Gary Mintchell

Author Archive

Another Perspective on Perspective

June 9, 2023

Some people have a theory in their heads about the way life is supposed to be. Or the way society is supposed to be. Or an organization.

Theories lead to rules to enforce those theories. Rules lead to those who achieve power to force other people to live according to their theory.

There is a scene at the end of the movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation where the CEO comes to realization of the effects of his theory on people, “Some things look good on paper until you realize the effects on people. I now realize it’s the little people, like you, Clark, who really matter.”

The world over has political and religious leaders who have a theory of how things should be and are trying to force people into the mold. I guess that’s a human thing.

It’s when we change perspective and realize the effects upon individual people that we come closer to the Spirit of God. The mission Jesus proclaimed from the very beginning was to bring people into the Kingdom of Heaven. Not by force—that was the Roman way. But by love—that was Jesus way.

Posted in Attitude, Compassion, Leadership | Leave a Comment »

Using Perspective

June 8, 2023

Too often we slip into the feeling that “It’s all about me.”

Roadworkers arrive and begin setting up equipment in the neighborhood. They are doing it specifically to annoy me.

Someone fails to show for a lunch appointment. They did it just to spite me.

Maybe the situation has nothing to do with us. Maybe when viewed from the perspective of the other person—they are merely showing up to do the repair work required; they had a crisis large or small with work or family and couldn’t make lunch.

As a wise person said, “Don’t worry about what people are thinking about you, because they are not thinking about you.”

Often when Jesus was asked about something, he tried to get the person to divert focus from within themselves and their prejudices and their rules in order to gain the bigger perspective of seeing life from other’s points-of-view.

Perhaps that is a good discipline to cultivate.

Posted in Attitude, Disciplines | Leave a Comment »

Resilience

June 7, 2023

The ability to recover from something that distorts you.

Many companies write to me about their new technologies or applications or also how well they are doing. A word has become one of the marketing terms du jour. Resilience.

They wish to convey that they are a resilient company producing resilient products that will make their customers, well, resilient.

So I thought, how does that apply to each of us? What does it mean for us to be resilient? How can this be acquired, if indeed, it is a quality that can be acquired?

My life has experienced many bumps. Events happened to distort me. Bend me. Cause stress and grief. Yet, I have (so far) recovered like a good foam mattress.

To recover implies that there is a good place to which to recover. Press on a piece of good, dense foam and release. It will recover to its original shape.

We must have that firm, original shape to which to return. If we are too pliable, we will remain in the new shape. If we are too firm, we will break.

Just so in our spiritual and emotional lives. We must be able to absorb any shocks and yet have that inner strength to regain our shape. Too brittle, we break. Too soft and we just blow with the prevailing winds. That calls for a solid foundation in teaching, experience, and spiritual life.

Posted in Disciplines | Leave a Comment »

We Are Not Perfect

June 6, 2023

You are not perfect!

I am not perfect!

We are not perfect.

Sorry to inform you.

Maybe you thought you were the exception that proves the rule.

Maybe you think that everyone else should be perfect—just as you tell them (order them) to be. Hint: see rules above.

I have experienced Christians who thought they were made perfect once they were “saved.” One group I knew held prayer meetings during our break times in the factory. To my eyes, they cheated the company out of 40 minutes of productive labor for which they were paid. Even if they were praying. That is not perfect. Even in a monastery where people live lives devoted to God, there is prayer time and there is work time.

We seem to have a brand of Christians all over the globe who seem to think that they are perfect and that they can force everyone else to be perfect. Guess what? It has been proven that that won’t work. But certain men keep trying.

We also punish ourselves. We want a perfect family. A perfect diet. Perfect exercise.

Those will not happen.

Everyone just needs to relax. Breathe deeply. Hold. Release slowly.

Now, just build healthy lifestyles and routines. Forget perfect. Live in the spirit. Try on some attitudes such as humility and forgiveness and joy.

Posted in Attitude, Humility | Leave a Comment »

Stop and Help

June 5, 2023

I visited the downtown of a local small town today. Walking toward a small business I noticed a string of paper napkins scattered along the front of the building extending into the street and curb landscaping.

Starting to walk past to enter the building to transact my business, I paused. To consider. I could leave it to someone else to pick up the paper. Or, I could simply bend over and start picking them up. I wound up with two handfuls of paper napkins to place into a trash receptacle located within five meters each way of the papers.

That took me almost three minutes.

And the bending over was good for my body.

And I could look at the street and feel better at the improvement.

When I went in the business, I mentioned the paper to someone inside. “Oh, yes, I noticed those,” said the person.

Hmm. How many times do we walk past something without stopping to help?

How many people passed by the beaten and robbed man on the road before the “Good Samaritan” stopped and helped?

Posted in Service | Leave a Comment »

Beyond Forgiveness

June 2, 2023

I have been contemplating forgiveness and wrote a couple of posts over the past week. This come staring at an index card on my desk every morning with Dallas Willard’s paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer. The phrase as we forgive those who offend us in any way.

That idea of “offends us” ranges from a careless word to language we find offensive to doing something offensive.

I wrote about how I may not have forgotten the acts of many who have offended me. I have moved on and carry no emotional baggage. Even though almost to a man those who have offended me were self-proclaimed Christians, I have not therefore refused to deal with Christians. I am more careful, though. We do need to learn from experience.

But let us turn this around going beyond forgiveness. Can we learn something from those whom we find offensive? Can those who disagree with us teach us something? Can we change our perspective and find a learning opportunity wherever we look? Could I watch TV news and learn something? Perhaps from a Twitter post or something on Facebook? Maybe instead of a quick emotional reaction, I could pause and ask why they believe that? Is there a truth from their perspective that I should consider—since I obviously don’t know everything about everything.

Approach everything as an opportunity for spiritual growth, not as an opportunity to show how much smarter I am than them. Perhaps we all come out ahead.

Posted in discernment | Leave a Comment »

Why Do We Want That?

June 1, 2023

Seth Godin recently asked on his blog a question I used to pose to my daughter when she was in high school, “How much of what we want, really want, is due to the ideas that culture has given us, and how much is truly what we need?”

It was easy for me to observe her and ask if she, for example, hated cafeteria food at school because the food was bland or tasted bad or if she was just saying what “everyone” was saying.

It is less easy for us to observe ourselves and ask if we believe something because we’ve thought it through or because “everyone” is saying it on social media.

There is probably a reason that even the most ancient wisdom literature teaches that unsubstantiated opinion is the lowest form of thought. Forming an opinion from a combination of learning and experience reflected on is a much higher form. Even better when we are open to someone pointing out the possibility of misinterpreting a source or a thought we may have overlooked.

Posted in Thinking, Wisdom | Leave a Comment »

You Have The Power to Change–Sometimes

May 31, 2023

A part of my first “real” job following marriage and grad school was production scheduling in a small manufacturing division. One day I received an order from one of our customers necessitating a change in the production schedule for one of the departments.

I rewrote the schedule and took it to the foreman. He said, “I can’t change the schedule. I have it here in black and white.”

“I wrote the schedule, so I can change it,” I retorted.

After a bit of arguing, he, of course, changed the schedule. (In reality, part of his job was to teach the “college kid” the real world of interpersonal relationships in a manufacturing operation.)

Do you ever notice that sometimes you adjust something, say a window blind or a chair. Or, you put something around the house in an inconvenient place. And you catch yourself muttering about it. But, you put it there; you can change it.

There are so many things about our routines, our diet (not a diet, what we eat), our exercise, that we chose and we can choose again. Yes, changing habits is hard. You can read Charles Duhigg (Power of Habit) or James Clear (Atomic Habits) for tips.

One key to a better life is to recognize those things you can change and then takes steps to make the change if they aren’t working out. Constructing a routine is good. Changing it when it doesn’t serve you is also good.

Posted in Habits, Wisdom | Leave a Comment »

Metaphor in Search of a Story

May 30, 2023

We bought a house where the back yard meets the brush along a creek. The good news is that no one can build adjacent to us. We’ll always have a buffer. The bad news is that an invasive species of bush/tree appeared in our development. Over the past three years it has spread along the outer edge of the creek.

This plant propagates two ways. It sends root runners out where new plants pop up seemingly at random. I watched the progression of these toward my patio and house. The landscaping guy told me to use a week killer on the sprouts to kill them off. That sort of works and sort of not.

The HOA employed the landscaping guy to spray the bushes. Perhaps that takes care of the, ahem, root cause.

These Sandbar Willows spread a second way—seeds. They grow seed pods and then release the seeds into the air. They are fuzzy like cottonwood or dandelion seeds. They release into the air and are carried by wind currents to new places.

Here is the potential metaphor—the seed pods were green. Then, as the bushes began dying, the seed pods matured and began sending out millions of seeds to begin a new generation.

Back in the 60s/70s of the early Jesus movement songs (much more meaning than the so-called praise choruses that swept Christian music later and still predominates), there was a song that included the refrain, “and in dying we are born to eternal life.”

Not only in Christianity, but also other religions as well as psychology there are observations and teaching about the necessity of dying to self in order to grow beyond. The excessive parts of the ego must die so that we can experience life in fulness. I think one of my first published poems carried that theme. It’s long been on my mind.

Don’t cling so much to the old that you miss out on new growth.

Posted in Awareness | Leave a Comment »

Remembrance

May 29, 2023

Today, Monday, is a US national holiday called Memorial Day. When I was quite young, my great-grandmother called it Decoration Day. One of the many changes of terminology that confused me as a youth.

For her, it was a day set aside to visit the family cemeteries and “decorate”, that is place flowers by the grave markers and remember those who lived before us.

The village where I grew up always had a small parade from the water tower where someone spoke to the local cemetery on the outskirts of town (about a mile probably). Those of us in the Boy Scout program would lay flowers on the graves of military veterans (that must have come from the change of Decoration Day to Memorial Day?). I was in the school band later and participated in the event for six years in that role.

I think I’ve not been to a Memorial Day service since I graduated.

But it is probably a good thing to remember and reflect on those who went before—especially those who had a guiding impact on your life. (I’d just as soon forget those who had what we might call a negative impact.) I could take these thoughts from psychology to religious referring to the Biblical Letter to the Hebrews where the writer remembers those who went before forging the path that led to his (her?) life of faith.

And more challenging yet, we could reflect upon the impact we are leaving behind as we journey the path.

(There are many international readers of these thoughts. I suspect you all have special days of remembrance. Use them well.)

Posted in Relationship, Witness | Leave a Comment »

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