It takes faith to believe in good...

It takes faith to believe in the good, because we live in a world of duality.

There is beauty and there is ugly.
There is love and there is hate.
There is kindness and there is cruelty.
There is joy and there is suffering.

The good is so gentle that it would seem easily trodden by evil. Yet there is strength in goodness.

We simply have to believe in it enough to choose it.

We never work alone...

No matter what you are going through you are not alone.

No matter how hard.
How tragic.
How unforeseen.

There are those who love you--both visible and invisible. Others outside yourself cheering you on.

Take courage in that.

Creating a place of refuge

There are a lot of decorating shows with advice on everything from choosing a paint color to organizing techniques to creating flow.  But I'm pretty sure, not one bit of that counts if your home is a place where there is bickering, complaining, criticism and power struggles.

The world is hard. We all need refuge.

A place of peace where we can be just who we are and be safe.

Sometimes the art of creating that is as simple as having it as a goal.

We can in our own small ways bring peace. Refuge is a worthy endeavor.

What can't you erase?

In the early days of my day job, we purchased the most expensive piece of equipment we’d ever invested in---a huge, beautiful teak conference room table.

Three weeks after it arrived, a pizza delivery man came with food for our office and as we awkwardly danced with pizzas, the receipt and a credit card, the delivery man set the piping hot stack of boxes on the table. The resulting scar mocked me at every meeting for the next 10 years. It was permanent.

Some things can’t be erased.

There is an art to accepting the unfixable–to assimilating it and making it part of you. (In the case of our company, the scar became a bit of company legend and a moral tale for putting too much stock in appearances.)

So, do a gut check. What is it that you simply can’t erase? Is it a physical limitation, mistake that you’ve made, life circumstance that you wish were different?

One of the most important things in your growth as an artist–or for that matter as a person–is to learn acceptance of the things that cannot be erased. And while you can often create “in spite” of them, there is power to embracing them and making them part of your art.

Anne Lamott writes that: “Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.” Some things can’t be erased, and it occurs to me that artists are better equipped than most to take the flaws and make them into something beautiful.

On leadership

The older I get the more I’m convinced that the leaders are the ones who discover their true selves. They risk giving up all of the “should” and “supposed to’s” to follow that calling in their soul. In large part, for the leader it doesn’t matter if there are followers. They would do what they are doing whether anyone was behind them or not. Yet, when they are doing it, their passion inspires others to join in. Their core belief in their cause and intangible sense of knowing the next step draws others who believe in the same cause adding their talents and gifts to the journey.

In praxis, it is important for leaders to implement practices that make it easier for them to “hear” that calling, and to be able to clarify that mission to the ones following.

Sure there are strategies…people skills, financial planning, skill of their craft...but those always appear to pale in comparison to a person who devotes their life to the pursuit of a passion. I actually believe that each person has this in their core, but there are enemies to leadership…distractions, doubt, fear, hubris. Perhaps the “one thing” to being a successful leader is learning to turn down the volume from the enemies so they don’t drown out the call.

In Depth Yoga Studies...Week 5

I've mentioned before that I am taking Advanced Yoga Studies with Shanon Buffington, a student of Rod Stryker.  This was weekend 5 of the training. We've moved beyond anatomy and into the nervous system.

I continue to be amazed at how little I know about the way my body--which at this point I've inhabited for 46 years--is designed.

Shanon shared with us an amazing article on the effects of stress on our systems and how to counteract it.  I can't write about it as well as the article presents it, so here is the link: http://www.bemindful.org/chaosorcalm.htm

Happy birthday, Bethany!

Today Bethany turns 20.  I can't tell you how proud I am of her.

The other day we had a conversation about her job. It really blesses me to hear her perspective on things. That she is focused on the long-view rather than the short.  That she cares passionately about how people are treated. That she is wise enough to see that doing the right thing is more important than ego.

Yes, my little girl is 20 today. If I close my eyes I can still see her at 2 and 5 and 10 and 14. Such a beautiful soul.

Dogs watching TV

Craziest thing. Our dogs watch TV. 

Not all the time.  Just if there are other dogs on television. 

In this particular case I was watching "Too Cute" a show about puppies on Animal Planet. 

They stayed engaged the whole hour. 

Too funny.  

Guest post by Big Tea | Peep Wars 2012

My husband blogs (maybe four times a year) as Big Tea. I loved this post of his because it captures a moment he had with our daughter this week. Peep Wars are a bit of a family tradition. (If you can call it that.)

PEEP WARS!!!

With Easter nearly over my daughter and I decided to revive a family (sort o) tradition and have a peep war.  Giving her first choice she immediately went with the pink chicks and I took the remaining yellow ones.  Quickly we released the small soft warriors from the protective packages.  Next we each chose a toothpick weapon, looking at length, flexibilty and sharpness.  Eventually we both settled on the best available weapon and armed our fighters.  Once armed we slowly and carefully placed them on the protective fighting surface, positioning them with the utmost care.

Finally, we closed the chamber and stepped back to allow the fighters room to practice thier craft.  As the carousel began spinning they both began to puff themselves up in hopes of dishearening the opponent, but these were both TRUE warriors and neither backed down and the spears inched closer and closer until, finally, a winner was declared.  The yellow fighter barely got the touch in before the pink chick could finish him off, and that ended the first fight.

All in all, Peep Wars 2012 was won by Team Dad but it was a hard fought battle and the plucky daughter promised to be back in 2013 for another try.

The seldom seen 'Dark Side' of peep wars.

Of Easter and infomercials...

When I was a little girl, a lot of what was taught to me about Jesus sounded like an infomercial.  Ask Jesus into your heart and all your problems will be solved. It was usually illustrated by a story of someone who had lived a life of sex, drugs, rock and roll who gave all that up and now magically was happy.

And so I bought into the product.
And was terribly disappointed when I learned that it didn't work.
And worse I learned that many were just "pretending" that it did while they hid the darker sides of themselves.

We live in an "eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth" world.  One where we wrong each other terribly and there is retribution. (Which as Calvin Miller writes is a "rapid, satisfying way to a sightless, toothless world.") The thing about sin is that it is selfish. My pleasure. My justice. My gain. Which on the surface would seem that it would get us somewhere. Instead, it is a strange sort of bondage, one that never seems to completely fill us and one that separates us completely from our Creator.

The power of Jesus is in the reversal of all of that. Instead of seeking for himself, he was willing to do the opposite. To give everything...his power, his blood, his obedience, his life. And this act of complete selflessness changed everything. The ripping of the fabric that separated God and man.

And therein lies the secret to Easter. Human relationships can only deliver so much, and there is bitter disappointment in living a life focused solely on ourselves. Easter means that we no longer have to.  That we can be filled with God's spirit and become--through a daily opening to that work--who we were always meant to be.  Filled with the love that made us.

My "Crowd-Sourced" Birthday Gift

Just so you know, the painting is now in my LIVING ROOM!!!

For those of you who don't know the story, I originally saw the painting on artist, Cori Berg's Facebook page. The moment being shared between the mother swan and the "ugly duckling" really captured me, and because the cost of the painting was out of my reach, I had a thought--a crazy but possibly workable thought--to ask people who would normally either buy me a present or send me a card to contribute. 

It became such a fun thing to look each morning to see if the meter had moved--and for people to message me to let me know when it did just in case I'd missed it.

I can't tell you how much it means to me that my friends went in together to make this happen. Well, it did. And is one of the best birthday gifts of all time.

Of the second commandment and modernity...

I find it interesting that the second commandment (of the ten commandments in the Bible) is about not making idols. In the ancient world, that was easy to see. (Big stone statues.)  But in the modern world it is more subtle. It would seem that a possible reason God would include this as #2 is that any god we create would be in our image and not be an accurate reflection of who he is.

Michael Gungor tells the story much better than I do in this simple, yet profound video...

To the young women...

Today is my birthday. I'm 46.

Which means there are likely more years behind me than in front--an interesting place to be.

As on most birthdays, I took the day off and spent it in silence. (Though there were a couple of hours spent at the DMV because my license is up.)

Today I found myself thinking a lot about the young women I know.  Some are single and some with families.  And it occurred to me there are things I wish I could say to them that I have no way to work into casual conversation.  So here it is...

1. You are special. Just as you are. Don't buy the marketing hype designed to make you feel less so you will buy things.

2. Enjoy the things you are good at and let the rest be. You don't have to be the "cookie mom" unless God wired you to do that. People's expectations (and often even your own) will always exceed your capacity.

3. Find out who you are. Try things. Don't give so much of yourself away that there is nothing left. (See #2).

4. The simplest path is usually the right path.  If you are trying to do something and it keeps getting inordinately complex, stop.  You will waste your energies. Chances are you are trying to make something happen that isn't supposed to or you are going about it the wrong way.

5. Forgiveness isn't just important; it is the only thing.  Learn to give people grace.

6. There is beauty in setting aside your task list and just being.  The world won't stop if you turn your thoughts off. Find some time for silence.  It will recharge you and create space.

7. Relationships are everything, but there are more things in this world designed to pull them apart than to foster them. Start thinking about your relationships in terms of concentric circles. With you in the center, the closest circle to you might be immediate family, then work relationships, church relationships, friends...the order will be unique to your life. Figure out what your circles are and visualize it, then when there are conflicts in where to give resources like time, energy or money you know to prioritize the closest circle. (There are never enough resources for everything.)

8. Have the courage to let go of things (and people) who are bad for you.

9.  The clues to who you are lie in what gives you joy. Listen for that.

10. Back when I worked with Lifetime Guarantee, Dr. Bill Gillham frequently made a point by asking: "How did you forget your high school algebra?" The illustration goes that you didn't forget it by focusing all your energy on x2. You forgot your high school algebra by getting busy on other things.  The idea is that it is easier to get rid of what you want to lose by focusing on what you want to gain. In the twenty plus years since I worked there, I've learned that the principle works for just about everything. Rather than focusing on eradicating the negative, it is way more useful to get busy with the positive.

Much love to all my young women friends....