pre-text

2010-02-17T11:55:00.003-03:00

Sternin's strategy [to address malnutrition in Vietnam] was to search the community for bright spots. If some kids were healthy despite their disadvantages, then that meant something important: Malnourishment was not inevitable. The mere Existence of healthy kids provided hope for a practical, short-term solution....
Sternin refused to make a formal announcement. He knew that telling the mothers about nutrition wouldn't change their behavior... "Knowledge does not change behavior...We have all encountered crazy shrinks and obese doctors and divorced marriage counselors." The mothers would have to practice it. They'd have to act differently until the different started to feel normal.
....
In tough times, we'll see problems everywhere, and "analysis paralysis" will often kick in. That's why, to make progress on a change, we need to provide crystal-clear direction -- show people where to go, how to act, what destination to pursue. And that's why bright spots are so essential: They provide the road map.....anytime you have a bright spot, your mission is to clone it.

Dan & Chip Heath. SWITCH: DON'T SOLVE PROBLEMS--COPY SUCCESS.

2010-01-27T12:58:00.002-03:00

Design thinking is a mindset and a methodology to approach challenges. It’s a process of approaching a problem from multiple perspectives and using trial and error to get to the right solution. It’s about drawing inspiration from a variety of sources and applying them to your particular challenge, resulting in innovation....

If you give a designer a blank sheet of paper and tell him to make something that looks nice, he will be paralyzed. At the minimum, he needs a topic, a message and an audience. But he needs more than that; great design comes from a seemingly impossible contradiction. Perhaps the impossibility is budget-related. Or the combination of two impossible desires that cannot possibly co-exist. For instance, a financial services client who hates the color green.... A designer needs a contrast to create a spark. In other words, designers cannot operate in abundance; designers need restrictions!

Design Thinking on The Back Row Leader.

2010-01-27T12:22:00.000-03:00

I’m learning that good leaders want to provide answers while exceptional leaders want to provide tools for people to find their own answers.

The first is easier and feeds the ego. The second takes time, patience and builds successful organizations.
The first develops dependency, the second develops respect.

Golden Eggs and Other Gems.

2009-12-01T21:49:00.003-03:00

What if....we only got to practice at simulated versions of our jobs? Lawyers only got to argue mock cases, for years and years. Plumbers only got to fix fake leaks in classrooms. Teachers only got to teach to videocameras, endlessly rehearsing for some far off future. Book writers like me never saw our work put out to the public – our novels sat in drawers. Scientists never got to do original experiments; they only got to recreate scientific experiments of yesteryear. And so on.
Rather quickly, all meaning would vanish from our work. Even if we enjoyed the activity of our job, intrinsically, it would rapidly lose depth and relevance. It’d lose purpose. We’d become bored, lethargic, and disengaged.
In other words, we’d turn into teenagers. ....
By insulating them from adult-like work, adult social relationships, and adult consequences, we have only delayed their development. We have made it harder for them to grow up.

Po Bronson Why Teenagers Are Growing Up So Slowly Today

2009-11-21T19:26:00.002-03:00

... would-be leaders must now become anthropologists. The as-good-as-dead Industrial Age cultural paradigm is being replaced by a new culture that requires the fieldwork skills of an anthropologist, the dedication of a missionary, the patience of a saint, the learning curve of a child, the cunning of a spy, the stamina of an athlete and the resolve of a Coast Guard sailor.

Leonard Sweet. AQUACHURCH: ESSENTIAL LEADERSHIP ARTS FOR PILOTING YOUR CHURCH IN TODAY'S FLUID CULTURE.

2009-11-10T15:12:00.003-03:00

Lewis conveys objectivist values in a futher sense. Just as Spirit must incarnate itself in creation, so the artist necessarily incarnates himself in using the materils of his craft, the moralist in beneficent action...More completely than elsewhere, in the "Summa" he condems also what Alexander calls the "dangerous practice of introspection.*" At our most spiritual, we look outward and seek to incarnate ourselves in what we discover, make or do.

Lionel Adey. C.S.LEWIS: WRITER, DREAMER & MENTOR.

*"The mind which broods over itself in dangerous practial introspection abandons itself to the enjoyment of itself."

Samuel Alexander. SPACE, TIME AND DEITY.

2009-11-08T21:15:00.000-03:00

Truth seduces us very easily into a kind of joy of possession: I have comprehended this and that, learned it, understood it. Knowledge is power. I am therefore more than the other many who does not know this and that. I have greater possibilities and also greater temptations. Anyone who deals with truth – as we theologians certainly do – succumbs all too easily to the psychology of the possessor. But love is the opposite of the will to possess. It is self-giving. It boasteth not itself, but humbleth itself.

Helmut Thielick. A LITTLE EXERCISE FOR YOUNG THEOLOGIANS.

2009-10-25T20:43:00.002-03:00

Sehnsucht - A deep-seated longing for joy: "that central music in every pure experience"; it may stab you but once you scrutnize that joy it becomes elusive. - An unatainable extasy which all your life has hovered just beyond the grasp of your conciousness.
The great breakthrough came when Lewis learned to discern between the desire for joy and the desire for that of which joy was the desiring. As long as you seek joy it evades you, but when you seek God, you find joy.

Knox Chamblin. Class notes from C.S. LEWIS. AN ELECTIVE IN THEOLOGY.

2009-10-24T22:32:00.002-03:00

Students who arrive expecting to find a "spiritual hothouse" often find seminary to be a singular test of faith. The crushing academic work-load, the uninspiring and unhelpful courses, the financial agonies, the too-busy professors, the equally hard-pressed fellow students all contribute to the spiritual debilitation.

John Frame. A PROPOSAL FOR A NEW SEMINARY. (make sure you read Frame's two postscripts)

2009-10-24T22:05:00.002-03:00

The house of my soul is too small to let you in; you will have to expand it. It lies in ruins; you will have to rebuild it. There are things in it, I know and confess, that are offensive to your sight. But who will clean it up? To whom else besides you can I cry out, "Clear me from my hidden faults...?"

St Augustine. THE CONFESSIONS OF AUGUSTINE IN MODERN ENGLISH (edited by sherwood wirt).

2009-10-16T12:21:00.000-03:00

I'm coining a personal principle: if given the freedom to choose between organizing and making stuff, don't let the allure of organization get in the way of making.

David Seah. A return to spirited blather.

2009-10-08T12:02:00.001-03:00

Your leadership can only move as fast as the progress made by the people you serve.

ericbryant: RT @ jagwick

Maybe what the world needs, more than for you to come alive...Is for you to become the kind of person who's alive by meeting the needs of the world.

Jason Jaggard

2009-10-07T22:29:00.003-03:00

Drawing on nothing fancier than the poetry of his own life, let him use words and images that help make the surface of our lives transparent to the truth that lies deep within them, which is the wordless truth of who we are and who God is and the Gospel of our meeting.

Frederick Buechner. TELLING THE TRUTH: THE GOSPEL AS TRAGEDY, COMEDY & FAIRY TALE.

2009-09-13T18:04:00.003-03:00

"Does not all our work always remain incomplete? What the verse means to communicate is: rest on the Sabbath as if all your work were done." Abraham Joshua Heschel

Sabbath was (and is) a time to cease all activity in which one was gainfuly employed and simply acknowledge the goodness of creation and life...It is an opportunty to affim and enjoy what is....A time to enjoy God...

Don Postema. CATCH YOUR BREATH: GOD'S INVITATION TO SABBATH REST.

2009-09-11T12:09:00.003-03:00

The basic premise behind the Concrete Goal Tracker goal setting methodology is this:
1. Identify your goals, whatever they are.
2. Create the things that are directly related to achieving your goal.
3. Take the things you created and use them in the actual world. That's what really counts!
4. If you do this continuously, you can't help but make progress.

...Step 3: Now that I've created these things, it's not enough to just let them rot on my hard drive. I need to use them in the world. That could mean showing them to a friend, posting them on my website, or doing the design for a client. I need to get off my butt and make an effort to show the world what I'm doing. Only then, will the world respond. And that's how we know things are changing.

David Seah. Concrete Goals Tracker on AN INVESTIGATIVE APPROACH TO DESIGN, PRODUCTIVITY AND INSPIRATION.

2009-08-15T10:05:00.003-03:00

Actualmente en muchos países latinoamericanos hay un amplio sector de población para el cual la vida transcurre movida por una dinámica que se puede describir con las categorías de desborde y de continua informalidad. Las instituciones formales de nuestras sociedades se han ido "quedando cortas" frente a la explosión demográfica, la modernizacion acelerada y la confusión ideológica, y junto a ellas ha ido apareciendo un mundo de informalidad.

Samuel Escobar. POSTMODERNIDAD Y LA IGLESIA EVANGELICA.

2009-08-09T22:30:00.002-03:00

Belongings, then, always weigh on me at some level, even when I do not carry them on my back. Accumulating goods takes far more time and energy than we ever
know.

Arthur Paul Boers. THE WAY IS MADE BY WALKING: A PILGRIMAGE ALONG THE CAMINO DE SANTIAGO.

2009-08-09T22:22:00.002-03:00

When he was 26, Gaudi wrote in a diary, "The ornamentation has been, is and will be coloured. Nature does not produce anything that is monochrome or uniform in color: neither vegetation nor geology, nor in topography nor in the animal kingdom. The contrast in colour is always more or less alive and from this we are obliged to colour in part or all of an architectural piece, colouring that will perhaps disappear when the hand of time gives it another colour that is more befitting and precise for something old".

Antoni Gaudi quoted by Juan-Eduardo Cirlot. GAUDI: AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS ARCHITECTURE.

2009-07-27T09:50:00.002-03:00

As I read and reread my trip's journal, I seldom see any day that was simply easy. And sometimes more than one day felt like the hardest so far! Some stretches of the path were so intense, demanding and challenging that I needed all my concentration just to put one foot in front of the other., and I dearly hoped no one would try to strike up a conversation. But every day also had unforeseen blessings and compensations.

Arthur Paul Boers. THE WAY IS MADE BY WALKING: A PILGRIMAGE ALONG THE CAMINO DE SANTIAGO.

2009-07-25T21:22:00.003-03:00

When scarce resources become abundant, smart people treat them differently, exploiting them rather than conserving them. It feels wrong, but done right it can change the world.
The problem is that abundant resources...are too often treated as scarce....the funny thing about waste is that it's all relative to your sense of scarcity.
...If you're controlling a scarce resource...you have to be discriminating....But if you're tapping into an abundant resource, you can afford to take chances, since the cost of failure is so low.
...We're good at scarcity thinking--it's the 20th century organizational model. Now we have to get good at abundance thinking too.

Chris Anderson. "WASTE IS GOOD" in WIRED. excerpted from FREE:THE FUTURE OF A RADICAL PRICE.

2009-07-25T20:46:00.003-03:00

"Where did your husband get all this?"..."Where can we buy the books he has read to prepare this stuff?"....We prayed for the ones of God's choice to be sent to us....I am certain He brought people for their own sakes but also brought a variety of people as a training-ground and as a means of developing, in the area of life conversation, that which Fran is giving in his apologetic today. Rather than studying volumes in an ivory tower separated from life, and developing a theory separated from the thinking and struggling of men, Fran has been talking for thirteen years now to men and women in the very midst of their struggles....In it all God has been giving him an education which is not possible for many people to have.

Edith Schaeffer. L'ABRI.

2009-07-20T12:28:00.002-03:00

Haste has worry, fear and anger as close associates; it is a deadly enemy of kindness, and hence love. If this is our problem, we may be greatly helped by a day's retreat into solitude and silence, where we will discover that the world survives even though we are inactive... for the most part our hurry is really based upon pride, self-importance, fear and lack of faith, and rarely upon the production of anything of true value for anyone.

Dallas Willard. THE GREAT OMISSION.

2009-06-24T10:39:00.000-03:00

Mapping is now non-linear. It’s more like “a spider spinning a web,” says Brian Shannon of the Corps of Engineers. “You’re moving back and forth building something one line at a time until you have a complex network that captures a place.” … Even for you personally to update redrawn maps becomes worthless when the very principles of mapping have changed. What leaders need to pilot the church on God’s terms are navigational skills that can get them from problem to solution.

Leonard Sweet. AQUACHURCH.

2009-06-22T20:13:00.002-03:00

Servanthood is not simply doing what one is assigned. Nor is it doing one's rightful duty. It means you will do what no one else would possibly choose to do!
Think of how much of Christian leadership is not labor or work of the menial type but rather traffics in information only. It is centered on conferences and congresses and colloquiums and committees and communication. But rarely is it focused on doing the work of a slave.

Joe Novenson. Draped in a Servant’s Towel Rather Than a Master’s Robes.

2009-06-21T11:48:00.001-03:00

I think every poet, or any artist, has a sense of the Muse. It’s unpredictable; no matter how much personal discipline you have, you can’t just sit down and write a poem when you want to. You have to wait for the images and the ideas to be presented and then be alert enough to catch them when they come, and record them….And you have to pay attention; you can’t just say, “Later, later.” You really have to pay attention at that moment. Because it’s so central—there’s a sense that this is what my life is really all about and the other things become more peripheral.

Lucy Shaw. Interview in Mars Hill Review. May 1995.