Month: February 2017

So, to recap part 1, I have had two sermons, a devotional and a conversation with a colleague converge this week into some personal spiritual insight and, hopefully, growth, and I figured I would share it here with you all. Hopefully, you will get something out it too.

My colleague is a great guy who was caught in a bad financial transaction when he had to move and realized his house, which he purchased at the market high point, was having trouble selling.  It had sat on the market for about 9 months and he had no offers.  He reduced the price, made a couple of improvements and was pleased to announce that he finally got an offer and the closing date was set for the following month.  As he was going through the story, he mentioned that the buyer was a real estate investor and he had put a sizeable earnest money deposit down, which made him breathe easier about the sale. That comment about the reliability of the buyer and the earnest money suddenly made me remember the verse from 2 Corinthians 1 I mentioned in Part 1…”set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come”.

We are God’s investment property…and we can trust His promises for our lives both here and into eternity, because He is both a reliable “buyer”, but, even more, He gave us a significant deposit as a guarantee. While that is interesting, of greater interest to me is digging deeper into what that deposit means.

First, earnest money is the owner’s once it has been given.  The owner gets to keep it and use it.  He doesn’t have to wait, because it is a completed action. Likewise, the Spirit,in His totality, is invested immediately in the believers heart.  Like earnest money, how the believer views and values the investment drives the utility of it in his/her life.  It can be used to improve or it can be put in a mattress and ignored. What we do with the investment is on us.  We have it in all of its fullness from the very beginning, without delay or restriction.

Second, the giving of the earnest money is a guarantee the transaction or agreement will be kept.  What it means in this context is that the agreement/promise of eternity and all of the promises made about our lives here and forever will be kept. I know that is not a new thought, but it is worth noting that God used a covenant or contractual concept to foot stomp this principle. 

Third, and probably most importantly, the agreement means the buyer is the new owner and can make changes as needed to the property, to improve it as He sees fit.  If the foundation is cracked, he can fix it.  If the roof leaks, it is His issue to resolve.  If the floorplan is awkward, he can rearrange it.  He gets the property “as is”, and has all of the responsibility and authority to make it how He wants, not how the previous owner thinks is best. Despite our efforts to fix up the property in advance, ultimately, our choice of new paint is His to paint over if He wants.

This is a pretty comforting realization for me, because far too often I find myself worrying about how I am going to “repaint, and forgetting that it is the new owner who supplies the paint, the brushes, and the effort necessary to do it.  All of the efforts to fix it ourself are not ours to expend, rather, it is our responsibility to recognize and cede that authority, and support the idea that His changes are to meet His purposes and they are focused on improving His property.  It is not that He acts, overruling our will, rather, with our willing participation in the contract. 

So that is the thought that has been rattling around my heart and mind.  With my consent, I can participate in a contract with the Almighty, where I receive a direct investment of His presence and power in all of its fullness immediately and continuing throughout eternity AND He gets the authority and, more importantly,  the responsibility of improving the damaged, overvalued and, in some places ugly, property to turn it into the home He wants, that I get to inhabit.

Hopefully,  you got something out of this.  Even if not, it has been meaningful for me to discover and share it.  Have a great day and come back again  tomorrow. 

Where Liberty Goes to Die

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.” – Billings Learned Hand, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

This quote makes me think of two of my favorite movies, Gladiator with Russel Crowe and Braveheart, starring Mel Gibson. In both movies, the protagonist has his freedom threatened and ultimately stolen by evil, self-serving leaders in who’s heat liberty has obviously died. Neither protagonist completely abandons hope however, and they both fight aggressively and passionately to restore liberty not only for themselves, but for the citizenry with which they associate. Liberty burns blazing hot in their hearts and fuels their emotions, actions and decisions. The flames of liberty shine through both men to the point that men who are physically stronger line up to follow them both into the throes of battle and the risk of death. Ultimately, both men die, but not until they’ve made such a mark on their antagonists that liberty springs forth again and wins out in the end. Both men die with honor and integrity knowing their cause was right.

That is the kind of men my coauthors are in their daily lives and the man I strive to be in mine. Do we get it right all the time-no. But I’ve seen these guys demonstrate their passion for liberty in many ways and it serves as an example for me to follow more than any movie line or actor’s portrayal. They’re both worthy men who you should get to know through this blog if you can’t do it in person.

Judge Hand is another man you should get to know. Here are a few more of my favorite quotes from him:

We believe, and I think properly, that when the men who met in 1787 to make our Constitution they made the best political document ever made, but remember, they did so very largely because they were great compromisers.

Life is not the thing of knowing only—nay, mere knowledge has properly no place at all save as it becomes the handmaiden of feeling and emotion.

There is no surer way to misread any document that to read it literally…As nearly as we can, we must put ourselves in the place of those who uttered those words, and try to divine how they would have dealt with the unforeseen situation; and although their words are by far the most decisive evidence of what they would have done, they are by no means final.

A wise man once said, Convention is like the shell to the chick, a protection till he is strong enough to break through.

Living in the Washington DC area gives most commuters a unique opportunity to think, listen to books on tape, podcasts, or their favorite music, or just simmer with road rage. That’s because most commuters (like myself) spend 10 hours or more a week in the car going to and from work.  I use my time (mostly) to listen to books or podcasts.

While listening I’m often struck by the occasional English word and how we use it. Today I was listening to the book The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why. I was listening to this book because of the reactions of the characters on the TV show The Walking Dead.  I wanted to know if people were really that stupid during disasters (the answer is yes, we mostly are) and what physiologically causes those reactions. I may write about that later and we can go down that rabbit hole, but today’s post is about words.

The author of the above-mentioned book, Amanda Ripley, used the word “overwhelmed” when describing the emotions of some of the victims of recent disasters.  I pondered the word – overwhelmed – and its opposite, underwhelmed, and wondered why we don’t say we are whelmed?  The definition of whelmed is (according to Webster’s) “…to be overcome in thought or feeling.”  So now I wonder: why overwhelmed?  Couldn’t we just say we are whelmed? The co-authors of this blog and fellow linguists are also weird this way, since we had to think about a word’s many possible meanings to translate it.  We are also picky about misuse of English words; one of our favorite English non-words was “irregardless” (even spell check hates this word). “Irregardless” has the same meaning as regardless – so why not use regardless?  I now find that overwhelmed (a real word) strikes the same chord with me that “irregardless” does. Just use whelmed; to say overwhelmed is simply redundant.

Friday rant complete – I will now contemplate further on why the writers of The Walking Dead seem to always find the worst in humanity.  Last note – where are all the Special Operations soldiers in The Walking Dead universe? Aren’t they the most likely to survive a zombie apocalypse? I mean – a housewife, a redneck, a redneck sheriff, and a wanna-be samurai survive but not one Green Beret, SEAL, Ranger, Marine?  Really?

We can’t let February end without talking about love.  February is identified with Saint Valentine. Most people I asked did not know the story behind Valentine’s day, which is tragic to me. If you are going to celebrate a holiday, you should at least know the real story why its important.  Saint Valentine was a Priest at a time of emperor Claudius II, who like all Roman emperors until Constantine, persecuted Christians for their refusal to recognize the Roman gods and, in particular, that the emperor was a living god. Emperor Claudius also prohibited the Christian marriage of young people.

Saint Valentine preached that marriage was sacred, this in a time of polygamy and “open” Roman marriages.  Saint Valentine openly preached the sanctity of marriage and secretly married Christians in defiance of emperor Claudius II.

Saint Valentine was eventually caught, imprisoned and tortured for marrying Christians.  14 February,  269 AD, Saint Valentine was brutally killed in a three-part execution consisting of a savage beating at the hands of Roman centurions (like in Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of Christ), stoning, and finally decapitation.

So, what does this have to do with how we associate him with love, besides the obvious marriage connection? One legend surrounds Saint Valentine’s time in prison, which talks about one of the Roman judges that sentenced him. He was a judge named Asterius, and his daughter was blind. Saint Valentine learned of this and offered to pray with Asterius to heal her.  Per the story, his daughter was healed and that Asterius converted to Christianity as a result. Before he was executed, Saint Valentine wrote a note to Asterius daughter encouraging her to follow Christ and signed it, “from your Valentine.” The Catholic church hailed Valentine as the patron saint of affianced couples, bee keepers, engaged couples, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriages, love, lovers, plague, travelers, and young people.

So, like the commentator, and one of my all-time favorite radio personalities, Paul Harvey used to say, “…now you know the rest of the story.”

But that’s not the end of this post – I want to close with my favorite Bible verse about love, and one that is frequently heard at Christian weddings. Saint Paul writes in the book of 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 – English Standard Version. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

And to all reading this – remember you special and you are loved.

I have recently been rewatching the series “Band of Brothers”, which is based on Stephen Ambrose’s book of the same name and was directed and produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.  It follows Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division.  While the central figure in both the book and the series was Major Dick Winters, the story focused on how they became united as brothers through the adversity of their service together during World War II.  From training in Georgia to Normandy at D-Day, from Operation Market Garden to the defense of Bastogne to ultimately their liberation of Berchtesgaden and the “Eagle’s Nest”, the men and replacements who served together formed a bond that continues among the survivors to this day.  It really is an inspiring story and presents the war and their efforts realistically, without pulling any punches as to the realities of combat.  Through their trials, loss of comrades-in-arms, victories and struggles, I found myself again emotionally invested in the members of Easy.

Watching the miniseries, I began to wonder about all of the other “Citizen Soldiers” and how their exploits and experiences shaped both the war and their personal lives.  Pilots like George McGovern, who piloted B-24s in Italy, airmen like Louis Zamperini, whose life story is detailed in Unbroken, and John Ford’s filming of the Battle of Midway are just small parts of such a huge endeavor that engulfed the world and reshaped American industry.  The unfortunate truth is that many of the actual events that occurred have been lost in the decades between then and now.  For every confirmed story about James Doohan (better known as Scotty on Star Trek) flying an airplane on a slalom between telegraph poles and being labelled the “craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Force”, there is the lost records of how character actor Charles Durning received his Silver Star in the Battle of the Bulge.  But, while those stories may be lost, the fact remains, a huge number of Americans were involved in winning a war against a truly evil force, and the sacrifices they made should not be forgotten.

Tom Brokaw called them the “Greatest Generation” because of their sacrifice, but there is a real danger today of forgetting both the sacrifice, and, more importantly, the reason for the sacrifice.  Today, we too quickly use terms like Nazi, fascist, or Gestapo, (particularly when discussing opinions or political views we disagree with) without really understanding the depth of the darkness those terms meant during that time.  We have been fortunate to not face that level of evil on that large a scale since the break-up of the Soviet Union, and we haven’t had to deal with that horrific loss of life since the passing of Joseph Stalin.  Sure, we have had our Pol Pots, our Saddam Husseins, our Ceaucescus and many, many other despots, but they haven’t committed atrocities on the level of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin or Mao Zedong.  And so, we have lost the concept of scale and trotted out the labels above in an attempt to underscore our disagreement with people, ideas, and so forth, by exaggerating their level of “badness”.

I am certainly guilty of abusing these terms, and am well aware that, most times, it is done with no ill intent, nor desire to diminish the truth of the past.  What concerns me is that, as the survivors die off, we’ll continue to forget and the mistakes of the past will again be made requiring a future generation to be the next “Greatest Generation”.  As was said in an earlier post, what goes around, comes around, especially if we forget the past.  So, I encourage you all to periodically go back and explore the sacrifices and experiences of history, not to glamorize it nor to wallow in the gritty reality of it, rather to remember it, understand it and to keep vigilant watch against its repeating.

And for those of you interested in learning more, there are a great number of documentaries, such as Ken Burns’ World War 2 series, Band of Brothers, We Were Soldiers, Blackhawk Down, and many others.  There are tons of books out there ranging from books, such as Founding Brothers, to the works of Winston Churchill, the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, William Shirer’s historical works, a number of books by Stephen Ambrose and other military and civilian historians.  I’ll try to post more in the books and movies lists for those who are interested.

Today had the makings of a stressful, difficult day.  Upon waking up, I discovered, by virtue of 24-hour communications devices designed to make our lives easier, that 3 new meetings were added to my schedule today.  Additionally, I opened yet another “priority” email, informing me I must “urgently” address a series of questions I had already addressed several times because YAI (yet another ID10T) needed the information and, of course, it was easier for me to reply yet again, than for him to dig through his old email to re-read what he already knew.  Finally, my phone chirped at me yet again, to inform me, that me meeting for tomorrow (with 2 people) required a one hour telephone conversation with one of the two to prepare for the meeting.  I realize that these types of episodes are unique to me and probably don’t happen to the rest of you, but humor me, because, I think we both can find some level of common ground in both the problem and the solution.

The result of all of this churn today was to threaten both my sanity and what really needed to be done and that got me to thinking once again about the tyranny of the urgent.  All too often we substitute the urgent for the important, mistakenly believing them to be one and the same, or, worse, thinking “it’s just a small thing, I can do it and get back to what’s important.”  For the latter, I merely offer the Despair.com quote “no single raindrop believes it is responsible for the flood.”  That type of thinking resulted in such concepts as “the straw that broke the camel’s back” and “death by a thousand cuts.”  Simply put, a small unimportant thing, though urgent, is still unimportant and doesn’t need done right now.  If it did, it’d be important.

The former idea, though, is the more difficult to correct.  We have become trained to answer the phone, respond to the text, like the post, get our food right now, etc. over the course of our lives.  It’s not a bad thing to have fast food, fast responses, or fast information.  It is, however, a bad thing to interpret fast actions/urgent actions as important.  How many times this week have you gotten a text and felt like you had to respond immediately?  How many of those times were you driving, working, handling explosives, performing brain surgery, etc.?  It’s hard not to pick the phone up when it beeps or buzzes.  We want to know what is going on so that we can stay plugged in and respond.  It’s like a drug and it’s easy to deceive ourselves into thinking we are somehow safer or more uniquely suited to reading and responding than “all of those morons on the road.”  The problem is, we aren’t.  If you were given the choice of ignoring a text while driving and knowing you would live or looking at the text and definitely being in an accident that may claim your life, none of us would look at the text.  But daily people just like us get hurt or killed doing just that.

More importantly, though, is the nuance of important versus urgent in our priorities.  Texting and driving is an easy one, but an email telling us about some new issue we haven’t dealt with before or telling us we may need to change our schedule makes us tend to freak out and focus on that problem until we resolve it at the expense of ignoring the important things that were higher priority.  I have experienced it first-hand.  A few weeks ago I had an unexpected free day.  I looked at the priority items on my list the night before and decided I would focus my time on a project I had been working on for several months that was supposed to wrap up soon.  I patted myself on the back, made sure my requisite resources were in place, politely, yet pointedly informed my co-workers that I was going to be “head down” focused on a priority project, and readied myself for a day of achievement never before seen by the likes of man.  I had two goals for the day…exercise and write…nothing more.

I woke up late.  That led to my first unfortunate response.  I had lost an hour from my optimal schedule, so I immediately started to replan in my head rather than stick to the plan I had developed.  The next mistake was critically bad.  Before heading out to exercise, I opened my email on my work phone, where I discovered an “urgent” email asking me for some schedule information that I had close at hand.  I mistakenly thought that I could just run to the laptop, send the information, incur a 5-minute delay (see “no raindrop” above) and be back on my game.  While responding to that email, my instant messaging app blew up at me because all of the people I told I would be head down, realized I was online and “available”. Most of the 6 or 7 requests were quick, so I started hammering out responses and clarifying what needed to occur.  By the time I finished that, my phone was ringing from the email respondent who needed more clarification on the schedule information and “just had a few questions, that we can quickly clear up over a call.”  By the time the call finished, it was somehow mid-afternoon.

From there I panicked as my day slipped away.  I ignored my devices and went to exercise hoping that would change the day.  In mid workout, my personal phone buzzed at me, reminding me that I needed to change some travel plans and that I needed to schedule my car maintenance.  I wrapped up my exercise early with the thought that I had gotten a decent workout in and tomorrow would be even better.  I ran to the computer to change my travel plans and discovered another 10 emails requesting some small piece of information for a couple of upcoming meetings (again, see “no raindrop” above).  I called to change my travel plans while simultaneously attempting to respond to the “small” requests.  IMPORTANT POINT:  HUMANS CANNOT MULTITASK.  We think we can, but we can’t.  As I was trying to talk on the phone and send responses, I realized I had sent the wrong info to the wrong request.  That led me to stop emailing and finish the phone tasks.  Again, I patted myself on the back for clarity of thought in stopping one action to complete another, but I ignored the irresponsibility that got me to that point in the first place.  I pounded down through the email and then looked at the clock…and saw that it was now early evening.  My heart sank.

I had lost a whole day of writing and a full exercise session to minor email responses and a change in travel that could have waited a day.  I was devastated and spent some time kicking myself and trying to figure out how to recover.  By that time, 8pm, I resolved to write as long as I could, and, ultimately, got a couple of strong hours of writing in…at which point I was tired enough that I ended up deleting most of what I had written in a way as to make it unrecoverable.  I was defeated…and justifiably upset with myself.  The problem was I had let my day be dictated by the “urgent” not the important…not by design, but by negligence, and it cost me my day.

I am sure that I am not the only one who has experienced this.  Whether it be email, text messages, Pinterest recommendations, Netflix or Amazon binge-watching, or anything else, we all tend to get distracted by what is in front of us, misinterpreting it as important, because it is in front of us.  So, what have I done to fix it?   Interesting you should ask.  I would love to tell you I found a handful of magic beans and fixed it, but that didn’t happen.  Rather, I have marginally improved in two areas…recognizing when it is happening and reorienting myself.  I have taken the somewhat stern stance that my priorities are my priorities.  While I may have 38 number one priorities (actually true according to my work), only one can  be 1a, followed by 1b, etc. and 1al probably won’t get done unless the other 37 are completed.  This has been remarkably freeing.  It has allowed me to learn a new word, which has the power to stop the urgent and refocus on the important.  That word is “no”.  I’ll probably write on it more later, but it is becoming a word I hope to use more.

So, what is this post really supposed to tell me, you ask?  First, although it is incredibly hard, you have to develop the mental toughness to ask the question, “is it more important than my current priority?”  Second, if it is, you have to ask “is it really urgent?”  If it is, then you do it.  If not, you have to put it on the list and then let it go.  Does this mean it may not get answered in time to be relevant?  Yes, but if it is not important, who cares?   Will some urgent things become more important with time?  Absolutely, but until they are important, don’t overprioritize them.

Finally, if you are driving and checking your phone, stop it.  If you are stressing out because your friend urgently needs your opinion on whether or not getting a tattoo on their forehead of today’s date, take a deep breath, recognize that your friend is an idiot, pull over to the side of the road and text them.  More than anything else, though, when emails, texts, calls and posts start to overwhelm your day, exercise tactical patience, look at your priority list, and choose to work that instead.

By the way, I blew off the unimportant calls this morning, took the important ones this afternoon, had a wonderful morning with my definitively better half and best friend, and figure I’ll deal with the fallout when and if it comes…

I consider myself an amateur historian. Amateur because I don’t have a degree in history nor do I teach history as my vocation. The reason I love history is because almost every problem, situation, or issue that we deal with today has been encountered in the past. A favorite Bible verse of mine that is germane to this is found in the book of Ecclesiastes (1:9) and reads, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” By examining what was done or said in the past we can develop a plan of action or framework on how to deal with today’s problems.

As I watch the current political discourse I’m reminded of the Melian Dialogue. During the Peloponnesian war, as recounted by the Greek historian Thucydides, the small island of Melos opposed the Athenians and asserted their right to be neutral. The Athenians, fearing the possibility that Sparta would use Melos as a naval base to harass shipping in the Adriatic, demanded that the Melians ally themselves with Athens. To this point in the war, Melos had been neutral in the conflict and wanted to know why they had to choose.  The Athenians simply told them because they were weak compared to the Athenians and stated, “Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” The Melians warned the Athenians that if they went down this path, eventually they too would be in the same position and their words would come back to haunt them.  The Athenians scoffed at this idea. The Melians refused to surrender their freedom, and unfortunately for them, the Athenians killed all the military-age men, and sold the rest of the population into slavery.  Later, as the Melians had prophesied, the Spartan’s and their allies defeated Athenians, which never again rose to its previous glory.

There are many lessons here. One – that way too many people have taken the Athenian proclamation about power and use that to dominate those they perceive weaker than themselves without regard to the fact they too might find themselves in that position. Two – that sometimes standing up for what you believe means that you will suffer for it, but it doesn’t mean you should give in to bullies. Three – karma can be a b*****.

Last, looking at the last 9 years of politics I see other parallels. It wasn’t long ago an American president said, “we won, you lost, deal with it”. I hear echoes of the Athenian’s proclamation in those words. Now that the sides have changed, the other party is using those same words. Sad. There is one last lesson from the Peloponnesian war.  Even though Sparta won the war – their resources and national will depleted by the long conflict – that it wasn’t long after that they too were conquered by another Greek city state. Karma.