Children's Stories

Last week I did a rigorous update of my pop culture awareness, by that I mean I got caught up on a handful of movies that I have either wanted to see, or felt obligated to see. One of the movies that I thought would be intellectually beneficial was the recent feature length interpretation of Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who…seriously.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, or do not remember the story from your childhood, there are two dominant themes that stood out to me. First, is the value of keeping your word and honoring your commitment, and then also is the indiscriminate value of human life. You see, Horton, the protagonist elephant, makes a promise to the people of Whoville to secure their world, which is contained on a spec of dust, to a place of safety and order. Horton goes to great lengths and subjects himself to extraordinary peril for two reasons, because he made a promise, and because life is important.

As I was thinking about the profound truth found in this imaginative parable, I started to consider other childhood stories and lessons that I was taught through children’s books. I found myself recalling some serious lessons, deep rooted principles, and pure values to practically apply to the way I live my life. While the lessons are straight forward conceptually, they are not simple, especially when it comes time to apply them to every day life. As I thought deeper I began to realize that a great division often exists between many of the principles we learn and how we apply them to our lives.

Somewhere along the line we become jaded, we stop seeing the world as it should be and begin to see it as it is. We dissect the principle truths that we once thought to be absolute and make them conditional. We compartmentalize the lessons we’ve learned pragmatically into portions of truth which we feel are practical and portions which are impossible for application. The truth of our values is then deduced and manipulated into a conditional mechanism that we fit into our realities, when in fact our realities should be shaped by these core values in their purest form. By no means are all children’s stories gospel truth, but contained in them are a number of life shaping lessons that all too often we as adults deviate from as we slowly are broken down by the real, not ideological, reality in which we must live.

The strange part is that we see and are inspired by the same lessons in thousands of contexts, yet we still fail to implement and secure these values as foundational elements of our relational, professional, and spiritual lives. When we fragment truths and values it is no wonder that we end up with something lesser than the anticipated outcome of a value-centered life. If wisdom, truth, and principle are present in our lives only in the event that they are practical then what do we have? We have lives that posses virtue only to the extent that virtue is found to be profitable or reasonable. In the end it is a self fulfilling prophecy, because we only partially sew the seeds of truth, we partially reap, and yet we end up frustrated that our crops are not bountiful.

So what if we fully embraced the principles of our youth and the lessons we once believed to be so profound. What if we took the lessons we were taught as kids, the lessons we teach our kids and embraced them completely? Would life look different? I believe so.


Think so some of the lessons found in our children’s stories –
Never give up
Share
Keep your word
Preserve in hard times
Love the people around you
Respect the things that make us different
Have big dreams, maintain hope

The list is long, and could be a blog in and of itself…but think of the possibility of these principles being absolutely and practically applied to our lives. The implications are substantial.

There is a reason that Jesus said that one of the keys to experiencing God’s glory was to make yourself as a child. In doing so, we not only take conceptual principles as being noble, but we BELIEVE that they are possible in our lives.

Children’s stories are almost always marked by a sense of imagination and wonder, and this is most certainly the key to bridging the gap. If we can imagine how our lives might be different by embracing truth, then maybe we’d embrace it…and subsequently maybe the lives of the people around us would be changed.

We as grown ups place so much value on being on a higher plane of thought, however I contest that there is value to living life by principles not of a higher plane but rather that of foundational truth, simple truth. For me I am realizing I have a lot to learn and much to implement in my life from the stories of my childhood, and I can’t help consider how much better I would be as a person if I embraced those things wholly, just like Horton did. He didn’t rationalize his way out of a promise…his values didn’t change because of the size of the people he made a promise to…his values were a core foundation for the way his life played out, and it created a marked result in the impact he had on those around him. This most certainly comes at a cost, but at the same time we stand to reap great benefits and live lives that are blessed and bless those around us in new, big, and simple ways.

CP

Control Premiums - Hopeless Love

In my life, there are many times when circumstances or situations have been so grave or so immense that the only sensible reaction that is plausible is to relinquish control and let go of the reigns. Futility can be hugely empowering; when the presence of choices or various courses of action exist it is easy to be consumed and find “hope” in that which we feel we are able to do. We shift reliance towards ability, and trust that we are both well equipped and capable of executing an action plan. However, when troubles grow beyond our ability and we are paralyzed in our efforts to dictate change, we begin to understand in a practical way a sense of hopelessness. Hopelessness not in the sense of pessimism or anticipation of less than ideal outcomes, but rather, hopelessness in the sense that there is truly nothing we can do, and to hope in ourselves or our ability would be utter folly.

We as people, regardless of our psychological predispositions, find comfort in positions of choice and positions where we are empowered to do something…and often, being able to do anything will suffice. When given the ability to act, we own a sense of control, we carry equity in our circumstances. As opposed to being a simple character in the plot, we get to write the script.

Now when the balance of power shifts beyond our grasp in life, we are still afforded much liberty, but as opposed to being proactive we become responsive. The choice of what to do is uprooted, and replanted in how to react. I believe when we examine the things in which we sense even an minute element of control, it is easy to conclude that our control is limited to that which is temporary and fleeting, and our realm of influence does not span past that which is finite. The situations in which we are hopeless in trying to dictate change are the situations of infinite significance in which we become subject to. No matter how hard we try, we are in a position of response, we cannot in these infinite situations, rewrite the rules.

For example, gravity is a constant force that all life on earth must recon with. Whether we choose to accept gravity or not is irrelevant, we can deny its existence, we can attempt to break free from its grasp, but escape is hopeless…we cannot simply avoid the gravitational physics because we do not approve of the parameters it naturally invokes. We can either live a life of disdain and rebellion against gravity, or we can choose to acknowledge the boundaries which healthily exist, and live within them.

In my spirituality and in a Christ-following life, there are many parameters we are given the ability to respond to. It is here that we may find many of the unwavering characteristics of God. His traits of love, sovereignty, goodness, holiness, and his justice (among others) are not contingent upon whether we choose to live by or acknowledge them, rather they simply are. They are unshakablee, they are unending, they are perfect, and they demand a response. Just as is the case with the force of gravity, the way we respond cannot change the nature of that which we respond to; our response predicates the way by we choose to live. Breaking free from the boundaries of the infinite is hopeless, instead we are given the choice to squirm restlessly in resistance or to rest in peace trusting the good nature of God towards us.

I know the word hopeless seems to be a bleak representation of a sanctified life, but it is not hopelessness presented as the absence of hope, it is hopelessness in the sense that we become so consumed by the infinite love, goodness, sovereignty, faithfulness, and holiness, that living by any other parameters not only become illogical but it becomes impossible. The phrase “hopelessly in love” has common place in the world of romance, hopeless love is not love that lacks hope for we know that love in fact is always hopeful, but instead it is love so deep, so true that it is inescapable. Hopeless love, is a love that consumes all that we are, it is love so powerful that we are hopeless to escape, and it is love so true that to do anything other than to live under its authority would be as illogical as senseless as trying to live a life in resistance to gravity.

The more I know my God personally, the more hopeless my love for him becomes. The more I see his goodness and provision, the more I am drawn to respond. With each sliver of his good good heart, I find myself at a place where my life must be radically changed to not only accept but thrive under the infinite, unwavering parameters of this good and perfectly loving God. Any other way would in fact be hopelessly insensible, how could I ever escape the long reach of perfect love? There are vast expanses of God’s love to be explored, and the more we search the more we find. The resurrection, and the provision of redemption invite us into relationship and into a life of freedom, a life of exploration, a life changed, a life in response through hopeless love.

Hopless...in a good way,

CP

http://chrispanoff.blogspot.com

A break in the fog

Its amazing what a day can do...a few shots from the second trip up Corcovado...Its good to know that every once in a while the clouds break to remind us that we do not hope in vain.

CP

To See or not to see: Clouded Vision

Each year thousands of tourists go to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil to see the Cristo Rendento (Christ the Redeemer) Monument that overlooks Rio. Yesterday morning I made the trek up to the top of Corcadova with hopes of seeing the monument, and the beautiful panoramic view that lays before the monument. As you can see from the above pictures, not only could we not see out through the cloud that came in to settle on the monument, but we could hardly make out the monument standing at its feet. The first picture was our view from the top of the mountain, the foreground is a portion of the guide to the panoramic view that we should have seen…and the background is what we saw…yep. The second picture was how we saw the monument, Comedic? absolutely, a great memory…you bet.

I guess in life what we seek is not what we find…but the view can be providential nonetheless. Faith tends for me to often be much about knowing and trusting the beauty of Christ’s plan, even though sometimes I only get a glimpse of his feet and the outline of his cloak.

My trip up Corcovado yesterday got me to start considering the lofty perches from which I often view my faith, life, and God. A lot of my major personal crossroads have been predicated by long lengths of time where my vision has been clouded by circumstance or fear, but everyday (both cloudy and otherwise) the fingerprints and influence of Christ’s divine plan are worked out regardless of the visibility. Our business as people is not subject to rain delays, or being rescheduled on account of some clouds or poor visibility, life is to be lived in the settings in which God creates. It’s much more romantic and poetic to have those moments of great revelation overlooking the vast span of creation, but that is the way I want it, and its not the way Jesus went about his business. Jesus spent his time in cities, on the street, teaching, loving, in ministry with real people, and while he could have spent his years a reclusive naturalist wandering the wilderness in the presence of his father, but that is simply not who Jesus is and its not reflective of the pursuant heart he has for his people.

When I boarded the plane to come down here to Brazil I had a lot of eager anticipation about the beauty I would get to see, and the sights that would be etched this the first (but probably not the last) time I am visiting this “Cidade Maravilhosa” (Marvelous City)…however, God has shown me something more marvelous than the view from high on a hill overlooking a city, he’s shown me his marvelous people…his greatest feet of creation. It took me coming down from the out of the clouds to see it, but the beauty is pulsing through the veins of this town on city streets, in bars, on sidewalks, on beach front sandwich stands, in futbol stadiums, in homes…and this is marvelous.

Our work, our mission is not to live lives that are spent with monumental views, but rather, we are called to live monumental lives. The way our lives play out is supposed to be a monument to the God who loves us, the one who breathed life in us, who created all we see, and who would stop at nothing to provide a way to be rectified justly to him. It’s not about appreciating the way we look or the things that make us different, but it’s seeing creation (us as people) the way God sees us, and that is as marvelous. It is not about worshiping the creation, but is about seeing beyond the clouds of personal struggles and imperfections that taint the way which we interact and go about our business each day, rather its about looking beyond the small things that are divisive and annoying, and looking to the special ways that God has made us; each of us loved in an especially unique way to match the especially unique way we were made…again, it truly is marvelous.

While it is disappointing to go to a place that has some of the best beaches and spectacular views in the world only to have days that have been primarily overcast, I’m deeply refreshed and reminded that there is work to do. There are a lot of lost people who need loving, and there is much creation that surrounds us to be marveled (people). You will find no man more thankful than I to have only seen the feet of Christ, for those feet are the feet that lead me. I trust that God uses clouds in our lives figuratively to focus on what is important, and to keep us looking at the right things and while we might not get the view we want, or see the sights we expect, we might just see a glimpse of something greater, a God who loves and marvels over us.

While there will surely be sunny days ahead, I’m using the clouds in my life, for there are many, not as a distraction but as a means to focusing on the task at hand. While I’m sure off in the distance there are great adventures, mountains to climb, battles to be won, beauty to be cherished; at my feet and in my hands there is plenty to do today and with that I am content. I of course hopefully anticipate all that is down the road, but I’m not there yet and honestly its really hard to see that far (and I certainly have tried), and even though I am hopeful I am busy marveling at what God has created at my fingertips today, and only today.

In awe (but still hoping for sun)
CP

Expectation Shaping

This Friday marked the last day of a chapter in my career, I’m going to be changing jobs and heading back into financial advisory work for distressed businesses. As I walked out the door of my employer’s office in Atlanta on Thursday afternoon, I was nothing short of excited. As I’ve been reflecting over the past few weeks about my tenure, my current circumstances, I have had an increasing sense of optimism and excitement about what lies ahead. At the same time I have a deep sense of thankfulness of what the LORD has afforded me and his very clear, very present hand in every aspect of my life, as the mantra goes, “Life is Good.” With all this going on in the backdrop I’ve also been thinking a lot about how my heart is, (and was) when this chapter of my life was still being written and I lacked a tangible sense of direction and closure on what direction I am heading. Certainty affords peace in a lot of ways.

At the same time I have been thinking a lot about what happens when things don’t go my way, and how I respond, for I believe character, if not defined in those moments, is certainly apparent in our active process in responding to unmet expectations. When we don’t get what we want, or when things don’t play out as we plan, we revert quickly back to greedy toddlers who throw tantrums on a whim and define the whole of our existence in temporal circumstance. All too often we define what “good” is by getting what we want, knowing what the big plan is, or having control.

On top of my professional situation being an element of my life that is on the verge of drastic change, I also have found myself much more politically engaged than usual with this years election…no soap box here, just keep reading. Regardless of who I voted for or how I feel about the election, I was thinking long and hard Tuesday evening about how the results of the election would impact my interest and involvement in politics. In short over the course of the past 8 years I have transitioned from being entirely indifferent about the political environment in which we live to being engaged and interested, who knows maybe, just maybe, I am growing up in this way. What I realized is that the things I believe in and the ways in which I choose to be an active contributor to those things should be a static element of my time and efforts. They should in no way be subject to circumstance or contingent upon whether or not they are in flow with my personal plans and agendas. Can my beliefs and convictions change? Absolutely! However, the way by and extent to which we go about engaging in God glorifying activities based on those beliefs, should not.

If I define my perception of “good” purely on a basis of my expectation, I am stripping an infinite quality of God’s grace and subjecting it to my viewpoint of the present tense. In the same sense, if I allow my involvement in ministry, politics, and relationships to rely upon the world around me complying with my rules and expectations then what does that say about where my heart is in the matter? As I look at my own life, I realize that my ability and willingness to serve and be involved is largely at risk to my expectations of how things will shake out.

When we allow ourselves to have expectation shaped realities, we exchange a firm foundation of core beliefs for a weak behavior pattern that is crafted around the direction that the circumstantial winds may blow.

Luckily for us, God is in the business of meeting needs not expectations. If our perception of God’s work is limited to our expectations then we reduce him to some sort of cosmic secretary who either did or didn’t do things as we had hoped. I, for one, am deeply grateful that God’s work doesn’t rely on my circumstantial thoughts about what’s best for my life, but rather its based on his deep and unshakable love for me, and his plan for not only that which is good but for that which is best. I am frequently guilty of compartmentalizing God and my view of him…but, the more I go through as a person, and the more I learn to trust him with my good and bad moments, the more I am learning to set no expectations for God whatsoever. In doing so, I am consistently blown away by the amazing ways the he works, and how much greater things are as he lets them play out…especially when compared to how things might have gone if I would have gotten my way.

So, when our chapters are unwritten, and wide open, do we still view and trust God to be good? Further more do we allow our unmet expectations to impede upon the beliefs and convictions that are nested in our hearts?

I am so thankful right now for where I am, there’s a lot that’s going right, and there is a lot that isn’t going great. As I see it, its not a matter of things going with the flow as I perceive it, but rather, it’s a matter of going with the flow of that which God has ordained, period. I don’t know exactly where I’m going to end up or what will happen tomorrow, but I do know that God’s in the process of crafting me to be more like his son…sometimes this feels better than others, but I’m glad to be refined in this way.

I’m glad Christ’s love, his grace, and his work are not dependent on my expectations…if so, we’d be living under the hand of a pretty lame God. The creator is still creating, and he works in creative ways and all because of his real sense of what is good and that which defines our needs.

CP

Defining What Matters

There is no such things as a bad time to make serious assessments about the things we take seriously. Life by no means is a joke, and there are things that are certainly not to be taken lightly, however I feel that many people walk and run through life making everything a top priority. If you live a life in which everything is in a tie for first place, I’m going to go ahead and guess that you probably live under an immense amount of pressure, and that much of that pressure is self created. Priorities are the vertical order of importance we use to organize our lives and relationships, time is finite, and typically finite resources have value. Furthermore the more limited or scarce a resource is, the more perceived value we assign to it. The fewer moments we have the more valuable each moment seems. Priorities assign a value hierarchy to our lives and help us define how we will employ our key finite resource time. There of course is a reason we inevitably see a shift in priorities of the way a terminally ill cancer patient prioritizes his time as compared to someone who isn’t forced to face, in a real sense, the fact that we’re all on a countdown to the grave. The perception of value changes when we change the way we view the scarcity of something.

Priorities are a way we communicate with the world around us. The way we establish the ranks and resources of our lives sends a message about who or what is in first place, and the things for which all others fall subordinate. Do we shift our relationships to fit into place around our jobs, or visa versa? Do we value providing for our families over having a fun day out at the beach? What matters more? What matters most?

I think for many of us young folks its so easy to get caught up in the pursuit of a career, establishing life in a marriage relationship, raising a family, whatever. The list of things that fit into our individual priority economies is exhaustive, and no matter how we perceive our “priority lists”, there is undoubtedly much that claws for our attention. But what really matters? We are complicated beings, and the reality is that there probably are infinite number of ways to rationalize any given priority structure.

For example, does a job matter because:

1. it communicates something about social status or value
2. it provides money or a means to provide for life
3. work in and of itself is important
4. people rely on you for your job
5. it enables you to do other things that actually matter more than the job itself

Every facet of our priority systems can fall subject to this line of questioning, and it is important to understand no only where things fall, but why they fall where they do. At the end of the day if you follow the process through to the end, everything you do will communicate something about whatever priority is really number 1 on your list. And number 1 of course communicates a very deep truth about what matters in your life.

I have spent many years of my life focusing on much that simply doesn’t matter. This is incredibly disheartening, because I haven’t been around for that many years. Whether it be pleasure, popularity, success, acknowledgement of my peers, fun, or general advancement in life, I’ve often caught myself prioritizing things that in the grand scheme of things simply DO NOT MATTER. The cultural trophies we have created often become my idols, and often it is because I either take myself or certain things in my life way too seriously.

There is great danger in myopically assessing that which is important, because when we do so our priorities become self motivated and self serving. The human tendency is to have a very narrow focus, and that focus is typically aimed and centered around ourselves…it is a shameful reality, but lets face it even in our most selfless moments we are all very self consumed.

There is only room for one at the top rank on the list of that which we care about in life, and typically there is a battle between Self and God, no two other things are in greater conflict. Self as a top priority may manifest as a job, a family, monetary wealth, or even some philanthropic endeavor, but the reality is that without God as number one, everything we do becomes a means to glorify ourselves. When we put God at the top, we cannot help but to take our work and the things that “matter” to us, and subordinate them to things that truly matter. All things on our priority lists work towards whatever holds the top rank, and when that is God, work, family, money, friends, and the lot all become means make God the top priority. It all becomes ministry, it all is transformed into something infinite, paychecks, board meetings, social gatherings all become a pulpit for God as the end all and be all in our lives. Conversely, when God is absent all works towards the glory of self, and in turn in one way or another we all end up at a point of total despair, total emptiness, or total destruction.

For all practical purposes our priorities are more than a list, they define a singular salient point about our lives. If all else fails, and I am left with nothing else what do I choose?

A prioritization of our lives is a 1 item list that contains multiple sub points, the sub points are the means by which we communicate what is number 1 and why. May God help us if our top priority is anything but him. How hopeless is life if we are given the choice to have one thing and we choose a job…yikes! I am aware that there is an old proverbial saying that warns of putting all your eggs in one basket, but a life for Christ is an all or nothing kind of thing, there is no room for anything but him at the top. There is no way to parcel and compartmentalize our lives to try to find a “happy medium”. In operating in an area of comfortable compromise we slyly rearrange ourselves back to the top spot and simply use God as an means to glorify ourselves.

For me especially, black and white choices are tough, I like to qualify and create contingencies in the event that I change my mind. I prefer to have escape routes and ways to keep my options open. In terms of picking what’s number one however, its an impossibility there just simply isn’t room at the top. Christ throughout his ministry preached this concept and the choice is simple, we may choose life (God) or death (anything else).

So the question remains, what really matters most?

CP

Fans

I am a firm believer that encouragement is one of the single greatest motivators that we as people have and can offer each other. Encouragement is the act of empowering others with hope, it is willing participation in situations and circumstances that we could, for all practical purposes, merely observe. Having fans and being a fan of others builds a bond through true challenges and struggles, and allows our lives to intermingle at times and places where we can cease to understand the circumstances and situations that loom over each other. Encouragement does not necessarily require that we understand or fully grasp the gravity of any particular event or undertaking, but rather it only requires that we make choices to step outside of our own circumstances to acknowledge the gravity and importance of the circumstances of others.

As is the case with any action where we invest time, resources, and emotions, encouragement and the act of encouraging others changes our perspective and produces a state-of-heart that opens the door to allow us to love each other in real and deep ways. When we make choices to cheer and to cheer loudly for people around us we not only plant seeds of hope and optimism in dismal and hopeless times, but we ourselves also will find that the way we view those we encourage also changes. Encouragement facilitates the shift from outcome to input orientation I wrote of a few weeks ago (Input vs. Outcome) and it helps us to love in a non-results-oriented way.

If we encourage only as a function of undertakings and actions that are successful, we aren’t really encouraging at all, we are simply rewarding results that we deem to have merit. By conditioning encouragement on when a particular outcome is achieved we commoditize relationships and we take on the role of fair-weather fans. Who in life needs support and encouragement only when they’re winning? The moments where we are lost, hopeless, and struggling seem to be much better candidates for us as spectators to cheer.

I believe that we all identify with what it means to overcome adversity, so it is no wonder that we cheer for the underdog and we love to hear stories time and again about those who overcome (not necessarily achieve) in spite of enormous obstacles. We all understand what it means to face big challenges, and when we see times and places where darkness does not prevail it resonates deep in our souls and reminds us to keep fighting. The will to overcome is something we all seek but don’t always find in ourselves and others, but when we engage in acts of encouragement we reinforce the fact that above the clouds the sun still shines, and that while times may be hard they too shall pass.

Think for a minute of a proud parent. Whether it’s a finger painting or their child’s first soccer game, it is clear that when you see a parent cheer for a child that their encouragement is a derivative of their love. Even if you have not experienced it in your life first hand, I’m confident you’ve seen it somewhere. Love and encouragement are intertwined, each one invoking the other. The more we love the more we encourage, the more we encourage the more we love…it is a beautiful cycle, and this is the heart of what I am talking about, encouragement is not only a result of love, but it makes love more deep, more real and in turn less performance based (or more unconditional)

By encouraging others we foster a sense of openheartedness to the people who grace our lives on a daily basis. When we cheer, we get in on the race and when it is our time to run, we run well. Encouragement is a great tradition of adversity.

When we are encouraged, we too as the recipients see great benefits and change in our lives. The field which adversity plows gives way for encouragement to plant seeds of hope. While seeds may take time to sprout, and may require replanting, once they are in the soil of our lives, there they stay. If we accept encouragement we become believers in hope, believers in our ability to change, our ability to overcome, our ability to stay the course and carry on when times are hard. And when it is harvest season, we too have seeds that we can plant in others.

I have been afforded many great fans in my life. My parents, my friends, sometimes even total strangers, but all of them cheer me on in some many arenas of my life. For this I am deeply grateful. I have found myself on both sides of the coin, both giving and receiving and I know that my greatest joy is not overcoming adversity, but knowing that there are people sincerely pulling for me in this life. Both those who encourage me and those I encourage inspire me towards greatness, while I have not by any means achieved it and nor may I ever, I know and believe that the hope and love of Christ is both the means and the end of that which I seek. Those who encourage me keep me rooted in this every day, and keep me moving on pushing forward towards Christ.

A life of cheering and being cheered is rich, so I implore you to not only cheer on the races being run around you, but I also cheer you to run well.

"If you're going through hell, keep going" - Winston Churchill

Cheering and being Cheered,
CP

Life on Loan

A few months ago, my Mom said something to me (or about me) that resonated deeply. As a part of a family birthday tradition, my Mother blessed me with some words of encouragement and appreciation.. Basically, what she said is that from a young age, and even when I was still in my Mom’s tummy, they knew I would be special. You see, while I wasn’t a part of my parent’s immediate plans, I was a part of God’s…I was for all intensive purposes a surprise. What she went on to say next, and what I viewed as being so profound was, “…we always viewed Chris as being on loan to us from God.” Maybe I’m prodding too deeply into the circumstances of my seemingly accidental conception, but viewing my life as a precious resource made me consider life on loan, I mean if I’m on loan to my parents…I’m pretty sure I’m on loan to myself too.

A part of me understands more about myself and my life, knowing that I was not the result of my parent’s family plans…but God’s eternal plans. Being “on purpose”, means a lot. Furthermore, being owned and loaned by someone else makes the possessive vocabulary in my life quickly vanish…what is “mine” anyways?

You see, my Mom’s view of me as her child as taught me something about my view of my life here on earth. Not only, is my life on loan to her as my mother, but its on loan to me. I can take no credit for what I am. I certainly had no role in drafting up the blue prints for humanity, and neither did I have a part in writing the script for time and history…all that I have really done is been invited in on the action. God handed each of us life, its his.

Each day provides an interesting intersection of our lives, at the drop of a hat our whole world’s are so easily disrupted, it goes both ways, good and bad. We could fall in love, we could lose a loved one; we could be stricken with terrible disease, or find great fortune. Life is stupidly delicate when you really consider it, which is why “being on loan” is a really profound concept. None of what I have is mine, believing in the sovereignty of God, means that every day, minute, and hour is on loan…it means that our time here is precious, and ultimately will be accounted for. After all, a loan gets repaid.

When something is borrowed and we have proper reverence for the true owner of the borrowed item, a shift occurs in our perception (mine becomes yours). Think for a minute of a teenager who borrows his dad’s sports car. The young driver knows that if he wrecks the car there will be hell to pay. On the other hand, if he is careful with what he’s been given and handles the car knowing he’ll give it back, he’ll get to experience great excitement and joy. Simply being lent a resource will not do, you must actually acknowledge the rightful owner, otherwise there is a detachment which allows self-indulgence and self-absorption to prevail. If things are kept in the proper perspective and we remain cognoscente of the true owner of our lives, our primary preoccupation becomes not that of self gratification but rather good stewardship. We stop trying to exploit that which we have been lent, and we start viewing our lives as an opportunity to enjoy and make good with that which we have been afforded.

Not only are our lives on loan to us, but we’re on loan to each other. The pool of assets which we are lent extends far past our lives in an immediate sense. Time, money, and relationships; all people, places, and things; its all borrowed and when we view it as such we start to become good accountants of it all.

If someone you loved handed you $100 and said, “I want you to use this to show me how you love me.” What would you do? Flowers, an elaborate meal, maybe tickets to a concert…there are a lot of creative options, there are lots of ways to put the money to good use. However, without a relationship with the lender, how could you possibly successfully achieve the objective with the $100? The deeper the love and closer the relationship, the more time and energy we would spend carefully planning out the $100 to the penny. Imagine getting to tell the person the story of how you used the resource they gave you to convey your love “…and then I spent a quarter playing your favorite song on a juke box, because I know how much you love it when people dance.” Its not about money, but think about being loved and loving that way…where we creatively and purposefully seek opportunities to invest and invest everything.

The covenants of our lending agreement with Christ are loose, they give us free reign to use what we have in infinite ways, but to be good stewards we have to be good lovers of God. Its not about being religious, its not about being good, its about being on purpose with how we invest (our purpose is loving Christ and glorifying him).

Christ said that “he who loses his life shall find it, and he who keeps his life shall lose it.” This has nothing to do with being alive or dead, but rather, being on loan. What Christ’s statement reflects, is a life sold out; a life that has handed over the total equity stake. It is the act of taking inventory of our lives and assigning God as the right full owner to it all, and in doing so we are given a piece of life in Christ. This is the deal of the century, we trade the temporary and fleeting elements of life on earth in exchange for a stake in eternity.

Going back to the $100 analogy, think that one day we will be able to give an account for our lives. If we had to hand back our friendships, our careers, our free time, our money, our marriages, our children, our homes, our everything and show how we used it all to creatively express our love for God who lent it all to us, how would we do?

We may come up short on the $100, we may spend it all, but God expects as to use it. When we hand it all back to him, we will not say “Here’s what is yours.” Do you think God needs us to affirm him as the rightful stakeholder in all of time and creation? he doesn’t (reference the parable of the talents). Rather, when we say, “Here is what I’ve done with what you gave me, because I love you.”

If our response to being loved and love itself are the primary motivations for everything we do, how should everything we do change?

Balancing my life “portfolio”,
CP

Input vs. Outcome

Results don’t lie, what a brutal proverb. In this day and age we have a unique ability and a strange obsession with measuring things. Financial results, stock performance, athletic performance, web traffic, school grades…we even measure and rate art (ridiculous). I agree that in many of our personal and professional endeavors, measurement helps us meet targeted objectives and be better at whatever it is we do. Results and measurement are a huge part of what drives our capitalist society (note word choice: society not economy), quantifying financial performance of a company tells us where we should invest, quantifying test scores in school indicates how well we studied. The problem is so much of our western world has become blinded by the quantification of risks and rewards that we threaten to reduce everything spiritual, relational, and personal down to some value oriented equation. We expend tremendous energy assessing where we can extract value from our lives; we calculate our return on investment and adjust our investment strategy accordingly. We are greedy people, me and my generation especially, and our only concern often appears to be maximizing what we GET.

Our measurement or benchmarking culture helps us know where we GET the most. However while results don’t lie, they can deceive.

What we fail to consider is that many of the things that we should be investing in, are very high risk, and often stand to yield no return. You can plug in factors to an equation to try to calculate what it is you can get out of any given relationship or situation, but you’ll get the wrong result every time. If we care at all about each other, and if we care at all about Christ’s work, about loving people, about changing those around us through love, we need to shift focus. We need to rethink the system we use to view the world, to view each other, and to quantify our means to get value out of things…instead of being oriented around the outcome of a situation, we must learn to be input oriented.

Let’s take the example of relationships, when you really weigh the risk/reward of loving someone it simply doesn’t stack up. Love is simply not an equitable transaction, when you consider all that you risk by loving someone it is a truly risky prospect. We make ourselves open to rejection, abuse, disappointment, not to mention a whole myriad of other frightening things that we subjugate ourselves to when we love others. Does being loved in return merit the risk of the endeavor of loving? The answer is, it doesn’t matter. We are to love no matter what, simply and purely, its Biblical, it’s the Jesus model for relationships, it’s a mandate not an option. Love doesn’t fit the equation.

Love, Grace, and the very nature of God are beyond calculation. It is incalculable the measures by which he loves us and the lengths he has gone through to redeem us. I’m pretty sure if we wanted a fair system that added up, we’d all be unfit to be loved, and we’d all be damned. The vast depths of our depravity, can only be overcome by the infinite span of God’s love.

God’s grace and love defy math. We are not loved because of an equation, we are loved because God chooses to love us, its his very nature.

When we shift focus to our input, none of the other stuff matters, performance becomes a moot point…we give God our best, we give him our everything regardless of how that feels…and most importantly regardless of what the outcome might look like. Being input orientated keeps us engaged in the action of giving, its keeps us investing, it invites God into our actions, and asks him to do whatever he ever he wills with whatever parts of our day-to-day lives he wants. While the shift from outcome to input is scary and leaves us constantly uncertain, it properly aligns our definition of value with God’s…that definition is: God defines value, not us. When we embrace this concept, we stop looking for ways to GET the most our of life, and we start looking for ways to GIVE the most.

A tremendous amount of tension is caused by wanting to get something OUT of any particular situation, as opposed to contribute something INto a situation. Next time you are in a meeting or in a group setting (professional or otherwise), pay attention to how much effort and fighting takes place…we fight for attention, we fight to be correct, we fight to be heard, we fight, we fight, we fight. The natural human reaction is to fend for ourselves and to get what is ours…unfortunately it is the American way. When we instead walk into a room giving attention, validating others, listing, giving, giving, giving…our hearts are completely changed and social dynamics are revolutionized.

When you give anything (time, money, love, attention, etc) and you do so willingly, your heart will be changed, by letting go of things and giving them away you contain the natural urge to horde and alleviate the relational stress of the aforementioned struggle of inter-relational combat. Giving means we rewrite the rules, it means we choose to play a different game.

Part of discipleship to Christ means not only do we constantly give, invest, and plant seeds, but it also means we expect nothing. Instead of recognizing only the shining celebrating our successes, the way we live life in community changes, life itself becomes a celebration. We do all we do as an act of love. We go to work, we have community dinners, we are spouses, we are employees, we are friends, we are citizens, we are leaders…we are all we are, and we do all we do because we love God. Outcome becomes irrelevant, instead the input, or what we invest in to people, places, and things in our world becomes an outpouring of love and a constant act of worship. We invest not because it’s safe or because there may be a good return, we invest because we have something to give. We take what God has so graciously given us, and we give it all away.

Our concept of failure transforms.

A while back one of my roommates and I wanted to lay low for an evening, and watch a movie. We were hoping for something mindless and lighthearted, so we picked up Disney’s “Meet the Robinsons”. As the movie credits rolled we turned to each other with drop-jawed expressions, astonished at the depth, and spiritual magnitude of the message of the movie. One scene in particular made me well up with emotion. The story is about a struggling young inventor who also happens to be an orphan. Through a series of events, the main character ends up in the future with an eccentric family who welcomes him into their home…

As the family sits down for dinner, one of the futuristic gadgets, a peanut butter and jelly making machine malfunctions, and the young inventor is asked to help save the day. The family watches anxiously as the young boy tampers and tweaks with the machine. As he pulls the trigger to test his work, what happens? TOTAL FAILURE, peanut butter and jelly go flying, total disaster.

The family sits quietly for a moment, and as the awkward silence builds, they erupt into cheers for their young inventor, proclaiming “What a glorious failure!!!”

When we change our focus to what we contribute into a situation, we live life on the edge. We go all in on life, we play with the chips on the table, cards up, it is risky as hell sometimes but the best we can do is try our best. I know this sounds like something you’d hear from a little league coach, but it’s so true. Sometimes we have glorious failures, but God works in our moments of triumph and tragedy.

The scariest thing in life isn’t failing, its giving it your best. Being completely sold out, diving in head first, holding nothing back…that is scary. When we love Christ and we love each other we must be in the act of celebrating the effort (the input), the act of risking failure, the act of being sold out, not the act accomplishment (what is accomplishment anyways?). When we do so grace abounds, and we love at all costs, not just when the costs the make sense.

Add it up,
CP

Planning & Improvising Part II: Chaos

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I believe in the principle of chaos, not in an anarchical sense, but rather chaos as a principle that the vast majority of elements are beyond our control. I’ve been learning a lot over the past few years about how little I control, and how trying to control things really can strangle the free roaming spaces of a life full of grace and love.

A few years ago prior to a triathlon I was competing in, I had the privilege of hearing Dave Scott, a World Champion Ironman triathlete, a hall of famer, and a legend in his own right, speak to the athletes prior to the race. As a bit of background about Dave Scott, he has won Ironman Hawaii 6 times, and was involved in some of the most ground breaking and exciting races in the history of the sport of triathlon. He is certainly no slouch and he to this day is held with great admiration in the Ultra-endurance community as a pioneer at going fast over long distances.

Dave said something incredibly profound, not just for racing triathlons, but for life. To Paraphrase, Dave said the following:

“It’s a hard course out there, don’t let the big challenge distract you. Take each tough moment in stride, and overcome the little challenges that present themselves, one at a time. On race day, you can only worry about what you control…weather, wind, technical malfunction are all out of your hands. Focus on your pace, focus on your nutrition, and enjoy the ride.”

If you agree with my principle of chaos, and Dave’s principle on tactically executing on “Race Day” (life), I think there are some major implications on how life looks thriving in chaos. When we learn to adapt, move in tandem with that which is beyond our sphere of immediate control we become great improvisers and we learn to move in flow, step for step with the things in life that don’t go according to plan (or at least according to our plans). What can we really control?...many people would say life is 20% what happens to you, and 80% how you respond to what happens. In reality, we can only really control our response, the choices (Dieting Choices), we make. Often what happens to us doesn’t align neatly with our plans, and in those moments we have the ability to make decisions on how we respond.

Last week I commented on a few things regarding plans, but that discussion was primarily a setup for communicating a proper balance between plans & a willingness to change the plan. As I stated, there is great danger in being so preoccupied in both the plan and the goal of the plan that we miss out on enjoying the ride (Planning & Improvising Part I). I’ve fallen victim to this trap many times, but I’ve learned from it, and found that when we live by our own agendas we miss a great deal of joy, and some amazing adventures.

Improvising, is creating room for chaos into the equation of our plans, the result is a balance between our future and present tense, leaving us adequately focused yet appropriately detached from our personally defined objectives. Improvising takes those elements that are beyond our control, welcomes them, and responds to them open heartedly.

When you look at the life of Jesus, he took lots of pit stops and detours, he moved in flow to the circumstances that were around him. He allowed room to deviate from his plans, he had an intimate connection with immediate circumstances as they arrived, and acknowledged their potential to have eternal significance. If you have ever had the experience of having someone who is preoccupied in some activity drop what they are busy with to give you or someone attention, those moments stand out. Whether that be a parent putting down the newspaper to play with their kids, a pedestrian stopping to aid the homeless, a motorist pulling over to help out a fellow traveler…this is improvising, and these are important detours. Improvising in this regard is the act of taking our plans, and making them a lesser priority to immediate circumstance, things beyond our control, the beautiful chaos that is a life filled and lead by God’s spirit.

When we improvise we let go of the time, goals, and objectives we so inappropriately define as our own. To improvise is to embrace that maybe, just maybe, God has other things in mind for our days, weeks, months, and years. Chaos as we see it, is calculated and carefully planned by a master architect and is an important way that he intercedes into the daily workings of our lives. How often do we feel that the circumstances of this world are so wildly out of control that they break any hopes that we may be able to “control” what’s happening around us? Its these moments that tend to loosen our grip on the agenda, and tighten our grip to God…sometimes, we’re just hanging on for dear life

Chaos from a human perspective (chaos without God), is the absence of order. Chaos with God, is coming to grips with the fact that God defines “order”, not us. Control is a false belief, it is a system of comfort that we have made to convince ourselves that life without God is not only plausible but that we on our own are in fact capable of handling things on our own, independent of Him. Improvising is welcoming God at all costs, at all times, it is welcoming chaos to our “plans”, and making room for his Plan.

So where is the balance? We of course mustn’t sit idly by pursuing and living lives lacking direction or activity. Conversely we also should not be so preoccupied with doing things and going places, that we become possessive of our own “plans”. Balance is the willingness to set our direction aside, to accept the pit stops and detours as they are introduced to our lives, it is to adjust our trajectory to match Christ’s. This is life in tune to the Spirit. It is fluid, it changes, it takes having our eyes on God, our hearts open to his people and his work, and a proper posture, subordinated, to the hand of the almighty.

In the end, we open the door to chaos, but we do so trusting that the chaos we see is carefully crafted in by the parameters of God’s goodness and sovereignty. Ultimately we find ourselves trying less to understand what God is doing and trying to fit his plans to ours, and rather we end up fitting our plans to his, trusting that whatever chaos may come, that it’s a part of an infinitely complex, perfect, and beautiful plan.

One of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis’s “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” is when Mr. Tumnus and Lucy are watching Aslan (the symbolic lion figure of God) walk away, Mr. Tumnus States clearly “He is not a tame a tame lion.”…Lucy’s response, “No…but he is good”

God cannot be tamed to our plans, he is wild, and reckless in the lengths he goes through to make himself known to this broken humanity. His wildness can mean a bit of chaos for us, but with that wildness comes a taste of his vast and unsearchable goodness. In those moments of deep uncertainty, total chaos, we are given the opportunity to connect with and trust a wildly loving God, and we are given a choice…do we adhere to our silly and eternally devoid plans? or will we put our plans aside, embrace chaos, taste the sweet flavors of a loving god, and see the wild passion of a loving savior?

Embracing the Chaos,

CP

Planning & Improvising Part I: Restructuring

For the next two weeks I am going to be posting two delicately related topics, Planning and Improvising.

I acknowledge that some of this entry in particular could be misconstrued to be focused on “success”, but I would encourage you to think critically about what success means, and to critically asses the deeper goals that define true achievement…

Game Plans

There is no doubt that there is a high correlation between a well thought out plan and the likelihood of meeting goals. Plans are the things that map a pathway of executable steps towards an end goal. If Goals and Objectives are the end, than plans and processes should articulate the means to achieve the “end”.

From training plans to business plans, planning can be a valuable process to help bridge the gap between where we want to go, and where we are today. Like a game of chess, plans get us calculating a series of interrelated moves that will strategically put the odds of self defined success in our favor. The process of planning asks two fundamental questions, “Where do I want to go?” and “How will I get there?” However, there are a few cautions in planning that make a life lived strictly by a stated “plan” dangerous, or at least introduce an element of personal risk to the equation. Two main areas of risk are:

1. Misidentification of Goals
2. Over preoccupation with processes

Misidentification of Goals

Plans can be a huge element that aids forward progress and acheivement of goals, but plans themselves are only effective to the extent that we start with the right answer to the “Where do I Want to go?” question. If we incorrectly diagnose for ourselves where we’re trying to go, or the right “destination”, we may execute a plan perfectly, but we’ll end up in the wrong place.

Lets assume that a business has a goal to grow to the size of 1,000 employees and $10 million in revenue, Today, the business has 20 employees and is earning, $4 million in revenue. What happens when it turns out that 1,000 employees and $10 million of sales results in a situation where the company no longer has a viable business model and is losing money in their bottom line. The business can execute a plan to achieve their goal, but as it may turn out, it’s the wrong goal.

As a second example, lets say a student is assigned a project in school to do a report on one of the 50 states in the US. In order to get awarded an A on the project the student needs to gather, 5 photographs unique to whatever state is selected, that’s it. If our example student decides that a 40 page paper outlining the history and uniqueness of his state would be much better that 5 simple pictures, executes a plan, and finishes a 40 page written project as opposed to the assigned 5 photograph project, what is the end result? Failure! Even if we have perfectly executed plans, when we improperly select goals, we fail.

When we set the wrong goals, we make the wrong plans.

Preoccupation with Process

The second risk, has to do with losing vision for the correct goals for the sake of the plans which were written to get us there. Simply put, when we place too much value on the plans themselves and fail to focus on what the plans were drawn up to achieve, we risk missing accomplishment of the end goal. Sometimes it’s hard to identify when plans need to change or when plans actually detract from progress towards our objectives. If we become obsessed with the road map, we risk failing to identify that we’re actually driving down the wrong road.

In a spiritual sense, this risk manifests as being religious while being detached from God. When we become too preoccupied with law and process, we miss the nature of God, and what he’s really trying accomplish. We become Pharisees, legalistic, and in all reality rigid and robotic in all things pertaining to God. We do not love and enjoy Him, we simply behave.

This process preoccupation risk, is prevalent in a variety of venues, business planning, personal plans, training plans, financial planning…sometimes plans need to change and when we loose focus of the goals, we reduce our lives to systematic pursuit of task while never really making any progress. If we set the right goals and we stay focused on the end game, we need to put ourselves in a position to realize that things don’t always play out like we envision, and that change is a necessary part of goal achievement.

If our founding fathers thought it necessary to have a process to ratify and change the laws (or plan) that governed this Democratic Republic, in hopes that if in the event that the plan to preserve freedom needed to change, it could. Shouldn’t we afford ourselves the same ability?

If we become too preoccupied with the plans themselves, they mutate into the primary focus, while all the long, the truly important thing (the goal) goes unattended.

It is entirely possible to succeed at a plan, and fail at the goal. Just as it is entirely possible to be “good” or “religious”, and miss God.

Restructuring

For most of my professional career, I’ve worked in the field of restructuring. I have dealt with and aided businesses that have gotten to a point where the plan needs to be rewritten to survive. Needless to say, I have learned much about what happens when plans need to change…and also what happens when plans need to change and they don’t. I was talking with my Dad a few months back about business, and he properly reminded me that, “The best businesses are always restructuring.” I believe that restructuring has some big time significance for other areas of life beyond corporate organization policies…restructuring by definition is the rebuilding or re-engineering of our plans.

Restructuring is what happens when plans change; it is the adjustment of either plans or objectives and sometimes both. Sometimes in life, we get to a point when we realize that there is a disconnect between where we want to go, and how we’re going about getting there, which leads us to change. If insanity is defined as doing the same action while expecting a different result, the restructuring is what we do when we want to get sane…its when we change what we do.

I believe that there are a few checks and balances we can build into our lives that help us identify when we need change; accountability and community being the primary mechanisms for identifying when and how we need to rethink our “plans”. Third party input provides guidance that we cannot easily arrive at on our own. When we have others who can objectively and critically look at our plans and our goals, we afford ourselves a perspective that is detached from our own psychological garbage. We all too easily get wrapped up in what we’re doing and where we’re going, that without good advisors, we risk careening through life with our heads down, blind to dangers ahead. There is a reason that top level athletes have coaches, there is a reason that the biggest and best run businesses employ third party advisors, there is a reason that many addicts require intervention to deal with their problems…there are certain risks and problems that not only are more easily identified from the outside, but some problems legitimately NEED to be diagnosed externally. Relationships afford us a level of sanity that helps us stay on the right track; much good comes when we get perspective that is completely detached for the delirium we are susceptible to when left to our own way.

I guess in reality the important things here are not goals or plans, but rather having the relational infrastructure in our lives the affords us the ability to assess both a need and a means to change. God’s grace, is a means of letting us constantly get restructured, it gives us a chance to change. While God has the benefit of making and crafting perfect plans, we do not. Restructuring is what happens when we identify a deviation in our plans from God’s plans, and we initiate change to realign ourselves with God.

To augment what my Dad said, “The best people are always restructuring or getting restructured”. This is not an obsession with self improvement, but rather it is a constant realigning or ourselves with God, it is accepting the need to be restructured, the need for constant change and re-creation. Just as with anything, it’s a long process…but over time we find ourselves not simply dealing with moments that require change, but embracing it.


Embracing Change,
CP

Next week, I will write on improvising, or creating balance between the plans and change.

Being Average - Incentives

Our society is full of incentive structures. Being incentivized means that there is some thing, either a reward or punishment, that will influence or help guide our behavior. Some incentives exist to get us to do the right thing, while others exist to prevent us from doing wrong or destructive things. Speeding tickets exist to keep us from speeding; year end bonuses exist to keep us working hard. Economists and psychologists alike have commented at length about the effectiveness of incentive structure in society as a means to change, motivate, and influence behavior. But I can’t help but wonder, are we fooling ourselves?

There is one thing that I feel doesn’t coexist well with social incentive structure, and that is excellence. So many of our society’s incentives, both locally and globally, personally and professionally, are structured around being average and our relative performance to our peers. Excellence is seldom properly rewarded, and therefore seldom pursued.

The marginal effort required to be excellent is high. Often, the cost associated with excellence over the long run either is or becomes so costly that when we live by social incentive, we ultimately arrive at a destination where we become disengaged and distracted from the very things that the incentive systems were intended to drive us towards. Incentives are established to drive us to outperform the next best competitor, they develop a system which redefines excellence as being relative, when in fact excellence is absolute.

Excellence for my purposes and for this discussion is defined as the absolute top level of input in any situation. Giving 100%, putting the best forward, working with your whole mind, body, strength, and spirit, REGARDLESS OF YOUR PEERS.

Here are two examples.

Speeding tickets are a negative incentive to prevent breaking the law, specifically driving above the speed limit. Are they effective? Well, it depends. Is the cost of a speeding ticket high enough that it will keep people from speeding, or are there certain demographics socio-economically that might view the cost of a speeding ticket well worth the benefit of being able to drive above the speed limit? Are there certain situations which would completely negate the incentive system itself? Examples: a wife in labor, late to a job interview, etc. Furthermore, if the ultimate goal (or excellence) is to prevent or eradicate speeding, does the incentive system work? Do we all take up arms to prevent speeding? NO! Rather we revert to the mean, and simply take measures to create balance between risk, reward, incentives, and hence become average…and in reality still speeding in situations where we can find a rationalization for our behavior that outweighs the cost of any potential tickets.

Now lets think about a Super Bowl Championship, a Gold Medal, or any other milestone of Athletic accomplishment. Here the incentive is a positive one, namely some financial reward or social prowess that motivates an individual to make personal sacrifices that are necessary to achieve certain stated objectives, a championship! Does this incentive system provoke excellence? Not necessarily, this system promotes that any individual would do only enough to outperform their next best competitor. Even if temporarily the desire to win some championship title motivates a person to the point of achieving a truly dominant level where no one can even come close to challenging their level of performance (Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps), over time, achievement becomes empty. Ultimately, the cost of being the best becomes too high or infeasible enough that outperformance not excellence is reinforced. With each passing championship, or achievement, any participant simply finds a new goal or benchmark to pursue, and is left with empty accomplishment and a incentive system to reinforce a life devoid of any true substance other than trophies and headlines.

When we succumb to living by incentives we become average, we abandon the definition of our true God-given potential, and we reduce ourselves to the lowest common denominator. As opposed to living lives based on principle and virtue we instead become products of a society and a system known as a meritocracy, where promotion, value, and advancement are awarded to those who outperform…not excellence.

So why be excellent if there does not exist some system that promotes, maintains, and nurtures excellent behavior? There has to be some other motivating factor that drives us to perform at a level that breaks free from our worldly incentive structures. There must be something that drives us not just to go the extra mile, but to go however far we can in an absolute sense…there has to be something that transcends our tendency to measure achievement, and give our absolute best.

Only one thing has the power to lead us to step out of the patterns and infrastructure created by our own notions of “success”, and that factor is a life changed by love. From a theological sense, we are called to give our everything in every way to Christ. It is a sacrifice not motivated by self deprivation, but rather an offering to honor and memorialize a life changed by the work of a loving God. The excellence as defined by Christ is a life lived completely for him. It is not about what we achieve, its about giving all we can, whenever we can, to bring glory to his name. It is as if to say, “Because I am loved in such a way, nothing less than my everything will do. Because I love God, all of my life in every way will be a reflection of that love.” Love motivates beyond incentive, it drives us to disregard the cost of excellent lives and pursue them fully.

Christ-defined excellence creates universal impact. It changes marriages, churches, relationships, workplaces, college campuses, and every nook and cranny of our lives. Pursuit of Christ-defined excellence invades our world in all that we do, and while we will inevitably fall short and come up lacking, excellence is defined not by a perfect record but how we handle respond when faced with our imperfection. Do we revert back to a life of being average and being motivated by incentive? Or do we absolutely and completely yearn to be stripped down in our non-excellent moments, accept grace, and become more excellent through the love of Christ that drives us forward?

I believe that a person who lives by the concept of excellence at all costs, and disregards the marginal concept of simply being more excellent than the rest, invokes change, and inspires excellence in others. While at its best moment this system is intangible and immeasurable by any external benchmark, lives lived in absolute excellence are markedly different and have distinction regardless of achievement. They trigger thoughtful response and dedicated attention to a life marked by something different, some factor that motivates beyond a system of rewards. While many can not define it, they can still see it.

Excellence is risky, and it often means that we must step outside of the boundaries we see and know in the world around us. But in the same breath that excellence redefines “success”, it also redefines “failure”, and when we accept that we are held to a different standard, and that the risk of failing to achieve in an earthly sense is far smaller the risk of failing to live excellently in an eternal sense.

To quote Bill and Ted’s Excellent adventure, “Be Excellent to each other!”

CP

Celebrating - First Steps

This past weekend I had the privilege of going on a fun weekend adventure with a close friend of mine down to Austin, TX. We had no agenda, no plans, no expectations…our only and primary objective was to go have a fun relaxing weekend. On Sunday evening we ended up participating in a 10k race that Nike was putting on in 25 cities around the world, the whole concept was centered around getting people together around an event to do some good for the world and a few charities through running.

I want to be honest, I’ve done plenty of races. It is easy for me to be very mechanical about racing, sometimes it feels like showing up for work; I show up, get the job done, work hard, go home. I enjoy it for certain, but often I enjoy a race well run (results) more than I enjoy simply racing. As I stood near the start line, and listened to the national anthem I felt for the first time in a long time, deeply in touch with many of the reasons that draw me back to toe the start line in my life. I realized it had been a while since I’ve felt this certain kind of excitement. I, for certain, had nothing to prove, I had no agenda, no goals, I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything specific, I was just there to enjoy the event…to soak it in completely.

As I stood there I started to recall many of the times where I had been in that position before, waiting for the race to start (figuratively and literally). There is a particular buzz that infests the air before the first steps of a race. Its hard to explain unless you’ve felt it, but I believe there are some deeply symbolic things about the first steps we take on any course in life, running and otherwise. There is an embracing of the unknown, an anticipation and a healthy fear of what lies ahead, and of course a decisive forward motion that pushes us onward despite what may come.

From Marathons to marriages, first steps are always big ones; they carry big weight and can set the tone for much of what is ahead. It is important to note that it is not the race that matters here…it’s the active step of getting out there, of doing and of trying regardless of circumstance or outcome. First steps always carry a degree of uncertainty mixed with action.

Part of what struck me about the spirit of Sunday’s race is it was, for me at least, a celebration. It wasn’t about how fast or how far, it wasn’t about an achievement, it was about enjoyment…it was about taking those first steps each day in my life and getting out on the race course and running a good race, it was about celebrating the journey and not worrying about the destination. What would my life look like if I was engaged in the act of celebrating regardless of my circumstances?

Celebrating is a hard verb for me, it’s a hard action. I like to achieve, I like to succeed, but celebrating…its so…well…soft. There is no orientation for outcome, there is no consideration for success, but rather a life marked by celebration unanimously sets circumstance aside and forces us to embrace the present tense of where we are. Celebrating means that we take the good with the bad, and we have a heart of gratitude for it all. We may not conditionally and selectively take things as good or bad, for if we truly believe we serve a sovereign and good God, then we embrace that he either allowed or mandated all of our circumstances to be so. When we celebrate, we take all that God puts in our lives and we take it with grateful hearts. Personal loss, joblessness, professional success, good grades, good looks, bad luck, disability, marriage, being single…its all his, and if we are completely his, we are called to celebrate what he is doing. We celebrate the opportunity for God to do great things in, on, through and around us…and we take those big first steps to get in on the action, and we take them daily. Its as if to say, “I don’t know where I’m going for certain, but I’m for certain that I’m going and God can take care of the rest.”

My Dad says it best, “you can’t steer a parked car”. If we are not in motion and in action, how is it possible for our ultimate trajectory to be changed?

I think if we look around, we can find so much to celebrate, but it is important that our celebrating keeps us taking action, taking first steps every day to run hard and leave it all on the course and let God do what he may. Celebration defuses the spirit of criticism and entitlement that so easily consumes us all, when we celebrate we look past all that could otherwise distract us from persevering and enjoying this great race. Celebration means we accept what we are graciously given with hearts of thanksgiving…celebration is enjoying the ride no matter how bumpy it may be.

All circumstance, good, bad and otherwise are the strokes of a master painter. Carefully planned, thoughtfully executed, beautifully intricate…our lives are a part of his masterpiece. Each brush stroke of heartache, joy, loss, and love, and each experience, each day, and each moment are all a part of his mural. They all add vibrant color and distinct character to each part of this work of art that he is carefully drawing out. All too often I find my self getting caught up in the paint and missing the painter completely. Instead of admiring the artist, I fixate on smudges instead of the broader work of art…I miss God completely.

When we live lives of celebration, we take a step back, and we admire the artist, we trust his work, and we acknowledge ourselves as a smaller part of his much larger masterpiece. We daily toe the start line, and race, we run hard, we run in faith, and we dive in to each circumstance whatever it may be. In the end, we turn back and give praise for each sanctifying brushstroke that crafts the mosaic of our lives together. In the end,

Take some time to celebrate your world, the more we look the more we find.

Stepping,
CP

PS. The picture above is of my first steps on Sunday…unfortunately Lance Armstrong and Matthew McConaughey got in the frame with me…I'm in the frame, consider it like a game of "Where's Waldo".

Whoooops

Just a quick technical heads up, the email subscriptions that I tried to set up aren't working properly. So if you subscribed, you probably didn't get an update email. I am going to work to get it all sorted out this week, and hopefully I can find a good solution.

Happy Labor Day.
CP

Proper Indifference

Life is full of “X factors”. X factors are the little things that make big differences in the outcome of situations and circumstances. They drive change, they differentiate. We often hear about X factors in venues where there are elements that we can sense, yet we cannot define which played a big role in getting a result. I believe that one such factor is attitude, our perception of self and the world around us…and I believe a sub-factor can be indifference, and indifference properly applied.

I feel that there are two types of indifference that if adopted, yield markedly different results in our lives. The action of being indifferent is the same; indifference is a detachment, or lack of feeling one way or another about something. What distinguishes proper from improper indifference is the subject of the action. Just as it is with nuclear power, alcohol, bleach, and spandex, when used in proper context each can be used for good and can be productive things in our lives. However when used with the wrong motives, improper application, or with impure intentions results can lead to total destruction.

When we are properly indifferent, we are indifferent to the inner barriers that hold us back.

The key distinction is the following, improper indifference is projected on to the world around us, while proper indifference is applied to ourselves specifically, our fears and insecurities. Again, indifference to the world around you, bad; Indifference to yourself, good.

When we are indifferent to the people, places, and things that make the backdrop for the setting of our life stories, we disengage from the very things that God has called us to be engaged with. When we say we are indifferent about the world around us, we say we simply don’t care. Our hearts become hardened and disenfranchised, we do not feel, we do not love, and we do not take action in our own lives. We become self absorbed. Like a rest stop exit that you pass on a highway, the course of our lives goes unaltered and the pathways of our days, weeks, months and years are reduced from an epic journey to a simple commute from point A to point B. We lose the spontaneity and improvisational aspects of life that allows us to engage with and impact the people and things around us. Further, we lose the ability to be engaged by and be impacted by others!

Indifference strangles the adventure God has set out; it cheapens life, and isolates us from the very things we were called to be in community with.

Proper indifference or indifference to our selves is not a state of self-neglect or dejection. It is not resolving to passivity, or inaction; it is not indifference to sin or a stagnation of progress in our lives. The subject matter of proper indifference is not ourselves as people, but rather it is indifference that is targeted at our fears and insecurities. Proper indifferences acknowledges, and then ignores, the little things in our nature that keep us from loving, doing, and living our lives on a full and a faith-filled basis. Proper indifference defuses the element of “self”, and allows us to go full speed ahead, trusting, hoping, and living with hearts open to the world, it is saying “Screw it” to the things that keep our hearts closed off to the world around us, and “screw it” to the things that keep us from diving in head first and being fully engaged and fully invested.

If you have ever been cliff jumping or skydiving, there is always a point in time where we stand on the edge, we cautiously peer down below, we acknowledge our fear, then decide whether we jump. This is the same type of “screw it” attitude that pushes us forward, this is proper indifference. Improper indifference lets fear rule and leads us to walk away from those big scary moments.

Proper indifference yields an open heart and fearless pursuit of a life of faith.

Indifference is not the same as ignorance. It is not pretending that we do not have fear or insecurity each and every day as we walk the pathways of this life. It is not pretending that the cliffs we peer over are not tall. Fear and insecurities both can be very important barometers for our lives. They help us pinpoint areas where we need faith, and where we have a disconnection from the perfect love we are called to abide in. However, if we dwell on these elements, we end up building huge barriers to living a life on the edge in faith.

Proper indifference is being in the habit of proceeding through life in faith. It is removing the elements of self that keep us from being engaged, and setting them aside for the sake of having our hearts be fully Christ’s. The statement of “screw it”, changes from being something that segregates and detaches us, to something that drives us forward and keeps us taking leaps and bounds of faith in our daily lives.

Imagine what life would look like with a total disregard of fear of rejection, fear of failure, insecurity that we are unloved, fear that we won’t be loved back, insecurity in our looks, insecurity in our jobs…the list of things I would gladly set aside and become indifferent to is a long one.

When we become indifferent to all the things that hold us back, those little whispering voices in our heads and hearts that keep us from charging ahead into unsteady circumstances, we liberate our minds, our hearts, and our hands to give it our all. I am a huge believer that all we can do is give 100%, anything less will not do, and that is a terrifying concept to me. I can not dictate the outcome, I can only control my input (more on this concept in a few weeks), and therefore I make the choice to give it my all. As I wrote last week, this is a choice.

Indifference to the world around us leads to hearts plagued by apathy and inactivity; indifference to our fear leads to hearts filled with hope, energy, and a motivation to take action in our own lives. The verb is the same, the context and result are quite distinct.

When I look at Christ’s model, I can see both elements of indifference to self, and lack of indifference to the external world. When Jesus was engaged in ministry he was not simply a commuter, his heart was filled with compassion, he took tangents on his point A to point B pathways, he was deeply engaged with the people and things around him. At the same time, his “not my will but yours be done” attitude communicates a heart that was in touch yet unconcerned with any element of self.

Proper indifference means we are fully engaged in, yet fully detached from the world. We are in the world but not of the world. We become people not interested in popular conception, worldly expectations, or the progressive hurdles of modern life. We become people not concerned with self, we become better lovers, supporters, and servants of the people around us, and better livers of our lives.

So let us set our fears and insecurities aside and strive onward. Let us take on the challenges ahead, let us love fearlessly, let us live hopefully, and let us become indifferent only to those things that hold us back.

Its strange to consider that one of the hardest hurdles to clear will be me…one of the biggest challenges to overcome will be setting myself aside…

Also, special thanks to my friends and family for a fantastic birthday surprise last week, you all are amazing! Thank you for loving me like you do.

Screw it,
CP

Dieting - Choices

I think its important for you all to know that the following has nothing to do with food. The only reason I feel a disclaimer might be necessary is because I am confident that the last thing that anyone wants on a Monday morning is my opinion on healthy eating.

Due to a number of circumstances, my life lately has boiled to down to a lot of choices. The choices I face are not synonymous with options; I’m not choosing between left and right or A and B, these types of choices are circumstantial. I am making the kind of choices that are abstract and overarching, they are the kind of choices that dictate the kind of person I will be, they are the choices that define the manner in which I do things more than they define the things I do. The choice statements I am making (or at least trying to make) extend far above the directional and circumstantial choices. It is as if to say, “Regardless of if I chose A or B, Right or Left, this or that, I choose to be ___________”

The choices I’m talking about are hard for me, and often they are contrary to my nature. However, I trust they are the right choices and therefore I carry on. If we live honest, public lives, these life defining choices can be scary, they force us to take a stand and be known. They draw clear lines, in the ways we talk, interact, and live life with each other.

In American Culture we talk about diets an awful lot, probably much more than we should. In any case, I think when most people hear the word “Diet”, they immediately associate it with, “Less food”, “no flavor”, “no fun”, “misery”, “I’m STARVING”. The reality is that a healthy diet isn’t about less choices, it’s about good choices. Its about redefining the way we go about eating.

Diet’s largely are not fun; the elimination of options is constricting and uncomfortable. We often end up eating things that we don’t like, and worst of all, we feel like we miss out on some of life’s truest pleasures…i.e. desert! Ultimately, we diet because we want change; we want a higher and better quality of life. We want health, longevity; we want the satisfaction that comes with making GOOD CHOICES. Making the good choices for a diet comes at a price, but the good news is that there is a return on that investment and in due time good choices yield good returns. Ultimately, what we hope (or should hope) happens through dieting, is that our appetite’s change altogether and the once hard and non-appealing choices become what we desire.

I took a shot in the dark on looking up the Latin root word for “diet”. I’ll go ahead and say that I am not the type of person who has language research as a habitual part of my internet routine. However, I got totally lucky on this one…and it just so happens that the Latin history of the word is applicable to my point. Plus, I feel that talking about things like root words and language structure makes me at least appear smarter than I truly am.

The root word for Diet is a Latin word, Dieata, which means “a way of life”. Diet, is about our lives, it’s about the choices we make about how we live. When we take that to the context of food, yes, what I put in my body communicates something about the big defining choices of my life. Our diets, or the way we live, is tied closely with the choices we make. It’s a two way street, choices indicate something about my way of life, and my way of life should impact my choices.

If there is a disconnect between these two things, you either need to asses the choices you make to align them with your belief system (way of life), or you’re fooling yourself about your way of life altogether, and you probably need to get a grip on the real “diet” you’re living by.

In my life, I am in the process of aligning a few things…I’m changing some choices I am making, also I’m reminding myself of and recommitting to choices I’ve wavered from. I’m seeking to align the choices to the way of life I have chosen. I’m reaffirming the way I will go about things, regardless of what it is that I ultimately go about doing.

Many of these choices feel like “eat your vegetables” types of decisions. I am making choices that are tough, they don’t taste good…and a lot of times I don’t like making them. But they are good choices, and over time I truly and deeply believe that making some of these hard to swallow decisions will serve to align my appetite, choices, and way of life.

Choosing to love people in my life even after they’ve hurt me, and when I’m scared I won’t be loved back.
Choosing to be hopeful when the outlook is grim,
Choosing to stay the course that God has called me to,
Choosing to stay positive
Choosing to pour into others, and relying on God to make me full

These are all eat your vegetables choices…they are hard! But making good choices can change our appetites, and what we desire altogether. We often confuse action with feeling…love, hope, perseverance, positivity, an encouraging spirit, being a servant, are all choices…they are not feelings. We are called to do these things, not feel these things. To my knowledge, there are no biblical commands associated with how we feel, rather there are plenty associated with what we do. We have to get our hands dirty, we have to eat our veggies, and often times we have to choke down some really unappetizing circumstances.

I think many people miss the boat by waiting to feel before they act. Rather, if we make the decisions to unwaveringly embody love, service, leadership, hopefulness, etc. feelings follow suit. By choosing to be more loving, I am choosing to see the world in a way which empowers me to love, therefore engraining the characteristics of love in me. By choosing to be positive, I am making decisions that universally shape my response to the elements around me…therefore making me positive. While we all may not be in fact loving, positive, cheery, smiley, neat and well polished people; we can make choices to live loving, positive, real authentic lives.

For most of us, love, hope, patience, etc. are contrary to our nature, but what I am finding in my own life right now is that my appetite is changing as a result of the choices I am making in my spiritual diet. It’s a process, and for me right now, I’m not adjusted to the flavors of some of the menu choices I’m making, but I’m coming around. I want to be clear, that it doesn’t feel great, and its tough, but they are the right choices.

So as you’re looking at the world around you and specifically your life, I’d encourage you not to ask “What am I?” but rather “What do I chose to be?”

Hungrily yours,
CP

Opening Ceremonies - The Human Spirit

I guess its rather fortunate timing to begin a writing campaign (for lack of a better term), in conjunction with the beginning of the Olympic Games. Personally, I am enamored with the Olympics. I love both what they represent and what they imply about the human race. There are few sporting events like it, and in a broader reach there are even fewer things that have the power to unite the world’s attention peacefully around a redeeming focal point. Yes, it is competitive, and with competition comes struggle and conflict, but on a deeper level, the Olympics are a celebration.

To put it in perspective, right now there are about 10,500 athletes in Beijing, for those athletes medals are awarded in 302 events…mathematically, the ratio of success (Gold Medal) is small, and rightfully so. But I believe the captivation of the games extends far beyond, the 302 ceremonies for the awarding of Gold medals and reaches into something that we all connect with, and that is the human spirit.

As I watched the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics, I cannot help but be drawn to the spectacle. It is a true celebration, four years of anticipation culminating to here and now; years of work and preparation. What is so incredible about the opening ceremony is that not one medal has been awarded, there is no distinction between those who are Gold, Silver, Bronze and those who are unadorned…they are all people, simply and purely so. For a moment, the world stops and celebrates being human. We stop focusing on the benchmarks of wealth, status, medals, and our position on the self-prescribed world ranks, and we just agree that while we are all imperfect, and while we all might not be “Gold medalists”, we are all people, we are all in it together, so lets put the achievement aside for a moment and just be human, and lets be human together.

I do not know what it felt like on Friday night in the Bird’s Nest, but deep down I can imagine it, and imagine life in a world where we all live in those big dreamy moments.

For me, so very little of what is happening right now in China is about sports. I think the Olympics are a great reminder to dream big, and to truly celebrate the human spirit. The human spirit, and the celebration thereof, is not about self indulgence or egomania. Neither is it about glorifying ourselves as creation over the God that created us, but rather it is celebrating the things that bridge the divisions that are inherent in the world around us. It is the recognition that while there are many fleeting things that segregate people, there are far more eternal, deeply significant qualities that unify us as human.

While circumstantially my life might be disconnected from other nations, socioeconomic classes, races, and religions. I believe there are connecting points that bring us all together and bridge those vast chasms.

I most likely cannot understand the biting sting of living under the auspices of starvation, plagues, homelessness, or the deep loss of a child or a loved one, but I can indentify with the struggle to find optimism in tough situations and to carry a banner of hope despite how hopeless circumstances seem.

I most likely cannot understand what it feels like to summit Mt. Everest, be a soldier on the streets of Iraq, to be an athlete in Beijing, or to be a single mother taking care of kids and trying to make it work for her family. However, I can identify with what it feels like to be faced with HUGE challenges, to have deep fears, and to have to make decisions to carry on, and push forward despite how big the tasks laid before us seem.

I may never know what it feels like to wear a Gold medal, but I know what it feels like to have big dreams and give it a shot. Often I fall short but I know what it means to give it my best, and to celebrate the journeys that lead both to my successes and failures. And this is the spirit we must celebrate daily, we should adorn grace in those moments, boasting love for each other in our failures. We as people universally fall short time and time again, but we’re in it together, and our shortfalls are one of the universal connecting points of humanity. Our imperfection creates both room and a need for Grace; imperfection is an unavoidable but crucial part of the human spirit.

So I guess what I propose is that we start looking each new day as an Opening Ceremony to celebrate the togetherness that we have the opportunity to live in. I believe that if we at least attempt to focus on the ways that we connect with each other, despite how different and unique we all are, we will begin to love each other, exhibit grace, and live life in new and profoundly impactful ways. I encourage you to look at the world around you and celebrate both the things that make us different and the things the bridge the gaps of our differences to unite us in the spirit of being human.

We are capable of great things...

Let the Games begin.
CP