Renewing the Mind

In his book Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard quotes John Calvin, making a point from a Christian perspective similar to the one made by David Foster Wallace in my previous post on "Real Freedom."

For as the surest source of destruction to men is to obey themselves, so the only haven of safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom, than to follow the Lord wherever he leads. Let this, then, be the first step, to abandon ourselves, and devote the whole energy of our minds to the service of God." (Willard, p.63)

He goes on to point out that this has been the classic viewpoint of Christianity, following the teaching of the Bible which says, "let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think." (Romans 12:2)

The Real Freedom That Comes From Education

Here's a fascinating commencement speech. The kind of stimulating thinking I don't hear very often.

"This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

"Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

"Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

"They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

"And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like 'displayal']. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

"That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."

'A More Practical Approach'

This thoughts in this article do not so much represent a new attitude by Christians in China as they represent a new kind of Christian in China.

Educated, urban professionals who have become Christians recently, and who became adults since Deng Xiaoping's reforms.

They have more progressive expectations for Chinese society than the less educated, rural Christians who have been believers longer and experienced persecution as a powerless minority.

This is an exciting development in China's move toward building a civil society. May God bless them and increase their numbers.

"As Yu Jie put it at the conference, 'Christians need to change from 'silent resilience' to a more practical approach. Christians have to change.' That more practical approach will require a shift in consciousness and terminology—from 'underground church' to 'family church,' said Yu Jie.

Yu Jie goes further. 'We want to bring changes to China through the love and justice of God, and through nonviolent means. God will raise great spiritual men like Martin Luther King and Archbishop Tutu who changed their countries by their faith.'"

Life Lessons through Failure

Years later, a former player realized that the difficult experiences on his college basketball team were what taught him the lessons that helped him succeed in business and family and life.

"'I look back at my days at UCLA and now realize it was the greatest experience any young person could have had.” Hill recalls.

“I discovered learning can’t always be pleasant. Sometimes the people who help you the most when you're young aren't necessarily the ones telling you everything is great all the time.”"

God's Hall of Fame

This poem had a profound impact on me as a teenager when I read it in John Wooden's book "They Call Me Coach."

God's Hall of Fame

To have your name inscribed up there is greater yet by far,
Than all the halls of fame down here and everyone man-made star.
This crowd on earth, they soon forget the heroes of the past,
They cheer like mad until you fall and that's how long you last.

I tell you, friend, I would not trade my name, however small,
If written there beyond the stars in that celestial hall,
For any famous name on earth or glory that they share,
I'd rather be an unknown here and have my name up there."

Living Under a Rock

This reminder from marketing guru Seth Godin for anyone who is trying to get a message across:

"Never underestimate the ability of the public to ignore you. They can and they will."

Lodestars of Breakthrough Success

Worthy of some reflection and self-evaluation: how do you rate in your quotient of focus, curiosity, passion, and courage?

"Nothing of much significance has ever been achieved, and nothing of much value has ever been created, that wasn't, at some time the point of someone's single-minded focus, the object of someone's intense curiosity, the subject of someone's deep passion, and the product of someone's enduring courage."

Class envy

Observations from Abraham Lincoln that I think apply to modern-day terrorism: isn't it really class envy?

"You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich."

"World opinion" is worthless

Dennis Prager comments on the value of "world opinion." As someone else said, it is doubtful if the majority has ever been right.

"If you are ever morally confused about a major world issue, here is a rule that is almost never violated: Whenever you hear that 'world opinion' holds a view, assume it is morally wrong.

"And here is a related rule if your religious or national or ethnic group ever suffers horrific persecution: 'World opinion' will never do a thing for you. Never.

"'World opinion' has little or nothing to say about the world's greatest evils and regularly condemns those who fight evil."

Sharpest Manmade Object Ever: A Tungsten Needle

This is amazing. I don't think I've ever seen a picture of an atom before.

"The picture you're looking at on the left is the tip of a tungsten needle, which happens to be the sharpest object ever made by man. How sharp is it? Well, you see those red and black orbs? Those are ATOMS! And the tip of the needle? One single atom."

What LA Needs

On my recent trip to LA, the biggest change I saw from 2 years ago is how freeway traffic is now a daylong affair. No longer are the roads wide open from 10am to 3pm.

LA drivers need a m more sophisticated way to figure out where the congestion is. Of course, they also need more highways.

"If you want to understand what an Internet-map-powered world might be like, look to Europe, where there's a higher adoption rate of mapping technology. In the United States, for example, commuters get traffic updates from frenzied helicopter pilots shouting over muddled AM radio; it's literally a top-down model. Many European drivers enjoy a more elegant solution. TomTom, Europe's leading in-car navigation company, dynamically updates traffic conditions on the maps in users' GPS devices, including which roads are congested because of an accident or roadwork and even the location of speed traps, all with the help of its subscribers. In effect, travelers are forming instant communities to cooperatively learn about their environment."

The compassionate ones

This article points out that the overwhelming factor in determining a person's compassion level is not politics, but religion:

"conservatives have slightly more compassionate attitudes than liberals; for example, they are three percentage points more likely to say they have tender, concerned feelings for the less fortunate.

Far more important than politics, however, is religion: people who attend their house of worship nearly every week are 15 points more likely to say they have tender feelings toward the less fortunate than people who never attend worship services (or attend less than once a year). That difference persists even when grouping people by their demographic characteristics, such as age, race, education, sex, marital status, and income.

As we all know, talk is cheap. So even if religious people say they feel more compassionate, do they also act more compassionately?

They do. Religious people of all political persuasions are 40 per cent more likely to donate to charities each year than secular people, and more than twice as likely to volunteer. They are also more than three times more likely than secular people to give each month, and three and one-half times as likely to volunteer that often.

And those religious believers aren't just giving to their churches, either. Research on volunteerism and philanthropy shows clearly that people who give and volunteer for religious organisations are far more likely than others to donate time and money to secular charities as well. For example, a 2000 survey of 30,000 people around the United States shows that religious people are 10 percentage points more likely than secularists to give (and 21 points more likely to volunteer) to explicitly nonreligious causes and charities.

Perhaps it is unfair to conclude that secular people (even those who feel compassionate) are simply less generous than religious people. Secularists with compassionate sentiments may simply be more likely to favour non-private means to help others - say, by supporting higher taxes to cover government welfare pa"

Do You Need A Boss?

From Seth Godin's blog:

You don't realize how much you need a boss until you don't have one. Bosses don't always do the following, especially when they're not very good bosses, but here's what we know about good bosses:

Bosses organize your time for you.
Bosses decide what's urgent.
Bosses give you cover when you work on something stupid ('she told me to!')
Bosses pay you even when the client doesn't honor the invoice.
Bosses can be sued.
Bosses create deadlines, and stick with them.
Bosses make sure you show up in the morning.
Bosses pay for the Postits.
Bosses give you someone to complain about.
Bosses carve up the work and give you just that piece you signed up to do.
Bosses give you a role model. (Sometimes one to work against, but that's a different story).

The main thing a boss does, though, is give you the momentum you need to get through the stuff that takes perseverance. The main thing that ends the career of a Free Agent is the lack of a hand pushing on the back, someone handing out assignments and waiting for the deliverables. Who keeps you going when you don't feel like doing it?

If you don't have a boss, you may need to invent one."

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06_crm_allstaff.jpg
Originally uploaded by crmphoto.

Our family had a great time at the CRM Worldwide Conference, connecting with colleagues from around the world who are building spiritual leaders. Our boys, especially, feel a great sense of connection being "CRM Kids."

What Was the Point, Again?

I like this quote on the decline of American liberal Christianity:

"When your religion says 'whatever' on doctrinal matters, regards Jesus as just another wise teacher, refuses on principle to evangelize and lets you do pretty much what you want, it's a short step to deciding that one of the things you don't want to do is get up on Sunday morning and go to church."

What if They Built an Urban Wireless Network and Hardly Anyone Used It?

I'm sitting in a public library in southern California and enjoying the free public wireless internet connection that the city of Fullerton provides. It's wonderful for a visitor like me, who doesn't have internet access where I am staying.

But if I lived here, I would have broadband at home and at the office, and doubt I would go to the library to get on the internet.

Maybe it would be helpful if I am out somewhere and need to check the internet or email for some reason, but that would be on rare occasions.

"Yet as Taipei has found out, just building a citywide network does not guarantee that people will use it."

Family in Monterey

My boys fell in love with the California coastline on a trip to Monterey in June.

Shaq Blames Poor Performance on Brainpower

Shaquille O'Neal and the Miami Heat lost the opener of the NBA Championship series when "the three-time champion went 1-for-9 at the free throw line, leading Miami's abysmal 7-for-19 performance.

"'Throughout my career, I've known that for my team to win a championship, I have to step up at the line,' O'Neal said. 'I will. I was probably thinking about it too much.'"

Thinking about it too much?

Yes, sometimes we can over-analyze. Lots of times our intuition knows what our brains haven't figured out yet.

Have you been able to find that balance between your cognitive and intuitive strengths?

A Sea of Sand Is Threatening China's Heart

Wow, read the staggering statistic from this article about the advance of the desert in NW China "...its precarious state threatens to accelerate the spread of barren wasteland to the heart of China.

The national 937 Project, set up to fight the encroaching desert, estimated in April that 1,500 square miles of land, roughly the size of Rhode Island, is buried each year. Nearly all of north central China, including Beijing, is at risk."

Could it be that the crucial commodity for China's future is not oil, but water?

Attention-Juggling in the High-Tech Office

"TECHNOLOGY is having a double-edged impact in the workplace, says Ed Reilly, president and chief executive of the American Management Association. It improves productivity, he says, but it may also be a distraction that prevents high-quality thinking."

I like the sound of that phrase: "high-quality thinking."

How important is high-quality thinking to my work and life, and what do I do to pursue it?

Certainly time-management is crucial. Also relating to people that stimulate my thinking, and putting myself in learning contexts. And carving out blocks of time for thinking rather than for action.

It reminds me of a phrase I read in a bok by Eugene Peterson more than 20 years ago. "When did the pastor's study become the pastor's office?"

And back then, we didn't even have computers in our offices. Or fax machines. Or cell phones! But I think even 2,000 years ago it was easy to let activity crowd out the "high-level" functions of thinking and spiritual formation.

"We apostles should spend our time preaching and teaching the word of God, not administering a food program." Acts 6:2