Post Birthday Blog...

61 and counting...

and the people keep on coming and the train done gone...

Lessons I’ve learned way, way after Kindergarten…like say, the last three years.

    1)   Being willing to listen rather than talk is a far underrated skill.   I’ve learned over the last few years that I’m a lousy listener…which is painful, because I have come to learn that it is one of the greatest gifts one can give.  The older I get the more I am convinced that we each want to tell our life stories.   Fisher (the Narrative Paradigm) and McAdams  & McLean each suggest that we see ourselves through the stories in our lives.  Let people tell their stories without interjecting your own.   (I’m working hard to take on this task…does not come naturally to me.)

2    2)   Everyone is vulnerable.  Yes, we like to laud our accomplishments on FACEBOOK or SNAPCHAT, but inside each of us, there is typically a lot of hurt that most of us never share.   We learn not to share, believing that exposing our vulnerability is a sign of weakness.   We often find that people are willing to ask for prayers and concern in times of severe physical illness, but when we are feeling depressed or overly anxious, we feel more inhibited.  

Sometimes it takes great courage to ask for help in these circumstances, but they are every bit as painful…many times much more so than physical pain… And when you do find the courage, you may be surprised.  Many will step up their game to support you. You may feel you have no support system, but you won’t really know unless you reach out.

3   3) While we all feel indispensable at work and in our private circles; we are not.  So, living in the NOW is important.   Today counts just as much as tomorrow.  That’s a big part of the MINDFULNESS movement…learning to appreciate the joy of just being…not always in Doing.  I believe God loves us just as we are-- whether we are devoting every moment of our lives to enacting social justice or sitting on our butts.  That’s what makes grace so powerful…and we are called to be just a graceful with each other as we are with ourselves.

     My parents were Lutheran missionaries in Japan, and I learned “Jesus Loves Me,” in both English and in Japanese. But the lesson that shaped my life more than any other in my Lutheran elementary school was that there is a tiny road to heaven…but make one slip, and you are well on your way to the big FAT road to HELL, with scorching goals of fire that will last for eternity.  In his powerful book. Love Wins:  A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, Rob Bell outlines a new vision based on the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible.   He concludes, “Eternal Life doesn’t start when we die, it starts now. It’s not about a life that begins at death; it’s about experiencing the kind of life now that can endure and survive even death.”  If God is truly a God of grace, my guess is that life and death is not something to be feared, but wholeheartedly embraced.

     BTW, check out his short NOOMA videos.   they will make you smile.

   4.)We are always far too tempted to throw out the baby with the bathwater.  There   are many folks I don’t naturally like and with whom I always seem to disagree.  And undoubtedly, there are lots who don’t care for me.   Yet I do believe that people are the greatest gifts of God’s creation.       
     So, I going to try to listen more, embrace the now, and be awed by a graceful image of God’s world.   Undoubtedly, religion and Christianity, in particular, has done a number on many of us.  But it also has done enormous good.  Yes, churches are filled with hypocrites, but so is the rest of the world.    So, I’ll continue to attend church, listen to others and look for grace in all of life’s experiences. 

Just think what I might be able to learn in the in the next three years if I really do some genuine listening.  I may even turn into someone who is able to see the glass half full!

Where have all the flowers gone?

The question posed by Pete Seeger's 1962 ballad, recorded by Peter, Paul, and Mary is akin to Bob Dylan's ballad, 1963, Blowing in the Wind.   Both were early indictments of military involvement in Indochina...leading to the Viet Nam war.

I think that sometimes my research finds me feeling at war with technology.    And of course, it's not really technology that is the problem, it's our inability to feel we can escape it.   

One Illinois State researcher, Brandon McDaniel, featured in my forthcoming film, Cellular Aftershocks, refers to the phenomenon as "technopherence."  It occurs when we let our dependency, particularly on the cell phone, get in the way of our key interpersonal relationships.   When we are talking with others, and then attempt to simultaneously start texting someone else during the conversation, we are engaging in an actvity labeled "phubbing."  It implicitly tells the person with whom we were conversing, that the cell phone is more important.   In fact, the phenomenon is leading to marital conflict and poor parenting.

For me, there has to be a time each day when we set aside our technology...actually turn off our cellphones (I know to many that sounds downright blasphemous) and just be.    Just be with one other person.  Just be with nature.  Just be with yourself.   

Take a few minutes each day to disconnect.  Believe me, the messages will be waiting for you when you turn your phone on again!  So will the emails.   So will the obligations.

But for me, God put us here on this planet to enjoy it, to engage with others on an intimate level, to stop and smell the flowers.  So to point to one last song from an era gone by, read these words to the 1974 hit by singer/songwriter Mac Davis:

Did you ever take a walk through the forest

Stop and dream a while among the trees?

Well you can look up through the leaves right straight to heaven.

You can almost hear the voice of God

In each any every breeze.

You've got to Stop and Smell the Roses

You've got to count your many blessings everyday.

While I'm not snapping photos of flowers with my camera (or my smartphone (GUILTY), I'm making an effort just to enjoy them for what they are:  God's creation, nature's candy.   Put your phone down for a bit and discover that there is a real world and real people who are just as interesting as the latest cute cat YouTube video, right around you.

 

Blog 3: Baby Steps in Giving

Doing something….

One of the great quotes of the last century was voiced by noted cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead when she said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Jesus offered these words to his followers, “for where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”

John F. Kennedy put it this way, “One man can make a difference, every man should try.”

We all know how seemingly insurmountable tasks can lead us to withdraw and keep us from taking actions.   The college professor who looks at a large stack of papers, says, to him/herself that no matter what I do today, there will still be more papers to grade tomorrow and then opts to head to sleep or catch a prerecorded episode of Jeopardy on the DVR.

From the student’s perspective, the term-paper due at the end of the semester seems so challenging, that s/he puts it off until the bitter end, when time for meaningful learning from the exercise is nearly impossible.

A great challenge can motivate us or turn us inward with the expectation that little things don’t really make big differences.   But indeed, little things can.  Students in my public speaking classes this week have noted that sometimes very small things said to them have (at the right moment) made significant changes in their own lives.

Two weeks ago my wife, her sister and I went to New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine, for its annual blessings of the animals service (my son’s high school choir annually sings for this service.)   You haven’t really experienced the full range of worship until you’ve heard the beautiful cacophony of sounds coming from a large pipe organ, a squealing pig, and a relatively muted camel all sharing the same space.  

The annual service is in recognition of the great animal lover of ages ago, St. Francis of Assisi, who put personal giving into a more meaningful perspective.   

“For it is in giving that we receive….”  Most of us learn that lesson the first time giving a gift to someone means more to us that getting something for ourselves.

But of course, giving doesn’t always have an immediate direct payoff as Assisi knew.  There can be discomfort in the process.    Indeed he concludes that it is in “dying that we attain eternal life.”

                                                               ChristianMiracles.com

And perhaps Mahatma Gandi put it the clearest when he said, "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the company of others.”

And what I have found repeatedly is that some of the best parts of life are found when we each are able to lose ourselves in the company of others.    And those life changing moments can, at the time, seem phenomenally minute.  Yet, there’s a chance, a relatively good chance, that those little moments can make a big difference…change someone’s life for the better.   It can take the form of just a little smile.   I ask my classes to smile each day, not just because evidence supports the notion that it will make them happier, but it clearly makes me happy too.   

So every couple of years, I’m willing to make a little fool out of myself and raise a few dollars for a local charity.   It’s never much, but it gets me in the habit of looking outside of myself for just a moment, and thinking of a way that I can make a small difference (in the company of others). 

This year the  bi-annual Run/Walk/Volunteer for Super-Dwight takes place on Halloween morning, Oct. 31^st at the corner of 15^th and Potter Street start.   Here’s a news report (completed by two of our former COMS students, Zach Barlage & Dan Armenti, and of what the event looked like in one of our years.) 

And two years ago, three groups of our CAPSTONE students worked on three different programs for City-Team Ministries, one such program serves poor women and babies in the area.   Here was a film that highlights the program that we will seek to help out this year….

   

So feel free to share us in our joy.  Consider running or walking our 5K with us on our Chester campus on Saturday morning Oct. 31^st .  You can offer to volunteer or walk or run, or just contribute.  (We always have students wiling to run or walk but are not in the position to pay the $15 entry fee.) You can volunteer by simply making posters, helping set up our chalk lines, handing out water cups, or just showing up to cheer us all on.

Please consider joining us Halloween morning at 10 a.m. on the corner of 15^th and Potter Streets or by sending me a $15 donation to support a student who can run or walk but would have a hard time paying the $15 fee.   You can send it via mail or simply drop it by my office at Widener at 220 Freedom Hall.

                  BTW, participants get this a fine Tee-Shirt, with this design:

                    (unfortunately arriving a couple of days after the race)

Giving can be fun….So can smiling. So can taking a walk/run.   

It all starts with one step.

Hope to see you, rain or shine, October 31st at 10 a.m. Prizes are awarded to the first place male, female, and best costume....it is Halloween after all.

Yin and Yang: The Papal visit and the Colts

Blog #2

I was in line at the bank on Friday to talk with the teller.  When I got to the window, we got talking about the papal visit and she showed me that she was one of the fortunate ones and was so excited that she had the "golden ticket."

This was the ticket that would get her in a closer space to the festivities on Saturday and Sunday in town.  

I compared the Papal visit with crowds celebrating the Pope to Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.   As a devout Catholic, she knew the Pope was no Jesus, but simply an ambassador for the church.  She said the real joy of the event would be in the people, sharing in the Holy Spirit.   I was moved by her faith and enthusiasm, just as I had been when watching TV Wednesday morning as the Pope arrived at the White House  to a royal fanfare of trumpets and drums and dignitaries.   Yet both his speech and President Obama's focused on "the least of these," something I've heard spoken of less and less in each ensuing presidential campaign.  (While there is a huge divide between the very rich and the middle class, there is still a very real, immoral divide between the middle class and "the least of these.")

The ensuing papal visits to the US Congress, the United Nations and to Philly, where I live has indeed been moving.  

So Sunday, after attending our local Presbyterian church, we Protestants decided to make the pilgrimage into Philly to watch the 4 p.m. mass downtown.   We had scored train tickets from the suburbs to the closed-off downtown and my son even had a golden ticket himself.   On the train, a man gave my wife another "golden ticket" and handed it to me.   So now my son and I would be among those within eyesight of the Pope himself.   Again, awe-inspiring and moving.

So, in lieu of staying home and watching my beloved Indianapolis Colts fall to 0 and 3 yesterday, we were to be blessed with this great opportunity.  Soon (after about a half-hour walk) my son and I found our way to 21st Street where those with "Golden Tickets" were exclusively sent for our entrance into the promised land.  It was a long line, but surely worth the wait.

We waited and waited and waited.  No manna fell from the heavens.  But I kept remembering my bank teller's remarks, "the power will be in the people sharing in the Holy Spirit."   So we all talked.  I had a good conversation with a professor from Notre Dame.  I talked with my son about his classes at school.   A little boy, named David, from Omaha took a liking to me and I hoisted him on my shoulders so he could see what's happening and try to catch a beach ball folks were throwing around.    It brought me as much joy as the boy.  

His mother, who was holding an infant daughter in a sling told me that the day before, her baby Felicity had been kissed by the Pope himself!  I boldly asked if I too, could kiss the infant.  She said yes, undoubtedly thankful that I was helping to entertain her son in the long wait.  So I kissed Felicity's head, the very day after the Pope had done so....(Two degrees of separation.)   It reminded me of the time, my sister Rebecca hoisted her daughter Ruth, into the arms of renowned baby authority, Dr. Spock.

Still we waited.   Some were catching sports scores and told me the Colts were behind by 14 after blowing a 14 to nothing lead...this with just minutes left.   I said "the season's over; I'll just start thinking about draft choices for next year."

Few were complaining despite the wait.   One said God knows our intentions and would certainly be reducing time in Purgatory.   Then I heard the Colts had rebounded in the last minutes and went ahead.  Finally, I heard they pulled out the win!   Since Protestants are not big believers in Purgatory, I took this as my Papal blessing for standing so long with the faithful.   

But despite the original cheer, the crowds starting getting angry.  We had the Golden tickets.   We knew the service was already well underway.   But of course, there was that feeling of the Spirit.  There was a joy in seeing the faithful throngs.  

I thought of a very pregnant Mary and her betrothed Joseph, heading to Bethlehem.  Even had they received the Golden ticket, they would have fared no better in our TSA inspection line.  (Indeed a pregnant woman was waiting slightly ahead of me.) By the time we neared the end of the line, the service was over, the Pope had left with all the dignitaries.   Still we were so far ahead in line, that we now had to wait to go through security screening, just to leave!   5.5 hours we waited for the Pope we never got to see.  Finally we were in!  I pretended to feel triumphant to witness the start of the clean-up.

Sure there was sense of failure and frustration.   I had not witnessed a sensational comeback from my beloved Indy Colts.  My son had had to leave his job early and had hours of homework due when we got home.   We were all hungry and tired.

But there is no Yin without Yang, no victory without loss, no Resurrection without a fall.  

In the end, that is the nature of life.   Sometimes the lowly are exalted. Sometimes those with the Golden tickets are sent away empty.  But every now and then, you just may get the chance to kiss a baby who was kissed by a Pope!

Joy....to Philly, the world, and the Faithful...