Hey, no one needs a market analyst to recognize that the market here and abroad has recently fallen through the floor. While it seems bottomless, there is no solace in knowing that there is an absolute floor of resistance the the averages will bounce off of. People - everywhere - are scared and the recession-proofing that was built into the stock market, does not account for fear of this nature. Interestingly, people living in poverty are not as scared. And to be certain they will bear the brunt of this recession more than anyone. They aren't scared because they have not lost anything - they had none to lose.
But we in the middle and others like my client I wrote of (Moment of Truth, 10/7/08), we have lost some of the future in which we had invested: retirement plans, 401K's, Social Security. Uncertainty has become the state of things for now and the foreseeable future. And yet our leader (W, himself) wants us to pretend that all is well in happy land. Sorry, Dubyah, I do not have faith in you, nor do I accept your ignorance and empty promises.
So what are we to do in times like these? Politicians and money brokers are looking out for their own best interests and that may or may not work out for all of us in the long run (secretly, I think that whatever solution "they" work out will ultimately benefit mostly "them"). The answer is not what you want to hear - nor is it an answer at all. You see, these are the times without answers. These are the times of doubt. These are the times that try men's souls. So the reality is that we look into these times and hone our faith. We need to view these situations like Peter stepping out of the boat, and ask ourselves, "do we believe?" "But when [Peter] noticed the strong wind he became frightened and, beginning to sink, cried out,'Lord, save me!' Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him saying, 'You of little faith, why did you doubt?'" (Mt. 14:30-31)
Do we have faith now when there is no reason to have faith? Do we believe when there is nothing in which to believe? We need to move beyond our inner Peter and inner Thomas to exercise true faith. So yesterday the Almighty Dow jumped in some shark-like feeding frenzy response of bargain-hunting. And we are all happy again. Indeed! "Have you believed because you have seen? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." John 20:29
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Spiritual Fitness (Yom Kippur)
My friend Peter and I have this running discussion on spiritual fitness. We got it in our heads that spirituality is something that either gets flabby or is exercised and is kept in shape - that in other words, we are not just gifted with spirituality, it doesn't just happen or just exist - it takes a certain discipline. So we started getting carried away with the discussion and the analogies of late. It seems to us that the fitness center is life itself - life, seen for what it really is and not through our illusions or denials. Life provides all of the stations of the universal gym of spirituality! Stick you face in that and go to town!
But then there are also spiritual exercises that in and of themselves tone up our spiritual fitness. (The discussion continued and spread through my friend Jeffrey.) These are literally physico-spiritual movements and positions - like yoga positions - that, in doing them, help tone and shape the spiritual muscles. And they come from every tradition: from yoga (when one surrenders to the position and no longer fights it) and the simple act of humbling oneself by getting on your knees; to various vipassana postures from Buddhism, the twirling of Sufi dance, and davening from the Jewish traditions. Each of these movements lifts us from our human and mundane experience and shapes and forms our spirituality. It is a workout routine with different stations!
But why bother? For me, I have no choice. Let me explain. I have a spinal injury that resulted in my left calf receiving no impulses and as a further result in atrophying that muscle. If I do not exercise daily, I am in pain by mid-afternoon. I suppose I could choose not to exercise and have the pain, but to me there is no choice. Spiritually, I am in the same place. I suppose I could choose not to exercise and have the hollow ache of lacking spirit or lacking the experience of god's presence in my life, but to me that is not a choice - ergo the only alternative is getting on my knees, stretching in the lotus, whirling in ecstasy, posturing in reverence, and rocking in prayerful experience at the east wall of the the life I see all around me.
The final element of Yom Kippur, Jeffrey tells me, is tachlit - the spiritual version of a hot soapy shower after weeks of hiking in the backwoods of Maine, or just that refreshing one after my exercising; letting the water wash away all of the sweat and smells of the spiritual workout! The whole thing is one big fitness routine. I get it! Now if you'll excuse me, the gym is calling - gotta go!
But then there are also spiritual exercises that in and of themselves tone up our spiritual fitness. (The discussion continued and spread through my friend Jeffrey.) These are literally physico-spiritual movements and positions - like yoga positions - that, in doing them, help tone and shape the spiritual muscles. And they come from every tradition: from yoga (when one surrenders to the position and no longer fights it) and the simple act of humbling oneself by getting on your knees; to various vipassana postures from Buddhism, the twirling of Sufi dance, and davening from the Jewish traditions. Each of these movements lifts us from our human and mundane experience and shapes and forms our spirituality. It is a workout routine with different stations!
But why bother? For me, I have no choice. Let me explain. I have a spinal injury that resulted in my left calf receiving no impulses and as a further result in atrophying that muscle. If I do not exercise daily, I am in pain by mid-afternoon. I suppose I could choose not to exercise and have the pain, but to me there is no choice. Spiritually, I am in the same place. I suppose I could choose not to exercise and have the hollow ache of lacking spirit or lacking the experience of god's presence in my life, but to me that is not a choice - ergo the only alternative is getting on my knees, stretching in the lotus, whirling in ecstasy, posturing in reverence, and rocking in prayerful experience at the east wall of the the life I see all around me.
The final element of Yom Kippur, Jeffrey tells me, is tachlit - the spiritual version of a hot soapy shower after weeks of hiking in the backwoods of Maine, or just that refreshing one after my exercising; letting the water wash away all of the sweat and smells of the spiritual workout! The whole thing is one big fitness routine. I get it! Now if you'll excuse me, the gym is calling - gotta go!
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Moment of Truth
One of my clients told me yesterday that he had lost more than two million dollars over the last week. When I share that with others, I am surprised at the reactions: "That's a rich man's problem, at least he had it to lose!" "Wow - I guess it's a sign of the times." But the one that got me was: "Why did you continue the session instead of letting him get back to work?" That translates to why talk about improving his leadership when what is most needed is action? But really, when is there a better time to talk about leadership?
I have written before about faith - the kind of faith that one finds when there is no reason to believe and nothing in one's mind and soul wants to believe. I think the same is true about leadership. Most situations of leadership are a cake walk. when people willingly line up behind the leader and when the mission is clear, it really doesn't take much to lead - just the title and the willingness to open one's mouth and say, "Let's go!" But when the chips are down, and when everyone is either looking the other way or at least over their shoulder, it takes everything you have and much of what you don't have to lead.
What doesn't work at times like this is cheerleading, pie-in-the-sky optimism, bravado, or sexy powerpoint presentations. What doesn't work is all of the aphorisms learned at leadership school, the lessons of leadership in Jack and Built To Last and The One Minute Manager. What doesn't work is "been there done that," "this too shall pass, and "win this one for the gipper."
This is the moment of truth, the dark night of the soul, the death valley experience. And what works here for you has not yet been invented. What works here is not resident in one person. What works here is simple, gut-wrenching, knee-to-knee, eye-to-eye engagement with others in the process of discovering through open, co-creative dialog what none of us knows nor even knew we had. Leadership at the moment of truth is open and inviting, humbling and being humbled, questioning and being willing to listen to what is said but perhaps as importantly to what has not been said. Most of all, leadership at this point takes the courage to be incredibly present to others - each other we encounter - and to stay present when everything inside wants to duck and cover. After all, leadership isn't about the leader - it is not about you.
I have written before about faith - the kind of faith that one finds when there is no reason to believe and nothing in one's mind and soul wants to believe. I think the same is true about leadership. Most situations of leadership are a cake walk. when people willingly line up behind the leader and when the mission is clear, it really doesn't take much to lead - just the title and the willingness to open one's mouth and say, "Let's go!" But when the chips are down, and when everyone is either looking the other way or at least over their shoulder, it takes everything you have and much of what you don't have to lead.
What doesn't work at times like this is cheerleading, pie-in-the-sky optimism, bravado, or sexy powerpoint presentations. What doesn't work is all of the aphorisms learned at leadership school, the lessons of leadership in Jack and Built To Last and The One Minute Manager. What doesn't work is "been there done that," "this too shall pass, and "win this one for the gipper."
This is the moment of truth, the dark night of the soul, the death valley experience. And what works here for you has not yet been invented. What works here is not resident in one person. What works here is simple, gut-wrenching, knee-to-knee, eye-to-eye engagement with others in the process of discovering through open, co-creative dialog what none of us knows nor even knew we had. Leadership at the moment of truth is open and inviting, humbling and being humbled, questioning and being willing to listen to what is said but perhaps as importantly to what has not been said. Most of all, leadership at this point takes the courage to be incredibly present to others - each other we encounter - and to stay present when everything inside wants to duck and cover. After all, leadership isn't about the leader - it is not about you.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Twisted
Okay, I can't be serious all of the time. From the twisted mind of yours truly comes the following observation on the bleakest of Monday's on the NYSE: I was looking at the big board listings on CNBC (all red down arrows) and noted with a giggle that turned into a raucous belly laugh (or is it gallows humor) that aside from the safe haven of gold which soared above the $900 mark, the only stock that went up today as the Dow fell 777 points was Campbell's Soups!!
I looked for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese but it isn't a stock symbol.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
It's All Good
I have been haunted by memories of late. I guess when one is approaching a full six decades there's a lot the inner haunter has to choose from. But don't hear that as a bad or a good - it just is what is happening. In fact, that is the problem: what is showing up in retrospect is how what seemed good, wasn't (or may have been) and what was a horror has become the foundation of a towering strength today. So these reviews are more like movie watching - scary scenes and fun scenes but both just some screen event with no real power over me anymore. The take-away here is that each event held within it the power to be positive or negative depending on how I chose then or see it now.
The Greeks had a word for spirit, daemonae (my Greek is 40 years old so sue me if it's spelled wrong), which was not just the demonic (evil) as it is known today. It was actually the force within that could be good (rightly used) or bad (improperly used). It was the root of happiness (eudaemonika) as well. I think they nailed that one. Life is like that - each moment is rife with the power of good and bad. However I see it, however I choose, it becomes that. Moreover, after the fact, it still maintains that power to morph from good to bad or bad to good. And, think I, if that is so of life, is it not also true of my experience of god? My belief in god (should you not have read others of these blogs of mine - god is a word of convenience but not to be confused with the bearded, robed, grandfatherish thing of lore) is that god is in through and a part of all life and movement throughout the cosmos - and that includes me and my tiny little corner. God holds that same daemonic power - the source of joy and the fear of destruction (remember, you and I can be taken at anytime). What if god were not good or bad (those are human terms), what if god just was/is; all powerful, meaning just that - the power to source everything and be channeled to good or bad?
Then that puts the responsibility squarely on me to choose (right and wrong) and to interpret the past (good and bad). Thanks god! It would be so much simpler if the rules were just spelled out, I mean beyond the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. But of course that is impossible - 6 billion people times a lifetime of living an infinite number of moment-by-moment choices - it would not be possible to write the rule book for that. Se we - I - have to think and choose, and who is to say what is good or bad? Life is just rich - filled with the spirit of it all, with the daemonic, the yin and yang of all-in-one richness.
Yesterday I got a note from a friend of long ago - someone who in the good and bad of it all I thought I had hurt. In telling her life story to her 18 year old, she had reflected warmly about our years together. Well - there you go! It's like Glenda asked, "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" I dunno - which witch is which? I guess to me it's all good!
The Greeks had a word for spirit, daemonae (my Greek is 40 years old so sue me if it's spelled wrong), which was not just the demonic (evil) as it is known today. It was actually the force within that could be good (rightly used) or bad (improperly used). It was the root of happiness (eudaemonika) as well. I think they nailed that one. Life is like that - each moment is rife with the power of good and bad. However I see it, however I choose, it becomes that. Moreover, after the fact, it still maintains that power to morph from good to bad or bad to good. And, think I, if that is so of life, is it not also true of my experience of god? My belief in god (should you not have read others of these blogs of mine - god is a word of convenience but not to be confused with the bearded, robed, grandfatherish thing of lore) is that god is in through and a part of all life and movement throughout the cosmos - and that includes me and my tiny little corner. God holds that same daemonic power - the source of joy and the fear of destruction (remember, you and I can be taken at anytime). What if god were not good or bad (those are human terms), what if god just was/is; all powerful, meaning just that - the power to source everything and be channeled to good or bad?
Then that puts the responsibility squarely on me to choose (right and wrong) and to interpret the past (good and bad). Thanks god! It would be so much simpler if the rules were just spelled out, I mean beyond the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. But of course that is impossible - 6 billion people times a lifetime of living an infinite number of moment-by-moment choices - it would not be possible to write the rule book for that. Se we - I - have to think and choose, and who is to say what is good or bad? Life is just rich - filled with the spirit of it all, with the daemonic, the yin and yang of all-in-one richness.
Yesterday I got a note from a friend of long ago - someone who in the good and bad of it all I thought I had hurt. In telling her life story to her 18 year old, she had reflected warmly about our years together. Well - there you go! It's like Glenda asked, "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" I dunno - which witch is which? I guess to me it's all good!
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Theology of Words
I don't have the words right yet to deal with what is tumbling around inside me. I am in this class with a magnificent professor - brilliant and pedigreed - and of course I find myself debating with him in class. It is sport and my own unique way of learning (if I can dialog with him the words and concepts have a better shot of sticking in with the cobwebs inside my cranium). And then it happens: this brilliant man says something that leads me to think that what he calls theology - a legacy of concepts from Niebuhr to Tillich to Stackhouse - a sound and well honed discourse, is in fact light years away from my personal theology. My beliefs are borne of those and other readings but then lightly tossed in a big bowl with a lot of vinegar, or more like dust and blood and events and dark nights alone in prayer. And as a result my "theology" if it can be called that, is not only personally defined but quite different.
Belief - that is the operative word - is something that I have because there can be no evidence for what I name god. (Sorry but I use that word/name for convenience because Voldemort stole "He who cannot be named"). Anyway faith and belief is what appears in the void not what happens when some Sunday School Teacher says "cuz the Bible tells me so." I believe in and follow what Joshua (aka Jesus the Nazarene) preached - a somewhat radical and reverse logic that in order to be filled one must be empty, in order to save your life you have to lose it, that the rich are poor and the poor have abundance. He told us that what we think is good is what is in the way and that when we embrace what is bad (our faults and defects) we are made whole and filled with compassion for others. This practical but counterintuitive logic seems to be quite different from the teachings of my church and certainly this classically educated professor.
Now I am not a suck for a grade, and I can go to the mat with the best of them, but I do feel this dilemma. How am I to explain and justify that which is only my journey? Each of us has a personal spiritual journey and most likely none of those will fit within the structure of any classic theology. It can't. Textbook theology is perhaps what we are supposed to think and espouse, but the experience of spiritual contact cannot be defined, or bottled up or very often spoken. Then what am I to do? Argue my points from a textbook definition which no longer lives for me? Or struggle to place my experience in some conceptual framework knowing that it may never make "real" sense to anyone but me?
Belief - that is the operative word - is something that I have because there can be no evidence for what I name god. (Sorry but I use that word/name for convenience because Voldemort stole "He who cannot be named"). Anyway faith and belief is what appears in the void not what happens when some Sunday School Teacher says "cuz the Bible tells me so." I believe in and follow what Joshua (aka Jesus the Nazarene) preached - a somewhat radical and reverse logic that in order to be filled one must be empty, in order to save your life you have to lose it, that the rich are poor and the poor have abundance. He told us that what we think is good is what is in the way and that when we embrace what is bad (our faults and defects) we are made whole and filled with compassion for others. This practical but counterintuitive logic seems to be quite different from the teachings of my church and certainly this classically educated professor.
Now I am not a suck for a grade, and I can go to the mat with the best of them, but I do feel this dilemma. How am I to explain and justify that which is only my journey? Each of us has a personal spiritual journey and most likely none of those will fit within the structure of any classic theology. It can't. Textbook theology is perhaps what we are supposed to think and espouse, but the experience of spiritual contact cannot be defined, or bottled up or very often spoken. Then what am I to do? Argue my points from a textbook definition which no longer lives for me? Or struggle to place my experience in some conceptual framework knowing that it may never make "real" sense to anyone but me?
Sunday, September 7, 2008
The Groundhog
We have a groundhog in our neighborhood - that I think lives under my tool shed. - and who helps himself to our herbs and flowers as well as the apples that fall over the fence from my neighbor's tree. He is big, and fat, and as it appears to me, quite happy in life.
I was watching him this morning at breakfast. He sat peacefully on the hillside, alternating munching on well watered grasses and observing the occasional joggers going by. I wondered what I could learn from him. First of all, he wants for nothing, yet he did not plant it, care for it or invest anything in it. If he could speak I am certain that he would view this world as his idea, his garden, his tossed salad on a silver platter! Yet I worry so much. How will I pay for this or that? Will I be able to feed my family? What about the leak I always get in the cellar after a heavy rain? How can I start seeing the world as my garden?
But he is also serene. Nothing seems to hurry my rather annoying visitor. He knows where his safe places are - the nearest bush or tunnel to escape me or another neighbor who has had it with his confounded eating our precious flowers. But he is calm and, yes, serene. he eats peacefully, looks up and surveys his world peacefully, and returns to his apple slowly and calmly. He isn't rushed - as I am - running from pillar to post, from one client to the next. Where is my peace, my pace, in this hurry-up world in which I live.
So I have declared today as Groundhog Day! And maybe tomorrow too. But unlike the movie of the same name, it will not be reliving the same events to get it right. It will be to see the world as my salad plate, to take my time, to know where my safety really is and to observe everything with a calm serenity. I have despised the little bastard, for always showing me up and outsmarting my attempts to stop him. But now he has the audacity to become my teacher!
I was watching him this morning at breakfast. He sat peacefully on the hillside, alternating munching on well watered grasses and observing the occasional joggers going by. I wondered what I could learn from him. First of all, he wants for nothing, yet he did not plant it, care for it or invest anything in it. If he could speak I am certain that he would view this world as his idea, his garden, his tossed salad on a silver platter! Yet I worry so much. How will I pay for this or that? Will I be able to feed my family? What about the leak I always get in the cellar after a heavy rain? How can I start seeing the world as my garden?
But he is also serene. Nothing seems to hurry my rather annoying visitor. He knows where his safe places are - the nearest bush or tunnel to escape me or another neighbor who has had it with his confounded eating our precious flowers. But he is calm and, yes, serene. he eats peacefully, looks up and surveys his world peacefully, and returns to his apple slowly and calmly. He isn't rushed - as I am - running from pillar to post, from one client to the next. Where is my peace, my pace, in this hurry-up world in which I live.
So I have declared today as Groundhog Day! And maybe tomorrow too. But unlike the movie of the same name, it will not be reliving the same events to get it right. It will be to see the world as my salad plate, to take my time, to know where my safety really is and to observe everything with a calm serenity. I have despised the little bastard, for always showing me up and outsmarting my attempts to stop him. But now he has the audacity to become my teacher!
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