Weekend Warrior Woes…

This was a weekend filled with work. Installing an air-conditioner in our travel trailer project so we could actually work in it when the temp gets over seventy-five degrees, mowing the lawn and ditch because when it goes over seventy-five degrees the grass explodes in growth and tries to take over our land, installing cabinets in our trailer (which has nothing to do with the weather) and taking a couple of rides and a walk just to look at the green countryside and blooming flowers. Ok, the last part wasn’t work.

We’ve been assigned an ‘Adoption Coordinator’ and sent another package of information to complete. We’ve also been contacted by AWAA’s Minnesotan Social Worker and will likely need to connect for some interview/home study update activity.

This is a process, and there is progress…but hearing the word ‘wait’ after 13+ years of waiting will never cease to be a struggle. I want to be a dad right now…but I have to ‘wait’; which is after all a four-letter word.

Leadership Series…

I’m tying together links to all parts of my leadership series into this post; one, two, three, four and five. I’m considering whether I have the time to blog each stage of this journey…and I may…but it may be a bit touch and go.

Our Summer Migration…

As we transitioned to new hosting for our photography site I also decided to migrate our blog over to that same hosting site and move up to WordPress as a blog management tool. Saints & Children and Paddling Creation, my two prior blogs will be migrated to this site and separated by categories. More categories will/have been added and we will grow in communication and our attempt to integrate my blogging with our photography.

Becoming a Leader, part five…done.

While watching a wedding a few days ago I was thinking about how ill-prepared the two people were to be married.

They are very young, they have so much growing to do, healing to receive and responsibility to learn. They were young and beautiful together and their marriage,as most are, was focused on the beauty of their youth; as is the culture we live in…they (we) have so much to learn…

An Eastern Orthodox friend was asked by her priest to mentor another lady. While reviewing how things were going with her priest my friend remarked; “She’s just so needy!”. Her priest replied; “And you’re not?”

We are all irretrievably immature, needy and ill-focused. When we look at somebody and call them a “mighty man (or woman) of God”; we are making a very lame, relative comparison. None are ‘mighty’ and we are all His through His Grace…not our own accomplishment. Rich Mullins said it best in his song Brother’s Keeper…

I will be my brother’s keeper,
Not the one who judges him,
I won’t despise him for his weakness,
I won’t regard him for his strength.

Becoming a leader is 1.) a lifelong process and, 2.) a necessary struggle with many pitfalls along the way. It is a worthwhile process because through it one is changed, and because of it, one may cause change.

It is necessary because all great efforts require trailbreakers, it is a struggle because making trails is difficult, sweaty and often blind work. There are pitfalls because none have been where you are going…and everybody is watching you…you are, in a sense, bait. The first to go, the first to fall and the first to fail.

We often speak of people in our culture being ‘blinded by love’. What blindsided me about my process of learning about leadership was my discovery that love is the core of leadership. The ’saving grace’ in this realization is that though I am as ill-prepared to be a leader as those two young people are to be married…the fact is that our inadequacy is part of the plan of the God who is Love.

When leadership skills exist without Love; it is an empty, selfish leadership.

Where Love exists without leadership skills (read: ‘God’s guidance’) it is an unfocused and sloppy love, merely our love.

When love and leadership coexist it is Love with a plan; Love that serves; Love that sacrifices; Love that sees; Love that forgives; Love that accomplishes; Love that heals; Love that grows and Love that restores.

What greater Love than this?

Struggling With Authority (being real) part four.

In my last post in this “Struggling With…” series I ended with this multi-layered question:

Could it actually be that a leader might be the best antidote to boring formulaic and programmatic approaches to things organizational and human?

I’m thinking about how to answer my own question, remember the axiom that says that “one should not ask anyone to do anything that they themselves are not willing to do”? My question was softly phrased, if I removed the ‘could it be’ and the ‘might be’ and abandoned the interrogatory I would reduce it to the strong statement: A strong leader is the best antidote to boring formulaic and programmatic approaches to things organizational and human.

Now I can ask myself the question: “Do I agree with my own statement?”

The politician/employee inside of me wants to answer: “I think so. (read: it depends upon what you think)”

The philosopher/writer inside of me wants to answer: “That would be an interesting subject to explore. (read: I think I’d rather blow smoke up your butt than answer that question)”

The historian/psychologist inside of me wants to answer: “The hubris of all humans is such that leadership inculcates certain traits in the leader and the follower…(read: I’m afraid that by saying lest I give power to the aforementioned megalomanics)”

The artist/photographer inside of me wants to answer: “In this image I tried to depict the timeless struggle of man against his own fallen nature…(read: I can see the problem, I’m not sure what the solution is)”

The man sitting at the keyboard, contemplating nearly forty more years of life; following God, husbandry, fatherhood, ministry…leadership. He needs to know what to believe. To the politician/employee I must say that “it’s time I followed my own light”, to the philosopher/writer I must say “I’m pretty sick of the smoke screen, help me to understand…”, to the historian/psychologist I must say “I understand hubris, but I’m learning that I need to understand righteous struggle too…and trust”, to the artist/photographer I must say “Yes, that is a problem, use your words and images to inspire me to correct it, to inspire a renaissance within me”.

The man at the keyboard being at various times and moments of each day any or all of the above-stated roles must then answer his own question:

Yes, I do believe that it’s true that a strong leader is the best antidote to boring formulaic and programmatic approaches to things organizational and human. I believe that all of the ‘parts’ and ‘roles’ of a man…all of those parts that ask questions and offer concerns…those are the parts of his being that struggle against each other for solutions, for direction, for love…for leadership.

There will be a part five.

Struggling With Formulae (read ‘authority’) part two.

Our management team, consisting of administrative staff and residence managers, has been working through John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. I’ve struggled with this. Partially because I don’t really want to be a leader and partially because I don’t want to be told what to learn.

rant (pseudo html ‘tag’ stating that I am ’starting a rant’)

I keep thinking I should be analyzing this as I go on, figuring out all of the reasons in my upbringing and psyche that cause me to be, think and behave like I do. Sigmund would appreciate this tack but in reality what I need to be doing is whatever I need to do to be what I need to be. That sounds a lot like Romans 7 doesn’t it? In-other-words, my behaviour is what counts, not my words, rationalizations, excuses and realizations.

It’s not that it’s bad to know the ‘why’; it doesn’t hurt to know that I don’t want to listen to this writer ’cause I don’t want to listen to men tell me what to do ’cause I have a broken relationship with older men who could mentor me; especially if they’re in authority positions. What happens because of this attitude is that I get sort of ‘pissy’ about what somebody says and I try to figure out rational reasons to ignore it; not because it’s not good and true but because it’s coming from some guy that I don’t want to listen to because my father was abusive.

Geez. Nearly 46 years of age and I still think like a little kid victim. Talk about being ruled from the grave.

What’s this got to do with the leadership study we’re doing as a management team?

Everything because unless I can change my behaviour, which is bent on destroying everything somebody’s trying to teach me, I’ll never be able to teach, lead, father and husband like I should.

/rant (pseudo html ‘tag’ saying ‘done with rant’)

I learned through my own pathology that I don’t have to be paranoid that somebody can reach out through a book and rip my heart out and make me into him even though I really just want to be the me that Jesus made me to be. I’m realizing that I can learn from others by taking what they tell me and forming and adjusting said wisdom to the point where it becomes mine. I have the power to appropriate and disregard whatever I believe Jesus would have me appropriate and disregard.

I am free to read Mr. Maxwell’s book, work through the workbook and open my mind to understanding him, his wisdom and make mine what needs to be mine.

Struggling With Leadership (read ‘authority’) part one.

I’ve always been fairly suspicious of people that want to lead; I think that it’s always seemed to me that it was a pretty short trip from den motherhood to megalomania. I was thirteen when the President of the United States resigned because he was a liar and all through my growing-up years there was this war on TV in Vietnam that everybody was talking about and saying that it was wrong and that the American people were being ‘lied to’ by our leaders.

The ‘leader’ I experienced at home through those years was a guy who needed to have a drink ready on the kitchen counter when he got home and who scared the hell out of me with his propensity toward yelling and smacking. Not a good example that father of mine.

Yet at some level I’ve allowed those who preside over me to define me…is it because I need some sort of primal affirmation I never received from my father? I’m sure that Sigmund would agree.

The problem is that there’s no way that I can go through life without encountering ‘leaders’ and there’s no way I can grow as a husband and father without becoming a ‘leader’. I think that sucks but there it is.

Part Two of this series will talk about the leadership training I’m supposed to be taking and Part Three of this series will exist in order to share some thoughts about this guy I saw on a recorded segment of 60 Minutes. I’m not sure about Parts Four and Five, except that they will be about me…which is ok ’cause it’s my blog.

Application Approved…

Our application to America World Adoption’s China adoption program was approved about an hour ago. Whoo-Hoo!

The ‘Whoo-Hoo’s’ aside there’s still a lot of work and expense…but it’s oh, so worth it as parenthood is at the far end of the long process. Now it’s time to update a Home Study, fill out a lot of forms and make some phone calls and appointments. We’ve been thinking about names…

Relational Liturgies…

This is mirrored from a post over at BHT. I’m going to try to expound on these thoughts in this space.

I just finished a great talk with my director that started with reviewing behavioural interventions and ended in discussing liturgies. We were focused on ‘empty apologies’ and potential corrections, we began to see empty apologies as ‘relational liturgies’ that had worn thin.

Changed behaviours, being the litmus of our work — cause us to place much more emphasis on ‘deeds’ than ‘words’ in our community economy — and the idea that the social interactions we develop, such as apologies, can be viewed as liturgies that we develop spurred interesting thoughts about how our social interactions, like our liturgies, can become meaningless over time when they are without the substance of ‘deeds’.

How can our understanding of the ‘cycle of liturgy’ from birth to death to ressurrection be understood as analogous to our own lives, behaviours and relational interactions?

Gestation, Being What it is…

Should it work out that our application to America World Adoption’s China Program be accepted and that the Chinese authorities accept us as suitable adoptive parents and that a selection or ‘referral’ of an adoptive daughter be made to us…considering the ‘normal’ timing of all of these activities…our future daughter is right now ‘in utero’. She is conceived and waiting to be born.

In the next dozen or so months she will be born, her gender identified and her (now) parents will make an agonizing choice, they will decide they cannot keep her. They may have already made this choice saying to one another “if it’s a girl you know what we’ll need to do”.

I can imagine struggling to accomplish a pregnancy, such a choice must be a similar pain. Both of her (now) parents are confronted each day by the fact of an ever larger tummy, a moment-by-moment reminder of a coming child to whom they want to deeply bond…yet the fact remains that they must be afraid to bond.

Somewhere, half a world away, is a little girl who will someday be our little girl. Her (now) parents are struggling and painfully uncertain about how to feel. I will never know them, but I hope for the best for them and empathize with their pain and struggle. I wish I could somehow assure them that her (later) parents will do their best to love her and prepare her for life in a world that is fraught with both pain and struggle.