Q: How do you eat an elephant? A: One bite at a time.
We can look at our to do list or agenda or stuff piling up on our calendar. We feel overwhelmed. What to do?
Take the next action. Do the one thing that moves the project forward. Make the one phone call. Research the trip. Confirm the next appointment.
Buddhism teaches something beyond the usual self-help guru.
Take the next right action. Move this discussion to a moral plane. Do the right thing, not the expedient thing.
Sometimes I’ve not done my best. Sometimes even I make a mistake.
It hurts.
Someone may point it out. I must regroup and reflect.
I consider myself a constant learner. If I am to learn, I must learn from my mistakes and shortcomings. Consider what was wrong. Observe people doing it right. Copy. Practice. Repeat.
Whether it’s guitar, singing, learning a language, resistance training, raising a dog. Whatever.
Own your mistakes. Swallow your pride. Learn from them. The path to true growth.
Trust and Openness
You meet a person
She casts a suspicious glance,
A guarded posture.
And another,
His furtive glance,
Filled with distrust.
You look at a mirror,
Perhaps it’s me,
Not them.
Perhaps if I smiled
With my eyes
As with my lips.
Projecting kindness and caring
Reflects back
Fading the suspicion and distrust.
I’ve read the New Testament—the story of Jesus and the beginnings of his movement. Many times.
One of the many lessons I learned from Jesus’ story was the futility of changing people’s hearts through laws.
Think through the stories of his interactions with religious people of his day. He would poke at the religiosity of their following their myriad of laws, yet the hollowness of their lives. Think of the cup brilliantly clean on the outside yet dirty inside.
The Civil Rights Movement of the early 60s formed my social and political thinking. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech about judging people by the strength of their character and not the color of their skin struck a harmonic chord with my early lessons about Jesus. It’s what’s inside that counts most—for me as well as you.
The Movement led to many necessary changed laws in the US.
Observing today’s social environment, the changed laws led to very few changed hearts.
The other day I observed that if all the spiritual study in the world doesn’t change the way you live, then that time was wasted.
What does it take to change a person’s heart?
So much hate spills out into our consciousness. Do people think that they can spew hate without consequence? It’s amazing how much energy we expend justifying ourselves.
Ponder this song from my youth:
Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets sounding
Come the judgement day.
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away.
(The Legend of Billy Jack, Peter, Paul, and Mary/Coven; author: peaceluvandbass)
You can study scripture as diligently as possible, but if it doesn’t change your behavior, then you have wasted your time.
I avoid political discussions as much as possible. People don’t like someone like me, someone who is an observer and sees both sides even while perhaps agreeing one way more than the other.
Axios CEO Jim VandeHei writing on the Finish Line newsletter offered advice recently for disaffected liberals and then for MAGA. Feedback from the MAGA group partly said that they have been put down for years with the cancel culture and inability to voice their opinions, so now that they are in charge, turnabout is fair play.
Nat Hentoff published a book many years ago called, Free Speech for Me But Not for Thee. He was thinking about a similar situation.
When we say, “I want justice for me; I don’t care about you,” then we have ceased speaking about justice. We’re talking about retaliation.
Retaliation is an honest human emotion. We probably all wish for some type of retaliation for those who have wronged us. Even to the feeling, “I should have said…”
Jesus had something to say about this topic (surprised?).
Love your enemies.
Even the heathen love their friends. But my followers are deeper than that. They can love their enemies.
Sometimes I turn to Rich Dixon for words of wisdom. He wrote, “People are hard to hate close up.” If I think in terms of a group, it’s easier to hate them. Then you realize that you have friends who sympathize that direction realizing that you love them.
Let me quote an American national document, “Liberty and Justice for all.”
I guess when I say “all” there, I actually mean, “All.” I guess that makes me strange. But I’ll own that.
I know a guy whose T-shirt reads, “Jesus took naps; be like Jesus.”
I can go with that.
Someone recently told me that his favorite divisive political commentator was like Jesus for he “tells it like it is directly.”
I wouldn’t compare any politician (choose your flavor) to Jesus. His message was to turn Roman culture on its head. Instead of every relationship being based on power, Jesus based relationship on love. Not sentimental love. Not necessarily tough love. But love all the same.
People who spread hate and divisiveness (choose your flavor) could use an infusion of Jesus’ type of love.
Can you disagree without being disagreeable?
Can you live without hate?
Can you accept that people are different from you?
I know it’s hard. Nobody said following Jesus was easy.
I know, logicians would be driven crazy by the logic of that title. Bear with me.
We are in an age where the natural human tendency to divide people into different groups is exacerbated by social media.
My undergraduate years were marked by the rise of a certain type of “feminism.” The theory was that females are innately better at certain things, say leadership, then males. Even though another part of the theory seemed to hold that biologically there was no meaningful difference. (I was confused in the late 60s—but maybe it was the times.)
Come to find out that people are people. Some people, male and female, can develop and lead organizations respecting and uplifting people; some people, male and female, cannot.
I have had the privilege of interviewing and meeting CEOs of multi-million dollar and even billion dollar companies. I worked with maintenance technicians who barely left high school with a diploma. I was pretty much as impressed with one group as the other. Each group had very smart people. Each group had people full of hot air.
I just left a software developer company conference. The place was full of engineers with a few marketing and business leaders thrown in. Everyone was gracious, patient, very smart. My conversations were enlightening and enlivening.
Think (and act) on these words of wisdom from the Apostle James:
“My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you show partiality, you commit sin[…]”
Far too many publicists have my email addresses. Some for my technology blog and some for this blog.
One publication publicist sent notice of a book on disciplines. Something like, Be Disciplined…Whose Disciplines?
It’s as if someone is forcing you to be disciplined. Or to follow disciplines.
The foundation of this writing builds from Spiritual Disciplines, or sometimes I say Spiritual Practices, because the word discipline can have a negative connotation. Like that book title.
We don’t talk about being forced to practice the Spiritual Disciplines. Now, if you decide to enter a monastic order, you have decided to follow the disciplines of that order.
But for you and me, it’s a choice. We get up in the morning and decide to sit in meditation and read from spiritual writing—or we decide to roll over and go back to sleep—or have a coffee and donut at the local donut shop and waste the morning.
The monastic example aside, you decide on your daily disciplines. Good night’s sleep, rise and meditate and read, exercise, eat a healthy breakfast, and so on. If someone tries to force you, it won’t work. If it’s your work or organization or church, leave. But listen to mentors and coaches who have your best interests in mind.
I encourage you to find your inner discipline. Don’t feel like a slave. Feel like someone who chooses to be healthy in spirit and mind and body.
Gary Mintchell
Faith Venture 