Thinking Verbally
The English language sometimes leads us astray.
For example: the phrase ‘taking responsibility’ as in ‘I take responsibility for my actions.’ Using English in this way skews us of thinking of responsibility as something I can take and therefore have, like how I can take a quarter and put it in my pocket. When I do that, I have the quarter in my pocket, and if I don’t do anything further, I’ll have the quarter still.
When I ‘take responsibility,’ I seem to have it like the quarter in my pocket; but the reality of the matter is a bit different, as responsibility is the relation I am taking toward something.
The relational nature of responsibility is more clearly revealed by using the phrase ‘being responsible.’ With this ‘verbal’ phrasing, the natural follow on questions are ‘to whom am I responsible’ and ‘for what am I responsible.’ It also makes it harder to think that responsibility is something I have. Instead, I realize that I must continuously choose to maintain my attitude of responsibility toward that person for whatever I have promised. Much harder to shirk the responsibility when I realize it is a moment-to-moment relationship I create, and that if I am not conscious and aware of my choosing, I’ll default to selfishness and irresponsibility.
January 2, 2013 Leave a comment
The Natural Blame Game
Being in a blaming mindset seems as easy as waking up in the morning. Calling it ‘natural,’ is to say that it is part of human nature to point the finger at others and call them out for where they let us down, where they break an explicit or implicit promise to us, where we are disappointed in our relationship with them. Sadly though blaming someone else just as naturally spurs the person I blame to justify himself and pay me the favor of blaming me in turn.
I was thinking of this pattern in my life due to it’s prevalence and because of reading a book: Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box. The authors (which is actually listed as an organization – The Arbinger Institute) describe ‘being in the box’ as that mindset wherein we blame others and justify ourselves and our own actions and responses: “What I need most when I’m in the box is to feel justified. Justification is what my box eats, as it were, in order to survive…. to feel justified, to be right.” (p. 101)
I don’t have the time in this post to cover the many facets of this concept – buy the book! But I do want to cover two thoughts: where we devote our focus in and out of the box and how to stay out of the blame-game box as much as possible. The authors suggest that in any moment we have two foci – a what-focus and a who-focus. When I’m in the box my what-focus is justification, and my who focus is myself. Out of the box, my what-focus is results and my who-focus is others.
Staying out of the box requires a change of mindset—from focusing on myself to focusing on others. The fruit of this change opens up the possibility of focusing on and achieving results in a way that honors and respects those we are connected to whether in the domain of marriage, family, work, or volunteer groups.
January 1, 2013 Leave a comment
Further In and Further Up
In the Last Battle, the concluding story of the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis ends his tale with the characters entering a stable; for those who didn’t have the ‘eyes to see and the ears to hear’ it was just a pitch-black stable, but for those who did, it was the ‘real world’ perfected: everything clearer, brighter, more substantial in comparison to the world the characters knew. Aslan himself invites them to “Come further in! Come further up!” The characters begin running faster and faster without getting winded or tired. So perhaps they still race further in and further up.
The idea that the characters race on suggests that the story hasn’t ended, that it was just beginning. Lewis explicitly comments: “All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
Hebrews 11 indicates that God has placed in us a desire for perfection; a desire to return to the bliss of the Garden of Eden; we each “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16). I believe this desire drives us first to the immediacy of faith—receiving the kingdom of God like a child (Mark 10:15). Not just by believing, but without conditions, without negotiation, freely and openly. But eventually the ‘adult’ in us becomes unsatisfied with the ‘on-again / off-again’ experience of life that is the hallmark of a child. We want something tangible; something we can count on.
Martin Buber in his wonderful book, I and Thou, addresses this reality. He uses the image of a hunter after prey: sometimes when we go to meet God, we find him and are filled; sometimes we go out and come back empty-handed. This reality comes against our inner desire for that better country, where we live with God face-to-face, not through a glass darkly. So we endeavor to turn the experience of the hunter into that of the farmer—by doing certain actions: tilling the soil, planting and watering the seed, we can have some sort of harvest, and therefore be comforted. Buber suggests that we embark on two approaches to this goal—we gather with those that believe the same, forming as it were the rim of the wheel with God in the center; we also come up with statements of faith that transform that moment of meeting God into something more tangible and more at hand. These acts at first help bring structure to our meeting God; but eventually they replace that meeting and so religion is born.
Unfortunately religion as described is counter to love because it emphasizes separation and division—who believes like us and who expresses those beliefs in the way we are comfortable with from those who don’t. Whereas love is a passion for connection, unity, and oneness.
October 27, 2012 Leave a comment
Oops!
My confusion caused GoDaddy to delete my old blog data. I blogged inconsistently depending on my paying workload, which has thankfully been good, so inconsistency will continue. I have the old blog posts and I may repost them occasionally. Ready go!
May 17, 2012 Leave a comment