Always playing catchup
Somehow it seems as though I’m always playing catchup. Whether there aren’t enough hours in a day or I’ve just done too many things in those hours, it still seems as though I don’t get the things on my list done. The list grows and grows and the parts that get done seem insignificant in the face of The List, which, as you can see, manages to acquire the ever-menacing status of Capital Letters. Sometimes, life gets in the way of The List. Dealing with recurrent back pain last week meant that some of the hours that could have been devoted to The List were spent on my recliner or in bed, knocked out by Tylenol with Codeine. Less pain to be sure. But also less gain. Saturday, Day 10 of this month of gratitude, was a day with no appointments, nowhere I had to be. I had to put together the worship service, music, and sermon for Sunday. It took longer than usual because of the mental and physical distraction of the back/leg pain. Frequent breaks for stretching out, … Continue reading
30 Days of Thanks
I’ve been pretty obsessed with the elections lately, so I’ve missed a couple of other cultural memes lately (and a lot of blogging days, as well). I’m hopping on one meme late, so I’m going to catch up and keep on going. It’s such an important one that it deserves attention. It’s gratitude. Or thankfulness. Or appreciation. Or whatever you want to call it when you realize that pretty much everything around you is an incredible gift and that, at the very least, good manners suggests that you say “Thank you”. The folks at 30 Days of Thanks have started a list of bloggers, Twitterers, and others who have agreed to put gratitude front and center every day through the month of November. There are about 20 Facebook pages for “30 Days of Gratitude” and another 20 or so for “30 Days of Thankfulness”. Do a web search and you’ll find even more. It’s a good time to remember that there is always reason to give thanks. Here’s my catch-up list. November 1: I was grateful for a tremendous mutual support … Continue reading
Fiber Arts Friday – Stewing and Knitting
It’s a little embarrassing to see that the last post on this blog was in late May. If I could claim that life has been a non-stop whirlwind of activity, I’d have an excuse for not writing. While there have been busy moments, it has not been non-stop. There is a writing project stewing in my brain that I need to start tackling, but right now I’m still wondering if I have all the ingredients to make the stew happen. What else does it need? A pinch of this? A dash of that? Another idea or theme or motif from somewhere to ratchet up the interest level? Ok, rather than get to writing, I’ll just read this one more thing. And this one. And then this one. I’ve always liked the research phase better than the writing phase of anything. I used to say it was because I was a procrastinator, and, while that’s true, it’s also because I couldn’t stop trying to find new things that might just push my idea from okay to amazing. This shouldn’t surprise me. … Continue reading
Playing on Purpose
I saw the Sue Orfield Band for the first time last August at Tuesday Night Blues at the Owen Park Bandshell in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I was blown away by this amazing blues-jazz-rock band (depending on who’s describing it), fronted by a female sax player. How many of those can there be? I knew I needed to find out more about this woman who was so clearly playing on purpose. One day in fifth grade as Sue Orfield rode the bus to school in Menomonie, Wisconsin, she heard something making beautiful music on the radio. She had no idea what the instrument was, but she knew she wanted to play it. When she asked her brother if he knew what it was, he told her it was a saxophone and a big one, at that. She’d been playing piano since she asked her parents for piano lessons in first grade. Some parents would have thought she was too young or wouldn’t practice. Not hers. She had the kind of parents who really wanted to support whatever their kids wanted … Continue reading
I fought the snow and the snow won. Or did it?
Today I looked defeat square in the eye and said, “You win.” Defeat lived at the other end of the snow scoop I had borrowed from my next-door neighbor. Last night’s snow was only about 6″ deep, but it was heavy. Really heavy. Back-breakingly heavy. Heart-attack heavy. I started with a path down the middle of the driveway, then got as far as the photo shows. This is the first year since 1992 that I’ve shoveled snow at all. I compressed a couple of vertebrae in a car accident that winter. From that time on, I either found a neighbor kid who would shovel for me or lived in a parsonage where the church took care of it. The same was true with lawn care. A couple of years ago, I began a diet and exercise program, lost a lot of weight, gained a lot of strength and drastically improved my fitness level. Mowing my own lawn and shoveling my own snow are victories for me. I don’t always like doing them, but I rejoice in the fact that I … Continue reading
Living on Purpose
One of my favorite parts of coaching is working with clients on their Life Purpose. I’m not generally a prodigal capitalizer, but somehow it seems as though working to help focus on and define the purpose of one’s life is big stuff. Every now and then, it deserves the focus of Capital Letters. Some people take a while to come to a sense of what they want to be about in life. It feels important, and they want to get their life purpose statement right. Sometimes it takes some stumbling around and massaging of words for them to feel like they have something they can really remember and put to good use. I believe pretty strongly that such statements need to be short and packed with solid nouns and a good action verb, not too many adjectives or adverbs. What’s important is that the person know what it means to them and how it informs their living, not whether it makes sense to anyone else. It may take a session or two, but we generally come to something the client … Continue reading
Leaning In
Last Thursday, I stepped out onto a high-wire and walked. Ok. I scooched more than I walked, and I trembled the whole way. But the fact remains: I stepped off the side of a high deck onto a cable and I stood there and I moved. I did not do this alone. I had a partner to whom I was committed in this exercise, and she had me. She was on her own wire and someone below had her rope, just as someone had mine. I knew I could not fail at this. I knew this not because I knew I would meet a specific goal, but because I knew that even if I fell, I would not have failed. I knew that because my partner and I had talked about it beforehand. We had cleared any air between us that needed clearing, and when we walked over to the deck rail where we strapped on our helmets and got harnessed up, we knew that we were committed to each other as fully as possible. I have a lot of … Continue reading
Click!
“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.” “Only connect!” This epigram from E.M. Forster’s novel, Howards End, has rattled around in my brain much longer than any detail or context from my 30-years-ago reading of the novel has. Only connect. Connect prose and passion, heaven and earth, yin and yang, being and doing. Connect to family, friends, co-workers, strangers. Connect to earth and life, to ideas and feelings, to heart and spirit. Connect one person to another, a part to the whole, action to purpose, meaning to action, purpose to meaning. Connect. Connect. Connect. Every time I’ve done some form of “What’s your life purpose?” at a workshop or seminar, the answer that has surfaced has something to do with connection. In two different workshops, a couple of years apart, offered in two different contexts, using different techniques and visualizations, two statements arose. The first workshop suggested we think of a Life Purpose … Continue reading
Fierce Love
I stand for the power of fierce love to change the dream of the world. “O Love that wilt not let me go” are the first words of an 1882 hymn by George Matheson. Love that will not let go it doesn’t get more fierce than this. It doesn’t get more insistent. It doesn’t get deeper. It doesn’t get stronger. That fierce, insistent, powerful love is the primary thread that runs through all my “Life Purpose Statements” in one of the columns over on the right-hand side of this page. Love is the current of connection, the juice of partnership, the energy of relationship. Fierce love champions, encourages, challenges, protects, inspires, and above all holds on and won’t let go. Fierce love holds a vision of what is possible and believes that the possible will become the actual. Fierce love has the power to change lives, to change the world.Fierce love is not mooshy or gooshy. It can be tender and poignant, but it can also be brash and insistent. It sees the magnificence of the beloved, especially when the … Continue reading
From “If Only” to “What If” — Changing the Dream
Ten people sat around the table in the church’s Fellowship Hall. Together the members of the church council represented about 25% of the church’s total active membership and about 50-75% of its average weekly worship attendance. Their pastor had just moved on, and they had invited me there to talk about options for pastoral leadership. I knew that what I was really there to talk about was change. For nearly nine years, it has been part of my job to sit around these tables and have these conversations in United Church of Christ congregations around Northern Wisconsin. As rural populations decline and cultural paradigms shift, many of our churches are shrinking. Of the fifteen open pulpits I will leave as I wind up my work by the end of June, nearly half will only be able to afford part-time pastors. Most of them perceive the need to move from full-time to part-time as a huge step backwards, as a failure. “If only,” they say. If only we had had the right pastor, if only the plant hadn’t closed, if only … Continue reading
