Visual: Details

Visual - "Details"

What You Believe

You don't become what you want, you become what you believe.

-- Oprah Winfrey

This strikes me as profound as it is frightening.

Wait for the Question

Wait for the question.

In other words, there comes a point where answering a question before it has been asked is no longer helpful.

LT: How Leaders Develop Their Grit

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Leaders are people who grow from their experiences.

What If: Description vs Prescription

What If...the nature of truth is more description, than prescription? What all would that change, or shift?

If this is true, how would we understand truth differently?  How we would view a source of truth, like the Bible, differently?

To me, this only enhances the truth of truth; the power of it, because of what it is, not just what it should be.

Relationships of Meaning

Big-heartedness always draws close to the other, always draws the other close. Francis of Assisi, Benedict, Dorothy Day, Jean Vanier—like Jesus himself—draw people naturally into relationship. And the hunger of the human heart that God put in us is not just for casual and recreational relationships. We long for relationships of meaning. We long to be connected, for healing, for vocation, and for mission. . . .

Our tradition suggests that it is very difficult to live a life of integrity apart from the support, encouragement, witness, challenge and celebration of a community. Community is, if you will, the medium in which so many other important things of the Gospel can happen. Community is an engine for peace, it is fuel for justice. We are made for each other. As a species we have always known we could not survive, could not flourish without each other. Whatever is to prosper, grow, or multiply will only happen with the nourishment of people who are for each other in a significant way. . . .

-- Jack Jezreel

A good reminder for me these days.

Cooperation Over Competition

In nature, headlong growth and all-out competition are features of immature ecosystems, followed by complex interdependency, symbiosis, cooperation, and the cycling of resources. The next stage of human economy will parallel what we are beginning to understand about nature. It will call forth the gifts of each of us; it will emphasize cooperation over competition; it will encourage circulation over hoarding; and it will be cyclical, not linear.

-- Charles Eisenstein

What We Need Is Here

Poem for the week -- “What we need is here”:

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here. 

-- Wendell Berry

The earth and heavens tell us everything we need to know.

Cannot Face

When humans cannot face and embrace the insecurities inside themselves, they project these fears outwardly, hating others instead of changing themselves.

-- Richard Rohr

Drifting or Pursuing

I try to remind myself occasionally to 'check in' with myself, to see if what is moving in my life is due to what I am pursuing or to just drifting.

LT: Don't Be A Leader

If you want to make everybody happy, don’t be a leader. Sell ice cream.

-- Jon Acuff

Only Thing You Can Do

I've noticed...the only thing you can do about the future is be present in the present.

In other words, nothing can prepare for tomorrow quite like today.

Mess With Our Heads

Instagram: bobgoff

God doesn't allow things to happen to mess with our heads; He uses these circumstances to shape our hearts.  He knows difficulties and hardship and ambiguity are what cause us to grow because we are reminded of our absolute dependence upon Him.

-- Bob Goff

Ecosystem: Integral Parts

. . . a shift of emphasis away from means towards ends; away from economic growth towards human development; away from quantitative towards qualitative values and goals; away from the impersonal and organisational towards the personal and interpersonal; and away from the earning and spending of money towards the meeting of real human needs and aspirations. A culture that has been masculine, aggressive and domineering in its outlook will give place to one which is more feminine, cooperative and supportive. A culture that has exalted the uniformly European will give place to one which values the multi-cultural richness and diversity of human experience. An anthropocentric worldview that has licensed the human species to exploit the rest of nature as if from above and outside it, will give place to an ecological worldview. We shall recognize that survival and self-realisation alike require us to act as what we really are—integral parts of an ecosystem much larger, more complex, and more powerful than ourselves.

-- James Robertson

Visual: From Above

Visual - "From Below"

...or "From Above"

Foster Falls, Tennessee

What We Say About Other People

What we say about other people says more about who we are than who they are.

-- Cory Booker

Are Ideas Just Interesting?

Ideas are interesting.

Interesting isn't bad; it's just not enough. Without something more, they just seem to melt into the great expanse of information. When do ideas seem more real? What makes them engaging?

Ideas need to be something that you can touch or that touches you. They have to make a difference somehow — to address a why, a where, a how, or a who. They have to meet something on the ground, to meaningfully touch someone.

Otherwise, ideas are, perhaps, just interesting.

LT: Leaders Do Not Get People To Believe In Them

"Leaders do not get people to believe in them, leaders find ways to get people to believe in themselves."

What If: Confidence

What If...because of your perception:

the only person who didn’t have confidence in you, was you?

Our Insurmountable Obstacle

In the end, doubting that we can change becomes a denial of God’s creative power, and our only insurmountable obstacle.

-- Mother Teresa

God Never Changes?

There are things that don't change, thank God. Like His faithfulness, His love, etc.

...but, there are many things about God that do change.  In some ways, He has been and is adapting to us all the time (look at history and how He has revealed himself along the way).

The problem is where I impose my ideas about changelessness, especially about God, onto my life (or the lives of others).

Before Dawn

Poem for the week -- "Before Dawn":

You ask me again this evening
          at what price

Does wisdom finally come
          in any life

Or at any age & now I think
          I know

The answer swear to me that
          when I tell you   

It is only everything you believe 

You will travel as far from this city
          as you can before

The streets grow smeared & lost
          to the smug

& promiscuous coming of the day

-- David St. John

Wisdom, at the price of...'everything you believe' — who would have guessed?  But, it seems not unlikely to be true.  And, it is not as disappointing as we thought it would be, because what we believed in was a lot more about ourselves than we realized and because what we can still yet believe in is far bigger (and better).

Building > Fighting

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. 

-- Socrates

Fit In

Instagram: bobgoff

We're not supposed to fit in; we're meant to change.

-- Bob Goff

LT: Embrace Uncertainty

We crave explanations for most everything, but innovation and progress happen when we allow ourselves to embrace uncertainty.
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-- Simon Sinek

Good leaders are not only willing to do this, but have become eager to.

A Little Frightening

I'm a little shocked as I continue to notice what creatures of habit we humans are. I mean, we are seriously habitual -- in how we think, what we do, how we see.

I'm human in this way, too.  And, it's a little frightening.

Transforms Our Actions

When love transforms our actions in a way that Christ is “represented”— then we become mothers, sisters and brothers of Christ. This birthing of Christ in the life of the believer . . . is a way of conceiving, birthing, and bringing Christ to the world in such a way that the Incarnation is renewed. It is making the gospel alive.

-- Ilia Delio

Paradox of Money

We are faced with a paradox. On the one hand money is properly a token of gratitude and trust, and agent of the meeting of gifts and needs. . . . As such it should make us all richer. Yet it does not. Instead, it has brought insecurity, poverty, and the liquidation of our cultural and natural commons.

-- Charles Eisenstein

Visual: Sky-ter

Visual - "Sky-ter"

Warsaw, Indiana

Not Fears

May your choices reflect our hopes, not your fears.

-- Nelson Mandela

Bad Habit

The bad habit of no longer asking questions reveals perhaps a rather terrible assumption: we think we already know enough...more often than not, a significant mistake (not to mention, a kind of arrogance).