Whatever Lens

Too often we see the Bible through whatever lens we get from our culture.

-- Brian McLaren

Half of All Colleges Won't Exist in 10 Years

Clayton Christensen has predicted traditional colleges and universities are ripe for disruption, arguing online education will undermine their business models (because education is, ultimately, a business) to such a degree that many won't survive.

A principle of Christensen's theory of disruption is that technology itself is not the disruptor. For example, Netflix created a new business model; streaming video made that business model possible. As Christensen says, "Technology enables the new business model to coalesce." Technology is the tool -- not the end result.

Which is exactly what he feels is occurring in higher education. As online and "hybrid" learning continues to grow -- and as the cost of a traditional education continues to increase -- many institutions will struggle to stay in business under their current model.  

And fewer people may be willing to pay for the piece of paper they receive.  Continue here....

-- Jeff Haden

High Dangerous

'Poem for the week' -- "High Dangerous":

is what my sons call the flowers—
purple, white, electric blue—

pom-pomming bushes all along
the beach town streets.

I can’t correct them into
hydrangeas, or I won’t.

Bees ricochet in and out
of the clustered petals,

and my sons panic and dash
and I tell them about good

insects, pollination, but the truth is
I want their fear-box full of bees.

This morning the radio
said tender age shelters.

This morning the glaciers
are retreating. How long now

until the space-print backpack
becomes district-policy clear?

We’re almost to the beach,
and High dangerous! my sons

yell again, their joy in having
spotted something beautiful,

and called it what it is.

-- Catherine Pierce

Controls You

It's what you don't know about yourself that controls you.

-- Marcel Schwantes

Preoccupied?

Are we emotionally available or emotionally preoccupied?

LT: Enduring

I believe an enduring [organization] unites partners through an emotional connection to a powerful mission, and demonstrates values through action. I believe an enduring [organization] is constantly evolving, taking on new challenges, not afraid to take risks; always learning and adapting...while staying true to its mission. And I believe an enduring [organization] handles adversity with grace, and success with humility—never losing its way.

We must always have the wisdom to know what to honor and preserve from the past... and the courage to boldly re-imagine the future.

-- Kevin Johnson

It seems to me that it takes leadership to include these things in nearly any relationship -- business, church, civic organization...marriage, family, friends -- because they are critical to healthy relationships of any kind...even with one's relationship with oneself.

Through Our Body

I've noticed...we can listen for our mind through our body because it can communicate so much from its practicality about strength and vulnerability, effort and rest, pain and pleasure, sadness and joy.

Captive

We keep the Creator captive to what we are able comprehend.

-- Peter Enns

Why Your Memories Can't Be Trusted

I've been in several discussions lately related to memory.  This explains some things that are useful to recognize.  I think we are all a bit surprised at how malleable our memories are, especially when they are replayed often and the reasons that drive that to happen.

Visual: Skyre

Visual - "Skyre"

Winona Lake, IN

...what it's like when we know something is not really what it looks like.  Nature is full of such things.

Grow Up

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up, we would no longer be vulnerable.  But to grow up is to accept vulnerability.

-- Madeleine L'Engle

In fact, I'm not sure if anything has caused me more opportunity for vulnerability than raising a family.  And, I am deeply grateful for it -- for the state of being that it allowed me to be in and learn to stay in.

Not Sure How Much You Can

I'm not sure how much you can grow without engaging other people...especially people who are not like you or who challenge you.

LT: Trust

Trust has two dimensions: competence and integrity. We will forgive mistakes of competence. Mistakes of integrity are harder to overcome.

-- Simon Sinek

As Much

I've noticed...I learn and grow as much by doing as by thinking and talking.

Transformational Lesson

Unfortunately, with the widespread acceptance of the substitutionary atonement theory, salvation became a one-time transactional affair between Jesus and his Father, instead of an ongoing transformational lesson for the human soul and for all of history. 

-- Richard Rohr

Menthol Smokers

The Exercise of Forgiving

'Poem for the week' -- "The Exercise of Forgiving":

Six months ago, the measuring of whiskey
left in the jug, urine on the mattress, couch
cushions, the crotch of pants in wear. You watch
how breath lifts a chest, how a person breathes—
sick hobbies of when we must. You watch
how you become illiterate at counting.
Six or seven broken breathalyzers; a joke
formulates in your throat & you
choke back your windpipe as punchline.
How many sobs in parking lots before sun
lugged above horizon? The heart hammers
all too familiar songs behind your ribs
& these notes cut away at you. You read online
how television, internet, starving children
in numbers greater than three, polar bears,
rain forests, light from an off direction
all desensitize the human brain’s ability
to empathize. You wonder how
you chew the word panic in your jaws,
let meaning burrow into molars
seep in crevasses between root & bone.
How rot tends to the insides. You wonder
now with the inpatient tags, the cafeteria visits,
the doctors, the psychiatrists, the when do you
get to come homes, the hesitation of our bodies
sharing space again, the words I have not
drank today & your brain in flinch, how you
excavate organs for what’s left, for salvage.

-- Felicia Zamora

From the author:

“For the past few years, someone I love has been struggling with clinical depression and alcoholism, a journey that has reshaped both our understandings of ourselves as humans and the space we inhabit with each other. These diseases can make people raw, rub you down to only nerve endings, and make you question everything you know. I naively thought I understood empathy and forgiveness before, but now I’m learning how to regenerate, pay attention, listen, and love boldly, and how sometimes we must brave the wound’s exposure to allow for any real healing to begin.”

Consuming Things

Contrary to historical and popular opinion, life and the things in it do not exist to be consumed.

Dwarfs Our Opinions

Instagram: bobgoff

We'll know we're growing when our love for people dwarfs our opinions of them.

-- Bob Goff

LT: They Need To Impress

True measure of a leader is how they treat everyone, not just those they need to impress.

-- Oleg Vishnepolsky

Starting Points

I've noticed...so many things are symptoms of our starting points.

Obsessed With Belief

Over the past few decades, our Christianity has become obsessed with what Christians believe rather than how Christians live. . . . But in Jesus we don’t just see a presentation of doctrines but an invitation to join a movement that is about demonstrating God’s goodness to the world.

-- Shane Claiborne

Things Must Change

Things must change.

In fact, things will change whether we want them to or not.

Right; eternal things don't change.  But, we don't know precisely what all those things are (we might not even know what very many of them are).  We believe we know, but we largely don't.

Jesus basically said, both by his words and his deeds, I am here to change everything...especially the things you think you know.

It is often religious people who think they know the most.  Because they seem busy trying to avoid dying: "I'm right—follow me, and you will live."  They cite Jesus as the one who said that—and he did.  But, what he meant was that in order to live you have to change, largely by dying to things (that we think).

Jesus, too, moved through this change, knowing everything dies—including himself—because he is interested in resurrection, in life after death.  ...in the life that comes from being born again (changing).

Everything around us is changing and so are we.

Things do change...because they must change.

Visual: Distance

Visual - "Distance"

Glacier National Park, MT

How Casually

How casually and certainly 
we say things about the only world we know.

-- Maggie Anderson

Every Day

Every day presents a freedom to begin again.

LT: Transcendence and Connection

Respect, freedom, and service...addresses our spiritual needs for transcendence and connection to something more permanent than ourselves.

-- Fred Kofman

Leaders know this and, more importantly, live this.

Valued

Ever noticed...when it feels like you are valued for what you do, rather than for who you are?

Ultimate Reality

I don't follow Jesus because I think Christianity is the best religion. I follow Jesus because he leads me into ultimate reality.
​
-- Rob Bell

OtR: Love & Revelation

...there are no delusions here about just how deep in the shit you can be. But if Over the Rhine’s body of work proves anything, it’s that deep shit can be a conduit for amazing grace....

-- Josh Hurst

This is so real, it hurts.  After the week I’ve had, I'm feeling a lot today—perhaps because of the space a long run this morning gave me to do so.

The rest of a review of OtR's imminent new album can be found here.

Human history, in one chart

You may need to click the image above - a lot of things have moved lately.

Almost all the gains in human well-being in history happened since the Industrial Revolution.

In short, for most of history, all human events — the rise and fall of empires, the spread of plagues, the spread and schisms of religions, the invention of wheels and aqueducts and the printing press — barely affected the typical person’s life span, political freedom, economic productivity, or wealth.

And then, with the Industrial Revolution, all those things changed at once. Within 200 years, the human experience looked very different.  Read the story here....

-- Kelsey Piper


Unrelated (perhaps):

Being Right

'Poem for the week' - "Being Right":

What is the source
our so apparent
need
to be right?
Why so instinctive
within us?
...so
religious
its connection?

It's not
benign.
It tends to
villainize,
mostly what
we don't understand.

But, is it necessary
for arrival?
acceptance
that what is
right

is far more
accommodating,
inviting,
inclusive,
than we would
otherwise
ever know?

Or, am I wrong?