I have observed this to be so true in people who have mastered the art of leadership. They seem to be able to believe in the work they are doing for and with others, they believe the can make a difference in the world and yet are willing to be vulnerable with the ones they are working with. This in turn allows others to do the same, creating safe and collaborative work places where people can really flourish. I have also experienced the opposite. That is a painful place to be.
I’m really excited to read Andy Crouch’s new book Strong and Weak. I’ve read a number of reviews and listened to some of his own words like this Book Promo . It’s already really resonating for me. The full title is Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing. Crouch’s previous books have been brilliant so it makes this all the more enticing. The visual is what really got me going: a two by two grid with High Authority and High Vulnerability or Risk, leads to flourishing. High Authority with Low Vulnerability leads to exploiting others. Low Authority and Low Vulnerability leads to withdrawal from relationships and Low Authority and High Vulnerability leads to personal suffering. Another word for authority might be agency.
I have observed this to be so true in people who have mastered the art of leadership. They seem to be able to believe in the work they are doing for and with others, they believe the can make a difference in the world and yet are willing to be vulnerable with the ones they are working with. This in turn allows others to do the same, creating safe and collaborative work places where people can really flourish. I have also experienced the opposite. That is a painful place to be.
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We get some wisdom from Seth Godin almost every morning. The author, entrepreneur, marketer and speaker has such a creative and insightful mind. He is especially good when writing about the health of a work place and how best to create working environments where people can flourish. He wrote this some time ago but I have always hung on to it, for good reason I think. “Can we talk about it? That simple question is the litmus test for a productive relationship. If one professional says it to another, the answer is an emotion-free, "sure." There's no baggage. Talking is the point. Talking is what we do. We communicate to solve problems. On the other hand, if the question brings with it fear and agitation and, "uh oh, what's wrong," you can bet that important stuff goes undiscussed all the time.” Most of us know this from experience either because we have worked in that kind of situation or we are right now. We know how good it is to be working where it is safe to talk about it. In the normal ups and downs of our life it is easy to emotionally go up and down as well; to be ecstatic one moment with good news and happy events and devastated the next when the headlines are crushing and depressing. How do we maintain balance in life, find peace in the storm? I read this by Marilyn Mcentyre the other day in Weavings about the welcoming prayer; a prayer to be prayed each morning upon awaking. “‘I welcome everything that comes to me today.’ When I first heard that prayer I thought that to pray it authentically, one would have to be either absurdly idealistic or remarkably courageous. The Precept is not particularly new, or Christian, but it gives me language for what it takes to live in a posture of welcome: fearless receptivity. To distinguish an attitude of welcome from approving or disapproving is liberating. It is not only others’ approval or disapproval that can be a trap, but my own. As soon as I find myself judging what has happened, assigning blame, or even praise, the humble attitude of ‘beginners mind’ becomes impossible.” Welcoming Prayer by Father Thomas Keating. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I welcome everything that comes to me today because I know that it is for my healing. I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions. I let go of my desire for power and control. I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval and pleasure, I let go of my desire for survival and security. I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself. I open to the love and presence of God and God’s action within. Amen. I know that I want very quickly to assign praise or blame to things and categorize them in my heart and mind. To hold them in suspension would be good for me. There are many issues that are just too complex and human being are too complex. I need to practice this fearless receptivity. The prayer below is an indictment on our self-centeredness and a call for each of us to be moved from the comfortable places that we are. “Have mercy on us for our selective living.” Justice needs to break the sound barrier of God’s people. We watch the news and the injustices that happen around the world as if from a great distance and we are silently thankful that it’s them and not us. Our own passive racisms numb us to much that is wrong in the world. I wrote yesterday about how a life without stones will not sing. This prayer asks us to go a whole lot further and to fling ourselves into the transforming froth of the flood waters of justice. Am I courageous enough to do that? A Prayer for the Waters of Justice God who spoke the world into being, who emboldened outcast prophets to speak the truth and empowered marginalized women to tell good news. God who can be heard in sheer silence and became the Word enfleshed – how weary your voice must be; how hoarse your whisper and strained your prayers when you cry out for justice – that she might roll down like waters upon your parched and thirsty people. O Word Incarnate, of all the visions you have named, justice has not broken the sound barrier of your people. Have mercy on us, O God, for our selective living. Have mercy on us, who are willing to ride a wave, but not protect the ocean; who dare to claim a star, but not love the sky; who invite one neighbor to the table, never questioning why she’s hungry; who love a handful of strangers, but still bear prejudice in our hearts. It is far easier, O God, to watch the waters of justice roll from a distance. The sheer power threatens us. The surging spray endangers our way of living. Yet we know that our hope comes from your waters. Without justice life dries up, freedom withers, faith lies dormant. O God, brace us to withstand the flood of justice. Help us unleash her power. Fling our old selves into her transforming froth. Give us courage to cry out her name above the roaring waters of your creation. Have mercy on us, O God. Amen. Pamela C. Hawkins We all long for a life that is not burdened by difficulties, disappointment, sorrow, failure and loss but few of us experience life that way. And somehow it is very often the people that have known great loss and suffering who have a quality of life and character that makes them admirable and worthy of following. Our human nature is to avoid pain and yet this is what makes for the growth in our lives. It gives us the stories to tell, or as Wendell Berry would say, it gives us the songs to sing. “It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.” So maybe what we really want is shoulders to carry the weight because we do want our lives to sing, as we love the sound that water makes over stones. The Japanese poet Matsuo Basho wrote the haiku
The moon is brighter since the barn burned. and there is something very true for us this morning about that. With the help of some strong friends we raised the south wall of our new barn yesterday evening as the sun was going down and it is certainly changing the skyline on the west. We will see less of the setting morning moon when the barn is finished. But the sunset last night was a beautiful sight as the wall was going up. It is also true what Sam Rayburn said, that "a jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one." I'm not much of a carpenter myself so I am finding those who know how and we are making progress one nail at a time. I came across these words by theologian Christian Duquoc the other day and it really resonated for me. “Forgiveness is an invitation to the imagination. [It is not] forgetfulness of the past; … rather, it is the risk of a future other than the one imposed by the past or by memory.” I think this is a grounded and realistic view of the hard work of forgiveness. It requires us to imagine a future very different from the one we are in or from the past, that place where we might be stuck for a long time. I think this is true about forgiving others and forgiving ourselves. I don’t know about you but for me if I am wronged I can endlessly press rewind on that situation and play the situation out over and over again. I feel trapped and it is only imagining a different kind of story, one that requires imagination and then courage to act and begin to live that newly imagined future. I keep coming back to the word flourishing to describe that newly imagined reality. When you are flourishing in your life you have moved imaginatively to a place of forgiveness and grace and the burdens of the past falls away and you feel free. It may be a bit like learning a new dance step. At first it feels awkward and clumsy but after a while it starts to feel natural and part of a new way of being. Not easy, but always good. Christian Duquoc – “The Forgiveness of God” in Concilium (1986) There are so many powerful and convicting things written and spoken by the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. One has only to replay the “I Have a Dream” speech or the “I’ve Been to the Mountain” sermon preached not long before he was assassinated to realize what a courageous prophet of our times he was. Two of our sons drove through the southern states this summer and visited the hotel-turned-museum where he was killed. They have preserved the hotel down to the details of the 1968 décor and the cars still parked in the lot as they were then. It’s a rather chilling effect. His words continue to inspire and challenge me to be more than I am no matter the cost. His ideas of creative nonconformity are bold and true. Are we willing to pay the kind of cost required to live that way? I hope I am. “Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit. The transformed nonconformist, moreover, never yields to the passive sort of patience that is an excuse to do nothing…. This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Our planet teeters on the brink of atomic annihilation; dangerous passions of pride, hatred, and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless calvaries; and men do reverence before false gods of nationalism and materialism. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority… Honesty impels me to admit that transformed nonconformity, which is always costly and never altogether comfortable, may mean walking through the valley of the shadow of suffering, losing a job, or having a six-year-old daughter ask, “Daddy, why do you have to go to jail so much?” But we are gravely mistaken to think that Christianity protects us from the pain and agony of mortal existence. Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian, one must take up his cross, with all of its difficulties and agonizing and tragedy-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves its marks upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way that comes only through suffering. In these days of worldwide confusion, there is a dire need for men and women who will courageously do battle for truth. We must make a choice. Will we continue to march to the drumbeat of conformity and respectability, or will we, listening to the beat of a more distant drum, move to its echoing sounds? Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to the soul saving music of eternity?” More than ever before, we are today challenged by the words of yesterday, “Be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Transformed Nonconformist: A Sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I try to visit with Jenny’s mom a couple of times per week for coffee. We usually chat about last Sunday’s sermon or what the kids and grandkids are doing. Usually when we talk she is knitting or crocheting and she can do this with eyes closed. My guess is that she has knitted several hundred pairs of baby booties over the last five years to say nothing of scarves and mittens. We had been paying some attention to the new trend in adult coloring books so for Christmas we bought her a coloring book. Though she still knits, most mornings when I am there she is coloring. She has finished the coloring book we gave at Christmas and is on to her second one and through several packs of crayons and markers which she likes to use. This has become quite the successful little industry and if you go to Chapters you will find no less than four large shelves with an enormous variety of coloring books. The coloring books and even adult coloring books are nothing new, but the recent trend started with the publication of The Secret Garden in 2012. If you read anything about this trend you will see that it has all kinds of de-stressing benefits and is not unlike art therapy. I can see that it has that effect for my mother-in-law who could happily spend the mornings coloring, thinking about her children, grand and great-grandchildren and her long and good life. I haven’t been in a Starbucks for quite some time so I’m not sure if they still sell coffee in cups with good coffee cup wisdom printed on them but a number of years ago I got my hands around a cup that still sits on my desk, now full of pens and pencils. and on it is some wisdom from Noah benShea a poet and philosopher who has written many books of gentle Jewish wisdom. And for some reason I do not know he was also adviser to Starbucks at some point in his career. Nice to know that there are some companies who think they might be able to be better corporate citizens with the help of a poet-philosopher. On the cups it says, “Do not kiss your children so they will kiss you back, but so they will kiss their children, and their children’s children.” It may seem like easy wisdom to incorporate into one’s life but in fact I have found that it is very difficult. We do want our children to kiss us back. However if you make that the focus of your child rearing, I believe the results will be disappointing to say the least and maybe tragic at worst. Can we learn to be unselfish and sacrificial enough in our parenting that we love our children in ways that truly sets them free and in turn helps them become the kind of people that can love unconditionally? |
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