Gary Mintchell

Author Archive

The Practice

March 13, 2024

Best-selling author and screenwriter Steven Pressfield publishes a weekly newsletter called Writing Wednesdays. He often talks about the practice of being a creative. This is similar to the practice of entering a spiritual practice as we delve into a deeper spiritual life.

Recently he quotes a dance teacher, “This class is a practice. When you step inside this studio to dance, leave behind your fear, your competitiveness with others, your anger, your worry, your grudges, your complaints, your dissatisfaction with your lot, your greed for glory, your avarice for attention. You are here to dance as well as you can. Leave your ego and your problems outside.”

Pressfield adds his own advice:

In other words, when our motivation is grounded in our ego, we do not have a practice. Or to flip that statement on its head, the aim of a practice is effacement of the ego.

Whether we enter prayer, meditation, study, or even service, these are foundational words. Leave the ego behind—that part of us that seeks control and “me-first” attitudes.

Posted in Disciplines | Leave a Comment »

Not Mine, But Yours

March 12, 2024

The class at the university taught management of public organizations. I don’t remember why, but that class introduced me to a psychologist called Leon Festinger and the idea of cognitive dissonance.

When I am introduced to new information, sometimes as I digest it I experience some amount of stress figuring it all out. Of course, that’s my personality type. Some people solve that problem by just rejecting any new information. That’s their loss.

Try out these thoughts, for example. Don’t we all think in terms of ourselves? Seems natural.

Today, Jon Swanson pondered as he leads us through this part of Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” He notices, “Not my kingdom. Not our kingdom. Your kingdom.”

The pastor of the church we now attend likes to say as he institutes the Lord’s Supper, “Not my table, not your table, but God’s table.”

Cognitive dissonance? What? It’s not my table to decide who and what? It’s not my kingdom to rule over this and that?

Who is this God who thinks he’s in charge? Oh, I guess he is. Whether I like it or not. And I’d better digest that piece of information for my own well being.

Posted in Awareness, Humility | Leave a Comment »

Seeing The Whole Picture

March 11, 2024

We worked off and on for a week. We looked for a small feature or shape or subtle change in color. The pieces covered most of our dining room table.

Of course, the wife and I were putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The motif of this series of puzzles concerns murder mysteries. This one was a Sherlock Holmes story. You read the story. It ends just before the detective solves the mystery. You solve the mystery which tells you the scene of which the puzzle is a picture. There is no picture to guide you. You figure it out as you go.

Now it’s complete. Seeing the complete picture brings all the elements together. Seeing the whole, you almost forget all the little parts.

Studying a difficult text is a similar endeavor.

I read the words of the Apostle Paul, for example, for years. Words. Sentences. Even paragraphs (in English, since there was not such a thing in Greek).

Then I read 1,800 pages of scholarly research getting into the debate among scholars of the meanings of Greek words and themes. Somehow the scholar was one of those writers who could go from the detail to the theme.

What a difference in interpretation when you begin to see the whole picture and then go back to the parts finding where they each fit in the big picture.

We call it getting lost in the weeds. You must get out of the weeds to see the entire landscape. Same with study. Don’t get lost in the weeds. You’ll lose your way and miss the picture.

Posted in Study | Leave a Comment »

Kindness, Generosity, Respect

March 8, 2024

I remember talking with education majors at university. They wanted to just teach skills. They neither wanted to model or teach any kind of morals.

How many of us, I wonder, of mine and succeeding generations have also abdicated teaching morals to the next generation?

I don’t mean the kind of teaching from many (most?) Protestant churches and also from what little I know of Catholic youth education. How often was that teaching geared toward all of the personal “thou shalt nots”? Thou shalt not drink, smoke, have fun.

I mean the sort of things we need to inculcate into ourselves and teach the next generations—the skills and inclination to treat each other with kindness, generosity, and respect. It begins with me and what I model. It’s like John Fischer’s theme—Grace Turned Outward.

Posted in Grace, teaching | Leave a Comment »

Finding the Meaning of Life

March 7, 2024

A popular theme of cartoons from years ago concerned a seeker climbing to a mountain top to find the guru sitting cross-legged at the summit. “What is the meaning of life?” the seeker questioned. Then the cartoonist would riff on jokes.

The meaning of life is what happened while you were wasting time finding a guru hoping they would tell you the meaning of life.

We find meaning through what we do and how we act as we make our way daily through life. As Jesus-followers we follow the way he taught so that each day’s meaning plays out in our relations to other humans.

Posted in Disciplines, Wisdom | Leave a Comment »

Talking At, Not With

March 6, 2024

They were a group of five middle-aged women. Friends. Meeting at the downtown hotel lobby bar after work, maybe. Having drinks and appetizers. Boisterous without being obnoxious. And in my line of sight when I looked up from my laptop.

I noticed one got up and walked about 10 feet away to take a picture. I usually offer to take the picture so that they can all be in the photo of the moment. I was about to get up when a guy got off his bar stool and loudly offered to shoot the photo. Then he took about 15 or so more. Loudly having them pose in different ways.

He was so loud, I couldn’t help but watch for the next half-hour as he gradually moved in on their table. Soon he pulled up a chair at the high top, bought a round of drinks, and established himself in the group—sort of. He talked. I could hear him from 30 feet away. The women were still paying attention to their friends, but quieter now.

I hate it when my self-awareness kicks in with the realization that I’ve talked too much. I wonder how often do we get caught up in a situation where we are simply talking at someone rather than conversing? Isn’t that a caricature of a Christian? Do we really want to be that guy?

Not I.

Posted in Awareness, Listening | Leave a Comment »

Transformation

March 5, 2024

This morning I am sitting at a table in a room full of tables populated with about 300 engineers. The presenters are talking about how to use digital data to transform product development and eventually business.

This is similar to our journey of developing and using spiritual practices—study, prayer, meditation, service, and the like.

When we pause and look back over our lives, we can observe how our practices have changed how we live. We have, so to speak, undergone a transformation from someone a little or a lot lost, directionless, drifting through life with the development and habits of our practices.

I have seen how many years of meditation, for example, have changed my inner workings from insecure and anxious to calmer (not perfect) with a broader understanding of people. I have learned tolerance and empathy.

It is never too late to begin a spiritual practice. Let the engineers talk about digital transformation. We can practice personal transformation. And it never ends.

[Side note: I just received a notification that 16 years ago today I started this blog on WordPress. That, in itself, was a transformation.]

Posted in Disciplines | Leave a Comment »

What If You Tried This?

March 4, 2024

Benjamin Zander is an English conductor, who is currently the musical director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. He is also a marvelous teacher. Search YouTube for some videos where he is teaching teenaged students.

These students probably rehearsed a piece a couple hundred hours. They perform flawlessly for Zander, who always compliments profusely showing empathy and understanding of their work. He then takes the student back over the piece—what if you tried this rhythm here, what if you varied the dynamics at this point. He leads the student to an entirely different feel for the piece. The best examples of teaching I’ve ever seen. Wish I had had a teacher like that.

What if as a spiritual teacher or pastor or leader, we practiced that sort of leadership? Not criticizing someone for their practices or thinking but showing empathy and understanding of their work. And then gently asking what if you tried this or what if you reconsidered your opinion of this writer and tried out this idea or took yourself in your imagination to that small cluster of Jesus-followers in a large room of a house—just suggesting, mind you, trying a slightly different approach. Perhaps leading to a newer and deeper understanding of John, Paul, George, Ringo, er…James and Peter and Luke.

Try it; you’ll like it.

Posted in teaching | Leave a Comment »

Aspiring To a Better Society

March 1, 2024

The part of the sermon that Baptist preacher from North Carolina that has gone viral concerning if he were on a jury of a trial of a man accused of raping a woman who was wearing shorts he would vote for acquittal disturbs me every time I think of it. When someone who professes to follow Jesus reveals such a lack of understanding and empathy, I hesitate to ever identify myself with their religion.

A sentence from my current reading, The Identity Trap by Yascha Mount, metaphorically slapped me in the face. In a different context but jarring my thinking here, he said, “In practice, universal values and neutral rules do often exclude people in unjust ways. But an aspiration for societies to live up to the standards they profess can allow them to make genuine progress in treating their members fairly.” (My bolding.)

Not everyone (in fact no one?) can live up to the standards that Jesus set. Reading his words in the gospels you get the feeling he knew he was setting the standard so high that no one could ever congratulate themselves for achieving them. But if many of us aspire to live up to those standards, then the Jesus movement should continue to progress toward the type of society Jesus envisioned.

Indeed, so many people responded to that pastor’s comments that the church posted an apology on its message board. I can hope and pray that the incident spurs some growth in all of us.

Where is your heart? My heart? Are we trying to live up to Jesus command of how to live—by loving God and our neighbor? Don’t give up. Every step in that direction helps.

Posted in Attitude, Ethics | Leave a Comment »

Cynicism or Opportunity

February 29, 2024

It’s all about data.

I’ve written that on my technology blog. Maybe half of my topics have involved data—finding, gathering, storing, analyzing, visualizing, using to make decisions.

We may see data in our favorite news source. The trouble with that lies in the choices of which data to show and which interpretation to emphasize. Often that flows from the point of view of the writer/broadcaster. The same data will have different emphases on Fox or on MSNBC. (I assume; I watch neither.)

For example, many years ago there was much data about how emissions in the US going into the atmosphere returned to earth in the form of acid rain. Dire predictions ensued. Those events never happened.

Why?

First came the cynics. The world is ending.

Then came the people who saw opportunity. I was involved in more than one project to scrub carbon from refinery emissions. That happened all over the country. Many technologies were developed to clean emissions.

We have much current data on changing weather patterns dubbed Climate Change. It’s real, but it does not have to be the end.

All over the globe engineers and entrepreneurs are working to find solutions to the causes.

We can choose how to react. We can choose to be cynical, dystopian, and fearful. We can choose to find solutions.

This works for climate problems. It works for problems in your organization or family. Which attitude sounds better to you?

Posted in Attitude | Leave a Comment »

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