11Oct, 2011

Intimacy with God Comes When we Accept His Kindness

Posted by Don
56

Each work morning I read a bit of the Bible. I don’t study it, I just read it. It’s my morning coffee and conversation with a power greater than myself. It centers me and without it I think I’d be distracted at work, distracted by a bunch of stuff that doesn’t matter. This morning I was reading through Psalm 7. There’s a humble thought in the Psalm where David asks God to “trample his life to the ground and lay his soul in the dust” if he has ever screwed over a friend or an ally. David was a dramatic guy. He was a passionate leader, or at least a passionate writer (something tells me he was a bit more sober in person as passion inspires but leadership needs to be measured). Regardless, the thought occurred to me that we often need to pray against ourselves. I was taking communion a few weeks ago in Nashville, at one of my favorite churches. My friend Jim Chaffee happened to be delivering communion that day and as I stood in line to go forward, I prayed about what to pray. Literally, I asked God what He wanted me to say to Him [...]

Read More
03Oct, 2011

How Should we use Intuition in Decision Making?

Posted by Don
66

I make a lot of decisions using intuition, which researchers are beginning to understand as more reliable, and less mystical than previously thought. Intuition is really about pattern recognition, about subconsciously picking up on conflicting patterns in a situation. One of the more discussed examples of intuitive decision making has to do with a fire chief who, shortly after entering a burning house, commanded all his men leave the house immediately without really understanding why. He said the decision came from his gut, that “something wasn’t right” and he wanted his men out of the house. That decision saved the lives of his men, as seconds after exiting the house the floor collapsed. If they’d have stayed in the house, everybody would have been killed. When interviewed about his decision, the fire chief couldn’t explain his decision logically. Some of the men under his command attributed the command to a higher force, a sort of guardian angel. But guardian angel or not, by design our brains work to protect us from making mistakes, and often we have no explanation as to why. On further investigation, several things were happening in that fire that worked to inform the fire chief’s subconscious. [...]

Read More
27Sep, 2011

Review: Katie Herzig and The Waking Sleep

Posted by Don
19

I met Katie Herzig years ago before I’d heard her music. She was a critics favorite, floating around Nashville but like so many musicians floating around Nashville she was, for me, lost in a sea of names and talent. We met at a retreat and like everybody who meets Katie I had my crush (supposedly it’s a right of passage in Nashville) and yet what came out of that for me was a sincere appreciation for her music. She’s since become a friend but honestly I consider myself more a fan, still. It’s arguable, but I think you could make a case for Katie being one of the greatest singer/songwriters alive. Occasionally she attempts a pop feel and while it works and works better than most other artists doing pop those songs often strike me as less than what she’s capable of as an artist, as though she’s torn between doing her music and doing music that she knows will land with a larger group of fans. These songs (though not sonically) remind me of that old Blues Traveler song “Hook” in which John Popper wrote a song with an incredible hook that rose to and stayed at the top [...]

Read More
26Sep, 2011

A Reminder that Beauty Comes from Pain

Posted by Don
50

My dear friends Jesse and Brianne Olson e-mailed me a picture of their daughter this morning. She’s beautiful of course, and strong and smart just like her parents and her name is Payson. What got me all choked up, though, was her name. I knew immediately where the name came from. I was there when the name Payson was born, sort of. It was a few years ago and we were all riding our bikes across America. We’d been in the desert for a week, riding through temperatures as high as 112 degrees. The day we rode out of Phoenix was one of the hardest days of the trip. We rode over mountains and then more mountains. Every range we climbed revealed another range. Our hearts sank each time we topped a massive, hours-long climb. We slept in a rock quary for rest, literally flat on our backs on piles of rocks. We drank gallons of water but never quenched our thirst, and our stopping place was hours and hours away. The ride was so tough a friend and I actually got off our bikes and walked the last few miles, our tires flat from punctured tubes. We walked into [...]

Read More
23Sep, 2011

Leaders Lead People Through the Fear

Posted by Don
67

I received an email last night from a courageous friend named Paul. He’s one of those tough guys but his toughness isn’t covering anything. He’s tough on the outside and tough on the inside, too. What I mean by tough on the outside is he’s actually training to run one-hundred miles in a single go only two weeks from now. No kidding, he’ll run the Chicago marathon as the last quarter of his personal challenge. He’s insane. He’s doing it to help some children he loves. I’ll give you more information below. And yet, whenever I exchange stories with my friend he’s got more to talk about on the inside journey than he does about his athletic accomplishments. He talks about very hard emotional stuff as though it’s a challenge equal to the physical. Whether it’s addressing a father wound, or addressing his desire to love people more deeply, they’re all challenges, they’re all mountains to climb and he does it with both fear and enthusiasm. Still, there’s times when it’s hard to be that kind of guy. I think one of the reasons it’s hard is because facing challenges head on is a lonely business. I truly believe most [...]

Read More
Pages: Prev 1 2 3 ...8 9 10 11 12 13 14 ...105 106 107 Next
Plugin by GrobeKelle