1. Let's set up an event! I'm just back from a two week stint where I spoke at a retreat for church planters and spouses, two churches, and a recovery gathering. They went really
well, and I'm wanting to do more of these kinds of talks as I'm finishing up the book "Not So Overwhelmed" and planning for its launch. I would love to speak at your church, men's or women's group, or community event about topics like:
"Spiritual Secrets for Overcoming Overwhelm"
"Changing the World Without Wrecking Your Life"
"From
Overwhelm, Burnout, and Addiction to Renewal ... a Leader's Story"
2. Insanity check: some pundits are calling Pope Francis a "failure" because Catholic mass attendance isn't growing.
I'm not making this up,
read the article here. Evidently some people are still obsessed with the "great man" or "great woman" theory of leadership (where the person at the top is credited or blamed for whatever happens in the organization). Thought experiment ... can you think of any reasons why Catholic Mass attendance might be down, besides what one guy in Italy is doing?
3. Don't believe your
thoughts.
Author Byron Katie is probably not going to be featured in the next edition of Christianity Today magazine, but she has something good to say: don't "believe" everything you think. “In a moment of clarity, out of nowhere, I saw that when I believed my thoughts I suffered and when I questioned my thoughts I didn’t suffer, and I have come to see that this is true for every human being." ~ Bryon
Katie
Someone once said that a key turning point in our emotional and spiritual development is when we come to this realization: "I have a brain, I am not a brain." We have thoughts, and those thoughts pop up in our brain for all kinds of reasons, and those thoughts need to be investigated, challenged, and frequently rejected. There is a part of our consciousness (the Bible would call this our "heart") which has
the ability to listen to and evaluate these thoughts that occur in the brain.
In 2 Corinthians 10:5, Paul talks about "taking every thought captive and making it obedient to Christ," and in Romans 12:2 he talks about our need to be transformed by "renewing our minds." All this happens as we discipline ourselves to separate our being from what's happening in our minds. We can control what we put in our minds, and we can control what we focus on ... but other
than that, the mind flits around like a drunken monkey. The thoughts that pop into our minds, and the ideas that bubble up in our consciousness are often the result of negative past conditioning and irrational fears. Don't believe everything you think.
4. Recent survey shows how sharply divided we are in the US:
Today, lots of people feel excluded from the conversation about the future of America: Blacks, Hispanics, white evangelicals, and white men with less than a college education. Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center summarizes the danger: "When
people feel excluded from from a society, they will endorse extreme measures in order to ensure that they get to be part of that society.”
5. Quote of the week:
“Experience is not what happens to you,
it is what you
do with what happens to you.”
--Aldous Huxley
