grab a pencil, Charlie Brown

In a favorite comic strip, Charlie Brown attempts to write to his pen pal (“Dear Pen pal,” he begins) but his pen splotches ink all over his page. In the final frame we see Chuck start again, this time with a different writing utensil. His letter now begins “Dear pencil pal,” and we presume he’s able to complete his letter with no further inconveniences. (Knowing this character, though, we might not be surprised if his pencil breaks in half, and he ends up finishing the letter with his blood, sweat, and tears.)

We’ve talked about setup before in our videos (see my writers’ group page in the sidebar) but sometimes our normal setup doesn’t work for a variety of reasons.

This week the keyboard on my Surface Pro 3 stopped working, a modern situation similar to that good ol’ blockhead’s ink problem. I had some time to write last night but I was too frustrated with using other keyboard solutions. Besides, writing on a computer keyboard usually also means I’m writing something I intend to publish, while last night I just needed to journal out my frustrations (while I write about authenticity a lot that does npt mean I need to pathologically spread my negative attitudes across the web while I’m having them). So not only did my objective change, but my setup changed, too. I grabbed that good ol’ pencil and a notebook and off I went.

Later on in the evening, calmed down enough to tolerate the frustrations (and backspace button excess) of typing on the tablet’s virtual keyboard rather than the magnetic, clip-on keyboard I prefer, I was able to come back to the computer to work on my next book outline, which I’ll use in a proposal.

The point is, we need different setups for different purposes. We also need backups and redundancies so that we have an outlet for creativity or activity of any kind. Instead of breaking the flow when things are not working, we need a backup plan. This doesn’t only relate to writers, but for backhoe operators, fitness fanatics, painters, dieting, dating your spouse, pretty much anything we have a personal dedication to doing regularly. What’s your plan B? What’s your version of a pencil? How will you get it done when you’re at your most frustrated state?

 

a few of my favorite things

It’s time for a bit of a recap  as I analyze what I want to write in 2016, as well as what you’ve been reading. Here are the five most-viewed blogs I’ve released since last April (which might tell us all about what you’ve enjoyed reading), followed by five blogs which didn’t get many views but are worth your notice in my opinion.

I’d like to hear from you particularly on this subject: which blog topics have you most enjoyed reading about? Some of my most common themes are: writing, listening, community, void, reading, and occasionally humor. Which particular blogs did you like the most?

My number one most viewed blog, originally posted Nov 28, 2015: Intentional community, #2. To be a leader who finishes well, you will need an intentional community.

Second place, from May 6,2015: Do you drink the Kool-ade?  Effective techniques are self-evident to intelligent observers. You shouldn’t have to tell someone to drink the Kool-Ade.

The most recent blog in the top five most-viewed, jumping into 3rd in just 10 days: Ant farm. The value of diversity in community.

The sequel to the number one blog is in 4th place: Intentional community #3. Redundancy: Having one person you can trust is not enough.

my 5th most viewed blog, another old one, from May 19: She burns my ears. The Amish guy whose community told him so.

Chances are if you’ve been following my blog for a while you’ve seen those, and based on the thematic connections it looks like my writing on community is most relevant. Now here are some of my personal top five favorites out of my first 120 posts on this blog, ones with fewer views that you may have missed (I have avoided blogs that were edited and reused in my book The Art of Motivational Listening, because I would prefer you read them there instead):

June 23, 2015: Thoughtfulness is the main resource for listening. About making time to think so your mind is unpolluted when listening.

September 8, 2015. Muzak to my ears. About dating your spouse and listening.

Putulu payer. About authenticity in giving each other compliments.

Calm under fire. About leadership, and martyrdom… more or less.

Coming soon to theaters. .. comedy. If you’re only going to check out one of these and you need a laugh…

I do encourage your feedback and would like to hear: out of these second five blogs, which did you like the best? If I write a book about intentional community in the 21st century, would you buy it? Thanks for your feedback!

 

 

 

 

 

Is it a cult?

What makes something a cult?

My wife Megan came under fire because she’s reading a book called The Urantia Book, which has been classified as a “cult” by www.creationists.org. This discovery caused some distress among acquaintances, and I ended up writing much of this in response to their concerns. I’m skeptical myself about the legitimacy of The Urantia Book. I haven’t read the book — she shares bits with me– but I haven’t read it all.

Having grown up in a Christian communal church (commune) myself I am fairly sensitive to the use of the word “cult”. Up to age 12 I lived in a community which has been termed a cult by some people but was in fact a fairly healthy Christian church. The community, Plow Creek Fellowship (PCF), in Tiskilwa, Illinois, still exists today. Living together communally with most major property (land, houses, cars and cash) owned in common, PCF in the 1970’s and 80’s was modeled after the early church as described in Acts, Chapter 2. I say that it was a fairly healthy church, in spite of the fact that we later (circa 1993, 7 years after my family left) found out one of the elders had perpetrated sexual abuse of minors. On the other hand, I have several friends who were raised in a different Christian church community here in Indiana that was not healthy, and even now they will tell you it was a cult. For example, that group’s stance on faith healing didn’t allow people to go to the doctor at all, and so some children died of easily treatable illnesses, a very cult-ish practice to be sure, also illegal (which became their downfall, as I understand).

On Curiosity and the impact of reading: We all have books other than the Bible which have been significant in our growth as Christians. Any particular book which might be just that for one of us isn’t as impacting for another. It doesn’t have to be an overtly religious book like The Shack, but can also be a novel such as A Prayer for Owen Meany which can enhance our faith (I read a few pages of The Shack and got bored, but I highly recommend A Prayer for Owen Meany as a deeply spiritual and thoughtful novel, which is probably eighty times more complex and intricate than The Shack). I will always encourage anyone I know to read as much as they can, with curiosity.  Really nothing much else fosters reading as well as curiosity does. You can’t make people read something if they’re not curious, or not read it if they are!

I figure the more often a book is banned, the more important it is to read it; one of my favorite books of all time is Huckleberry Finn. It’s been banned twice, and for exactly opposite reasons! At first they thought it was too friendly to blacks, later they decided it was racist against blacks. In fact, it’s an incredible piece of artwork which forces you to decide for yourself what you think about race and doesn’t dictate what you should think. Banning a book is a sure way to make it a bestseller.

In fact, one major defining factor of cults is that they limit what sort of things you can read, or where you get your information. I’ve been reading about the woman who took down the cult leaders, misogynists, child abusers, rapists, and polygamists at the FLDS compound a few years ago in Utah (The Witness Wore Red) and this is a key component to how the FLDS leaders controlled people: they clamped down on what information they get and what they read or saw on television, much, much more than mainstream (LDS) Mormons do. This is part of what the Jehovah’s Witnesses do also. I visited my in-law’s Jehovah’s Witness neighbors at Christmas for half an hour, while they were watching a movie produced by JWs and that’s pretty much all they’re allowed to watch and read, stuff produced in New York at the JW headquarters. So I will never tell anyone what they can and cannot or should and should not read. It’s much preferable to me to have people read what they want to read, and then have an open discussion with them about it. That’s a major factor in how you avoid becoming sucked into a cult. No secrecy, no double life, lots of curiosity and plenty of open forum for discussion. Megan’s decision to share with her family about what she’s reading, rather than lead what she calls a “double life” is brave, and in itself is a strong indication that she’s not in a cult! Most people sucked into a cult tend to cut off contact with their families, they don’t share openly and vulnerably the way she is.

What makes a cult a cult is not so much what they believe as how they are structured regarding access to information. The Christian Church, from Greek and Russian Orthodox to Catholicism to Southern Baptists to the Harrist Church of Western Africa to cell churches in South Korea to PCF, all have different iterations of Christianity, so many forms and beliefs that there are people who follow Jesus and interpret various Biblical passages in ways that are sometimes a polar opposite from each other, all of them claiming that they stand on the Word of God (and so they interpret Scripture in the same way that Huck Finn has been interpreted: in opposite ways at different times in history). This doesn’t mean the Word is wrong, but it does show how wrong people can be (including myself)! The key difference between churches and cults is not as much in what they do or don’t believe (though that does play a part, there are definitely heresies within cults) but in how tightly they control what information people can have. As far as interpretation goes, only the very best literature has multiple legitimate interpretations. The Bible is such a book, praise be to God! And so is Huck Finn and A Prayer for Owen Meany. My understanding is that Urantia is not such a book, not so much, which squelches my interest in reading it.

Let’s suppose you write a book stating that the moon is made of cheese. Some might enjoy your story and laugh it off, while others may believe you and come along for the ride. This latter group might even start sharing with others this wonderful discovery that the moon is made of cheese, and say that if we could only get there we could feed all of Africa for years and years, and so on, and that’s fine, no harm done, really… Unless you begin to tell people they’re not allowed to read books about the lunar landings where Neil Armstrong picked up some moon dust and he discovered that it wasn’t Kraft Mac N Cheese powder, or unless you begin raising money (sorry, I mean “tithes and love offerings”) for a lunar voyage to acquire this cheese (which you pocket so you can buy vacation homes and a private jet, of course)… as long as you don’t do those things, you don’t have a cult. You just have a goofy idea that’s incorrect according to other sources. Your theory or claim might be misinformed, or it might even be correct (Galileo comes to mind here when it comes to theories about planetary stuff which people thought were anti-Biblical, because the Bible clearly states in at least FIVE different books out of the 66 that the earth has four corners, borders or extremities and everyone knows a sphere has no corners) but your Moon Is Cheese theory is not blasphemy worth burning at the stake over. It’s just a silly book. Good luck, sell lots of copies! Especially when it gets banned! (One last comment here: if your book does sell lots of copies, obviously you got some money out of people, but you still don’t have a cult. If you convince them that the book itself is some sort of talisman that will protect them so long as they have one in every room, or build an entire temple out of them, so that they’ll buy multiple copies, then you might be leaning towards cult-like problems. But just selling a lot of copies of your book doesn’t make you a cult leader. It just makes you a rich celebrity and perhaps a thought leader, like Rush Limbaugh.)

I did read through creationists.org to see their critique of Urantia. Now here is an interesting question that creationists.org raises in their refutation of Urantia: that “the Bible is God’s only revealed truth to us.”

This is a common statement, but a tricky claim to deal with, because the statement comes with implications that raise a lot of questions. The first implication to consider about this statement is “therefore we should read no other books, or at least expect to get no revelation when reading other books.” But as I’ve established, we’ve all had other books which spoke to us in some way that was beneficial. (For example, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” made a huge impact on me just a few months before I met Megan.) Clearly other books have had some benefit, in the sense that God has revealed some of the truth of his love, mercy and justice to us through them. While we say that the Bible is God’s only revealed truth and we have a certain awareness of the correctness of this statement since the Bible includes the story of Jesus’ resurrection, yet we don’t act like it, because we read other books and we do get something out of it. It does not mean that we should canonize any of these other books, but that certainly happens informally. My brother likes “Culture of Honor” so much that he’s recommended it to me multiple times. He’s not canonizing Culture of Honor formally, but he sure seems to think it’s revealed something important for how his church leadership can build a desirable culture. Does Culture of Honor reveal a part of God’s truth to us? Most likely it does. Was Danny Silk writing while the Holy Spirit was dwelling with him? Probably so. Does Danny Silk think this book should be added to Scripture? I doubt it. Did Paul think we would canonize his letters? I’m not so sure he did! He may not have realized it! I think if he did, he might have taken more care to avoid sarcasm. When Paul discusses how all Scripture is “God-breathed and useful for teaching, reproof, correction, training” (2 Tim 3:16) was he referring to his own letter, the one he was writing at the moment, as well as the Torah? I suspect Paul only meant the Torah. So then where does that leave the entire New Testament? Or was Paul assuming his audience knew which books he meant? Does the New Testament get added to his statement retroactively? These are questions that the statement “the Bible is God’s only revealed truth to us” fails to really address. It’s simplistic.

A second implication is the idea that the Logos word of Scripture is all we need. The problem with this is that Jesus said what we need even more than daily bread is a “Rhema” word (spoken, uttered) from the mouth of God when he resisted Satan in the first temptation. In doing this he quoted Torah, of course, because that’s beneficial for reproof. Often times this passage in Matthew 4:4 is misunderstood to be a reminder to read the Bible every day, but that’s not what he’s saying at all. He’s saying our relationship with the Father should be such that we can ask him for daily bread in the form of a spoken word to our hearts. So there are some other ways that we get revelations. Jesus says that “my sheep know my voice” and so does not spend a lot of time explaining how we will know when we’ve heard a Rhema word uttered to our heart. He assumed we could hear it.

A third problem with the statement that the Bible is “God’s only revealed truth” is that it also gets tied to a particular interpretation. The bottom line is that this can lead to idolatry of an interpretation. Very dangerous.

I do see the admonishment in Galatians 1:6-10 as a significant reason to look into whether or not Urantia is “a gospel contrary to that which we preached” and I think that’s exactly why Megan is studying Scripture just as much as she is reading this Urantia book. Is it contrary? If so, “let that angel be accursed.” But if it is not contrary, then what is it? Jesus said it both ways: Whoever is not against us is for us (Mark 9:40) He who is not with me is against me (Matthew 12:30). The bottom line for Jesus here seems to be not so much how you interpret stuff, but who are you for? Which is known by fruit, not interpretation.

I was also curious about the link to ex-Mormons that creationists.org had, with a testimony of an ex-Mormon who (after leaving Mormonism) found a group of people studying Urantia. The person then encountered spirits who “visited me personally at my home and are very real” which were tested later by Christian friends and found to be demonic. Were these spirits coming because the person read the book? Or were they coming because the person was a ripe target for deception? I don’t know. It’s an interesting case study and a personal testimony that should give us good reason for caution.

If there are any books I would steer clear of completely, it would be things that invite people to openly invite demonic presence, like Satanic ritual books or whatever. There are a few things that are inherently unhealthy to even read. From the few passages Megan has read to me of Urantia, it does not sound like a book of Satanic rituals or invitation to the demonic. Strange, weird, goofy maybe, but not Satanic.

I wanted to address a second definition of the word “cult” which was presented to me. This definition has more to do with unorthodox teachings: the idea that Jesus is only God, or only Human, for example. I would like us to consider that if we’ve decided someone’s interpretation of Scriptures to be outside our broadest sense of Christianity, but they aren’t in  some single-leader, hyper-controlled, brainwashing situation, let’s just call it a “different religion” instead of a cult. I found the  usage of the term “cult” to be negative and hurtful. I’d rather have someone say “your wife has joined a different  religion”(which I would debate) than to say she’s  joined a cult.

For that  matter, I believe there are  cults  springing out  of other religious traditions too. ISIS is a cult springing out of  Islam, for example.

I am happy to say that Megan’s interest in reading The Urantia Book doesn’t look like joining a cult to me. There is no single leader trying to get your money, no secrecy, no organization of any kind in fact, and as far as I have heard there are no unhealthy or un-Christian practices taught, recommended or required. Whether or not the book is prophetic, or hogwash, I can’t say because I haven’t read it for myself, but I do know that Megan’s intellectually a critical reader and mature enough in her faith to determine for herself whether or not something is helpful in her journey towards and with Christ. Of course anyone can be deceived. I do not want a cult-like environment in my family, so it pays to be cautious, have discussions about what we read, and make sure to have accountability with a local church. And Megan does those things. And she gets healthy push-back from our church community, too!

In the meantime, as she figures some of this out, I know that Megan is also praying to Jesus for angelic protection and trust that Jesus will give her that. I’m also aware that creationists.org is concerned about people who believe in ETs. I am curious what Creationists think the Nephilim were, if not ETs? I looked it up on Answers in Genesis and they think the Nephilim were human but they admit they don’t really know that — so much for giving me confident answers for the questions Genesis raises! They’re picking a theory out of many just like the rest of us have to do. Recent evidence, however, from things like crop circles in Europe, from what I can tell, look like evidence that there really are ETs. Should we be surprised that modern evidence might teach us things the Bible did not, even though the Bible is our Number One Go-To Resource as God’s Revelation? I mean, after all, we figured out later that the Hebrew’s flat earth concept wasn’t accurate. Incidentally, the Book of Enoch is, according to AiG, not a revelatory book, yet it is quoted in Jude. AiG says that this only really means that that little portion of Enoch is revelatory, but how could Enoch be a true prophet sometimes and a false one the rest of the time? Scripture regularly teaches that prophets are either true or false, Elijah and Elisha and the others regularly get in the faces of false prophets and even say things to false prophets like “in a year you will be dead”. The bigger point is that the writer of Jude (probably Jesus’ brother Jude) is aware of the Book of Enoch and not afraid to quote it; ancient theologians read everything they could get their hands on (which may have only amounted to a couple dozen books, I think the assumption was that if someone went to all that trouble to write it, and then copy it over and over by hand, to disseminate the book beyond one village, then it must be somehow significant). Even as recently as the time when Charles Dickens was writing, educated people believed they could read everything worth reading that was published within a given year. Now, no literature professor worth their salt would think that they could read all the literature considered “important” by the critics. It’s impossible to keep up. So. Should Enoch be canonized? Does Enoch really endorse the idea that ETs exist? Are ETs real? And if they are, what does it mean to us? These are all questions Megan gets curious about.

There are many outstanding questions. This is why curiosity continues to be valuable! Dangerous, risky at times, but valuable.

So before people decide that Megan has joined or fallen prey to a cult it pays to be informed about what makes a cult. She has not joined a cult, she’s simply found interest in a book. That is a huge difference. I, for one, am open to continuing to hear what she’s reading and how it’s positively impacting her faith in Jesus Christ.

I will continue to encourage her to read whatever she wants to read, as I will do with all our children. Megan is right, curiosity brings with it a certain risk. The bigger risk, in my mind, is in becoming disinterested in the various perspectives and worldviews available through reading broadly, or to begin to control which books people can read and which they can’t. That is very risky behavior indeed.

Thanks for reading. Make sure to visit the bookstore before you leave!

Writer’s Thursday: From Whence The Evil Writer’s Block?

From Whence the Evil Writer’s Block?

In a previous article I noted that

The question of “what is art” is a deeply involved philosophical question which I don’t intend to address in full here (or perhaps ever) but one critical aspect of artwork is that it is a product of some sort of intentional working out of a problem or puzzle that often times the artist has created for themselves. It means finding a way to say something, to address an issue in society, in a fresh way, and that takes intent. Much of writer’s block can be said to stem, then, from a lack of hope. Intent-crushing despair. Such despairing statements as “nobody will publish this book anyway” or “nobody reads this blog anyway” or “nobody understands me” kill the working out of the puzzle, while the statement “I will make myself understood” is a statement primarily of hope, for we feel that if we are understood, someone may also come to a life-changing conclusion, we will have made an impact. Once we’ve made that statement, we have voiced an intent to do it. What we speak with intent is what we do.

We need to back up here. If you’re an aspiring writer—who has been an aspiring writer for some time—without actually writing, it may be time to reevaluate. It’s easy to fall in love with the idea of being a writer. As readers, we begin to learn to admire writers while we are still young. They have made us giggle or ponder some wonder of the earth, say, dinosaurs. It’s harder to begin to believe that we actually have something unique to say.

Saying that unique thing which comes from us, while referring to writers who have gone before but without plagiarizing either their voice or content takes some development. Developing our voice is a stylistic thing, to be sure, but it goes along with content. An example from a voice I admire: Kurt Vonnegut’s voice always matched his message.

When I was a college student, one professor encouraged me to continue to speak up in class. “We need your perspective,” he said. I still remember that when I wonder if anyone will care what I have to say. My professor recognized something valuable even then.

Should everyone who admires writers try to be a writer? Probably not.

How do you make that determination? I can’t say in general, though I’m confident in a few conversations I could help someone sort that out. My friend Doug Fike says that each of us has a message, and people to give that to, and a delivery method. Perhaps writing is your delivery method, perhaps not. I think it could be quite freeing to discover that writing is not your medium. The same sort of relief I felt when I stopped carving stone.

Once you’ve decided for sure that writing is for you, and begin to develop your voice, matching it to your message, you’re going to need regular infusions of hope, like a daily cup of coffee. I’m not saying it will be as easy to get as coffee is. Hope is connected to your wish for meaning and connection with others, and it’s so critical in getting past writer’s block.

What good is a voice with nothing to say? My wife says that until she was four years old she hardly spoke. Her mother took her to the doctor or a speech therapist or some other “authority”, and they said, “She’s perfectly fine. When she has something to say, she’ll speak up.” Perhaps it was just that her older sisters anticipated her needs. “Mom, Megan is hungry.” She was also taking a lot in, no doubt about it.  If you think you might be a writer, and might have something to say, but aren’t sure, then just keep taking it in. Read. Read a lot. This is such common advice for how to become a writer that I’m going to leave it at that.

But where do you get hope, then? Intellectually, it’s optimism. Emotionally, it’s positivity. Spiritually it’s acceptance of your voice as valuable to the world.

Ultimately, if you’re grappling with writer’s block, one question to ask yourself is “do I have hope for this project? Do I have hope for the people who experience this project?” If the answer is yes, perhaps there’s another problem. After all, a lack of hope isn’t the only thing that keeps you from writing.

I’m curious to hear your take, readers. What other issues do you think cause writer’s block?

What Happens in Vegas

They say it stays in Vegas.

I traveled to Las Vegas this weekend for the first time to attend a Rapport Leadership retreat. While I’m not sworn to secrecy, what we actually did at the retreat in Alamo, NV, isn’t something I’ll talk about (though I will brag that my team won the pirate sword in the creativity exercise with my concept).

But what you do in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. Whatever you do goes with you. The promotional phrase they use on billboards all over town is a lie of the worst kind. Whatever you do, no matter where you are, impacts you later, no matter where you go or what you do later.

Las Vegas is not an impact-free zone.

I hit the lobby of the hotel to catch a shuttle. It was 4:30 AM and I saw a couple staggering back to their room. The woman was so drunk she could barely stand up or walk. It’s sad to see people who’ve bought into this lie that whatever you do while you’re there won’t matter later.

On the positive side, what we did at the retreat, while I won’t share the details even with my wife (it’s best if she doesn’t know in case she gets a chance to attend the same training sometime) it will have visible and demonstrable results, because what I did in Vegas isn’t going to stay there.

Ant Farm: Power in Intentional Community

The Value of Diversity of Thought and Heterogeneous Influences

Consider a formicarium, or an ant farm. This is a toy made popular in the 1950s which takes a normally secluded creature found almost anywhere in nature (save perhaps the Polar Regions) and makes it easily observable in an isolated and controlled context. With an ant farm, and you can watch ants doing ant stuff: making tunnels, carrying their eggs about. However, when ants live in nature, they do all sorts of things that are also interesting. They fight other species of ants, as well as other insects, some of which are much larger, yet they haul them home. They tackle leaves from plants, rebuild their homes after floods, and so much more.

Shortly after we married, Megan and I became the caretakers for a small painted turtle inappropriately named Chauncey (because it was probably a female). Chauncey lived with us for 10 years. Early on, we attempted to introduce goldfish to the aquarium tank for some diversity. Chauncey considered them a diversification—of diet. She didn’t rush anything, just snapped the tailfins bit by bit until they couldn’t swim any more. Even without any hurrying on her part, the fish were all belly up (or perhaps I should say “spine-inverted” since the turtle liked to eat the belly first) within three days.

It’s exhausting for the fish to be in an environment so small that they’re swimming for their lives constantly. For the turtle, it’s not challenging hunting.

The same fish and turtle would be much more in balance in a larger ecosystem. The fish would have somewhere to hide. They’d also interact with a great deal more diversity in plants, deal with other variables such as increasing and decreasing flow in the river, other seasonal changes, and generally struggle to survive in a good way, a way that keeps them sharp, on their toes.

It’s a bit boring (but easier to control) when animals are in a tightly contained environment where only one species can live, or, if others are added they are at the dominant species’ mercy. In the same way, the environment of a human community where variation in thought is not tolerated is controlled but uninteresting, potentially stagnant.

Intentional communities look a lot more like cults when they resemble a closed off formicarium. You can see what everybody’s doing, and make sure they’re all in their place. You can keep the lid on, so none of them escape.

The kind of dangerous pattern which leads to cults is born of a desire for homogenous thought. It may begin with a healthy desire for righteousness, but it degenerates and twists, gets bastardized, when the word gets shortened to “right”. It’s much easier to be right than righteous, after all. Once we figure out what’s right, we can make sure nobody gets hurt. No outside influences are allowed, and the ants live a happy life. Or so we think. But when a thirst for righteousness gets supplanted by a twisted desire to be right, healthy authority also degenerates into a twisted desire for power.

Intentional community done well is a lot messier. Margaret Thatcher said that “being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell someone you are, you’re not.” Truly powerful people, strong and authoritative, don’t need to worry about controlling their image as powerful. They’re less tempted (I didn’t say “not tempted at all”) to exert control over the environment. They can live with a certain amount of mess, because they know that in the end, justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Their ants can live outside, encountering ants of other species and experience the world in a much more interesting way for the leader (and even for the observer) than those enclosed in a “farm”.

And isn’t the observer of some interest for those of us who deliberately join our lives in community with others? Don’t we hope they’ll say “That’s exciting! That’s unique and challenging!”?

In seeking intentional community, we’re overruling our perhaps more natural instinct to conceal our patterns and thoughts, like ants underground, and instead allowing our tunnels and actions to be known. We’re not living in an ant farm, but we do extend an invitation for others to observe us, to hold us accountable for our lives. Being known is a great thing! But how much do you want to be known, and by whom?

Choose your leaders wisely. To become part of community, you abdicate your considerable independence. You agree to leadership and observation from within, and you’re going to get observation from without, too. For example, few people love to argue more about how Christians ought to behave than atheists!

The questions people raise when they wonder if any intentional community is a cult or not present a fairly simple barometer: what is the tolerance level for heterogeneous thought? Who is in authority and how do they wield power? Are they constantly working to get more ants in their farm, or do they enjoy their ants in a natural environment, where they may interact and perhaps even be harmed? Where the people may get some different ideas from outside influences. For example, maybe they read things.

So as you think about whom to include (or exclude) as leaders and members (the members are future leaders) of a community you intentionally relate to, observe carefully the size of the tank and the teeth of the most powerful person when you’re abdicating your own power for the sake of mentoring, growth, accountability in some area. Ask yourself what they’re really about; and when will you check in on that question again? Will you give up this independence once, forever, or routinely for shorter periods of time? Because the nature of absolute power is so destructive when given to humans, I personally think committing to a communal situation for life is not healthy. But the question of whether or not those who have some power in a relationship will allow, accept, embrace and encourage heterogeneous thought on your part is perhaps the most tell-tale indicator. If you know that you disagree from the beginning and still agree to enter into community, you’ve given yourself (and those around you) a gift. The gift of diversity. I want to be like an ant in nature—a messier situation, to be sure, and perhaps more dangerous. To be sure, there’s are certain benefits that come with being in a place like an ant farm where everyone thinks alike: and I’ll get to that in my next piece. But if someone comes along and attempts to stuff everyone into an aquarium like goldfish, watch your tail.

 

Writers: Big Blocks vs. Legos

I played with Legos as a kid. Along with baseball cards, Legos were pretty much my favorite toy. As a younger boy (back when swallowing a Lego might have meant I’d perish) I played with bigger blocks, building towers and gleefully knocking them down.

When it comes to time management, though, I think the block of time you need for writing something may have something to do with the end result length of what you’re writing. For writing a novel I like big blocks. Blocks of time allow me to immerse in the fictional universe. The big blocks also allow me to complete larger chunks of the tower that is to become my novel. If you ever tried to build a tall tower with Legos, you know that they don’t have the integrity that large blocks of wood have. This is why we build actual houses out of wood blocks called too-buh-fawers.

For writing non-fiction, I prefer Legos, er, I mean short blocks of time. The non-fiction world is something I’m already immersed in, and it’s not as much fun to write about. Also the length of what I’m writing is much shorter, like this blog for example. Hmm. I thought of a comparison. I threw the idea out there. This is how I believe nonfiction should go. Tell the idea. Then, the piece is over.

Why We Eat Dessert First. Thailand ’16 #1.

Why We Eat Dessert First: Hope breeding Intent at the crossroads of The Arts and Mission

Megan and I are invited to attend a conference for a week as members of the arts team, providing music and visual art for a group of missionaries in February. We now have tickets for Thailand, and my assignment (as I understand it today) is to write about my observations as missionaries encounter artists and their arts, and as the artists encounter missionaries and interact with their lives.

The first question that naturally comes to my mind is “what do artists and missionaries have in common?”

The writer of the first letter to the church at Corinth famously noted that, of the three great spiritual gifts (I call them this because the writer of this letter does not differentiate them from gifts in the previous chapter), or what theologians have termed “graces” or “fruits” from God – faith, hope and love – love remains as the greatest (1 Cor. 13:13).

I find the silver medalist, Hope (anticipation of good outcomes), to be more accessible than its companions. Each of the three strike a sort of musical chord. We have strong emotional connections at a heart level, yet we recognize both an intellectual harmonic or overtone and a mystical bass note which throbs through our soul and transcends even our emotion. The word ‘throb’ implies a rhythm as well. In other words, at the top of the chord we can think about these things, and in the center we feel them, but at the bottom they explore things in nature beyond expression, a bass note and a driving rhythm.

Like a chord, they all have potential to move us when they’re well-tuned. A dance is created, and this means we’ve been spurred to action.

As I mentioned, I find the chord struck by Hope to be the most accessible in terms of how easy they are to discuss or understand. I don’t say that this means the mystical bass note of Hope is any less complex, because it isn’t. That brings me to a different metaphor. If faith, hope and love were wines, we might say that Hope is the dessert wine, adding a sweetness, faith the more complex wine which pairs with the main course (the works), and love, well, even “outside the Work” (hors d’oeuvre) love is essential. We must have love from the very beginning, love is the hors d’oeuvre; and love is the alpha and omega. We must have faith, without which our works are dead, but Hope satisfies our sweet tooth. I may want chili one day and salmon the next, (my works change as life is lived) but I always like to have a bit of chocolate around to finish with.

And yet we have a rather popular saying: “eat dessert first, life is uncertain.”

In the face of uncertainty, indeed, we do need some hope to bring us to the main course of faith. In this sense, I believe that hope is the breeding ground for intent. “I believe, Lord, help my unbelief” is not a statement of faith, it’s a statement of hope: I hope (anticipate) that I can have faith, that you can help me. Where hope gives intent, faith gives action, and love produces fruit. I will say this several times so that we don’t forget the gold medalist in all of this.

For both the artist and the missionary, the uncertainty of life brings us to a decision to eat dessert first. One might say that the concept of retirement is a bit like eating dessert last: you have an assumption that you’ll be around to do the things you enjoy after completing the stuff that’s expected. You clean your plate, then you get a treat.

The artists and missionaries who I know never seem to live that way. They follow the passion of their hearts first. They pass through some financial difficulties that others don’t experience because of this passion (sometimes necessarily and other times unnecessarily) because they’ve chosen to pursue something delicious first.

They break a bottle of embalming perfume before death has taken their Lord. “Responsible” people criticize them, but their hope brings them to intent, their intent drives them to action (work), and they make something of the moment they have.

The reason hope is so easy to understand (in comparison to the other two) is that it’s perhaps easiest to connect with hope’s opposite: Despair.

Few things are as powerfully carnal (even to our souls) as Despair is. The problems generated by lack of faith, fear, and apathy can be turned aside by hope. The problems missionaries encounter, and artists as well, is that in their work environments, isolation and the very difficult and real challenge of communicating complex ideas across cultural barriers leads one very easily to lack of faith and even apathy. “If people don’t even want to hear what I’m trying to tell them, well, who cares, anyway? So what?” This leads to burnout, which is a function of despair. If hope breeds intent and faith and work, despair breeds burnout.

Artists and missionaries both, therefore, need regular injections of hope. They’ve chosen a lifestyle that goes after the sweetest thing they can imagine first, eschewing stability in the process, and hope drives everything. For a missionary or an artist, hope is the gasoline, faith is the pistons and the drive shaft, love is the wheels.

Ask a missionary who’s kept a beater running for ten years. Last year I drove around Chiang Mai with a guy whose car was so old it was like … it was old. It defied metaphor; it defined clichés about oldness. He’d bought it for $600 or so from another missionary who was leaving town. It’s amazing how many missionaries can keep their cars moving forward, a spare part here, duct tape there, as long as they have gasoline.

I think a missionary’s life is like that. Give them hope, and they’ll patch together the faith to work and love to bear fruit as they go. It may not be pretty, but without hope, they’re standing on the side of the road like the blind man in the song, singing “show me the way to go home” and that statement in itself is a final statement of hope.

Artists have similar dreams for society. They hope that people will see the world differently. They wonder at times (or often) whether their work will make a difference. They grapple with faith in what God has given them. Consider the prophetic art of Elijah, who had a great big installation project entered into an important competition (The First Book of Kings, Chapter 18) and his results stunned everyone. Afterwards, he had faith enough for rain, but when a small portion of his audience (Jezebel) was displeased with his art, (not even fair to say she’s part of the audience because she didn’t attend, like a critic who talks about an installation they didn’t bother to see) he spun into a tailspin of despair (chapter 19) and was ready to end his own life. Biggest success to date, followed by suicidal thoughts, a sense of complete isolation. What’s going on here? Despair. Finally God reminds him there are plenty of connections left and sends him back to work (at least long enough to anoint his replacement, because, God knows, he’s burned out for good; Elijah has fought the good fight, and given everything he has). Had Elijah used up all his hope? Or did he operate primarily on faith and miss large chunks of both hope and love? Possibly. After all, he was human.

When we function with hope, it breeds intent. The question of “what is art” is a deeply involved philosophical question which I don’t intend to address in full here (or perhaps ever) but one critical aspect of artwork is that it is a product of some sort of intentional working out of a problem or puzzle that often times the artist has created for themselves.

It means finding a way to say something, to address an issue in society, in a fresh way, and that takes intent.

Much of writer’s block can be said to stem, then, from a lack of hope. Intent-crushing despair. Such despairing statements as “nobody will publish this book anyway” or “nobody reads this blog anyway” or “nobody understands me” will kill hope. These will frustrate the working out of the puzzle; while the statement “I will make myself understood” is a statement of not only of faith, but primarily of hope, for we feel that if we are understood, someone may also come to a life-changing conclusion. Once we’ve made that statement, we have voiced an intent to do it. What we speak with intent is what we do. And this is the crux of the work of a missionary as well, the attempt to communicate something to people who’ve never seen life a certain way before, with intent born of hope to faithfully work towards world-change.

Hope breeds intent. Intent breeds work, which breeds faith. Or, faith breeds work, these two are symbiotic. Love, a fruit of the Spirit, transcends the others, and produces the fruit from the others.

 

 

 

Writer’s Thursday… on Saturday?

Why not move Writer’s Thursday to Saturday when I feel like it? I know we’re supposed to be consistent, but I had another issue I wanted to talk about on the 31st. So I did.

Everyone else is writing about resolutions, but we often don’t take time to celebrate our accomplishments. The last day of the year is a great time to celebrate what you’ve accomplished over the last 365 days. I want to hear from you what you did!

As for myself, beginning at the very end of April, up until today, I’ve posted over 100 blogs on this site. That’s almost one every two days!

At the end of November my second book was published by a traditional publishing house. That means I wrote a book proposal and put well over 70,000 words through the editing gauntlet with an editor as well. (Lest you think that all that writing is in addition to all the blogs I just mentioned, not so. Many of the blogs were used as the rough draft material for the book.)

My next novel(s) now have some 95,000 words. I expect this series to close in on 200,000 by the end of next year. I also think there’s a good possibility I’ll be taking all the Intentional Community blogs and fashioning a book out of them as well, perhaps by the end of 2016.  But I’m getting ahead of myself a bit here. I really got a lot written this year and hit some pretty significant milestones! Hooray!

If you wrote a lot this year, or achieved some other milestone, make a note in the comments! Or, if you consider yourself a writer but feel that you don’t have much to show from this year, now may be the time to join a writer’s group. Luckily for you, I lead one, and you can join it! Two of the guys in our group will be finishing their first novel’s rough drafts within the next few weeks, and the group works because we’re accountable to produce every month! If you want to join, the cost is only $30 per month and you can just reach out to me via email: adam.fleming.lifecoach@gmail.com and I will get you the relevant information. Not sure? Check out the videos in the Writer’s Group page on this blog and get to know me and Justin a bit better.

Want to write down some Resolutions? We’ll help you make those attainable and help hold you accountable to getting it done, so that next year, when I post a similar blog, you’ll have something to celebrate too!

 

Smaller and Quieter in 2016

I got to do a lot of extra listening this month as I completed the Final Evaluations (they’re called “4C Evaluations” though I don’t know why) for a group of new coaches I’ve been helping train all year. I say even less than normal during an Eval because the trainees are coaching each other, and I just observe quietly for a full 40 minutes before I say a word.

One of my trainees did a very nice job coaching, helping the other person (the coachee) to slow down and take time to process something, and as I debriefed the session, I had a picture in my mind:

Have you ever watched the Kentucky Derby or another major thoroughbred horse race? At the end of the race a racehorse is all geared up for speed. Their heart is racing and they’re doing exactly what they were born to do: fly around a track in 2 minutes or so. But they have to cool off gradually so they don’t pull a muscle or whatever. The jockey is there, of course, reining them in, but they need more help.

Next time you watch a race, notice the horse that comes alongside this thoroughbred. The Alongside Horse comes up and communicates with the racer, helping them ease out of their wild-minded, chomping at the bit excitement, so that they can cool off gradually. In other words, the trainer makes sure the horse has a friend who can help him settle down and refocus on what’s next. The Alongside Horse isn’t a great racer — they’re a calming influence. That’s a totally different kind of horse. If these horses were on the DiSC scale, the thoroughbred would be a HIGH D while the Alongside horse is probably anything else.

It’s not unusual to see coaching clients who are going from one thing to the next so fast they don’t have time to breathe.

So, rather than bigger and better in 2016, my mantra is smaller and quieter, calmer. Helping people ease out of their fast-paced life and stop for a moment to breathe.