margeeness

2nd March 2010

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If You Want to Walk on Water, Get Out of the Boat

Thanks Mich for sharing :)

Here’s an interesting excerpt from If You Want to Walk on Water, Get Out of the Boat by John Ortberg:

“You cannot choose your calling,” Palmer Parker [a Quaker educator and writer] writes. “You must let your life speak.” By this phrase he means that an enormous part of following our calling is not so much choosing as it is listening. From early on, you have been drawn to certain activities, certain ways of being and doing. These ways may not be applauded by your family or your company. You may prize solitude in the midst of a culture that rewards extroversion. You may crave spontaneity in a subculture that praises predictability. It will take care and courage to discover and be true to the person God made you to be. Over time, your heart will seek to make its longings known.

Perhaps you were created to learn and, by your learning, to benefit others. You will find yourself drawn to reading, reflecting, writing and teaching. But if you are convinced that you must be a corporate success for your life to count, you will saw against the grain of your life. You will refuse to let your life speak.

Maybe you are a woman who loves to lead teams, to sound trumpets and charge up hills. But if you have been told that women are not to do such things, that you must stay in the background, you will bury the gifts that you were given. You will refuse to let your life speak.

It is very important to distinguish what I love doing for its own sake from what I may want to do because of the rewards it may bring me.

Researcher Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi did a study involving two hundred artists eighteen years after they left art school. He found it was those who in their student days savored the sheer joy of painting that became serious painters. Those drawn to art school in hopes of wealth or fame drifted away to other professions. “Painters must want to paint above all else. If the artist in front of the canvas begins to wonder how much he will sell it for, or what the critic will think of it, he won’t be able to pursue original avenues. Creative achievements depend on single-minded immersion.”

Sometimes this choice —- the decision to let one’s life speak —- has spelled the difference between failure and greatness. William McFeely’s biography of Ulysses Grant describes a man who was masterfully fitted for military leadership and writing (his Memoirs are considered a classic of military literature) but horribly ill-equipped for business and politics. Grant neither understood nor enjoyed life in Washington, and he is usually judged to have been one of the least effective presidents of the United States. In his final —- and extraordinary —- State of the Union message, he apologized for his ineptness: “It was my fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training.”

Why, then, did this Civil War hero work so hard for a job he neither enjoyed nor understood? “His personal need was to retain the immense respect in which he was held everywhere in the North… He wanted to matter in a world he had been watching closely all his life. A little recognition —- a little understanding that he did know what he was doing —- was all he required. He needed to be taken into account.” His own unmet needs for acceptance and wholeness blinded him to acknowledge his limitations. He did not truly love his job.

All of us face this challenge. A man I know, whose father was very successful, decided he had to go into the same line of work. He was not pressured into it, and indeed, he might have resisted such a career if he faced that pressure. This snare was much more subtle. In part, it was that his dad’s success opened doors for him in this field that might have been closed in other arenas; in part, it was because when he was growing up, this was the field in which accomplishment was always discussed and celebrated. At any rate, he has spent twenty years now trying to be his dad, trying to convince himself that he is doing pretty well at it; yet, as he moves through his work, that argument is getting harder and harder to maintain. Reality —- I am not my father; I don’t have the same kinds of gifts and drives that he has —- would be too painful for him. His wife sees this more clearly and tries to tell him sometimes, but he cannot hear her. He does not honor his raw material.

I can think of a woman who craves attention and is certain that she must succeed as an actress or singer so she can get it. She clings to this dream even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it does not reflect whom God made her to be. She clings to it so tightly that whenever anyone tries to tell her she may be making a mistake, it causes her unbearable pain. She feels they are rejecting her, so she runs away. She does not honor her raw material.

When I do not honor my raw material, reality becomes my enemy. I close my eyes and ears to all the indications that I am trying to pursue what I am not called or gifted to do. But underneath I am condemned to live in chronic, low-grade anxiety that whispers to me that I am trying to be someone I’m not.

If I have the courage to acknowledge my limitations and embrace them, I can experience enormous freedom. If I lack this courage, I will be imprisoned by them. Some of my limitations do not bother me much. It does not really concern me that I am unable to operate power tools or draw a straight line. But I have a few limitations that are exceedingly painful to me. They have involved dreams that I have carried with me for as long as I can remember. Acknowledging those limitations has felt a lot like dying to me. It has sometimes left me wondering whether I have a true purpose at all.

I think of people I know who possess tremendous minds. They have a depth of learning and insight that enables them to make lasting contributions to the search for truth and knowledge. They sit at the table of what Mortimer Adler calls “the Great Conversation” of the human race. I was bright enough to do well in school and reach a certain level of learning, but I will never have a mind like that. I will not sit at the table.

I watch leaders who have enormous energy to lead, who carry deep within them reserves of optimism and confidence to fuel those under them, who have a kind of inner gyroscope that guides them to develop others and achieve a mission. I admire these gifts highly and have often found myself pained or confused in trying to do an honest self-assessment of them.

Parker Palmer writes about the myth of the limitless self:

Like many middle-class Americans, especially those who are white and male, I was raised in a subculture that insisted I could do anything I wanted to, be anything I wanted to be, if I were willing to make the effort. The message was that both the universe and I were without limits, given enough energy and commitment on my part. God made things that way, and all I had to do was get with the program.

My troubles began, of course, when I started to slam into my limitations, especially in the form of failure.

Even as I write these words, I recall failures that are the most disappointing to me. Many years after they occur, the memory of my failures still holds the power to make me want to forget them, hide from them or explain them away. The reason for some of these failures was not simply a lack of persistence or unfriendly circumstances (which might just call for more effort); I was slamming into my own limitations. It is a humbling thing for me to realize how often in my life my own need to be seen as a successful, strong, confident, charismatic leader has caused me to run from patiently examining my failures and learning from them who I am and who I am not.

I think of the dreams I had for a church I helped plant that did not grow into what those of us at the core hoped and prayed it might become. I know that, at least in part, my limitations played a role. One of the greatest challenges of life is learning from an experience like that both with truth that enables me to live in reality and grace that reminds me I have a calling from God and adequate gifts to fulfill it. I am convinced that if I face up to acknowledging the limitations that pain me most, there is enormous freedom and joy on the other side.

I believe that each of us has similar experiences, which is why I think some of the most important, yet difficult questions for a person to ask are What is your most painful limitation? What is the limitation that frightens you most to acknowledge and accept? Where do you most avoid seeing the deep truth about yourself?

6th February 2010

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Examination of your voting conscience

Worthy of sharing from Super Bianca:

one of the best explanations i’ve heard if you’re having trouble choosing your candidate!

question of ben cabigas:
“In principle, is it OK to abstain for the position of President? Pa’no pag hindi buo ang loob mo sa boto mo?”

reply of st anthony enriquez tiu:
“Ben, para sa akin, wala naman talagang perpektong binoboto e. Meron lang perpektong boto - yung botong pinag-aralan, pinag-isipan, at handang panindigan sa loob ng 6 na taon. Kung hindi pa buo ang loob mo, ibig sabihin kulang pa ang ginugugol mong panahon upang pagtibayin ang iyong kaalaman at paninindigan. Sa loob ng 5 buwan, imposibleng maging perpekto ang isang kandidato. Pero sa loob din ng 5 buwan, kaya mong kumbinsihin ang sarili mo kung sino ang mas karapat-dapat na iluklok sa pwesto. Sino ba ang dapat?”

3rd February 2010

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VERY SHORT, MOST EFFECTIVE AND HOW TRUE

30 second Speech by Bryan Dyson (CEO of Coca Cola)

“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them - Work, Family, Health, Friends and Spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the Air.
 
You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back.
 
But the other four Balls - Family, Health, Friends and Spirit - are made of glass. If you drop one of these; they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for it.”
 
WORK EFFICIENTLY DURING OFFICE HOURS AND LEAVE ON TIME. GIVE THE REQUIRED TIME TO YOUR FAMILY, FRIENDS & HAVE PROPER REST.