Sabotage

So I was reading this blog by a guy named Dan Pallota, and it got me thinking about people's crazy.

Let me begin with a confession:

If you ask me my golf handicap, I'll probably tell you it's a 12 or if I'm feeling like you wouldn't care either way I'll be a little more honest and say it's a 15.  However, I’ve got to be honest with you, I have no idea what I actually shoot on the golf course.  It’s not because I don’t count my penalty strokes or my mulligans, I actually do (a few weeks ago I took a 12 when my first three tee shots went into the woods, years ago I would have called that 3 mulligans and a birdie).  No, it’s because I have probably never actually taken an honest second putt.  What I mean is, if my ball is around six feet from the hole, I begin to do what I call ‘mental gymnastics.’  Here’s what I mean: Instead of standing over the ball, lining up my shot, and taking the putt, I usually walk up and create some sort of sabotage.  I’ll swing the club with one hand, hit the ball from the wrong side, or just run up and shoot it really quickly.  If the putt goes in, it counts (of course).  However, if I miss (which usually happens), I say to myself, ‘well if I would have just taken my time then I would have made it.’ And then I walk off the green with mixed emotions, knowing deep down I bogeyed the hole but gladly enjoying the par on the scorecard.  In the end I’d rather walk to the next tee box feeling like I could have made it rather than accepting the truth that I’m really not that good at golf.

Pallota’s blog is a critique of non-profits.  His observation is that many people get into ‘world-saving’ work because they are hero-complexed co-dependents. I, out of my own experience, more or less, agree with him.  Furthermore, Pallota went on to critique the way non-profits almost pride themselves on being under rescourced:

In my consulting work, I see people who wear the debilitating lack of resources in their organization like a badge of honor, despite the fact that the deficiency undermines their ability to impact the community problem they are working on. I see people moving from one nonprofit to another, from one cause to another, seemingly more addicted to "the struggle" than passionate about solving any particular social ill.

Now if you know anything about me, you would know, that no one waves the ‘everyone should suffer and struggle’ flag more enthusiastically than I do.  But I do think there is a difference between the kind of struggle that involves addressing and working through the pain and suffering happening in the world/your soul, and struggling because of your own sabotage.

Do you perpetuate cycles of struggle because you need something to blame your failures on?  Do you surround yourself with busyness, a lack of resources, organization or preparation because you are afraid to face the truth: What if you had all of your ducks in a row and you still failed?  What if you had unlimited resources, time and energy and you still came up short?  Could you accept that you aren’t that great?  Could you still love yourself if you saw how talented you actually were rather than living in the delusion of whom you could potentially be?

My point is this: The world might be a better place if we stopped nurturing the crazy that keeps our egos alive.  I’m not encouraging despair but rather encouraging all of us, not just those that work in non-profits, to work on cultivating healthy environments and a balanced self.  Stop trying to save the world if you can’t properly care for the people around you or even yourself.  Work to bring order to the chaos around you.  Take the morning to organize your desk.  Take five minutes and meditate or pray.  Reassess your goals based on what you or your organization can actually afford both financially and emotionally.    

no one is impressed by how crazy your life is

So line up, take your time on that putt, if you miss it, so what, at least you’ll find yourself outside of the turmoil and in a place of authenticity. 

Shalom.

A Fatherless Generation

A few months back my dad and I were having a heart to heart discussion and he said, ‘Son, I want to be a role-model for you, I want to be someone you can come to for life advice.’  Now, this is nothing unreasonable for a father to ask of his son, but for me this became a moment of grieving.  I desperately desire a father, someone I can look to, someone whose standards I have to live up to, someone who is wiser than me beyond my years.  The thought that crossed my mind was, ‘yes!  I want that for you too.’  But I am afraid this may be impossible.

We live in a world where the most valuable person isn’t the wise man but rather the child who can Google.  The world is no longer asking the grey hairs for wisdom or approval but rather we are on a journey inward.  Our heroes of this generation are the 30 year olds who just sold Instagram for a billion dollars.  And the truth is, the 27 year-old Mark Zuckerburg owns all of our souls.

This Lent I challenged a handful of my students to give up screens for Lent.  I asked them to limit their facebooking, their video gaming, their youtubing, to just one hour per night when they got home from school.  And in the end, we all failed.  Miserably.  To say that we are addicted to our technology is an understatement.  We are officially married to it.  Our smart phones, our televisions, our laptops, they are our appendages: our digital arms, legs, and second brains.  Our mastery of them is our ticket to prosperity and adoration. 

Those that have used this technology to decide what is cool, who have used our connectivity to monetize our relationships, who have created art to be exclusively appreciated by those who are ‘connected’ or ‘on-line,’ it is these people we aspire to be.  And so we serve the screen because it promises prosperity, popularity, and connection.  Instead of legends and tall-tales, we read about and tell stories of the Mark Zuckerburgs of this world.  We no longer look to the wise man to tell us how to live, we look inward at our peers, and we desire to be the most important among them (and thus reality TV was born: an economy of people being famous for being famous).

And I think about my dad and all the other fathers whose identity has been formed around being ‘men.’  And I grieve because their services are no longer needed here.  Lessons in character and integrity, stories of the long, winding journey through the wilderness can’t help someone whose only precious commodity is the preservation and commercialization of their cool.  And I wince as I watch their tired, grey faces begin to follow awkwardly behind us with slumped shoulders muttering stories about patriotism and what it means to be a man.

Perhaps, there is something more to life than moving to the front of this new class we’ve built for ourselves.  I know we’ve all deconstructed the so-called, ‘American Dream,’ but this new peer driven dream feels even shallower than the suburbs we ran away from.  Sure, we eat locally and we live in refurbished hip flats under the shadows of skyscrapers.  And certainly we are the most tolerant and conscious people who have ever lived.  But without the wise men, we have no narrative, no values, no ethos.  If the Kony 2012 controversy is any indication, we haven’t the slightest clue what, exactly, we are supposed to do with all this. 

We have to unplug.  Not because technology is bad but because in our marriage to it, we have created unbalance.  We have to stop celebrating cool aps and start being interested in the content of one’s character.  Stop selling your relationships to Mark Zuckerburg and start cherishing them, listening to the people on the other end of them; share in their suffering, and take interest in their formation.  TURN OFF YOUR DAMN PHONE.

I have to admit I’m deeply in this wilderness too and I have no idea where to begin the divorce of the machines.  Perhaps it will happen like any divorce happens: we stop listening (to the voices of culture telling us how to live), we meet someone new (contemplative prayer and friendship is a good place to start), or we wake up one morning and realize we aren’t happy and that dead beat who has never given anything back to the relationship needs to go.

In the end, at the very least, we must grieve for the giants whose shoulders we sit upon and whose mouths we keep duct taped.  Grieve, the fatherless generation.

Bibliography:

The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen
My good friend Jarrod who listened to me rant yesterday.

Easter With Haiti

In February 2012, Ted Cassidy and I teamed up with a group from Church of the Nativity in Huntsville, Alabama to help build a running water system and plant a garden in the city of Thomazou, Haiti (you can read about my experience here).  I met an old friend of our community by the name of Father Pierre Valmar or Pere Val as he is called by his friends.  He is an extraordinary man with an even more extraordinary community that reaches across several suburbs and villages of Haiti.  He has been working tirelessly for the better part of 30 years to bring health, education, and faith to his people in Haiti.  I am a witness to what his ministry has done for so many and I assure you that the money we have been sending to him has produced wonderful fruit.

Easter With Haiti is our campaign to help Pere Val accomplish what I would argue is his opus.  Over the past several years St. Paul's church and a number of churches from the diocese of Alabama, South Carolina, and Missouri have been working to build the Lespwa Timoun nutrition clinic in Criox de Bouquet, Haiti.  It promises to be a place where people from all over Haiti can come for clean water, medicine, and nutritious food.  Currently, the clinic is being operated out of a leased property, however, they will be leaving that site in October.  Time is of the essence not only because of the expiring lease but because unfinished structures in Haiti have a tendency to crumble.  

Haiti Serve has promised a matching grant of $60,000.  This Easter we are working to match that grant!  If you would like to be apart of completing the Lespwa Timoun clinic, please send your contributions to the St. Paul's Episcopal Church offices with 'Easter With Haiti' in the memo line (the address is below).  100% of the proceeds will be sent directly to Haiti and all donations are 100% tax deductible.  Please pray for this wonderful ministry and consider contributing to the cause.

Shalom

Make Check payable to:

St Paul's Episcopal Church
116 N. Academy Street
Murfreesboro, TN  37130
memo: Easter With Haiti