I write, speak, invest, network, and question to stimulate fruitful conversation. Let's talk about human flourishing! It begins with freedom. Holy leisure is the key to human being, freedom and generativity. Please join me in the adventure of realizing Christ!
Apologia Pro Vita Sua
My whole life is an argument! It’s not that I go around picking fights, but that every choice I make, every action is, in its own way, an argument for choosing that action over other possibilities. This quality of actuality – one judgment realized in concrete form necessarily limits the range of possibility for the next choice – is one reason we keep ideas and virtue locked in a mental tower, and so seldom actualize them in forms, gestures, incontrovertible proofs of what we have thought about.
Thankfully, I don’t live intimately among people who choose quite differently. So, there’s not really much overt argument about my life choices. Every now and then, I realize that my very presence – because of these choices, not because I’m constantly mouthing off about my decisions – is a challenge to someone else.
I know how they feel. I’ve felt it myself – a little defensive in the presence even of someone who has chosen to dress nicer for this party, or go ahead and buy from that company. They might feel a bit wary that their choice for something I clearly chose against might be grounds for exile from my heart, my community, or my regard for them.
Their remedy – if my experience is any indicator – is to be much more clear than people usually are about the whys and wherefores of their own choices. The real challenge is to see that it’s me who needs to shift course when I feel defensive. I need to go over my own reasoning with a teachable spirit (not a combative, internal, self-righteous rehearsal) and then take a calm stand based on my own judgment.
Most important, I need to ‘own my own stuff’ and not attribute my discomfort to the other person, as though he were forcing me to defend myself.
I can stand my high ground, but need to stay free while doing it. Read some surprising reasons why you should argue.
Don’t Get Trapped Like This!
There is something you’re avoiding. So you distract yourself with something else. It works for a while, but there’s a catch. The more you tense-away-from The Thing, the more it seems to be pulling you to turn back to it.
Like an exercise in which you pull a rubber band away from a wall, escapism guarantees you’ll need more and more oomph to pull away from the pain, the need, the person, the issue that needs attention. Of course, the more powerful it seems to get, the more you want to get away from it!
That’s the trap. Not only does your distraction ratchet up the level of tension, it also slowly narrows your focus to a point as getting away from The Thing takes more and more of your effort to focus your attention away, away, away.
Jim Robbins, in The Open Focus Brain, discusses ways he helped patients in chronic pain avoid this trap and thereby eased their pain. These are lessons worth remembering and passing on:
- Move toward the pain, relax and try to release any effort you’re exerting to pull away from it.
- Diffuse your focus – engage your senses: What can you smell? How does this fruit taste in your mouth? What do you see all around you? What sounds can you identify in the environment?
- Think about negative spaces in your body (nostrils, the space enclosed by your lungs, the space between your fingers) and in the environment.
I’ve had tremendous improvement in migraine headaches following his advice, but I also recommend it for any situation that pushes your ‘Escape!’ button. Relax, diffuse, engage your senses, contemplate negative spaces. There are more things that are REAL than The Thing! Don’t try so hard to avoid it that you see it alone in your narrow focusing. Staying distracted is a symptom of being tensed away from something you’d do better to face, resolve, accept.
I’d like to know if you take this advice. Please let me hear your story!
Ready, Or Not?
According to security expert Gavin De Becker, who wrote The Gift of Fear, the best thing you can do to protect yourself against unforseen danger is to be keenly aware, in the present moment, of your own response to a situation. [Read more…]
I’m Just Sayin’…
We’ve all heard it can be hard to hear God’s still, small voice. Apart from that difficulty, another problem arises in the communication between God and poor little us. Even when He speaks clearly, we don’t hear so well. Here are some examples of things I’ve misheard, and what I finally understood He was trying to say to me.
When God says, “Be still,” He doesn’t mean, “Be immoveable.” We’ve got to have an interior stillness that can be moved forward toward our own destiny, toward the reality we encounter – a dynamic centeredness that is very different from a rigid, or inert ‘stopping’.
When He says, “Be not afraid,” He doesn’t mean, “Your fears are groundless, stupid, psychological.” Fear inside is a response to something outside. We are affected by something, or by imagining something, and that causes a wave of the emotion that is ‘fear’. That emotion is not ridiculous, or crazy, but because it’s sometimes hard to discern what it was we were affected by, it can seem like He’s telling us to pooh-pooh it. In fact, He wants to cast it out for us – to send in buckets of perfect love to wash over us in a cleansing, healing wave.
We can turn toward our fear, knowing it is an emotional response to something, and ask Him for that love to come and calm its storm. We don’t have to ignore it, distract ourselves from it, or violate ourselves by toughening up against it. We may realize what caused it, and we may not. We may need to stop watching scary movies, reading scary news, having scary conversations, or allowing scary imaginations if we find ourselves frequently needing help with fears. Or, we may be amazed to find that the fears we thought we’d just have to deal with indefinitely, are simply gone – their originating events so deeply buried, and so profoundly healed that we cannot see what just happened!
When God says, “Be quiet,” He doesn’t mean, “Shut up!” He doesn’t violate us, doesn’t silence us, doesn’t ask us to ignore what we need to say, and doesn’t hate the sound of our voices, no matter how long we pray (or how angry, whiny, self-pitying, ungrammatical, or snarky those prayers are!). Quiet is a gift, and if He shushes us, it’s so that we can find out what our deepest needs really are and express those to Him. He’s waiting just to be with me in that interior chamber of my soul, and “Shhhhh” is to remind us that it’s a holy, hallowed, quiet place.
When He says, “Wait,” He doesn’t mean, “Never.”
When He says, “Be perfect,” He doesn’t mean, “Or else I’ll hate you.”
When He says, “Have self-control,” He doesn’t mean, “Be in control.”
When He says, “Be strong,” He doesn’t mean, “Be impervious.”
When He says, “No,” He doesn’t mean, “You were wrong to ask.”
I’m sure you get the idea. Sometimes it has taken me a while to figure out what message I was actually getting from God’s ‘transmitter’, and then fine-tune my ‘receiver’ so that I could hear an ungarbled message.
Here’s a talk I’ve given about having a great conversation with God.
The Most Expensive School, Part 2
Did you miss Part 1?
Tuition includes swim lessons, piano and other instrument lessons, various physical training and sport options, art lessons in every media, and several foreign languages. Fundraisers and grants-in-aid pay not only for direct expenses of the school, but for placement of pianos, computers, pottery wheels, woodworking equipment, and more in the homes of the students! Talk about ‘homework’! Sit down, there’s more: travel grants are made to families and small groups for field trips to the seashore (oceanography), Rome (religion, history, art, Italian), Mexico (missions work, Spanish), Civil War battle fields, folk art camps, and a number of other wow destinations. [Read more…]
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