Posts Tagged ‘randy hasper’

the ask

Posted: December 18, 2012 in leadership
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2011_0617Nicaragua0509“Would you be willing to help?” I asked her as we stood in the door together, framed in old oak.

Maria is Peruvian, from New York,  living here in California, away from home,  trying to make a go of it with her daughter and husband in a small apartment. San Diego, California is a foreign place to her, as it is to so many of its residents.

“Yes, I will, ” she said.

“You can think about it,” I hedged.

“No, I’ll do it,” Maria responded quickly.

“Great,” I said, “then will you go downstairs before you leave today and tell  Jeanie that you’ll be on her team?”  Maria left me, smiling, to tell her new team leader.

It was good, how she was so quickly willing, and it was good, because we needed her. We needed her to help us give more food away, because in our church, we are aiming for an outrageous generosity, and that takes a group. I gave her a hug. Love felt present.

I looked at her smiling face, more visible to me than only moments before, when she had been just another face among the 160 people in the room, one of many, sitting and watching. But now, standing in the doorway, there she was mattering. She was suddenly more included, and she was just perhaps,  becoming more Californian. Asking her to help — it seemed to make a bit of home for her here.

The ask, the response — it’s needed, by all of us, because we are too much alone, and because there is a huge amount to do when we set out to be generous, and because generosity is best done by a team. Every good NGO and every effective nonprofit knows that.

It has come to me of late, that asking is an art, unpracticed by many, and responding  is an art too, also largely neglected in its various subtly shaded nuances.

The art is in knowing who to ask for what, when and how.

It’s interesting, however, that asking and responding doesn’t always go well.

The very same day that Maria became a member of our food team, a homeless friend of mine came to the church and asked me for food.

I said to him, “I can’t help you right now; I’m meeting with someone.”  He took that well and went back to his car.

But then I saw that I had some home-baked cookies on my desk. At that moment, suddenly I felt like a bon vivant, expose for surfiet. I ran out to him, before he could drive away, and gave him the cookies. On his car seat was a powerbar, partially eaten. He look horrible. I felt badly for him. He was so broken, so irresponsible, so alone, so done.

I had told him only two days before, to come at noon for food that day, and that at that time he would get a really good bag of food from us, but he didn’t. Instead, he came on his own timetable, later, even though he has nothing to do, and it didn’t fit our schedule at all, and the best food was all already given away. It was also the case  that he has often ignored the opportunities to get food when we give it out, and then come late, asking just after we have finished our day’s effort.

So I said, “no,” and I felt okay about it.

Some people are in the habit of asking, too much,  at inappropriate times, for things they should be providing for themselves. My friend is one of those people.

It’s an art, asking, and an art too,  knowing when to say “no.”

I like asking people for things, and I like saying “no” when that’s the best response — for them. More asking is needed, to get more important things done, and more saying “no” is needed, to people who should be doing more for themselves.

Considering the issues our world faces, there is too much asking that is quite simply selfish, and there is not enough asking that is deeply rooted and nourished in love.

Our broken planet and our scattered people need massive amounts of help, but too many us are not taking the responsibility to do something or to ask others to. Why? So many reasons.  We ourselves are selfish, and we tend to our own affairs rather than others. And when we do serve others, some of us really prefer to work alone, or we say we do because it is “easier.”  It is not. There are other excuses.  We say, “people are busy,” and that “We don’t want to burden them,”  and they are, but it is often doing a bunch of things less important than helping others.  And, we are afraid to ask people to help, because we are afraid of being told, “No, I can’t,” with perhaps the implication, “You are making things so awkward by asking.”

None of that is really it.

The real hold back is that we don’t have enough love in us. It is not selfishness that holds us back, as we might first expect, or fear, or awkwardness.  It is love, a missing love that holds us back, because if we store up enough love inside of us, that love will totally suffocate and annihilate selfishness and fear.

The world clearly lacks love’s driving passion, love’s “ask,”  love’s intrinsic leadership, love’s deep desire to make a place for people to belong and to have what they need. There are so many things that need to be done, like feeding people who don’t have enough to eat, but so often, most of us don’t really believe in the importance of such things. We can tell because we are doing nothing to help, or to ask others to help.

We ignore the things that most need doing, things like valuing children, like healing our earth,  like protecting people from violence,  like being there for the victims of sexual abuse,  like making sure kids grow up with a chance to learn, like mentoring a young person,  like helping someone who is marginalized find a new place to belong.

Something is missing in us, a passion to help is missing, and the courage to ask for help is missing, but gladly, it is something that we can change. We can make the choice to make important things matter. We can say “no” to lesser things. We can choose to love. Love is a choice that acted on, brings passion along with it, and it has a natural momentum that pulls others in,  and it is a choice we can make at any moment and in every moment of life. It is a choice to see, and to act, and to value others, to help them to stand out, from the room.

We can stand in a door, and we can see a person in front of us, really see them, see who they really are, and we can do something needed for us and for them.

Love, it’s good. Love see’s who’s there. Love is strong and powerful and much needed to fix what can be and  needs to be fixed.

Love, we need it more — it makes the ask.

opportunity

Posted: December 10, 2012 in beginnings
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DSC00814“What class would you like to teach?” she asked me at the end of the interview. I hadn’t expected that.

I had only walked into the English Department office at this California community college a few days before, and now I was being given a chance to choose the class I wanted. I left the campus excited, surprised, thrilled!

Opportunity knocks; perspicuity answers. I choose to teach “Critical Thinking About Literature,” because I wanted to think and read stories and teach students to do that with me. I choose well, looking back, because I thrived on teaching this class, and by doing so, I realized a long-standing passion — to teach college students literature.

Sometimes we get to knock out the opportunity-that-knocks.

How does that happen? We usually have to belly up to the fact that life’s opportunities don’t come knocking that much, particularly early on, when we are new to the game, young, or a novice, so we have to go knocking.

A few years earlier, on a trip to Brazil with some students from my church, I got to talking to a pastor I worked with about how important children are to a church. I enthused, I gushed, I fired him up, and myself too, and I made a decision right there to write a piece on how to creatively ramp up the positive attention given to children in churches. When I got home, I wrote the article, and then I sent it out to the best magazine in the field. They bought it, to my surprise, and I realized another dream I had been sheltering for years — to be a published writer.

It’s tough when we are young to figure out how to do what we ache inside to do but aren’t sure we can but want to try anyway even when we haven’t tried yet. What to do, what to try, are we good enough? Will it be a mistake, can we live with failure, do we  really want to do it? Does it sound to good to ever be true, are we worth it, can we cut it?  The questions mount, and sometimes come to loom high, like formidable Annapurnas jutting into skies of impossibility.

We should knock anyway. It is worth moving, in a particular direction, when we think we can. By an approach march, we test what is possible. Every journey has its uncertainties, its headwind, its steep pitches, but we don’t know if we can push past these until we try. Trying is not overrated. By trying, even by failing, we learn what we can do and what we can’t, at least at that particular time.

I’ve applied for teaching jobs I didn’t get. I’ve written articles that were rejected by editors. I have sometimes even felt that in these very special areas of personal giftedness, I couldn’t cut it. And I’ve come to see that this is normal. In every area we attempt to succeed in, at some point we will feel inadequate, temporarily frustrated, even done.  And yet,  despite some set backs and disappointments, my chosen careers — teaching and writing — have been my sweet spots, my personal playgrounds, my lovely battlefields, my sacred spaces for thriving and succeeding and making a difference.

I play the guitar; I’ve done so for years. I’ve written songs; I’ve led worship, but the guitar has never been a sweet spot for me.  I have never been paid for my modest guitar skills, I don’t have a good singing voice, and I have never had a song published. I’ve had fun with the guitar, and enjoyed playing on my own, but through experience, I’ve learned my musical limits, and I’ve come to see song as a sidebar for me,  a fun diversion, not the main thing, an appetizer, not an entrée, and this realization has been good for me. It has kept me from wasting too much time with a pick,  and set me to spending more time with a pen, and yet my awareness of the  place of music in my life has still allowed me a fair of amount of pleasure banging out some minor, partial, and power chords at home.

Opportunity — I’m still knocking. These days I’m thinking about what is next, creatively, and I’m looking inside the developing me within the very me of the quintessential me. What can I still do? Where should I yet knock?

The best place to find this answer lies inside of each of us. Other friends and family and counselors can help, but it is crucial that we come to own our own passions. We must, to be genuine, to be authentic, to keep moving toward an inward sense of success,  honor our own unique skills, treasure and safeguard our talents, and resource the opportunities we secretly burn for.

We all will do best when we begin to move towards what we want to do that no one has to tell us to want to do. We must trek toward the thing that gives us pleasure while at the same time that scares us like crazy.  We must go ask for what is reasonably possible and yet is so beyond what we have ever done before that we  fear  that we will not have the energy, intelligence, skill or opportunity to do it.

Our passions, I’m for taking a swing at them.

We just might knock out the next opportunity we knock on.

more

Posted: December 3, 2012 in love
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Randy HasperI didn’t see Carlos hit the old man, but he did, hard, right up side of the head, with his fist, and the old man bled just above his right eye.

When I went over to check things out, Carlos was looking dour. I could see that the world had gone down hard for him. Larry, who knows Carlos, told me that Carlos is homeless, living in his car and scrounging for every bite.

Carlos denied hitting anyone.  Then my friend John spoke up and said, “I saw you hit him,” and pointed to the old man.  But Carlos wasn’t to be pinned down, and seeing that his lie didn’t work, he said to all of us menacingly, “What I do in my family is none of your business!”

Tiffany, standing on the sidelines, spoke up, “I know about abuse, and it isn’t okay.”

I took my cue her. “We’re not okay with abuse and with violence at the church,” I said. I wasn’t sure what Carlos would do next, but whatever the outcome, I was acutely aware that the whole thing was brutal and sad, for the whole lot of us, standing there.

Then I told Carlos, “I don’t mean to disrespect you, but you need to leave,” and he did. I then turned to the old guy who got hit. “It’s nothing he said.”

“No, it’s not nothing,” I said. “It was wrong for him to hit you like that? Why did he do it?”

“He’s just like that,” he said.

I went and got some medical supplies and I wiped the guy’s cut, and I  put a bandage on him. It was only then that I noticed that he was shaking. He had played in cool, out of fear, at first, but now that the threat was gone I could see how horribly upset he was. He too was homeless. He told me that he was afraid that now Carlos would come get him. I suggested he move his camp. Then we fed him dinner, in the basement of the church, along with the hundreds of others who came for the meal.

Three times the guy who was hit came back to me before he left, and he thanked me for caring for him for standing up for him.

Then I got a plate of hot mashed potatoes and gravy and sat down with some older Hispanic ladies who lived near by in the Congregational Towers. They were super cute, and friendly with my daughter, who tried out some of her Spanish on them.

The food was exquisite, and the company too, except for Carlos, but he just needed a boundary drawn, and maybe he needed that more than a meal.

A grandma told me that recently when her granddaughter was at her house, and the little girl was jumping on the couch. she told her, “Please don’t do that.”

The granddaughter said, “No.”

So grandma said back to her, “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.” That settled that. Another boundary drawn, and so we civilize the world, protect our couches and our heads.

A little while later, the granddaughter asked for something and the grandma said, “No.”

The little one, two or three looked at her grandma, thought a moment, and said, “I not asking you; I telling you.” Grandma told me that she really had to try hard then, to keep from laughing.

We all need more, more boundaries, and more love too. Maybe no one told Carlos “No” enough when he was little. Maybe they told him too much.

On Sunday, Angelina came up to me. She put out her arms and gave me a hug.  She’s five.  Pretty soon she was back for another hug. I picked her up and gave her a big squeeze. I love Angelina. She looks like a little fire plug. Last year I sponsored her for Christmas and bought her a polka-dotted dress and a sketch a doodle. We’re good together.  She came back for a final hug before the morning was over.

Alex also came up to see me after church.  Alex is in his twenties. He has a learning disability.  “I’m getting baptized,” he told me proudly. Alex  has found a place, and some people, in our church, to make a little bit of a family out of, and be loved.

At the end of the morning Elizabeth came by. She too wanted a hug, and took three. Elizabeth is about fifty and learning how to make it on her own for the first time in life. She handed me a letter. “I just need to tell you how I’ m feeling she said, “I’m doing much better.”

We need more, more protection, more acceptance, more of a sense of belonging, more affirmation, someone to hug us, someone to read our letters, more love.

I wonder how Carlos is doing today?  What does he need? What put all that hate in him? What could take it out?  Not punishment. Not prison. Not rejection? Not religion.

I think that he just might need what we all need, more love.

heaven

Posted: November 28, 2012 in nature, spirituality
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It’s my humble observation that heaven overlapps earth.

The other day, I put my head up against my wife’s head, my check touched her cheek, the skin of her face presed up flat against mine and the porous boundaries of our individuated existances merged. We hugged with hugs that only thirty-three years of marriage can hug. We Venn diagramed.

Venn diagrams, and the nature of earth and occassionally a fleeting idea or two about heavenly possibilities, have long interested me. In Venn’s, circles represent sets. The interior of one circle represents the elements of a set, while the exterior represents elements not members of the set. If two circles, representing different sets are overlapped, then the area of overlap represents members of one set that are also members of the other. For example, one circle may represent creatures which walk on two legs, the other creatures that fly. Creatures in the area of overlapp both walk on two legs and fly, for instance, ducks.

The concept underlying Venn diagrams is commonality. One thing which is different from another thing may yet have something in common with it and even crossover into it. I like it; I  have always liked it, two things sharing common space, cheecks for instance, and I don’t much care for “this-is-nothing-like-that!” and the “us-and-not-them” perspective and other various separating distinctions, selfish individuations and nasty polarization. Legs go nicely with wings. I have legs; I wish I had wings. Antithesis and this-has-nothing-to-do-with-that is not that much fun.

Take heaven. What a weird and absolutely bizzare concept. Heaven is the idea that there is a place which we go after we die, and that it is better than this earth, and it is better than Mars and the time-space continum that we, Mars and Earth inhabit! Really? How would anyone know that?

It makes me nervous when people talk about heaven.  I find myself particularly nervous when people talk about who is not going to be there. The “in heaven” versus the “not in heaven” — how would anyone know that?

It is my rumination that the set of things that make up heaven somehow overlapps with the set of what make up earth and that earth and heaven have things in common, and that no one on earth has any accurate idea of what barriers or for that matter, doorways, exist between earth and heaven.

When Jesus was born, the scripture says that “Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared …  praising God and saying,“Glory to God in the highest heaven,  and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

That’s an interesting report, from a Venn perspective. According to scripture, the set of things that make up heaven include God and angels, the set of things that make up earth include God’s favor. But elsewhere in scripture, Paul, a fairly repectable authority on the spiritual-space continum, says that in God, “we live and move and have our being.” So, if this is true, then earth’s set includes God too, and if we trust Dr. Luke, angels too, seeing they showed up for the shepherds.  So then if  we look at the teachings on heaven in the Bible, we might conclude that the set of things that are in heaven share with the set of things that are on earth,  things like God, angels who talk, and other attendant and following vague-itudes like “peace” and “favor.”

It’s overlap; heaven overlaps earth. Heaven isn’t some kind of alien place. Heaven shares underpinnings with earth. If we do go there, after we die, it will feel familiar. When we put our faces up against it, it will put a warm face up against ours. When we hug heaven,  heaven will hug back.

It is my observation that some people think heaven will be long church!  I think it won’t! Thank God!

C. S. Lewis posited that heaven is found in our longings for a place that is suggested by the beauty and wonder of earth. We see a beautiful mountain. We long to climb to the top. That longing — its’ a longing for heaven, stirred by the beauty of earth. Earth’s mountains have something common with heaven’s mountains and one suggests and creates hunger for the other.

Speculation? Perhaps, but the hints at what-will-be after-what-is-present-now  indicate commonality. Perhaps, earth  does mirror and even contain pieces of heaven, the angels, the peace, God himself. The best of what we taste here? It’s realized and finalized and perfected there. Coal here, diamonds there. Legs here, legs and wings here and there.

Heaven?

I think we might be experiencing a bit of it now.

Think Venn diagrams.

my appreciatives

Posted: November 20, 2012 in gratitude, thriving
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Lately I’ve taken special note of  my appreciatives, my approbatories, my applaudables, and also those small salvific islands of gratitude lurking along the waterways of my supra-conciousness.

I make a grocery list of them. 1. I like being male.  2.I like being married. 3. I like being comedic.

These idiosynratic commendatories are my cognitive Jacanas, the colorful water birds living on my cerebral Lake Nicaragua, and I watch for them as I round the corners of my mental islands,  putting along in my smoking, psychic motor boat, and I flush them out when I can — my favorables. I exult when they run on the tops of the lily pads on my everyday perspectives.

Dr. Christine Carter, excecutive director at the Greater Good Science Center at University of California Berkeley says her research shows that the more we practice gratitude the happier we will actually be. She suggests keeping a gratitude journal.

I respect Dr. Christine, and I appoint her my mentor, and in my mind, I mind her counsel and keep a mental journal of my gratefulness. I prop it up on the back shelf of  my short-term memory and work it over. I  listify my thankfuls, lining them up, one, two and three.  1. I am thankful for my black  glossy cats with their ulta-soft, outrageously fluffy furification. 2. I am thankful for my wife, particularly her drop-dead gorgeous cerebral cortex and the droll and wry desultory three-storied thoughts housed therein 3.  And I like my hazelnut coffee with milk every 6 am.

I love these and all of my other precious gratitudes. They are my safety nets, hanging above the lower levels of my extreme dissatisfactions.  They are my psychological floaties; they keep me from drowning in my own deep waters;  they are my sport’s brain seat belts, clamping me in my as I accelerate hard out of all my life’s sharp corners.

I  trot them out often, my idosyncratic applaudables.  1. I like my house, the big windows and the odd angles of the high ceilings. 2. I like my two daughters, particularly the way the call me “daddy” and sit close to watch TV or just talk  3.  I adore my job, the taylor-made, custom-designed, hyper-precise fit of it. 4. I love God and the way he loves me back and  how he is so outrageously gentle, patient and gracious with me. 5. I like my pain, and how it eloquently informs me about being human.

By laying out my admirables like this, I anchor what I are grateful for in my brain. These positives, these pluses, these commemoratives — they moor me. When I don’t like something about my job, I  coounter that with something I do like about my job. My thankfuls act like my very own team of counter-insurrgents against negativity. I don’t like my work stress, but I do love my work challenges, and so I embrace them, and I go on this way, cloaked with strength.

What will happen tomorrow? I think that more good will happen tomorrow, and if it does not, then I will roof over my losses with a thick thatch of approvables , and this is how I will survive, and shelter my happiness.

I will be thankful.

compliments

Posted: November 11, 2012 in gratitude
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“You did a great job during the rough transitional years of this organization,” I said. “Your relaxed, calming personality helped settle other people down.”

The ten other people at the board room table nodded in affirmation. It was good, praising him, for what he had done,  especially considering the fact that he would be leaving our leadership team at the end of the year. Affirmations and goodbyes, like peanut butter and jelly, go well together.  He smiled. He looked pleased. I  was glad I said it. Every authentic compliment is a facelift. The art of giving and receiving compliments — it’s a fundamental and powerful social skill. The well-phrased compliment, like the water lily, graces the whole pond.

“I love you,” I told my wife this morning, “I love your brain.” I’ve told her this before. “You are such a good thinker,” I continued. “It is an honor to live with someone as  insightful as you. You  get it right so much of the time.” I said this because she had just gotten it right, in our discussion of one of our daughters, and I said it because it was true, and because I’ve learned to always compliment the people who feed me —  better food!

Compliments are good, fun, needed, but they can also be complicated.

Someone complimented a talk I gave recently. I think they meant to say, “I want you to like me.” I do like them, but they may not know it. Perhaps I need to tell them more.

Ingratiation is a term coined by social psychologist Edward E. Jones, and it refers to a social behavior in which one person attempts to become more likeable to someone else. Ingratiation is accomplished by complimenting the targeted person, by adopting their values and mannerisms or by promoting oneself to gain the favor of the targeted one. We have probably all complimented someone to their face, or we have complimented ourselves in someone’s presences, in order to win their approval. It’s normal, but that kind of praise is partly a lie, just dressed up in a suit and tie.

To avoid the dangers of phoniness, we might ask before we affirm, “Why do I want to compliment this person?  Is there a real accomplishment to acknowledge, or am I just trying to ingratiated myself to them?”

Winning each others’ favor is good, but the means of doing that involve getting to know each other authentically, over the long haul, not candy coating our relationships with manipulative praises. Those  people who we grow to like gradually — those whose delicious personalities we come to savor like slow-cooked soup  —  they become our true friends.

All this to say,  it is wise to run our words through a meshed sieve of honesty before we release them. If we don’t, a weirdness may enter some of our relationships, and this may bite us, over time.

The smoothest, most ingratiating person I ever knew turned out to be the most dangerous to me. Resentments were cloaked in social niceties. But I  learned, we all do,  from the way it’s not supposed to go. And as we go through the process of learning how to put our affirmations in proper form, we will do well to avoid becoming cynical. The good resident in the authentic praise of others is not sullied by the occasional experiences of social cloaks that hide verbal daggers.

Most compliments are good! Deserved compliments are wonderful; authentic compliments are life-giving. Valid compliments are the entrée of the soul. An affirmed person —  who can hold them back! I know that for myself, I write, in part, because of the praise I have received for it.

Applaud, appreciate, praise, endorse and commend  — more! Please, I beg you, tell the people who have done well that they have done well.

I heard somebody tell a friend who was going through a mess, ” I believe in you. You’re the real deal!” The person who was complimented had made a serious mistake, but that affirmation helped carry them on through it. They made the wrong, right and moved on. They were the real deal. The compliment was solid and true.

It is needed that we compliment our friends and family and coworkers. It is likely that their mothers or fathers failed to tell them that they were good enough, and we must make up for that, so that these loved ones can relax a bit, and calm down, and not go socially wacky,  and so that they can stop over-achieving, and in just the right time become all that they can be and more.

personality

Posted: November 5, 2012 in becoming, people
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“Don’t do anything for your kids,” he said with a mischievous look in his eyes, “and then they won’t expect anything from you.”

Pat laughed, as he did after so many things he said, then I laughed too. His personality filled the space between us, like an air bag, as it did often, and not just with me. He was easy to be with, and safe. He often quipped about his profession, the noble art of house painting, by saying, “Women like a man in uniform.”

Personality can be hard to define, but when you are up close to a unique one, you know it. With Pat there was this casual, relaxed honesty that included a keen wit, a self-effacing humor and a willingness to let the “somebody slot” be filled by somebody besides him. The “somebody slot” is that opening which occurs when people talk,  an opening for one of the parties to be important. Pat gave other people room to be the star around him — he even invited it. This invitation, this ease, this opportunity —  it rubbed off on you, like fresh paint, a kind of fluid sociality, with no rules.

I told Pat once, “I’m my worst self around you.” We laughed. It was a compliment.

Everybody has one, a personality,  but not everyone lets it out to play. It would be nice if they did, and not just the extroverts. Personality is fun to experience, in ourselves and others. Shy is good, when we to see it peek out, a subtle, beautiful demeanor, lovely in the same way as deer.  And loud is good too. Loud is like a sunflower shouting its bright yellow.  And there are so many fun personalities! I  love gentle, sincere, kind selves.  I especially like droll, sarcastic or wry personalities.

I also like sass, sometimes. “If you don’t like me, there is something wrong with you,” one of my young friends quipped to me recently. I like her.

What is personality? Personality is the tuxedo of the soul.

Personality is our inner self showing up in our outer clothing. Personality dresses itself in gestures, postures, animations, idiosyncrasies and vocalizations. My cat, Shanaynay, has more personality that most three people combined. She yowls, huffs, purrs, begs, greets and deftly inserts herself into any possible opportunity given to play, eat, snuggle or snooze with anyone!

Personality is the expression of the unique self that arrises out of the distinctive core — like magna oozing from the earth. When we encounter it in others, it leaves us with a whiff of them, their cachet, their mark, their social signature. This is deep; it is spiritual; it is residue of the image of God in us.

When I left one of my older friends recently I could still smell her social perfume in the air after she was gone. It was the  fragrance “graciousness,” with sweet, woody notes of gentleness and non-judgment.

But in any one person, we must be careful not to constrain or warp their personality by labels and categories. Personality is a complex kind of thing, made up out of traits and states that swirl together and separate again like the Northern lights. Traits in us persist, but states (as in “I’m in such a state”) come and go. This morning, for a moment, I was grouchy. It left me shortly. The moment of grouch is normal for all of us, and so is the moment of temporary insanity, but these moments do not and should not define us.

But say they do, the dark moods, begin to define us. It’s possible. Something caustic, cynical, critical, mean and dark may overtake us. Then we should get help, and change, as a form of mercy, for the rest of the living, or if we cannot, we should at least remain at home — and not post on Facebook.

Personality can change, heal as it were. Mine has. Thirty years ago, “cautiously reserved” might have fit me. Now, at times, ” wild and crazy” might be much more suitable.  The wall flower may one day climb the wall. I have a friend who is basically shy, but she is getting good at speech making. Out of her shy person she is learning to bring a new, public persona of confidence.

But whether it morphs or not, personality, in all its diverse forms, is something to savor, like a good wine, in ourselves and others. It is also something to learn to give, as a gift, to ourselves and others.

If I could do anything for the many fearful people whom I know, it would be to set them free to be all that God originally designed them to be — unique personalities. Their personalities might yet be the secret sauces of their success.

wise by eyes; fools by rules

Posted: October 30, 2012 in rules
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When the heat from lava began to melt the bottoms of our shoes, we knew it was time to head for cooler ground. We were hiking the Kilauea volcano on the big island of Hawaii, and the black lava field we were making our way through at dusk was filled with little rivulets of lava, break outs and pop ups.

I looked around for a park ranger —  none — and thought, “Should they even allow us to walk out here?” You’d expect a rule, a national park rule, to protect us from the fire, a verbal fence, maybe even a real one, to keep us from being stupid. There was none.

I was suprised. I live in a world full of rules and  make up a few myself now and then.

“Take my arm,” I said, and guided her hand to grip my bicep like a hand rail. Then my daughter and I stepped out into the street. I often do this with her often, because she is disabled and unsteady, and also unobservant. Brain damage. When you are brain-damaged, rules help. They take the place of thinking. They protect.

“The deposits go in this tray,” I said, “the bills in this tray, and the treasurer’s paperwork goes here.” I was explaining to one of the office staff  our new system of organizing financial paperwork. Rules, scripted behavior, categories — they work to keep from things getting lost, to keep order, to prevent bad accounting. Rules organize us. Rules are the magic wand whereby we zap chaos into order. But they can do more than that.

“I’ll do the dishes,” I said, “since you cooked.” Usually I don’t even have to say it. It’s a tacit rule, often unspoken but fully operational in my family, “The cook shall not do the dishes.” Rules, about who does the dishes  — they tend to make for good relationships; they may even make things fair — when followed. They other night my wife cooked and did the dishes.  I thanked her as I headed out the door, on the run. She said that she wanted to do the all this. I let her, want to, and do it —  I let her break the rule.

There are lots of good reasons to have rules, for protection, for order, for good relationships, but there are also some fine reasons not to live by them.

One reason involves the distinctly idiosyncratic nature of people and life.

When the mom didn’t want to move her preschooler to the kindergarten class because she believed that her little one was not socially ready to move up, then we, as leaders of the organization, gave the mother and child respect, and relief from the “promotion” rule in play. The little one stayed where she felt safe. That’s good. Organizations with no flexibility, without a brain, without the eyes to see that it is best to do something different in a particular case, become oppressive and harmful to unique personalities.

Wise by eyes; fools by rules.

Sometimes I think that we have ruined the world with bad rules, rules about what women can and cannot do, rules about what men can and cannot do, rules about what is spiritual and what is not,  rules about what certain racial groups can and cannot do, rules about who can live where and who can do what, how, and when and with whom and for how long!

The development of civilization is the multiplication of rules. Many of those rules began with what was thought to be protection, but in time became brutal oppression, for instance, the tacit, long-standing rule that women must present themselves as both attractive and submissive to men, whatever the personal cost to themselves and their children.

It’s estimated that something like 40,000 new laws went into effect in the United States in 2012, for example, the 100 watt incandescent light bulb can no longer be manufactured. I suppose that’s good, to save energy, but at the heart of the issues is the need to promote and preserve good thinking. If I can see for myself that the fluorescent bulb is cheaper and longer lasting than the incandescent bulb, I will choose to replace mine under my own volition and energy. Consumer choice ultimately rules the markets. Consider the black market that always exists for what people really want.

Often common sense and love will do just a nicely as a pack of rules, usually better. The problem with rules is that they don’t much motivate people. The value in thinking is that once you decide, with your own observation and good thinking, that a course of action is good, then you will be motivated to carry that thinking out. Rules require, but visions inspire.

When Jesus himself spoke about the many laws of the Jews, he reduced them all to two, really to one — love. Love God, love your neighbor. Love, he said, was the fulfillment of all the law and the prophets.

For Jesus, love decimated all rules but itself. The religious people didn’t like that. Neither did the government. They still don’t. Governments and religions love rules. They use rules to control people. They use rules to maintain power. They use rules to opperess. But love doesn’t control others;  it certainly doesn’t oppress. it sets people free.

I have a fondness for a few rules, especially the ones I make up, like don’t eat all the ice cream before I get a bowl. And I certainly like it when people stop at red lights and obey speed limits. It keeps me safer.  I live by a lot of rules, as we all do,  but many of the rules of the organizations that organize our lives increasingly seem to me to be hot beds of irresponsibility. People let rules do their thinking for them. People blindly follow rules that harm other people and ruin everyone’s opportunities to develop.

Too many rules, too fiercely enforced, can keep people from  learning from their mistakes, from suffering  the consequences of their bad choices, from learning  for themselves and from trying new, good things. We need some rules, but I much prefer that we promote more good observing, some fine analysis, some clear thinking, some exceptions to the rules when that works best, and a bit more taking personal responsibility for life without being forced to do so by rules.

To be really honest, I really don’t so much care for rules and I don’t like policing other people when they break them. I much prefer rule-free relationships, and far above law, I’ll stand with Jesus, and hold high the banner of love.

And I like it too, when I get a chance to gawk freely,  even with some minor risk, at the fiery red and orange glow of the beautiful, dangerous lava. Then I know I’ve lived a little.

rooting for legit

Posted: October 24, 2012 in news
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O how the mighty has fallen — off his bike.

Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his seven Tour de France cycling titles and banned for life from sanctioned Olympic events.  Nike, Trek, Anheuser-Busch, Oakley and several other sponsors have dropped him. Furthermore, Lance has stepped down as the chairman of Livestrong, the cancer-awareness charity he founded 15 years ago after surviving testicular cancer.

Why? Armstrong and his teams used steroids, the blood booster EPO and blood transfusions to help them win the Tour de France. They cheated and lied their way to victory.

USADA’s recent report on Armstrong says the now-retired rider was involved in the “most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.”  The evidence from his teammates is that the cyclist not only used banned drugs but bullied others into using them too.

Lance made us proud; now he has made us sad, mad, perhaps more cynical or just numb.

Lance’s losses are big time. He can’t be having fun these days. He had the big rides, he had the adrenaline rush of being the big star, he made cycling history, but the memories and accomplishments are tainted now. They were illegally won. Well, one might muse, he still has the big money that came with the big wins, but even the cash may now be may be at risk. Legal experts say Armstrong may be sued, and that coming clean with a confession could make him even more vulnerable to civil or criminal actions.

So many conclusions can be drawn from this saga and will be over the next few years. Certainly one is this: members of a group sometimes collectively engage in risky, potentially ruinous behavior in order to achieve a desired end. In such groups, a culture develops in which everyone participates in a cover up and a lie. They agree to lie and cheat to win.

How does this happen?

Well, for one thing, group members may buy into that old, trite but highly useful rationalization.  “Everybody is doing it.”

Such group think was most likely a factor for Lance’s riders. The logic was, “We have to dope because all the other contenders are doing it. We have to drug up just to level the playing field, just to have a chance to win.” But at that fork in the road, where one chooses to pedal the shady route or not, that is precisely where each cyclist’s personal responsiblity comes into play.  To fall in with the collective mindset, to decide to push a doped pedal, that was an individual choice for each rider. Why make such a choice? Perhaps it worked like this in their heads:”It’s worth the risk for the chance to win, and with the good doctor’s help, we aren’t likely to get caught.” How did that work out for them? They did win, but they got caught, winning unfairly, and stripped of honors.

It seems clichéd these days to say there was and always is the option in sport to stay clean, to refuse the rationalization, to go for it, fair and square. There was; there is. But, in cycling,  in Lance’s era, clean may have meant  that you simply couldn’t win a race like the Tour de France. It’s sad, but it may have meant that clean, you had to go compete somewhere else, and ride at a lower level. That’s hard, for a “winner’s” mentality, but it’s a good choice for a guilt-free mentality.

Secondly, on Lance’s team, some of the riders seem to have been coerced, intimidated and even threatened to go along with the cheat. You were in or you were out. You doped or you were noped. And worse, there might have been the mindset that if you finked, if you talked and tried to expose the thing, Lance would come after you. There is evidence that Armstrong  used the strong-arm.

Conclusions?

Everybody who doped should own that. They did it. They knew it was illegal.  It’s on them. If they lost their wins, it was their fault. If they lost their reputations, they did it to themselves. If they lose their money — on them too. Lots of loss, but not just individual loss. We lost too, the fans, along with the riders. We lost our heroes, perhaps our trust in winners, perhaps our faith in clean sport, but still they lost more. We didn’t lose one thing they lost: along the way, they lost their integrity. If we are still honest, in what we do, then we haven’t lost that. And for those who have lost integrity, some of it is regained just by coming clean. It doesn’t change the past, but it might change the future. Honesty still makes a good mental insurance policy.

And as for the  team coaches, the team doctors and the lead riders, like Armstrong, who mandated and pushed a doping culture, they operated at another, even more culpable level. It is one thing to cheat; it is another to encourage and or mandate others to cheat. Harm yourself, not good, harm others, worse. Harm others to protect your own lies — that’s a pretty nasty life to live, and live with. To have ruined people to get what you wanted, that changes you, somehow, and not in a good way.

Sports, business, politics, entertainment — this isn’t new, cheating and lying. We’ve seen this before. Cheat, harm, lie, drag others into your scheme, attack, get caught, stonewall. People won’t always live strong; they’ll live wrong. Lance Armstrong did.

I’m not cynical. My conclusions do not include the overreaction, “You can’t trust anyone anymore.”  You can, but this will happen again. And  then again, thankfully — it will not.

Some people won’t cheat, they won’t lie, and they won’t harm others. And some of them will win, out of sheer hard work, practice, skill and fierce determination. And if they don’t win,  they will at least have a clear conscience, and in the end, that has more satisfaction in it than a stripped title.

I’m still rooting. I’m rooting for legit.

discrepancy

Posted: October 21, 2012 in difficulty
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The first time I really took much notice was when she was lying on the sidewalk. We went over and presented her with the standard cliché. She said she was, and we helped her get up, and she hobbled off.

I had my office manager email the city. I had images in my mind of them coming out and pouring a cement square and calling it a day. They didn’t. Instead we got a letter in the mail saying that it was our responsibility to fix the problem.

“What?” I said on the phone to the city official, “We own the sidewalk?”

What it really came down to was the tree. Our tree cracked the sidewalk so it was our responsibility to get it fixed. There often seems to be a discrepancy in life, between what we want and what we get.

Actually, the whole thing started about forty years ago because of the sun. Someone decided to solve the problem of the sun shining too much in the west-facing windows of the church. In a moment of brilliance they took a little potted tree, dug a hole about ten feet from the side-walk, right in front of the windows, and put it in the ground. It was a good solution, it worked well for quite some time, but the problem solvers didn’t imagine the end result — another problem. It’s often like that with people who plant trees — they lack the prophetic gift.

When the company we hired came and broke up the sidewalk, all sixty feet off it, they uncovered root work —  forty years of it. Huge python-like roots were exposed, some six inches in diameter, lurking along a sixty foot span of walk, uplifting the cement from two to three inches, creating a trip hazard, eventually upending an older woman.

The fix cost the church close to $7,000 — the removal of the 35 foot tree, the removal of sixty feet of walk, the pouring of the new sidewalk and curb, the purchase of new landscape — non-root invasive.

There is often a discrepancy between what we want and what we get. We want someone to fix a problem; we are required to fix the problem. We want shade, we get a bill for $7,000.

I’ve noticed the discrepancy lately. Recently the son of a friend of mine committed suicide. We were stunned, knocked sideways, and run over by this. I went to the memorial service and came back home kicked in the head. This wasn’t what we wanted. We wanted life; we got a brutal death. A mom planted a tree. The roots broke the sidewalk. There is no fix.

There is a discrepancy in life between what we want and what we get. There is an uplift, a break, a gap and we fall on it, or into it and we don’t much care for lying on the concrete.

I don’t quite know what to do, but one thing comes to mind. What we can’t fix we can love. I love my friends left. I love the good that was in the little boy who grew up and then gave up. I love fixing the things I can.

The discrepancy remains, but it doesn’t overwhelm us, because other things remain too, a new sidewalk, a new tree, new friends, good memories, bravery — love.

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