foolishnotions.net

set them up for success.

this concept has been stuck in my head for weeks. i am a volleyball player, a setter (obviously), albeit on a long sabatical. i really need to fix that this summer. anyway, if a volleyball team doesn’t have a good passer and setter it makes no difference whatsoever how hard your big man can hit. he’ll never have the chance.tonight i skipped to the end of this book i’m reading (i know, i can’t help it - it’s completely involuntary). this is what I found…

“a call for change without clearly defined core beliefs and behaviors is like conducting a job performance evaluation on an employee who has never received a job description. the employee walks away with a semiclear understanding at what failing at his or her job looks like. but no real understanding of what it means to succeed.

it is not enough to communicate, ‘things need to change around here.’ that’s akin to kicking over an ant bed. to get things back on course things must be exceedingly clear.” ::andy stanley, visioneering::

this is good information to have under your belt BEFORE things get off course, don’t you think? this is why I read and this is why I pray. so I don’t unwittingly go around kicking ant hills.

set them up for success.

so this is what has me up tonight. what is keeping you up till the wee hours?

1. i have, for quite some time now, had a great desire to teach. i am not, as of yet, a good teacher.
2. a very great dream of mine is to be a tool to equip the average individual with enough practical technological & creative information to empower them and expedite the dreams god has put in their hearts. i want to set people up to succeed. i want to inspire people who thought they couldn’t lead - to lead.
3. in order to teach effectively i have to slow down. in order to slow down i have to manage, somehow, to teach.
4. for me the hardest part of leadership is communicating. i will procrastinate a phone call or email until the last possible second. i feel this is my greatest leadership weakness. (and, yes, I am aware - this is a HUGE weakness)
5. leading and teaching are two completely, totally different things. i believe that to be successful in either i’m going to have to be pretty well versed in both.
6. i am rapidly approaching a point where i can not possibly absorb enough vital current information about all the things my hands touch and do them as well… much less teach them. this makes teaching all the more imperative (truthfully, i’ve most likely been there for a while. i’m just not too fond of being told i can’t do something - so i guess that puts me in denial.)
7. i need to expand my field of life experiences… I need to take some greater risks.
8. sometimes I don’t feel old enough to be 37.
9. did i mention, i procrastinate communication and i’m not a good teacher…. yet? will someone please tell me i can’t do this so i can get on with it?

little known fact about me: i look forward to reading the comments that grace my akismet spam folder.  wow, that sounds really needy when i just put it out there like that.

little known fact about you: it’s probably bothering you, at least just a little, that there is no #10.

1. today i helped a lady from honduras who knew very little english. i found out what she needed (food), gave her directions to the church (much more than a straight line), told her what time she should come (and why), met her when she arrived and had a nice long conversation with her (learned all about her job, her family far away, her struggles in america and her endeavors to learn english at a local community college), helped her get some groceries from our food pantry for her family living with her, gave her a hug and sent her smiling on her way with enough food for another couple of weeks. (ok - that was a really long sentence.) i was surprised at how much i remembered of my 5 years of spanish. i was surprised at how much i had forgotten of my 5 years of spanish. i really need to finish learning this language. political and immigration issues aside…. i really have a heart for the latin community.
2. pb, abs and i had the first creative meeting of the year for our next two series. man, i really love those meetings.
3. practiced my didge. circular breathing is really hard to get.
4. watched biggest loser and american idol at the same time. reality tv at it’s best.
5. saw apple’s newest stroke of genius. man that thing is sleek. i don’t want one (i still want the other) - but it’s cool none the less. looking forward to updating my iphone tomorrow.
6. listened to pastor ron lay out a huge dream before the whole church for the rock. one significant part pertained to my particular area of ministry. i almost shouted amen all the way from the booth. oh, wait - i think i really did. we all did. my team was so excited. i love my team. it’s a good dream.
7. played a killer game of uno with my boys. honestly… i think we take that game a little too seriously.
8. had a 20 hour date with my honey thanks to eric and mel who let cam stay over and hang out with joe. mmm, hmmmmm.
9. had a work related conversation that stretched me instantly… and will stretch me for a good while to come, i’m sure. it has something to do with #6 and this.
10. started a new book called visioneering by andy stanley. (i know - i have about 4 others i am in the middle of… just let me do it my way. a.d.d. works if you just go with it sometimes). no, really - it’s our new staff study. looking forward to it.

bonus cool fact:
one totally unknown fact about me (my honey doesn’t even realize this): i have always organized the clothes in my closet in “roy g. biv” order. in fact, i do it with other things like uno cards and colored pencils. it’s a silent sickness. now you all know.

well, there you go. and, it’s only tuesday!!!!!

here’s an excerpt from C.S. Lewis’ fictional work, The Screwtape Letters for your contemplation…
(so you will know what’s going on…)
writer= Screwtape (a demon)
to= Wormwood (his apprentice)
patient= a human
the enemy= God
our father= the devil

“You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character. Some talents, I gather, he really has. Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be. No doubt they are in fact less valuable than he believes, but that is not the point. The great thing is to make him value an opinion for some quality other than truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue. By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible. To anticipate the Enemy’s strategy, we must consider His aims. The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another.

The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour’s talents – or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognize all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things. He wants to kill their animal self-love as soon as possible; but it is His long-term policy, I fear, to restore to them a new kind of self-love – a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours. For we must never forget what is the most repellent and inexplicable trait in our Enemy; He really loves the hairless bipeds He has created and always gives back to them with His right hand what He has taken away with His left.”

– C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

i so love how mr. lewis has painted such a beautiful picture of true humility here, and more importantly how our enemy tries to distort it. i’m a little tired of being ashamed of myself for something that i did or i am that is good.

it’s all about the heart…. i’ll try to remember that.

here’s an excerpt from C.S. Lewis’ fictional work, The Screwtape Letters for your contemplation…
(so you will know what’s going on…)
writer= Screwtape (a demon)
to= Wormwood (his apprentice)
patient= a human
the enemy= God
our father= the devil

“You are much more likely to make your man a sound drunkard by pressing drink on him as an anodyne when he is dull and weary then by encouraging him to use it as a means of merriment among his friends when he is happy and expansive. Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. Although we have won many a soul through pleasure, all the same, it is His invention, not ours. The Enemy made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, in incorrect ways, or in an excessive obsessive way. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. To get the man’s soul and give him nothing in return - that is what really gladdens our Father’s heart.”

– C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

hmmmmm…. interesting. i’ve heard some that would disagree with mr. c.s. lewis on some points of this theory. what do you think?

don printy just sent me the following awesome and amazing response to an email i sent out earlier today to my tech team outlining the details surrounding next sunday’s set load for imagine christmas. i printed it out an posted it on the breakroom refrigerator and in the sound booth. enjoy…

From: Don Printy
Sent: 12/4/2007 12:04:51 PM
To: Carolyn Mejia
Re: FW: Imagine Christmas Set Up Information

Vernacular Prohibition Notice:

All Rock Staff will be prohibited from using the words “amazing” or “awesome” for the period of thirty consecutive days even in light of the current state of extreme excitement/giddiness. Use of a Thersaurus for alternative expressive words/phrases is highly recommended.

This notice brought to you by: The Committee for the Ethical and Non-repetetive Use of Exclamatory Words and Phrases.

thank you soooooo much, don! btw - love your take on the word “thersaurus”.

here’s an excerpt from The Screwtape Letters for your contemplation…
(so you know what’s going on…)
writer= Screwtape (a demon)
to= Wormwood (his apprentice)
patient= a human
the enemy= God

“All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at this period. Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the “Cause” is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal. Even when the little group exists originally for the Enemy’s own purposes, this remains true. We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men may know the Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and the defensive self-rightousness of a secret society or a clique. The Church herself is, of course, heavily defended and we have never yet quite succeeded in giving her all the characteristics of a faction; but subordinate factions within her have often produced admirable results, from the parties of Paul and of Apollos at Corinth down to the High and Low parties in the Church of England.

…Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours—and the more “religious” (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE”

– C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

here’s an excerpt from The Screwtape Letters for your contemplation…

(so you know what’s going on…)
writer= Screwtape (a demon)
to= Wormwood (his apprentice)
patient= a human
the enemy= God

“Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train. Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. (I don’t, of course, mean what the patient mistakes for his will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real centre, what the Enemy calls the Heart.) All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from our Father’s house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there.

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE”

– C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemy’s [God's] will, looks around upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” - C.S. Lewis

Every Saturday my family and I go to the library downtown. I really look forward to this day. We always stay for at least an hour - sometimes more. We all love to read. And Cam likes to play the computer games. I usually peruse the stacks for something totally random to distract my busy brain. Today I walked by The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I love this book. I read it for the first time when I was about 15. C.S. Lewis is absolute genius…. he is hands down one of my very favorite authors. Anyway, I checked it out to read it again. I’ll probably drop a few more quotes from Uncle Screwtape from time to time. I suspect a lot of you have read it - it’s pretty popular. But if you never have - - i highly recommend. The premise: it’s a collection of letters (obviously, fictional) from a demon character named Screwtape to his demon understudy Wormwood. He is basically mentoring him on how to screw with human minds in order to keep them from falling into the enemy’s (God’s) hands. Outstanding.

Great stocking stuffer, too!

these are my favorite….

the ones who know how to turn…

black
burgandy
red
orange
and watermelon (in the brightest most shocking hue of you have ever seen)

- - - all at the same time - - -

oh, how i want to know how to paint! and - - we need to plant a few hardwoods in wilmington. can someone please get right on that?