Or, does it, really.
Those flowers won’t grow–they are plastic.
Could this be a metaphor for how we share the love Jesus taught?
Love Grows Here
May 29, 2025Too Much Advice
May 28, 2025Arnold Schwarzenegger recently wrote a note to The Pump Club (an online fitness community) regarding too much fitness and nutrition advice floating around. Even if much of it is good advice, which unfortunately it is not, too much becomes confusing. Your head fills with more information than it can act upon.
Recently picked up guitar after a few dormant years. I know and have practiced many chords. I know from experience which keys I can sing in—and which genres. But I sought assurance. I visited my old friend Dr. Google. Man—too much advice. How to hold the guitar, what sort of strap and how to mount, what is the appropriate singing range based on an app.
I’ve devoted years to simplifying fitness and nutrition into something that works. Taking that thought back to the practice of guitar, I sought to simplify.
The same with spiritual practice. After 60 years of meditation experience and teaching, I found a new teacher online—just to check in to assure I’m still on the right path. His message—simplify. If the lesson didn’t come right away, well, that’s OK. Come back tomorrow.
Spiritual practice is just that—practice. Every day. If you didn’t receive a lightning bolt from God, well, that’s OK. There’s always tomorrow. Over time your personality will change. Just from sticking with the basics. Day after day.
Read, pray, love.
We Blame The Wrong Thing
May 27, 2025I once accepted a position in a company to develop a marketing plan for a new product. The product looked not only cool, but also to fill a customer need. I knew the market and the technology.
I developed and executed a plan based on a model that I thought was current and best.
The market had changed a little within two years. It no longer conformed with my model.
We blame the world for not fitting into our model.
I could have blamed the world for changing. But I knew that I had not adapted. There were other problems, such as updating the product to ever changing technologies. The end result was we closed the company within 18 months.
This is not a metaphor for changing your mind—which is something we always must consider.
This metaphor is about blame.
Perhaps we have a model in our head about the ideal church or the ideal organization or the ideal theology. Then we discover that the world does not work that way.
Whom do we blame?
Do we blame the world for not bending to our will and then go off to pout?
Do we accept blame and work on ourselves to adapt to reality?
Memorial Day in America
May 26, 2025Today is a national holiday, which many people will not observe officially. The official purpose includes remembrance for those who fought and died in wars to protect our country. My great-grandmother when I was quite young called the day “Decoration Day”—a day of remembrance to visit grave sites of deceased family and decorate the site.
I observed 25 Memorial Day weekends at a youth soccer tournament. So, I am a perpetrator of the idea that this last weekend of May is the official beginning of the summer season.
I’ve not compiled an exhaustive list, but it appears to me that most countries have some form of a Memorial Day of remembrance.
Wherever you are—pause today to remember and reflect. It’s good for the soul.
Stochastic Parrot
May 23, 2025I try to separate the two sides of my thinking. Sometimes the overlap is too tasty.
Our pursuit of spiritual formation and the rest we can find in the Spirit sometimes can be disturbed kind of like in one of the Star Wars original episodes where one character remarks, “I feel a disturbance in the force.”
Perhaps all the news items and speculation, for it’s all speculation and not news, regarding what might happen with artificial intelligence have caused a disturbance in your (our) spirit.
I can no longer write a computer program (without a lot of catching up) and my memory of all the probability math I was taught has mostly evaporated. However, I remember enough to read books and articles sent to me for my tech blog The Manufacturing Connection picking up ideas of what technologies are behind all the hype. I write often to calm people suggesting they look more realistically behind the marketing and journalism hype.
Then came this podcast of Tech Nation by Moira Gunn, who hosted a linguistics professor called Dr. Emily Bender. Bender had released a book with Dr. Alex Hannah, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want.
My interest was piqued when they mentioned a 2021 paper by Bender, et. al., on language models called Stochastic Parrot.
As one of the thinkers attempting some common sense to cut through the AI hype, I love that term. Much of generative AI and large language models are simply probability calculations based on learned text. In other words:
Stochastic—a random probability distribution that may be analyzed statistically but may not be predicted precisely—plus Parrot—to repeat something said by someone else without thought or understanding.
There are writers on both sides of the hype divide—the doom sayers and the optimistic hype sayers—who have let imagination run amok. Shall we pull back a little and look for those applications where this will really help. Applications other than providing more words for marketers to stuff into a news release, that is.
Let this be an example of maintaining our focus on our spiritual development filtering hype from our awareness.
Leadership is a Choice
May 22, 2025Although sometimes it is thrust upon us.
Still, we can choose to lead rather than only filling a role.
Movies, TV shows, novels, social media all promote a lie that only a few are born to lead. Leaders show up in many place with many guises.
Maybe we’re born into a family that provides leadership examples. Maybe we’re born into a family where low self-esteem is pervasive in the atmosphere. But as we grow, we can choose to lead. It took me years, but it happened. It can happen to you.
Sometimes we decide to try something. I remember standing in the center circle of a soccer pitch in a professional soccer stadium. 22 high school players are lined up ready to decide the state champion. There were several thousand spectators in the stands. There was a local TV feed. I had the whistle. A sinister thought flashed through my mind just before blowing the whistle to start the game—What in the world made me think I should be here??
Many times I’ve been in a tense negotiation or facing a business decision holding great consequence for the company. I’ve wondered why I made the decisions that put me in those situations. Certainly I was not bred for those roles.
Most of you probably have similar examples. But, we all did it. Right? Leaders can be found and nurtured everywhere.
Oh, that soccer game? It was a great game. I even got a “great call” from the professional player/TV commentator. I had a second state final where I had to caution the best player on one side. Then I had a brief chat to manage him to get his head back into the game. He made the assist leading to the goal that won the game in overtime. Sometimes it works out to take the risk.
Two things:
- Take the risk to lead
- Nurture someone as they take the risk
Learning or Education
May 21, 2025With the exception of my final two years at university, the only time I cared about grades came with the school report cards every six weeks. Dad was given the mistaken impression by a teacher that I was smart and lectured me every six weeks about my grades. Which, by the way, never improved during that time.
Even as young as 15, I was more concerned with learning than grades. Even at 17 when I looked into potential professional graduate school (seminary) I figured out that what that was was simply a certificate which served as a ticket into a club. A club I may not wish to join.
Seth Godin recently wrote, “Education is the hustle for a credential. It exchanges compliance for certification. An institution can educate you, but only you can learn.”
[I figured out the game, finally, during the third quarter of my second university year. The game meant I should work enough to get high enough grades to graduate. That I did. And at the same time devised my own curriculum to learn what I wished outside the approved structure. But I’m staring at the envelope holding a portfolio with a piece of paper awarding me a BA. That’s all I needed to get interesting jobs—and continue learning.]
If you wish to be a doctor of something or a pastor or the like, you’ll need that certificate. Nothing wrong with that. You can probably study both in the system for the grade and certificate and to learn just for your own growth. Just be aware of what road you’re on.
[This is post number 3,500 on this blog. I started it in 2008 as sort of a trial. I didn’t treat it seriously for about a year. With the demise of Google search and algorithms and the essential end of Twitter, my traffic is down a little. But there are many subscribers one way or another. Mostly I write to think. For those of you who continue to read—Thank You very much.]
Choose Community Wisely
May 21, 2025Parents know to observe carefully the friends their adolescents hang out with. Their friends have greater impact on the youth than parents at this stage.
The online community we hang out in, if we so choose to spend time in “social media,” impacts our thoughts and, indeed, our life.
Belief is born when we combine community with emotion.
Choose your community online or in person wisely. You can be sucked into a vortex of conspiracy theories and negativity. Or you can find generous people who relate with kindness and build each other up.
We think we have free will and will make up our own minds. But often we get drawn a bit at a time into a life we would not have chosen.
Develop the power of reflection and awareness. Choose your friends and direction with intention not by osmosis.
Not a Contest
May 20, 2025His entire life was driven by the need to be better than his brother. Every thing, every situation, every skill, all was competition. Every interaction was win/loss.
No relationships. No relaxation. Even vacations were competitive—had to be bigger, better, more expensive, more physical.
What a loss, I thought.
Life is not a sporting event. It’s about coming to grips with that lost little girl or boy. Living with generosity and kindness.
It’s never too late to start.
Kindness Is a Gift
May 19, 2025It makes every interaction easier.
Practice giving it generously.
To yourself, as well as to others.
Faith Venture 