve Hike

We did our family Christmas Eve hike—this time to the top of Mt Herman:

What Is Truly Amazing

What is truly amazing about the Christian faith is the idea that God made the universe—from quarks to galaxies—but at the same time cared enough about us to be born as a human being, to come down, to die and be crucified in the person of Jesus, and to bring forgiveness and new life to broken people.

-- Jonathan Feng

Like those hearing the good news in Matt 2, I am amazed at the incarnation of God—that blows my mind, not to mention my broken reality.

Uniting Through Traditions

Descent

In the true Spirit of Christmas, 'Poem for the week' -- "Descent":

They sought to soar into the skies
Those classic gods of high renown
For lofty pride aspires to rise
​But you came down.

You dropped down from the mountains sheer
Forsook the eagle for the dove
The other Gods demanded fear
But you gave love

Where chiselled marble seemed to freeze
Their abstract and perfected form
Compassion brought you to your knees
Your blood was warm

They called for blood in sacrifice
Their victims on an altar bled
When no one else could pay the price
You died instead

They towered above our mortal plain,
Dismissed this restless flesh with scorn,
Aloof from birth and death and pain,
​But you were born.

Born to these burdens, borne by all
Born with us all ‘astride the grave’
Weak, to be with us when we fall,
​And strong to save.

-- Malcom Guite

To Be Authentic

To be authentic is to be at peace with your imperfections.
​​
-- Simon Sinek

Don't Let Someone

Don't let someone else talk you out of what you really want to be or do.

It’s not that you can’t ever be wrong; it’s that you forfeit the process you need to grow (even when that includes you being wrong).

LT: Hurt and Fear

Instagram: brenebrown

We desperately need more leaders who are committed to courageous, wholehearted leadership and who are self-aware enough to lead from their hearts, rather than unevolved leaders who lead from hurt and fear.

-- Brené Brown

Stop Talking

I've noticed...that knowing at times that I should stop talking doesn’t necessarily help me know when to do so.  Or, does it?

All Spiritual Disciplines

All spiritual disciplines have one purpose: to get rid of illusions so we can be more fully present to what is.
​
-- Richard Rohr

Where We Got It Wrong

In many traditions, the weeks leading up to Christmas are considered a season of self-examination and repentance. At Christianity Today, this period of reflection comes after the November online release of our complete archives, encompassing every issue of CT since the magazine first published on October 15, 1956.

This is a cause for gratefulness to God; so many articles and editorials ring true today. For example, we advocated creation care at the outset of the modern environmental movement, decades before climate change became a national conversation. Note the April 23, 1971, editorial: After arguing biblically that “to fail to respect life and all other environmental resources is to demean creation and to violate biblical principles of stewardship,” the editorial concludes with a bracing word...

There are also moments that make an editor in chief wince. Nine (mostly anti-communist) articles by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who we later learned seriously abused his power, especially in his underhanded attempts to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. and derail the civil rights movement.

And on the civil rights movement, our track record is checkered at best.

Clearly, we were naïve about the ugly realities of segregation, and how little it was or could be realistically “directed by a Christian conscience.” In that era, we consistently argued that racism would never end without the spiritual transformation of each individual’s heart. That was and remains true enough. But we were completely ignorant about the nature and stubbornness of structural injustice. We worried how “forced integration” would impinge upon the freedom of individuals (mostly, the freedom of whites) without recognizing that segregation already denied freedom to millions of African Americans.  Continue....

-- Mark Galli

I must say, I appreciate the reflection, candor, honesty, and confession this represents.  An exercise we perhaps all could benefit from doing collectively and individually.

FOR THE TIME BEING: A Christmas Oratorio

'Poem for the week' -- "FOR THE TIME BEING: A Christmas Oratorio":

A prayer from the poem:

And because of His visitation, we may no
longer desire God as if He were lacking: our
redemption is no longer a question of pursuit
but of surrender to Him who is always and
everywhere present. Therefore at every moment
we pray that, following Him, we may depart from
our anxiety into His peace.

-- W.H. Auden

Widening

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. [One] experiences [oneself] . . . as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of [one’s] consciousness. . . . Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. 

-- Albert Einstein

Know Your Purpose

Instagram: bobgoff

Everybody has a plan; know your purpose.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Many Beats One

To solve complicated business problems, many perspectives beats just one.

-- Scott Page

Seems to me this applies to leadership in any arena (not just business).

Disappointing

I've noticed...how disappointing it is to learn that my ego is alive and well.  And, that's a good thing (to be disappointed in).

A God Veiled in Time and Space but Revealed in Christ

A well-beaten path to atheism: cognitive dissonance over the church’s stand on sexual orientation and gender; outrage over pain and injustice; doubts regarding the authority of Scripture; and an embarrassing feeling that science has rendered belief in the Bible’s claims ridiculous. If there are reasonable explanations for these conflicts, why doesn’t God just show us? Why doesn’t he come out of hiding? Why doesn’t he come out of hiding and reveal himself to my child, to my friend? Or, if he has, to where can I point them? The various doubts that tripped my friend before he fell into atheism were all situated on the bedrock of the hiddenness of God. His thinking went like this: Christians say that God requires people to believe in him or they will be eternally condemned; God, if he is good, would assist people in forming that belief by revealing himself; God does not reveal himself; therefore, God is either not good, or he does not exist.

As far as many of these young adults are concerned, the burden of proof is on God. If he exists, he’s going to have to prove it.

The hiddenness of God, which was once a problem for philosophers and theologians, is now a reason for millennials and their older counterparts to reject the gospel. Christian parents and leaders can help them work through this, but they must be able to offer reasonable answers to two questions. First, why would a God who insists that we believe in him not give us more evidence—why would he hide? And second, where would he hide? Continue....

-- Shayne Looper

Wassail

Gotta try this stuff — so seasonably good heated up!  Don't even need a little bourbon to go with it, but....

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

A beautiful evening of music with The Piano Guys:



...perhaps the oldest of the carols we sing each year at Christmas.

Often Breeds

Certainty often breeds absolutes, intolerance, and judgment.

-- Brené Brown

Learn How

Before you can learn to effectively listen to others, you have to learn how to listen to yourself.

LT: Bill Clinton - George H.W. Bush’s Oval Office note to me revealed the heart of who he was

No words of mine or others can better reveal the heart of who he was than those he wrote himself. He was an honorable, gracious and decent man who believed in the United States, our Constitution, our institutions and our shared future. And he believed in his duty to defend and strengthen them, in victory and defeat. He also had a natural humanity, always hoping with all his heart that others’ journeys would include some of the joy that his family, his service and his adventures gave him.

His friendship has been one of the great gifts of my life.  Continue....

-- Bill Clinton

Impacted

I've noticed...I am impacted by stars.

Really?  Actually, yes.  My sense of existence is impacted when my ability to see the stars is reduced (even by just too much unnatural light).  Or, I could say it the other way around; I am more at rest in who I am when I consider the magnitude of what is around me, especially what is above me when I see the stars of the night sky.  I was reminded of this again early Sunday morning.

It strikes me as symbolic that the stars are most visible in the darkest part of the night.

God's Silence Isn't Indifference

Instagram: bobgoff

God's silence isn't indifference; it's engagement.  He isn't quiet because He's run out of things to say or is scared about the outcome.  It's because He already believes in me, just as much as He knows the outcome.

-- Bob Goff

The blessed angels

As much as any other season, the emerging one this time of year is rife with imagery and symbolism.  Some of it is even good!  And poetry, for me, is often the clearest way to imagine it, to re-engage (believe) in it — expressing something ineffable.

'Poem for the week' -- "The blessed angels":

How much like
angels are these tall
gladiolas in a vase on my coffee
table, as if in a bunch
whispering. How slender
and artless, how scandalously
alive, each with its own
humors and pulse. Each weight-
bearing stem is the stem
of a thought through which
aspires the blood-metal of stars. Each heart
is a gift for the king. When
I was a child, my mother and aunts
would sit in the kitchen
gossiping. One would tip
her head toward me, “Little Ears,”
she’d warn, and the whole room
went silent. Now, before sunrise,
what secrets I am told!—being
quieter than blossoms and near invisible.

-- Toi Derricotte


From the author:

“In the morning I make an espresso and sit in a comfortable chair where I can see the outside. Sometimes I’m up so early I can feel the light coming. I just listen to the air. The angels are lovely creatures to talk to. Rilke also enjoyed it! Often I can’t tell the difference between my voice and theirs.”

This feels 'Saturday Morning'-esqe to me, especially as we enter December.  Last year, I collected a number of Christmas poems, in particular, which can be found by scrolling here (along with a few other seasonal gems).

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.