The Box of Love

Paul’s wife bought Christmas wrapping paper for presents they could not afford. Angry over the purchase, Paul flew into a rage. His three-year-old daughter fled into another room with the paper. She soon returned with a poorly wrapped box. Enraged even more, Paul sent her back to her room sobbing after a harsh spanking for wasting the paper. 

On Christmas day, the little girl brought the same box to Paul, promising it contained her daddy’s gift. Paul’s embarrassment soon turned to anger, when he discovered the box was still empty. But the little girl explained to him that she had not forgotten to add a gift.

“It is full of love and kisses" she had “blown into the box” herself. 

Paul hugged his daughter and asked for forgiveness. He promised to leave his anger and bitterness behind. Paul, a child abuse survivor, kept that box. He used it as a well of affection to draw from when he was hurt or discouraged. 

Paul had seen the best and worst of fatherhood. But that box of love served as a reminder of what being a father can truly mean.

While we do not choose our fathers, we have the opportunity to decide how we will respond to them. As we gather with family this coming Thanksgiving and Christmas, may we reflect the goodness and kindness we have received from the one father who never disappoints and loves unconditionally.

Author unknown 

Healing Quietness

One summer afternoon my wife and I went for a long walk in the woods. On this beautiful afternoon, nature was laying its hand of healing quietness upon us, and we could actually feel the tension being drawn off. Just as we were falling under this spell, the faint sounds of what passes for music came to us. It was nervous, high-strung music of the jitterbug variety. Presently through the woods came three young people, two young women and a young man, and the latter was lugging a portable radio.

They were three young city people out for a walk in the woods and tragically enough were bringing their noise along with them. They were nice young folk, too, for they stopped and we had a pleasant talk with them. It occurred to me to ask them to turn that thing off and listen to the music of the woods, but I didn’t feel it was my business to instruct them, and finally they went on their way.

We commented on the loss they were incurring, that they could pass through this peacefulness and not give ear to the music that is as old as the world, harmony and melody the like of which man has never equaled: the song of the wind through the trees, the sweet notes of birds singing their hearts out, the whole background of the music of the spheres.

This is still to be found in America in our woods and great plains, in our valleys, in our mountain majesties, and where the ocean foams on soft shores of sand. We should avail ourselves of its healing. Remember the words of Jesus, "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile." (Mr 6:31) 

Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking

New Lines of Thought

(Alexander Bell)’s primary investor (Gardiner Hubbard) was initially skeptical of Bell’s work on the telephone. It “could never be more than a scientific toy,” Hubbard told him. The initial inability of Hubbard, and everyone else to recognize the promise of the telephone represents a patter that recurs with a frequency embarrassing to the human race. “All knowledge and habit once acquired,” wrote Joseph Schumpeter, the great innovation theorist, “becomes as firmly rooted in ourselves as a railway embankment in the earth.”  Schumpeter believed that our minds were, essentially, too lazy to seek out new lines of thought when old ones could serve. “The very nature of fixed habits of thinking, their energy-saving function, is founded upon the fact that they have become subconscious, that they yield their results automatically and are proof against criticism and even against contraction by individual facts.”

Tim Wu, The Master Switch

Dependent People

Dependency is unconcerned with spiritual growth. Dependent people are interested in their own nourishment, but no more; they desire filling, they desire to be happy; they don’t desire to grow, nor are they willing to tolerate the unhappiness, the loneliness and suffering involved in growth. Neither do dependent people care about the spiritual growth of the other, the object of their dependency; they care only that the other is there to satisfy them. 

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

In the furnace

When Jesus puts his saints in the furnace, he goes in with them.

Are you a self-objectifier?

Are you a self-objectifier in your job or career? Ask yourself a few questions, and answer them honestly.

• Is your job the biggest part of your identity? Is it the way you introduce yourself, or even understand yourself?

• Do you find yourself sacrificing love relationships for work? Have you forgone romance, friendship, or starting a family because of your career?

• Do you have trouble imagining being happy if you were to lose your job or career? Does the idea of losing it feel a little like death to you?

If you answered affirmatively to any or all of these, recognize that you will never be satisfied as long as you objectify yourself. Your career or job should be an extension of you, not vice versa.

Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic

Out of Focus

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. –Mark Twain

Are we immune to manipulation?

We like to think of ourselves as independently minded and immune to manipulation, and yet imagine others — particularly those of a different political persuasion — as being fantastically gullible. The reality is probably something in between. 

We do know that the posts we see on Facebook have the power to alter our emotions. A controversial experiment run by Facebook employees in 2013 manipulated the news feeds of 689,003 users without their knowledge (or consent) in an attempt to control their emotions and influence their moods. The experimenters suppressed any friends’ posts that contained positive words, and then did the same with those containing negative words, and watched to see how the unsuspecting subjects would react in each case. Users who saw less negative content in their feeds went on to post more positive stuff themselves. Meanwhile, those who had positive posts hidden from their timeline went on to use more negative words themselves. Conclusive: we may think we’re immune to emotional manipulation, but we’re probably not.  

Hannah Fry, Hello World

Gossip

Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you. -Spanish Proverb

Why organizations become stale and ineffective

Organizations are created by their founders to serve vibrant, living purposes. but all too often the founding purposes fade and what finally get served are the purposes of institutional self-enhancement. It happens in hospitals to the detriment of patients, in schools to the detriment of students, in businesses to the detriment of shareholders and customers, end in government to the detriment of taxpayers. It is rarely the result of evil intent: it happens because memes triumph over ends, form triumphs over spirit, and the turf syndrome conquers all. 

John W. Gardner, On Leadership

Who you are becoming

Who are you supposed to turn into?  It isn’t who you have been, it’s who you are becoming. -Bob Goff

I must go in

I must go in, the fog is rising. ―Emily Dickinson (born Dec. 10, 1830)

The will to persevere

The will to persevere is often the difference between failure and success. -David Sarnoff

The I-Thou

The ideal model of intimacy is what the philosopher Martin Buber has described as the ”I-Thou” relation. In an I-Thou experience, two people focus intensively and unswervingly on each other, sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings but remaining separate beings in the process. We do not “merge” or “unite”  with other people in intimacy. Rather, the ”I” confronts the “Thou,” and in the confrontation each becomes enriched through relation. 

Dan McAdams, The Stories We Live By

Opportunities

Wise men make more opportunities than they find. –Francis Bacon

So Much Straw

It is said that on 6 December 1273, while he was celebrating mass, a great change came over Thomas Aquinas. At the age of 49, his Summa Theologica ("Summary of Theology" – nearly 1300 pages) unfinished, he stopped writing. To his faithful secretary and companion Reginald of Pipersno, he said, ‘Reginald, I can do no more; such things have been revealed to me that all that I have written seems to me as so much straw. Now, I await the end of my life of my works.’ Aquinas died three months later.

All our talk about God is halting, partial, hopelessly inadequate. This does not mean we should not hold firm beliefs about God or do the best job we can as philosophers and theologians. It simply means that no matter how much skill or effort we bring to the job, God always remains in part a mystery. The gap between God and our ideas about God was, we believe, salvifically narrowed by God’s revelatory initiative, but not closed.

Like Aquinas, all Christians can see that human talk about God ultimately comes to an end. It’s best efforts are like straw.

Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God

Winning

Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing.  -Phil Jackson

Entrenching Ourselves

The nearer we approach to the middle of life, and the better we have succeeded in entrenching ourselves in our personal standpoints and social positions, the more it appears as if we have discovered the right course and the right deals ideals and principles of behavior. For this reason we suppose them to be eternally valid and make a virtue of unchangeably clinging to them. We wholly overlook the essential fact that the achievements which society rewards are won at the cost of a diminution of personality. Many—far too many—aspects of life which should have been experienced lie in the lumber room among dusty memories. Sometimes, even, they are glowing coals under grey ashes.

CG Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

We create myth

We create myth so that our lives, and the lives of others, will make sense. Through myths we determine who we are, who we were, and who we may become in the future. -Dan McAdams

How Numbers Can Lead to Biases

To simplify the world enough that it can be captured with numbers means throwing away a lot of detail. The inevitable omissions can bias the data against certain groups. (Deborah Stone in her book Counting: How We Use Numbers to Decide What Matters) describes an attempt by the United Nations to develop guidelines for measuring levels of violence against women.

Representatives from Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand put forward ideas about types of violence to be included, based on victim surveys in their own countries. These included hitting, kicking, biting, slapping, shoving, beating, and choking.

Meanwhile, some Bangladeshi women proposed counting other forms of violence—acts that are not uncommon on the Indian subcontinent—such as burning women, throwing acid on them, dropping them from high places, and forcing them to sleep in animal pens. None of these acts were included in the final list.

When surveys based on the U.N. guidelines are conducted, they’ll reveal little about the women who have experienced these forms of violence. As Stone observes, in order to count, one must first decide what should be counted.

Hannah Fry writing in The New Yorker