When Time Stands Still

No joking, that was Rodlie Ortiz’s sermon title today at the Pioneer Memorial Church. I’ve been blogging a bit about “time,” but Rodlie’s “time standing still” did not refer to the blessing of quiet times of reflection; quite the opposite! but a blessing nonetheless. Ortiz spoke about the trials that Joseph went through, not minimizing Joseph’s tattletale behaviors and his indiscrete trumpeting of the two dreams predicting his future greatness. But Ortiz’s focus was on those times “when time stands still” for you, like when you’ve heard the cancer tests have come back positive, when you open the note saying your loved one is not coming back, your application has been denied, etc.

He looked particularly at the humiliation Joseph suffered when he was thrown in the pit knowing that his brothers would rather have killed him, being sold as a slave, being falsely accused by Potifer’s wife, and jailed with no hope of parole. When time stands still for us and it seems that there is no hope left, it is human to ask God “Why?!” or to angrily deny there is a God. Fortunately, Joseph did neither.

The line Ortiz repeated many times was “Trials are not an indication of God’s absence, but a preparation for a greater purpose.” He said that often in the trials we can see no reason for them. Rather, it’s like being in an earthquake; all we can do is cling to the walls and hold on. So Ortiz encouraged those in trials, “Hold on. He is clearing away the things you have relied on—your wit, your intelligence, your cuteness—whatever it is, He is making it not work so you can learn to set it aside and grasp what He is needing you to learn.”

Apparently Joseph’s youthful pride is eradicated as his favored status is totally removed. But like Job, Joseph moves closer to God. He surrenders his pride, but not his faith. When he successfully interprets the dreams he says that interpretations belong to God, and when his brothers grovel at his feet asking forgiveness, Joseph says, “It was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.” It’s a different, incredibly more stable and mature Joseph; someone fit for the divine calling to save life—farm boy turned royal.

I want to be like that. Ready to let God strip away anything I have begun to count on that isn’t Him. It reminds me of Blackaby’s Challenge last Sabbath. Between these two Sabbaths I have had to face my difficulty in letting go of an objective. Is that all I need to learn? Hmm… Not sure.

"Lord, What's Happened to the Time!"

Horrible day. I don’t even want to chronicle all the ugliness. I just want to ask a few hard questions of myself. Briefly, I’m at the Andrews “Research Writing Bootcamp” where I’m supposed to be making great progress on my dissertation while surrounded by my dissertation committee and other writing coaches. Even my methodologist is here from Florida. However, instead of a broad highway towards chapter completion, I’ve experienced a bumpy, rutty road with many detours. Why? The lender and escrow agents keep pelting me with requests for more documents, and many of the requests seem peevish and irrational.

After a wasted first half-day on Wednesday, I wrote all night trying to catch up. I’m sure the loss of sleep helped set me up for the fury I felt on Thursday. Despite the frantic work to catch up, Thursday was only another day of doing banking while the cohort around me focused on their writing and had great conferences with the live resources in the room. I was “frustrated” I told Janie, the lender agent. The truth was that I was enraged. I think I was civil to her, though I could hear her cringe once when I called her.

I have no regrets about my dealings with her, or Erin, or Cara. I believe I kept a civil, if somewhat pointed, tongue. What perplexes me is how angry I was inside. I know I was not far from danger. I could hear it in Ginger’s pacifying comments. I am also perplexed by how long I stayed angry. Truth be told, I still am! But why? I don’t like being so close to rash decisions.

Again, I’m trying not to descend into the gory details, so let me record the dynamics. I was angry initially because I sensed being robbed of an opportunity—the writing bootcamp. Then the incessant requests became more annoying with each new email or phone call. It was like mosquitoes that continue to buzz in your ear or skewer you as you are trying to enjoy camping out. With each new buzz you slap yourself harder and get madder. Third, I became fearful that I would appear incompetent to the agents and even to my wife as the requests moved into things that Ginger’s folks would need to do. That is, I had less ability to actually fulfill the requests as they drew dangerously close to our closing date, and they began to involve the folks. I felt righteously indignant about Ginger’s parents having to shoulder work for our loan arrangements, but that indignation was really fueled by my anger over the whole thing. “Unfair to the folks” was just a more attractive banner to march under.

As things progressed the tension built up like I was sitting in a giant pressure cooker. Then my resource people began to leave early! My methodologist flew home early Thursday afternoon, and others began to drift off. But not everyone left me, the plaguey lenders continued to attend me like a depressing drizzle. “No clearing in sight.”

Given this context, one can see why even Ginger’s help didn’t help my mood. The lender wanted her folks to provide some documents and a phone interview. I fumed that both were not needed, unfair, and nearly impossible. Ginger, who didn’t need a hearing aid to detect my rising anger, had made a phone call to a College Place friend for help, and in two or three hours she was able to provide the needed documents to the lender.

While the help was great, and a relief of sorts, it also made me feel even more incompetent and foolish. Here I was frothing at the mouth, parading around, claiming it couldn’t be done while Ginger coolly and quickly provided. I felt like a petty, grandstanding jerk. I was, and am, grateful that she got us unstuck—that she saw the crystallizing impasse and quickly got us around it—but it did highlight my ineffectiveness.

Yet, as incompetent and horrible as I appeared to myself, I did have to chuckle a bit. I had been amused at Steve Martin’s meltdown in “Father of the Bride” as he was reduced to doing one of the simple tasks the family felt would be safe, given his highly agitated frame of mind. The task was to pick up some picnic supplies for a little family supper. In the grocery store scene Martin, who is enraged at the out-of-control costs of the wedding, gets red-hot furious when he discovers that there are 10 hotdogs in a package, but only eight hotdog buns per package. He is convinced that it is a dirty little scheme cooked up by the butchers and bakers to rip off “Joe average American” by causing him to have to buy more than he needs of either hotdogs or buns.

It’s a wildly funny tempest that he creates, and for which he is jailed. For a moment I could see myself in the same humorous way, but long term it is not very flattering to think that my anger was just as pointless. I really did lose a major writing opportunity, but I want to avoid getting so close to the boiling point. I sense that there is a lesson here, and I want to keep my eyes and ears open to it.

So in reflection: I was angry because I had a strong vision of what I wanted (writing progress) and that was being thwarted by things out of my control (the lender’s requests.) In this standoff, the passing of time escalated the pressure as the bank and title company offered no relief. I felt more and more hogtied.

I began to see the deeper problem more clearly when I was hurrying home that evening. I was on foot and the rain began; small infrequent drops at first, but I could sense it was building up to a good squall. I began to walk faster, hoping to get to the house without getting drenched. As the rain became a downpour I was only 80 yards or so from my cousin’s house. I was running to close the gap quickly. My backpack containing my laptop was bouncing with every step. It also was shifting in a way that felt like the shoulder straps were failing. I felt them as I ran and they were okay. Yet the pack felt like it was falling away. “Oh well, I’ll just make the mad dash across the cul de sac and into the open garage.” There I swung the pack off my shoulders and my keyboard rattled down onto the concrete floor! My zippered section containing the computer had opened up and the laptop and keyboard had been getting soaked!

This was like a voice from God about my deeper problem. I can get so focused on my objectives that I didn’t stop to consider my resources. In the rain I had an umbrella. It was neatly folded in the pack, and I could have put it up before the raindrops got big and thick. An investment of 30 seconds could have kept my pack and computer dry.

Two other incidents from my sorry past came to mind. Once when I spent a full Sunday slaving over a computer program I was writing (and never did get to work properly) I got so angry that I wouldn’t pray for two weeks. I had requested God’s help with my “noble” effort, so I was frosted when I failed. Another time when I was carrying a hotdish from the oven to the table where my kids were waiting. The heat from the dish began to burn my fingers, so I ran faster and faster, finally slamming the dish on the table and dancing around waving my fingers in the cooler air. To get to the table I had had to run around three sides of a breakfast bar on which I could have set the dish while I searched for better hot mitts. But no, my eyes were locked on my objective.

In all three stories—programming, hotdish, and now the rain—the constant was my fixation on completing a task regardless of the situation. Isn’t that noble? “Leaders” don’t surrender objectives. They push through like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. We all love stories of the one who never quit believing. Who never quit striving until the dream became a reality. That works great on a Hollywood set. It tells a story near and dear to our hearts. It’s the American way; pursue a dream, knock out all resistance until you stand holding the winner’s cup aloft. There shouldn’t be any obstacle too big for me to surmount. Right?

It’s not in my nature to give up an objective. It’s not even “the right thing” to do. But last Thursday I couldn’t ask the lender to give up hers… (Well, truth be told, I did, but you can guess that wasn’t very effective.) So I really was trapped in a slummy blind alley, and rather than trying to climb the walls, I should have turned to face the headlights.

Surrendering an objective causes psychic pain. It’s an admission that life has moved out of my control or that I was mistaken in my choice of goals. But my rigid refusal to surrender only succeeds in clamping the lid more tightly on the pressure cooker. Rather than moving towards achievement, I move towards an explosion.

Frankly, knowing when to push on and when to give in is a skill I normally possess. I’m not Steve Martin. Most people like working with me because I can be flexible. I can change when it is needed; when clashing interests demand it. But what always seems to get me is the pressure of time. When time is in short supply, so is my creative resourcefulness. When pressure builds up, so does my rigidity.

Here’s the sobering thought: When I am holding the reins of power my anger doesn’t build up. I simply make the decision I have the power to make, and I become the pressure for some hapless soul who has just presented a request. At that time I am in the lender’s role and the other person just has to “eat it” like I did. I want to see these storms as they brew and whip out the umbrella for my own protection and for the protection of those who have to wait for my word.

Tackling the Wrong Problem… Can It Work?

I’m still listening for God to tell me what to put down. I’ve been thinking “pride” because of my sorrow when I am not recognized. Today walking the two miles to Roundtable I realized that I want to be noticed in my leadership role, but when I am not I don’t feel proud as much as I do ashamed. It’s a bit complicated. You see, I have equated leadership with charisma. I want to do things that add “good” to life and I think I must be in a leadership role to do that. Since I have believed that real leaders attract followers like flies, then when the followers don’t follow or acclaim doesn’t cling to me, I feel ashamed. “I am not being a leader.”

I know some principals that are truly charismatic. Some of my Leadership classmates are. They love being on the stage, planning the party, joshing with everybody. I think, “I oughta do that. I’m a leader; why aren’t I acting like that?” But now I see that I’m equating “leader” with “charismatic” which often involves being sanguine. Sanguine I am not. I don’t actually want to be the life of the party, yet I have thought that I should be. Aside from that I have full confidence in my ability to do good things. I find it much more rewarding when a person writes to tell me that my life has improved theirs than when I am hauled up on stage to receive applause or awards.

Suddenly a bit of history strikes me: We used to revere the “director” type of leader, the “man with the plan.” Let’s get things done. It was a modern world, and we were focused on progress. Now we want the “relator” type of leader, the empathic person. Let’s just get along. It’s the postmodern world, and we are focused on comfort. Maybe there are fads in leadership style. Does it matter if my style is not in vogue? I don’t even need to know if it ever will be.

What intrigues me is this question: If my discomfort has come from being ashamed for not meeting a false image of who I should be, yet I misread those emotions as pride… could I effect the needed changes in my life by trying to become more humble? It might work to release the feelings of disappointment as being pride and then turning away from them. Perhaps we often do mislabel our deficits and work on them with the wrong tools. And maybe that works enough of the time for us to go on and give semi-helpful advice to others. But wouldn’t it be better for me to recognize the feelings as shame and say, “Hey wait! I’m not trying to be that kind of a leader,” and then turn back to the things I know I’m good at? Wouldn’t that strike closer to the root of the disappointment and more easily redirect my focus to whatever I should do next?

In the meantime, I think, “Yes, I have been leading, and I have loved and been loved by those who worked with me. And I did it in my own skin. That’s enough.” I vowed to quit feeling bad about not being a personality I really don’t want to be. I love sanguines and charismatics, just as I love gazelles, but I don’t aspire to be them. Instead, I want to trust in the talents He gave me. If they are good for leading somewhere, He’ll make sure I end up there. If they are better suited to something else, I’ll gladly go there. I can quit thinking of leadership and simply be whatever He wants in the moment.

Still Time to Be Holy

Wow, today I saw Linda Caviness in a fight for credibility. She was on a panel discussing social intelligence in the wake of Dr. Daniel Goleman’s two presentations. A director of nurse anesthetist training took her to task as not being scientific. “You talk of oxytocin as being the trust hormone. Well, it’s also called the love hormone, and men don’t have much of it. Does that make men incapable of love? We give women Pitocin, which really just oxytocin, after birth to slow bleeding. Men don’t use this stuff in their bodies. Can we not be trusted? The problem is that some “researchers” in “brain science” take things too far. They over-generalize.”

 

Linda responded with a poignant story of how in a UC Berkley class on diagnosing and treating reading difficulties, the Harvard-grad professor asked, “If you had to boil this all down to one thing, what would that be? What one thing would make you the most effective, give you the most success?” The class sat quiet.

Linda pondered all the things they had learned and tried to extract some common denominator that would be most helpful to teachers of young reading students. Since no one else was hazarding a guess, she ventured, “Love. That’s the most basic tool we have.”

The professor turned on her and said, “Well, Miss Goody-two-shoes, do you have any more Pollyanna philosophy to share with us?”

Back then she felt attacked and stunned, but on stage today she finished the story by addressing the nurse-training director with, “That was 1980. Dr. Goleman didn’t publish his work until 1995. Because of his work, today many people would agree with me.” I think she was implying that it is worth pursuing a science of love and decency even if that science is emerging and incomplete.

On the same panel, all panelists agreed that the one biggest factor that blocks us from being the emotionally intelligent people we could be is time. Dr. Bailey stated that religion suffers without time. Some scientists try to find the “God spot” in the mind, but it will not be found. There is no righteousness gene, no moral epigenome. Instead, when things work well, we are still free to devote them to good, or not.

To further make his point about time, Bailey continued, “Time, quiet time, is a problem-solving marker. Just before a brain makes a leap to some wild new solution, it goes totally quiet. You can observe it, and you can predict what is coming. The brain always goes quiet before a sudden burst of activity.” He went on to look at the Sabbath rest as a possible explanation as to why students at Andrews score higher on self-moderation (lower at-risk behavior) than university students at large. He also wondered if the studies showing caffeine as an inhibitor of emotional intelligence were actually catching two symptoms of the same thing: lack of time. “Our society is so rushed it uses caffeine, AND it doesn’t do well in places where E.I is needed.”

So perhaps to unlock righteousness in the human mind we need not so much science as we need unhurried time. “Be still, and know.”

Blackaby’s "Subraction" Challenge

It’s Sabbath. I’m at Andrews University sitting in a special session titled “Spiritual Leadership” featuring Richard Blackaby a well-known pastor, beloved seminary professor, and best-selling author. One of the things I have loved about being in this doctoral program is that each summer I am required to be here for “Roundtable” a time when all Leadership scholars gather for training and inspiration.

Blackaby is telling a story about when he was in his 20s pastoring a church. Another pastor’s church across town was experiencing impressive growth. Blackaby’s church was stagnant. He went in tears and prayer to the Lord and complained, “God! I can’t work any harder! I’m doing all I can. Your job is to bless my efforts. Why aren’t You doing that?!” He says there was no audible voice, but God’s answer was very clear, “I am giving you all the success your character can handle.”

Blackaby was devastated. “Oh Lord, don’t leave me where I am. Do whatever You must to change me. I have 40 more years to work, I can’t do it as I am now.” Through the next year things got worse as key families left his congregation. “They found a way to blame me for everything from world hunger to climate change,” said Blackaby. The year was a prolonged lesson in managing his pride, and things turned around in a remarkable way.

It was a time when he had to lay down his pride before he could receive what God wanted to give. “There’s no point going to one more leadership seminar, filling one more book with notes on leadership, adding one more skill to your leadership tool belt if there is something God needs you to put down. It’s not all about addition. Sometimes subtraction is the key to progress.” 

Then he highlighted the five things he feels are the most deadly for a leader: pride, fear, laziness, unforgiveness, and pessimism. He had great stories for each one which I will not tell, but regarding pessimism, he said that some wear it as a badge of honor, a mark of superior intelligence. Once a church board member told his father, Henry Blackaby, “Well, I’m your Doubting Thomas. Jesus had one too.” Henry responded with, “Fine enough, but is that Thomas before or after he met the risen Christ?” Not sure I’m pessimistic, but I certainly am skeptical. My default position for looking at anything new is with squinty eyes.

It got me wondering if there is something that I need to let go of. I prayed the same prayer: “Lord, lay it on me if there is something I need to give up, don’t let up. Make it as painful as necessary until I surrender it.”

I thought about it on the way back to my cousin’s house and jotted down two things that might be issues for me: goofiness (Ginger warned me about this one. When I’m around other brainiacs I tend to say silly and confusing things.) and whininess (I’ve warned me about this one many times.) Goofiness comes from being a bit unsure of my acceptability, so it’s easy to keep things edging on the silly side so folks can think I was “just kidding” if they don’t agree. Whininess comes from being too easily upset by things that do not match my expectations. I can be easily rattled.

Hmm… not sure that’s all. Not sure those are the worst things I do. But I am sure God can make it clear in His time.

Juggling as Salvation

Ginger read an article that stated emphatically that learning to juggle could extend your life and protect your high-functioning mind. So, who would not want to juggle? This morning walking in Brandy’s neighborhood I pondered the process of learning to juggle and found it to be a great metaphor for the salvage work God does in our lives, the great dance of mind and body.

Our progress in juggling, as in salvation, can be frustratingly slow, because we cannot rely solely on our brains; our bodies must come along and that takes time. This was Paul’s lament when he said that his spiritual nature “gets it” but his physical nature is slow to learn.

Our brains can comprehend something before our bodies can be trained to automatically do it. Pilots, gymnasts, musicians, and others have to train their bodies bit by bit to do things that are not instinctual. Jugglers do too. The brain “gets it,” but actually moves too slowly for the rapidity needed by the body. The balls answer the call of gravity too fast for our plodding logical mind. Daily business progresses too rapidly for our moral consciousness; we need spiritual reflexes. Therefore, the conscious, rational mind grasps the steps, but only for that thin slice on the edge of our body’s learning. The rational mind must constantly focus on the tiny changes required in that thin slice while the body works to make those changes reflexive and habitual. Only repetition—repeated failures, repeated corrections, repeated small advances—can weave a new physicality into those neuropathways deep in the lower reaches of the brain; the places out of the reach of the prefrontal cortex which is the home of the rational mind.

Imagine seeing an immense brush fire from an airplane. You see the unburned grasslands, and you see the blackened acres where the fire has been. Between the two you see a very thin line of orange flames. This is the process of learning. The grasslands are things yet to be learned. The blackened acres are those things which have been mastered. The rational, understanding mind is that thin line of orange scrutinizing each blade of grass. In its wake lies this vast and growing body of “conquered knowledge,” that stuff that has been worked into the body for easy execution. There is no magic, just deliberate progress. Each time the body masters what the mind has already figured out, the mind is freed to inch forward and logically grasp the next step and to wait for the body to come along.

As we learn to juggle we think about how we must throw one ball and where it must land so the other hand can easily catch it. But no matter how well we “know” what is needed, we have not “learned” it until each hand can give that special toss—just the right power, just the right trajectory—so that the ball falls effortlessly into the relaxed and waiting other hand. There is no magic here, no genetic advantage, just repeated effort for every learning juggler.

Malcom Gladwell says that the key is 10,000 hours. Time spent in repetitive practice makes the difference between the hack and the pro, the sinner and the saint. Our rational mind is too proud to admit that mere knowing (its forte) is not enough. It is offended to think it must wait for the body to engineer all those new neural networks. So in impatience it puts down the balls and say, “I’m not gifted in this.” Yet the people who seem “gifted” have simply brought neural networks they formerly developed in other play. It’s called “transfer.” Even for them, each new level of skill requires the same “figure it out in the logical mind, move it into the reflexes” effort. That simply requires time and repetition. There is no shortcut, no golden path for anyone. It all comes from focused work over time. The mental mind has to cool its jets while the physical mind does the rewiring.

So it is with salvation. Some of us come to it with some previously learned habits of lifestyle, habits of attitude, that make a new, more-godly practice easier. But for everyone who is thirsting after God’s kingdom and righteousness there is a painfully slow process of “getting it” in theory and then failing repeatedly in practice; grasping it logically and then thoughtlessly letting old physical scripts run which are not aligned with our new vision. Only time and consistently returning to that place of learning will change the flavor of our lives.

It wounds our pride to think we can be so “dense,” but the faithful body is doing what it does, building slowly but building well. How often our offended and impatient rationality grabs control back from the body before significant progress can be made. It thinks, “Better to discontinue the effort than to live in that painful gap between rational understanding and physical accomplishment.” Just so our wounded spirit can give up the struggle towards righteousness: “Better to pretend it doesn’t even matter.”

So in reality it is our proud rational mind that is the flighty one. Its attention can be drawn to this thing, then to that thing. And the poor body tries to find the averages. So in juggling as in sanctification, the key is keeping the conscious mind committed over a sufficient span of time so that the physical mind can make the changes that actually enable the rest of the body.

Then in a great irony, as the flighty mind waits for the plodding body, the body prepares itself to perform at a speed too fast for the mind. In time, the body combines all the motions into the graceful, rapid, complex process we call juggling. The conscious, logical, nit-picking mind has to shut up and just watch the thing of beauty, scarcely able, anymore, to separate out all the learned parts. The whole has become something more than the sum of the parts. Such is the final speed and genius of the body. Such is the righteous life.

And it’s only our physical being that brings our truth into the physical world.

THE Drive South

This is the last photo we will take of us and our car outside our house, as though we still live there. All our stuff is in boxes inside, and this is it! This is the beginning of THE drive south.

We spent a rather rushed two days driving to California. Ginger did most of the driving so I could finally return to the studies have had “on hold” for several months. That part felt good.

Rolling along past desert scenery also felt good… just like we were on vacation. But how did it feel knowing that this was the official drive to a new home, new surroundings, a new life?

Strangely, I don’t feel anything about that. I think I am blocking thinking about what I am driving away from. It has been my best job ever. I love the people I worked with; yes, teachers, students, parents, pastors, board members, the whole gang. I don’t believe I’ll find that again. My life is in God’s hands and I have lost things precious to me before. He cares and watches over me, so I don’t dwell on what the change might mean. God knows what is in store for me, for us.

When I am not reading and marking articles, I look out the window and think ahead to when we will be settled again. It’s been awhile since life was normal.