On the Leadership of Self

The following quote is taken from the book, Conscious Capitalism, written by John Mackey (CEO and cofounder of Whole Foods Market) and Dr. Rajendra Sisodia, professor of Global Business at Babson College. Both are cofounders of the nonprofit Conscious Capitalism, Inc.

"Ultimately, our greatest challenge as leaders is to manage and lead ourselves: to make wise choices, to learn and grow and evolve as human beings. Today's world offers us nearly limitless choices, says Peter Koestenbaum: 'We've reached such explosive levels of freedom that, for the first time in history, we have to manage our own mutation. It's up to us to decide what it means to be a successful human being. That's the philosophical task of the age.'
It is also our greatest opportunity for service, and the rewards to our organizations, our families, and ourselves personally are virtually limitless. First we must become more conscious, act in ways that help make the world a better place, and then share our wisdom with the world. That is the hero's journey."
John Mackey and Raj Sisodia

Redemption of the Times is Yet by Christ

The following timely quote is by Richard Caldwell, Jr.
     
     "There is no political fix for what ails this world. There is no human solution to the problem. There is no cultural analysis or commentary or social program that can fix what's wrong. 
     There's only one answer for such a world, there's only one hope in the midst of the chaos, and his name is Jesus. 
     When the light of the gospel confronts the darkness, when the clarity of the gospel cuts through all the confusing voices that we hear in this world, then the sovereign Spirit of God unshackles our souls. When God says, 'Let there be light,' and the light of God shines into the darkened soul of man so that Christ is seen on the pages of Scripture in all of his beauty--and he is loved and he is believed in and embraced for life--there's a new order, a new creation. Old things pass away, all things become new.
     Through that saving work, peace replaces chaos, love replaces warring, compassion replaces pride, God brings order out of disorder. All these new creations, one soul at a time, form one new man in Jesus Christ. Christ is at the head of a new humanity, a redeemed human race."
Richard Caldwell, Jr. 


As I read the above words, and believe them to be true, I know them to be exceedingly difficult, in the every-day, to realize.

As a Christian for 19 years, I read the above words and consider my own failures that took place, and continue to take place, all the while Christ was and is, in theory, guiding me; the mental and emotional stumbling blocks that precluded, and preclude still, Christ's new humanity from being lived out in my own life. 

But at the same time, He has overcome: through the overcoming, as Caldwell states in the quote above, of each soul, albeit gradually and perhaps much too slowly for our patience. 

I look back upon the last nineteen years and thankfully no longer recognize the young woman I was before Christ began His work in me, and I cringe in remembrance of certain actions and attitudes held when I was just beginning to shed the skin of death for Christ's clothing of life.

Christ does overcome. But it is in part and not all at once in each soul. So Christians, though transformed, are yet transforming. Redemption is here, fulfilled in Christ's death, but also not entirely yet in an evidenced perfect kingdom on earth.

Again, I know the quoted Caldwell words to be true, in spite of Christians' inability to always grasp the Messiah's Hand in cooperation, missing the Spirit's whispers of attainable peace and harmony. 

But as a seminary professor once stated, 

"Just imagine the world without the constraint of the Holy Spirit, which holds so much evil and tribulation back." 

Without that constraint, all hell, literally, would break loose. 

And so it is. We as Christians persevere in the goal, like Paul, and continue to run the race, sometimes at a snail's pace, in the confidence and vision of internalizing and imparting as much of Christ as we understand of Him at the time. In as much grace as we allow Him to nurture within us, humanity's redemption, little by little or in leaps and bounds, is on-goingly forged by Christ. 

copyright Barb Harwood

Evil is Not a Thing

I came across this definition of evil that has given me something to think about:

"Evil is not a 'thing'; it is the absence of a thing--the absence of purity and holiness." Ralph O. Muncaster

Gaining Humility in the Confidence that is Christ

In the course of Christian maturity, I have come to understand that those who transform into sincere, accepting, joy-nuanced and calm humility—

humility not threatened by or jealous of how others live; 

that doesn’t attempt to cover up feelings of weakness with bravado or intelligence; 

humility that actually prefers to mind its own business and not meddle (whether that meddling be through overt unsolicited advice, internal irritation or passive, critical gossip)

—that those who become this are true, gentle and beautiful.

These then spread truth, gentleness and beauty wherever they happen to be at any given moment. 

Oodles of books have been written about how to live the Christian life, along with the steps to becoming humble. 

In reality, the answer is in the live-streaming, if you will, of Christ the Person: embarking upon the journey of Him, relaxing into His Spirit, taking in His nourishment to wholeness in His Person. 

Thinking upon Him always, contemplating His Words, our heart-mind strengthens as His confidence proceeds while our own recedes and eventually peters out. 

Then it is that the humble surety of Christ reveals: His constant presence, His love not just for us but for all—nothing marred by the grandstanding, interfering self. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

The Approach

A poem, by Carl Sandburg:



                                CHOOSE

     The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
                                Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.


Carl Sandburg

To the Morning

There’s a song, called To the Morning by Dan Fogelberg, which I became acquainted with during my 16th summer while working and living at a Wisconsin Youth Conservation Camp. 

Each morning, as we campers snoozed in cozy bunks in rustic lumberjack-era cabins shrouded in pre-dawn mist, we would perceive, from the corners of dreams or out-cold REM, the ever so slight inklings of piano music emanating from the camp loudspeaker. 

The song, played on vinyl in the camp office, tiptoed at first into our heavy-lidded slow-to-come-to-life consciousness, and the singer, Dan Fogelberg, began:

“Watching the sun

 Watching it come

Watching it come up over the rooftops”

Then, in slow but sure crescendo, it spread out across the camp, eliciting the first no-going-back-to-sleep-now stirrings among the slumbering workers.

“And maybe there are seasons

And maybe they change

And maybe to love is not so strange”

Every morning, in rumbling thunder or windy restlessness, that song woke us to the day that lay before us.

Not a morning person at that time in my life (show me a teenager who is), I loved waking to that song. It modeled for me how to rise and meet the day in the possibility of romance with life itself.

I used to occasionally play this song to rouse my boys before school, and have returned to listening to it in the last year.

It reminds me of that summer—of that soft dawn light carried on a breeze of fresh pine through screened cabin windows—of when the song did justice to a time of day I had previously loathed. That summer, I learned what morning is—the very best time of day.

Back then, it was physical hard work that would dim this fleeting moment of ante meridiem joy: 

The bright harsh afternoon sun which reduced the landscape to a flat, one-dimensional plane;

The sore neck from looking up to trim branches on Department of Natural Resources Land;

The aroma of bleach and pit toilets that sticks in the nostrils after a week of State Park Campground duty;

And the sentimental-tinged realities swirling in my adolescent head as each day wore on: missing my best friend back home, and yet dreading the ever-approaching end of summer when I must leave this brief, but thoroughly established and adapted-to camp/work existence, never to return to it again.

But when I play To the Morning now, after these many years, this time, of course, on Spotify (which certainly can never quite measure up to a rusty loud speaker as conduit for a tune spinning on a record player in a northern conservation camp office), it all comes back and I remember--that when I meet the day in this way, and watch the eggy orb show it’s cherub face, be it above a stark frozen landscape in January or one teeming with the early June croaks and bleeps of frogs and trillings of Red Wing Blackbirds in the marsh outside my door, that morning is when we establish how it will go—this day. 

And so I toast the morning in determined commitment, in a non-negotiable and oddly confident way, that, in the words of the song, “Yes! it is going to be a day where there really is nothing left to say but ‘come on morning.’”

Copyright Barb Harwood

To the Morning by Dan Fogelberg

Watching the sun

Watching it come

Watching it come up over the rooftops

Cloudy and warm

Maybe a storm

You can never quite tell 

From the morning

And it’s going to be a day

There is really no way to say no 

To the morning

Yes it’s going to be a day

There is really nothing left to

Say but

Come on morning

Waiting for mail

Maybe a tail

From an old friend

Or even a lover

Sometimes there’s none

But we have fun

Thinking of all who might

Have written.

And maybe there are seasons

And maybe they change

And maybe to love is not so strange

The sounds of the day

They hurry away

Now they are gone until tomorrow

When day will break

And you will wake

And you will rake your hands

Across your eyes

And realize

That it’s going to be a day

There is really no way to say no

To the morning

Yes it’s going to be a day

There is really nothing left to say but

Come on morning

Written and sung by Dan Fogelberg

Another Thought on Re-Thinking the Status Quo Corporate Church of Today

"But do not be called Rabbi; for One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers. Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. Do not be called leaders; for One is your Leader, that is, Christ." Matthew 23:8-10

R. T. France, in the Tyndale New Testament Commentary on the Book of Matthew, writes, regarding the above passage:

"...to recognize that Matthew records Jesus' creation of a new community does not entail reading into his Gospel all the institutional paraphernalia which the word 'church' tends to suggest to us. Indeed, when this Gospel is compared with the letters of Paul, mostly written before even the earliest date suggested for Matthew, it is remarkable how lacking it is in 'church' terminology. No church officers are mentioned..."