Faith Venture

Heraclitus lived even before Socrates in Ancient Greece. He perceived that everything changes. “You cannot set foot in the same river twice.”

Indeed, we see in our lives constant change. The kids grow. Jobs change. We must learn to adapt and, in this sense, go with the flow.

On the other hand, seen from a different perspective, say from 30,000 feet in an airplane, the river is where it has been more or less for millennia.

While everything changes, the Spirit never changes. It is always around.

We can read the thoughts of humans from 4,000 years ago or even longer and they were in touch with the Spirit.

Everything changes except for the important thing which never changes. The Spirit is a constant.

The need and desire for getting in touch with the Spirit is what makes spiritual practices so foundational.

For decades, the most popular magazine in America was devoted to helping people decide what to watch on TV from among three choices (TV Guide).

How do you decide today? There are too many shows, yet not enough quality. And the quality is spread among too many carriers.

I am upset at the sudden large increase from Spectrum for TV service. I’d like to cut the cord. How many subscriptions will I need to replace it? Will the cost of Netflix plus Amazon Prime plus a new Disney streaming channel plus many more in the end cost more than cable?

Seth Godin calls it cognitive overload in this blog post.

Try shopping at the local “super” grocery store. I’d like to buy a box of cereal. Not so simple.

From Seth—

Here’s my list, in order, of what drives behavior in the modern, privileged world:

• Fear

• Cognitive load (and the desire for habit and ease)

• Greed (fueled by fear)

• Curiosity

• Generosity/connection

The five are in an eternal dance, with capitalist agents regularly using behavioral economics to push us to trade one for the other. We’re never satisfied, of course, which is why our culture isn’t stable. We regularly build systems to create habits that lower the cognitive load, but then, curiosity amplified by greed and fear kick in and the whole cycle starts again.

That is where spiritual practices such as meditation and breathing come to our rescue. We slow down, focus, breathe, meditate. Slow down Seth’s eternal dance until we can handle it.

There is an equally critical factor for success in companies: Teams that act as communities, integrating interests and putting aside differences to be individually and collectively obsessed with what’s good for the company. Research shows that when people feel like they are part of a supportive community at work, they are more engaged with their jobs and more productive.

Thus begins the book that you should read next. Trillion Dollar Coach: The Playbook from Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell, by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle. (The three authors were senior leaders at Google / Alphabet–and coached by Bill.)

Bill Campbell’s journey took him from head football coach at Columbia University, to the top sales and marketing job at Apple, to CEO of a couple of technology companies (Intuit and GO). Then he became a coach. He coached Steve Jobs at Apple. The three leaders and then many more at Google. And more than 80 other Silicon Valley CEOs and leaders. And his middle school football team that he coached at the same time.

He was most likely the most influential and respected man in Silicon Valley.

And his values and teaching are appropriate to all of us no matter the organization we’re with.

For example, he let everyone know his blocked time for coaching his football team of 13- and 14-year-olds. He wouldn’t answer his phone if you tried calling. One person, though, would ignore the time and call. Bill would pull his phone out of his pocket and look at the caller ID. The kids around him would look, also. They would see the name Steve Jobs, and then see Bill decline the call. They all knew that when Bill was with them, he was with them.

Read this book–and put the principles into practice in your life. You may not be building the next Google. But you can be the determining influence in someone’s life.

Diet–a word that scares some people and causes others great anxiety. From the Greek diaita which has connotations of a way of living.

I worked in a factory for a year while I was in college and then again for several years after. We had two 10-minute breaks for using the restroom and grabbing a snack and 30 minutes for lunch. Then we would grab a sandwich, play cards, use the restroom, and get back to our station.

I learned to eat quickly. And hardly mindfully.

When we eat mindlessly, we are distracted, hurried, reacting to stress, filling a need.

Eating mindfully, we bring intention of nourishment for our body. Our attention is on the quality of the food we eat–along with, perhaps, to the enjoyment of the company we are with. We bring an attitude of gratefulness for the food we have.

It is like our approach to life, to meditation, to study, to prayer.

Slow down. Focus. Intentionally approach what we are doing. Place our undivided attention on the task at hand. Become aware of where we are, our place, our companions.

Bringing mindfulness to eating helps us manage weight and health. Bringing mindfulness to daily life helps us manage stress and health.

Rex Stout was an author of detective novels. He created a character who had emigrated to New York City from the region around Serbia or Macedonia following World War I. Nero Wolf liked a good life of never leaving his house, tending to his orchids, eating fine food prepared by his personal chef–and solving murder cases for a fee.

His secretary/assistant Archie Goodwin would go out and gather information and then pressure Wolf to go to work–thinking through the problem to solve the mystery. Late in each story, Wolf would sit back in his chair custom-designed for his large frame, close his eyes, and his lips would start to purse out and return. That was a sign he finally had gotten around to the hard work of thinking.

I just finished a project that requires at least 10 hours of concentrated thinking following many hours of preparation. I keep putting it off knowing how hard it is. Then, I sit down, pull out the laptop, and go to work. I find out that 1) it’s not so bad as I thought and 2) losing yourself in concentration and then coming up for air generates a good feeling.

How many things, I wonder, would benefit from us taking a few minutes of concentrated thinking rather than spouting off an ill-formed opinion based upon emotional reaction to a stimulus?

Maybe we would not be so easily manipulated by others.

Maybe we would mature and have adult conversations.

Maybe hate and division would settle into respect, debate, and working out the best possible answer.

But that all requires work. Thinking is a discipline worthy of practice.

There was a group of violin students. Some were very good. Others were OK. Still a third group was found lacking in skill.

The teacher asked how long each student spent practicing alone before coming to orchestra practice.

It should be no surprise. The best violin players devoted the most time to practicing in solitude. The worst of the group spent the least amount of time alone in practice.

Perhaps if you feel your spiritual formation is lacking, you need to spend more time alone in solitude in meditation, prayer, and study.

Martin Luther once said, “I have so much to do that I will spend my first three hours daily in prayer.”

This is Good Friday, part of Easter weekend. Christians celebrate this time because without the death and resurrection of Jesus, his teachings would be similar to the Stoics (his contemporaries in Rome).

But–this leads to problems of understanding. We have a concept of Trinity, something not explained in the Bible. Jesus gave us the idea of God as Father. He talked about God’s Spirit dwelling in people. The former was new. The latter is as old as the worship of the Creator God. But then, what to make of Jesus himself.

As an Enneagram Five, I try to understand things intellectually. But with a strong Four influence, I’m moved emotionally by music.

A singer/songwriter (from the Christian group Jars of Clay who is also a Five with a strong Four wing) said understanding the three can best be done aurally as a triad. Don’t try intellectually. Just listen for it.

It’s like a music chord. In the key of C major, for example, you play the notes C-E-G simultaneously. Each of the notes exist individually. But they resonate together.

When my grandson’s middle school jazz band hit their first chord to open the program, it was like, “Wow, this is a fantastic sound.” The writer of the piece, the conductor who brought the band together, and the musicians all coming together each playing a part of that chord. It was powerful.

That is a far superior metaphor than any intellectual logic you could try to reason through.