Don’t Be Complicit

Here are a couple of intertwining thoughts from two different books I’ve been reading. In Safe People (by Cloud and Townsend) the authors write: “An important question to ask (when discerning if a person is safe or unsafe) is: what does this person do with my no?”

Saying yes and no (being truthful), and how people respond to that, is a theme that keeps showing up in a number of places.

In The Bottom of the 33rd, Joe Morgan (no not that Joe Morgan) is the manager of the AAA Pawtucket Red Sox. As a AAA (closest minor league level to the major leagues) manager Morgan saw a lot of guys who went on to play in bigs, but he also saw a lot of guys who were good but not quite good enough.

These not quite good enough players would hang around and hang around hoping against hope for their break. At some point they would come to Joe and ask: “What do you think, skip? Am I going to make it?”

And Joe Morgan was honest with them. He told them the truth. Sometimes that was a really hard, even brutal, assignment. But, and here’s our quote of the week:

“Morgan never wanted to be complicit in another man’s delusions. He felt morally required to provide either encouragement or release. To say yes or no.”

He wasn’t a jerk about it. He didn’t take delight in crushing a man’s dreams. But he didn’t lie to them either. This is a hard lesson of leadership, but, as I am learning, it is important to tell the truth.

Quote of the Week (NT Wright on Forgiveness)

From NT Wright’s excellent book, Simply Jesus

“Forgiveness, indeed, is a sort of healing. It removes a burden that can crush and cripple you. It allows you to stand up straight without pretending. It spreads out into whole communities.

Forgiveness and healing! The two go so closely together, personally and socially. Whole societies can be crippled by ancient grudges that turn into feuds and then into forms of civil war. Families can be torn apart by a single incident or one person’s behavior that is never faced and so never forgiven. Equally, societies and families as well as individuals can be reconciled, can find hope and new love, through forgiveness. Jesus was tapping into something extremely deep in human life.”

Quote of the Week…

This is from one of my former professors at Western. Steve Korch was my favorite prof in seminary mostly because of his passion for people. He (re)wrote a book recently, now under the title The Presence, and it’s good. Here’s some great stuff on being able to laugh at life (and yourself):

“There is a kind of laughter that comes from seeing the foibles of life for what they are. It is an emotional release that surges forth when we don’t make every detail of life a serious issue. God says it is good for our soul to laugh (Prov. 17:22).

Chesterton writes: ‘Laughter has something in common with the ancient winds of faith and inspiration; it unfreezes pride and unwinds secrecy; it makes men forget themselves in the presence of something greater than themselves.'”

NT Wright Quote of the Week

I just finished NT Wright’s excellent book on character and virtue: After You Believe. In it he argues winsomely to wrap up the quest for Christian character inside the ideas of worship and mission. They all go together. We pursue virtue and character as an act of worship and to help us in our mission.

He writes that the 4 big virtues are humility, patience, chastity, and charity. These four big words contain a bunch of other ideas (i.e. faith, hope, and love, the fruits of the spirit, etc). This section comes from his thoughts on chastity, but I would argue they really capture the essence of the book:

“Christians have always insisted that self-control is one of the nine fold varieties of Spirit’s fruit. Yes, it’s difficult. Yes, you have to work at it and discover why certain temptations, at certain times and places, are hard to resist.

“That because chastity is a virtue: it’s not first and foremost a rule which you decide either to keep or to break; it’s certainly not something you can calculate according to a principle, such as the greatest happiness for the greatest number; and in particular, as Jesus himself indicated, it won’t be generated by going with the flow of what comes naturally.

“This is where the genuinely celibate, like Jesus himself…have discovered the joy of a ‘second nature’ self-control which much of our culture, like most of the ancient world, never even imagines.

“By contrast, as those of us who care pastorally, or in families, for people who have embraced the present habits of society will know, the bruises and wounds caused by those habits are deep, long-lasting, and life-decaying. The church is often called a killjoy for protesting against sexual license. But the real killing of joy comes with the grabbing of pleasure…the price tag is hidden at the start, but the physical and emotional debt incurred will take a long time to pay off.

“Here Patience and Humility come into play once more. The frantic urge toward sexual intimacy is part of the drive to express yourself, to push yourself forward, to insist that this is who you are and this is how you intend to behave.

“No, says Humility; you don’t discover your true self that way. You find it by giving yourself away. Precisely, agrees Patience: taking the waiting out of wanting is short-changing yourself and everybody else. The virtues are linked together…if you want one of them, you better practice them all.”

Start with Why (Quote of the Week)

Great story from a book that has captured my attention: Start With Why

The story of two Stonemasons:

A stonemason is asked, “Do you like your job?” He responds: “I’ve been building this wall for as long as I can remember. The work is monotonous. I’m out in the scorching hot sun all day. The stones are heavy and lifting them day after day is backbreaking. I’m not even sure if this project will be completed in my lifetime. But it’s a job. It pays the bills.”

A second stonemason, working on the same wall, is asked, “Do you like your job?” He responds: “I’ve working on this wall for as long as I can remember. The work can be monotonous. Yes, it can be really hot out here and lifting these stones, day after day, is back-breaking. I’m not even sure if this project will be completed in my lifetime. But I love my job…I’m building a cathedral.”

Build cathedrals, not walls!

Leadership Quote(s) of the Week

I have spent some time over the last week skimming back through one of the most formative books I’ve ever read: The Making of a Leader. Here’s some good stuff from the intro, “A Letter to Dan, the Intern”:

“Superficially it may appear that ministry training is the focus of development…but closer analysis shows that the major thrust of God’s development is inward. The real training program is in the heart of the person.

The amazing thing is that during [the primary phases of leadership development] God is primarily working in the leader, not through him or her. Though there may be fruitfulness in ministry, the major work is that which God is doing to and in the leader. Most emerging leaders don’t recognize this. They evaluate productivity, activities, fruitfulness, etc. But God is quietly, often in unusual ways, trying to get the leader to see that one ministers out of what one is. God is concerned with what we are.

We want to learn a thousand things because there is so much to learn and do. But he will teach us one thing, perhaps in a thousand ways: ‘I am forming Christ in you.’

Perhaps the key issue in all of this is submission. Are you willing to submit to God’s purposes right now for you? Anyone can submit to something he or she wants. Submission is tested only when the thing is not desired. God is not in as big a hurry as you and I are.”

Prayer, Boundaries, and The Center

This is a long one today, but this stuff from Richard Rohr’s book Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer is really, really good.

Those who rush to artificially manufacture their own identity often end up with hardened and overly defended edges. They are easily offended and are always ready to create a new identity when the current one lets them down…living only in reaction to someone or something else.

Many give up their boundaries before they have them, always seeking their identity in another group, experience, possession, or person. Beliefs like, “she will make me happy,” or “he will take away my loneliness,” or “this group will make feel like I belong” become a substitute for doing the hard work of growing up. It is much easier to belong to a group than it is to know that you belong to God.

The gift that true contemplatives offer to themselves and society is that they know themselves as a part of a much larger story. Their security and identity are founded in God, not in being right, being paid by a church, or affirmed in the eyes of others. People who have learned to live from their center in God know which boundaries are worth maintaining and which can be surrendered…which, ironically, requires an “obedience,” to listen to a Voice beyond their own.

By contrast non-centered people have boundaries that must be defended, negotiated, or worshipped: their reputation, their needs, their nation, their security, their religion, even their ball team. You can tell if you have placed a lot of your eggs in these flimsy baskets if you are hurt or offended a lot. They are a hurt waiting to happen…in fact, they will create tragedies to make themselves feel alive.

I believe that we have no real access to who we really are except in God. Only when we rest in God can we find the safety, the spaciousness, and the scary freedom to be who we are, all that we are, more than we are, and less than we are. Only when we live and see through God can “everything belong.”

Thank You Eugene (Living at Our Best)

No writer has shaped my thinking and helped me on this journey with Jesus more than Eugene Peterson. This cannot come as any surprise to readers of the “ill dil”. Yesterday, Peterson presented, for what many presume to be the last time, at Q Practices. In honor of that, hear some good words from Eugene:

“Exile (being where we don’t want to be with people we don’t want to be with) forces a decision: Will I focus my attention on what is wrong with the world and feel sorry for myself? Or will I focus my energies on how I can live at my best in this place I find myself? It is always easier to complain about problems than to engage in careers of virtue.'”

and this:

“Daily we face decisions on how we will respond to these exile conditions. We can say: ‘I don’t like it; I want to be where I was ten years ago. How can you expect me to throw myself into something I don’t like–that would be sheer hypocrisy. What sense is there in taking risks and tiring myself out among people I don’t even like in a place where I have no future.'”

and finally, this:

“Or we can say: ‘I will do my best with what is here. Far more important than the climate of this place, the neighbors in this place, is the God of this place, God is here with me. What I am experiencing right now is on ground that was created by him and with people whom he loves. It is just as possible to live out the will of God here as any place else.”

Amen.

Lent (quotes)

From the New York Times:

“There’s something tricky about the secular notion of Lent. You give up something personally important, so its absence will remind you of your purpose in giving it up, but not so important that it disrupts life much. You give up chocolate, but not refrigeration. Bread, but not the Internet. Coffee, but not Downton Abbey. Americans are not a naturally ascetic people, and it shows. Fasting lies at the heart of Lent, and most of us are not fasters. We choose our Lenten sacrifices from a very short menu.”

I’ve struggled with this idea myself. I’ve given up some good things for lent the last couple of years: coffee, tv, etc. But I still drink coffee, and I still watch tv.

So, this year I’m trying something different. Rather than give up something, I’m going to add something. Time to ramp up the Scripture reading.

The goal: the New Testament in 40 days. The hope: this extra reading will cut in (or cut out) other things like tv, like mindlessly surfing the net. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but this year I like the idea of mixing it up.

Matthew 1, here we go…

Prayer

I’ve been re-reading some Eugene Peterson stuff on prayer. I tend to stink at praying and yet, for a whole bunch of reasons, I find myself praying more and more these days. Here are couple of thoughts that have been helpful:

“His prayer took him into a world far larger than his immediate experience.”

and

“Every thing and every person has an interior. Prayer goes beneath the surface and penetrates the heart of the matter. Unlike mere action, prayer is not subject to immediate evaluation or verification. If we are addicted to ‘results’ we will quickly lose interest in prayer. When we pray we willingly participate in what God is doing, without knowing precisely what God is doing, how he is doing it, or when we will know what is going on–if ever.”

From Tell It Slant.