Centering . . .
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
(Raymond Carver, “Late Fragment.” A New Path to the Waterfall,. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989.)
Ponder . . .
At first, it seems as though the things you declare, espouse and promise matter a lot. And they do.
For a while.
But in the end, we will judge you on what you do. When the gap between what you say and what you do gets big enough, people stop listening.
The compromises we make, the clients we take on, the things we do when we think no one is watching… this is how people measure us.
It seems as though the amount of time it takes for the gap to catch up with marketers/leaders/humans is getting shorter and shorter.
Remember . . .
So these are the five essential questions.
“Wait, what” is at the root of all understanding.
“I wonder” is at the heart of all curiosity.
“Couldn’t we at least” is the beginning of all progress.
“How can I help” is at the base of all good relationships.
And “what really matters” gets you to the heart of life.
If you ask these questions regularly, especially the last one, you will be in a great position to answer the bonus question, which is, at the end of the day, the most important question you’ll ever face.
“And did you get what you wanted out of life, even so?”
(Dean James Ryan, “5 Essential Questions.” Commencement Address at Harvard Graduate School of Education. May 29, 2016. Click here to watch the video for the full context of Dean Ryan’s remarks.)
To borrow a movie quote, “Holmes, you must widen your gaze.” (Sherlock Holmes, © 2009 Warner Bros. Ent. All) “Widen your gaze” is good advice for our culture right now so that we might see and experience one another as something other than a political, sexual, or religious identifier. For me, that means reviewing Red Letter Christians, Patheos, and other websites of those that label themselves “evangelical” who continue to redefine what “evangelical” means in the 21st century. That also means checking out the Baptist News Global at least once a week.
I am not evangelical, but like being liberal (progressive for those fearful of that other word), I don’t think either need be a derogative term. There is a richness in both adjectives that has been lost as we have figuratively and literally retreated to our gated communities in the online matrix and in the breathing matrix. When you die in the matrix you do die in real life. I found this article thanks to other liberals that I follow who pointed the way. Widen your gaze. A paragraph and a link.
We all are Omar Mateen
Miguel De La Torre | Baptist News Global | June 14, 2016
Reading our newspapers, watching our politicians and listening to our ministers we find evidence that proves we are more comfortable with a culture of hatred, a culture rooted in the survival of the fittest. Let those of us who claim to be disciples of agape stop talking about our current predicament, and instead commit to praxis that can bring us closer to a different reality.
Click here to read the entire article.