That Spark That Helps Others

November 25, 2016

Who is it who has helped you grow in your career and as a person? Perhaps you didn’t even know it at the time.

I was pretty clueless about working with other people when I started out in my career. But there were John and Jack and Alex who saw something and put me in positions where I could contribute and grow. Of course I am grateful to them.

“At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.” Albert Schweitzer

Then there are teachers who taught more than their subject matter–Mr. Johnson who taught logical thinking that I still use, Mr. McCarty who pushed me to go to science and engineering summer camps, Mrs. Maxwell who taught literature and writing (she’d probably be shocked to see me doing all the writing I’ve done over the past 20 years!), Mrs. McGowan who told my parents I was smart and ruined my next six years (every time report cards came out, I got “the lecture” from dad about how my grades didn’t reflect my intellect–I don’t know, maybe they did 😉 but actually when someone compliments you that can be the spark.

“The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.” William James

So, I hoped I sparked some good memories for you. And a sense of gratitude for what others have done.

“The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you.” John E. Southard

The challenge before us is to try to get even with those people. Many are gone now. But you can still get even by passing the torch. Who can I help today?

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Happy Thanksgiving With Gratitude

November 24, 2016

Just a quick post to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving–even if your country doesn’t have a special day.

I stole this from Rex Hammock. He owns a publishing company and was an early blogger. This is from his Idea Email.

In her book Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, Anne Lamott writes about this kind of thanks:
“Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides … When you are aware of all that has been given to you, in your lifetime and in the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back.”
Happy Thanksgiving.

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Gratitude is Attitude

November 23, 2016

Tomorrow is a US national holiday–Thanksgiving. It is national “go home to be with family” day. Or in my case, go to the Chicago ‘burbs to be with family.

We have a somewhat romanticized recollection of the first English settlers in Massachusetts who came over here totally unprepared. They were helped by the natives who already lived here (and whom they would subsequently kill off) to survive that first winter. They had a banquet in gratitude for the help.

So, I’ve been turning to a collection of gratitude quotes to end my Yoga class.

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” William Arthur Ward

I was quite a shy kid and often was afraid to speak up. Yes, that was a long time ago. I’ve made up for it. But I think back on those times when someone did something for me and I didn’t speak up to thank them. So now, I try to thank everyone for everything.

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” G. K. Chesterton

That is a lot to say from one of the leading thinkers of his time–or any time. Many people are lost in search for happiness. That is the wrong way around. Happiness finds us when we are most focused on gratitude for what others have done.

“‘Enough’ is a feast.” Buddhist proverb

We traditionally have a Thanksgiving meal that is way too much to eat. We feel so miserable that we sleep through the football game. We call it a feast. I had a bad experience with poultry early in life, so I don’t stuff myself with turkey and stuffing. Even so, the temptation to over indulge is great. This saying implies much more than just Thanksgiving dinner. Are we on a quest for ‘more’, or are we content with ‘enough’?

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.” John F. Kennedy

And President Kennedy dove right to the core. Gratitude is not a one time expression of “thank you.” Rather, gratitude is the attitude with which we orient our daily lives.

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Are You In or Out?

November 22, 2016

This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me…  Jesus quoting Isaiah

The Pharisees (remember them, the rule-followers of Jesus’ time) were complaining about Jesus followers not following precisely the traditions of the elders. Again. And Jesus quotes their passage back at them.

Did you ever wonder if they got it?

Jesus commented often to them. We know of a few who “got it.” But one wonders if the words just flew around them like so much noise.

As I read and reread this part of Mark 7 this morning and meditated on the passage, my mind was drawn to churches and religious organizations. And I thought about being “in” and “out” of the group.

How many times during the famous “10 am hour on Sundays” when many are attending church are the walls of the various buildings actually separating people into “in” and “out”?

Do we expect people to say the believe what we believe, how we believe it, and vote like us before they can come in?

As Jesus explained himself a little later, he said it is all about what is inside the person that counts. And I meditated on whether we are busy wondering if the people around us are following all the traditions and rituals that we have put our faith in or if we are concerned to bringing hurting, lost, and searching people into a deeper, life-changing faith?

Then I thought that we, like the Pharisees, are more concerned about whether people believe what we do and act like we do and dress like we do than about what their needs are and how we can help meet them.

And I thought (meditation goes this way–if you’ve never tried it, give it a shot) about how most likely the wrong people are “in church.” The seats should be filled with people who are seeking God–or something they don’t know but that it is really God. And the people now in the seats should be outside introducing people to God and enticing them into a safe place where they can learn and be equipped.

Not to say that worship isn’t great. But is our focus on our worship? Or is our focus on walking with God–24/7?

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Finishing Well

November 21, 2016

She stared down at the finish line of the 40 meter sprint. She had made the sprint 6 times in under the time requirement. Missed one. There was just this one more try. Get in under the time and she qualifies to go to the camp to train to be one of the elite soccer referees in the country. Miss, and she goes back to youth games.

The signal beeped. She took off. The pain of so much running and so much stress started to enter her consciousness. Then she looked at the approaching finish line. Finishing strong. It was as much the way she finished as beating the time that guaranteed her success.

let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us…  –letter to the Hebrews 12

Have you learned anything new today? This week? This month? This year?

John Kotter, in his classic leadership and management book Leading Change, talks about the many people he has seen in his consulting career who peaked at 35. They ceased to learn anything anymore. They grew comfortable. And the world passed them by. When change came, as it inevitably does, they were lost.

That is a big problem in our economy and country right now. We’ve had far-reaching changes in the type of work available, in the location of jobs, in new things to learn.

It’s not like it is the first time in human history this has happened. It happens in every culture, every geography, over millennia. Why do we think we can do the same things we’ve always done and expect different results?

Then there’s personal growth. When is the last time you really studied the Bible or one of the great thinkers of the tradition? Did your knowledge stop when your were 15? Do you still quote the same verses or sayings having long since forgotten the context or the reason?

How do you want to finish? Coasting to the finish line over the last half of your life? As for me, I wish to finish strong. Like the young woman in the story I led with. Like the “vast cloud of witnesses” at the beginning of the Hebrews passage, we were all rooting for her. But it was up to her to finish strong. There are people rooting for you.

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Leaders Are Connectors

November 18, 2016

It’s a weird thing. I attend many conferences. Sometimes they are single-company conferences. It seems as if I’m always introducing people–even within the same company. I just connect people.

Recently I went to the wake of a leader. Listening to the stories about him, it was clear that he was a connector. Aside from also being humble and ethical, his connections and how he connected people stood out as his legacy.

Then I thought about the Apostle Paul. We usually study his writings in order to compile a list of rules for churches (or sometimes countries depending upon your political bent).

What if we looked at them from the point-of-view of leadership? Think of all the times he was “commending” people to other people.

Then there was the slave (a little bit different meaning than our slaves in the South pre-Civil War, but still…). His name was Onesimus. He belonged to a little fellowship of Jesus-followers. He ran away. Wound up serving Paul in a distant city.

Paul writes to his owner. Philemon, he writes, please welcome Onesimus back. “He’s a beloved brother,” he writes. Look at the situation from the point-of-view of love rather than the harsh view of the law.

Always connecting people. And that in an era when mail delivery was slow and uncertain. It took days or weeks to travel to some of these places where we could drive in a day or two. Or fly in a couple of hours.

Somehow he kept track of people and introduced them to each other, encouraged them, tried to get them to get along with each other.

America is not the only country in the world that is crying out for more connectors right now. But we could really use some leaders, and not exclusively political ones, who connect rather than sever relations.

And we have to ask, what is our role in that effort? Do we divide or connect?

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Beware The Yeast of the Herodians, Or Don’t Let Power Go To Your Head

November 17, 2016

This is the third post in a series on a comment of Jesus found in Mark.

mind-map-mark-yeast

Did you ever know someone who got a taste of a little bit of power and let it go to the head? Did it ever happen to you?

Power relationships.

It happens in dysfunctional marriages where one person needs to have power over the other. I see it often in schools where a principal or superintendent has such a need of control and such a great amount of self-absorption that they must exert power over their minions. Happens in business, churches, pretty much wherever people are gathered.

The yeast of the Herodians infiltrated the dough of their (our?) lives.

Herod was “king of the Jews” appointed by Rome to control the region. He knew how to exercise power in the most brutal way. Rome itself was the epitome of exercising power relationships. Remember when Herod ordered all infant boys aged two years and under killed in Bethlehem lest the new “king of the Jews” who was reported born there survive and kick him off the throne?

Even Jesus’ followers at the very last instant just before his arrest and trial were still thinking of the coming kingdom of God in terms of a power relationship where the Jews would rise up and kick some Roman butt. Jesus had other ideas. And the power idea didn’t work very well for the Jews, either, some 40 years later when Rome came in, destroyed the Temple and killed thousands.

But Jesus turned that power relationship on its head. Check out the Sermon on the Mount. The teaching that if a soldier asks you to carry his backpack for a mile (legal) you carry it two. Love your enemies. Washing the feet of your followers.

Jesus was not against power. He was against using power over others. He used power for others.

Where are you in your power relationships? Do you use it to lord it over people? Or do you use it for the benefit of other people? Your choice. Choose wisely.

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Beware the Yeast of the Pharisees

November 16, 2016

mind-map-mark-yeast

Still considering Jesus’ seemingly off-hand comment “Watch out–beware the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of the Herodians.”

Reporters didn’t follow Jesus around recording every word he said in hope of a “gotcha” moment where they could make him look bad. That type of “journalism” (and I use the word loosely) only happened recently in history.

No, the gospel writers took these little vignettes and recorded them because they moved their stories forward. So consider that whenever they record a comment, it is important.

So, we were looking at the spiritual meaning of the sentence, since Jesus obviously points us to the spiritual significance later.

Considering we–as in each one of us–are the “dough” in the story. And consider that yeast is a reactive agent that enters the dough, permeates throughout it, and then creates a chemical and physical change in the dough.

As we are the dough, and we are to beware letting the “yeast” of the Pharisees into us, then what does that mean?

Let’s look at how the Pharisees are represented in the gospels. They are rule followers. Empty on the inside. Remember the metaphor of the cup–clean on the outside and corroded on the inside?

Or seekers of loopholes–that is how all of us rule-followers are. How can we make the rules favor us rather than someone else?

Or lovers of comparison. “Lord, I thank you that I am not like that sinner over there.”

When we allow these thoughts and attitudes to permeate us, then our entire being is changed.

We are no longer kind, empathetic, loving, serving people of God–the sort of people who inherit the Kingdom. We become negative, cynical, separate, hard-hearted.

Perhaps we think back to Paul’s description of people of the flesh and people of the spirit in Galatians. Which do we want to be? Beware the yeast of the Pharisees lest it change your character!

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Listening With Our Entire Mind As A Spiritual Discipline

November 15, 2016

Did you ever hear what someone said and not understand what was meant? Sometimes someone you know assumes a background and just makes a comment. You hear it and think it applies to something totally different.

What if you were a friend of Jesus back in the day? He was full of those comments. You knew that when he said something it had spiritual reference. But, still….

One day after coming up with a way to feed 4,000 people by miraculously coming up with truckloads of bread manufactured from only a few loaves as the “raw material,” Jesus was riding in the boat with his buddies.

He says, “Watch out–Beware the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of the Herodians.”

Do they let the spiritual significance of this comment sink in? Noooo. They are still thinking about all that bread they fed the crowd with and where in the heck it came from.

mind-map-mark-yeast

When I’m studying a section that obviously needs some thought, I like to make a mind map. This is a quick one I sketched out in my journal. There were three key words–yeast, Pharisees, Herodians. So, I mapped out a bunch of descriptions of the three and then tried piecing it together. [By the way, I have a prettier app for the Mac and iPad–MindJet Mind Manager. It’s a great way to outline thoughts and brainstorm.]

Of course, the disciples were caught by surprise. Then didn’t have it written. It was a quick comment.

Yeast can mean a number of things. I read once that it is a symbol of evil. But I thought it likely to look at two characteristics–it permeates through the dough and it causes change.

Pharisees? Well, they represented the religious elite who thought that behavior could be changed through laws and the legal system. And in this manner, they could prove they were better than “sinners” because they followed the law. Jesus usually poked at them.

Herodians? They were the political elite. Ruthless exercise of power was their characteristic.

If the dough is us, then think it through.

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Augmented Reality or Distorted Reality

November 14, 2016

I put on the pair of magic glasses. Immediately I was transported to a magic land of another reality. I saw things floating in front of me. I could walk around objects and view them from every angle, but I couldn’t touch them.

There was a white dot. I focused on the dot and brought my hand up to eye level forming a fist with fingers on top. Then I opened my fist like a jasmine bud you drop into hot water to make fragrant tea. And a computer screen appeared before my eyes.  I raised a finger, pointed to a button, brought my finger down and then back up as if clicking. And a machine started.

No, I had neither smoked something or injected something. (Although people suspect that in my days at university… well that’s another topic for another day!)

Perhaps you’ve seen the TV ads for the Samsung phone with Virtual Reality (VR) goggles? I was wearing a real product–the Microsoft Hololense. This is Augmented Reality (AR). I could see people. I could see the actual machine in the second scenario. I controlled the fan speed of the real machine without touching anything. People watching would only see me waving my hand.

Last week I was in Atlanta at a trade fair sponsored by an industrial technology company–Rockwell Automation. At a stand called modestly enough The Future of the Connected Enterprise, they showed these working examples of AR in a manufacturing setting.

This being a spiritual discipline blog and not a technology blog (you can find mine here), I contemplated reality this morning. We often say that others live in a “distorted reality field,” that is, they couldn’t see reality if it raised up and kicked them. They think they are perfect, their kids are perfect, that nothing is going wrong. Or they live firmly in the belief that other people are going directly to hell (I guess that would make heaven a lonely place).

And I thought about how Jesus time and time again held a sort of mirror up to people–Pharisees, the rich young man, his disciples–and tried to get them to see beyond their VR or AR point of view to the reality behind.

Just now reading through Mark, I thought about this story where Jesus commented to his disciples to beware the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of the Herodians. They started to speculate that he said that because they had no bread to eat. Jesus said something to the effect of “put on your spiritual reality glasses and see the spiritual meaning of my comment.” He did that all the time, didn’t he?

What sort of glasses are we wearing today? VR, AR, or SR?

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