Author / Michael
Given the History of Misunderstandings
Friday I read an article about the President-elect’s conversations with world leaders and how they were, consistent with his earlier manner, clear departures from the way diplomatic leaders and ambassadors think he should participate in such conversations.
Mark Landler’s NYT article quoted a former Pakistani ambassador who said that in his country history and details matter most. He said that his country and our country has between them many misread signals. I thought: given the “history of misunderstandings” some conversations need more than a leader’s reactivity.
I don’t know that the President-elect’s conversation was reactive. But I do know that some conversations require patience and consideration. In other words, a considered approach is a more thorough one given the history between your conversation partners. Wisdom seems to be in knowing which conversations require us to dispense with history and tradition and which require pronounced appreciation for them.
In which relationships do I need to pay attention to what’s happened before? I think most relationships call for that. I can’t think of any situation where knowing and respecting what happened before you arrived at the next seminal isn’t important. Then, you choose according to your wisdom.
My Blog: Prayer of the Week
We seek many things. Sometimes, in our seeking, we turn away from you.
Be unmissable this week. Be in our way this season. Be traceable and visible and unmistakable.
As we turn toward what’s ahead, help us see your presence there. Make our attempts to see hoped-for things soul attempts to locate you. Transform our desires until they become desires for you, for the Holy.
You created us to be curious people, resilient people, even stubborn people. You placed within us the hard-to-beat impulse to seek. Grant that we might keep seeking. Grant that we might do as Jesus says and find.
As a Whole
See Jonathan’s article at the Root here.
My Blog: Pep Talk
I think you are amazing. Already. Before you get it done. Before it succeeds. Just prior to the grand opening of your tomorrows.
You are already an exemplar. You’re faithful and caring. You’ve achieved a clarity in your soul that most people overlook.
You’ve prayed and centered on the things that matter, things that aren’t things at all.
Stay centered. Stay connected. Stay certain.
My Blog: Name-Calling
My son and I were talking about someone calling him a name. We’ve discussed this a few different times. This happens to children. Of course, it happens to adults, too.
I told Bryce that name-calling is a compliment and that the boy, saying what he said, was trying to get his attention. He was trying to keep his attention.
I suggested a strategy to which Bryce said, “I like your thinking.” I like your thinking. Six-years-old and he likes my thinking!
Aside from the strategy, Bryce followed the suggestion and the boy immediately switched, became his friend, and made me look like I knew what I was doing with my son!
The point of this post is that name-calling is a compliment. Bullying is not. Bullying is different. Find your words to distinguish them. And help somebody else do the same.
My Blog: Prayer of the Week
We live in fear and you tell us to be unafraid. You tell us, “Don’t fear.”
Grant that we might revisit your record and find you trustworthy. Anchor us in something deeper than our first, primitive reactions. Drop us into some penetrating truth that the world of death is a world on its way to a fitting close.
Open us to expectation for life even while we move toward Advent. Use us to bring life, to frustrate death the way Jesus did, to remind violence and all its offspring that life still wins. In the strong name of the winner whose coming gives us hope.
My Blog: Spending Yourself
Spend some of your quiet moments with yourself, considering yourself, thinking about you.
Not the job. Not the task. Not the vision. Not the project. Just you.
Your mind, dutiful as it is, will resist it. Your spirit may feel anxious. It’ll feel like a small robbery, this giving of yourself back to yourself and not giving you away to some other thing.
Take it in and feel what it’s like. You need those moments. They will make you and re-make you after you’ve spent you. Those moments are prayerfulness. Those moments are times of contemplation and rest. You need them.
Advent: Hope — Signs of Life
Advent has become one of the most important seasons of the year for me. My recognition of this ancient Christian season – beginning on the fourth Sunday before Christmas – was born out of my frustration with the hyper-consumerism associated with the holidays. The discovery, as one who’d not grown up with an awareness of […]
via Advent: Hope — Signs of Life
Thank you, David!
My Blog: Who’s With You
Most of us work around people. Or we live near people. Or we serve them or parent them or date them.
When you think about the community around you as you live, work, and play, notice the people. Notice who’s with you. Isn’t it more important to know this, to notice this, than any other thing?
In some ways, it’s a foregone conclusion that you’ll get where you’re headed. Either you will or you won’t. The unknown is who’ll be with you.
I wonder if all the people you’re spending yourself over will be the ones with exhibited faithfulness after the course is finished and once the long run is done. Maybe the more important matter is not where you’re headed but who your company is on the way.
My Blog: Prayer of the Week
As Thanksgiving approaches, help me remember to pray for those who are looking toward the holidays while hurting and grieving. Help me grieve my own losses, too.
Many people have slipped away. Some have been forced to go. Some have chosen to leave. Some have lived brief lives and others very long ones.
Comfort us directly in our losses. Renew love. Replenish strength. Be gracious by supplying our needs according to your immeasurable wealth.
You give good things. You give us each other. Help us to cultivate relationships with those that we love despite distance, despite death. Grant that we might still be grateful for as much as possible.
Be good to us so that we turn toward you, in every way, and find you grieving and loving with us.
My Blog: Under Such Circumstances
Michael Washington 