"The Advertiser" - venial & mortal sin!

Recent 'articles" and, in particular, cartoons demeaning, belittling, the new Federal Labour Government and its leaders has raised my ire. Using some thoughts from one of my favourite novelists with respect to this Adelaide 'newspaper' I used to think it was OK for Gaynor to buy it so long as I didn't read it. As though, to use a good Roman Catholic analogy, buying it was a venial sin & reading it a mortal. But now I think I've got it the wrong way round because it's a mortal sin to buy it because it encourages them to keep on printing it. And reading it is only a venial sin because it really doesn't have anything of merit to present.

Research and young people.

From "The Age" 18/12/2007

This is interesting research about how young people spend their time
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/kids-hooked-up-to-but-not-on- gadgets/2007/12/17/1197740182399.html

from the article:
"research released by the government media watchdog, the Australian
Communications and Media Authority, suggests young people have not
increased the total time they spend being entertained by electronic
devices in the past decade and rank outdoor activities and hanging
out with friends well above sitting in front of a TV or computer."

You can read?!

Coaching & Leadership - an excerpt

(Some stuff I came across as part of my post-grad studies & I apologise that I've lost the reference because it was on my computer with some kind of gobbledygook 'name')

But there’s there’s no one-size-fits-all approach when dealing with people, so it’s important to see coaching in context, to understand where, when and how it can be effective for leaders - and what the alternatives are.

In their well-known book Leadership and the One Minute Manager Ken Blanchard, Patricia Zigarmi and Drea Zigarmi present coaching as one of four basic leadership styles - Directing, Coaching Supporting and Delegating. They argue that managers need to be flexible in adopting the most effective style for any given situation. In a similar spirit, Daniel Goleman wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review called Leadership that Gets Results, in which he argued that managers should utilise “a collection of distinct leadership styles - each in the right measure, at just the right time”. The analogy he used (no doubt familiar to corporate executives) was of a bag of golf clubs:

Over the course of a game, the pro picks and chooses clubs based on the demands of tbe shot. Sometimes he has to ponder his selection, but usually it is automatic. The pro senses the challenge ahead, swiftly pulls out the right tool, and elegantly puts it to work. That’s how high-impact leaders operate, too.

What makes Goleman’s article really interesting is his presentation of a research project carried out by the consulting firm Hay/McBer, into the relative effectiveness of different leadership styles. He begins by identifying six basic leadership styles:

1. Coercive - demanding compliance
2. Authoritative - mobilizing people towards a vision
3. Affiliative - building relationships and promoting harmony
4. Democratic - promoting consensus through participation
5. Pacesetting - setting high standards by example and demanding the same of others
6. Coaching - delegating responsibility and developing people for success

Here’s Goleman’s characterization of the coaching style of leadership:

Coaching leaders help employees identify their unique strengths and weaknesses and tie them to their personal and career aspirations. They encourage employees to establish long-term development goals and help them conceptualize a plan for attaining them. They make agreements with their employees about their role and responsibilities in enacting development plans, and they give plentiful instruction and feedback

I’m not sure I agree that good coaches habitually give “plentiful instruction” - coaching usually involves asking questions rather than giving instructions - but apart from that this is a good description of the coaching style of leadership. As Goleman points out, “Coaching leaders excel at delegating” - the key to their leadership is their ability to help people identify their personal and professional goals, and act as facilitators, letting individuals take responsibility for their own success.

Once the researchers had defined these six leadership styles, they assessed the impact of each style on ‘climate’, a term devised by psychologists to assess the ‘working atmosphere’ of an organisation. Climate is defined in terms of the following six factors:

1. Flexibility (freedom to innovate without being shackled with red tape)
2. Responsibility
3. Standards (set by people in the organisation)
4. Rewards (how accurate and fair these are)
5. Clarity (about mission and values)
6. Commitment

According to the researchers, of the six leadership styles, two of them - Coercive and Pacesetting - had a negative impact on climate. It’s no great surprise that Coercive was the least effective leadership style, except in emergencies. Few managers who really think about impact of their behaviour on others are likely to habitually coerce people into obedience. Perhaps more surprising was the fact that the Pacesetting style had a negative effect on climate. After all, isn’t setting a good example one of the things we expect of a leader?

In fact, the pacesetting style destroys climate. Many employees feel overwhelmed by the pacesetter’s demands for excellence, and their morale drops. Guidelines for working may he clear in the leader’s head, but she does not state them clearly… Work becomes not a matter of doing one’s best along a clear course so much as second-guessing what the leader wants. At the same time, people often feel that the pacesetter doesn’t trust them to work in their own way or to take initiative… As for rewards, the pacesetter either gives no feedback on how people are doing or jumps in to take over when he thinks they’re lagging.

This reads to me like an inverted coaching style - the emphasis is on the leader rather than the team, outcomes are not clearly described or checked for mutual understanding, responsibility is not delegated and feedback is either non-existent or clumsily delivered.

Moving onto the styles with a positive impact on climate, the most effective leadership style was ‘Authoritative’. Again, this is no great surprise - the core function of a leader is to identify a goal and inspire others to achieve it.

The authoritative leader is a visionary - he motivates people by making clear to them how their work fits into a larger vision for the organization. People who work for such leaders understand that what they do matters and why. Authoritative leadership also maximizes commitment to the organization’s goals and strategy. By framing the individual tasks within a grand vision, the authoritative leader defines standards that revolve around that vision. When he gives performance feedback - whether positive or negative - the singular criterion is whether or not that performance furthers the vision.

The three remaining styles (Affiliative, Democratic and Coaching) scored lower than Authoritative, but all had a positive impact on climate, scoring about the same as each other. So each of these styles is clearly important for a well-rounded approach to leadership, although none of them stick out as more important than the others.

Where coaching did stick out like a sore thumb however, was in the fact that it was the most neglected of the leadership styles:

Of the six styles, our research found that the coaching style is used least often. Many leaders told us they don’t have the time in this high-pressure economy for the slow and tedious work of teaching people and helping them grow. But after a first session, it takes little or no extra time. Leaders who ignore this style are passing up a powerful tool: its impact on climate and performance are markedly positive.

When I first read this article it confirmed my feeling that coaching is the tortoise compared to the hare of some charisma-based leadership styles, or the more glamorous, guru-centric approaches to personal development. I’m not saying there isn’t value in a charismatic, high-energy approach, but I do wonder about the end product. For example, I sometimes hear people report amazing experiences on personal development weekends with a famous speaker, from which they return full of plans and enthusiasm - but a few weeks later there’s nothing much to show for it. When asked, they usually say that it was a valuable experience to see such an inspiring speaker, but that they were probably being a bit unrealistic in some of the plans they made.

Similarly, the danger with a Pacesetting leadership style is the fact that the focus is on the leader rather than the team. By comparison, coaching might look a less dynamic style of leadership - the leader listens more than she talks, asking questions and making sure commitments are recorded and followed up - but it does ensure that things get done. And the person being coached is centre-stage, with all the opportunity and responsibility that implies. As Goleman puts it:

Although the coaching style may not scream “bottom-line results,” it delivers them.

Excerpt from Grace Davie ..

From Obligation to Consumption

The changing nature of churchgoing in modern Europe is important to understand, and to do so, one must clarify the constituency: here are Europe’s diminishing, but still significant churchgoers—those who maintain the tradition on behalf of the people described in the previous section. And here an observable change is taking place: from a culture of obligation or duty to a culture of consumption or choice. What until somewhat recently was simply imposed (with all the negative connotations of this word), or inherited (a rather more positive spin), becomes instead a matter of personal choice: “I go to church (or to another religious organization) because I want to, maybe for a short period or maybe for longer, to fulfill a particular rather than a general need in my life and where I will continue my attachment so long as it provides what I want, but I have no obligation either to attend in the first place or to continue if I don’t want to.” As such, this pattern is entirely compatible with vicariousness: “the churches need to be there in order that I may attend them if I so choose.

…

Voluntarism (a market) is beginning to establish itself de facto, regardless of the constitutional position of the churches. Or to continue the “chemical” analogy a little further, a whole set of new reactions are set to that in the longer term (the stress is important) may have a profound effect on the understanding of vicariousness.

…

The stress on experience is important in other ways as well. It can be seen in the choices that the religiously active appear to be making, at least in the British case. Here, within a constituency that is evidently reduced, two options stand out as disproportionately popular. The first is the conservative evangelical church—the success story of late twentieth-century churchgoing, both inside and outside the mainstream. These are churches that draw their members from a relatively wide geographical area and work on a congregational, rather than parish, model. Individuals are invited to opt in rather than opt out, and membership implies commitment to a set of specified beliefs and behavioral codes. For significant numbers of people, these churches over firm boundaries, clear guidance, and considerable support—effective protection from the vicissitudes of life. Interestingly, however, it is the softer charismatic forms of evangelicalism that are doing particularly well; old-fashioned Biblicism, relatively speaking, is losing its appeal.

Very different and less frequently recognized in the writing about religion in modern Britain (as indeed in Europe) is the evident popularity of cathedrals and city-center churches. Cathedrals and their equivalents deal with diverse constituencies. Working from the inside out, they are frequented by regular and irregular worshippers, pilgrims, visitors, and tourists, though the lines between these groups frequently blur. The numbers, moreover, are considerable—the more so on special occasions, both civic and religious. Hence, concerns about upkeep and facilities lead to difficult debates about finance. Looked at from the point of view of consumption, however, cathedrals are places that offer a distinctive product: traditional liturgy, top-class music, and excellence in preaching, all of which take place in a historic and often very beautiful building. A visit to a cathedral is an aesthetic experience, sought after by a wide variety of people, including those for whom membership or commitment presents difficulties. They are places where there is no obligation to opt in or to participate in communal activities beyond the service itself. In this respect, they become almost the mirror image of the evangelical churches already described.

What then is the common feature in these very different stories? It is the experiential or “feel-good” factor, whether this be expressed in charismatic worship, in the tranquility of cathedral evensong, or in a special cathedral occasion (a candlelit carol service or a major civic event). The point is that we feel something; we experience the sacred, the set apart. The purely cerebral is less appealing. Durkheim was entirely correct in this respect: it is the taking part that matters for late modern populations and the feelings so engendered. If we feel nothing, we are much less likely either to take part in the first place or to continue thereafter.

Conscious Incompetence

Conscious Incompetence is the action of doing something that you know that you cannot do properly, competently, or at all, for the purpose of learning or practicing how to do it better. It’s consciously and deliberately going out of your depth to learn how to swim well. In the process, you also let go of your pride and allow yourself to appear awkward, foolish, and sometimes stupid.

There are some provisos:

• Because you are choosing to do this, you naturally try to select times and places where you are not going to cause yourself — or others — real damage by making mistakes.
• When possible, you practice Conscious Incompetence away from the eyes of critics, especially bosses or jealous colleagues. This is, however, not always possible. Since your harshest critic is usually yourself, you have to be willing to put up with some internal carping and ignore it.
• You limit the risks by doing a little at a time, when you can. Little and often is a good guide.
• All episodes of Conscious Incompetence should be immediately followed up with time to reflect on what happened, what mistakes you made, and what you can learn from them. Conscious Incompetence is a learning process, so give yourself plenty of time to absorb the lessons.
• However badly you do, you don’t give up — at least until you have proved to yourself that the effort is truly not worth it. You are practicing, not trying to win a competition.

"The word must always become flesh .."

“The centrality of the community to the gospel means that the message is never disembodied. The word must always become flesh, embodied in the life of the called community. The gospel cannot be captured adequately in propositions, or creeds, or theological systems, as crucial as all of these exercises are. The gospel dwells in and shapes the people who are called to be its witness. …If there is good news for the world, then it is demonstrably good in the way that it is lived out by the community called into its service… The lived out testimony of the Christian community is to become a witness, visible and audible, given in and to the world, so that the gospel will spread.” — Darrell Guder

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Urban Church

http://www.flickr.com/photos/smallritual/sets/72157603329245538

Very much worth a look

I'm not able to do much but can I suggest you copy this into your browser. You'll be much rewarded.

http://alanbecker.deviantart.com/art/Animator-vs-Animation-34244097

Fallacy of wealth as the sole measure of value

In an email group to which I belong ..

Even if we can’t yet persuade business and politicians that their obsession with money as the sole measure of worth is self-destructive and ruinous to society at large, most people’s feelings of self-worth have rather less to do just with the size of their bank balance. Feeling uneasy or ashamed of the job you do—even if you do all you can to avoid anyone realizing this—isn’t a recipe for a happy life. You can try to ignore it, push it below the level of consciousness, or even deny it altogether, but it will still be there. The amount of personal damage it can cause is considerable.

We’re told that more and more young people are demanding better work/life balance and rejecting the overwork, narrow results orientation, and achievement obsession of previous generations. I think this is a misunderstanding.

What these younger people are demanding is more meaningful work: work that provides them a chance of real happiness, personal stimulation, and the sense that what they do matters. They aren’t rejecting good salaries, comfortable lifestyles, or future prospects. They’re rejecting what they are being expected to give up to get those in many corporations: their personal freedom, their leisure time, their relationships, their ideals, their ethical standards, their sense of what makes for a good life, and their dignity.

They are also questioning the current notion that wealth is the sole measure of value, whether of individuals or corporations.

What makes you feel good about what you do for a living? Is it just the size of your income?

I doubt that very much. As social animals, people are concerned with their status in the group. Money can be used as a way of enhancing this yet these outward displays of success only go so far.

People also want to be liked. Being rich may make people defer to you—even suck up—in the hope of getting something out of you, but it won’t make them like you—or what you do to earn that wealth. In fact, it may well make you suspect their motives for hanging around with you at all. The stereotype of the rich person who looks for love but only finds golddiggers is a stereotype because it expresses a truth: that having money is more likely to attract the wrong kind of “friend” that the right one.

Ethics also play a part. To feel good about your job usually means knowing that, if you tell your neighbors what you do, they will value it. They will approve both the outcome of your efforts and the means used to achieve them.

But suppose that you suspect that knowing exactly what you do—and how you have to do it—might cause those same neighbors to look askance and cross the street rather then meet you? Suppose you are employed selling dubious loans to people who can’t afford them, and part of your job is to conceal the exact terms to avoid firghtening them off? You may earn good money, but can you really shut your mind to the consequences of your actions?

Whatever we do has consequences; and what we do habitually has them over and over again. Choosing a career or a job that makes you feel uneasy about your actions is going to produce some internal consequences at least that aren’t conducive to happiness.

If your work doesn’t make you feel proud, will the money dull your feelings enough to compensate? If you’re asked to undertake actions that offend your values and ethics, will even oodles of cash quieten your conscience? And if you are brought up against the negative consequences of your emplyment—if it all comes out into the open—how will you feel? How will those you care about feel about you?

Young people have always been idealistic. It would be a sad world where this wasn’t so. They have also always been able to see where the compromises and surrenders of their elders have presented them with futures that contain, not what they want, but what their parents think they should have.

We have greater abilities than ever, through modern technology, to build the world we believe will fit with our ideals. We can use our powers for the good of the many or the profit of a few. It would be a disaster if all we do is use that same technology to build a world based on the past: a world enshrining inequalities, attitudes, and tawdry beliefs that we already know are failing to provide a happy society.

When you see some old film of what people of 40 or 50 years ago imagine today would be like, it’s so laughable as to make you wonder what they could possibly have been smoking. But is that so very different from looking forward and realizing that the world people are building today is may very well seem mean-minded, greed-obsessed, and stupid—even downright nasty—to our grandchildren?

Away with the Manger

Cheryl Lawrie
November 25, 2007

Taking the pressure to be popular off the Christmas story offers a chance for a whole new meaning.

In the town where I grew up, the Christmas pageant was the highlight of the year. We'd arrive early and thrust our way past the adults to sit at the blue line. We'd watch, enthralled, as marching bands, exotic floats, dancing ballerinas and clowns went past. We especially loved it when it came time for the nativity scene. The baby was cute but, more to the point, it meant that the very next float was Santa's. And while he would go on to set up shop in Myer, the nativity would be carefully wrapped up and put into the storage shed.

Ownership rights for Christmas have long been a tricky subject. We've become used to the tug-of-war between what we've designated as the sacred and the secular at Christmas, but over the past couple of years the ground has shifted even more. Christianity is no longer fighting for its share of centre stage - it's discovering that it can no longer assume that it has a place on the stage at all.

You can predict the letters that will fill our papers this Christmas as easily as I can. "We need to get back to the real meaning of Christmas," they'll proclaim, as though there can only be one, and as though Christianity holds its copyright.

For hundreds of years, Christianity has assumed a privileged position as the meaning-maker within Western society. But in the last few generations, Christianity has become like the favourite great aunt who sits in the corner of the room at Christmas - we play along with her for the day, listen nostalgically to her old stories, and with bemusement to her folk wisdom. "We must try to see more of her during the year," we say as we leave, knowing we won't.

At the risk of overworking the analogy, for many people, their great aunt has long died and been buried. Many people in our community whose heritage was Christian have decided firmly against it.

To say that Christianity is under threat, however, is more than a little melodramatic. Christianity has a resilience and tenacity that's enabled it to survive horrific persecution and oppression, from its earliest days in the Roman Empire, until now in communist China. The decision by a local council in Melbourne to not have a nativity float in a Christmas pageant won't kill off Christianity. Thinking that having a nativity float is a sign of a Christian society is a far greater threat.

It's ironic that Christmas has become the season over which this battle for making meaning is fought. The origin of the festival left the way open for the argument to continue forever. It wasn't until about 400 years after the birth of Jesus that anyone felt it necessary to mark the day.

Historians largely agree that the celebration of Christmas came about just after Constantine had made Christianity a recognised and privileged religion within the Roman Empire. Religious leaders were looking for a way to make Christianity more widely accepted among the populace, so they adopted an existing mid-winter festival and layered it with Christian meanings.

Many of our Christmas traditions came from the pre-existing festival: preparing great feasts of meat and ale to use up all the stores before they went off. While people would celebrate surviving the darkest time of year and the promise of light to come by dancing and singing naked in the streets, we've translated that tradition into a much more tasteful version, with the fully clothed Salvos singing Christmas carols from the back of a truck.

So much for those of us who thought that Jesus was actually born on December 25, and that we were joining in some world-wide birthday party that's been thrown ever since in his honour.

The relationship between what's been defined as sacred and secular has always been murky. Our tendency has been to define some traditions and behaviours as sacred, without recognising that they are - at best - just carriers of something sacred.

Perhaps the great mistake of the Christian church since the festival of Christmas began is that it has compromised itself so deeply in order to be palatable to everyone. It doesn't recognise that it has lost hold of much that is sacred. Which means we no longer recognise the irony of playing Christmas carols in a shopping centre.

Taking nativity floats out of the Christmas pageant and not insisting that Silent Night gets sung next to Jingle Bells may give Christianity the best chance it has had in years to offer something deeply sacred to the world. It gives back the freedom to not be attractive, to not have to be enticing. It lets Christianity stand on its own. It gives us the chance to distinguish between the truly sacred and the purely religious or nostalgic. Please, God, it gives us the chance to never hear Away in a Manger again.

Best of all, if the Christian Christmas story is released from the pressure to be popular it means we can take the nativity from its place in the corner of the sparkly shopping centre, where the star at its top gets lost among the glitter and glitz of the decorations.

We can put it unashamedly next to the dumpster out the back, where there are no other stars to light the dark.

In praise of "Eccentrics"

from John Stuart Mill:

"In this age the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time."

The quote comes from his 1859 book 'On Liberty', where he regularly rages against 'custom', believing it leads to conformity, and thus lack of freedom:

"Even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes."

Eccentricity simply means 'having a different centre'. For this reason alone, and with no thought for wanting to be 'quirky' or 'different', I'd like to sing in praise of being eccentric. Within this definition it is only the eccentric who can speak prophetic criticism. It is only the eccentric who can, by the gravity of their thought, draw close and change the orbit of the masses. Bauman writes in Liquid Life of "the mind-boggling quandary of having to mark oneself out as an individual, while also remaining obviously an acceptable part of the group" and it is this pressure that draws us into predictable, one-dimensional orbits. Being such a satellite around such a large mass is safe, yes, but cold and life-less.

The force to break away from this comes in two forms. The greater force, perhaps, is the gravity of the a-centrics, the vacuous cult of celebrity that tempts us with ideas of total freedom. The exultation of form over content (see Guy Debord "The Society of the Spectacle". But nothing can have no centre, save nothing itself.

So it is down to the eccentric, the differently centred to provide some alter-orbit. The physics is clear on this: the closer this eccentric orbit swings to the other mass, the greater its changing effect. Eccentricity is not an excuse for seclusion or flight, but an invitation to challenge the prose-flattened, cathode-ray world with some vital poetry.

Ordination & Leadership

From a recent blog on Jonny Baker's blog where he is responding to questions about ordination & leadership.

more widely the emerging church is forever talking about this issue. some within the emerging church are embracing the opportunities to get trained and ordained to fulfil their sense of calling/vocation. the anglican church has smartly opened up a new pathway for ordination for what it is calling pioneer ministers and quite a lot of people i know are going to get ordained via that route. the thinking is that the current training and so in is really aimed at pastor/teacher sort of gifting. but pioneers might have and need a very different set of skills and approach and training. i think this is a great move and suspect it will end up changing the landscape. the danger is that these pioneers are having to slot into an institution that has older understandings of leadership and doesn't yet know how to rethink or re-imagine them. there are unlikely to be paid jobs for a lot of these pioneers and in my heart i think that's a good thing as they will have to genuinely pioneer new things on the margins, albeit with the blessing of the church, and grow things that are self sustaining. others within the emerging church are really quite anti the whole ordination thing, emphasising the body of christ and its priestly callng in all areas of life. i don't want to rehearse the debate here. but i think it is an important one. i tend to be pragmatic and want both/and. i think we need people inside the structures and denominations with a calling to renew, pioneer and effect change - to be there you have to work with the system. but i also think we need people who are not prepared to play that game and want to do stuff on the edges and margins. if you get renewal flowing in both directions that strikes me as a good thing! that's why i want to encourage people with both approaches.

the church is in transition so struggles about leadership are part of the wider cultural shifting landscape. those at home in the new environment will have the instincts about leadership that are likely to herald the future. but it will take a while to change.

Acting, thinking, behaviour

The use of technology

There’s an old story about a Roman emperor who was shown a wonderful harvesting machine. “It can do the work of at least 100 men,” the inventor proclaimed. “With just 10 of my machines, you would need no people at all to collect the harvest.”

The emperor congratulated him on his ingenuity, admired the machine —then ordered it destroyed utterly, the plans burned, and the inventor put to death. When the stunned inventor protested, the emperor said: “I must see that my people have work as well as bread.”

This story isn’t told to launch a Luddite attack on technology. Technology is great. What causes the problem is how it’s used—and that’s down to people.

Is it better to use our technology to make a few people very, very rich, even if the bulk have to work harder then ever? Or to allow more people to live good lives with less effort? The same technology can do either—but not both at the same time. It’s a matter of choice.

Elephants are large, slow, and live long lives. Shrews are small, incredibly fast and active, and die within two years or so. Giant tortoises move incredibly slowly and live for centuries. Nature has fixed a link between speed and shortness of life. In our rushed and harried world, we rely more and more on medical technology to fend off the diseases caused by the stress our lifestyle produces.

I wonder how healthy and extended people’s lives would be if we devoted our know-how to that objective, instead of patching up our walking wounded to squeeze a few more dollars out of them?

Orthodoxy -praxy -pathy

(From Alan Hirsch's blog)

Not forgetting Orthodoxy: Having noted that orthodoxy (right belief) is not enough, I am not suggesting that it is not important. Far from it! Right belief is an irreplaceable element of any discipleship in the way of Jesus. However the church nearly always sees orthodoxy narrowly, as a commitment to propositional truth, assuming that the knowledge of God is received through purely the cognitive functions. I am convinced that if we are to come to a full appreciation of God, our thinking about him must be right, but it must be complimented by othopraxy and orthopathy if we are to come to a full-orbed, biblical, engagement with (and knowledge of) God. This can be depicted in the following way:

As can be seen above, it is in the nexus between orthopraxy, orthopathy and orthodoxy that that a true and full appreciation of God is to be found. Indeed, in the place where all three intersect we are less likely to make the mistakes that occur when we favour one over the others. If we adopt a commitment to orthopraxy alone at our worst we become tireless (and tired) activists, burning ourselves, and others, out and relying on our own efforts to please God. If we foster orthopathy to the exclusion of the others, we can end up as impractical mystics, so focused on contemplation and personal spiritual experience that we become no use in the kingdom of God. But as we well know, if our primary or exclusive interest is in orthodoxy (as is the case in many churches today), at our worst we are arrogant bibliophiles, no different to the Pharisees, worshipping our doctrine and our theological formulations over a genuine encounter with the Jesus revealed in scripture. It is in the place where the ways of head, the heart and the hand overlap that we find our way to Jesus. This is exactly what the shema (Dt.6:4-9) aims at, and what Jesus directly affirms as being at the heart of discipleship and knowledge of God (Mk.12:28-34). We are to love God with all our heart, mind, will, and strength.

More on LEADERSHIP

Sent by friend in USA from 'slow leadership' blog

Maybe corporations do get what they deserve

The German World War II general Erich von Manstein is said to have categorized his officers into four types.

The first type, he said, is lazy and stupid. His advice was to leave them alone because they don’t do any harm.

The second type is hard-working and clever. He said that they make great officers because they ensure everything runs smoothly.

The third group is composed of hardworking idiots. Von Manstein said that you must immediately get rid of these, as they force everyone around them to perform pointless tasks.

The fourth category are officers who are lazy and clever. These, he says, should be your generals.

Discovering this information set me to wondering how General von Manstein’s categories might apply to business organizations today.

The lazy and stupid ones

Most organizations have some managers within them who are lazy and stupid—at least, that has been my experience. Although they claim they try to get rid of any employee who is found to be lazy, let alone stupid as well, they don’t seem to be so successful, judging by the number who are left—some even in fairly exalted positions.

Maybe one reason for this is that lazy and stupid people rarely do much active harm. The harm they do is more often based on missing opportunities and stifling the creativity of those who report to them. Bad enough, but not always easy to turn into clear grounds for dismissal—especially if the person in question is protected by someone powerful. Still, my guess is that even lazy and stupid people today realize that the best route to self-preservation is at least to appear busy and active.

The hardworking and clever ones

Von Manstein’s next group is made up of hardworking, clever people. Organizations mostly want as many of these as they can get, for obvious reasons. But you’ll notice that the general seems to confine them to the military equivalent of middle management: jobs that are aimed at making everything run smoothly.

I suspect one reason is that such people do make excellent administrators. They can take orders from above and turn them into practical ways of achieving the desired results. Some are so useful in these roles that they are never allowed to rise higher. Others maybe want to progress, but lack something that—at least in von Manstein’s view—is essential to become a good general. That something, it seems, is laziness. He wants the choice of generals to be made from people who are clever, naturally, but also lazy. Why should that make them better top executives?

The lazy and clever ones

One reason might be that laziness is the principal spur to creativity. Lazy people are always looking for easier, simpler, and less arduous ways to do things. If they are also clever, the chances are that they will find them, and make them available to everyone else.

Lazy people are also natural delegators, and find it very attractive to let their subordinates get on with their work without interference from above. Lazy, but bright, generals would be likely to make sure they focused on the essentials and ignored anything that might make for unnecessary work, whether for themselves or other people. In fact, it’s hard to see why you would not want your top managers to be as lazy as they are clever. It would indeed make them great strategists and leaders of people.

The hardworking idiots

Now to the last group: the ones von Manstein said that you should get rid of immediately. That group is made up of people who are hardworking idiots. He says such people force those around them into pointless activities.

I don’t know about you, but I suffered from several bosses I would unhesitatingly put into precisely that category. They were extremely hardworking—and demanded the same from their subordinates—but what they set others to work on (and what they spent their own time in doing) was mostly worthless.

Today’s fast-paced, macho style of organizational culture creates, and then fosters, the hardworking idiot. Indeed, I think it takes a great many sound, useful, hardworking, and clever people and turns them into idiots by denying them the time or the opportunity to think or use their brains.

If you don’t look busy all the time, you’re virtually asking for a pink slip, never mind what it is that you are doing—or whether it is actually of any use to the organization or its customers. It’s all so rushed and frenetic. If all that matters is “meeting the numbers” and getting things done (whatever those things are), managers will be forced into working hard at projects that they know make no sense.

The dumbing down of organizations

The dumbing down of organizations isn’t caused by poor educational standards or faulty recruitment. It’s due mostly to the crazy pace that is set, and the obsessive focus on the most obvious, rigidly short-term objectives. The result is a sharp increase in hardworking idiots: people who are coerced into long hours and constant busyness, while being systematically forced to act like idiots by the culture around them.

Don’t ask questions. Don’t cause problems by thinking, or waste time on coming up with new ideas. Don’t think about the future, or try to anticipate problems before they arise. Just keep at it, do exactly what is expected of you, and always get the most done in the least amount of time and at the lowest cost. If von Manstein is correct, the result will be that more and more employees will be used to perform essentially pointless tasks. Isn’t that exactly what we see?

I think that even a fairly cursory look around most organizations today would confirm the accuracy of this observation. Consider all the time wasted in unnecessary meetings. The obsessive emphasis on staying in touch, regardless of need. The torrents of e-mails, most of which are simply copies of documents of no direct relevance to the people to whom they are sent. The constant collecting of data for no clear reason. Management by numbers and motivation by numerically-based performance measures. Trust replaced by obsessive control and leadership by forced ranking of subordinates against vague criteria determined by committees with no idea of the specific circumstances.

You do not need ethical insight or human understanding to operate a machine, and machines are how many of today’s leaders see their organization: machines for making quick profits, not civilized communities of people working together to a common end. We can only hope some organizations at least see the error of their ways before the hardworking idiot becomes the commonest creature in the hierarchy.

It’s no fun to be forced to deny your own intelligence on a daily basis. We can still reverse the trend, but only by dropping the current out-dated dogmas, dangerous half truths, and total nonsense that disfigure management thinking. Let’s do it before it is too late.

"going troppo - the way of obedience"

Bonhoeffer believed that the only way to truly comprehend the revelation of God in scripture is by approaching it with the pre-commitment to obey it. For those interested in weird theological terms, he calls this ‘tropological exegesis’ or simply ‘tropology’. Bonhoeffer can therefore speak of discipleship as a ‘problem of exegesis’ and goes on to say, “By eliminating simple obedience on principle, we drift into an unevangelical interpretation of the Bible.” So, if we never obey God we can never understand or follow him. Simply believing right doctrine is not enough. As followers of Jesus, we have to start obeying long before we know and understand much of Him whom we obey. More than that, if we take obedience out of the equation, we cannot even hope to truly understand the bible. Calvin can claim that true knowledge of God is born out of obedience, and to obey takes us to the path of action, of praxis, of goodness.

We are saved by grace, not by works. Hence we cannot glorify works. Yet doing them is indispensable, for they are prepared in advance by God, they are in his ‘plan,’ and we are created to do them (Eph.2:10). In Paul, then, practice (praxis) is the visible criterion that we have seriously received grace and also that we have entered effectively into God’s plan. For Paul, as for Jesus, practice is the touchstone of authenticity. “We are in the presence here of something that is constant across the centuries (J.Ellul, Subversion of Christianity, 5).

(sent from the blog of Alan Hirsch)

Patience

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions”
Rainer Maria Rilke

When you “live the questions,” you start on a path to true learning. Questions are so much more useful than mere answer —especially if those answers are based on convention, dogma, or supposed authority. No one ever learned much from answers. Only time spent wrestling with the most demanding questions can produce real insight and wisdom.

The God Who Loves You

I came across this poem by the Pulitzer prize-winning poet Carl Dennis.

The God Who Loves You

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week—
Three fine houses sold to deserving families—
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you'd have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music

Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you're living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don't want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day's disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You'd have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you're used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You're spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven't written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you've chosen.

A communion precursor

The first time this story was told
they gathered around a table
a ragged collection of people –
sinners
betrayers
power-hungry
fragile
lost
lonely.

The first time this story was told,
Jesus promised that it was for all time
that whenever the bread was broken
and the wine was poured,
wherever the story was told around the table
he would be there.

Today we tell the story
as its been told a thousand times over;
we break the bread,
and we pour the wine;
sure, as we do,
that we belong at this table
and that Jesus is here with us.

On the night Jesus was betrayed…

[I’m writing communion liturgies as part of a collection of liturgies for using in the prison. one of the things we try to emphasise in worship is the connection of the community of faith in the prison with communities of faith throughout history and across the world today. Cheryl Lawrie]

"We will not comply ... We pledge allegiance"

With governments that Kill...we will not comply.
With the theology of Empire...we will not comply.
With the business of Militarism...we will not comply.
With the hoarding of Riches...we will not comply.
With the dissemination of Fear...we will not comply.

But today, we pledge our ultimate allegiance to the Kingdom of God...we pledge allegiance.

To the peace that is not like Rome's...we pledge allegiance.
To the gospel of enemy love...we pledge allegiance.
To the kingdom of the poor and the broken...we pledge allegiance.
To the king who loved his enemies so much He died for them...we pledge allegiance.
To the least of these, with whom Christ dwells...we pledge allegiance.
To the transnational Church that transcends that artificial borders of nations...we pledge allegiance.
To the Refugee of Nazareth...we pledge allegiance.
To the homeless Rabbi who had no place to lay His head...we pledge allegiance.
To the Cross rather than the Sword...we pledge allegiance.
To the Banner of Love above any flag...we pledge allegiance.
To the One who rules with a towel rather than an iron fist...we pledge allegiance.
To the One who rides a donkey rather than a war horse...we pledge allegiance.
To the Revolution that sets both oppressed and oppressors free...we pledge allegiance.
To the Way that leads to Life...we pledge allegiance.
To the Slaughtered Lamb...we pledge allegiance.
...
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit...Amen.

(Shane Claiborne)

Thanks Craig Mitchell

"the interview with god"

http://www.theinterviewwithgod.com/

Re "Leadership" - again!

Sent to me from the great blog of Alan Hirsch. Very serious pondering required!

I have long believed that leadership, or the lack of it, is a significant key to either the renewal, or the decline, of the church. If this is true, that leadership critical to our success or failure, then we must ask the question as to why we are in our current state of demise, and then seek to remedy the situation. This is of strategic importance. And if we pursue this a little further, we must in the end center our attention on the agencies and people that have been responsible for the training and endorsing of a leadership that has overseen the massive decline of Christianity in the last two centuries. Some hard questions must be asked about the way we train and develop leadership.

Perhaps the single most significant source of the malaise of leadership in our day comes from the way, and the context, in which we form leaders. For the most part, the would-be leader is withdrawn from the context of ordinary life and ministry in order to study in a somewhat cloistered environment for up to seven years in some cases. During that period they are subjected to an immense amount of complex information relating to the Biblical disciplines, theology, ethics, church history, pastoral theology, etc. And while the vast majority of this information is useful and correct; what is far more dangerous to discipleship in that setting is the actual socialization processes that the student undergoes along the way. In effect, they are socialized out of ordinary life, and develop a kind of language and thinking that is seldom understood and expressed outside of the seminary. Its as if in order to learn about ministry and theology we leave our places of habitation and take a flight into the wonderfully abstracted world of abstraction, we fly around there for a long period of time and then wonder why we have trouble landing again.

Please don’t get me wrong, we need serious intellectual engagement with the key ideas of our time, what is truly concerning is that such engagement largely takes place in the largely passive environments of the classroom. To love God fully with our whole being, leadership development must inculcate in the disciple the lifelong love of learning but this must be done in a way far more consistent with the ethos of discipleship than the ethos produced in and through the academy.

The Synergy of Growth

Breath of God

Apparently from a shop window in London. Strange or ..?

"Local Maximum"

It would appear that most manifestations of church have reached a "local maximum". The particular processes that moulded them and nudged them certain ways toward their styles of worship and modes of being actually originated in small country churches hundreds of years ago. The churches developed to meet the needs of the 'Industrial Revolution' and have continued to seek out higher ground, but we in the post-Christian West, as is Australia, are beginning to see, and are being told by some 'emerging church' "types" that this "animal is now unfit for its environment". However having said that we continue to build & plan for a form of 'if we do it they'll come". However I believe the model we 'be been using, and the 'tweaking' we are trying to do is at a dead end. There is no more room for improvement. In a sense the church cannot advance further along the branch that it's on - there is no more branch! The systemic faults that are actually the root of the problem remain unchanged.
(A good reference is James Fowler "Stages of Faith: The psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning")

"The Chapel" - R.S. Thomas

A little aside from the main road
becalmed in a last-century greyness
there is the chapel, ugly, without the appeal
to the tourist to stop his car
and visit it. The traffic goes by
and the river goes by, and quick shadows
of clouds too, and the chapel settles
a little deeper into the grass

But here once on an evening like this,
in the darkness that was about
his hearers, a preacher caught fire,
and burned steadily before them
with a strange light so that they saw
the splendour of the barren mountains
about them and sang their amens
fiercely, narrow but saved
in a way that men are not now.

There is a sadness about it that this happened once, but it has now gone – the glory has departed and the chapel is empty but that doesn’t mean it was now once real. The image of the preacher who ‘caught fire’ here is just right. It doesn’t say who he was, or draw attention to his gifts, preparation, or anything – just that the Spirit once fell here, the fire of heaven touched earth the word of God gripped him and he just burned before them. That describes revival perfectly, when a person in a particular place is consumed by God in worship or preaching or praise. We just have to be in the right place with the right heart for when it happens.

For reflection

From the SACC email list

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me

to make me less afraid, more accessible

to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom

and that which came to me as blossom

goes on as fruit.

‘I will not die an unlived life” by Dawna Markova, published Conari Press, California, 2000

Reality

Picked this up from Craig Mitchell's blog

Controlling Voices: Intellectual Property, Humanistic Studies and the Internet by TyAnna K. Herrington, Southern Illinois University Press, 2001.

A quote from Herrington's book:

“Reality exists only in shared perception, and this perception depends on information developed through the process of creating knowledge. Those who have access to knowledge and control its use and dissemination thus control what we perceive: ultimately our shared reality.”

"Leadership is an extension of discipleship"

Was sent to me by a friend from the blog of Alan Hirsch.

If this is not already obvious by now let me say it more explicitly: the quality of the church’s leadership is directly proportional to the quality of discipleship. if we fail in the area of making disciples we should not be surprised if we fail in the area of leadership development. I think many of the problems that the church faces in trying to cultivate missional leadership for the challenges of the 21st century would be resolved if we were to focus the solution to the problem on something prior to leadership development per se, namely that of discipleship first. Discipleship is primary, leadership is always secondary. And leadership, to be genuinely Christian, must always reflect Christlikeness and therefore…discipleship.

If we wish to develop and engender a genuinely missional leadership then we have to first plant the seed of obligation to the mission of God in the world in the earlier and more elementary phases of discipleship. This seed should be cultivated into full-blown missional leadership later on. And this is not being coercive and manipulative, but simply recognizing that as disciples we are active participants in the Missio Dei. We can’t merely create missional leadership when the DNA of missional leadership was not first laid down in the seeds of discipleship. And this is exactly how Jesus does discipleship: he organizes it around mission. As soon as they are called He takes the disciples on an adventurous journey of mission, ministry, and learning. Straightaway are involved in proclaiming the Kingdom of God, serving the poor, healing, and casting out demons. And it is active and direct disciple-making in the context of mission. And all great people movements are the same. Even the newest convert is engaged in the mission from the start; even he/she can become a spiritual hero. If we accept that Jesus forms the primary pattern of disciple-making for the church, then we must say that discipleship is our core task. But if disciple-making lies at the heart of our commission then we must organize it around mission because mission is the catalyzing principle of discipleship. In Jesus they are inexorably linked.

Cause and Effect

It’s amazing how little attention people pay to the simple process of cause and effect. There’s a common saying that the best definition of insanity is, “Doing the same thing again and again, while expecting the outcome to change.” By that definition, maybe the majority of working people—and nearly all their managers —today are insane.

OK, so that's the piece I came across. Now I'd like to try & put down a few thoughts that arise out of that.

Choosing a game plan for life based on short-term gratification

What has all this to do with life, work, and slowing down? The answer can be expressed in a simple equation:

Old Habits + Old Thinking + Short-term Viewpoint = Predictable Consequences

This seems to be the game plan for life that many people follow.

But if you want to build a less stressful, better, more enjoyable and more satisfying and happier life, you won’t do it by sticking with the way the majority think and act today: following current fashion while looking only to the immediate future.

A short-term, conservative mindset is not your friend if you want your life to change for the better. Nor is clinging to security. If you stick with habits and thoughts that are comfortable and undemanding, and don’t look much further ahead than next week or next month, expecting any different outcome from what you’ve experienced up till now is so illogical it must be described as form of insanity(?)

A game plan for positive change

To produce slow, measured change you should try changing one, or perhaps two, of the terms in front of the equals sign in the equation above. For example:

Old Habits + Old Thinking + Longer-term Viewpoint = Potential for Different Consequences

I say “potential” because those old habits and thinking will still hold much of your life in place until the longer-term viewpoint starts (fairly slowly) to change them.

The same would be true if you changed your habits, but kept your current ways of thinking and short-term outlook. There would be some change, but your old-style, short-term thinking would keep pulling you back towards the way you’ve always reacted to events until now—and thus to very similar consequences.

To make major changes, you must change habits and thinking and viewpoint at the same time:

New Habits + New Thinking + Longer-term Viewpoint = All New Consequences

If you do that, the “law” of cause and effect will ensure different outcomes and paths through life. When people have some life-changing experience, they often describe it as having turned their lives upside down. They can’t think as they did before, nor can they bring themselves to fall back on their old habits or see the world in the old way. They have new thinking, new habits, a new outlook, and therefore their life is totally changed.

Life-changing experiences . . . on demand

Armed with this insight, you can create your own life-changing experiences. Open your mind to new thoughts, lengthen and broaden your outlook, and try new ways of behaving. You can definitely expect different results to come about if you do that. The major drawback to a short-term, conservative, risk-averse mindset is not that it’s always wrong (though often it is), but that it’s static.

When you choose to alter your life in a controlled manner, inner change precedes outer change. You change yourself and how you choose and new consequences arise as a result. When outer change forces inner change on you, it’s nearly always due to some traumatic life event. That’s what happens when you stay dumb and happy until the universe forces you to make a major course correction.

If you wait until that happens, it’s likely to be painful. Wouldn’t it be far better to choose change than be compelled to experience it through a life-altering trauma?

The practice of Tolerance

The more strongly you cling to what matters most to you, the more fiercely you will respond to any threat, real or imagined, against it. People find it hard to cope calmly with such a slight danger as disagreement with the values they hold. How can someone pose a threat to your beliefs simply by holding different ones? Yet friendships are ended, families disrupted, work teams destroyed, careers derailed, and marriages wrecked by nothing more tangible than a disagreement about what is valued or believed by one of the parties. It makes no sense.

Of course, it does once you understand the fear. By refusing to accept your beliefs and values as mine too, I undermine, just a little, your confidence in what you believe. If I go further and openly oppose or denigrate your point of view, the threat is greater and the emotional response will increase in proportion. This is the paradox. The more strongly people believe in something, the less easy it is for them to cope with others who don’t. That’s why clubs become exclusive. That’s why we’ve had centuries of religious and political persecution.

Every day, we must all must face people whose view of the world does not match ours. You may have to work with them, serve them as customers, or answer to them as your boss. If you cannot learn to tolerate different—even uncomfortable—beliefs and viewpoints cheerfully, you’ll cause yourself and others continual pain. The dark side of your passions is always there, waiting to disrupt your life.

Strong values are usually seen as something to be applauded. Maybe. They also increase the danger of bigotry, self-righteousness, discrimination, persecution, and obsession. I’ve met many cases of good, principled people unaware of how they allow the dark side of their passions and fears to turn them into narrow-minded, cruel tormentors of anyone who disagrees sufficiently with them.

St. Paul wrote (in one version of the Bible) that without charity we are nothing. He’s not an authority much given to quoting, but in this case I believe he was pointing to something essential. One of the meanings of charity in Webster’s dictionary is “leniency in judging others, forbearance.” In other words, tolerance. If your values are strong but you do not practice charity and tolerance, the steep slope into bigotry, discrimination, and persecution is already under your feet.

A "Janet" writes about "inspirational" versus "institutional" leadership

I’d be cautious about getting simplistic here with “inspirational leadership = good, institutional leadership = bad”. The other great leader of the 20th century would have to be Nelson Mandela. His moral influence reverberated around the world when “institutionally helpless” in prison. However… he also continued to exercise moral leadership AND institutional leadership as President of South Africa. In that capacity, the Truth and Reconcillation process he instituted is one of the utterly remarkable stories of civil (indeed Christ-like) use of institutional power.

We actually live in a world of institutions… schools, governments, businesses… this is our current reality. I would rather leadership of these organisations be exercised by people who also have moral authority, than by those who are narcisists or worse.

Organisational leadership puts good people occasionally into moral grey zones… but isn’t it better to have bosses who agonise over whether there is any alternative to making good people redundant, than bosses who are only interested in maximizing short term profits to maximise their short term bonuses? Isn’t it better to have presidents / prime ministers / governors etc. who prayerfully agonise over whether tax increases to fund initiatives to benefit the poor might in fact increase unemployment and increase the numbers of poor people (for example)… rather than leaders whose only consideration in decisions is shoring up votes for the next election?

I do not believe aspiring power for power’s sake is ever Jesus’ way. But I do believe some Christians are called to institutional leadership. At least… I hope some are. I don’t want all institutional leadership to be exercised by those whose moral character is weak.

Ghandi exercised inspirational leadership only… and changed a nation. Mandela exercised inspirational leadership and (for a time) institutional leadership… and changed a nation. I think both types of leadership MAY be an expression of God-given vocation.

But of course… temporal power corrupts so often we take it up with fear and trembling.

"That Sunday morning feeling!?"

Prefering sign to thing signified

But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.
Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity

Always Leunig challenges

"What shall it profit a man ..?"

“What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world yet lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)

That question is just as relevant today as then. Is it a fair calculation of your personal “bottom line” to look only at getting and spending? Is it enough to make as much personal profit as possible, if the cost includes wrecking relationships, threatening your own health, and reaching the end of your life rich, alone, and despised? What if your personal profit comes mostly by exploiting others or pillaging the environment? Is that acceptable, merely because it makes sense in financial terms? What value do you put on a clear conscience and a civilized world?

"We have accepted the unthinkable with resignation"

I need to confess that as I read the newspapers both online from around the world & the occasional in the hand version; as I see various TV documentaries; as I listen to various world leaders and the leader & aspiring leader of Australia - in short as I contemplate the state of this earth & the reality of the poor, marginalized, dispossessed assails my mind & heart I think of the comment by the English writer H. V. Morton in his book I Saw Two Englands: "We have accepted the unthinkable with resignation. That is the distinctive quality of this age …"
What more can I say?

Any further comment?

Letting go ..?

Freedom's paradoxicality.

Freedom's paradoxicality.
Originally uploaded by Domen Colja

"go in pieces .."

The task is ended
go in pieces

†

Our concluding faith
is being rear-ended
certainty's being amended
and something's getting mended
that we didn’t know
was torn

†

We're unravelling
and are traveling to a place
of
new-formed-patterns,
with delusion as a fusion of
loss, and hope, and pain and beauty.

†

So,

†

The task is ended
go in pieces
to see and feel
your world.

(Written by Padraig Twomney and performed by Jayne McConkey)

Precious Moments being wasted?

Change is more about letting go of old ideas than finding new ones. Most of the time, people are sufficiently happy with the way things are, so they see no need to change. Life may not be perfect, but it’s good enough; the effort and uncertainty change brings look too great to be worth it. That’s why the moments when you’re open to change are precious. Miss them and your life and growth goes back on indefinite hold. Seize them and you have moments of infinite preciousness, when your mind is open to new ideas and fresh perspectives.

Here are some ways to take full advantage of these precious moments:

• Let yourself consider the opposite to your normal way of thinking. Even if it’s not the answer, it will allow you to see past your habitual mind-sets. For example, if you usually like to plan carefully before acting, imagine what might happen if you just took the first, most obvious decision and allowed things to develop from there.
• Let your imagination to run wild. Create mental pictures. Play with analogies and metaphors for the situation. Challenge your mind with thoughts like: “Suppose I was 20 years younger (or 20 years older, or the opposite gender, or had unlimited money, or decided to re-locate to Mexico), what might I do then?”
• Combine and recombine options into all sorts of novel combinations. Don’t worry whether they’re feasible or practical. Just allow your mind to play. Then pick a few options and see how you might make them work.
• Don’t allow the idea of failure to enter your mind. There are no failures; only actions that didn’t turn out as you anticipated. Take them and track exactly what happened, using that knowledge to produce still more alternatives; this time, backed up by actual experience.
• Above all, do something. Anything is better than nothing. Any action will lead to a result you can learn from, even if it doesn’t work out exactly as you wanted.

Precious moments of open-mindedness are worth more than gold or diamonds. Never waste them. Use every one to learn something to help you develop.

Breaking me ...

take a second
to unravel
the complicated things
that you’re thinking
take to a moment
to unscrabble
the words that you never
could spell
take a minute
take an hour
take a week
or dammit a lifetime
give some space
for some meaning
give intelligence
a tanglible lifeline
let your heart
let your breathing
let your skin
and let your heartbeating
find a rhythm
rich with meaning
that isn’t just mindless
repeating

†

take a second
to imagine
what you’d be like if it
weren’t for rules
rules for living
rules for crying
rules for rebels
and rules for prudes
rules for shagging
rules for bragging
rules for morals
and rules for rules
rules for criminals
rules for liberals
rules you’re given
and rules you choose
would there be no
ground for standing
would you float
as free as a feather?
would you put your
guilty feelings
liturgically into a shredder?
COULD you put your
guilty feelings
sacramentally into a shredder?
and could you find a
code of meaning
not based on rules
but based on a story?
could you unravel
bad religion
and knit
a story to hold me?

†

alleluia, alleluia

†

D-O-C-T-R-I-N-E-
is
s-u-f-f-o-c-a-t-i-n-g- me
R-E-L-I-G-I-O-N-
is
b-r-e-a-k-i-n-g- me
and
B-R-E-A-T-H-I-N-G-
is
R-E-C-R-E-A-T-I-N-G- me
and M-Y-T-H- is
liberating me

†

I don’t need
to be
born again
(no), I
don’t need
to be
born again
I don’t need
to be born again
I was born once
and that was enough
what I need
is I need a good friend,
cos I’m lonely
and I’m gifted
I don’t need another damn
puberty
I need to grow-up
stop waiting for certainty
to be proved to me

†

alleluia, alleluia

†

A-L-L-E-L-U-I-A-

†

and could you find a
code of meaning
not based on rules
but based on a story?
could you unravel
bad religion and knit
a story to hold me?

†

I am Mary, in the Garden
Seeing God in the face of a gardener
I’m leaving conclusion, embracing delusion
it’s better, but jesus it’s harder.

†

(Written and performed by Padraig Twomey, with Jon Hatch, Sarah Williamson and Stephen Caswell)

Silent & Obedient Consent?

Set in a futuristic, totalitarian Britain, the movie V for Vendetta tells the story of V, who urges his fellow citizens to rise up and bring freedom and justice back to a society plagued by cruelty and corruption. In one of his speeches to the people, V says:

The truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and depression. And where once you had the freedom to object, think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame?

Well, certainly, there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now High Chancellor ... He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.

When you look at the footage in the lead up to the APEC Summit — the guns, the water cannon, the police; the appallingly infantile ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet’ threats from Ministers of the Crown; the authorisation of the pro-American group ‘Aussies 4 ANZUS Alliance’ to hold rallies during APEC, while others are excluded — you can’t help but see parallels between our country and the nation depicted in V for Vendetta.

The Turtle Principle

The Turtle Principle comes from the Tortoise and the Hare. It states that expert leaders are interested in the benefits of the long-range approach and behave accordingly.

The Personal Leadership Insight Definition of Vision is: “To passionately pursue valuable opportunities.”

• Clearly identify a personal definition of success. Know what makes you happy, content, challenged and strong. Just as important, identify the characteristics and traits you connect with failure. Knowing what to avoid is just as critical as knowing what to include in your life.
• When you are setting goals for the future, cross reference them with your success definition. Make certain they are moving you closer to what is important to you. You can’t be too formulaic with goals because of the uncertainty of life. However, leaders always have more things to do than they have time to do it. Leverage this scarcity and invest in highly fruitful activities.
• Become an expert at something by investing a large portion of time in a small range of activities. This prioritization is critical if your vision is to have relevance and meaning. That is why it is called “vision” and not “visions.”
• Talk with other people in a long-term context. When you invest in conversations about tomorrow, you invest in tomorrow. Having a vision of where you are heading and where you see your organization heading is important, but that doesn’t make it real to others. Your language needs to reflect the power you feel for your vision. Only then will it inspire others to jump on board.
• Use positive, optimistic language. It is amazing how many “visionaries” are simply great at talking up the future. This is not a rose-colored glasses approach. You must consider the up and down sides of your vision. However, expert leaders understand the power of their language and how it directs the opinions and behavior of others.
• Get as clear a picture of your future as you can. Talk with others, listen to people who have been there, and visualize as many aspects as possible. As your vision gets clearer, your passion grows stronger. This visualization also helps you to make it through the extreme challenges you will face while making your vision come alive. I am a huge believer in faith. But I also understand that seeing is believing— even if it’s just in your mind.
• Leaders with great vision don’t let short-term failures or set-backs break their spirit. You can’t just talk about the future; you have to believe it will come to fruition, no matter what happens today. There are thousands of leaders who have a vision for the future. Expert leaders fight the fights worth fighting and make it through the tough times.

Obedience as worship..

More from the Paul Minear readings of a couple of blog postings ago

"When one looks at the Gospel records themselves it is clear that “…Jesus did not ask for homage but obedience. He always had much more to lose from his friends than from his enemies. Admiration has always blunted his sword. It serves to dull the original outrage of his mission. Veneration assumes that we know what kind of man he really was and that we approve of his demands. It blinds us to their radicalism and inoculates us against being wounded by them. In fact, our well-speaking makes him vulnerable to his own curse: ‘Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is what their fathers did to the false prophets.’” (Paul Minear, Commands of Christ: Authority and Implications.) I think what he is pointing to here is true. Nowhere does Jesus call us to worship him in the Gospels…what is clear is that he does demand obedience. Obedience is the worship we should render him. And when we merely approve of him, as Minear suggests, the can easily domesticate his demands, making them into sayings and aphorisms."

Juggling Finale

HeQiarts - supper at Emmaus

We try to escape God by ...

Alan Hirsch using Paul Minear's "Eyes of Faith" says in his blog
"According to Minear, we try escape God by….

1. Idolatry
Making our own gods according to our own image and likeness. One of the basic urges of idolatry is man’s desire to initiate his own relationship to God and thereby control God. “Man worships idols precisely because of his ability to see them, to know them, to have power over them. But he can never observe God in the same way in which he can reflect on the beauty and power of his idol.” In becoming idolaters, we try diminish the power and presence of God in our lives, minimize his impact on us. It’s an ancient dodge.

2. Vacating the arena
Attempting to leave the arena of engagement and become a spectator, thereby trying to reverse the roles God becomes the actor and we become the critical observer. We try to become “investigators of God’s claims.” But this attempt to escape is futile because God cannot (and will not) simply be observed by us. He can only be truly known by existential involvement. Key knowledge is denied to the detached observer in precisely those questions that are the most decisive in determining his destiny. Besides, a person cannot forgive themselves of their own sins, or even keep death away. God cannot be dodged by these means. “Existential concern expels speculative detachment.”

3. Simply trying to hide
But in reality there is nowhere to hide. When God invade our lives he forces us out of our corners and into the arena. And besides we cannot hide from God anyway, for as the Psalmist writes, “Where can I flee from your presence?” (Ps.139:7). We carry the issues deep within us. No human can fully evade the issue of God.

4. Through religiosity
We try to escape God by attempting to “...preserve mementoes of God’s former visits in ritual and law, to idolize these, to substitute legal observance and cultic sacrifice for ‘knowledge of God…The religious person is also inclined to speak of God in the third person, albeit with apparent reverence, and thus to remove himself from the magnetic field of divine compulsions. Man can forget God in the very act of speaking of him.” Religion is one of the biggest cop-outs known to the human. It objectifies God and thus seeks to control him.

5. Building compartments and allowing only a partial rule by God
The dodger in this way consents to God’s authority in the area where that seems desirable, but at the same time tries to maintain his autonomy in other areas. “But God does not respect these man-made fences. Man’s total existence is known by him. When he speaks, he claims total sovereignty.”

6. Creating false dualisms
Trying to erect walls between the sacred and the secular and confining God to the sacred realm. But there is no such concept of ‘religion’ in the Scriptures “…for there is no experience which as such can be defined as religious, and no experience which lies outside of the divine radius. [But] God does not call man to endorse a religion, but to view all life religiously, i.e., in its relation to God.”

7. Trying to draw a line between flesh and spirit, between physical and spiritual reality
But the biblical God is the Creator of both body and spirit. In every personal encounter he forces us to participate as a unit. He does not draw the false line between flesh and spirit and deal with one in isolation. We are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices.

8. Trying to draw false distinctions between private and public life
We try to distinguish between events of significance to the individual and those having social impact. But in a real way, “…every event is social because it takes place within the web of personal relations and involves, in however small a compass, issues of ultimate concern.”

In tacking these attempts to hide, the biblical writers “…fight against any false separation of sacred from the secular, against any reduction in the territory under divine rule.” And as disciples, we are called, not to escape from God, but to fully engage him, to actually become like him. We are the people of the way of Jesus, and as Stussen and Gushee point out, when this way “…is thinned down, marginalized or avoided, then churches and Christians lose their antibodies against infection by secular ideologies that manipulate Christians into serving some other lord. We fear precisely that kind of idolatry now.”"