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.  
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-- 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.
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-- Simon Sinek

...a helpful reminder for leaders.

Something Is Wrong

I've noticed...when the means becomes the end, something is often wrong.

Call To Discover

A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes, but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and, having found out what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.

-- Ernest Hemingway

Referring to Hemingway...

So whether he was writing about an old fisherman on small boat in the ocean or a Spanish bullfighter, he communicated the realities he’d found. I was struck by how his comment also applies to pastors, whose call is to discover God's truth and the realities of the gospel and God’s kingdom, and to present them in ways that allow listeners and observers to experience that truth .

-- Marshall Shelley

Perfectionism

Most people think of philosophy as a system of ethics or an explanation of the purpose of life, so they miss its most practical aspects. Ancient philosophy was a way to create mental clarity — to clear the mind of what psychologists today refer to as cognitive distortions.

Epictetus, the Stoic slave-turned-philosopher, told his students that the place to “begin in philosophy is this: a clear perception of one’s own ruling principle.” He meant that people became philosophers when they began to question what guides their thinking and analyze their thoughts. Epictetus wanted to help his students break out of the exaggerated thinking patterns that have a destructive impact on the life of the thinker. Patterns like negative self-labeling, catastrophizing, disqualifying the positive, emotional reasoning, and other cognitive distortions.

Today, one of the most common destructive thought patterns is all-or-nothing thinking (also referred to as splitting). Examples of this include thoughts like:

If you’re not with me, you’re against me.
He/She is all good/all bad.
Because this attempt wasn’t a complete success, it is a total failure.
In other words, perfectionism.

We often hold up perfectionists as models, but psychologists know that this sort of extreme thinking is associated with depression and frustration. It’s a miserable, unproductive way to live. How could it not be? Perfectionism rarely begets perfection, or satisfaction — only...continue here.

-- Ryan Holiday

Visual: Patient

Visual - "Patient"

St Anne's Catholic Church - Mackinac Island, MI

Enter With Thanksgiving

Enter His gates with Thanksgiving.

-- Psalm 100:4

Six Words

Instagram: bobgoff

Someone once asked me what I would write if I only had six words for my autobiography.  Here's what I came up with:  What if we weren't afraid anymore?

-- Bob Goff

What would your Six Words be?  I'm working on mine....

LT: Suspicious

When you lead from a position of fear and control, people become suspicious.

What If: Only Capacity That Really Grows

What If...the only capacity that really grows as we age is the capacity to increasingly carry the tension of this world...by releasing it to God.

Oh, and speaking of being awake....

Awakening

Awakening is the expression of that grace in which we see through our apparent separation and notice that we are already one with divine Presence and with all that is. All that is missing is awareness.

-- David Benner

Hey, it's snowing! I gotta go...for a run.

Dear Daughter: Leave When You Are Not Valued.

Dear Daughter,

Unfortunately, in life there are times you will not be valued. Do not stay where you are not valued. Do not waste time in self-pity because someone did not value you. Your value, your worth, comes from your heart, not from someone else.

Today you were rejected by someone. Your heart felt broken, it was not. You even trusted the person who did not value you. They led you to believe they valued hard work, passion, off-season dedication, and attitude. They led you to believe these qualities were important to them when in fact to them they are not. Your heart hurts because you believed the words of someone who let you down. You are better leaving when you are not valued.

It is ok and normal to grieve when you close a chapter in your life and start another. Do not confuse self-pity for grief. Grief is part of celebrating what was joyful and good, grief is sadness to saying good-bye, grief is leaving to move onto the next journey. Self-pity is subjecting yourself to another person’s power. Self-pity is allowing imperfect people’s errors to consume your energy. Continue here....

-- Sara Johnson

I feel increasing aware that nearly all positions have some merit and that they are often mixed with other things, too.  In this case, I like admonition to consider the source of value, especially under the circumstances involved.  But, I'm not sure leaving every time you feel you aren't, is the best advice. 

Each situation is different and perhaps that is the point.  Knowing that something might be helpful but that it also may not be in every situation is, too.

Sometimes

Poem for the week -- "Sometimes":

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

-- Mary Oliver

There really isn't enough space to record everything that is significant or even good. So what should we do with this limitation? Get better at selecting what is worth recording? Or, just get closer to your version of it and tell that.

We Will Transmit It

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it — usually to those closest to us.

-- Richard Rohr

Speaking From Power or Freedom

How often do we say what we say when we feel we have the advantage when saying it? In other words, if we didn't feel we had some basis for proving that we are right (and that the other is not), would we just not say it (if there's nothing to be gained)?

Speaking intentionally from a position of power, especially as a premise, can be a dicey proposition.

So, what would the opposite look like?  I'm guessing it's much closer to speaking from a position of freedom — not from one of imposing something, but rather from a position of true humility, curiosity, and wondering.  The effect of which is the more desirable one of inviting another person towards something, rather than trying to control them with power.

LT: Striking Example

On leadership:

Yahoo! — a striking example of not listening, not understanding, and not being interested in changing.
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-- Fred Kofman

Few Things Are Like Pain

I've noticed...there are few things that get my attention like pain.

...which can be a giver of the many gifts that awareness brings.

Why Christian?

Instagram: bobgoff

Jesus doesn't turn people into Christians.  He turns them into love.

-- Bob Goff

The Perils Of Pushing Kids Too Hard, And How Parents Can Learn To Back Off

On New Year's Eve, back in 2012, Savannah Eason retreated into her bedroom and picked up a pair of scissors.

"I was holding them up to my palm as if to cut myself," she says. "Clearly what was happening was I needed someone to do something."

Her dad managed to wrestle the scissors from her hands, but that night it had become clear she needed help.

"It was really scary," she recalls. "I was sobbing the whole time."

Savannah was in high school at the time. She says the pressure she felt to succeed — to aim high — had left her anxious and depressed.

"The thoughts that would go through my head were 'this would be so much easier if I wasn't alive, and I just didn't have to do anything anymore.' "

Looking back Savannah, now 23, says the pressure started early.

She told us her story as we sat at the kitchen table of her childhood home in Wilton, Conn., a wealthy community near New York. Her dad commutes to the city where he works in finance.

From the outside, Savannah's life may have appeared picture-perfect: two well-educated, loving parents; a beautiful home; siblings and lots of friends.

From an early age, Savannah says, she was considered one of the smart kids, and when she arrived at Wilton High School, she was surrounded by many other high achievers. Lots of kids take a heavy load of Advanced Placement and honors courses. They play varsity or club sports and are involved in lots of extracurricular activities.

But by sophomore year, the high expectations began to feel like a trap. Like many kids at her school...continue here.

-- Allison Aubrey, Jane Greenhalgh

Visual: Fall Tree Of The Day, 2018

Visual - "Fall Tree Of The Day, 2018"

Warsaw, IN

Autumn is like a second Spring when every leaf is like a flower.

-- Albert Camus

Hate

Hate is just a bodyguard for grief. When people lose the hate, they are forced to deal with the pain beneath.

​-- Sarah Fields

Religious People Try To Control What You Think

Why does it seem like religious people often try to control what you think?

OK, it's not just religious people...makes me wonder when I'm being 'religious', in this way.

Why Women Leaders Are Outperforming Men

Women leaders:

• place a high value on relationships,

• have a bias for direct communication rather than following the chain of command,

• put themselves at the center of the people they lead,

• are comfortable with diversity, and

• are skilled at integrating their personal lives and their lives at work rather than compartmentalizing.

Continue here....

What If: True Color

What If...like the color of autumn leaves, our true colors aren't apparent until the end of our season of life either?

Jesus Has This Effect On Dead People

This week out at the prison Bible study we were studying the healing of Jairus' daughter in Mark 5.

Casey was discussing the story, sharing his observations, and while he was sharing he said this:

"Jesus has this affect on dead people."

Casey was connecting the raising of Jairus' daughter with the healing of the woman with the issue of blood.

Both women are dead, one physically, the other socially and ritually. Jesus comes into contact with both, bringing...continue here.

-- Richard Beck

“She Really Thinks For Herself”

Megan Phelps-Roper didn't start "thinking for herself" -- she started thinking with different people.  To think independently of other human beings is impossible, and if it were possible it would be undesirable.  Thinking is necessarily, thoroughly, and wonderfully social.  Everything you think is a response to what someone else has thought and said.  And when people commend someone for "thinking for herself" they usually mean "ceasing to sound like people I dislike and starting to sound more like people I approve of."

This is a point worth dwelling on.  How often do we say "she really thinks for herself" when someone rejects views that we hold?  No: when someone departs from what we believe to the True Path our tendency is to look for bad influences.  She's fallen under the spell of so-and-so.  She's been reading too much X or listening to too much Y or watching too much Z.  Similarly, people in my line of work always say that we want to promote "critical thinking" -- but really we want our students to think critically only about what they've learned at home and in church, not about what they learn from us.

-- Alan Jacobs, How To Think

Playlist: 11 Weeks

Poem for the week -- "Playlist: 11 Weeks":

1. lush field of shadows, static
    hush and radial itch, primordial

2. goo of the sonogram's wand
    gliding across my belly

3. my daughter blooming
    into focus, feathered

4. and fluttering across the stormy
    screen, the way it rained

5. so hard one night in April
    driving home from the café in Queens

6. where we’d eaten sweet tamales
    I thought we might drown

7. in the flooded streets
    but we didn’t and I want to say

8. that was the night she was conceived:
     husk and sugar,

9. an apartment filled with music,
    hiss of damp clothes

10. drying on the radiator,
      a prayer made with a record’s broken needle

11. to become beaming
      and undone.

-- Kendra DeColo

Think We Know

The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions.

-- Madeleine L’Engle