Gary Mintchell

Author Archive

Enough

August 31, 2022

Enough is a feast–ancient proverb.

We go to a buffet dinner. We could take a smaller plate and add just enough tasty food to satisfy. Or we could take a large plate, pack it full of food piled high, eat most of it, and with stomachs distended and bloated feel lethargic and ill.

In America, we have so much stuff that we have no place in the house for the new stuff we just had delivered from Amazon. A thriving business of storage garages serves the need to keep stuff that we may never see again.

We can’t get enough. We must have a larger house. Another car. More money.

Yet, we are unfulfilled.

Posted in Attitude, simplicity | Leave a Comment »

Work Success

August 30, 2022

What does it take to be better at work? Even for someone like me who works alone?

One of my few go-to news sources is called Axios. They use a technique called smart brevity. What I like. Short and to the point. I wrote to them about too many adjectives, but in reality they minimize those extraneous and emotion-laden words. (Did you notice what I just wrote?) I’ve always tried that here.

They have a daily newsletter called Finish Line that ponders personal issues. They ran a series where they asked readers from different generations to send their thoughts on work. I appreciated how similar the thoughts were. Founder Jim VandeHei summarized all the comments in a column called the 10 Commandments of Work Success.

Click the link to read them all. My picks from the litter include:

Serve others: If it’s only about you, you will do the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Life is empty alone.
Work morally: Honesty, grace, humility, hard work and honor are the core values of a work-life well-lived.
Work smart: Working hard on the wrong or nonessential things is time wasted.
Study deeply: Master the tiny details and panoramic context of your profession.
Study thyself: Be clear-eyed about your gifts and flaws. It’s the only path to betterment.
Fortify thyself: Optimal work performance is impossible without healthy relationships, diet and exercise, and spirituality and mindfulness outside of it.

The bottom line: When the clock stops, smile confidently — knowing you did it right and well.

Posted in Disciplines, Work | Leave a Comment »

Charitable Attitude

August 29, 2022

I told my wife this morning, “I’m going to the grocery to pick up a prescription this morning. Do you need anything?”

She replied, “You could pick up some of that wine I like–but only if it’s on sale.”

This is a cheap Riesling. It costs around $9 a bottle, $8 something with my discount card. If it’s on sale, it might save another $0.50. This from a woman who just spent $300 for a framed picture for our living room. (We moved during the pandemic, so she’s still in decorating mode.)

While I’m thinking about this typing on my $1,500 Apple laptop at a park, my thoughts coalesced around an incident during a trip we took with a church group that wound up in Egypt.

It seems that there is no toilet paper in the latrines at one of our stops. Women from the area sell toilet paper in order to make a little money to feed their children. The women in our group were aghast! What?? We get toilet paper for free back in America. Why should we pay? And they rapidly organized themselves into who had tissues in their handbags that could share around.

I thought at the time (and still remember with regret that I kept my mouth shut), what a poor example of Christian charity. These women were not “ripping us off.” It was partly custom and partly a way they’d worked out that could provide an income for poor people. It is similar to dropping a coin into the saucer in a German restroom as a tip for the cleaning lady.

It’s like a minimal charity. Although middle class people in America seldom feel rich, we are. There’s a frugal mindset and a cheap mindset (borders on greed?)–and there is also a charitable mindset. Charitable with money and with time and with encouragement.

What mindset do you (and I) cultivate? Does it need continual tuning?

Posted in Attitude | Leave a Comment »

That Complex Relationship With Emotions

August 26, 2022

Once when somewhat stressed and flooded with email requests of my time and energy, I responded to one with some extra comments. I don’t remember the exact topic or words or the exact response from the woman who sent the original–someone I’d known for several years–but her response pricked at a sore point. She said something like, “I know how you are…”

That stung. And 15 years later, I still feel it.

And, god bless electronic media. It’s so easy to delete 2/3rds of your response to an email or entire Twitter or Facebook posts!

I am emotional. I try to keep the emotions in check. I hate emotional movies–I tear up.

This thought from Pema Chodron came my way:

“If you open to all your emotions,

to all the people, to all situations,

staying present and trusting,

that trust will take you as far as you can go,

and you will understand all the teachings

anyone has ever taught.”

– Pema Chodron

If you pause to consider this little poem, you’ll find complexity and compassion.

Try “open to” as a key word. And then “trust”.

So much of Jesus’s “blessed’s” that I’ve been pondering lately contain these. Open to God, open to yourself, open to others. Trust God.

I need this. How about you?

Posted in Attitude, emotions, Trust | Leave a Comment »

You Are Blessed

August 25, 2022

What a great way to begin a long session of teaching:

You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
Your blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the one most dear to you.
You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.
You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘carefull’, you find yourselves cared for.
You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.
You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s Kingdom.
Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.

No matter what season of life you are inhabiting right now–you are blessed.

So many of us can only see all the bad things around us. We open “social” media–other people are either parroting misinformation designed to make us feel bad or extolling how great their life is (making us think about how much we are missing). We turn on “news.” It is designed to capture our emotions to keep us tuned in to sell us stuff through advertising. This has been true for many years of the news media. We used to nickname a leading local TV station as “wrecks, rapes, and murders.”

But Jesus says we are blessed.

I think I will sit in contemplation for a bit today and soak in this blessedness. Perhaps tomorrow and the following day, also. Perhaps I can experience what being blessed feels like. Must be good.

Posted in Christianity, Faith, forgiveness | Leave a Comment »

Blessed When People Don’t Like You, or Worse

August 24, 2022

We are reaching the end of the Beatitudes. Sort of an outline for Jesus and his teaching. This one is a bit different. We must be careful how we approach this one, which is longer.

You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s Kingdom. Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.

Some people, at least in America I’m not sure about other places, seem to go out of their way to achieve this one. Or perhaps look for instances of this. But their view of persecution stops short of anything personally threatening. It’s more along the lines of “the popular people in town don’t like me.” Some actually use this as a source of pride.

I think of people who emulate the preacher in the stage play and movie Paint Your Wagon who thought it was his role to condemn people and took a perverse pride in not being liked.

I don’t think that Jesus told us to try to be disliked. That is merely being obnoxious. But in Jesus’s day, choosing him (God) was rejecting both the Roman power structure and the Jewish power structure. Either one of which could cause death in the extreme cases.

Continuing to live on the path of following Jesus–living in the moment with-God–will threaten some people who may attack you physically, emotionally, financially. You are blessed because you are still with God. It’s not a disgrace. It’s not a source of pride. It’s a blessing to live with-God no matter what.

Posted in Attitude, Christianity, Faith | Leave a Comment »

Blessed Are The Peacemakers

August 23, 2022

The seventh Beatitude in The Message translation:

You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.

And, God, can we use more of these today!

This blog has an international readership. I studied international politics at university writing a major paper on US-China relations (in 1968). I’ve imported and exported and dealt internationally for most of my career. I don’t think there exists a single place where I know people or read about in the entire Earth that cannot use someone who can show people how to cooperate.

I am working on a blog post/essay analyzing several announcements by technical trade organizations that have competed vehemently over the past 15 years or more. These announcements have at least one common theme–cooperation. They still compete. But, for the good of the customer, they are cooperating on standards and compliance. The organizations represent companies from Germany, US, France, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Italy, Japan, even China. And more.

Cooperation makes life better for us all.

That’s why I turn off all inputs to my mind that emphasize divisiveness. TV news. Social media. Most print/web news. I pick my sources carefully with the goal of knowing what’s going on in the world with as little hype as possible.

And I tune out all the people who seek to make faith in God political. The guy I follow, Jesus, shunned politics. His kingdom was God’s kingdom. It was about living with God. He tried to show both the Roman governors and the Jewish leaders a new way.

Every day in every way we can point to cooperation and reconciliation rather than strife and conflict. We could make this a movement.

Posted in Attitude, Disciplines, Justice | 1 Comment »

Bring Order To Your Inside World

August 22, 2022

I’m slowly thinking my way through the beginning of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. The bullet points to outline the context we cal the Beatitudes–written in The Message translation. This is the sixth of eight. We have learned about emptying ourselves so that we can have room for God. Then about focusing on God in order to fill ourselves with him.

But wait! Sometimes there is more. A next step.

You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

We have tried to empty ourselves and focus on God. Sometimes we may try to focus our mind, yet our heart is not with us.

Have you ever tried to meditate or pray or even read and our mind says it is time but our heart it troubled? Or, perhaps our heart wants to settle into meditation and our mind is scattered into a thousand thoughts?

How blessed we are when we sit in meditation or sit with someone else and our mind and our heart are together, focused on the moment. There is a calm that envelops us. We are completely present in the moment.

Posted in Disciplines | Leave a Comment »

Being Full of Care

August 19, 2022

Later I realized this 1969 encounter was my introduction to a Baby Boomer/Yuppie attitude that I’ve noticed ever since. He had a good job lined up after graduation. However, if he didn’t pass this second-year German class, he would not graduate. The professor suggested he contact me (why, I don’t know) for tutoring to get through the class. I mentioned once about feeling bad about the professor’s lot of moving from Vienna, Austria to Ada, Ohio. My pupil remarked, “I don’t have time to care.”

Jesus’s fifth of the eight Beatitudes, “You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘carefull’, you find yourselves cared for.”

Life is filled with these reciprocal situations.

Love when shared returns to the sender.

Gratitude when shared returns to the sender.

Even money at some point when shared appropriately returns benefits to the giver.

Jesus makes a point–we are blessed when we care.

Let us make that today’s mantra (saying that we repeat). We will then be presented with people or situations for which we should express care.

Posted in Compassion, Ethics, Gratitude, Habits | Leave a Comment »

Fill Me With God

August 18, 2022

According to the Apostle Matthew, Jesus noticed the crowds and his closer followers (probably one of the better understatements in the New Testament), and walked up a hillside, sat down (as was the custom), and taught.

He led with eight thoughts about being blessed. The first three we discussed in the last two posts concerned emptying yourself. Now, why should we empty ourselves? Yes, to be blessed, for sure. But Jesus continues:

You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.

An empty mind and soul can be the devil’s playground. But not if you intentionally choose what will fill them. That is why I always recommend turning off TV news. Be ever watchful of what fills your mind. With 2,000 years of Christian writers to help us, there is no excuse for not finding something to help us fill our minds with God. Work up a good appetite, Jesus says. Eat and drink from the goodness of God.

Here are a few items on the buffet table: the Desert Fathers, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, many more guides and mentors.

Read. Sit quietly and focus. Fill your mind and soul.