Here I Stand!

Nearly all of us choose to work rather than become wards of the welfare state. We have an obligation to be happy where we are, and chances are good that in order to earn a living we need to spend a significant amount of time working.

The best of jobs can be made crummy by someone who should never ever be allowed to have authority over another person. Ever. Yet what do we see in the workplace? I’d venture to say over ninety-percent of those in leadership positions are at best incompetent and at worst cruel.

But we choose to work, and more often than not, wind up working for that ninety-percent. What to do?

First, discover what is true, then uncover the right thing to do.

Let’s say these three things are true:

1. We have an obligation to ourselves and our fellow man to be happy (or at least act like it until we are); and

2. Many if not most of us are working for somebody who is just this side of the troll who crawled up from under Billy Goat’s Gruff’s bridge (and the only immediately noticeable difference is that he wears a tie to work); and

3. We are not being physically abused.

Now what?

Do this: Stay put. Don’t cling to it as if you are a victim of work-abuse. Choose to stay.

Know that there are good and legitimate reasons to do so. (And there is every possibility that you can be happy there, too.)

Homework assignment: list one reason staying in your job working for the troll makes good sense. Consider reasons like “it pays well,” and “dental insurance,” and “I think the cute engineer down on the first floor likes me.”

Next post: a discussion of our obsession with work utopia.

Want to read ahead? Pick up the book Quitter by Jon Acuff. Read the first chapter for free here:  http://www.amazon.com/Quitter-Jon-Acuff/dp/0982986270/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331816139&sr=8-1

The Kindness Of His Eyes

“He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them.”  Mark 2:13

The city of Capernaum became a marketplace, crowded with people who came to hear the rabbi and those who sold both the necessities of life and some of its more sordid luxuries to them. The streets were lined with vendors selling bread, wine, figs, dates, pomegranates, and goat cheese. Men sold so many pieces of the rabbi’s robe that if the pieces had been sewn together more than a hundred men could have clothed themselves.

“It isn’t usually like this, brother” said Moshe happily, hefting the bag heavy with denarii. “May this rabbi stay for many weeks, and may he draw ever more customers to our humble fishing vessel!” He turned to the crowd of people standing on the shore. “We have no more, brothers and sisters! We will return later with a full boat, God willing.” His smile and bright countenance eased their disappointment.

Moshe placed the bag of coins in a small compartment under the oar lock of the fishing boat and he and Mordecai pushed the boat off the sand and out into the Sea of Galilee. “The Sea provides for the diligent” said Moshe. “We may be able to get in one more good catch before it gets too hot and the fish go deep for the day.”

Though only healed for four days, and a fisherman for three, though his knots were untidy and he poked the net-awl through his hand more often than the net, still, Mordecai gloried in the feel of the boat moving under his feet as he stood on the deck and directed the sail to catch the breeze. He had blisters on his feet, and callouses too! He was proud of his scars, proud too of the skills he had acquired, and shamefully pleased at the way the women looked at him as he walked home from work. Women’s eyes in all the years before the rabbi healed him held only pity. Except for one.

* * *

While Mordecai her husband fished, Abigayil his wife made bread. She arose with him, well before dawn, and by the time he left she had baked a stack of flat cakes of bread. Each time she pulled a cake warm from the fire she proved her worth, and her desirability. But the feeling didn’t last longer than the time it took to put the cake with the others, and she kept baking as though her life depended upon it.

She could not help but think of her husband and how he had changed since the rabbi healed his paralysis. Fishing made Mordecai strong, and he was so happy. He had always been a cheerful man but now some heretofore undiscovered vault of joy had been opened. “The rabbi, not I, has unlocked this part of his heart” she thought. This fact galled her even more than the women’s open admiration of her strong tall husband.

“He cannot swim” she said to the empty room. “He could have given him the gift of swimming while he was at it. It would show that rabbi something if the man he healed fell off the fishing boat and drowned.”

* * *

“Abi, come! The rabbi is speaking in a few minutes, down by the shore!” Sarah rushed into the room and pulled Abigayil away from her work table. “We can stand at the back, near the edge of the crowd. You’ll be safe there.”

“You assume I want to hear what this rabbi has to say. I do not.”

“Yes you do. Don’t you want to hear the man who healed Mordecai? They say he is the Messiah!”

“No I do not” said Abigayil. “I’m busy.” She slapped a ball of dough flat and threw it down on the table.

“Then keep me company” said Sarah. She took a towel and began wiping the flour from Abigayil’s hands and arms. Abigayil sighed. With Sarah there was always a line beyond which it was futile to argue. When Sarah had finished with her, Abigayil took her cane from its place against the wall beside the door and followed Sarah out the door. Sarah took Abigayil’s left arm in her right and they joined the crowd of people pushing down the street toward the Sea of Galilee where Jesus of Nazareth was to speak.

The sick, the crippled, the demon-possessed, and the desperate were drawn to the shore, hoping this rabbi might heal them with a blessing, a touch, or even a look. They had heard stories that were almost beyond belief, but to the hopeless even a straw is worth grasping, if there is nothing else to pull them up toward the light.

Abigayil watched them push their way toward the front of the crowd and resisted the urge to warn them of healing’s more unpleasant consequences. She let Sarah lead her to a place at the back edge of the crowd. She walked well with her cane but if pushed she fell easily, and it was difficult to stand up again with a right foot and leg that were largely useless.

The rabbi sat in a boat not far from shore. Abigayil saw him look up, then he stood and began to speak.

“Listen!” he said to the crowd. “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on shallow ground, and the seed grew but burned because its roots could not go deeply enough.”

Abigayil could hear her heart beat in the silence. She looked sideways at Sarah and saw tears welling in her eyes.

“What’s wrong with you?” whispered Abigayil. “He’s talking about farming.”

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear” said the rabbi.

‘This is it? I don’t need him to tell me not to sow my seeds on the rocks’ Abigayil thought with disgust.

The rabbi continued to speak, and finally Abigayil whispered “Come on, this is a waste of time.” She pulled Sarah’s arm but Sarah’s gaze was fixed on the rabbi. Abigayil shook her head, stepped away from the crowd and walked up the street toward home. She stepped over her doorsill and threw her cane against the wall. “I will have bread ready for sale when they tire of this messiah” she said.

* * *

Moshe and Mordecai leaned against the rail of the boat and listened. They were close enough to see drops of sweat run down the rabbi’s face and wisps of his dark hair blowing in the wind. When the rabbi finished speaking and sat down, they turned, raised the sail, and moved south, away from Capernaum.

They spoke only what was necessary to move the boat to a good spot and throw out the nets.

“Moshe, did you understand what he was talking about?” asked Mordecai, after the nets had been set.

“He meant that we should work hard, and wisely” said Moshe confidently. “Now, pull!” They pulled the net closed around the fish.

“Are you sure?” said Mordecai.

“No, not really” said Moshe. “Perhaps we should ask him. You could show him how well you’re doing.”

Mordecai shivered at the thought of meeting the rabbi. What could he say? It was as if he’d been given a new life.

Moshe and Mordecai pulled the net into the boat and picked the fish up by their gills and put them in baskets in the stern. When the net was empty they threw it out again into the water, working hard, and wisely.

* * *

The man who leaned his head into the doorway of Abigayil’s home was short, stocky, and comfortably handsome. “I was told I could buy bread here?” he asked.

Abigayil looked up. “Certainly, sir. How many would you like?”

“I need twenty loaves, if you have them.”

“Twenty! I have close to that now, but it will take some time for me to prepare the last few. Please come in and rest out of the sun while I prepare them.”

The man stepped over the sill and sat on a low stool next to the table. He folded his hands inside his robe, politely lowering his eyes. “I am with the Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth. The twenty loaves are for his disciples.” He paused. “I have only recently been chosen as one of them.”

Abigayil stood up from the fire and poured the man a cup of wine from the clay bottle kept in a dark corner of the room, careful to avoid his eyes.

The man continued. “I was a tax collector in this city until yesterday. The Rabbi said ‘follow me’ and I followed” said Levi, for that was his name.

“Apparently no one can refuse him” said Abigayil evenly.

“No, you cannot!” said Levi.

“I was at my booth. It was midday, and hot, though I sit—sat—in the shade of my small tent. That was a good tent. My father gave it to me the last time he spoke to me. He was not proud of my profession, and once I took it he forbade me to come into his home. He said the presence of a tax collector made it unclean.” Levi spoke quickly and without rancor.

“My box was full of the morning’s collection. I separated it into two portions; one for the Romans and one for myself. That is how it is done, and I am sorry for it now.” He looked up at Abigayil. She leaned over the fire with her back to him.

“There were no travelers coming toward the city, so I took my midday meal from my pouch and began to eat. Some salted fish and bread. This is what I have for the midday meal every day except the Sabbath, when I have some figs and a bit of goat cheese as well.” He spoke quickly, as if he expected to be interrupted, or as if no one had ever cared to listen to the small details of his life.

“As happens more often than not, as soon as I began to eat a crowd of men came into the street. I recognized some of them—Peter, John, James, fishermen from this town. The rabbi walked with them. I had seen him before, from a distance—you can’t be in Capernaum without knowing about him and hearing what people say. He came up to my booth. ‘Follow me’ he said. That’s all. ‘Follow me.’” Levi paused. “So I got up and followed.” Pause. “I do not understand what happened at that moment but I knew then and I know it now that I am compelled to do as He says.” He looked at Abigayil, tending the loaves over the fire. “I believe He is the One the prophets spoke of, the Messiah, and He will deliver us from the heavy hand of the Romans.” Levi ignored the fact that up until the day before he had earned his living working for the Romans. “Have you heard him speak?” he asked.

“Yes” said Abigayil. “I heard him speak earlier today. About farming.”

Abigayil wrapped the twenty loaves into two packets of ten loaves each. “My husband believes also that this man is the Son of God” she said. “He was healed a few days ago of his paralysis and now earns his living as a fisherman.”

Levi looked at her. “This makes you sad.”

“Yes” she said, looking down at the loaves of bread. “Yes, I am sorry for it but I am… afraid. Nothing is as it was before and I do not like it.”

She put the two packets of bread on the table next to Levi the Apostle. “We must get you back to your rabbi” she said in a tone of voice that told Levi he was no longer welcome.

He stood so suddenly he knocked the stool backward onto the floor. He blushed and set it back upright. ‘I wish I were a different man, not so shy nor clumsy’ he thought. “Yes, thank you” he said to Abigayil politely. He gave her the denarii for his purchase, adding a few above the price, took the two packets of bread and left the house. He tripped over the sill on his way out.

Abigayil put the coins with the others in the bowl on the shelf, after counting them twice. He was not only handsome, but generous.

She returned to her work. Her crippled foot ached but she told herself to ignore the pain and work harder so that she might be desirable to her husband. Hadn’t Solomon said this was what was expected of her?

“I must work harder” she said, and laid two flat loaves near the fire to bake.

Her mind wandered to the tax collector, and she wondered if her house were now unclean, as his father had believed. He was a former tax collector; was that enough? She hoped so. His eyes were so kind. And she was so scared.

Volunteer, Not Junior Varsity

After a recently bad experience volunteering for a local organization that had professed to need her help but had in fact needed much more help than she could provide, Becky Codswallop made notes to herself such that, if she were ever in a position of leadership, she would know what to avoid. Volunteers are, after all, no less important than regular employees, aren’t they? She walked to a favorite spot at the park, a bench located off the beaten path near the creek, where she could talk to herself without being disturbed by anything other than the wind in the trees.

“One” she said, speaking as she wrote, “Make them feel welcome, and needed. Do this by training them appropriately, well, and training them yourself. Don’t leave a flunky, or someone who’s just learned the task themselves and may have missed something, or heaven forbid the punk who thinks he knows everything to train a new person.” She sat back and considered. “Although this may seem more time consuming than you can afford, the goal is to keep this new person with you for an extended period of time. It’s an investment” she said, grimacing at the word ‘investment’. It sounded inhuman and much too modern, as if she were writing a self-help manual. But it was, indeed an investment, in time, if not treasure.

“Two” she said. “Do not make your volunteer chase you down.” She scratched this out and wrote “Plan ahead and be where you said you were going to be.” She refused to write what came to mind just then: “Be Accessible.” That touched on the same tone as ‘investment’ and she refused to go down that path. Better to wait until some better words came to mind, words that weren’t so utilitarian. It was however critically important to make oneself available for questions, or even to solicit ideas. It was amazing how much wisdom people had if you just sat them down with a cup of coffee, asked a question, then shut up and listened. She made another note to herself, speaking as she wrote: “Honor the volunteer’s time and their expertise in other matters.”

The wind began to blow harder, picking up the leaves and scattering them across the bench and across her notepad. She looked up and though she appreciated the beauty of the gathering dark clouds she didn’t want to be outside underneath them when they let loose with what was certain to be a torrential downpour.

“Three” she wrote hurriedly. “Grow up and lead. Volunteer doesn’t mean junior varsity.”

She placed the cap back on her pen, tucked her notebook and pen into the leather bag she’d had longer than she’d had most of her friends, slung the strap over her shoulder and walked back to the car, satisfied that she had captured her own experience in a positive and helpful light.

Cats For Old People

Gracie Hiding In The Christmas Tree

After Dad graduated from Chemo-University Mom agreed to fill the house with kittens again. For a year, after their old cats had gone the way of all old cats they had kept the house bare of creatures; Mom had enough to do caring for Dad.
We leaped into action and discovered that the organization most likely to provide new healthy kittens refused to even talk to old people because they considered kittens too “rambunctious” for the elderly.
Really.
Apparently a lifetime with cats in the house and younger family members in the form of adult children living nearby should anything go amiss was not enough to persuade them of the wisdom and need to have rambunctious furry things in the house.

So, in God’s providence, two cats were discovered in a box outside a grocery store, if I remember the story aright, and Gracie and George arrived in all their English Blue Shorthair glory. I’m not actually sure that they are English Blue Shorthairs but they look to be purebred somethings and this is close to what they look like.

George enjoys climbing into the cabinets above the counter and eating the butter straight from the dish. I think he dips into the sugar bowl, too, but we have no evidence of that; the butter stays on his face after he’s done. He climbs up on the counter and steals the toast, but only after it’s been covered with jam. He is particularly fond of cinnamon rolls, but will suffer to eat eggs, bacon, nearly anything edible as long as it’s been prepared properly. He leaps to the counter and has off with it before you can say “George!” then drags it to the kitchen floor and shares it with Gracie, who has the grace to stay on the floor where cats belong.
Gracie and George have systematically eaten every houseplant down to the root; there is nothing living in the house except those plants big enough to survive the onslaught. They have pulled all the crystal off the window box above the sink. They prefer to sit in the kitchen sink and wait for the water to be turned on so they can take their refreshment.
Mom and Dad pretend to complain about them yet every phone conversation begins with “George and Gracie did…. ha ha ha!” And though their food bill has increased as if they had teenage sons in the house, they haven’t been this happy in a couple of years.
What seems like wisdom is often foolishness. (But don’t leave the bacon on the counter at Mom and Dad’s house, not if you want it there when you turn around.)

Loneliness Makes You Crazy

If I hurried through my after-class shower, left my hair wet, threw my uniform back on, and raced down four flights of stairs two at a time and out to the back porch I could reach the pay phones before anyone else. Five minutes’ slower and there would be at least five people waiting for both phones and even if they adhered to the ‘no more than ten minute call’ rule I’d be almost an hour waiting to call home.

The high temperature in southwest Oklahoma that particular November was 15-degrees Fahrenheit. Then the wind comes sweeping off the plains and sucks the breath out of your chest, freezes your wet hair, and turns your booted feet into blocks of ice. This phone calls costs.

There is nothing familiar or reassuring in a hundred-year-old stone cavalry building filled with people you don’t know assigned to the Artillery School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Loneliness is expected and often overwhelming, particularly at first, when it’s hard to make friends.

Sometimes just hearing the voice of someone you love, who lives outside your current circumstances is the breath of life. It gives you something to hold on to while you walk through your current misery because there’s hope of something better at the end of it.

Later in life we may be just as lonely but there may be no one to call. We do well to be kind to others. The loneliness might be making them crazy.

Tom Waits gets loneliness with his song “Shiver Me Timbers”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_F0DIJyHRs.

Musings On C.S. Lewis’ “The Weight Of Glory”

By writing about things I try to become part of a conversation that is merely overheard. I write from a state of perpetual longing, the feeling of being outside of things.

I’m never invited in, I’m merely allowed to listen.

In the process, the act of writing, I am there. It is only when the writing is done and the pen is put away that I’m filled with the loneliness of having gone home alone. Again.

The moral: never read C.S. Lewis on an empty stomach.

Humble Beast – The Truth

This weekend I discovered the talent at Humble Beast Records. Young men who get the truth of Christ and the gospel, and communicate that truth lyrically, truly, and well.

Two compelling videos:

The Incarnation: http://vimeo.com/34056202

The Gospel: http://vimeo.com/20960385

Real. True. Eternal.

Battle? Birth.

Bare battlefield,

Home to naught but wind through grass and trees.

Knowing not what is to come Only that it will come;

God’s creatures as He made them: best and worst.

Sunlight now. God’s gaze on dew. Warming bones chilled during cold night’s preparation.

Knowing not what is to come, Only that it will come.

Agincourt? Iowa.

Men? Eagles.

Battle? Birth.

“…and I was daily his delight

rejoicing in his inhabited world

and delighting in the children of man.”

 * * *

Join us for a new season with the Decorah Eagles. The nest is ready. The Mama and The Papa are ready. The eggs are coming: The camera is on:  http://www.decoraheaglecamalerts.com/.

Delight in greatness, and the events that call us to be our best:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAvmLDkAgAM

Don’t Be Afraid of Silliness

Leader, do not be afraid to be silly.

It does your heart good.

It’s fun.

My suggestion: gather a few select toys around you, and play with them periodically, in full view of your team. Wind-up crabs that walk across the desk; foam-rocket-guns; screaming-monkey-slingshots; all are worthy.

The biggest reason to play? It keeps you humble.

Beeker rides stop the camera bag during a recent visit to Balboa Park, San Diego. Ignore the look of abject panic; he had a great time.

I Have A… Mixer: Update

Not quite the “I Have A Dream” speech but for me, it’s huge.

I have a dream, yes, I do, of serving an exquisite selection of baked goods and tea to people who want the best, at the best price, served quickly.

I needed a mixer that would overcome the fact that I can’t knead bread anymore (I could I suppose but it’s painful, and why do something that hurts?). Being financially prudent, I’ve been pricing KitchenAid mixers, setting aside websites and waiting for my tax return to arrive so I could take $350 or so and plop it down on a KitchenAid mixer that’s so huge and heavy it looks like one of the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse. Power. I love the idea of that kind of machinery in my kitchen.

A couple, Mark and Dawn, who are in my Financial Peace University class heard my cry for a KitchenAid in one of our classes where we shared our dreams. “We have one that somebody gave to us” Mark said. “Do you want it?”

YES.

I spent yesterday cleaning and scrubbing this left-in-the-garage KitchenAid mixer. He stands next to my coffee maker on the counter (and he’ll stay in that spot because he weighs 30 pounds and it took all the strength I had to carry him from the garage upstairs to the condo). I think I’ll name him “Mr. Bunter,” after Lord Peter Wimsey’s valet. We’ll see.

I expressed my dream in public, as crazy as it sounded, and was given a $300 mixer. Coincidence? We think not.

Be inspired as I’ve been, with a 24-minute interview of Seth Godin, talking about being remarkable (and courageous enough to share your dream ideas). Here:  http://upmarket.squidoo.com/2012/02/08/we-are-all-weird/.

UPDATE: The mixer blew just a few minutes into the dough. It was looking beautiful, all fluffy and twisty, then “grrrrrrrr….” and silence. Gears stripped. Took the back off to see if I could uncover something that might be tinkered with. I refused to just concede defeat. Returned the back plate to its original position and now it won’t even turn on. It’s sitting by the front door awaiting a ride to the dumpster.

On to KitchenAid for a new one, the next larger size! And about $400 more expensive than free. Coincidence? We think not.