It's hard to tell when you're moving from the middle of the ocean.
When you are so far out that you can't see land, you can't discern that you are actually moving in the intended direction.
Experienced pilots from the Polynesian areas can follow currents to navigate. Astrolabes,, and now satellites, can pinpoint the ship's location now.
But, as a traveler, a sailor, on board a vessel, you can only feel the wind in your face, the pressure and variance of the water, as you sail along.
As a traveler, you can only have faith that you are moving correctly.
We know what happens when the crew loses faith: mutiny. Then the mutineers must be trusted to sail in the best direction.
Can you see a theme here?
We are all ships at sea, often away from the sight of shore. Occasionally we will see the lighthouses in our path, showing us the way.
Yet we are all involved in a big adventure called life.
We can't always see ahead. Parents who have special needs children are perpetually confronted with issues they never foresaw. Will the school help? Who is standing in the way of their child receiving appropriate services? Which of the parents' friends will support them, and who will drift away? Which of the child's peers will be kind, and who will be harsh?
In the same way, we only have confidence that we know our path when everything is going well. Our careers are predictable, our families are happy, and we have friends.
But that can all change in an instant. Have you known someone who lost a spouse unexpectedly, suddenly? Have you suffered through "outplacement" and experienced your colleagues distancing themselves from you?
Life is like this.
How, then, do we navigate when we can't see the shore?
First, accept that life is full of oddities and unpredictable circumstances. We can't always predict; we can't always plan for all circumstances.
Second, stand tall. We all must have confidence to know that WE are the best one to live through this challenge. No matter how painful, we can survive everything the world may throw at us.
Third, gather friends. Find the time to make that call, have that lunch, meet for supper, go to a game. Connection to others is essential to our entire well-being.
Next, tend to your spiritual side. If through religion or through walks in nature, your habit must be regular in order to nurture that part of yourself. (If you are The Caregiver, reach out to the support groups in your area, or the national ones, to find help.)
And lastly, claim your Intention for each day. Intention is not about a list, but about deciding on attitude and response in advance of the day's activities. We are all susceptible to burnout, and intention + connection are tools for prevention.
All these are probably obvious to you, but here's one that might not be; when times are tough, find a therapist. Everyone needs an unaffiliated, unbiased, outsider who can give us perspective when it seems that the world has brought only storms.
Hugs to you all!
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
In just a few weeks...
It's December 7. Pearl Harbor Day. The day the US entered the Second World War, dragged into the melee that isolationists had wished to avoid.
December 7 spurred the idea that Americans of Japanese ancestry were a threat. Little children, full-time housewives, 3rd generation American Citizens were assumed to be corruptible, so they were taken from their homes and businesses. Our government seized their property, never to return it. (If this sounds familiar, it had happened before, to the original residents of North America, but with more killing.)
December 7 is a few weeks away from the inauguration of an idiot/imbecile/narcissist/destroyer, who may bring our nation into war. All the economists have stated his policy stances will bring us into a major Recession soon. I despair with how the least, the last, and the lost may be treated.
December 7 is a few weeks away from my mother's birthday...my first one without her. Only a few days after that, is my daughter's birthday, what a wonderful fun time we will have!
December 7 is a few weeks away from the remembrance of the birth of the Christ child. And that birth is what I've been thinking about for a couple of days.
Christ was sent to us as as a baby, born into a working-class family of the conquered society. He was born in a stable, cold and dark. Today, the equivalent would be a garage, I think, or a subway, or a post office.
We don't have records for much of his life, but the tradition holds that at age 30 he went on walkabout, then decided to become a homeless beggar for his preaching tour.
That's right: the Great Change began from a homeless beggar.
Christ has always had a following from the poor. In his life, he valued those who society had discarded. He touched the leper. He allowed the woman with the permanent hemorrhage to touch him. He allowed the community leaders to pose difficult questions, which he answered with a story (and, I think, often with a gleam in his eye!)
He didn't regard any human as more valuable than another. When disciples fought over pecking order, he curtailed that notion. He wept when his friend, Lazarus died, but delayed going to see him in order for the miracle to be verifiable.
I often have difficulty understanding what Christ was thinking during these days. How much did he understand of the divinity within him? How did he discern when to reveal it, and how much of the divinity to reveal? With one, he healed from a distance. With another, he healed with direct touch.
I was listening to an interview with a Jesuit, who noticed that the Beatitudes (Sermon on the Mount, the Blessed is the...poem/song) could be spaced to fit into 140 characters.
Tweeting the words of our Lord can bring both challenge and peace.
Are all my tweets bringing challenge and peace?
I've heard that the job of Ministry is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.
But, until we were left with nothing, I really didn't understand how "comfortable" I was!
And on days when we have enough to eat and the bills are paid, I feel myself sliding back to that state of mind, where Items become objects of desire.
At one point, all we owned was locked away from us, held hostage, it seemed. Having little furniture, an air mattress, and only some shoes destroyed my reflection, the image I had tried to maintain of myself.
I'd like to think I could say that I wouldn't trade that experience, for what it taught me. I value the lessons I learned, but it wasn't an easy way. At one point, I sold pieces of jewelry in order to have funds for food. Later, I learned that the church had given us gift cards for the grocery store.
But today, I get to value each person. Today, I get to be surrounded in light. Today, I can choose to be that which I am called to be, the only view of our living Lord that some will see. Oh, that I do not fail in that task!
December 7 spurred the idea that Americans of Japanese ancestry were a threat. Little children, full-time housewives, 3rd generation American Citizens were assumed to be corruptible, so they were taken from their homes and businesses. Our government seized their property, never to return it. (If this sounds familiar, it had happened before, to the original residents of North America, but with more killing.)
December 7 is a few weeks away from the inauguration of an idiot/imbecile/narcissist/destroyer, who may bring our nation into war. All the economists have stated his policy stances will bring us into a major Recession soon. I despair with how the least, the last, and the lost may be treated.
December 7 is a few weeks away from my mother's birthday...my first one without her. Only a few days after that, is my daughter's birthday, what a wonderful fun time we will have!
December 7 is a few weeks away from the remembrance of the birth of the Christ child. And that birth is what I've been thinking about for a couple of days.
Christ was sent to us as as a baby, born into a working-class family of the conquered society. He was born in a stable, cold and dark. Today, the equivalent would be a garage, I think, or a subway, or a post office.
We don't have records for much of his life, but the tradition holds that at age 30 he went on walkabout, then decided to become a homeless beggar for his preaching tour.
That's right: the Great Change began from a homeless beggar.
Christ has always had a following from the poor. In his life, he valued those who society had discarded. He touched the leper. He allowed the woman with the permanent hemorrhage to touch him. He allowed the community leaders to pose difficult questions, which he answered with a story (and, I think, often with a gleam in his eye!)
He didn't regard any human as more valuable than another. When disciples fought over pecking order, he curtailed that notion. He wept when his friend, Lazarus died, but delayed going to see him in order for the miracle to be verifiable.
I often have difficulty understanding what Christ was thinking during these days. How much did he understand of the divinity within him? How did he discern when to reveal it, and how much of the divinity to reveal? With one, he healed from a distance. With another, he healed with direct touch.
I was listening to an interview with a Jesuit, who noticed that the Beatitudes (Sermon on the Mount, the Blessed is the...poem/song) could be spaced to fit into 140 characters.
Tweeting the words of our Lord can bring both challenge and peace.
Are all my tweets bringing challenge and peace?
I've heard that the job of Ministry is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.
But, until we were left with nothing, I really didn't understand how "comfortable" I was!
And on days when we have enough to eat and the bills are paid, I feel myself sliding back to that state of mind, where Items become objects of desire.
At one point, all we owned was locked away from us, held hostage, it seemed. Having little furniture, an air mattress, and only some shoes destroyed my reflection, the image I had tried to maintain of myself.
I'd like to think I could say that I wouldn't trade that experience, for what it taught me. I value the lessons I learned, but it wasn't an easy way. At one point, I sold pieces of jewelry in order to have funds for food. Later, I learned that the church had given us gift cards for the grocery store.
But today, I get to value each person. Today, I get to be surrounded in light. Today, I can choose to be that which I am called to be, the only view of our living Lord that some will see. Oh, that I do not fail in that task!
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
When there's Kudzu in the Forest, nothing thrives
So what does your forest look like?
Do you have a combination of old growth and new growth? Is there room for the young saplings to grow and thrive? Or does the old, towering growth, shut out all the sunlight and rain?
I think of this analogy when I think of organizations, especially business organizations.
I have seen corporations fall because they refused to adapt. Making bad decisions because the old guard feels threatened, disputing evidence and data, relying on old allies can all contribute to their failure.
For example, please think of a company that used to be the leader in vinyl flooring. To diversify, they purchased a tile manufacturer. This was a natural fit, right? Yet, the old guard saw it as direct competition to their divisions, and did all they could, successfully, to destroy the alliance. Not being able to adapt and change became the destruction of this company. Once on the cutting-edge of products, their stock price fell, from a Fortune 500 to an negative value. There were other errors, including hiding from the damage of the asbestos-based ceiling tile division, until after the lawsuits began.
That happened many years ago, and some of the management salvaged and redeveloped the company. Now, in the town where I live, I see this inattention to details and lack of adaptation to the new Century occur with a hospital. In the past few years: waiting to implement electronic records until nearly too late, one purchase that was destined to be a money-loser from the beginning, the choice of a new name/brand without researching a conflicting name in a neighboring state, and the errors continue.
There are ways of embracing the future without abandoning the past. We have seen that happen recently, when a national retailer recently hired a CEO who did not understand the importance of The Sale to the customers of the company. He said, "I'm going to break them of their addiction to sales," without listening to the customer first. Needless to say, the customers of this retailer never understood the new concept of always-sale prices, and the entire enterprise nearly collapsed. Whether or not the rescue of the company will actually result in the saving of the corporation has not been determined.
A forest needs both old growth and new growth to be stable over centuries. Are we planning in our businesses for the long term? Are we listening to the young, and paying attention to customers? Or, are we just skimming across their ideas, ignoring the pleas of customers?
Let's resolve to plan for the long term, for decades, then centuries, rather than the imminent needs exclusively.
Do you have a combination of old growth and new growth? Is there room for the young saplings to grow and thrive? Or does the old, towering growth, shut out all the sunlight and rain?
I think of this analogy when I think of organizations, especially business organizations.
I have seen corporations fall because they refused to adapt. Making bad decisions because the old guard feels threatened, disputing evidence and data, relying on old allies can all contribute to their failure.
For example, please think of a company that used to be the leader in vinyl flooring. To diversify, they purchased a tile manufacturer. This was a natural fit, right? Yet, the old guard saw it as direct competition to their divisions, and did all they could, successfully, to destroy the alliance. Not being able to adapt and change became the destruction of this company. Once on the cutting-edge of products, their stock price fell, from a Fortune 500 to an negative value. There were other errors, including hiding from the damage of the asbestos-based ceiling tile division, until after the lawsuits began.
That happened many years ago, and some of the management salvaged and redeveloped the company. Now, in the town where I live, I see this inattention to details and lack of adaptation to the new Century occur with a hospital. In the past few years: waiting to implement electronic records until nearly too late, one purchase that was destined to be a money-loser from the beginning, the choice of a new name/brand without researching a conflicting name in a neighboring state, and the errors continue.
There are ways of embracing the future without abandoning the past. We have seen that happen recently, when a national retailer recently hired a CEO who did not understand the importance of The Sale to the customers of the company. He said, "I'm going to break them of their addiction to sales," without listening to the customer first. Needless to say, the customers of this retailer never understood the new concept of always-sale prices, and the entire enterprise nearly collapsed. Whether or not the rescue of the company will actually result in the saving of the corporation has not been determined.
A forest needs both old growth and new growth to be stable over centuries. Are we planning in our businesses for the long term? Are we listening to the young, and paying attention to customers? Or, are we just skimming across their ideas, ignoring the pleas of customers?
Let's resolve to plan for the long term, for decades, then centuries, rather than the imminent needs exclusively.
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