The opposite of love is not hate, its indifference.
– Elie Wiesel
Category: lead vividly (Page 14 of 18)
Death is more universal than life;
everyone dies but not everyone lives– Alan Sachs
Our task today is recklessness.
For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature,
We lack a holy rage.The recklessness that comes from the knowledge of God and humanity.
The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets . .
and when the lie rages across the face of the earth —
a holy anger about things that are wrong in the world.To rage against the ravaging of God's earth,
and the destruction of God's world.
To rage when little children must die of hunger,
when the tables of the rich are sagging with food.
To rage at senseless killing of so many,
and against the madness of the militaries.
To rage at the lie that calls the threat of death and the strategy of destruction — peace.
.
To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change
human history until it conforms with the norms of the kingdom of God.– A peom by Kaj Munk, a Danish pastor killed by the Gestapo in 1944. Cited in Exiles by Michael Frost, and The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne.
One of my earliest childhood memories is chasing my father around the lawn with my toy lawn mower. Not surprisingly this wore off in my teens when I was forced to actually mow the lawns with a crappy old lawn mower that you had to start with an electric drill.
Nowadays I actually like mowing my lawns. (You will notice I said my lawns; I probably wouldn’t enjoy mowing your lawns.)
Mowing my lawns brings some form of escapism and satisfaction. I plug in my MP3 player, zone out and get an uninterrupted hour to myself. The satisfaction comes from completion, the finished product, and it looks good.
Over the weekend I was mowing the lawns and Jayden woke up and decided he would take his plastic lawn mower and “help” me mow the lawns.
He starts by zig zagging all over the place, bouncing around like a rabbit on steroids. At first I think it is cute and it brings a smile to my face. After a while it becomes outright dangerous as he cuts in front of me and instigates lawn mower head on collisions.
My frustration starts to set in. Not because it is genuinely dangerous but because he interrupted my routine, my thoughts, MY time!
I start to get annoyed, and at that precise moment I miss the point of life.
Jayden was having fun, enjoying life while his old man was selfish, grumpy and annoyed. The five minutes extra it took to have fun with my son, was just 5 minutes I would spend on the couch later that day.
I was reminded that I need to be joyful. To delight in everything. In all things. To make my sons day.
Joy, afterall, is something God wants us all to have.
Strangely, the times I have the least joy seem to be the times that I am self-centered and concerned more for my problems and myself. My needs become more important that the needs of my son or my family or my friends … or … people!
In order to live vividly we need to take every opportunity to experience joy.
So … What if I focused less on myself and more on bringing joy to those around me? What would happen to me if I did this? Would I experience more or less joy?
SEXY.
For some reason I really like the provocative nature of this word. Its a funny word because said in the right situation with the right amount of, well, passion; you can actually make grown men flinch.
Noticeably flinch!
The America Heritage Dictionary says that it is slang for HIGHLY appealing or interesting.
For me, sexy is a great way to describe the need to build a brand that is fun, fascinating, fanatical, and edgy.
It encapsulates, and provokes, a dynamic that I would like every organization and industry I work with to have. That is, that they become HIGHLY appealing.
That they become interesting.
That they become sexy.
The problem with sexy is that it is hard to catch if you don’t have it.
You have to c h a s e i t . . .
And sometimes when you get it, it was not what you wanted. Just ask Don Rabbit.
[NB I think this is a post about being appealing, just in case you wondered]
Without each individual drop of water there would be no puddles, no streams, no rivers, no ocean, no life.
You may feel as significant as a drop in the ocean, but without you we are nothing.
Its amazing how things are waiting for you to make the right step and then the other things will just fall into place.
A friend of mine has a new toy. It is a Lama V4 remote controlled Helicopter. He is seriously addicted and now so I am I.
I wish I had known about these before Christmas. I mean if I had a Lema V4 my life I think would be all but complete. Seriously, what more could I want. Really?
It is interesting to me that so many of our wants revolve around “if”.
If I just had …
If only …
If …
I am drawn to these toys, the same way I can be drawn to many other things. It is almost as though I have fondness to whatever the “if” is. As though by not having this thing, I miss out. I am deprived of some great pleasure.
In reality of course by not having a Lama V4 I miss out on little (Or a lot depending on your world view). But I actually have everything I need.
What I am really trying to say is this: “If” can be a dangerous word.
Footnote: I did $65 dollars damage to his Lama the first time I flew it. I could have flown to Tauranga in a real plane for that price.
Disclaimer: Nothing in this post should be read to indicate that I will never buy a RC Helicopter. As I said I am now addicted and that may be the theme for another post.
It was a stunning day. 27 degrees, warm water and a gentle breeze flowing from the shore out to the deep blue Pacific Ocean. The location is Sonaisali Island Resort just 500m off the Fiji mainland.
Sitting on the shoreline the Hobbie Cat was geared up and in the offering. How could I resist? I donned the obligatory life jacket and haul the boat into the gentle swell.
In an instant, a blink if you will, I made the decision to wear my expensive prescription sunglasses on the boat. I mean the wind and sea state was such that there was simply no way I could capsize the boat.
So I push off, sheet in the Main and sail at a lazy almost meaningless pace off down past the resort. It is after all a holiday and even the wind seems to work on Fiji time.
Sometime and distance later round the boat downwind and prepare to jibe. It is at this point that I notice for the first time that the tiller extension has undergone some Fijian style refurbishment that has left it practically impossible to cross the boat with the extension in my grip. I grab the tiller bar and complete the job, the sheet in for a long slow broad reach.
I then lean out of the back of the boat to recover the tiller extension when Slip … Slop … Splash … my glasses fall into the now very murky water. I lurch out to grab them, then make a decision to fully commit to their recovery.
Moments later after diving into the water and trying to swim to the bottom with a lifejacket on. Yip. I quickly become aware that the glasses are lost at sea. I stand up and find the water is chest deep then turn to see the boat is slowly making its way seaward without me. Oh yeah, one of the first things I was taught about sailing. ALWAYS stay with the boat unless it sinks.
Now had the wind been any stronger the sail would have circum and flapped in the breeze. Not today. Just enough wind so I couldn’t dog paddle after it. Just enough wind so I couldn’t swim then stop for a break. I tried both and each time the boat sailed off.
I had to put in some serious swimming to finally catch the boat, round it into wind and pull my water logged body back on board. Heavier and darker!
Thus ended the first morning of my holiday and now here is the strange implication:
Sometimes we make blink decisions (deciding to wear my glasses); that lead to bigger decisions and commitments (going in after my glasses); that lead to a whole heap of extra work (swimming after the boat).
Sometimes our blinks are wrong!
There is a standard rule in communication theory. It goes like this: when predictability is high, impact is low. If I think I know what you are going to say and you go ahead and say it, I am not likely to be very affected by your message. The inverse is also true: when predictability is low, impact is high.
– Michael Frost (Jesus the fool) pg 27