Keep Imagining

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Thanks,

Keith

This is exerpted from an essay by Scott Burkin entitled:

#40 - Why smart people defend bad ideas

Death by homogeny

"The second stop on our tour of commonly defended bad ideas is the seemingly friendly notion of communal thinking. Just because everyone in the room is smart doesn’t mean that collectively they will arrive at smart ideas. The power of peer pressure is that it works on our psychology, not our intellect. As social animals we are heavily influenced by how the people around us behave, and the quality of our own internal decision making varies widely depending on the environment we currently are in. (e.g. Try to write a haiku poem while standing in an elevator with 15 opera singers screaming 15 different operas, in 15 different languages, in falsetto, directly at you vs. sitting on a bench in a quiet stretch of open woods).

That said, the more homogeneous a group of people are in their thinking, the narrower the range of ideas that the group will openly consider. The more open minded, creative, and courageous a group is, the wider the pool of ideas they’ll be capable of exploring.

Some teams of people look to focus groups, consultancies, and research methods to bring in outside ideas, but this rarely improves the quality of thinking in the group itself. Those outside ideas, however bold or original, are at the mercy of the diversity of thought within the group itself. If the group, as a collective, is only capable of approving B level work, it doesn’t matter how many A level ideas you bring to it. Focus groups or other outside sources of information can not give a team, or its leaders, a soul. A bland homogeneous team of people has no real opinions, because it consists of people with same backgrounds, outlooks, and experiences who will only feel comfortable discussing the safe ideas that fit into those constraints.

If you want your smart people to be as smart as possible, seek a diversity of ideas. Find people with different experiences, opinions, backgrounds, weights, heights, races, facial hair styles, colors, past-times, favorite items of clothing, philosophies, and beliefs. Unify them around the results you want, not the means or approaches they are expected to use. It’s the only way to guarantee that the best ideas from your smartest people will be received openly by the people around them. On your own, avoid homogenous books, films, music, food, sex, media and people. Actually experience life by going to places you don’t usually go, spending time with people you don’t usually spend time with. Be in the moment and be open to it. Until recently in human history, life was much less predictable and we were forced to encounter things not always of our own choosing. We are capable of more interesting and creative lives than our modern cultures often provide for us. If you go out of your way to find diverse experiences it will become impossible for you to miss ideas simply because your homogenous outlook filtered them out."

Don't even get me started....

I was at the store the other day buying some sundries (we'd run clean out of sundries @ home.) and on the list I brought was "avacados." I judiciously selected four and went to check out. I'd noted the price as I did. At the checkout, the register said they were $1.50 more than the sign did. I told the cashier.

What ensued was a full 20 minute rig-a-ma-roll. The supervising cashier was overly apologetic about the wait and "trouble." I said "Ma'am, there are people all over the world huddled together trying to stay warm, right now my biggest problem is I have to wait a few minutes for my avacados, it's not a big deal."

She stared at me in disbelief. "that's a great attitude to have.....you'd be surprised at how upset people get around here sometimes." I assured her that I wouldn't be surprised.

Dan Wilt, a friend of mine, wrote this on his blog. "Life is meant to be well lived" It was almost in passing that he mentioned it, but the weight of the words hit my soul. I've long been an advocate of living well in the true luxuries of gratitude, simplicity, joy and fun; the "excesses" of close friends and peaceful living. It is in these things that real abundance is found.

Dan's right - life is to be well lived, for it is in living well that we celebrate God's goodness to us. So enjoy your appreciation of a great orange in the middle of winter. Linger deeply in the warmth of a blanket, or the smile of a loved one. These are the things that a well lived life embraces as graces from the Lover of our souls.

Live very well, love as extravagantly as you have been loved by God and bask in the true luxuries of life

Osama Grah'm Hardie

My friend's wife thought a photo he had posted on the web made him look like a terrorist. I wanted to give her a something to compare it too.

My true love gave to me 12 creepy Santas!

Check out my photo album titled "creepy" and you'll see what I mean!

My thanks to the folks @ Scared of Santa for their work that made this possible. I just gleaned the shots where I thought the kids had an obvious reason to be freaking out - even if they weren't.

So it's been about 3 or 4 weeks since I last posted. I don't know why - probably due to the "busy" created by moving my entire life to New Brunswick - yeah that's probably it.

Anyway I came across this in Walmart recently. It sheds some light on the differences between cultures we enjoy. It's about food and it's funny - it's fundy.

I'd love to hear what you think - they were thinking - when they made it. They had to know this could happen - I mean they are two languages, sharing the same alphabet.

Hey all the hiatus was brought on by the deer hunting season. I am back and blogging. 11 hours in a deer stand does give one time to think. His still small voice says much in that silence. Most of it was for me and it would be inappropriate to speak of it in this manner but some of it filters through.
What follows are some notes I made 30 feet above ground - in the deep woods.

I really wrestled with staying the extra 1/2 day, two days of thwarted effort has felt all too familiar given what I've just been through at the old church - but I had to perservere. I had to just keep persisting. The sense of failure I've been wrestling with, as a result of this summer, has been a lurking phantom always pouncing when I'm least able to mount a mental defense.

I was out earlier than the sun to hunt - doing all I could to succeed - but I was foiled before I started. Forestalled because I had held up "harvesting a deer" as the measure of my success. (There is a reason they call it "hunting" and not "getting.")

But I realized that all I, or anyone else, will ever have is the fixed reality of our own attempts. My free will is all I have control over. That gift allows me my choices and actions only, so "being and trying" is all anyone has. It is when I give up - I become fruitless. No matter how many times I am undone by circumstances (or others) barreness only comes when I try to extend my control beyond what I truly can control.

God will honor - I believe - the sincere effort born out of circumspect and humble living. Any life devoted to God and His will - is the life that prospers. My wife is so fond of reminding me that it is all about the process - another way to say that is "being while trying". Until now I had not seen the two as equals. Perhaps it is because I felt (at some subconscious level) that "process" sounded too airy-fairy or perhaps too mechanical or intangible. But "being and trying" are two things I know well. Then as I looked for a way to express what I wanted to say in this post - I came upon a good word for it "Kairos."

Kairos is a way of acting in regard to an opportune moment in time, it is about me "in the now." As long as I apply myself to the moment and keep seeking fruitfulness in it - I am living sincerely. This hunt I could prepare for, get up early for, even get up the tree but then all I could do was wait . There is where my control ended. I had to sit in the darkness and listen. I was being and trying all at the same time in each singular moment that passed.

So too with the rigors of life - they will do what they may - "the being as trying," this kiaros, is the thing. The whole of life is trying and trying again and being present in that. When I thought of "being as trying" in the same manner as "the journey," it resonated deeply with me. It sounded so much more gentle and forgiving than the driven format so popular today. Just be here and now - lean on Me and keep on persisting - I'll give you the rest you're after.

Each breath a moment of kairos - a crucial moment - for acting as disciples of Jesus, taking risks to proclaim that our ultimate concern is love, truth, generosity, forgiveness and so much more. Kairos, as an act of devotion - the art of presence while "keeping on." Growing and bearing fruit not in the sense of always "doing" but in "life as a whole" being a big opportune moment to be with and in Christ.

So I'll go forward today - and try to be a disciple, and with God's help I'll bear fruit in the kairos that is today. May God grant us all the life more abundant.

For those of you who are not fortunate to read Herr Blumhardt's daily offering I submit this:

I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Ezekiel 11:19-20

As the heart is, so is the person. The heart is the soil from which divine plants grow; it is the source of all the power that is needed for their growth. That is why the seed of God’s word must first be planted in the heart. For the same reason a mere outward conformity to the law on the basis of fear is worthless. If it doesn’t stem from the heart it is hypocrisy; it is pharisaic.

The heart must be tender, kind, and good. We must be warmhearted if we are to please God. Therefore, look to your heart. Whoever understands God’s will in his heart and is sensitive to it, will carry it out. Put effort into it—stir up this feeling you have in your heart for God, so that it lights up your whole being and turns you into a fulfilled and genuine person of God!

Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, from Family Prayers for Each Day.

If it doesn’t stem from the heart it is hypocrisy; it is pharisaic. - I love that. It's all about the heart and the heart is all about actions and choices. It is there that we learn what we really believe. Don't be like the "too many" that are content to say "We believe!" but live it in a measly way.

Go help the heartless dispassionate one's! Those who are more intent on comfort and confirmity. Busy about the business of smoothing the way and points of order - making everyone alike - removing contention the heart of a thing and calling it unity. Making everything a choking beige and extinguishing the fires of fervor.

We are the church of God! Those for whom passion won eternity! Those who despite the bleak darkness that swirls around them can drip with joy!

God help us for loving our safety and predictable cloying comforts, too afraid of our own shadows to step up to the position we own in Christ. This cancerous ease that turns us into meager and exiguous shades of what Christ Himself died for us to become.

"God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.....Man - that great and wonderful living creature, more precious in the eyes of God than all other creatures! For him the heavens and the earth, the sea and all the rest of creation exist. God attached so much importance to his salvation that he did not spare his own Son for the sake of man..." (http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p6.htm)

May God grant that we all look to our hearts and stir them to live in grace, gusto and the marrow of our faith - leaving off comfort more quickly and risking more of what we only suppose we own for that which we truly do!

You are Snoopy and you are MAGNIFICENT!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
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