Great supporting inspiration from my wife

"To the extent that we want something from someone, to that exact degree we will be in pain."

-- Joan Walsh Anglund


"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."

-- Seneca

I had a meeting yesterday with a group of about 10 employees of a local company, at the request of and including the CEO, to facilitate and support a conversation about organizational trust - how it gets built, how it gets damaged, what it takes to rebuild and sustain it. It was a great initial meeting on the subject with some courageous and committed people. At the end of the meeting I offered each one of them a personal challenge, and they all accepted, the challenge being to invite another person in the organization with whom they have had an ongoing complaint or struggle or something they've wanted to be different (a situation that drains and strains personal and organizational trust), to have a constructive conversation about it with them, and then to invite and attend the next meeting on this subject with this person and share what transpired between them in the daring attempt to re-connect, and to get support from the group to help solidify progress and improve the situation even further, all as part of an ongoing effort to gain momentum in this early trust-re-building effort. The point of the exercise is to empower the people who were brave enough to come to the meeting to "be the change they wish to create" and to invite others to participate who have something specific to gain from the experience. As I left the meeting thinking about this scenario and then came up to my office to write about it, I had the first of the above quotes in my email In Box from Anne, and the second was the leadership quote from the inspirational calendar on her desk. It really does pay to have a partner who senses what you need as you need it. Thank you, partner.

And D.P., would you please share this message with everyone who was at our meeting, as well as with M.H., who so wanted to be there, and schedule time with me to prepare the memo you will send out to the company to give everyone context for the courageous requests that are about to occur. And know that it is an honor to serve you and your company in such a sacred undertaking, my friend.

Hidden justice

THIS FIRST PIECE WRITTEN ON THURSDAY MORNING AT 6:30AM:

"A person only begins to become the person he wants to be when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life."

-- James Allen

Now about this hidden justice, I was thinking about what might be another appropriate and interesting metaphor for the intermittent pain and peace of our lives, and the total justice and perfection of it, and sure enough one showed up just this morning, and it goes like this:

"Spiritual growth, our journey home, is like childbirth. You dilate, then you contract again, dilate, contract, and so on. As painful as the contractions might feel, it's all just part of the necessary rhythm for reaching the ultimate goal of total openness."

While pondering that metaphor, I recalled a conversation yesterday with a new client/friend in which we were talking about another great movie, "Mr. Holland's Opus." As you recall the movie, isn't it interesting to see the painful places where his life contracts (like when he loses himself in the struggle of career-building, disconnects from his wife and son, almost has an affair with a student), and those wonderful places where it stretches open again (like when he's teaching young people to find their love of music, and it works, his public tribute to his deaf son in the form of singing John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy," his touching moment with the retiring principal, played beautifully by Olympia Dukakis), leading up to that glorious moment where it all comes together (right after he thinks it's all about to end, and end badly) where he's standing on the podium with batton in hand, leading his former students in the playing of his life's symphony, looking tearfully into the face of God.

THIS PIECE WRITTEN ON THURSDAY AFTERNOON AT 1:30PM:

Sharing another update on my day as it happens, I just got back from a gift store where I found myself going to pick something up for Nellie, the mother of the police officer son who is involved with him in an ugly court battle over money and property, and as I walked through the door I was thinking to myself, "I'm just going to walk around until something speaks to me and says, 'buy me!'." Well, as I passed by one particular glass gift case, a polished silver plaque did the calling, and on it was inscribed, "Every wall is a door." That's what I bought, and that's the theme for this afternoon's visit - that this wall she is facing with her son is really a door to a whole new appreciation of life and love, and that it's up to her to walk through it. While I'm at it, I'm taking a copy of James Allen's As A Man Thinketh for the son, to honor the wisdom of the quote at the top of this page, and to help a police officer see God's justice in this situation, vs. the very limited perspective of man. I'm also taking a camera to get a picture of their first hug in 8 years. Wish me luck.

THIS PIECE WRITTEN ON THURSDAY NIGHT AT 8:30PM:

There is no picture to share, no progress to report, other than we're meeting again next week. I remain committed and hopeful, fully aware that love is the most powerful energy in the universe, and it's on my side.

Peace of mind, for its own sake

"Peace of mind has become the ultimate consumer good - which means that marketers and service providers must become healers."

-- Melinda Davis, founder and CEO of the Next Group, from FAST COMPANY Magazine

This quote holds such resounding truth for me, even if it's slightly askew in its focus (that of suggesting that marketers need to position themselves to take advantage of a market opportunity). I have been saying to my business clients lately that the work we're doing together could be brought to their clients to help "ease their pain" - not because it's good business, but because it's good, period. It's clear that so many people are hurting today, including (if not especially) those for whom money is not the primary or overwhelming issue in their lives, and they want to buy goods and services that help them feel good again, about themselves and the world they live in. And to further reinforce that point, I just watched the movie, "Field of Dreams" Tuesday night, maybe for the 7th or 8th time, and of course I cried again. That movie really speaks to me, so much so that I had to call the guy I had just met with at the end of my coaching day, and share the moment with him. We were talking about the subject of healing with our fathers, and how it ties to the legacy we want to leave our sons, and how it fuels the ministry we find ourselves taking out into the world of "successful," professional men. I remember the amazing words of Terrence Mann (the character James Earl Jones plays so brilliantly in the movie), "Yes, Ray, they most definitely will pay, for it is money they have and peace they lack.", and I saw my whole life before me, like the car headlights driving through the Iowa dusk to the baseball diamond in Ray Kinsella's corn field, where father and son stood re-united in their shared love of the simple, good things in life - beauty, family, nature, play, sharing. He didn't risk everything (while serving the voice that said, "build it, and he will come") to grow a business or to make money, but rather he was totally willing to "go the distance" simply to "ease his pain," defying all conventional wisdom, and God took care of all the rest.

P.S. It's now Wednesday morning as I'm writing this, and I just came back from my morning bagelatte with Jake, and while there I got a call from the same man I referenced above, who told me that last night he had a uniquely wonderful phone conversation with his 15-year-old son who he has had a strained relationship with lately. They spoke of simple things, and their desire to go deeper in their conversations and their love for each other, and they agreed to do so in person very soon. This man spoke as if nothing else mattered in the world after this first glimpse of a real relationship with his son. >From this, he can sense that all relationships can blossom this same way, when he shows up as all of who he really is. How simple and how wonderful.

Running as a metaphor for life

"Some running is good, more is better, and too much is just enough." - unknown

"Run with perseverance the race that is before you." - Heb. 12:1

I just came in from a 40-minute run in the neighborhood; I would guess about 4 1/2 miles. I've now logged 220 minutes aganist my 480 target for March, and I have run at least every other day for at least 20 minutes for 2 months now. Let me start by saying that it is still a stretch of the imagination to say that I'm a runner right now, but no more than saying, "I'm alive right now!" Both are bigger conversations than the simple words might suggest. And I am so amazed at the metaphorical comparisons that can be made between disciplined running and a disciplined life. For example, when you haven't been running (or really living) with discipline and focus over a significant period of time, it can be very difficult when you first choose to, even painful, and each minute seems to last forever, and then you just want to sit down and relax. When you have been (and it has taken me two months this time to just begin to feel this way again), it becomes pleasant, even joyful, and time goes by more quickly, and you often feel like you could spread your wings and fly. When you haven't been running (or really living, with all of life's raw emotions unleashed), all you can think of when you do is the immediate discomfort of it, and all you see is the next painful step that lies ahead of you. When you have been running (or really living), you have ample opportunity to think about everything, how thankful you are for your healthy & fit body, how much you love your wife and children, how much you enjoy your work, what you want to accomplish that day, and you can actually see how beautiful those trees are in the distance. When you haven't been running (or really living, according to God's spiritual laws), your body craves foods (or other things) that satisfy the immediate urges of your mouth and taste buds only (or the desires of the ego and mind), which just happen to keep you not running (or living), because they leave you feeling lazy and lethargic (possibly from being out of integrity with yourself). When you have been running (or really living), your body craves healthy fuel to keep experiencing that which makes it feel so good. And you happen to also notice that those healthy foods really taste good, too. What a bonus! When you haven't been running (or living full-out), you have no desire to run (or live full-out), and you can think of lots of good excuses not to - like being too busy, too drained, too old, over-worked, over-stressed, too tired, worn out. It all just seems like so much work. When you have been running (or living full-out), you can't wait to get out there and feel those real, alive feelings again every day.

And finally, if you're going to take up running, there's nothing like training for and running a marathon to give you a rich microcosm experience of what it is to live a big, full life. The year-long process will roller-coaster you through tremendous ups and downs, then when you can taste it and you want it the most it will break you down and crush you, and at that special moment when you most want to quit - no, have to quit - and yet somehow you can't and don't, then everything becomes possible for the rest of your life, from that quintessential moment of truth.

The paradox of acceptance as a prerequisite to change

"Anything in life that we don't accept will simply stick around and make trouble for us until we make peace with it."

-- Shakti Gawain

"Some people confuse acceptance with apathy (or resignation), but there's all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens."

-- Arthur Gordon

This applies most directly and painfully to changes we wish to make in ourselves. When we don't accept ourselves exactly as we are and, as a result, work feverishless to change those things about us that we find objectionable, those attributes tend to go underground and get worse, continually re-surfacing and unraveling our best efforts in the most exasperating ways. Most of us pursue this path with the purest of intentions, feeling that we "should" change these "bad" characteristics in order to become a "good" person. To ignore them (apathy) or give up (resignation), after all, would be a sign of weakness (which is very bad). So, with all of these "best intentions" and a rigid insistence on our own self-improvement, we proceed to pave the pathway to hell for ourselves. We often blindly project our own self-hate onto others we see demonstrating the same "weaknesses" we can't reconcile inside ourselves - judging them by their "bad" actions, while judging ourselves by our "good" intentions. The truth is that we must come to terms with ourselves first, accepting - even embracing - our full nature, before we can ever begin to find peace and the freedom to act in our own (or anyone else's) long-term best interests. Self-acceptance frees us of the impossible burden of our own flawed humanity in our efforts to become the best human beings that we can be.

The humbling pathway to humility

"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." -- Matthew 5:5

"After crosses and losses, men grow humbler and wiser." -- Benjamin Franklin

"... the voice of humility is God's music, and the silence of humility is God's rhetoric. Humility enforces where neither virtue nor strength can prevail nor reason."

-- Francis Quarles

"Is it not as the steps of degree in the Temple, whereby we descend to the knowledge of ourselves, and ascend to the knowledge of God? Would we attain mercy, humility will help us most."

-- C. Sutton

"I had to be forced underground before I could understand that the way to God is not up but down. Years ago, someone told me that humility is central to spiritual life. That made sense to me: I was proud to think of myself as humble! But this person did not tell me that the path to humility, for some of us at least, goes through humiliation, where we are brought low, rendered powerless, stripped of pretenses and defenses, and left feeling fraudulent, empty, and useless - a humiliation that allows us to grow from the ground up, from the humus of common ground."

-- Parker Palmer

Sorry, I got carried away today with FIVE quotes, but I just loved the power and consistency of these messages, and the vivid description of how some (like me), only come to experience humility through deep (and often humiliating) self-knowledge. Some are born with this Divine awareness and never lose it; they are deeply blessed. But some must come to it through "crosses and losses." I can relate to these people. This is especially true in the business world, where we get deluded and seduced into believing that we should, can, and actually do (when we get it right) control outcomes and people. Regardless of how it's attained and in what venue, it is the increasing (and often painful) awareness of our own fragile personal egos and shared humanity that tunes us in to the beauty of "God's music." Yes, Bruce, I believe this is the "natural flow musical universe economy" you so eloquently describe in your writing, and please keep it up. :-)

Remembering Eric

"God saw you getting tired
And a cure was not to be.
So He put His arms around you
And whispered, 'come to me.'
With tearful eyes we watched you
And saw you pass away.
And though we loved you dearly
We could not make you stay.
A golden heart stopped beating,
A precious soul at rest.
God broke our hearts to prove to us
He only takes the best."


It was two years ago today that a group of us from my corporate days said goodbye to a dear friend who fought a losing battle with Leukemia. Eric was a beautiful young man who lived the values so many of us espouse, and he did so quietly and matter-of-factly. He loved his family and his friends, and everything else was second. As I turned the page of my 10-year journal to today's date, his picture from his memorial service fell out of the pages with the above poem right below his smiling face, and I knew that God and Eric were smiling down on me in fond remembrance of a life well-lived. For those who loved him, Eric is still very much alive in our struggle to live his elegantly simple life philosophy. He was, and still is, a great teacher.

I offer this message today to anyone who is experiencing the imminent loss of a loved one. May God comfort and guide you and your family as you honor death as an important lesson in Life.