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Friday...13 April '12...at the conclusion of the DC QConference I spent two additional days seeing people friends from years back, and visiting selected sights, which have almost also become like old friends. The friend who had attended Q with me, and I, made a mad dash for the last public changing of the guard at Arlington Cemetry...at sunset...what an amazing time to be there in the hush of that vast place...remembering.
Watching the precision of these men, who guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and bring dignity to all who have given their lives for the sake of the US of A, I wept at the honor being given...especially watching others in the gathered crowd who had obviously been in the service at some time in their own lives...tears sliding down their weathered and time-worn faces...with volumns of stories registering behind their eyes.......
...when we were leaving to return to our car, all these silent markers of honor greeted our pending departure from Arlington. I walked among these, alone, for a few minutes, all politics aside, and prayed for the men and women who are yet in the line of fire that day, even this day...Monday, 28 May '12. Which family, somewhere in America will be next to see two soldiers walking up to their front door with the first words, "We are sorry to inform you......."
This past Saturday, upon awakening, I opened our front door to be greeted by a lone flag punched into the edge of our front lawn. A local realtor had placed a flag in front of every home in our neighborhood. My orginal intent was to simply go out and get the morning paper. The new and larger intent was to look up and down the street, and the images that came to mind from this simple display of care took me back to the recent visit to Arlington Cemetry.
It's easier, though a bit overwhelming (if you've ever been to a national cemetry...especially on this day), to be caught up in remembering with the vastness of the white tombstones there. Coming back into that day, even looking out my office window at that flag, this day of our lives, it's easier to somewhat put behind us the remembering, as we tackle the "stuff" of our lives.
However...this flag...this day...remains in front of our home...as one does in front of most of the homes in our neighborhood. This day...I remember...from a heart of gratitude...and pray, not only for those from our own country, but for those of other countries who yearn to live in freedom...indeed, may freedom be the cry of all our hearts...freedom to live the life our God intended that all should live...free to be all the Triune God has created them, and us, to be...and do.
Freedom...
...in too many places still a novel thought.
O persistent God,
deliver me from assuming your mercy is gentle.
Pressure me that I may grow more human,
not through the lessening of my struggles,
but through an expansion of them
that will undamn me
and unbury my gifts.
Deepen my hurt
until I learn to share it
and myself
openly,
and my needs honestly.
Sharpen my fears
until I name them
and release the power I have locked in them
and they in me.
Accentuate my confusion
until I shed those grandiose expectations
that divert me from the small, glad gifts
of the now and the here and the me.
Expose my shame where is shivers,
crouched behind the curtains of propriety,
until I can laugh at last
through my common frailties and failures,
laugh my way toward becoming whole.
Deliver me
from just going through the motions
and wasting everything I have
which is today,
a chance,
a choice,
my creativity,
your call.
O persistent God,
let how much it all matters
pry me off dead center
so that if I am moved inside
to tears
or sighs
or screams
or smiles
or dreams,
they will be real
and I will be in touch with who I am
and who you are
and who my sisters and brothers are.
...from Guerrillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle
...by Ted Loder
...who is actually telling the truth these days?
...in this world, this life, this political cycle?
...between each sunrise and sunset?
...between each sunset and sunrise?
...found these words today on Inward/Outward:
The True Prophet
How do we tell the false prophet from the true prophet? The true prophet seldom predicts the future. The true prophet warns us of our present hardness of heart, our prideful presuming to know God's mind. And the final test of the true prophet is love. God came to us as Jesus because of love....
We must be careful in our right and proper protests...that we are protesting truly, that we are not being false prophets fearing only for our own selves, our own families, our own country. Our concern must be for everybody, for our entire fragile planet, and everybody on it.... Indeed, we must protest with loving concern for the entire universe. A mark of the true prophet in any age is humility, self-emptying so there is room for God's Word.
Source: A Stone for a Pillow by Madeleine L'Engle
It's been amazing how many people from past days have been in touch recently...so encouraging to know of their journeys forward...stunned by what a sentence will do when offered to carve new paths for others wondering what might be next.
Tonight, an overnight guest in our home, one very good man in his early 40s, asked, "Do you remember what you said when you called me 12 years ago?" Of course I didn't...but...then he said, "If you had not called right when you did, we would not be talking today, and I would not be doing what I do. That brief phone call changed my life direction. You heard me and responded...even when I didn't think you would."
Whew!
How many times have I not spoken when urged to do so?
How many times have I ignored the promptings within?
How many times have I said too much...or not enough?
How many times have I not followed through on a promise to call someone?
How many times have I followed through?
How many times have I not listened deeply enough...long enough?
How many times have I waited, trusting the silence to be doing its work in the good soul of another, so that when a word is spoken it does, finally, it's life-giving work?
How may times have I been grateful, to the max, for the sacred privilege of getting to do what I do?...seeing people set free into their futures and their dreams and their relationships...making differences in our world...some of those differences known to many...some known only to God, and a handful of others.
Most blessed am I...! How many times?
Can't even begin to count 'em.................................all I know is that the greatest means of impacting the future is to build into another person's life. This IS called intentional, whole-life, deep-change, transformational mentoring.
I go to sleep tonight with a grateful heart.
Good night.
The first year out of grad school was, at the core, amazing, sincerely. Not often in one's life do you have a completely clean board to draw on and create what has not been done before within a fast growing and energetic organization.
Faith Presbyterian Church took a gamble on me. I'm grateful.
Back in that day the words "Christian"' and "counseling" were a bit new to the religious scene to say in the same breath...especially for more conservative places. Counseling of any variety was held suspect. Shoot, one was just supposed to pray and everything would be OK. Well.......not always.
However, taking the offices off site, creating an intentional, honest sense of care for anyone, no matter the issue, things began to flourish. Trust in the processes increased. We soon had to add good staff. A lay-counselor program was instituted that I still hear talked about today from those who participated in that training. Lives were changing...by design...as intended from the beginning of time...by God.
For most churches this was...whoa, ho!!!...way out there. The status quo and the same-old-same-old has never wood me in. Deeply changed lives was the hope/goal. It began to happen.
At home our beautiful daughter began to crawl all over including walls (Spider woman in the making?)...up, over, down, under, around...curious about everything. First steps were wondrous to behold. Watching this vibrant child begin to develop, my heart/our hearts kept getting stolen with every new advancement.
...look at those big eyes on that little girl...!
Experiencing her growing up one evening, it hit me that organizations are a lot like we people. Watching our own daughter grow, develop, explore, discover, began to inform me of the creative care that is crucial for healthy organizational growth and development.
Jesus' words about not getting where we were supposed to be headed, unless we become like little children, began to take new meaning. This little people was informing us on how to live.
How does that translate to organizational design? Well, that's a conversation for another time. Just like a child will test and try things...so I began to test and try all kinds of ideas with regard to leadership development...and personal design.
Stating the obvious, organizations are made up of people. People were once children. What stops children from remaining creative? Same things that stop most organizations from taking risks. Looking back, the time at Faith Pres became a laboratory, of sorts, for trying ideas which have informed what I'm about today.
Seeds were planted. Some did not grow. Others did.
Most grateful. Within the next year, important risks were taken.
(.....................to be continued.....................)
Who knew?
Back in the day a popular survey called the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale was used as a type of predictor for what could happen if one did not own and recognize the pile up of life happenings that may not, in the long haul be good for a person. Moving into and through my 35th year...like about half a lifetime ago...much was new, and piling up. :-)
New daughter.
Newly graduated.
New job.
New home.
New responsibilities
New privileges and opportunities.
New hope!
Heading for church on Mother's Day in 1976 I had one heck of a toothache. We had no dentist, yet, in Denver. We had, in our nine years of marriage been to Judy's dentist in Phoenix, when visiting her family. But...whoa! I needed a dentist.
So...in the meet and greet time that was part of the church service, the couple behind us was oohing and ahhhing over our beautiful baby daughter, Shannon, when I asked the man what he did? He said, "I'm a dentist...have my practice over on Hampden Avenue." I almost hugged him...but restrained myself.
He asked what I did, and I told him I was graduating from Denver Seminary. Then I asked what did it take to get an appointment with him. He asked why I was asking...and he almost did an exam right there...but restrained himself.
L o n g story short, I was in his dental chair the next morning, thanks to his generosity...and he remained our dentist for the next 25 years of his practice. He and his wife became special friends. My tooth got fixed, and so did the next six and a half years of our lives.
We've often laughed at the fact that he kept asking me questions about my future hopes and dreams, while keeping my mouth wide open and doing his good work. Easy for him. Hard to do for me. But...enough information got through so that he went and asked his father to meet us for lunch, because his dad was on the church board and they were looking for additional staff for their fast gowing congregation.
So there I was at lunch with two Dr. Petersons (the son was taking over the practice from his father), hearing about what the church board was looking for. What I had shared with the younger Dr. Peterson, via my wide open mouth, was exactly what his Dad said they were looking for. They were not looking for the usual theolog...but for someone who would be creatively thinking way outside the box with regard to counseling, spiritual formation, and leadership development.
That is the only time I thanked God for a toothache. Some other places and kinds of work were exploring the possibility of me...but in places we were was not fond of thinking about moving. Thank God we've been blessed to stay in Colorado...39 years this coming Labor Day Weekend in September.
...that is not what I wore to church on that Sunday, but I hold in that pic the most precious bundle of love any mom or dad could hold...oh my, what a new miracle in our lives, for sure! She still is!!!
(.....................to be continued.....................)
It's been said a picture, at least some pictures, are worth a thousand words. There are not enough words to describe this pic from 1976.
We graduated from being just us to being a family of three when our amazing daughter was born late in April. This bundle of joy came to us, newly born, through the miracle of adoption. An amazing story here.
The second miracle of the year was that I graduated from Denver Seminary in May. Though some of my growing theological perspectives were not quite "right" for some, they allowed me to exit, gracefully. I moved through this year with growing vision for the future that includes today.
(.....................to be continued.....................)
Sincerely...my apologies for not keeping up with the series.
It's been a bit of a wild ride...and continues to be.
But...now the countdown continues...again. :-)
* * * * * * *
The year was 1975. The middle of grad school. A major transition was taking place within my thinking and pondering, as it began to dawn on me that the thought of us living a first half and a second half of life might not be the best way to look at life...though it was a familiar way to look at life back in that day. Was there another way (stay tuned, as there is, it turns out...)?
This was the year that President Ford, having taken over for his old boss, declared the Viet Nam war "finished." Not won. Done. Frankly, he did bring some dignity and strength back to the office of President of the United States of America. I read recently that he lived longer than any other U.S. president, 93 years and 165 days.
The tumult of the times was just beginning.
Some may disagree, but red lights were going off all over our society. The pendulum of life, as we knew it back then was shifting...again. Thirty-five years later a fairly well researched tome called The Fourth Turning brought some intriguing, controversial historical sense to what we all experienced back then in one way or another. Life was no longer (as if it ever was) as simple as red, yellow, green light...and a time when everyone would correctly follow all the rules.......because.
Back then, I probably would not have called it a spiritual renewal that was forming in my own soul. Such language was left to more mystical elements in known Christianity. The conservative circles of Christianity were into revival. I always wondered if that meant someone was "vived" in the first place for a "re" to be attached to the word.
Soul nudges that had begun in the earlier 70s in Southern California were subtly taking form deep within. The seminary training was challenging me to not accept the traditional Christian status quo. Questions I brought from the west coast were enlarging...not diminishing.
Soulishly I was being quietly "forced" to think in new ways. Though precipitious, the journey was beginning to get a bit exciting. Welcome. Conversations with Rex, Gary, Les, Stan, among others, were permitting more questions than answers. Drs. Grounds, Keiper, Lewis, Burdick, Alden were being used to strengthen the foundations of my soul. Just a tad challenging and kind of fun, were these unfolding moments...more questions than answers. I found myself liking that. Dr. Grounds, especially, encouraged that.
Relieved. Renewed. Released. Reformed. Refreshed. Refocused. Reality. These words began to reposition themselves in my soul and work their way into my thinking. Seeds were sown that are still bearing fruit in what I'm doing with and through my life today.
I began, maybe for the first time, to believe in grace.
(.....................to be continued.....................)
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