The Wisdom of Age

2013-04-22T15:38:00.000-04:00

Lay Servant Training Opening Worship – April 20, 2013

Good morning! I am going to start today with the story of the graphic that I am proudly displaying on my Springville United Methodist Church T-Shirt. A story that has Easter People written all over it!

Have you ever had an idea just pop into your head? An idea that came from some place you did not know existed? This is where the One Another cross came from, and where it goes no one knows.

I attended a church service where the pastor cited the large number of occasions in the New Testament where the words “one another” were preceded or followed by a command or request. Searching an online bible database, I found 41 such instances. They started with Jesus’ words in the Gospel According to John, Chapter 13, Verses 14 (^“So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”), 34 (“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”), and 35 (“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”). “One another” also shows up in Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, 1^st Thessalonians, Hebrews, James, 1^st Peter, 1^st & 2^nd John. It was in seeing the breadth of the commands where the idea of the cross was born.

And then my business background kicked in…how could any Christian NOT like this cross? I thought, “I will copyright it and sell it on anything I can print it on. Better still, I will license it to someone and collect royalties for the rest of my life.” And I started down this path, sending inquiries to companies that I thought would be interested in some original Christian artwork…even though I am hardly an artist! Alas, no responses came.

It was about this time that I had a long talk with God. Did He not send the cross to me in order to help provide for my children? If so, I reasoned, the offers should have been flooding my email. Since that did not happen, what was His intent? And then the classic series of consequences started. Our Emmaus group wanted to raise money for worthy causes. “What do you guys think about using this image?,” I asked the group. Their approval was enthusiastically “YES!” and the project was started.

Pastor Ron Fike and I were discussing where this project could go, and we talked about getting $1 from each item sold through other churches for our local mission fund. And then God and Julius had another chat, and the $1 charge no longer felt right. The words were His, and I am pretty sure that the image is His; that I was simply the facilitator here on Earth. So the charge went away…

And since then we have about 40 items floating around the village of Springville. And the cross has made its way to Flint and New Orleans on the front of Siena Heights University Campus Ministry’s Winter Break T-Shirts. And it is now in Marquette, MI and Los Angeles as gifts for my girlfriend’s family. And it has been translated into Spanish with help from Nick Kaplan of Siena Heights and Rey Mondragon of Ypsilanti First United Methodist Church. And the Spanish version is probably on its way onto t-shirts in Iowa, courtesy of Katie Waggoner’s sister Sara, who plans to use it to raise money for her mission trips to Guatemala, and to take shirts down with her.

So where is the Easter People connection? In his recent Easter message to the United Methodist Church in Indiana, Bishop Michael Coyner gave some guidelines for Easter People. First, Easter People know that the church is the Body of Christ, and not the buildings that we worship in. How many stories are there of church buildings being wiped out by natural disasters, yet the congregation pulls together and continues to function until another building is secured? Each one of us here today, the teachers and the students and the clergy, is a living, breathing part of the Body of Christ. We not only understand that “church” is a living thing, we have a demonstrated commitment to further the Word of God.

We Easter People offer our best out of a sense of gratitude to God. Sure, we will all take the tax deduction for our financial donations, but we all know that it is the non-financial donations that make God’s church the force that it is today. Every time we step up to lead a small group, to preach a message, to add our voices to a choir, to lead a charitable effort, and so on, we share the love that He put in each one of us out of a sense of owing Him something for all of the good we have been given. And without the efforts of our Lay Servants, our churches would be dark and uninteresting save for an hour or two each Sunday morning. It is our best that makes our churches vital and alive with the spirit of Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ death on the cross and His rising are the things that fuel our faith, not the points that we collect for helping out or for writing our weekly check. We understand that we were all redeemed on that first Easter! We know that we are awash in His grace! We know that He will not take any of this away from us even though we are all sinners! We know that Jesus’ final act as a human being was the ultimate act of love, a love so profound that it can never be completely understood. We understand that the Holy Spirit moves us to do the things that bring glory to God, the things that we could never figure out to have done on our own, including designing and giving away a cross graphic!

In wrapping up this morning, I would like to read from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, Chapter 3, verses 12-14: As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

And we Easter People place all of our trust in the Trinity. We know that by believing in Him, and by sharing the love in our heart in same manner that Jesus shared His love, we have been granted access to all of the goodness that God created here on Earth and beyond. There are no other conditions for His love of us. As Chris Tomlin says in his song “Indescribable,” “He can see the depth of our hearts, and He loves us anyway.”

But we Easter People need to remember to be vulnerable enough to continue to share the compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness and love that we have in our hearts. We need to share love when there is no promise of a return. We need to share love when all seems hopeless. We need to share love when bombs rip through our world. For when we are vulnerable and courageous enough to share love when all seems hopeless, that, my friends, is the moment when hope is fueled, and God shows just how powerful and loving He is. He showers all of us in goodness. He fills all of our hearts with joy. And all of that, and more, makes us smile as He shows us just how much WE are capable of doing in His name. We know that we cannot do any of this without Him. And He needs more Easter People to make more good things happen here on Earth. Amen!

Springville UMC: Sermon January 6, 2013

2013-03-07T18:47:00.002-05:00

Today we celebrate the Epiphany, which happens to fall on the 12^th day of Christmas. Yes, that 12^th day of Christmas, the one that makes you take a deep breath so you can sing about pipers piping, lords a-leaping, ladies dancing, geese a-laying, gold rings, and a partridge in a pear tree! In fact, even our readings this morning tell of the gifts that surround the arrival of our Savior. Over 500 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, the author of Isaiah tells us that a multitude of camels will bring people with gold and frankincense to proclaim praise of the Lord. David, in Psalm 72, tells us that kings will render him tribute and bring Him gifts. And this psalm was written between 970 and 610 B.C. Matthew’s gospel reminds us that the gift of a savior was foretold over 700 years before it happened, in the book of Micah 5:2-5, which says:

“But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel. And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the end of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace.”

But what does the Epiphany mean for us today? Dictionary.com says that the meaning of the word epiphany is “a sudden perception or insight into the essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple or commonplace occurrence or experience.” A commonplace occurrence like the birth of a child, albeit a special child! The symbol of The Epiphany is light, and Jesus is commonly called The Light of The World, the one who helps us to see that which is shrouded in darkness. So, for me, the Epiphany is a time to gain a deeper understanding of God’s gift to us and to spread the light of God's love through the blessed gift of Jesus.

But how do we share such a joyous and hopeful message when so many of us are prisoners of earthly things? Prisoners, you ask? Yes! It is clearly after the traditional Christmas gift giving season, and many of us are experiencing guilt & regret. I can see the guilt on your faces! I can smell the regret! We now feel guilt over all of the high calorie food that we ate at all of those holiday celebrations. And we feel deep regret as the credit card bills start rolling in for all of the earthly gifts that we felt that we had to give to who knows how many people; bills that we will need to tap into our bank accounts to pay. And then there are the resolutions that we, at least for a few weeks, are prisoners to…pledging to exercise, and to diet, and not to swear, and to spend less money on non-essential things, and so on and so on. And all of them hold until the pressure of modern life crush our dreams into the dust of previous years’ goals. So what can we do to make 2013 different, a year when we are successful in bettering ourselves and in spreading the hopeful news of Jesus Christ? I have a couple of ideas that have worked for me.

I begin with that fountain of wisdom know as FaceBook, and a quote that struck me hard a year or two ago. It goes like this:

People who don't love themselves can adore others, because adoration is making someone else big and ourselves small. They can desire others, because desire comes out of a sense of inner incompleteness, which demands to be filled. But they can't love others, because love is an affirmation of the living, growing being in all of us. If you don't have it, you can't give it!!!

In years past, the Christmas season was not one that I looked forward to because of the financial situation into which we had put ourselves. Money was tight, and my ex was adamant about making Christmas memories for our family via the joy that our gifts would bring. I was only worried about her exceeding the budget we had set, the bills that would arrive in January and how I was going to pay them. I did not speak up. I made myself small. And I now know that it was because I did not love myself. I was not a living, growing being, except maybe around my waist. And that Julius was not a pleasant person, and I now stand before you as someone who has been divorced for three years and now gets it. So what changed?

I realized that I needed to change my mind, and my heart. I was living in the wrong paradigm. I needed to let go of the wants of the material world and seek the needs of my spiritual being, needs that the material world were helping to hide. We do not recognize our spiritual needs when we are busy chasing our material wants. It is not possible. You cannot pay homage to two masters and be successful with both. So how did I break out of that life and find myself again?

I realized that I was never going to find what my heart needed in the material world. I was blessed to be introduced to people who challenged me to find God in my heart, and they were then kind enough to help me find God in my heart and in my life. How did they do that?

The answer is actually in today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Paul speaks of the gift of God’s grace that Christ bestowed upon him; a gift that he was told to spread to the Gentiles of the time so that they could see God’s mystery in all things that He created for them. Prior to his receiving God’s grace, Paul actually persecuted the church and cooperated in the killing of Stephen. He was converted after seeing a vision of the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus.

I can say that my epiphany was not so dramatic…I had no vision of Christ. I came to understand that the hardships I was carrying on my back were of my own doing…from decisions I had made to keep others happy…while ignoring my own needs, mostly the spiritual ones. My “vision” was that I would have to drop that material world baggage in order to find my spiritual self. I had to give up on the wants of the material world and feed my spiritual needs. And I became convinced that I could not do this if I did not love myself. When I found love for who I was, and decided to not allow others to judge me, I found God’s grace.

God’s justifying grace reconciles us, it pardons us, and it restores us. Through Christ our sins are forgiven. Through God’s grace we are brought into a relationship with God. We are only required to believe. The Methodist church calls this process conversion, changing our earthly orientation to a spiritual orientation. This can only happen when we see ourselves as right with God through his eyes. It is a time of pardon and forgiveness, a new beginning in joy and love. We turn away from behaviors that are rooted in sin and turn toward actions that demonstrate God’s love to others. We are redeemed!!!

Seems like all I could see was the struggle
Haunted by ghosts that lived in my past
Bound up in shackles of all my failures
Wondering how long is this gonna last
Then You look at this prisoner and say to me "son
Stop fighting a fight it's already been won"

I am redeemed, You set me free
So I'll shake off these heavy chains
Wipe away every stain, now I'm not who I used to be
I am redeemed, I'm redeemed

All my life I have been called unworthy
Named by the voice of my shame and regret
But when I hear You whisper, "Child lift up your head"
I remember, oh God, You're not done with me yet

I am redeemed, You set me free
So I'll shake off these heavy chains
Wipe away every stain, now I'm not who I used to be

Because I don't have to be the old man inside of me
'Cause his day is long dead and gone
Because I've got a new name, a new life, I'm not the same
And a hope that will carry me home

I am redeemed, You set me free
So I'll shake off these heavy chains
Wipe away every stain, 'cause I'm not who I used to be

I am redeemed, You set me free
So I'll shake off these heavy chains
Wipe away every stain, yeah, I'm not who I used to be
Oh, God, I'm not who I used to be
Jesus, I'm not who I used to be
'Cause I am redeemed
Thank God, redeemed

In closing, I ask you to give yourself a gift before this holiday season officially closes. Take all of the earthly baggage that has been dragging you down and holding you back, and lift it up to God. First off, He can handle it! Second, it is an amazing feeling! And finally, it will give you incredible energy to share His Good News with the world.

Springville UMC Sermon: November 18, 2012

2013-03-06T22:37:00.000-05:00

Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you have what appears to be a difficult task to do, a second, wider look reveals the task to be simpler than you originally thought? Yeah, that happens to me from time to time, too, and it happened in the preparation of today’s sermon. The gospel reading from Mark starts with the admiration of several buildings by one of the Apostles, only to have Jesus reply with some line about the buildings they are looking at being demolished. Boy, did I volunteer for the wrong day! I struggled with my task and finally picked a direction, I wrote down a lot of notes, and crafted it into a message…a six and a half minute message. This would not do!

So I went to what has become an old standby in my life, I looked for inspiration, and God provided it! Why was I limiting myself to only the Gospel reading? There are no such rules for writing a sermon! So I read the other three readings, and a common theme emerged. The same common theme I was already working on! I was relieved! I felt blessed! I did not need to start with another stack of blank paper!!!

The first reading from the first book of Samuel details a change in the life of Hannah, mother of Samuel. She was taunted & teased because she had no children, one of the major life accomplishments of women in those days. The taunting led to her depression, a common sequence of events even today. Even in her depression, Hannah found her faith in God, prayed to the Father, and her prayers were answered! She had a son, Samuel. Faith can do that, if we only let it!

Psalm 113, like many of the Psalms, is full of praise for the Lord, whose glory is higher than the heavens. In this psalm, God lifts the poor from the dust, and the needy from the garbage dump. In doing so, He elevates them to the status of princes and princesses upon their arrival in Heaven! Faith can do that, if we only let it!

The writers of Hebrews then remind us that, unlike the frequent animal sacrifices of the Old Testament, Jesus’ sacrifice was good enough, or should I say great enough, to forgive all sins, everywhere, for all time. We are able to enter into Heaven and enjoy God’s house, if we are sincere in our faith and fully trust Him. The authors then ask us to motivate each other to acts of love, and to encourage one another, two things that we enjoy doing here at Springville United Methodist Church. And faith can do all of this, too, if we only let it!

Today’s Gospel passage from Mark has Jesus talking to only 4 of the Apostles, who have asked him when the magnificent buildings they are sitting in the shadow of will be reduced to the stones from which they were built. Bible scholars believe that Jesus, in response to their questions, foreshadows events that would take place after his eminent death. Indeed, there were a series of wars after His death, including the Jewish War. It was during these conflicts that Jerusalem was destroyed. These scholars believe that Mark’s gospel was written after the Jewish War, and was composed to set the stage for Jesus’ return to a world that desperately needed Him.

Peter, James, John and Andrew are told that they will be persecuted and challenged for believing in and teaching about Jesus, just as the Son of Man and John the Baptist were. This comes as no surprise to us today, because we know that Jesus life and death and the birth of the church shook the fabric of society for hundreds of years. Mark’s gospel speaks of wars and earthquakes as the beginning of birth pangs, the world’s labor pains of Jesus’ return. Some of that chaos was generated by those who held strongly to the teachings of the past several hundred years, as they did not believe that Jesus was the Savior they had been waiting for.

The Old Testament, as many of you know, is filled with stories of war and battle. God clears out many a land to make room for his people. In the book of Joshua alone the troops of Jericho, Ai, Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, Eglon, as well as those of the Amorites, are defeated by Heaven’s Army, and those in only the first 10 chapters! He also does a do-over with His people a few times because they will not obey Him. God does all of this destruction and killing for an important reason: He is clearing the way for something better! God does these things without warning, for what He has planned is so much better than what already exists. We need to remember in times of war and natural disasters that God’s worst plans are better than even the best plans of we humans!

His swift, decisive actions are also meant to serve as a warning to future generations…a warning to be prepared! In the Old Testament, He used the “fear of God” strategy to try to keep His people in line. But, still, His people sinned openly and lusted after the things that other people had…and that lusting eventually led to sin, which then led to war. For when we lust, we lose sight of God and our individual goodness, and we begin to seek greener grass. Alas, the grass is not greener, and God is not happy with us.

I would like to read from Jeremiah, Chapter 7, verses 20 through 26. “Therefore thus says the Lord God: My anger and my wrath shall be poured out on this place, on human beings and animals, on the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. For on the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.’ Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but, in the stubbornness of their evil will, they walked in their own counsels, and looked backwards rather than forwards. From the day that your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have persistently sent all my servants, the prophets, to them, day after day; yet they did not listen to me, or pay attention, but they stiffened their necks. They did worse than their ancestors did.”

We know that God sent a long line of servants and prophets to lead His people to Him. This did not work well. God needed to reevaluate. Perhaps God decided that His ways were too obscure, too divine to be understood by humans. Might that be why He sent His Son to live among us and teach us a way of life centered around service, and forgiveness, and love? Yet, even this kinder, gentler approach does not appeal to many on planet Earth today. The golden rule proves an elusive life objective for many!

Returning to our scene across from Mount Olive, Jesus talks of the destruction of the buildings. WE know that Jesus had little use for the majestic, the shiny, the refined. His people were simple and humble, with a deep faith in Him and the Father, a faith that could save them. Faith is all that is required to receive His gifts, not fancy buildings or vestments. Faith can do this, if we only let it!

Jesus tells the four to beware of those who claim “I am He.” There were many deceivers, seducers and impostors back in the day, and there are even more among us today. Who or what are these deceivers? Then, as now, they are the people we choose to idolize. They are the earthly things that we long for, and lust for, that are supposed to bring us happiness. They may different from the golden idols and the carvings of the Old Testament, but, yet, they are quite the same. You know them as Hollywood stars, cars, houses, clothes, professional athletes, vacations, food, Internet sensations, big screen TV’s, sexual partners, and so on. And they all have the power to make us happy…for a little while…and none will last forever! We use our God-given free will to choose these things, showing our humanity, our weakness. We believe that these things are “the one thing”…the Holy Grail! Then we learn again and again that “things” are never forever. Only God is forever!

Knowing that everything comes to an end, many of us wish to know God’s timeline, as the four inquire of Jesus. “When will it all happen?” they wanted to know. We want to know! They wanted to be ready. We want to be ready! God, however, has a different plan. He would prefer we live the kind of life where we are always prepared for what comes next, be it a good step or our demise.

Jesus tells us several times in the Gospels that the end is near, but what is this end of which He speaks? A few years ago, the song “Closing Time” had gained some popularity, and its lyrics tell us that every new beginning comes from some other new beginnings’ end. Again, every new beginning comes from some other new beginnings’ end. This is very true! These beginnings often come from the birth pains of a new you! But only God knows when it is going to happen, how it is going to happen, and how it is going to end. We live a life where new rules are made occasionally, and God had made us flexible and adaptable and resilient enough that we thrive in new beginnings. That is His way to help us to grow closer to Him, and closer to always being prepared!

I can tell you from personal experience that life is a never-ending series of renewals. I saw new things when I went to high school, and I grew because of those experiences. I went to college away from home, and saw first-hand how the families of my friends were different than my family, and different in a good way. I had opportunities I never expected to have, and took advantage of them to gain useful experience. My professors encouraged me to go straight onto graduate school, and it is one of the best pieces of advice I have ever received. Little did I know it, but I was evolving under the guiding hand of the Maker. My work life provided more experience, and I was still changing.

I got married. And I changed, but this change was less than good. Looking back, it was one long period of my life when I did not think of or thank God very much. And the financial problems grew. And the stress grew. And my depression grew. And my waistline grew and my health got worse. And at the height of all of this bowing to these earthly pressures while ignoring God, about 5 years ago, I looked like this on the left…and as I look today on the right.

Almost 4 years ago, a series of unrelated events put me on the path back to the me I used to be, and back to God. I found a counselor who I could relate to, who brought me back from the floor of Hell. I found a website that showed me how to release the fears and limitations that I had placed on myself. I had a friend tell me that my comfort zone had disappeared along with my family, and my job, and my home. Good riddance! It had long grown uncomfortable, anyway. I had the support of friends and family to build a new comfort zone. I found a new career in teaching when my research career had seemingly reached a dead end. I had an old friend invite me to a Via Di Christo weekend, think Walk to Emmaus, and my faith in God was fed by the grace He offers to all of us, yet too few of us readily accept it. And I was blessed to meet a woman who challenged me to find God in my life, and to let God do His work for me by lifting my needs up to Him and thanking Him for all that He provides.

Mikeschair, “Someone Worth Dying For” video

We are God’s creations, and YOU, every one of YOU, are as magnificent as the most beautiful structure you can imagine…no, actually, we are more beautiful! You are someone worth dying for! We are made not in the image of some architect, but in the image of God. As we grow up, we are exposed to the ways of the world, the temptations and all that. We sometimes lose our focus and succumb to the deceptions of our world, falling into an abyss, and sometimes we even fall to the floor of Hell. We feel alone and ashamed. We are challenged and we crumble. Yet we are built on solid rock…the love of the Redeemer and His Father! They gave us birth pains and many warnings of a new life in Christ. It is His way…to break us down…to make us the most vulnerable we have ever been…the most weak…the most unworthy…and give us not that which we want, nor deserve, but what we NEED…and what we need is His love and the chance to go out among His children to teach, to evangelize, to serve, to forgive, to love, to spread His Good News. Yes, faith can do this, too, if we only let it!

He makes us better than we were yesterday, more beautiful, more able to resist the deceivers, with Him as our foundation! And we are better prepared for His return, whenever it may be. For we love Him and He loves us, each and every day!

Hanover Chapel Sermon:Spring, 2012

2013-02-02T16:45:00.000-05:00

I was an adjunct professor at Hanover College in Hanover, IN from January, 2011 until May, 2012. It was during that time that my spirituality was reawakened, and I gained a deep understanding of the love of God for each of us. I was asked on a couple of occasions to share my story, and was then asked to give a sermon for the weekly chapel service in the Spring of 2012. What follows is the sermon I delivered that day. I hope that you enjoy!

"If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong of a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but I didn't love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever - faith, hope and love - and the greatest of these is love." -1 Corinthians 13:1-13 (NLT)

Verses from the first letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 13, are often used at weddings, since it is at weddings where love always fills the air. The readings in the church are selected, often by the couple being married, to emphasize that they love each other and that love is the greatest gift. While we can only hope that this is true for each and every married couple on the planet, these words from Corinthians are not meant as a profession of love. They were written to remind us that love must show up in each and every day of our lives, whether married or single, if we are to fulfill our promise to God. Love cannot just kick in when we find “the one” with whom we will spend the rest of our lives. Most importantly, we must learn to love the person we see in the mirror each morning, and not feel as if the sin of arrogance is creeping into our lives. Arrogance is defined as an “offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride.” It is not love.

Each one of us was created with special gifts bestowed upon us by the Father. One of the ways that we demonstrate our love for Him is the cultivation of those gifts, the use of those gifts, and the sharing of those gifts with others. Sharing our gifts visibly demonstrates our love of others. And when we share our gifts, others, in turn, will be willing to share their gifts with us, and so on, and so on, and so on. Human beings are social creatures; in the story of Genesis, it’s why God created Eve. Most of us crave interaction with others at some level. We cannot hoard our thoughts for very long, lest they ultimately consume us. We must share and expand upon what we know and believe so that we can move beyond thinking and reasoning like a child toward the unachievable goal of seeing everything with perfect clarity.

So, if the destination of seeing everything with perfect clarity is unachievable, why are we here on Earth? What was God thinking when he put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and allowed them to be tempted by the fruit of the tree? Could it be that He has so much love inside of Him that He wanted to let some of it out and allow it to grow in crazy multiples, just to see what would happen? Perhaps the experiment changed once the apple was eaten? Maybe it became even more interesting to Him? It seems to me that He set up the classic struggle between good and evil…white hats versus black hats. Whatever his reasoning, what did not change is the love of the Father, nor the potential for goodness and love that is installed in each one of us on our “born on” date. It just got a little more challenging for us to allow our goodness to come forth, since we are all now swimming in a sea of sin.

At a time in my life when allowing the goodness to come forth was particularly challenging, I came across a passage by Marianne Williamson. Those who have been to my office have seen it hanging on my door. I strive to live my life by it. Why? You decide:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves: who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear our presence automatically liberates others.

If we believe in God, we know that we are powerful beyond measure, because He made us, and everything that He made was good. The potential brightness of our light must scare us. After all, we are all sinners and are attracted to the darkness in our world at least once in a while. And we do this even when we know that there is a better way, as we are told by Paul in his letter to the Romans, Chapter 12, verses 1-3.

Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Because we are children of God we are by definition brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous! Our brilliance, however, must be cultivated via education; we must do some heavy lifting and study…all of us! Give us a basic understanding of a subject and our collective imaginations fly to new discoveries. Our gorgeous-ness is deep under the layers of skin we live in, which simply serve to hold our bones and muscles and inner workings in place. No matter what we, or society, may think we look like externally, we each have beauty in our hearts and souls, and it is multiplied when we decide to share it with others in the form of love. Our talents lie dormant until given the opportunity to burst forth and surprise even ourselves with the breadth of what we are truly capable of becoming. And fabulous? You know it! And if you don’t know it by now, you’d better embrace it! Again, God created you from the dust of the Universe, and you are here to do his bidding on Earth since He has a universe to manage.

Since we have all of these gifts inside of us, shrinking inside yourself is a sin. Not using your talents is a sin. Not living a life in homage to God is a sin. Not being “fabulous” so that others will not feel inferior is a sin. Sharing your love is using your gifts to brighten the world we live in. The light of the world is in each one of us. We are duty bound to turn our light on and let everyone see how awesome our God is to give us such gifts. We have nothing to fear, for God is on our side. He loves us! He continuously bathes us in his grace! And when someone finally sees your light, they will be less afraid to be liberated in Him and turn their light on and share their gifts. As Paul told the Philippians in Chapter 4, verse 13:

For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.

God does indeed liberate us from fear through His love for us. Always has, always will! FEAR, I have believed for a long time, stands for False Expectations Appearing Real. Think about it…How often does all that we fear actually happen? Answer: rarely, if ever! What do we have to fear? We have the ultimate safety net: God! Turning your fear off and turning your light on WILL give someone else the courage to believe in Him and turn their light on. So, how do we turn our light on? From the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 16, verses 13 and 14:

Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong. And do everything with love.

The Sea Is High: Mid-Life Crisis

2010-05-05T19:34:00.002-04:00

“I'm 45 for a moment,
The sea is high,
And I'm heading into a crisis,
Chasing the years of my life.“

-from 100 Years, written by John Ondrasik

The song 100 Years was quite popular several years ago; so much so that it was used in a credit card commercial that showed us why a certain card was so good for us for our entire life. Yes, we all got sick of the song and were glad to see it move down the charts and into a feel good place in our memory. And when we hear it now it brings back fond memories of that year, or that time in our life, or we remember how overexposed it got and we still hate it!

The lyric I have cited had deep meaning for me when the song was popular. I was around 45 years old at the time, and things in my life were not going according to the script I had written many years earlier. The sea in my life had risen to a very high level, and I knew each and every day that a crisis was just around the corner. The only questions were which corner and when I would find it. There had already been plenty of times when we had to pull out the life rafts until the water could be bailed off of the good ship Nagy, but we always managed to re-board and proceed with life, hoping that a happier ending was in store; hoping being the operative word. Most of the time I was sailing along without GPS or a functioning compass, not sure of how both got broken.

The day my now ex-wife decided to stay on vacation with the kids was the day the water came on board so fast that one man could not save the ship. The hope for my marriage was all but extinguished, an end that I saw coming, but felt clueless and powerless to stop. Clueless? Yes, I had no idea how I had gotten there. Powerless, you might ask? Yes, because when I was in the center of the hurricane I could not see what was causing it. I later figured out that it was…ME! I was off course because I had not locked in the coordinates for the dream that I once had with my spouse, or even in my own mind. Let me explain…

I began wondering during my walk today if many people, men and women alike, reach middle age and see that a something is on the horizon, a dim figure, so far away that they cannot make out what it is or where it is headed. And without knowing those things, they maintain their course with very little to worry about. In my continued wondering, I then determined that the unidentifiable object on the horizon is the time when we check in with ourselves, seeing where we stand against the hopes and dreams that we had when we were younger. In those dreams we had enough to put the kids through college, we had enough to retire, the kids were very well adjusted with no issues of their own, our parents were wonderful grandparents and emotionally supportive, and so on. My guess is that there are very few of us that have lived out the dream just like we laid it down in our youth, or like we laid it down with our spouse or significant other. And I also bet that when the difference between the dream and the reality of today reaches a certain magnitude, then a mid-life crisis appears.

I thought that I had done a lot of things to attain the dream: college, grad school, worked for major companies, got great performance reviews, and so on. What I now realize is that there were many things I did not do: I did not write down the dream in goal form, I did not make sure that the dream of my spouse was coordinated with the dream that I was wishing for, I did not stay conscious of the things that were important to me. I fell into the trap that many of us fall into, particularly when stress begins to be an everyday occurrence: I became an amalgam of all of the people who raised me and I did all the things that they did when they were under stress. I yelled at my wife. I yelled at the kids. I found funding wherever I could. I shut down emotionally with my wife. I literally did everything I swore I would never do the day I left my family for college.

How? Why? Every experience we have, from the moment our brains begin to work while we are still in our Mother’s tummy until today, is stored in the marvelous machine we call the brain. And if we are not fully conscious of what we are doing and where we are going, the brain is very willing to pull chapters from our lives for us to replay. “Let’s see: when Dad had this stressful situation he lost control and yelled at the kids. Check.” And we do it. We later regret it and remember exactly what Dad did, but we did it anyway. Because we are so stressed that our life is not what we thought it would be, and we are so obsessed and/or worried about how to get it on track, that we are not and cannot consciously live OUR dream. We are really living the dream/nightmare that we saw when we were growing up. And that can make not living the dream all the more painful.

Mid-life crisis? Yes, I guess that I had mine, but I do not have a Corvette or a vacation house bought on impulse, nor do I have a young, hot blonde on my arm. What I do have is a consciousness of what happened, my role in what happened, and a very strong resolve to live the second half of my life by a script that I have recently written:

Love my children as best as I can.
Find work that I enjoy doing.
Get out of debt.
Share all of the love and goodness that I can find with as many people as life allows.

I never thought that Saint Peter was going to ask for my balance sheet when I showed up at the pearly gates, and, for me, that is a good thing!

Until Next Time,

Julius

HOW WE BECOME WHO WE BECOME: Part V

2010-04-01T13:08:00.002-04:00

If you have missed previous parts, please drop down the page and click on the blog archives on the right…Thank You!

We are human beings. We like to have fun. We love to be pleased. We love pleasing others…in every way imaginable. And all of the things we choose to do come from our experience, our comfort zone, our individual map of what is good to do and what is not so good to do. We sometimes look outside our comfort zone, and even allow others to take us outside our comfort zones. But we live 99% of our lives within the parameters we have learned previously. Much of what we do we do not even think about! The routines of our everyday lives are automatic. We wake at the same time each day. We have the same things for each meal. We are on autopilot, even in our interactions with others. And most of the time, this serves us well, giving us no reason to do anything different.

Then what happens to our lives when the comfort zones that have been built in our minds begin to not work so well? The decisions we had been making without thinking very much are no longer getting us the desired results, and we don’t even see the impact on those around us. There is stress at home, with the spouse and with the kids. There is stress at the office. There are missed commitments. There are missed or cancelled appointments. We are not on our “A” game, and those who we are closest to can see it. They may even, usually after some period of time, mention something to us, and we tell them that they are imagining things. So we keep on doing the same things, and the list of things that are no longer working is getting longer. And then we begin to notice some things going not so well. And we take notice and fix things for a day, or two, or three, and then we are right back walking the destructive path.

How do I know? I lived it! And I lived it with the people I loved most, my wife and kids, for the better part of 17 years. For most of that time, I swore that it was not me that had changed, but everyone around me. Logic should tell us that when many people notice that things are not right, it is us who need to adjust, but we are in serious denial because we are living off of our map, and it has been right all of this time, right? Instead of using the shovel to fill in the holes in our life, we just keep digging, and the hole gets bigger. And one day it gets so big that everything we know just vanishes into it!

What do we expect when our loved ones are telling us that we need help and we deny that we do and redirect that THEY are the problem? Why would sane people continue to live in a world that gets more chaotic each and every day? After some time, they don’t. They get it, and they see that leaving is the only sane alternative. And with them, they take our comfort zone, the day-to-day life that we were mostly enjoying and had become used to, even the chaos! What are we to do???

There are several options…some of which might lead us to a better place…some might just continue the nightmare. The bottom line is that we need to take a long, hard look into the person in the mirror and answer some really tough questions. And that is where we will go next time…with my sharing the steps that I had to take to figure things out!

Until Next Time!

Julius

HOW WE BECOME WHO WE BECOME: Part IV

2010-03-25T10:40:00.002-04:00

If you have missed previous parts, please drop down the page and click on the blog archives on the right…Thank You!

Throughout our school years, no matter how long they last, we are acquiring information and building our comfort zones. At some point, we begin to realize that the things that we see and hear are either consistent with what we have come to believe, or inconsistent to some degree. It is at this point when we begin to alter the zone that exists to be more consistent with our current values and beliefs. We may choose to reinforce the lessons taught by our parents and family and friends, or we may choose to modify for any number of reasons. Those reasons for change could be guided by new friends, the love of our life, the politics we choose to follow, the realization that our family is not a good model for how we want to live our life, etc. The point here is that our comfort zones are evolutionary, constantly changing to some degree, based on what we encounter in the world we live in.

It is here where the bad elements that have been previously installed may come into play. If our comfort zones include places where bad influences are alright in small doses, we may grow into accepting those influences in increasing doses until they begin to negatively impact our lives. This becomes more possible when we move away from the limits imposed by our parents. Drugs and alcohol are the two that are most obvious, but the evils of overeating, excessive sex, narcissism, gambling, and so on can be just as distracting and destructive to a developing life. The endorphins that are released when we are feeling pleasure are powerful substances, driving us in directions that may not be in our best interests. Our comfort zones do not make wholesale changes overnight, and the changes are in fact so subtle that we often do not even see them happening. We may even have the same values and deeply rooted beliefs, but we fool ourselves into believing that our current behavior is consistent with who we really are.

And some of us may reach the stage when we see that we are a lot like the people who raised us. Even though they taught us from their experience, the lure of pleasure was so strong that they were not able to live without the temptations of life on Earth. And how do we feel when we realize that we are like our parents? When we hear ourselves say the exact same things that we hated hearing as a kid and swore that we would never say ourselves? For some, I suppose that it could be reinforcing and comforting. For others, it could be enough to scare us into a major shift in our comfort zones. And many of us never see it coming, and continue down the same paths.

But what happens when our comfort zones no longer work for us? When the things we hold dear to us begin to slip away, when the things we allow ourselves to be seduced into begin intrude upon who we want to be, what we want to have, where we want to go? What happens when we are kicked from our comfort zones, with no safety net to catch us? What do we do to save ourselves? Physically? Emotionally? Spiritually? Mentally? We will begin to explore one man’s journey in our next installment.

Until Next Time,

Julius

HOW WE BECOME WHO WE BECOME: Part III

2010-03-23T08:43:00.000-04:00

If you have missed previous parts, please drop down the page and click on the blog archives on the right…Thank You!

As we grow from infants to school age, the inputs into our minds continue, and they come from an increasing variety of sources. We may have playmates, who have caretakers. We may have relatives in our age group, and they too have caretakers. We begin to be mesmerized by television, either broadcast or videos of our favorite characters. We may even begin to enjoy music. And all of this input streams into our minds outside of our control.

And then we go off to school (or day care, or preschool), and begin the years of spending a lot of time with people who we are not related to, and really know very little about. We trust that our teachers have been schooled properly to hold a job with such great responsibility, but you never really know. And all of their teachings continue to barrage our brains with information, building upon the layers that went before them, and constructing the framework by which future input will be processed and stored.

Some of the things that get stored into our minds at this stage are relatively unimportant. The way we pronounce certain words, like “creek,” are defined by our families and the region of the country where we grow up. Whether we call it “soda” or “pop” or “a Coke” again is dependent on factors that have little to do with us. But there are many things that have been installed that will be important the rest of our lives. We learn how to react when people threaten us or speak ill to us. We learn about hugging and kissing. We learn the value of birthdays and other celebrations. We learn how to apologize. We learn what it means to apologize. We learn to forgive others who do wrong to us, or we learn to hold a grudge against them. We learn how to worship our respective superior beings. We basically learn how to treat other people. And we learn how to treat ourselves. We learn all of this by observing life around us, and we have no say in what we see and what we hear. We do not know when to leave the room, or we cannot leave the room. The building blocks to our comfort zone are laid by people other than us! And as a child, we are given no choice but to be there, and we do not know what to accept as good and what to reject as not so good. We are sponges!

And unfortunately for some of us, we learn some things that will not exactly help us as we grow older. We learn that families argue and use bad words. We learn that sometimes the arguments progress into people hitting loved ones. We see that apologies are not always forthcoming from people who feel they are right in doing these things. We see that celebrations are occasions to drink to excess, or the time to ingest recreational drugs. And because we see the people who have helped to program our minds doing these things, they become OK for us, maybe not at that moment, but when we reach the right age. And it all goes into our minds, building our comfort zone with no editing from us.

Fortunately for most of us, the good stuff that enters our minds far outnumbers the bad pieces of information our young brains process. But as we will begin to see next time, it only takes a few bad bits to spoil the whole deal.

Until Next Time,

Julius

HOW WE BECOME WHO WE BECOME: Part II

2010-03-21T20:35:00.000-04:00

If you have missed Part I, please drop down to the bottom of the page and click “older post”…Thank You!

Now that we are a real, living infant, our brains are being barraged with information every second of our lives, and from more sources than mom and dad. And all of that information is being processed and stored for future use. How we are responded to when we are crying, when we are wet, when we are hungry, when we are lonely, when we are cold, when we are warm, and so on. And we have no idea how it will impact things in the future.

But it had to impact things in the future. One thing that I came to realize was that each piece of information that our brain processes has an influence on how the next piece of information is processed. Where did this idea come from? Brain scientists are learning that our brains actually grow as we learn. They believe that as we learn new things, the brain is making space in which to store those things. Think of your brain growing as a vine grows. Where the vine grows in the future is determined by where it has been in the past. If it follows a crack, it will continue along that crack until it is forced to go elsewhere. Science is telling us that it is much the same process in our minds.

They have also discovered that each brain stores things, like images, differently from how another brain stores the exact same image. The texture goes in one location, the coloring in another, any shading, sound, etc. each going in its own location. When we are asked to retrieve that image, our brains can pull all of the elements together and reproduce the original sight of the image. No, our brain pulls the image together based on what it processed for us in the first place. And that processing was based on all of the information it processed before you saw that image. And since your experiences were different than mine, your brain processed it differently than did my brain. Hence, your recall will not be exactly the same as mine, or exactly the same as anybody else’s mental reproduction of the same image.

Now, let’s go back to thinking about of an infant’s life. The major parameters of importance would seem to be to stay happy and content, and to complain when not happy and content. Pretty simple stuff. So we can say that babies like to be in their comfort zone, and that comfort zone is defined by how people have taken care of them and how their brains have processed that caretaking. I believe that this comfort zone is something we carry with us for most of our lives. In the early days of my product development career I had occasion to be involved in discussions concerning the scents that should be used in air fresheners and cleaning products. In those categories of products, floral scents are very popular. I believe that one of the reasons why, particularly for those us who were babies before the mid-1980’s, is the use of Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder. That gentle floral fragrance has a special place in our minds, a place where we were comfortable and pampered. And even for those who prefer different fragrances, the light floral scent is not very offensive at all.

In Part III, the infant leaves the home from time to time, and the processing begins to get more interesting.

Until Next Time,

Julius

HOW WE BECOME WHO WE BECOME: Part I

2010-03-20T15:40:00.003-04:00

Over the past two years, I have spent considerable time thinking how things in my life could have gone so wrong. After all, I did all of the things that I was taught and told that I had to do to have a wonderful life: I did great in grade school, I got a scholarship to high school, I got grants to go to the college of my choice, and I went right to graduate school and got my doctorate. So why did my family move away from me? Why did my job go away, again? Why am I sitting in a huge financial hole? And I just might have figured it out!

I have spent a lot of time thinking this through, and I will be posting my thoughts in several posts. So...

Let’s go all the way back to the microsecond that a sperm cell enters an egg and creates YOU. We all were taught that this is the moment when YOU start to develop, in a flurry of cell division and cell organization into the different parts of the body. Some of that cell activity results in a brain, and once that brain begins to function, the programming begins. See, besides running your body, the brain processes all of the inputs that run through it. Yes, ALL of the inputs that run through it! And that includes while we are still inside our mother.

Studies show that what we hear and feel while in the uterus can have an impact on us after we are born. Many parents play classical music for us in hopes that it will make us smarter or more creative. The medical community also has proof that the things that mom ingests during our pregnancy can affect our bodies and our minds: alcohol and drugs having the most negative effect. Everything that is happening to mom is happening to us: the joy of happy times, the sadness of rough times, the people who talk to her, etc. All of this has some effect on the developing brain. What effect? We do not know, and we may never know, but those inputs ARE being processed.

It is also no small surprise that babies often bond strongly with their mothers in the first few days after they are born. Why? Besides the fact that they were sharing the same body for all of that time, mom’s voice was the sound that they heard most often and there has to be some comfort in hearing that voice as we are fed and changed and coddled and caressed in the “real” world. In most cases, dad is the second person we bond to, and again, his is a familiar voice. So if those voices were processed into our memory, we have to wonder what else of our pre-birth lives was wired into who we ultimately become, right? And how much of this did we choose to accept into our brains? Right, none of it.

And the lack of choice that we all have as to what goes into our brains when we are young will be a recurring theme when I pick this up in my next blog post…

Until Next Time,

Julius

My Christmas 2009 Reflections

2010-03-16T16:58:00.000-04:00

Originally Posted: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2009

For the first time since I can remember, I am not surrounded by the trappings of Christmas: a beautifully decorated tree, cards from friends, crazy quantities of food to feed family and friends, and so on. You see, in late February my position was eliminated due to the economic downturn. Shortly thereafter my wife filed for divorce, as she wanted to ensure that our kids could get what they needed (from the state of Michigan) in case work was hard to find. We had been separated by 4 states for 8 months at that point, and we both knew that “we” were over and that it was the best thing to do for our kids. The divorce was final in mid-November, 4 days after I got evicted from our former family home due to foreclosure. I did not become the first in my family to graduate from college or go on to get a doctorate degree for all of these things to happen. But happen they did.

So, I could sit here, living with a friend, and be angry at the world and all of the people running the country and the banks and the companies that haven’t hired me, but I am not. I cannot sit here and be filled with anger. I have too much to be thankful for…

I have 5 children who understand enough of what is going on to know that I have not seen them since June because money is that tight. Their mom has kept some of the details from them, but they know that I am not staying away through my own choice. They know that I love them! And I am grateful for that…

I have had two sets of friends who have taken me in until my job hunt comes to resolution. I have not had to live in my car, or a tent, or a cardboard box. And I am grateful for that…

I have been able to send the majority of my unemployment funds to my family to keep a roof over their heads, food on the table and gas in the family car, and still keep enough for food and gas for my van. I do not eat like I used to, but that is a matter of choice. And I am grateful for that….

I have had the time to sort out my life as a spouse and father, and have come to understand my role in the train wreck that was my family life. I now know why I was myself at the office and turned into Mr. Hyde on the way home. I am not proud of what I have done. I should have known better. I now do. And I have forgiven myself. And I am grateful for that…

I have been blessed to find a website that has helped me to become more healthy physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and it is www.transformation.com (screen name NCDrJCN). I feel like myself again, even in the midst of all of the chaos that has descended upon me. I am taking care of myself, eating sensibly, exercising regularly, thinking outside of the box, looking for new comfort zones, and am optimistic that I will find a way to make a contribution on our world. And I am grateful for that…

I have applied for countless jobs, and have had some interviews which have not led to jobs. I continue to look for opportunities to use my skills in a constructive manner. And I know the right opportunity is out there, because it has been out there before. And I currently have an opportunity that would move me about 100 miles from my kids. And I am grateful for that…

Finally, I live in a country where people continue to strive to pick themselves up out of the ashes and make a difference. Our country was built on hope: the hope that we could build a better life than we had in the past; the hope that our children, and their children, would have things easier than we did; the hope that we could find a way to bring peace and harmony to all of the world; the hope that each one of us can find a way to give a piece of ourselves to the common good. I continue to have hope, for my country, for my children, and for myself. And I am grateful for that…

As you go through the motions this holiday season, keep in mind that no matter how many gifts are under the tree this year and no matter how much traveling you are able to do, there are people who have fallen pretty far from where they used to be: people have lost jobs, and homes, and families, and loved ones. And even though they have lost all of that, they still have hope…they are clinging to the hope that they will have a meaningful life very soon…and that they can make a difference in the lives of those they love and those they care about. And I am grateful for that…

Happy Holidays to all!!!
Julius

Book Review, Part II: “ReBoot: My Five Life-Changing Mistakes…and How I Moved On”

2010-03-16T16:56:00.002-04:00

Originally Posted: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 2009

To properly set the stage for this post I suggest that you scroll down to the previous post and give it a read. Thanks, JCN

“I became suspended in a strange, numbing nothingness. I didn’t feel anything…I realized my numbness was masking anger. I could explode with little or no provocation…I was angry at everything I was and all that I would ever be…I saw myself as a different version of my mother…I was trapped.”

Many people believe that all anger is a response to a situation that is fermenting in our minds, lingering with no solution that we can implement. And many of us saw anger in our childhoods, not necessarily directed at us, but outwardly visible in some form. One of my most vivid childhood memories is my mother repeatedly smashing the phone receiver into the metal hook of our wall mounted phone because my father was still at a bar and not where he should have been. I remember walking up to the phone when she was done and seeing the metal bent so much that the phone could no longer hang on it.

All too often, when life deals us a bad hand, our subconscious mind takes over and pulls out the lessons of our childhood. Many of those lessons are the ones we are ashamed of, and desperately wish that we could erase from our memory. But selective brainwashing is not an option. The work of reprogramming our subconscious mind is difficult. It requires a lot of focus by the conscious mind, knowing that there is a better state for us to be in. For me the path away from anger involves mentally moving to a place where my mind is not stressed out and can operate out of love and not react out of that subconscious memory. Often easier said than done.

“So, I start writing about my real mistakes. Not my business mistakes, but my LIFE mistakes. I allowed others to define me. I built my image of myself on two main supporting pillars (smart and married). I stopped believing in myself. I stopped taking care of myself. Allowing my head to rule my heart.”

Selfish. An often misunderstood word. But I now understand it very well. Michael Losier teaches its meaning as “self care,” doing the things necessary for me so that I can do everything else I have committed to do. When I read the five mistakes Julie has outlined above, I hear someone who was trying to appease others, who held other people’s opinion of what she needed to do in higher regard than her own opinion, who in trying to be everything to everyone forgot to be who she really was. Unfortunately, Julie Wainwright is not the only person to fall into this trap.

We are hardly out of the womb when we begin to hear the opinions of those we encounter, some welcomed, some not. And as children the opinions of adults mean everything to us because we do not know any better. And many of us wind up with a pretty well installed version of “People Pleasing,” where we do things to make others happy, to make others proud, to make others give us nice presents, etc. We learn to please everyone we encounter. Except us. We never learn where to draw the line. We never learn how to recognize that we are giving up some of the precious stuff that makes us, well, us. We move so far in becoming one with our jobs or one with our significant other that we lose sight of who we are. And it often takes life changing events, like job loss, divorce, becoming widowed, etc. for us to learn the bitter truth: we MUST find ways to love ourselves more; to get in touch with our own hearts and minds and become whole. To be selfish.

“I had failures and successes in the past. If I really looked at things truthfully, I had more successes than failures. I had acted honorably toward the Pets.com employees and the shareholders, but I hadn’t treated myself with the same kindness.”

Julie realized that we need to be kind to ourselves, as well as those we serve. It isn’t simply a matter of doing the right thing. It is sort of like the old oil filter commercial: “You can pay me now or you can pay me later!” If we treat ourselves with proper kindness on a regular basis, then we can keep every ball in our court in play. If we allow no time for “selfishness” then we are listening to all those around us tell us which ball to play next. Chaos reigns, and the subconscious mind kicks in. And our old friend anger is right around the corner, frequently directed at those we love. Or inward…

“I had a choice: go along with someone else’s perception of the world or get on with creating my own world. I really wanted to heal my own wounds and start living again, so I made a conscious decision to separate my wounds from everyone else’s…when I started to pay close attention to that tenet and I did so from a place of love, not fear, all that negativity lost its power. As far as I can tell, negativity needs energy, a reaction, to feed it.”

This is such a powerful concept! “Negativity needs energy to feed it!” Julie eloquently relates fear to negativity, so we can say that fear also needs energy to feed it. And she teaches that love is the one thing that takes power away from both fear and negativity. This is so simple!!! But again, when we are focused outwardly, we never give our own hearts enough time with love’s healing energy.

“I held tightly onto those two adjectives, smart and married, as a measurement of personal worth that left no room for me to just be a person who accepted my own humanness. And when I couldn’t use those adjectives to describe myself I became, in my mind, worthless. I never held anyone else to these standards, since I knew they were external measurements, but I didn’t have the same compassion for myself.”

I cannot add anything more of substance to these statements. If you have read this far, you can either apply this to yourself or someone you hold very dear to your heart. Maybe when we begin to feel like we are letting ourselves down we need to examine our standards for ourselves and check them against our current reality. Most of us will see that we are doing just fine!!!

“I realized that all those who truly loved me didn’t care if I was uber successful, and they certainly did not want to see me in an unsatisfying marriage. Their love wasn’t conditional…I began to feel truly secure simply by being myself and really enjoying life.”

Again, there is so much power in these words! Unconditional love is powerful stuff! It can heal any wound. This is the reason that Marianne Williamson tours the world preaching love’s great benefit for the world! Remember to feel some love the next time you look into a mirror!!!

“The most prominent goals were focused on me being successful in every part of my life: physical, emotional and spiritual…I showed myself climbing the proverbial ladder and once again reaching for the stars.”

There is a very important concept here that many self-help programs do not pay respect to. Particularly as we approach middle age, personal fulfillment consists of finding ourselves physically, mentally and spiritually. Any one itself may be good, and any two may benefit the individual, but it is only when we work on all three aspects of life that we maximize our contribution to the world and to future generations. When we “find” ourselves physically, emotionally AND spiritually we set the stage of reaching for the stars and manifesting all of the goodness that God gives to each of us the day that we are born. As an example, Bill Phillips’ Transformation site (www.transformation.com) asks the individual to work all three areas of being so that they can “be the change!” Check it out! My screen name is NCDrJCN.

“Doing things that filled my heart with love and learning to trust myself enough to follow my heart…those were the key…I had to learn to let go of fear. It meant learning to trust myself, my spirit and something greater than me, which connects us all.”

I believe that it can be difficult to allow our hearts to guide us because few of us get that type of guidance as we grow up. We are taught that education and pure knowledge are the keys to success, and our fast paced, entertainment driven society certainly seems to reward knowledge. It is only when life slows down a little that we allow ourselves to listen to our gut, that “feeling” we have that one thing or the other is the right way to go. Previous generations had the benefit of fewer entertainment options and a slower pace to life. There was a lot of wisdom passed down on the front porch, watching people pass by as grandparents told the stories of their youth and discussed current events with their experienced opinions. How does that generational wisdom, or love, get passed down today? We are moving too fast to care!

“ ‘When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.’ “

If there is a single lesson in this book that should be passed on to future generations, it is the one above. Look with you in mind! Look for a way to share joy, and goodness, and love. You may find yourself looking in some new places, or just from a different point of view!

The next time you are faced with a critical decision, consider consulting your heart as well as your mind. It is the merger of the two where the better answer can be found. And usually one that allows you to consider yourself in the solution.

Until Next Time,
Julius

Book Review, Part I: “ReBoot: My Five Life-Changing Mistakes…and How I Moved On”

2010-03-16T16:55:00.000-04:00

Originally Posted: SATURDAY, JUNE 6, 2009

AUTHORS of Book Reviewed: Julie Wainwright with Angela Mohan

Julie Wainwright had a spectacular public fall. She was the CEO of the Internet start up Pets.com. You may remember the sock puppet that they used in their advertising. Well, remembering the brand may be good, but Pets.com was in business for about a year, Julie was at the helm, and got publicly trashed for some of the moves she made. Mostly for closing down the company while they still had capital. Why would she do that? So she could live with herself! She knew that the business had NO chance to succeed because so many other internet pet companies went online in the same timeframe, and she saw that Pets.com was actually losing money on every transaction. My guess is that many of us would do the same thing and give our investors some of their investment back. But we all have recently seen the logic of Wall Street and the financial markets. Enough said!!!

At virtually the same time as the company was folding, her marriage ended when her husband not only announced that he wanted a divorce, but promptly left their home with all of his possessions. The double whammy was devastating to Julie, and she took some time to think about how her life had gotten to this point. Which gets us to the blog article that inspired this book.

As a part of the healing process, Julie wrote a blog post with the title of this book on her website . In less than a year’s time, nearly 100,000 people had read “The Five Mistakes” blog in over 156 different countries. Truly not what she expected. Many of the readers asked for the material in book form so that they could share it with friends and family. After seeing that the requests were never going to stop, Julie decided to write the book.

It is a revealing work, with Julie reliving much of what she went through and how she got to the places that allowed all of this to happen around her. The key to me is that she knew that she had to move on, pick up the pieces and reinvent herself in order to live with herself. She found that her priorities had been shaped by the needs of those around her, and that she allowed herself to lose touch with…Julie. Life events like the ones she experienced are often quite eye-opening, and having them occur in parallel caused Julie to open not only her eyes, but her brain and heart as well.

In the post to follow this one I will take quotes from Julie’s book and add my spin on her learning. I find that her experiences have great teaching value to me, and I suspect that many others can learn from her insights. I do this split because I know it would get quite long, and I do not want to post the “mother of all posts.” But as a teaser, here are the first couple:

“I had no idea, no real idea that is, that my marriage is over…Still, I don’t really believe it.”

I can relate, as I am currently living the last stages of my marriage being over, the stage involving court personnel. Somehow, you know its over but you just don’t understand its over. I never wanted it to be this way. I never wanted it to end this way. I want to start over. But none of that is going to happen, mostly because the other party has given the marriage many chances before they resort to this ending. We often get out of touch with the “us” because we are so busy doing other things: managing work projects with fierce internal intensity, dodging the bosses latest requests in our minds 24/7, worrying how we are going to have the funds to put the kids through college, worrying how we are going to have the funds to retire, etc. And all of these things can look like selfishness to our significant other, and maybe they are. But for me, they were the response to years of doing for others and going against the grain of what I thought were the right things to do in order to not rock the marital boat. I was cultivating a “joint” approach to problem solving. In my own mind. And it often ran 100% upstream from where my heart told me I should be going. If you EVER feel yourself going against the grain to the point of discomfort, I implore you to resolve the situation, either by sitting down with your significant other and hashing things out, or by getting out of the relationship. Like most other personal issues, letting it fester will only make things worse in the long run.

“I didn’t realize that when you’re older, life is different. You see the patterns in your past actions and they can actually trap you in the past because you assume that this is just how your life will always be. Sometimes, you create patterns when they aren’t there, because you’re miserable; you think you must have done something wrong, because you are in so much pain and time is running out and you can see very clearly that there won’t be that many more do-overs in your future. If any.”

Believe it! Life changes as the years pile up. How? As Julie states, the habits we pick up along the way corrupt our minds into thinking that things will ALWAYS be a certain way. You put your head into solitary confinement. You begin to imagine walls that don’t exist in the real world, but they may as well be three feet of concrete. There is no way out, and you see that you alone are responsible for this sentence. The pain in unbearable, but you are too old to get back to “GO” and get your playing piece and starting salary because that salary cannot support the life you have created and someone else has the sporty car or the guy on the horse.

The reality: the resources you need are out there. In fact, the resources you need are IN there, and have been all along! Your mind and heart are two of the most underutilized resources that many of us have. While we don’t consciously think that we have quit on ourselves, we subconsciously have given up. We resign ourselves to the little corner of the world that we currently reside in and the daily schedule that drives many of us insane. Who, exactly, imposed these limits on our lives? We did! We all have advanced degrees in wall building and confinement, of our hearts and minds. We either get comfortable with what we have or consumed by what we want, often because to aspire for more is “too hard” or because what we see our neighbors have or what is marketed on TV is way cooler than what we have. Or because the vacation we can’t afford is deserved. And so on.

Often changes like the ones that Julie went through act as a wake up call. We learn that we have infinite power to become a person other than the one we have been playing in the drama known as life. The car we have is fine. The TV we have is fine. Who are these people I share my life with? There are people who have it worse than I do? I can help them? And I really can have a different job, a different career?

Cars can be repaired. TV’s are used too often. The people you share your life with are your family and friends! They nourish you! You nourish them! You can help those who have less than you have!!! It’s called giving!! Or sharing the love!! Embrace it!! It will make you feel better!!! The knowledge to job change is out there on the Internet, and with personal coaches and with career consultants. In no way do you need to settle for what you have!

You can live a more fulfilling life!!! And it shouldn’t take your life falling completely apart for you to see that!!! You can learn from the experience of others!!!! We can take their wisdom and find a life that satisfies us to our core! It can be heartwarming to help others, and to really know our family members, and to have friends who really care about us!!!! All of these things exist when our hearts and minds are OPEN and ready to share in the abundance we all have inside of us!!!

Until Next Time and Part Two!
Julius

Love is All That Matters

2010-03-16T16:52:00.002-04:00

Originally Posted: SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2009

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…And God created man in his own image…And God blessed them...And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
Genesis 1: 26-31; American Standard Version (http://www.biblegateway.com)
Shouldn’t that be enough for us to be satisfied? Isn’t that a high enough standard for all of us, that God created us, and that we are very good? Where do so many of us get the idea that we are less than very good? What is the motivation to be less than very good? Near as I can tell this notion that we are less than very good is more destructive than it is motivational.

Somewhere between our birth as totally innocent beings and the moment when we finally believe that we are “very good” we are taught the notion that we are more than some people and less than others. We are more or less intelligent. We are more or less financially secure. We are more or less able to accomplish athletic tasks. We are more or less worthy of the love and respect of others.

Perhaps it is a humanization of Mother Nature’s pecking order. It is well established that among many animal species that live as groups there are identifiable animals that are the leaders, or the “alphas,” and that there are sometimes battles to establish the alpha. Being as we are descendants of the animal kingdom this should not be too surprising. This stratification appears to begin when we are very young, where some children demonstrate abilities that are superior to those of others. Reading ability. Cognitive abilities. Athletic abilities. Leadership abilities. After all, we are each a combination of different slices of genetic code, and there are an infinite number of such combinations. That we all don’t do everything equally well is not surprising.

The striking thing is that beings that were created by a loving God use this natural separation of abilities as the basis for social differentiation. We learn as children to praise and belittle others based on these natural abilities. We are taught to look up to certain people as role models. We are taught to look down upon others as bad examples. We begin to call others names, and then the names get more awful as we hear what adults call each other. So we not only inherit our genetically-granted abilities from our families, but also their standards and biases and prejudices, and their labels. Fat. Stupid. Idiot. Democrat. Republican. And all of the others that my conscious does not allow me to type.

Where is the love? The love that is best taught by the Golden Rule, and other biblical variations upon it:

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."
John 13:34; American Standard Version (http://www.biblegateway.com)

"The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'…To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
Mark 12:31, 33; American Standard Version (http://www.biblegateway.com)
"No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us."
1 John 4:12; American Standard Version (http://www.biblegateway.com)
What do we say about ourselves when we categorize those around us, those we elect to lead us, those who live in foreign lands, those who truly do not know better, with the slurs we learn from adults and the others we hold as leaders? I believe that we are telling ourselves that we do not love ourselves very much; that there are fundamental parts of our being that have not been put into place. And there are plenty of clues that this is the case. Addictive and compulsive behaviors.

At 48 years of age I have finally read and learned enough to know that the compulsions that have manifested themselves inside of me have been driven by low self-esteem, a feeling that I am not good enough, that I need to be more. They are fueled by my inability to solve my need to please other people at my own expense, to compromise to the point of compromising my values and what I know to be right. I have this overwhelming urge to please others as a means to get them to accept me. To love me. Because somewhere along the way I never learned to love myself enough to say “no:” to food, to pleasure, to relaxation, to spending money I didn’t have, to skipping exercise. And based on the obesity epidemic and the scores of those who harbor addictions, I believe that I am not the only one who has been looking for love in all the wrong places.

And where are the right places? In the 21st Century, they are everywhere! There are Internet communities that provide the support needed to help us begin to see that we are not alone, that provide the information to help us make better choices, that provide the fuel to allow us to find the courage to keep seeking answers to our individual questions, and that encourage us to continue to ask ourselves the questions that will teach us what we need to know about ourselves.

And where do you go when you need something real, something not generated by electrons shooting at a computer screen? You go watch the sun rise on a Spring morning. You watch the rejuvenation provided by a Spring rain. You seek the laughter of a child as their parent pushes them on a swing. You seek the crack of a bat at a Little League game, or the celebration after someone scores the winning goal. And you keep seeking these things when you remember those who are less fortunate than us, because it is only us, by finding and sharing the love that God provided in such abundance who can raise them up and let them know that we remember that we are all children of the same world. And all deserving of love from all available sources.

Everything that God creates is very good. His standard is the most important one in our lives. If we can remember that we are very good, and to love ourselves as such, and to share that love as often as we can, then we will begin to right our individual ships, and someday all will be well in the world.

Until Next Time,
Julius

What is Marriage Supposed To Be?

2010-03-16T16:47:00.002-04:00

Originally Posted: FRIDAY, MAY 22, 2009

The upcoming formal end of my marriage has had me going through the classic stages of loss and grieving, and doing a lot of thinking about what went wrong. Then today I come across a post on a personal improvement website that I frequent about a member who was chucking it all because his wife didn’t like the time he spent there. Prior to dispensing any words of wisdom, I found a subsequent post that he and his wife were back, and it brought back some old memories from my marriage.

Not having been in any serious relationships prior to meeting my wife probably left me naïve as to the interpersonal skills needed to negotiate such a committed relationship. I learned much more about myself over the last 17 years than I did about my wife, and it is going to change the way I behave as I move forward in the world. The way I behave as a single person, and the way I behave if I ever have another significant other, which right now is the last thing I want! It’s not that it was so bad, or has to be bad, it’s that I have a lot of work to do to get me where I need to be for the 5 children that I now have to father from a distance, and where I need to get to in order to be the me I want the world to get to know.

Let me start here: I believe that marriage is not so much a dedication to each other, but a commitment to the shared person that marriage creates, a celebration of the yin and the yang, the creation of a complete being who is more than the simple sum of the two people being joined. There does need to be a realization by both parties that each participant is a person, with characteristics and flaws that make them the individual they are, the person who attracted the other. And each person has thoughts, and feelings, and history, and friends, and likes, and dislikes, and so on, that are uniquely theirs. And the complete being formed through marriage must respect, if not embrace, these traits as just as important as those of the shared person. If either party’s characteristics become more important than the other, many negative feelings will be generated, and the union will suffer.

How do I know? I lived it. Not that I was the perfect partner. Not that I will ever be the perfect partner. That being said, I do have a concept of what unconditional love is, and it is what I tried to practice over the past 17 years of my life, and always will. A part of me still loves my wife and always will. I accept her flaws and her history and her misgivings about what she did before I met her just as I accepted all of her positives. And there are many times that I do not know how I will live without her. There are also the times I resent her for asking me to give up friends she didn’t like, female associates that she was suspicious of, interests that didn’t mesh well with hers, telling me what was wrong with my family and my upbringing, and my point of view, and my questions. And I get angry at myself for doing all of those things, and more, that were inconsistent with who I was, who I am, what I wanted my shared life to be about, where I wanted to go with her by my side. Places I will have to go alone, or with someone else. And I will probably think of her, at least once in a while.

I have a sense that many a divorced person could have written the previous words. Why do so many people expect their significant others to give up their lives so completely in order to have a shared life in their personal vision? Why are so many so willing to give up everything they have become through their own trials and tribulations? Are we all so scared to be alone? Are we really that conflict averse? Are we afraid of what a true sharing of ideals and values and thoughts can give us? Or the benefits of a little arguing? Do so few of us see this model in our parents that we do not know how to gain it for ourselves? And what does this kind of relationship teach our children? What hope can we have for them to have more fulfilling relationships when all they see is one or the other partner sacrifice so much to keep the other partner “happy?” How does one break this cycle and allow their children to have better relationships than they have had?

I am a chemist by training, so the following excursion into genetics will be with some trepidation, but here goes: I think that the whole idea of hybrids in genetics is to take the desirable properties of one seed line and merge it with the desired characteristics of another to produce better fruit than either of the original seed lines. Many of these experiments don’t work out, but many do. Is there a way of teaching our children that marriage is much like the desirable hybrid, where the two sets of characteristics are merged to produce a superior relationship? We as people should never compromise everything that makes us unique, but we do need to be prepared to give up that part of ourselves that would compromise the union we so desperately crave. There is a humility, an openness, a vulnerability that two people share to become an example to their children. The intimacy that is created when everything is right is the sacred union that is the quest of each of us. It is nirvana, heaven on earth.

Then why do so many of us choose to impose our individual personal hells on one another in the name of marriage? How do we learn to play nice and not just pick up our ball and run away? That, I believe, is one of the secrets of life that not many of us ever get to experience. For when we do have it, maybe we won’t know what else to seek. Living in nirvana is a problem I would love to have.

Until Next Time,
Julius

Love Cures The Evils of Our Ego

2010-03-16T16:46:00.000-04:00

Originally Posted: FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 2009

"Criticism is often not so much about our achievements as it is an expression of the speaker’s perceived inferiority."
The speaker of the above statement is my counselor who has been such for over a year. I have learned a lot from him, and discovered even more about myself. He has had the thought above for some time, and shared it with me in a recent session. I happen to think he is right, although I would never had said it so, well, bluntly, but that is why I like him so much! The question it begs is “Why do we have such a need to feel superior to others?”

Many years ago I heard someone verbalize the thought that when people complain about you they are really complaining about themselves. It’s called projection. Example: “you are selfish” isn’t so much that the target is selfish, but that the speaker is selfish, and perhaps do not like that they are selfish. I have encountered many who say these sorts of things, and found that indeed they are usually commenting more on themselves than the subject of the moment. I find myself making these sorts of statements much less often than those around me, and wondered if I didn’t do it because I didn’t want to publically comment on myself or others. I have come to the conclusion that I am just far less judgmental than many and less extroverted (and vocal) than most, borne out by my INFP Myers-Briggs type.

Why are we so competitive? Why do we need so much to win in interpersonal situations? Why do we need to feel superior to those around us? My position for today is that the ego is the bad guy here, the ego as presented by Marianne Williamson in “A Return to Love” and subsequent books. Some excerpts:

“…ego…as the ancient Greeks used it – as the notion of a small, separated self. It is a false belief about ourselves, a lie about who and what we really are.”

“The ego is our self-love turned into self-hatred.”

“The ego…draws us away from the love in our hearts. The ego is our mental power turned against ourselves…it proceeds to counsel us to look out for ourselves, at the expense of others. It teaches us selfishness, greed, judgment and small-mindedness.”

Ms. Williamson’s teaching is that love is the one thing that every human being is born with, and that fear is it’s polar opposite, and fear is completely learned during our life experiences. It’s a powerful tool in the upbringing of many. It helps to provide boundaries. We “imagine” many things that we are afraid of, “borrowing trouble”, and very few of them come to fruition. If we believe the teachings of the Law of Attraction (LOA) community, then we attract that which we think and believe, ergo the manifestation of at least a fraction of our fears. Would it not be better to focus on the love in our hearts, the possibilities it can bring forth, and manifest love rather than imagined situations?

The other connection between Ms. Williamson’s teachings and the developing LOA beliefs is centered on energy. In Ms. Williamson’s world, love isn’t material, but rather energy. Recent teachings from John Assaraf, in his book “The Answer,” relate “energy” as the thing that differentiates one state from the other. For example, the protons, neutrons and electrons that make up all matter are the same particles. Why have some particles combined to become water atoms, others to become gold atoms, and so on? The current theory of quantum physics is that the energy at the moment of conception drove the distinction, and that energy can be controlled by our thoughts. It is how “thoughts become things.” Therefore, love being energy and energy being the key to attraction, it makes complete sense to me that by sharing our love inwardly and outwardly we can attract the kind of life that we want for ourselves and those around us in the world. And, following Ms. Williamson’s advice, by outwardly sharing our love we can impact the course of the world and move it to a better, more positive and less fearful place.

Remembering the adage that “FEAR=False Expectations Appearing Real” reminds us that we can actually make our fears real if we dwell on them and give them the energy of the ego. By releasing our fears and letting our love shine through, we can make our lives better, stronger, and more productive while spending (or wasting) less time inventing situations that could go wrong, but rarely do.

Until Next Time,
Julius

Diversity (and Teamwork) Always Wins!

2010-03-16T16:44:00.000-04:00

Originally Posted: SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2008

I am writing this post on Saturday, November 8, 2008. I have been watching a DVR recording of MSNBC’s coverage of election night. Being at least a little to the left of center, I have grow to enjoy their coverage of the campaign, and wanted to see what they said on election night. Tuesday evening I was holed up in a hotel room in Shelton, CT on a business trip. My wife and I talked several times that night as the result became increasingly inevitable. I also reminded my children to watch as much as Mom would allow because no matter who won, they would be witnessing history, and that didn’t happen everyday.

Keith Olberman, not everyone’s favorite personality, just paralleled Barack Obama’s moment of victory to the moment when Walter Cronkite tried to describe Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon as being a distinct point in time when our American culture changed instantaneously. I agree, and there are other parallels and one important difference, worth mentioning.

A major parallel is the power that television can have in communicating “now” to millions, no, billions, of people simultaneously. I remember being 8 years old and watching that black and white image descend the steps of the lunar module while uttering the words “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” and those words changing everything for everybody. Not only did the race for the Moon give the world the age of computers and ultimately the Internet, but it erased a border for us. We could go outside the limits of our planet and explore, not only with our satellites, but with our own hands and eyes. And I saw that event at the same exact time as many others did, worldwide. Just like Tuesday night.

The second parallel is the magnitude of the effort required to make both events possible. From President Kennedy’s pronouncement on September 12, 1962 that the United States would put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade to that instant on July 21, 1969, thousands of people contributed their knowledge and creativity to achieve the stated goal. Again, from Mr. Obama’s announcement of his candidacy until the closure of the polls in California and other states at 11 PM eastern time on Tuesday, millions of people contributed their knowledge and creativity to achieve the stated goal. Both events were initiated with a bold statement of vision, something all too often lacking in our recent global efforts and financial crisis. Vision crystallizes thought, it focuses the collective spirit, and it challenges the individual mind to find the path from today to the seemingly impossible. Vision is always the cornerstone of transformational change.

This brings me to the one key difference I see between the efforts that culminated in Tuesday’s events and the effort to put an American on the Moon. The videos we see of the Space Race of the 1960’s contain only the images of white Americans and white immigrants. This was no fault of NASA and the contractors who contributed to this effort, but a statement of where we were as a country at that time. The images from Tuesday evening’s celebrations showed the rainbow that now defines the United States as different from the rest of the world. How are we different?

First, we have finally fulfilled the proclamation that we are a melting pot for the World. What we have been is a soup in that melting pot, each component certainly a part of the whole, but each component largely separate from the other. Each noodle, carrot, celery, bean, cube of meat, and onion slice contributing some flavor to a great broth, but separable when convenient. We have all seen those occasions of separation: the images of the civil rights uprisings of the 1960’s, the images of the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King arrest, and the images after the acquittal of O.J. Simpson. Those and countless other events have divided our soup into two or more parts, each angry at the other for what they thought were good reasons. And each time it took months, years, and sometimes forever for the healing to take root. Barack Obama’s victory and the effort to achieve it have put the blades of a blender to our American soup, and should make it all the more difficult to draw those same tired lines. Every part of our soup worked to get him elected, and each part will have to help to fully enjoy the fruits of this historical event.

The events that culminated in Tuesday evening’s celebration also give much needed credence to a fundamental that each of us needs to keep alive in our lives: Diversity always wins! And I do not mean just racial diversity, but diversity defined by the largest scope of the word.

I was fortunate to begin my professional career with The Dow Chemical Company, and they taught, and I’m sure they still teach, that “diversity” encompassed differences along any axis that existed in the company, or the world: race, religion, education, upbringing, region or country of origin, philosophy, etc. Their desire is for their employees to use every element of each individual’s make up to benefit the company. They believe this is accomplished through teamwork of the utmost degree. Teamwork of the type where people put all of their diverse, unfiltered thoughts on the table in a divergent manner and subsequently work together to converge to the best possible answer in the time allowed. For this to work optimally there can be no individual ownership of the thoughts and ideas on the table or the solution, only group ownership. In that case, upon completion of the task there is reward aplenty for not only those involved in the process, but all those affected by the outcome. It is my sincere hope that our next administration employs this type of process to further our standing the world community. Such a use of diversity and teamwork would set us apart on the world stage, where some centuries old differences, think Northern Ireland, the former country of Yugoslavia and the Sudan, still plague some countries.

Finally, Bishop T. D. Jakes was part of MSNBC’s coverage on election night, and after the magical 11 PM moment he said, “I now know that I leave my son a better country than I was born into.” Agreed, but only if the diversity and teamwork that elected our 44th President is used constructively to help our country solve the problems that plague us.

Until Next Time,
Julius

Tuesday's Hidden Message

2010-03-16T16:34:00.006-04:00

Originally Posted: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2008

At the instant we are born we have infinite potential. It is God’s gift to us. And each second we live we are exposed to other people who also once had unlimited potential. But not a one of them has realized all of that potential. Do I really believe that? It is an opinion, a hypothesis, a belief. Let me explain.

I believe that our lives are shaped by the lives of those around us. If we experience loving and caring each and every day, we will also have those tendencies. If those around us work hard to make a living, chances are that their work ethic will live in us. If they accept the mantle of leadership, we too may be comfortable leading others. On the other hand, if those who raise us are “takers,” it is likely that we will reflect those tendencies. If they are lazy, we might not work as hard as we might. And if they do not set and work toward goals in their life, we too may tend to drift through life without self set direction.

Why do I believe this? Where did this come from? My life. My life has been a series of hills and valleys, with true optimism about my future at the heights and full of despair at the valleys. I have been fortunate to get a college education, and then get the direction to pursue an advanced degree. Upon gaining that degree the world of work was next. Mishandling of finances and personal relationships paved a descent into undesirable lands. And now I am learning some of the things I needed all of those years ago, and am seeing the light at the top of the next hill. One important thing I have learned is that if you feel you are missing something too make the leap forward, go and get some help! There are people out there who can help you see things you cannot see yourself.

One of my objectives for the second half of my life is to prepare our children, as best as possible, for the possibilites the world may offer at the forks in their roads. It's also one of the drivers for "The Wisdom of Age," sharing what we wish we knew when we were younger with those who might actually benefit from it. Lofty? Ambitious? Perhaps, but I can't get past the thought that I would be in a very different place with some additional guidance when I was younger.

So of all of the people born into this world today, how do some become “worker bees” and some become a future President? I have come to believe that as our lives progress we come to forks in the road, where each of the available paths before us will guide us until another fork arrives. If we are fortunate enough to have had wise counsel and a good compass, we make the “right” choice and realize more of our unlimited birth potential. If we are less fortunate we choose a less optimal path and our potential lies dormant, awaiting the next fork. In our fast moving society the forks are many and we all too often don't get a second chance at any of them. All too many leave this Earth with much of their potential left inside of them. Some of us find it only occasionally, making some good and some bad decisions. And some appear to get it right a majority of the time, or at least at the most opportune times, and they seem to get more opportunities at forks. And those who choose correctly become the people we remember for eternity: Michelangelo, Leonardo daVinci, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lech Walesa, Mother Teresa, Ronald Reagan, Orah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and, God willing, Barack Obama.

Finally, I believe that his election to our highest office should inspire all of us to find our hidden potential and find an avenue to let it out and move the world to a better place:
a planet where we always play “win-win,” where we always ask ourselves “What more can I do to unlock more of our cumulative hidden potential?” And to find the courage to follow through, and do what we can to give future generations a world that is better than our world of today. A world where fear can find no ground on which to grow; where hope and possibility are everywhere we look; where every part of God’s rainbow can shine forth and share more of their potential with their brothers and sisters, and maybe even a world that can become Heaven right here on Earth!

Until Next Time,
Julius

Floating Diamonds!!!

2010-03-16T16:32:00.000-04:00

Originally Posted: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2008

As I was meditating this morning, two random thoughts merged into a story of growth and development.

The first was a story I read on the net, where a child complained about having to remove rocks from his father’s field every spring after plowing. He was always giddy with delight that the rocks were gone, only to be mad the following spring when more rocks returned. His father explained that “rocks float,” which bewildered the boy until he understood. As rocks form from some small particles under the surface of the Earth, they are forced to the surface by the smaller particles settling past them. The particles of the rock are “lucky,” because they eventually see the light of day and can be made useful, the young boy learns, to build other things, to be a foundation for other purposes.

The second thought comes from a surprising place. While watching Ultimate Fighting Championship 89 (Sorry, I was intrigued!), color commentator Joe Rogan (Yes, Fear Factor Joe Rogan, but with a full beard!) said “Pressure makes Diamonds!” to one of the winning fighters. And he is right! Millions of years of pressure force coal into the precise atomic alignment that we know as diamonds. Some more precise and beautiful, others less precise but still very useful.

So, consider yourself a particle on the day you were born. You are at the bottom of the heap of humanity with millions of others born around the same time. You have experiences. You take on knowledge. You begin to grow. At the same time, you are surrounded by the pressures of your life. The first day of kindergarten. Your first test. Your first kiss. Your first graduation. Your values and principles begin to crystallize. You acquire more knowledge. You experience more of the richness of life. You grow larger as a person. You face even more pressure. Your first job. Your first tax return. Your marriage. Your first child. And these pressures cause to you to grow in ways you never thought possible. Still more pressure. Financial concerns. Downsizing. Moving your family to a new location where you know nobody. Growth to solve those dilemmas, and others too numerous to mention. Pressure that you could never conceive. And then it happens! You finally arrive at the Earth’s surface! You have been exposed! You are large enough to be used for other purposes: educating the smaller particles about your journey to the surface, building foundations that support other purposes. And you are beautiful! Your vision and values have crystallized in a way that you can peer inside yourself and see your purpose on this Earth. And it is all good!!!

May you encounter particles of growth each and every day of your life! And may that knowledge help you find yourself deep within your crystalline self. I know it is there, because I have finally, at 48 years of age, found the purpose for the rest of my life! And knowing you have found the right thing feels wonderful!!!

Until next time!
Julius

The Challenge of Life: One Man's Opinion

2010-03-16T16:28:00.000-04:00

Originally Posted: MONDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2008

"The challenge of life is not living up to the expectations of our parents. It is living up to the expectations of our children."
-paraphrased from Sam Johnson, former CEO of SC Johnson, a Family Company

Sam Johnson spoke these words during a documentary of his trip that retraced the trip of his father to find new sources of carnauba wax for the family company. While I'm sure that he gained a new appreciation for his father's original trip, I believe that Mr. Johnson learned more about himself and his life.

Many in the psychiatric community believe that our parents play a pivotal role in our lives before the age of three. Many of the values and decision models we use over the course of the rest of our lives are etched into our subconscious in those first 36 months of life on Earth. Our life map.

But what happens when our lives are very different from those of our parents? What happens when our parents lived and taught from a model that no longer exists for us? What happens when our parents never treated each other with respect and love? What happens when we need tools that we never received?

We cannot possibly know how life will unfold for our children. And the more children we have (and my wife and I have five), the more varied the outcomes of their lives will probably be. But there are a few things that we can know with a great deal of certainty:

They are going to need to know how to show someone that they love them and care about them. Not only as a friend, but at a very intimate level. If you never saw that in your family of your origin, chances are you don't know how to do this. And it's not clear to me just where you go to find the instruction manual. If you know, please share the location!
They are going to need to know to keep learning. The world changes at a very rapid pace. If you don't believe me, check out where the Dow Jones Industrial Average was just a month ago! I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said "Learning is the only true sign of life," and I think that he got it right. I'm currently on my fourth job, and will probably have one or two more before I am done. I've worked on cleaning products, diapers, dusting cloths and now beds. And even with all of that learning, I still have a lot to learn about life.
They are going to need to know that all of us travellers on the planet Earth are in this thing together, more so today than ever before, and likely less than tomorrow. Technology has made the world a very small place with few secrets. The sooner we can understand each other, the sooner we can help each other make tomorrow better than today. Reading about the collapse of global financial institutions and how we all plan to pay for our next tank of gas leads me to believe that we have a long way to go.
They are also going to need to know that they can never quit and give up hope. Hope brought our forefathers to this country. Hope mended us after the Civil War. Hope brought us back from the Great Depression. Hope put us all on a rocket ship to the Moon. Hope will help us to solve the incredible problems we face today, and the more complicated, unimaginable problems of tomorrow.

And hope is what drives those of us, like Sam Johnson, who were not given the correct map during the first 3 years of our lives. Hope keeps us searching for answers. Hope keeps us moving along the path to a better life. And hope keeps us working for our children, so we can teach them that even in our darkest hours, there is a better way! And that we will not rest until we teach it to them!

Until Next Time!

Julius

The Wisdom of Forgiveness

2010-03-16T16:25:00.000-04:00

Originally Posted: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2008

This post was rattling through my head as I struggled to sleep last night. Forgiveness will be one of the three nuggets of wisdom that I include in my personal contribution to the book.

Since Don Henley of The Eagles is a songwriter of some note and one of my personal favorites, I'll start with the closing lyric from "The Heart of the Matter":

There are people in your life who've come and gone
They let you down, you know they hurt your pride
You better put it all behind you baby, cause' life goes on
If you keep carryin' that anger, it'll eat you up inside, baby
I've been trying to get down to the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it's about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don't love me
I've been tryin' to get down to the heart of the matter
Because the flesh will get weak and the ashes will scatter
So I'm thinkin' about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, you don't love me anymore...

Allowing other people's treatment or opinion of you to "eat you up inside" is one of the worst things you can allow to happen to you, your self-esteem, and your vibe. The key consideration is that they are notyou, and cannot understand why you have made the decisions they have witnessed. Many times you will not fully understand your own quick decisions until deeply reflecting on your motivation at that point in time, which will often be tucked deep inside your subconscious mind. If you discover that you indeed have wronged someone, you of course need to apologize. If you have made a mistake that impacts only you, correct it and go on with your life. Should you discover that you were indeed true to your core beliefs, then forgive them for their opinion and get back in the game!

There will also be times when others will wrong you. You can try to determine their motivations, but that is largely wasted time (Whoa, another Eagles song reference!), since they won't even fully understand their actions. You need to find forgiveness in your heart, and live with what they give you!

I have tried to live my life by finding the "good" in people, connecting with that side, and working with what was available. People have variable degrees of "good," which can be defined as that which connects with you. There are very few people out there with whom you will find a total connection, and you will find that they often become life-long friends or even spouses. Embrace them!!! They will enrich your life, give you moments to treasure, and provide the safety net we need as we move out of our comfort zones. As John Maxwell said "If we're growing, we're always going to be out of our comfort zone." And you never want to stop growing!!!

Until next time!
Julius