Be yourself - Everyone else is taken (Oscar Wilde)
Peter Drucker once said the number-one trait of an effective leader is that they do one thing at a time. Today’s technology tools give you great opportunities to do 73 things at a time or to at least delude yourself that you are. I see managers who look like 12-year-olds with attention deficit disorder, running around from one thing to the next, constantly barraged with information, constantly chasing the next shiny thing.
Tom Peters
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
Epicurus
“Grasping at things can only yield one of two results:
Either the thing you are grasping at disappears, or you yourself disappear.
It is only a matter of which occurs first.”
Goenka
A year ago I arrived from Queensland, Australia in Austin, Texas to attend the first retreat of a Courage and Renewal, Leadership Academy course. I had the privilege to be the focus person in a “Clearness Committee”. My opening statement was that, “It’s been a big journey, and I’ve come a long way.” In choosing those words I was seeking to express the hugeness of physical and internal journey when arriving at the first retreat as a student.
I didn’t realise that at that point was the start of one of the most difficult and also one of the most creative phases of my life. A year ago I had various labels put on my state of mind, “depression”, “burnout”, and “grief” were a few that were relevant. Each of these can be debilitating conditions that affect different people in a range of ways. They are common to many people’s experience. My state of mind was expressed mainly as fear. I was living a fearful, uncreative life that impacted on every part of my world.
One of my harshest lessons since that first retreat nearly a year ago is learning to recreate myself. To have the courage to face my reality and the journey that emerged. Many of the things that I had attached myself to in the past were no longer there and could never be retrieved. In the words of the Quaker wisdom, “The way behind has closed”, but my experience is things have closed the way ahead has emerged.
I wrote the poem, “Where do broken dreams take me?” not as a lament but as a celebration of what lies ahead. It’s a recognition that change is constant and nothing is permanent. I had planned a desired future, dreamed about it and then it was gone.
It would be very easy to constantly lament those changes. I could be living life regretting the loss of future that I attached myself to and thinking it was going to be the only way. But, thinking this way doesn’t give life. Regret may feel like a safe haven but it requires that a person stays with an attachment to regret and in so doing losing yourself.
Being able to dream is an important part of being human. It’s what has brought humanity to where we are today. People are incredibly resourceful and creative even when facing the most adverse of situations. The biggest and best dreams have all emerged from an inner epiphany that affirms each of our humanness.
To choose to keep living means that the way ahead will continue to emerge. New dreams emerge that help create new possibilities. When understood this way life is not confined to an anxious uncertainty but a fresh appreciation of the way that closed and what lies ahead.
Where do broken dreams take me?
What future was imagined?
Splintered into a million drops of vapour,
Leaving nothing that can be grasped,
I question what was reality,
The drops of moisture remind me,
With the beads that collected,
Of dreams broken and tears shed,
And, what can never be remembered,
In the same way again.
Broken dreams are etched in my heart,
Forgetting is my heart’s desire,
Memories that keep me awake,
Regret is an easy refuge,
To evade the blows that were the breaking,
Remembering is the anxious,
Pursuit of Why?
Never to dream is the only way,
To never be broken again.
(Chris Gribble)
When two persons want reconciliation through forgiveness, the whole cosmos is involved, and the energy springing from forgiveness is released for other forms of service. Forgiveness makes possible a deeper communion than that which existed before. One can begin to see another reason why forgiveness is important. Its importance is on the scale of evolution and it springs from the Creator of evolution. It invariably releases love, and love is the energy of creation.
John Yungblut, 1994
For what it’s worth: It’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start over.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
When seeking to understand eternal truth our human minds can only grasp at the edges. This encounter with a cripple at the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem reminds me of how we can get it wrong and then impose our wrong beliefs on others. Confusion always abounds when creating theology that deals with the human condition. In this encounter I saw the religious leaders use their theology as a battering ram to seek to break Jesus.
This time we met a crippled man. His life was an eternity of failed hope. Disappointment had etched deep lines on his face, and the hopelessness of his situation touched his eyes. He had waited without success for nearly four decades to be healed.
Jesus started talking to this man, asking him questions about why he was there and why he hadn’t been healed. Jesus brought with him a presence of authority. The man had no idea who Jesus was. I am guessing he thought he was some kind person who may be able to help him get to the pool if the waters were stirred up.
Jesus then instructed the man to simply pick up his mat and walk! Amazingly the man did this.
This grabbed the religious leader’s attention immediately. Something had happened that was outside the rules. Firstly the pool wasn’t stirred up and secondly this was the Sabbath and if someone was healed and then carried their mat they had “worked”. They picked up on the work and forgot about the healing.
The religious leaders interrogated the crippled man. You could see the fear in their eyes as they sought to understand what was happening. They wanted to know every detail of the man’s encounter with Jesus.
The insecurity of these leaders was growing as more signs were being performed that were uncovering the lies that had been constructed. There was a hint of desperation about their questions as they saw their power base being threatened.
Insecurity makes it impossible for someone to be friends with anyone. When I looked at the religious leaders it was becoming very clear that they had to make Jesus their enemy. In their world there could only be a winner and a loser. They were going to fight to the death to be the winner.
Psalm 127
Work for work’s sake is futile activity,
Slavery to an endless list of tasks,
Only to achieve a bigger paycheck is futile,
They are illusions of success,
Rest is important too,
It teaches us that God provides.
Later on that day we met the healed man again. He was in the Temple, giving God praise for what had happened to him. Jesus was very clear in his instruction, “Stop sinning now, otherwise you will return to the despair that you had during all those years when you waited for healing.”
Those of us who were close to Jesus started to realise some things that we didn’t know when we started out. The obvious thing was the growing conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders. It was becoming very clear that they hated Jesus. Even though their questions were polite you could hear and see the contempt in their voices and eyes. Sometimes I was chilled to the core when the raw hatred was seen from close quarters.
Jesus was fearless in his presentation of the truth. Even when surrounded by contemptuous glares he did not back away from what needed to be said. The new reality was that the Voice, the Breath and the Flesh’s desire to love us humans was going to be declared to the whole world.
This meant that forgiving love would set us free from the burden of sin. I know this burden because every day is littered with my own broken standards. Then when the religious leaders standards are imposed over my own standards I come out feeling a complete failure.
The secret that Jesus was revealing when he healed the crippled man was that rest belongs to God. It’s not some legalistic predetermined day. When we enter fully into the community of the Voice, the Breath and the Flesh we discover rest.
Your wealth is your relationships. Fight for love.
Your Best Friend,
God
P.S. A happy person has happy relationships. A miserable person has miserable relationships. Iinvest in your relationships more.
Bo Sanchez
Loneliness is small; solitude is large. Loneliness closes in around you; solitude expands toward the infinite. Loneliness has its roots in words, in an internal conversation that nobody answers; solitude has its roots in the great silence of eternity. . . .
Kent Nerburn’s Simple Truths
“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”
Leo Buscaglia
Stillness is what creates love,
Movement is what creates life,
To be still,
Yet still moving—
That is everything!
—DO HYUN CHOE, Japanese Master
I just spent a couple of days at a retreat. One of the main activities during our time is to listen to each other’s stories. I have been retreating in this manner with some of these people for more than a decade. Over that time we have heard each other’s story many times but I still look forward to catching up.
I often wonder what is the gift that is received during these times. Each of our stories is very ordinary, with the usual mixture of failure, successes and transitions. We laugh often, cry sometimes and respond to each other’s voice, so our time is not a deathly 24 hour silence. It’s a time that’s full of life that keeps us coming back over and over.
Perhaps as Do Hyun Choe says, “it’s that stillness that creates love.” Giving our presence in a quiet space is something that is life giving for each of us. Our souls are given a little more light to be able to reenter the fray.
I know that these quiet spaces can be difficult to find in a busy life. There is always one more email needing a response, another phone call to make, or that one more thing to check off on that unattainable checklist of perfection.
Last week in a small orphanage that My family supports in Asia a small life passed from this earth. I stopped and considered his life. A different voice emerged to me that day. His was a short story that impacted on a few lives on a world with many busy souls.
The words, “A voice speaking to me”, in the midst of the “raucous din”, reminded me of there are important things to consider that needed to be sifted from all of my activity. A reminder to stop and listen because there may be an important voice that I have not heard that I need to hear.
Still – For David
A breath of stillness passes by,
A whisper that is barely caught
I was still just now,
I heard a voice speaking,
Love and hope for those left behind.A life passes sadly in the din,
Barely heard,
A small voice in a crowd,
Eternity cries out to me,
Be still and hear him now.What does this life say to me?
I pray my soul is not deafened,
To the cry of the poor,
Not drowned out,
by a raucous busy life.I took a moment to be still,
I heard a voice speaking,
I took a moment to be still,
I heard his voice speaking to me.
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.
Seneca
“When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
Albert Cannus
You have a gift—a very special gift—to give to the world.
Don’t hold back,
God
P.S. When you give this special gift fully and unselfishly to the world, happiness and success will flow to your life like a rampaging river.
Bo Sanchez
Timing can be everything when it comes to truth. But, I don’t think that there ever would be a right time for the religious leaders to hear this next truth that was spoken by Jesus. His words were a direct confrontation to the lie. But, from what I know of Jesus he was never going to shy away from the truth.
He started with the words, “I am”. The same words used when the Voice had spoken to Moses in the Wilderness, “I am, who I am”.
Then he spoke about light and darkness and choosing between the two. In the midst of his response to the religious leaders he said this, “My truth lights up the world, darkness is its enemy. Follow me and the lie will be clearly seen and the truth will set your life free”.
The religious leaders went straight for the jugular when they heard Jesus say this. They had no time for Jesus because he was clearly directing his comments at them and the lies that they were leading the people into. Without saying it directly he had clearly identified that they were speaking lies.
The next challenge was about Jesus’ authority. But, Jesus again gave them the perfect response. He knew that true authority comes from who a person is and their character, both gifts from God. Authority is not from a self constructed version of truth that seeks only to hear its own perspective.
Jesus said to them in very clear terms, “My statements are true. I am the Flesh, speaking with the Voice and the Breath. This is more than enough to hear truth. Lies can seek to fabricate truth but the truth will always be evident in who a person is”.
This obviously confused the leaders. They asked a stupid question the answer that they of all people should have known the answer to. “Who is your Father?”
They clearly didn’t realise how much the lie had infiltrated every part of their thinking. They had stopped hearing the Voice for a long time. Even when the Voice had spoken in past ages they never obeyed. Now when in the presence of truth the way to truth was obscured. They were living in a prison of their own making.
Jesus was not afraid for himself when making these statements to the religious leaders. I could see that they wanted to punish him because his presence was challenging the very foundation of their beliefs about the Voice.
The Flesh’s perspective on their predicament was very different to their own understanding. Jesus very clearly was saying that they were missing the secret that the Voice wanted to reveal through the Flesh. This very serious because their refusal to believe the truth was jeopardizing their own lives.
The leader’s lack of understanding became more evident as they argued with Jesus. “Who are you?” was their perplexed question.
Jesus answer challenged several hundred years of accumulated understanding that had drifted further and further from the truth. The lie that they believe made them believe that they were the way. But, Jesus very quickly challenged this. “I am the Voice, speaking in the flesh,” was his response.
In hindsight I know that the lie’s pull would bring them to want to destroy the truth. Jesus knew this already. He knew that this journey could only end one way, that there would be a battle between the lie and the Flesh. This battle would take Jesus to a cross just outside Jerusalem.
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
Epicurus
“Everyone has inside himself a piece of good news! The good news is that you really don’t know how great you can be, how much you can love, what you can accomplish, and what your potential is!”
Ann Frank
The lie usually expresses itself through condemnation. In this case the Religious Leaders, full of righteousness anger drag a woman before Jesus. They didn’t care about her at all, they were so steeped in the lie that they could only see their own perspective.
But, this encounter would clearly show their hypocrisy. They weren’t interested in truth. They were only interested in making their own point. They had stopped listening to the Voice a long time ago.
I imagine that this poor woman was in this situation because of how she was treated at home. Adultery isn’t usually a woman’s first choice for intimacy. They dragged her before Jesus and listed the rules that she had broken. They didn’t care one bit for her as a person. She had unchecked some areas on of their list and this was considered unforgivable.
The religious leaders spat it out their contempt of the truth and showed their true selves. It was a trap, not a search for truth.
Jesus unfazed asked the perfect question that completely disarmed their lie: “is there any person who is completely innocent?” Then he looked them in the eye and said; “if you are completely without sin you can have the first blow”.
Jesus didn’t even bother to look at these accusers. Their words were designed to be trapdoors to destroy. Not doors to open into truth. Words that had no love contained in them. Questions that were seeking to perpetuate the lie that they had immersed themselves in.
Jesus looked at the woman. It’s hard to describe his expression. It was the sort of look that a mother has when she is looking at a newborn child. There’s wonder and curiosity of the yet to be known parts. It’s the coming together of two hearts in unabashed love. It wasn’t an uncomfortable stare, but a gaze that enabled mutual sharing of compassion and care to be expressed and appreciated.
When Jesus turned away from the woman back to where the religious leaders were standing. They had all gone. I could see that it was the older ones who left first. They were the ones who could see what Jesus had really asked and knew they were in the wrong. The younger leaders battled with pride for much longer. Admitting wrong in the presence of someone that they despised was not easy. You could see that they were torn. They left but were preparing for their next battle with the Flesh.
The next part of the encounter showed the true nature of the Flesh. It is a refreshing antidote to the lie.
Jesus asked a question but the answer was obvious. All her accusers had left. There was no one there to condemn her. But, Jesus asked her to press home his point and to show her the secret. “Where are they? Did anyone stay to condemn you?”
“There’s no one”, was her response.
Now the Voice, the Breath and the Flesh speak with one voice, “I don’t condemn you either”
My Beloved’s Voice
Whispers softly
You are my beloved
Soft words giving
Loving hope
Offering joy
Caring compassion
Certain friend
Forgiving love
My Father’s voice
Sure and insistent
Reconstructing
Desires wholeness
Life’s fullness
Celebrating
I am your beloved
Your creation
Wonderfully made
Loved unconditionally
Graciously accepted
By an open heart
Longing to speak
Hope and trust
Well done my child
(Chris Gribble)
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning
Albert Einstein
I really connected with the the father’s pain in this encounter between Jesus and the lie. The lie uses death as its main weapon. Jesus in this encounter with an important man is about to reveal one of the most important secrets that can refute this lie.
Don’t you normally see the heart beating?” I asked the radiographer. She was obviously having problems although we were unsure just what was happening. My wife, April was having an ultrasound but there was something not right. I didn’t realize then the heartbreaking implications my question was to have for us.
“Mmm,” she replied distractedly. “I’m having some difficulties finding some of the landmarks. I need to get the senior radiographer to have a look,” she told us.
By this time it was becoming obvious to April and myself something was terribly wrong. The senior radiographer’s verdict verified the fear that was beginning to develop in us both. Our news was devastating. Something had gone very wrong. At 21 weeks we never dreamt that anything could happen to our child. Everything we had read said the danger period was during the first three months. After that the baby was supposed to be virtually indestructible, or so we thought.
“How are you today?” brightly asked the girl behind the checkout counter at the supermarket later that day. She had the usual pasted on smile they must teach at checkout school.
What were we to say? “Well, everything was pretty good, until we found out our baby died.”
I never expected what had been up to now a growing bulge in my April’s middle could cause me so much pain. We were told it was best if the baby was delivered as soon as possible. April was checked into the labour ward early in the morning two days later. Every four hours she had a chemical inserted in her uterus to induce labour. Like so many births it began happening in the dead of the night. April’s pain increased late in the evening as her contractions heightened in intensity. Through it all there was a feeling of numbness. I felt disconnected from these horrible events. For us there was the certainty that at the end there wasn’t going to be a bundle of joy. I think in some merciful way our minds had gone into shock where they could take no more bad news.
Shalom was born on the twenty seventh of March, four days after my birthday. He was so tiny his body fitted into the palm of my hand and his head rested on my fingers. He was so perfect except he never would have the chance to draw a breath in this world.
He was my son but I never really had the opportunity to be his dad. I never will have the chance to cheer him on at the football, or to take him to the movies, or to wrestle with him on the lounge room floor. I will never have to confront that awful moment dreaded by fathers when it is time to tell him about the facts of life. Despite never doing anything with him I miss him a great deal.
This is not the sort of pain that I want to have in my life. The deep grief that seems to have touched the core of my being, my constantly aching heart, and the deep wounds that have lacerated my soul.
I would much prefer my wounds to be physical. I want my pain to be tangible. I know how to deal with things when they show on the outside. I know I can cope with this type of pain. Physical scars for blokes are our badges of pride. We hold them up as notches of our manhood. They are something to show off, to prove to others that the toughness of life will not beat us. Yet the real pain we feel is so often hidden under protective layers of putting on a brave face. We force ourselves to keep up appearances and get on with life without taking the time to understand why it can hurt us so much.
I know in my head that God wants to work all things together for good for those who love him. Yet I wish so much that God’s working was different to this. It seems like God wanted to play a cruel joke on April and I after we waited so long for a child and now He snatched him back. How do you farewell someone you’ve never met? There were no photos, no memories of fun times together. There were no cute expressions for me to remember. All I have is a card with a tiny footprint and handprint on it. We only held him for a short while then it was time to for him to be taken from us. Saying goodbye to Shalom is the hardest thing I’ve had to do in life.
An important man approached Jesus and begged him to help with his son. He was distraught and in deep fear that his son was about to die. It was humbling to see this man plead with Jesus. The love of this father for his son was very obvious.
Calm is my description of Jesus’ response. He simply said, “Your son is ok. He isn’t going to die”.
This seemed to give the man confidence. I am not sure if I would have been able to trust like he did with my son’s life. Once Jesus said these words he headed off in the direction of his home.
I heard that when he arrived home that his son greeted him at the front door. When they talked about the boy’s recovery they realised that it happened at exactly the same time that Jesus had said, “your son is healed”.
I share in the same promise that important man received from Jesus. I believe that my son is also alive. The lie seeks to take away hope of life. The lie wants us to believe that this is the end and that there is nothing to hope for.
Jesus’s second secret revealed that death wasn’t the final word on life.