Author / Michael

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Posts by Michael

I am a husband, father, minister, and writer.
by Michael

Relax What You’re Not Using

This is an instruction I hear a few times a week in my fitness routine. It’s a group class, and our instructors–especially one of them–when they lead the warm up say in one way or another, “Relax what you’re not using.”

I breathe as if for the first time when I hear it. I feel spoken to. I feel embarrassed because they are always talking to me even in a room of 30 people.

They’ve told me for a while that my trouble is in relaxing. Release your shoulders. A tight mouth does nothing for your power. A hard stare is not helping. These are things I need to keep hearing.

Focus on what I’m using. Conserve the rest for when their time comes. Breathe.

by Michael

Dilemmas as Openings

One of my educational theorists is Jack Mezirow, and he writes about how transformative learning happens after learners have experienced disorienting dilemmas. The first experience of the transformational process, a disorienting dilemma is a moment or series of moments that open a person to change.

For dramatic reasons or simple troubling reasons, things don’t fit. Answers that used to work were called into question by one comment or by an accident or by something being different.

In Mezirow’s educational theory, a dilemma is an opening to learning. It is an opening to freedom as I’m developing my practice of education. Perhaps you can see the dilemma ahead of you as an opening.

Perhaps the closed door is an invitation to see the door differently, to see the other side of the door differently, or to see yourself as you stand differently. Dilemmas can be disorienting, but that disorientation can catalyze parts of you that were asleep, dreams that were forgotten, and futures which were awaiting inspiration.

by Michael

Where Loyalty Leads

Loyalty gets you places. Good places. It doesn’t always feel that way or look that way.

In fact, it often seems the opposite is true, that being loyal is out of touch. The politically saavy move and the shrewd choice is about agreeing to what you need to for the moment.

That’s loyal to the moment but not to the deeper, more meaningful thing that is you. It’s disloyal to you.

Being loyal to you–which emerges from that first loyalty of being loyal to God–leads to shimmering beauty. No matter how circuitous the path, loyalty ends in the neighborhood of strength.

by Michael

Prayer of the Week

When the anticipations which once gave hope have fallen away;

When the dreams which decorated our imaginations have turned;

When the efforts and energies which once swelled purpose have drowned in reality;

When rejection has convinced us that the full space of received creativity is too crowded and the consistent whispers of friends is forgotten;

When passion has been misplaced, misdirected, and misshaped;

Grant us the ever-increasing melody that will not go unheard, the rumble of an instrument underneath our feet, the blaring of an unseen horn, the striking of unseen strings.

Pull that music from every possible source and play it into us that the embers of persistence might churn and shift and renew us and every word that comes from you.

In the name of the One whose coming brings unparalleled melodies.

Amen.

by Michael

Taking a Page from Myself

Wouldn’t life be sweeter if we spoke to one another in tones of possibility and faith? We can do this. We can say words of greatness and calling and majesty when we speak to each other. Our words can fill the ears of the children in our neighborhoods, the colleagues in our workplaces, and the friends at our tables. We can declare wonderful hopes and prophesy tomorrows of splendor, and each word can be powerful. Those declarations would be welcome by the people we speak of because it would be a surprising, strange gift to be so well-regarded.

Wondrous Communicator, grant me the blessing to speak such blessings to, for, and about others today.

 

(Hope, Day 25)

by Michael

Freedom Is What You Need

What happened to you will do things to you. It happened. The event itself was transformative and that means you are different.

Give yourself time to feel all that feeling. Give yourself room to rummage through all that pain.

Notice your insides because they’ll scream to become your outside. When that happens, do what is best for you, whatever you think that is. Resist people telling you how to be and how to look and how to behave.

Resist even words like these ones I’ve written when they feel restricting and not freeing.

Freedom is what you need. Freedom is where you’re headed. Freedom is where you’re going.

by Michael

Isolating Root Causes

I was reading materials in preparation for a class on safety and quality improvement. It’s a multiple months-long course with a lot of physicians and statistics. It’s not material I’m naturally good at. I have a part to play as a spiritual caregiver in what we’re planning. I am useful even if I’m not a nurse or respiratory tech or, certainly, not a doctor.

I’m learning interesting things. I’m hearing even more interesting things about our hospital and about hospital systems in general. I’m learning more than I thought I would when I joined the team to work on our project.

In the pre-course work for our session on analyzing data, the final sentence on the slide was this: Please create two to three visualizations in an effort to isolate root causes / key drivers. This was a sentence about measures and hypotheses and graphs and tools.

As I think of it now, this sentence can go in many directions. What would it look like if you prepared a visual to capture the things that were causing you trouble? What would the visual addressing those causes and drivers include?

by Michael

My Blog: Connecting

I’ve been a student (through the text) of Parker Palmer for years. Scottie May introduced me to his book when I took a class on teaching and learning at Wheaton.

The book, To Know As We Are Known, was my first encounter with Palmer’s thinking. His work is foundational to the educational theory I’m developing for clinical pastoral education. He talks about prayer as a relational act. He nods to the explicit spiritual power of prayer. His subtitle is Education as a Spiritual Journey. Still, he lifts prayer as an act that can connect us to others.

It isn’t a religious act as he sees it but a relational one. Education is the same. We can relate to people and to ourselves in the learning environment.

Consider how you’ll connect to others today. What will be your prayers? The ones you utter and the ones you mutter. My sense is that we pray a lot more than we think, and in that prayerfulness may be the roots of what’s needed to relate to others.

by Michael

My Blog: Prayer of the Week

You heal. You made your servant’s body, know his frame, and remember everything within it. You know him, love him, and remember him.  So look at and bless him with the sensitivity and care that he needs.

Relieve all manner of sickness. Remove pain. Use doctors and nurses and attending angels to do your work. Grant your servant a strong sense of your company, so that, as he lays and waits and receives both loss and newness, he may always have you.

Grant renewal of body and spirit and mind. This is not difficult for you.

 

by Michael

My Blog: How to Love

The pain on her face disrupts and unsettles me. I think about her expression all day long. She is the wife of a patient and she’s remained at his side.

She’s smelled the stink of his excrement until the scent of his insides is normal to her. She’s listened as medical team members file in and out of the room.

Each time a doctor rounds with students, the patient’s spouse is in that familiar seat, waiting and doing her best to love her husband. She is an image of how to love, and I keep her in mind.

At first, in the words of one of my students, she haunts me. And I think better of it. I think of her the way I suggested my student might see her patients: as friends.

My patient and his wife become friends to me. And they walk with me through the quiet halls of our hospital. They sit with me at my desk as I reflect upon my ministry today. They wait with me. They tell me how waiting is an expression of my pastoral care.

And I believe them. And I settle into myself. And I give thanks for them and for her and for the image she offered of how to love.