Most Creative Expressions

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

-- Bob Goff

Bias

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

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

Is it inate?  Is it cultivated?

Visual: Non-Atomic

Visual - "Non-Atomic"

Tropic, Utah

Reframe Aging

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

-- Parker Palmer

Exceptional & Deficient

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

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

LT: Beyond Polarities

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

-- Richard Rohr

What If: Not About Me

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

Do Not Matter

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

God seems to care about our humanity.

Pre-Wedding Advice That Actually Helped Our Marriage

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

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

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

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

But marriage can’t thrive on secrecy and acting.

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

Read the rest here....

-- Jessica Crooke 

Untitled

Poem for the week -- "Untitled":

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

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

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

-- Jesús Castillo

Disconnected

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

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

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

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

Quit Letting

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

-- Bob Goff

LT: Fear

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

A Little + X = A Lot

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

Hear Him

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

-- William McGill

The News

Be aware of 'the news' these days.

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

Or, so it seemed....

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

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

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

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

Visual: HooDoos

Visual - “HooDoos”

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

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

Can't See From The Center

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

-- Kurt Vonnegut

Just One Thing

Nothing is just one thing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

LT: Conceal the Truth

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

-- Rex Tillerson


 ...consider the relationship between truth and freedom.

What If: Wasn't There

What If...because something was so big:

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

Get A Lot Closer

Instagram: bobgoff

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

-- Bob Goff

The Mind Is a Difference-Seeking Machine

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

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

Grasses

Poem for the week -- “Grasses”:

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

-- Alfred Kreymborg

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

Trust Emerges

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

Spin Class & the Flood of Emotion

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

She left yesterday, to live in Colorado.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LT: Cynical

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

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

-- Fred Kofman​

Comforts of Approval

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

Dynamic

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

Public Intellectuals

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

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

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

...

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

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

...

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

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

-- Jen Pollock Michel