Endangered Thinking

It’s been calculated that 40% of all organisms on our planet are under threat.

I put that sentence by itself, because we sometimes read a sentence too quickly to have it hit us as deeply as it could. It means 2 out of every 5 things out there are in danger of becoming a memory. It’s staggering.

Now this is not going to become another rant about how horrible we are when it comes to our planet (although we shouldn’t let ourselves off that hook – actually, we can’t afford to let ourselves off that hook). Instead, I want to talk about ‘rareness’ or ‘exclusiveness’ or ‘missing-ness’.

It’s a fact of our history that ‘stuff’ gets ‘dropped’ along the way. It’s not only true of species from the natural world, but it’s also true of the thought-pool you carry with you in your head. Some of what gets lost is anecdotal and has low-significance. On the other hand, some of what gets lost is worth holding on to – and it could lead to a much-improved future. It’s why I journal. I have 20 years worth of ‘research’ on who I am, how life works and what really matters. Every day I go to my bookmark as I re-read these notes so that I can build on the past, push deeper where it matters and side step the need to learn the same lessons over and over. Every day I am surprised at some life-lesson or insight that was ‘under threat’ of disappearing from my daily awareness.

What are the endangered insights in your own thinking? What insights and life-lessons are at risk of sinking into the past only to repeat themselves by accident at some point in the future? Any step which takes us past ‘casual remembering’ or taking our head space for granted is deeply worth taking. It doesn’t matter if it’s a journal or a single page we look at every morning or even just a quote or two.

Our current series, “Thoughts for the Open Road”, takes us all the way to the end of August. Starting with launch week on Sunday September 7th, we’re going to be looking at a series of endangered thoughts and insights which may have ‘gone missing’ somewhere along the way. It’s something you won’t want to miss.

Join us on Sunday or tune into the podcast through the week.

Have a great weekend,

Chris

Why You Can't See the Sun

It’s impossible for us to see the sun as it is (at least at our present level of development). You can only see it as it was 8 minutes ago. Why? Because that’s how long it takes information in the form of light to travel the distance between us and the sun. I find that really interesting: it’s impossible for us to see the sun as it is.




The problem, of course is that there is no way to know by simply looking up in the sky that what you are seeing is not really there. You are only seeing what used to be there (8 minutes ago). And that’s a big problem because the sun doesn’t ‘look’ 8 minutes old. In fact nothing about how it sits there (as plain as day) gives you any clue to what’s really going on. It’s something you can only figure out if you start asking questions.

Everything that passes through our eyes and into our minds requires interpretation. You have to qualify some of what you see – like when you look at the sun. You have to tell yourself that what you’re seeing is actually 8 minutes old because it doesn’t look 8 minutes old. You even have to learn to ignore some of what you see, like the way heat rising off pavement in the sun can ‘look’ like a pool of water. We call it a ‘mirage’. And again you are seeing something that isn’t really there.

At any rate, I think there’s a powerful lesson in this ‘problem with the look of the sun’. It can be easy for us to think something is obvious when it seems obvious. And what could be more obvious than looking up at the blazing ball of light in the sky and simply seeing what it is? You don’t have to speculate – just look. But it’s not so easy. It took thousands of years for us to figure out all kinds of things that we didn’t know we didn’t know – like ‘things’ about how light works, and how far away the sun is, and what that really means in terms of what we think we are ‘seeing’. And only then did we realize that what we are seeing is not really there.
In other words: because of what we didn’t know we didn’t know, we didn’t know what we were looking at. And what we’ve learned along the way that has changed how we think about what we think we are seeing. It’s not always easy to see what is really there – even when you’re looking right at it.

I often think of all this when it comes to the ‘problem’ of God (as in ‘how could there be a God in a world like this?’). We could say we are only looking around us to ‘see’ what is really there – and what we ‘see’ is a universe that made itself. Perhaps it seems as obvious as simply looking up at the sun. And that’s that problem: it’s not always easy to see what is really there – even when you’re looking right at it.

Last Sunday we poked and prodded the question ‘what makes a great life possible?’. We also touched on issues of identity along the way (‘who am I and what do I need?). This Sunday, I’d like to move into the problem of God (as in ‘who is He?’). Join us for coffee and a live talk on Sunday or tune into the podcast through the week. All summer long we’re providing discussion guides that you can download with the podcast or from our website so that it can become more than just something you listen to.

Have a great weekend,

Chris

Getting what you Want

There is very real power in the things you tell yourself. For example, when I was a kid I used to believe those ‘coin-and-ride’ airplanes at the grocery store could really fly if I could only have one to myself. Can you imagine my disappointment if I ever got exactly what I wanted? Sometimes I wonder how many things in my life are still like that today where I’ve told myself something and I deeply believe it – and long for it – but it simply just isn’t true or isn’t possible or both.

As another example you can tell yourself, “I deserve better” and find a way to believe it so deeply that you resent a life which could be more than good enough if you just didn’t look at it in that way. You can also tell yourself, “I’m fortunate to have this chance, today” and move through your whole day feeling rather glad for it. The real rub is that you can find a way to say either of those things about the very same life. Perhaps happy people have simply just found a way to feel lucky for the same kind of life we all have. Perhaps unhappy people have found another way to look at that same life. There is very real power in the things you tell yourself.

Now I know you know this on some level already. I’m just not convinced we do very much with it. If the stuff in our heads really is like a shrub, then it means we must tend it, nurture it and even prune it – yes – it must be trimmed and contained and reduced in order to grow in healthy directions and ‘hold it’s own weight’. Otherwise it grows wild and then eventually it stops growing at all.

I landed on all of these thoughts this week because I decided to examine some of my ‘longings’ more carefully. What do I desire? Are those things true? Are they possible? Are they helpful? Am I focusing on them in helpful ways? All of this is something I don’t do very often and I think it costs me. My head-space grows wild and untrimmed and I become tangled in it. And I realized I’ve found more than a few ‘grown up’ versions of thinking that ‘coin-and-ride’ airplane could actually fly if I just got one all to myself. Imagine my disappointment if I actually got what I’ve been wanting.

There are people who’ve wrapped their whole lives around an ‘if only’ (as in ‘if only I could be this or that or have this or that’). But that ‘thing’ either never came to pass or it wasn’t possible or it simply didn’t have the desired effect when it did. And in that case their whole life happens to them while they are waiting for something else. Think about it: their whole life happens to them while they are waiting for something else. So I’ve decided to tell myself a different ‘set’ of things: my most important life is the one that is happening to me right now and that means there is no other place and there is no other time.

There is very real power in the things we tell ourselves. What are you telling yourself?

This Sunday is the first of 5 questions I’d like to ask you this summer as you re-think who you are, who you are becoming and the path that you’re on. Join us for more ‘Thoughts for the Open Road’ or tune into the podcast through the week.

Have a great weekend,

Chris

It's Time

Research tells us that you really only do three things. The first and largest use of our time (according to researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – I just had to put that name in there) “includes all the things we do to generate energy for survival and comfort.” No surprise there. Work. We spend somewhere between a quarter to half our time doing ‘work’. What did surprise me, however, is that our ‘modern world’ doesn’t have us working less – but more. Anthropologist tell us that those who live under the least technologically developed conditions only spend about 4 hours a day on ‘work’. The rest of the time is spent singing or dancing, resting or chatting. You and I spend (on average) 8. I’m moving to Papua New Guinea. To the jungle.



The second largest use of your time goes to work’s close cousin: maintenance. We spend up to a quarter of our time dealing with all the things we already own (cleaning, fixing, arranging, updating) as well as the many things we need to do each day to keep our body functioning (eating, resting, grooming, exercising).

That leaves only 1 category left: leisure. This takes up the remaining one quarter of our time, and the vast majority of that is taken up by only 3 kinds of leisure: media consumption (books, magazines, TV), conversation and ‘active rest’ (hobbies, sports, restaurants, whatever).

What struck me about all of this is how accurate it was for me. Here I was thinking of myself as a ‘creative person’ living this ‘uniquely different existence’. It’s true that we can express a lot of creativity within these uses of time (as in what kind of exercise and how we execute it) but the truth is that almost all of us spend almost all of our time doing these three things in very similar ways.

As a result, I want to encourage (or challenge) you to do at least two things. The first one has to do with this past Sunday’s message. Rethink the path you’re on, rethink your use of time, rethink the person you are and the one you are becoming. Why not have an adventure. The only other word to describe your life is ‘ordeal’. And trust me: you don’t want that one.

The second thing is a bit counter intuitive (at least I thought so). Challenge yourself to change the way you think about creativity and creative people. Since almost all of us spend almost all of our time doing the same thing… Then it doesn’t take much to be creative. Jesus talked about change in these terms: changes the size of a mustard seed, over time, can amount to the largest features of our lives…

Something to consider…

I hope you’ll make the effort to participate in our summer series, “Thoughts for the Open Road.” It’s about change, discovery, challenge and the chance to reinvent yourself. If you can’t make it on a Sunday, join us in the podcast through the week and use the discussion guides.

Have a great weekend,

Chris

Tomorow

I think one of the things that draws us to movies is that they give us a chance to live vicariously. For 90 minutes or so, we are transported into a story with a different starting point than our own and we get to lose ourselves in it (for a while at least). I think that’s why there are so many movies driven by the idea of power: super human abilities or characters with the reckless wit to say what you and I never could or would. In that way movies are kind of like sucralose. It’s not sugar, it’s just takes the place of it. Sometimes I wonder if my own movie habit is a poor substitute for real adventure.

I need to pause for a moment and insert this directive: This is not a challenge to avoid the movie theater! I’m deeply fatigued with that part of us that wants to conclude all examples of something are bad just because it’s possible for it to become bad when taken to extremes. Hyponatremia is the term we use to describe an ‘electrolyte imbalance that can come from water intoxication’. Yes, you read that correctly, water intoxication. Does that mean we should all stop drinking water just because it’s possible to encounter difficulties if you drank 2 gallons of it?

Anyway, back to the main thought. On some level, watching and adventure is a very poor substitute for living one. Think of this: you have two options when it comes to how you think about your own origins. You were either made on purpose by some intelligence as part of a dream or a scheme. In which case you can safely assume you were made to have an adventure by that intelligent being. Alternatively, you can assume you were made as an accident of particles colliding first in the emptiness of pre-existent space and then as an additional accident of two things colliding in your mother’s womb. In which case you might as well have an adventure because your life is going to happen anyway and then it will end.

So it doesn’t matter (in my mind) how you slice it. You have a cause to get up tomorrow and start making great decisions about great things all over again. I see no reason for any of us to live on repeat (moving from one familiar pattern of choices to another). All this comes to mind because this Sunday is the launch of our summer teaching series: “Thoughts for the Open Road”.

You have this two-month opportunity to ‘fiddle’ a bit in the midst of your lightened obligations over the course of the summer. Why not take it as an opportunity to have an adventure? And more than just an adventure of motorized water equipment (or something like that), why not also have an adventure of personal change as well? Our teaching team has put together 10 things to think about as you rethink yourself this summer. Join us on Sundays when you can (for a BBQ among other things), and tune into the podcast while you’re on ‘the open road’.

Something to think about,

Chris