Gary Mintchell

Author Archive

Complex or Simple

December 21, 2022

Occam’s Razor (a principle in philosophy) holds that with competing theories or explanations, the simpler one is to be preferred.

One of my favorite contemporary writers, Nassim Taleb, holds that Mathematics make complex problem simpler; economics makes simple problems complicated. To economists I add as do theologians and pastors.

My wife is reading a book I pulled from my library, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, by NT Wright. He is an extraordinary scholar who can also write for us “plain folks.” But she had trouble getting into the book. (Her normal reading is novels.) Then, suddenly it clicked.

My point is that when you are reading the Bible or other spiritual writing (or anything for that matter) do not try to take the complicated path. If Jesus’ last command was to love one another, he meant, well, that we should love one another. Full stop (or period if you’re American).

Yes, Paul wrote much seemingly complicated prose describing what that meant. Don’t make it complicated. When you are faced with another person or a comment on social media, remember that Jesus said to love one another. Don’t make it hard. What does love require in that moment? Do it!

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What If You Cannot Start Your Day Perfectly

December 20, 2022

My bed has sensors and a microcontroller and networking. When I get up for the day, I can open the app and learn about my night. How much restful sleep, how much restless. How long it took me to fall asleep. Whether I met my proper circadian rhythm, spent enough time in bed, got enough restful sleep. The little computer runs through a calculation and gives me a “Sleep IQ” number.

My daughter is a therapist who numbers among her clients many people–especially teenagers–with anxiety problems often driven by the need to succeed. This number would push them even further along their spectrum. OMG, I didn’t get a 90. I’m a failure at sleep, too!

Yesterday I wrote about a way to orient yourself to a new day. It is good to have a discipline to help orient yourself to the new day.

But life happens. Sometimes you cannot hit the mark. Maybe you slept late because people came over to visit. Or there was a party. Or that chili you had for dinner talked to you all night.

Or, you have an early appointment. Or, you just feel like crap.

It’s like my Sleep IQ number. Yesterday I was 87; today I’m 60. But I still feel OK. If I look at the numbers one day at a time, I can feel good or let that low number ruin my day.

Or, I can look at a long term, say over a month or two, and realize that if I plotted those points on a graph they are actually pretty consistent.

I can get all worked up over missing a part of my morning routine and let it ruin my day.

Or, I can shrug and say “life happens” and make the best of the rest of the day. We learn to just go with the flow.

The goal is consistency over time. It is not being perfect every day. They tell me that Jesus was perfect every day (but he also lost his temper a few times). No one else has ever been recorded as being perfect every day. It certainly isn’t going to be me that breaks that string.

What has helped me learn this? One is consistent, but far from perfect, meditation practice. Another is Yoga. Another is this rural country boy learning to drive in Chicago rush hour traffic that screams along at about 5 miles per hour (8 kilometers per hour). You learn to slow your body rhythm and go with the flow. Your are better off at the end.

Posted in Attitude, Disciplines, Wisdom | Leave a Comment »

Prepare for the Day

December 19, 2022

Begin your day by finding proper orientation. I find these steps to prepare for a good day an essential daily discipline.

Get full, restful sleep

Awaken without a loud alarm, best is to train yourself to awaken naturally

Rise gently, make bed

(I make a cup of coffee, some say to postpone coffee for an hour)

Find your chair, pillow, sit and meditate / pray

Read something short and positive

Eat breakfast

And, if things happen that you have a bad day–you can return to where you started and at least have a well made bed to return to or your chair to remind you of the morning meditation to help refocus.

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We Are All God’s Children

December 16, 2022

During my meditation many years ago, I found myself walking past an old, empty house. I walked up the path through the overgrown weeds to the front door. It was unlocked. I entered. I had previously explored the house and entered the basement. (If you are Jungian, go for it.)

That day’s meditation took me down the steps into the basement with some fearfulness of what I would find.

Well, there was a huge party going on down there. I was shown people of every race and nationality and tribe. They were all partying together. There was no rancor. No small groups over in the corner peering suspiciously at the others. It was all one family of humanity. I was told we are all God’s children.

Either in business or on holiday I’ve interacted with people from most of the areas of the globe. I’ve shared meals and conversations. I’ve tried every day to live up to that vision treating everyone like I learned from that party experience (well, maybe except for the idiot that cut me off driving in traffic–no one is perfect!).

Today’s meditation returned me to that time. We are in Advent and also Christmas season. We hear a lot about “peace on earth and goodwill toward man”. Beyond hearing that, perhaps we need to practice it during our everyday lives.

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Knowledge or Curiosity

December 15, 2022

You are bringing a new person into your company or organization or committee. Two candidates present themselves. One strives to impress you with the extent of their knowledge. The other obviously has knowledge of the field, but they impress you with the quality of questions they ask and their overall history of curiosity and ability to learn new things.

Which do you bring on?

If you chose the second, you chose wisely.

Research dating back to the mid-1980s revealed that in the long run Liberal Arts majors with ability and desire to learn new things who were also insatiably curious outperformed MBA graduates.

Speaking from my experience, I had a technical/engineering/math background but decided to end my university time in as much of a classical Liberal Arts program as my university allowed. That combination has served me (and my employers) well.

I think it works in spiritual formation work, too. Some people seem to know it all. But, they also seem stuck. Back when I was a teacher, I’d learn what I needed to teach or lead the session. I also learned from my class. I loved the people who were striving to learn. They’s ask the most off-the-wall questions. They’d make me think. I turn, I’d try to make them think. That generates so much energy the entire room feeds from it.

Even in (or especially in) spiritual growth and development including Bible study never stop asking and never stop learning. We’ll never know it all.

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Seeing What Is Before Us

December 14, 2022

We pray for God’s guidance for the day.

Have we done the little things set before us that reflect God in us?

It’s Advent. We sing carols and pray for peace, hope, joy.

What did we do yesterday and what will we do today to reflect that peace, hope, and joy?

We must beware that praying becomes mere words in a formula.

Prayer sets an attitude and perhaps a communication with God. But attitude just sets a direction. What we do when we leave our prayer mat or chair is what pleases God.

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Tyranny of the Urgent v Try Easy

December 13, 2022

It happened back in the 70s. My unofficial title at that company was “the kid in engineering.” I was included in the management level whisked off to a company-wide conference. There I was introduced to the professional personal development and productivity guru genre.

I guess I’ll not forget the points the speaker emphasized–beware the Tyranny of the Urgent and Try Easy.

British writer Oliver Burkeman wrote in his last newsletter about Urgent. He calls himself the Imperfectionist. His book Four Thousand Weeks is worth the read…and re-read.

He describes urgency as “a whole state of mind, indeed of body: the anxious knot in the stomach, the clenched jaw, the furrowed brow.”

We get that way. We try to force our way through tasks many of which don’t even need to be done.

The opposite is to know what’s important and work through these in a planned way. Of course, sometimes plans go awry, but the “imperfectionist” adapts and continues. She tries easy.

Reflecting on Advent and beyond in these terms, consider the anticipation of the entire region of a spiritual awakening and a new order. Among some, I imagine even a sense of that urgency. Especially among Jews anxious for the overthrow of Roman rule.

And Jesus was born. Thirty years later he began his ministry. And many men could not wait. Getting rid of Roman rule was an urgent task in their minds.

They didn’t understand. Jesus obviously spent 30 years learning and growing. He worked his plan by teaching and mentoring those who didn’t yet understand. Then came the crisis moment–death, burial, resurrection. But that was later.

We’re still in the anticipation moment. What will the future bring? How will it change us? Change the world? Maybe today we still need to live with some of that anticipation. Perhaps this Christmas celebration and remembrance will bring some change in us.

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Anticipation or Completion?

December 12, 2022

Advent is a time of anticipation. We celebrate completion on Easter. Christmas day is sort of a completion—the celebration of Jesus’ birth. Even that birth is pure anticipation.

The question for us lies in whether we can live in anticipation.

Tension hovers thickly in the atmosphere. Living with tension requires developing a tolerance for uncertainty. It means living a day at a time. Sometimes an hour at a time. Living looking forward to a future condition without certainty of its completion.

I’m not an expert on US situation comedy TV shows. Probably people in China are more knowledgeable. But how many have you seen where there is romantic tension? The show will play for several seasons living with that tension. Then the writers can’t take it anymore. They write in a scene of sexual completion. Now, the show is changed forever. They have to find a new tension. It’s a different show.

Advent teaches us to live in the last century before Jesus’ birth when large groups of people were saturated with the anticipation of God’s stirring. That something new was going to happen. What would that new time look like? No one knew for sure. OK, I bet many people thought they knew. Mostly, they were wrong.

Now we are living in anticipation. What will happen? How will it change me? Change the community? Change the world?

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Follow Me, He Said

December 9, 2022

Stories come my way every week about people who call themselves “Christian”, perhaps they are regular, bubbly, smiling church attenders, and yet the congruence between how they live and what Jesus taught us about how to live exists only in their minds.

I was going to write another brief essay about my disappointment. And then, I thought, what good would that do?

Most of us are probably just trying to infuse thoughts Jesus left us about how to follow him. After all, when he decided the time was ripe to start bringing people together, his invitation was simply, “Follow me.” He didn’t ask for belief first. No one of his first followers believed (maybe Martha and Mary?). Three years later, they still didn’t believe. That is, until the resurrection, they didn’t believe.

But they all followed.

And they stumbled. And argued. And learned a little. Forgot a little. Were disappointed a little.

Still they followed.

Even though I don’t feel it, I am an old man. I’ve seen many things. Experienced many joys and disappointments. Sometimes I feel like Mark Twain, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.”

This is Advent. It’s a remembrance of a time when people were looking for Jesus. But they didn’t know it, exactly. And when they had it, they didn’t know what it was. And when they followed, they didn’t know where they were going–even unto the last days.

Later reflecting on the journey, they realized it was the best days of their lives.

And they shared it.

What can we do but to take that same journey and look back and say it was the best days.

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Put The Dough In The Oven

December 8, 2022

In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius marvels at “nature’s inadvertence.” A baker, he writes, makes the dough, kneads it and then puts it in the oven. Then physics, then Nature takes over. “The way loaves of bread split open,” Marcus writes, “the ridges are just byproducts of the baking, and yet pleasing, somehow: they rouse our appetite without our knowing why.”

We think, read, write. We might even talk to people.

At some point, we have to “put the dough into the oven.” We must turn the thinking and praying and talking into doing.

It pays not dividend to talk about helping others.

We put the dough in the oven by actually doing an act of kindness. Now. With whomever is near.

OK, maybe we can also send a check. That’s something, too.

Or call someone who’s lonely and despairing.

And that is pleasing to God.

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