Penny for your thoughts

First.

This post is, as some would say, sticking in my craw. Nevermind that I don’t know what a craw is. Wikipedia probably does, though. Anyway, Ann posted on (In)Courage the other day, and is givin’ it to me where it hurts. Sample?

I am a daughter failed and I am a parent failing and I know it in ways now I never knew: if I rip apart the bridge of forgiveness for my own parents with my own hands, I destroy the only way my own children can come to me.

Buh. Why she gotta tap the nerve, highlight the sore spot? Doin’ so in the Spirit of God, methinks. If you took some time to read, what was your response? What stands out to you? What do you hear the whisper of God speaking?

Second.

I’ve changed my blog theme! Whether you’ve visited my blog in the past or not, I’d love to hear your feedback. I’m diggin’ it so far, for a number of reasons too boring to enumerate here.

If you’ve stopped by before but haven’t ever commented, this might be a practical, low-stakes way to get your feet wet. And a sure-fire way to bring a smile to my face!

S’all for now.

I don’t have an MBA, but I can still be masterfully overconfident

I suppose it makes sense: I write a post on enjoying blogging, the regular discipline of blogging, mentioning my almost-a-post-a-day success. And then I have a hard time posting! Ahhh the familiar humor in that. Speaking of ironic turns of events…

Though uncharacteristic of my reading choices, this blip from Mark Shead’s article on Productivity501 is a winner. Sparked by an email newsletter, I started reading “Never Hire an MBA”. Obviously, the author is lovin’ on drama-stirring fiats. Such generalizations generally don’t tickle my fancy; I tend to mentally swat them away like obnoxious linguistic pests. But when I noticed that the article focused on how formal education isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (in this case from the hiring perspective), it tapped into a conviction of mine and I read.

The writer discusses various problems with hiring a person carrying an MBA but not work experience. One of them: overconfidence. But overconfidence isn’t an MBA thing.  It’s a human thing. It’s a deceitfulness-of-sin thing. Consequently, it’s a me thing. The ideas below aren’t new, but ideas don’t have to be new to be valuable (just ask the apostles). Professionally, the concepts are applicable to a wide-variety of fields–definitely education! But on a more basic level, the observations apply to many aspects of our personal lives. Master’s degree not required; the danger exists in any area where my knowledge exceeds my experience. Or rather, it’s a step back from that. Frighteningly, it lurks when I’ve unknowingly conflated knowledge with experience, or am unaware that the former doesn’t equal the latter.

Shead writes:

[Overconfidence] is…an issue with people who have had very little real work experience. While most MBA programs offer good content, simply being exposed to a lot of great ideas doesn’t say much about your ability to implement those ideas in real life. Just because someone took a class in negotiations doesn’t mean they are any good at it.  Worse, they may think they are good at it and blindly cause a number of problems. Confidence is good, but not when it blinds you to your inability…

If you think you are bad at something, it probably doesn’t hinder you much.  When you get to a situation that requires that skill, you are extra careful, ask for help, delegate, etc…However, when you think you are good at something its easy to overlook obvious signs that you are doing something wrong.

I once met with a newly minted MBA who was taking a new position.  I asked about what she considered her greatest strengths.  She gave me a list of 5 or 6 things that she felt she was really good at.  A few months later in a 360 degree evaluation (where everyone evaluates everyone else) her weakest attributes were exactly matched the list she had given me a few months earlier.

Those ideas make me shudder. SCA-RY.

Probably because I have experienced the fall off the deceptive, haughty heights of intellectual overconfidence during my transition from college to teaching. Probably because I have experienced the fall off of similar precipices of relational & spiritual overconfidence through various events. I praise God for each exodus and resulting vision correction. However, another consequence is an increase in appropriate terror at just how threatening, how astoundingly silent and pervasively present these confidence-pockets are. Enhancing their peril is that the inward experience of them is predominantly…neutral. Like a 70-degree, sunny, slightly-windy day.

Now, I don’t agree with this dude when he says that thinking you are bad at something probably doesn’t hinder you. WRONG. Talk to any of my students. Talk to me! A more apt phrasing: you’re probably not hindered if you are aware that you lack mastery, or that you, as a limited human being, need others’ help to ensure success. In other words, if you have a truly humble (AKA accurate) view of yourself. I still remember a prayer of my former pastor’s–he cried out for God to give him/us true humility. Because there’s a million and one things that can seem like humility in our hearts and minds and eyes. But we want actual humility, which we can’t fashion ourselves but is, like true repentance, a gift of God’s spirit.

I don’t think overconfidence is ever 100% avoidable–precisely because you need the experiences (+ revelation) to curb an otherwise natural tendency. On the other hand, experiences don’t preclude the overconfidence–enter our little friend “denial”. The “newly minted” MBA the author refers to in the cited passage can choose not to take seriously the feedback of her colleagues; she has the freedom to invalidate them or deafen her ears.  And experience can breed it’s own brand of overconfidence. How many times have you heard someone refer to their age or story that effectively exempts them from new blind-spots (the reemergence of old ones)?

.          .          .

And now for the unrelated, post-ending, eye-delighting find of the day:

Hand-crafted jewelry and other assorted treasures inspired by mold, anemones, lichens and such. Click the picture to visit Elin’s blog, or the link here to check out her store!

Lavinia Porter’s real voice

I’ve added a title to the ever-increasing, never-diminishing list of books to pursue:  Women’s Voices from the Oregon Trail.  I learned of the book through Tonia’s recent “letter” at Study In Brown which I encourage you to read.

This particular segment of her letter/post checked me:

i have been curled up with Women’s Voices from the Oregon Trail.  oh my, what those women endured.  their reality was a far cry from the christian fantasy world i read about as a young person.  (i’m talking to you, Bethany House.)  those fictional women always kept their sweet spirits and a pretty dress.   but the very real “Lavinia Porter drained her husband’s whole barrel of whisky.”  and it’s hard to blame her in a world where “Then cholera took my oldest boy His sister fell beneath the wagon And was crushed beneath the wheels.”

I would make a brave effort to be cheerful and patient until the camp work was done.  Then starting out ahead of the team and my men folks, when I thought I had gone beyond hearing distance, I would throw myself down on the unfriendly desert and give way like a child to sobs and tears, wishing myself back home with my friends and chiding myself for consenting to take this wild goose chase.  ~Lavinia Porter

dear Lavinia, i hear you. my life is so very easy compared to yours, but i think all women, especially mothers, know what it is to push ourselves beyond our endurance and to cry aching tears when no one is looking.

i don’t know how to say this without stepping on toes, but i think that christian women need to not be afraid to hear people’s real voices instead of the gussied up, glossed over, imaginary world of the past.

.          .          .

A real voice.  I must remember that that’s what I’m thirsty for, what makes me feel known.  And that’s what I want to cultivate myself and share with others.

Which means that even when what I’m hearing is not easy for me to receive, even when it’s inconvenient or speaking something that clashes with my beliefs, I need to be open to listening because a real voice utters it.

Which means that I must always self-examine to see if I’m operating from my real voice, or if I’m applying the gussied-up, glossy sheen–highlighting or accenting strategic parts but omitting others.

(Abba, thank you for this space.)

Loving Invisible People (or, Commitments as Abstractions)

I’ve never heard of Russell Moore before, and I don’t even remember the trail that led me to him today.  I entered his site through a Q&A board, but then was pleasantly surprised by his most recent post: “Loving My Invisible Neighbor“.

Have you noticed how abstract and ethereal so much of our Christian rhetoric is on virtually every topic?

Some Christians rattle on and on about “The Family” while neglecting their kids. Some Christians “fight” for “social justice” by “raising consciousness” about “The Poor” while judging their friends on how trendy their clothes are. Some Christians pontificate about “The Church” while rolling their eyes at the people in their actual congregations. Some Christians are dogmatic about “The Truth” while they’re self-deceived about their own slavery to sin.

…As long as “The Family” or “The Poor” or “The Church” or “The Truth” are abstract concepts, as long as my interaction is as distant as an argument or as policy, then they can be whoever I want them to be.

.          .          .

This passage touches the root of all difficulties facing the believer–the extent to which we let Christ’s Spirit *actually* transform us.  Whether we will ourselves become incarnations of Jesus.  Whether we let His Spirit transform our embodied selves–not just our hypothetical, abstract selves (which really are no selves at all).

My buddy Susie and I have often talked about the challenge brainiacs have of being practically changed by the Holy Spirit, since  thoughts and comprehension go waaaay further than what’s actually wrought in daily living.  But thought is not reality (sorry Chopra followers).  That’s why Kierkegaard, in spite of his admiration of Socrates, had to differ with him in a major way–we people have a SIN problem, not a knowledge problem.

And if we talk brass tax here (what does that even mean?), Jesus fought against knowledge of and purported commitment to the Lord not actually effected by the Spirit.  Pharisees, anyone?  And if Jesus fought against it then, no spouted knowledge of the truth will make up for the discrepancy between our profession and our lives.

We–fortunately and unfortunately –are bearers of 20/20 hindsight when it comes to the Pharisees’ hypocrisy.  We have the advantage of heeding some dangerous spiritual tendencies, heeding the warnings about how deep blindess can go.  But that same knowledge tends to put us in a position of comfort, anesthetized by hindsight bias.

I must work to always assume the worst of myself–that I am always prey to the yeast of the pharisees–in order to more confidently ensure that God’s multitude-of-sin-covering grace is what’s working in me.

.          .          .

Now, I ask the my Father and you to allow me some literary license (though probably not in an original way).

To some in the 21st century who are confident of their own righteousness and look down on everybody else, Jesus may be speaking this parable:

Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Baptist, Calvinist worship leader and the other a Methodist of the Arminian persuasion. The Calvinist stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—Obama-supporters, users of the NIV, alcohol drinkers—or even like this Methodist here. I believe in the assurance of salvation and know that sanctification will never be complete on this side of heaven.’

But the Methodist stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

Is it not likely to think that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God?

Because, as Jesus actually said, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The balm of selective attention

[ a calming image from Ann today ]

Pairs well with a verse I read yesterday at a recently found blog, Heart & Home:

You keep him in perfect peace

whose mind is stayed on you,

because he trusts in you.

Isaiah 26:3

Yes–for us with cluttered heads, a mind taken with only one thing means *rest*. Selective, sustained, focused attention is having a still lake-surface inside.

And when that one thing is a person, is Jesus, who is Himself our peace, and against whom we can lean the weight of all our heaviness–we are indeed kept in perfect peace.

Keep my mind stayed on you.
May my be attention be a fruit of confidence and trust in who you are.

beautiful asparagus

[courtesy of lovely Elise, Simply Recipes]

unlikely complements

It’s Friday.  My brain’s pretty dead–just ask my 7th period students about my blurring and slurring of words!  But the desire to post is alive and kickin’.

I don’t really know much at all about Seth Godin, though apparently he is what some might call a “big deal”.  At least in the realm of entrepreneurship/business/marketing/etc.  I visited his blog today because Tim Challies linked to him.  (In perusing Godin’s blog, I was amused to see that he had his own post–humorously titled “These Bullets Can Kill”–on the NYTimes’ Power Point article featured in Wednesday’s post here.)

Not everything about Godin’s passions is really my shtick (that I’ve seen so far, anyway).  But I appreciate his incisive, well-communicated observations.  And today, while looking through his entries, I found a helpful nugget on the motivation and transaction of blogging:

Online…, I’m not sure the [investment return] math is so obvious. You don’t write a blog to get gigs…Sure, that might happen, but that’s not why you do it. If you are busy calculating quid pro quo, that means your heart isn’t in it, and the math won’t work out anyway.

Online, the something, the quid, the *this*, doesn’t cost cash. It takes heart and energy and caring, which are scarce but renewable resources. As a result, many people are able to spend them without seeking anything external in return. Even better, the act of generosity, of giving without expectation, makes it easier to do art, to create work that matters on its own.

.          .          .

And now thoughts from someone completely different. Gary Lucas, at Wrestling with an Angel, blogs about “lessons in the life of a father learned through the struggles of his disabled son”.  I heartily encourage you to read last Friday’s post about an overwhelming blast of God’s grace during his typically exasperating experience of bathing his 17-year-old son. 

I found this last week within one of his posts.  His reflections mix helpfully with Godin’s above–I need to be reminded of these things as I continue to venture out in the online writing/faith community:

Sometimes we are so concerned about what other people think and about our outward appearance, that we forget the message we are to deliver. And make no mistake, every parent of a disabled child has a message. It is a message of humility, dependence and grace. And from time to time we need someone to point out our pride so that our message will be more authentic.

Our message to the world is not, “I have it all together and I can handle anything that comes my way”. The message that should be preached by every parent of a disabled child is, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength”. There are many other messages that follow, but all originate from the strength of God given to weak people for the magnification of His fame.

We carry this message to make much of God, not ourselves. And in making much of God, we allow people to experience His grace and love through us.

.          .          .

I want to give without expectation, to create art and work that matters on its own.

I want to forsake concern about my outward appearance and others’ thoughts for the sake of the message I am to deliver.

wise to pause

I’m wise if I heed Tonia here and Shaun Groves here.  Would you join me in reading them, too?

I jotted down some thoughts a few days ago on self worship.  Their two posts seem timely in light of where I’m at.  Blogging–thinking, composing, sharing–is a new gift that I’m loving.   It can also easily become consuming, and a source of the pride that yearns to scatter and take root in my soul soil.

That is not a new thought.  But it’s a true thought.  And a reality for me, at present.

Remember, Jessica: Be quiet. Stop competing, preening, examining yourself. Rest in the Lord. Think about others, attend to them. Listen. Encourage gratitude in your heart.