Making Work/Faith Connections

There is nothing like watching a close friend and admired associate step to the plate and hit a home run. The High Calling is putting their new beta site up, and I recommend you jump over there now and check it out.
Marcus Goodyear is one of the key engines in the development of my own strategic plans and writing goals. He does a marvelous job gathering content and resources of interest for those interested in the intersection of work and faith. For those of you who find the Christian faith a meaningful factor in your personal lives, here is an opportunity to make a valuable connection to your working lives.
You know how strongly I feel about the importance of the workplace. If you want to participate more fully in this new community and dialog, it is possible to become a member of thehighcalling.org.
I don't promote many things, but when someone of the caliber of Marcus is involved I know good things are afoot.

Sensing Change

I'm sensing change in the air. The morning fog weighs heavy on the breeze rustling through. There is something irrepressible about the wind, though, and my lips part in a relieved smile.
That change is coming is good to be aware and prepared. Discerning what change is coming is another matter altogether. I don't have a sense of that yet.
So with heightened senses I embark on my day, seeing the world through fresh eyes. But maybe it is not the world around me that has changed. Maybe it is I who am changing. How does one prepare for that?

Centered or Focused?

I lose steam when I lack focus. The lack of clarity is a hindrance. I've been complaining lately of the difficulty of maintaining focus.
I am beginning to suspect, though, that of greater significance is that I am not centered.
Feeling centered is different that feeling focused. I can be centered whether or not I am focused: enjoy a low center of gravity, internal poise, know who I am and whom I serve. Being centered speaks to a soundness and strength within myself. Being focused sees with clarity and steadiness what needs to happen outside of myself.
I think what I'm realizing is that becoming a more centered person comes before becoming a more focused person. While both are essential, one builds on the other. Centeredness extends the reach of my focus.

Driven to Live

From what quarter of the universe do we derive the drive to perform at the top of our game? From deep within? From another dimension altogether? Both/And.
The forces that compel us to press hard and press forward are not all healthy ones, but we do not have the luxury of clearing out all dross before getting out of bed each morning. We can but fix our eyes on the prize that draws us ahead. We engage with our hopes and dreams in the context of our sufferings and circumstances, and don't look back. We trust because our intentions are good that whatever immaturities and brokenness we bring to the journey will be transformed into something new, beautiful and beneficial along the way.
And so back to the original question. From where does the drive to engage fully and participate in life unreservedly come?

Hoping for Happiness?

Hope is different than happiness. Obvious?
Not necessarily. We tend to confuse the expected effects of hope with happiness. That somehow to believe that, at the end of the story, all will be well, should result in an upbeat mood for me here in the middle of the story.
Instead of either hope or happiness we get a strange (and frequently irresponsible) reinterpretation of what is transpiring here in the middle of the story. Our part of the story. We either want pain and evil vanquished, and take up arms to that end. The casualties of our righteous hostility lie scattered across the battlefield of our moral crusades. Or we pretend that pain and evil have already been vanquished and any remnant is but a gift from God to test our faith and enhance our characters. What response is there but docile and unquestioning gratitude?
But if pain and evil are harsh realities here in our part of the story (whether or not their ultimate doom is guaranteed), then included in my discipleship responsibilities is a thoughtful, intentional and lifelong response.
I can neither ignore nor be consumed by all that is wrong.
Hope makes it possible for me, in the midst of and in spite of my harsh reality, to function within it and to act creatively to counter it. If my energy is not wasted on denying or demonizing, it can be directed toward healing and restoring. Toward creating a tomorrow more reflective of the reign of the good and just God. The hope that comes from knowing the end of the story sustains and nourishes my spirit in the face of the seemingly insurmountable odds that we face in the middle of the story. Whether or not I find moments of happiness along the way, I give all of myself to living a full and meaningful life because I have hope.

Help Self Help

I find it intriguing that our culture is so smitten with self-improvement efforts. Especially given how slowly people change. I guess I'm admitting I'm old enough to have some experience with the pace of self change.
Intriguing and irrational, but hopeful nonetheless. Despair would be worse. Resignation or fatalism.
No, for all the difficulties involved, I'm glad we err on the side of trying to become healthier and healthier. It speaks to an inner plumb line somewhere within that knows something is amiss. More significantly, it recognizes, even if only dimly, a beauty and fullness that seems to belong to us. If only we could reach a bit further and lay hold of it.
And so we reach. Most all of us reach. I head off into my day now to do some reaching.

Learning Again

I'm reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, and I must say I am quite intrigued. As a person passionate about the implementation of new ideas, the insights regarding how word-of-mouth epidemics spread is fascinating. And since the ideas with which I'm currently working are my own, I can hardly put the book down. We'll wait to consider the implications to my business plan, but it seems there will be quite a few. It's refreshing for a constant reader like myself to come across something so personally pertinent.

I Wish, or Do I?

Sometimes I wish certain things about work or life were different than they are. All well and good, unless if I believe my best chance for experiencing change is to continue with the wishing.
I have a mug imprinted with the Gandhi quote, "Be the change you wish for wish for the world." Be it. Do it.
Maybe the difference between wishing and hoping is that wishing is passive while hope participates. Wishing desires everything to change around us. Hope lives as though the change has already taken place.
Such a distinction begs the question, "How then do I live?" If you looked at my choices, would you know what sort of world I am hoping for?

Challenge and Remind

Pausing to be present with my words. To sit among them and let them dance around me. To watch as new worlds emerge and melt away. New ideas challenge the very underpinnings of reality and then remind me that love has always been the answer. New adventures, old lessons. New territory, old terrain.

Too Cautious?

The visor successfully deflected the glare, but at what expense? We protect ourselves from one danger and blind ourselves to the next. Smothered in an overprotective blanket of cautions and precautions, we lose some of the agility that walking through the minefield demanded. We give ourselves an exhaustive list of all the things at which we should not look, and our attention is filled, but not as we had intended. Avoiding one thing is not necessarily embracing another. What fills the void?

Focus, But How?

Where does everything else go when one focuses on one thing alone? Is there some place to tuck the myriad voices that cry out for attention? I suppose if one is absorbed enough in one thing, there is no room for anything else.
So is the task of focus becoming completely filled or becoming completely empty? I imagine some of each depending on how your mind works.
In either case, there is not much practical assistance out there except for stating the obvious. "Be more focused!"

Subtly Persuasive

Suggestions linger, if not haunt; while assertions are discarded before they are even discredited. The ability to catch someone's attention while looking the other way and leave them wondering whether or not you were flirting—to the extent that they then initiate conversation with you to find resolution—is the goal of persuasive communication.
I do not try to overcome your resistance. I arouse your curiosity. I do not try to reassure your reluctance. I enhance my own mystery. I respect and therefore tap into your own desire to learn and need to change, not my own need for you to agree with or be like me.
It's a matter of on whom I choose to focus. If I am doing something for myself, then I need to compel, force, command, assert, dominate my way upon you, and the risk of your rejection, difference or indifference cannot be permitted. If you are my focus, then I tickle, poke at, accentuate your own learning edges so that you want to take action and pursue new possibilities.