Learning the difference

"One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem.
If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, if your spouse or child is seriously ill ...
then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient by nature. Life is lumpy.
But a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, ... and a lump in the breast ... are not the same kind of lump.
One needs to learn the difference."

-- Rev. Robert Fulghum

So much of what we spend our every waking hour stressing over are petty inconveniences compared to the really important things in our lives - our personal health and well-being, our relationship with God, our spouse, our children, our families, our communities. When we spend time focused on things other than these, to the detriment of these, we have lost our sense of "the difference," and it's time to look in the mirror and remind ourselves, before some of life's more serious lumps show up and do the job for us.

Lend me your ears ...

One of the things I love to do is to "lend" this community's ears and hearts to a member of the group who has a passion they want to explore. Another such fun opportunity has just surfaced. I met yesterday with a woman here in Houston who is passionate about parenting and about helping young people grow up in a healthy and unencumbered way. She has an idea for a local workshop that I would love to help her explore and get off the ground. The first step is "market research" - getting feedback from parents and young people about the relevance and value of her idea and getting as much useful input as possible. Could you please read the following paragraph and ask any questions, make any comments, request any additional information, etc. that you feel inspired to communicate. I will share all of it with her and let her choose to reach out and introduce herself to you if and when it feels right to her to do so. Thanks for taking a minute to review and consider this.

"As a professor of psychology, I constantly hear from the parents in my classes when the topic is on parenting and child development how they wish they had my class before (or even while) they had kids. In response to those requests, and from my own desire to make child-rearing less stressful and more fulfilling (both for the parent and especially for the child), I would like to offer a series of lectures on the fundamentals of child development and of basic parenting techniques. Essentially, I would like to offer for parents (and children if they like) a jargon-free, psycho-babble-free, sensible roadmap to important milestones throughout childhood and adolescence. This lecture series is designed to help parents understand things like cognitive abilities, the emotional impact of physiological changes, and other highlights of specific stages of development. This knowledge may help parents change their approach with their children (to one that is more sensitive to the child and also more effective) or help them de-personalize certain stressful elements in child-rearing (like understanding toddlers' temper tantrums or adolescents' lack of communication at home). Please give me your thoughts on whether you would find this useful and valuable and whatever other feedback you might share to help me pursue this interest in offering this service."

-- R.D.

One last note. I had the extreme privilege of doing a reading at this woman's wedding several years back. She and her husband and their two beautiful girls are dear friends of ours. I would do anything within my power to support their efforts. Both are creating new ventures, and it is scary work these days. Just as I was reflecting on this I came across this reinforcing message in the calendar on our bathroom vanity from "A Course in Miracles":

"The ultimate success of your efforts will not be determined by credentials, financial backing, or marketing techniques. It will be determined by your ability to access the spiritual gulf stream. Prayer makes that happen. Our prayer is that our devotion to excellence in any endeavor might come forth and serve the world."

Consider this a prayer on behalf of R.D., in an attempt to tap into that spiritual gulf stream through all of you.

Take it easy.

"Easy is right.
Begin right, and you are easy. Continue easy, and you are right.
The right way to go easy is to forget the right way and forget that the going is easy."

-- Chuang-Tzu

And here's the most amazing, baffling, and ironic twist to this great truth - something that no one tells us as we strive to embrace it - that the pathway to this deeper level of human understanding is very, very, very hard, and humbling. We have to have "hit the wall" in "doing it our way," which leaves us "desperate enough" to "slow down to look into (and through) the eyes of a child," as my dear friend, B.M.S., would say. Another great friend, S.W., just offered me a perfect little example of this profound truth that I'm very happy to share with all of you:

From a cartoon (Hi and Lois) in yesterday's Houston Chronicle:

Mom says to baby in playpen "Trixie, there just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything!"

Baby thinks: "Do less…"

Next panel, baby thinks again: "It amazes me how adults can't see the simple solutions."

Embracing life's adventure

"Adventure isn't only hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day-to-day obstacles of life - facing new challenges, seizing new opportunities, standing up for what we believe, testing our resources against the unknown and in the process discovering our own unique potential."

-- John Amatt, organizer and participant in Canada's first successful expedition to the summit of Mt Everest

Now this is a different way to look at our human difficulties - as part of a grand adventure of self-discovery. Isn't it interesting the things we are willing to risk our lives in pursuit of, all for the sake of adventure and fun, when at the same time we turn our career, money, and relationship struggles into agonizing misery that we dread. Aren't they all the same - big, somewhat dangerous, outrageously fun opportunities to discover the full extent of what we're capable of.

Prayer in support of marital struggle

Yesterday I met with the Men's Group I facilitate in having lunch once a month to support each other in being the best husbands, fathers, and men, in general, that we can be. Several of our members currently find themselves in the midst of varying degrees of marital crisis, which led to this prayer being our theme for this particular lunch conversation. I think it's a good "refrigerator prayer," something to be kept readily available for any of us who are married and experience difficult struggle from time to time:

"Beloved God,
Freedom lies in forgiveness.
Take these feelings of pain and hurt and transform us both.
I am willing to have my perceptions healed that I might rise above,
That I might hurt no longer, that I might be released from this suffering.
I ask that (* my partner's name* ) be healed
And given new life in our loving.
Guide us both to new life in Love by releasing the past.
By God's Grace, may this Love be made anew,
Sustained and alive forever and ever.
Dear God, take our pain and heal our hearts.
And guide us in our journey into ourselves."

-- Tamara Robinson

Business Revolution

"In the 20th century Business shifted and became information-based. In the 21st century it will become transformation-based, which will cause a global Business revolution...

Business in the 20th century was based on fear; it over-compensated for this fear by extreme busyness, cut-throat competition, and desparately trying to win rather than helping all succeed. Business in the 20th century kept trying to find new solutions in old ways, working harder and harder to stand still. In the 21st century Business will eventually find and lead with its heart, moving past its treatment of people as objects and its deadly and self-defeating dissociation, which blocks receiving and enjoyment. The successful Business will be transformative in its very nature, for itself as a company, its employees, its community, and the world.

There is a new breed of business men and women appearing on the scene to lead this revolution. They are bold visionaries - ones who know that Business cannot be conducted 'as usual' in the 21st century. They will bring revolution in the best sense of the word, in that, while the Business world will necessarily be turned upside down, it will be saved from being brought to its knees. To stop Business from being crippled and learning lessons the hard way, these visionaries will step up with authority to voice both their concerns and their solutions. They know that there has to be a better way to live and work, and they have committed themselves to finding and implementing this new way. In birthing this new vision they will bring it to Business, and in so doing birth the world into an abundant and flourishing future for all of mankind."

-- Chuck Spezzano

I enjoy the privilege of supporting some of these leaders, revolutionaries, and visionaries - helping them crystallize their beliefs, integrate their lives and their work, live their faith and their principles everywhere they go, walk their talk. They are peaceful warriors, and their journey is hard and fraught with risk. But they are surely "desparate enough" for this change, relentless in their stand for humanity and the world, and their number is increasing rapidly. Remember Einstein's theory on the three stages of acceptance of new truth; first, it's ridiculed, then it elicits hostile objection, then it is embraced openly and universally, as if it were always true. We are on the cusp of this "third stage," as it relates to this new order of Business, and it will happen in our lifetime.

On the subject of a book

"Creativity is . . . seeing something that doesn’t exist already exactly the way you see it. You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God."

Michele Shea

I've been getting many comments of encouragement lately from people who are inviting me to write a book. I am very thankful that so many of you feel that I have something important to say. I have struggled on this subject for quite some time now, not proceeding for reasons far too confusing and mind-numbing to get into here. So last night I prayed on the subject, and the response I got was loud and clear. This is "the book," my writing to and with you like this, and it is a living, breathing book that is not confined to a binding on a bookstore shelf. Instead, it shows up every day in the air and in your In Box. I have been instructed to touch your 500 or so lives as deeply, personally, and ongoingly as I can, rather than touch tens of thousands of lives, one time or several, in a fleeting and superficial way. I am being asked to live God's message to me every day, as it shows up in my daily life, encouraging each of you to experience your life so fully that you reach out and touch your own personal community with your life's message, and so on and so on, in such a way that the entire world will be touched by this living book, which is not really authored by Jim Spivey, but by all of us with God's encouragement and support. I am simply its daily instigator. This book is intended to be written by all of us, together, as a globally shared human journal, taking advantage of today's techology, but only at a pace that is consistent with deep and real human connection. I will know that I'm serving this calling when I am hearing from people all over the world who reach out and share their deepest selves with me. That is happening in a trickle right now, which means I'm growing and learning slowly but surely, exactly as it's meant to be. Thank you for your participation in this ongoing and ever-expanding dream. And thank you for reading (and writing) this book with me. Don't worry about its timing; there is no pressure to meet deadlines, no editors to feed our drafts to, no publishers to appease, no book-signings to schedule, nothing but us writing together in this ever-expanding now.

And one or more of the other kind of book might also show up one day; it's just not as if "the book" in me isn't already being written.

Take the time to be kind.

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes and impact are truly endless."

-- Mother Theresa

How quick we can be to assess, critique, judge, and refute each other, when it is so painfully obvious how starved we all are for human kindness. Take the time to share simple words of compassion, connection, and deep understanding with another person, and then feed yourself at the banquet created by your own kindness.