Pray Like You Talk. Talk Like You Pray.
How to be.
Back when I was newish to this notion of pursuing reunion with the Creator, I began to wonder about prayer. Was it just a kind of thick wishing; full of detail and electric longing, uttered into the silence? The practices of prayer remain mysterious to this day, but way back then my buddy said something I’ve never forgotten:
“Look. Just pray like you talk. Simple stuff. Forget the impressive words. Just talk.”
That proved useful. It still makes sense to me today.
Prayer is an articulated event. A speech-act that causes things to happen out in the world—though not exactly the way you might hope. This is what people who pray believe (people like me): that by talking to the One who controls everything, laying out the case, and leaving it there, stuff starts to happen. Of course, dictation and demands are fruitless. So are bargains. Prayer doesn’t work that way—it’s not exactly a reciprocal relationship.
But what if my friend’s advice worked the other way too: what if that easy conversation full of detail and electric longing was a part of our daily, hum-drum human conversations? So rather than utter desire into silence we uttered it into relationship? That does not sound like wishing into the silence. People would be listening—the very people right around you. They would hear. And sympathize. Or challenge. You’d get known. Your peaks and valleys would be known. There would be no hiding. If our talk were like our prayer, there would be a measure of freedom, and a whole lot of assumptions about the level of interest in our conversation partner.
No. Now I see that would never work.
But. Wait—that characteristic of being known is a peak human experience. What if we were designed for that very thing?
That would be something.
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Image Credit: Kris Graves via Lenscratch
I don’t always wear clothing, but when I do…
How a Leaderless Team Ruled Project Runway
OK: bait and switch. I typically wear clothing. And if you know me, I doubt fashion comes to mind. But my costume-designing wife and the fashionistas in our house started watching this show. And I’ve started to like it because it parallels my work of producing copy that must be new and unique while fitting tight space, tone, accuracy and brand requirements.
Season 8 episode [whatever] featured a group exercise. This was poignant for me because when I teach professional writing at Northwestern College, I often include a group exercise. The group exercise is universally hated. For all the reasons you might expect: it’s hard to define what the group is doing together. There’s always someone who fits the slacker role. No one wants to take charge and if the work isn’t up to par, it feels like someone else’s fault.
Next time I introduce a group project, I’ll use Project Runway Season 8 Disc 2 [yes. I am a Netflixer] to set up the team task. That episode shows an outstanding example of what can happens when a leaderless team backs away from personal project management and allows each member to find their own way. Some bit of magic happened in the show that allowed each designer to do their own thing while still producing garments that seemed to belong together. It’s as if they were listening to each other at a level beyond the words used. Leaderless teams don’t always work that way. But that it worked that way once gives me hope.
In contrast, the team with the heavy-handed project manager forced every member to work down at a level beneath their abilities. The judges held that team’s feet to the fire with blistering reviews.
I am intrigued by what can happen when creative people work together. Perhaps the best leader helps their team hear and understand each other so each creator’s personal best is produced rather than some spiritless guess about what the bully micro-manager wanted.
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Image credit: 4CP via thisisnthappiness
In the presence of evil
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Hit Me Hard
I just finished Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I’m not sure I have the courage to watch the movie. The violence is sadistic. And the violent intent boils up from unvarnished evil. But because I am a sappy reader, I get even more queasy about well-drawn characters I’ve grown to care for who keep walking into ever more desperate situations.
In the Wikipedia entry for Mr. Larsson, there is a claim that everything that happened in the book—all that brutality—actually happened in Sweden at one time or another. Somehow Mr. Larsson had seen something in his growing up in rural Sweden that made him both fearful and a lifelong activist against far-right extremists. He responded to this evil with these “fictionalized portraits” of the people and culture he knew. Of course no culture has cornered the market on brutality, sadism and ever-deepening horror: Just last weekend as we sat on the Memorial Union Terrace at UW Madison on Saturday evening, I found myself pointing out the smokestack of the asylum on the other side of Lake Mendota where Wisconsin’s own Ed Gein was housed—he of the lampshades crafted from human skin.
But why spend time reading about great evil? And why be entertained by such things? It’s hardly uplifting, though the reason we watch shocking horror stuff is often for the very purpose of getting our blood moving.
And yet it is partly uplifting for a couple reasons: because the evil is overcome in the end (Oops. Did I spoil the book for you?). And because the evil is overcome at least in part by shining a light. By letting others see what was going on. My vision of the activity of solid reporting was raised by this bit of fiction, and it made me grateful for the journalists I read every day.
One part of the story speaks to the continuing human need to interact. I say that because the more hidden our behaviors became the more deplorable they can become. It seems that Blomkvist (Larsson’s main character) reason for living was to expose what was hidden. Another part of the story hints that it’s not so far-fetched to look deep inside ourselves and locate an equally limitless capacity for evil.
I cannot help but be reminded of that old dead letter writer who wrote that “everything exposed by the light become visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.”
Mr. Larsson’s book illuminated things for me.
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Or. What is it good for?
Absolutely Nothin’
[January 13, 2014: looks like the video was made private. Here’s a Vimeo version: http://ispot.tv/a/7ktx ]
Nice consumerist retooling of an anthem from my childhood.
Via Adland.TV
A Road Trip May Just Unspool Your Secrets and Hopes and Fears
What Sidetracks These Conversations?
Is there a shortcut to those conversations that happen toward the middle of a five day canoe trip in the Boundary Waters? Is there a quicker way to those moments of insight that happen after camping together for two weeks? Is it possible that the drive itself, from Wisconsin to New York City, actually played a starring role in the kind of conversations we had all along the way—plus all that happened after?
No. And Yes.
No, there is no shortcut and Yes there are other ways and Yes those conversations play pivotal roles in our lives.
I was reminded of this during a weekend drive to that hotspot of the Midwest— Decatur, Illinois. Eight + hours in the car has a way of unspooling topics as the miles pass. Topics you were never even thinking of—until you realized you actually had something to say about them.
This is one reason Mrs. ConversationIsAnEngine and I like those long drives. Enormous strips of time laid out lengthwise where you talk about anything and everything as landscapes pass. Are you with me? You’ve had these conversations. Maybe you’ve had with your then future spouse. Or college buddies. Or people you didn’t know from Eve before the trip.
But in daily life? Forget it. I’m too busy social-media-ing and texting and Netflixing to let those topics unspool. Plus—I’m not ready. You’ll judge me. Amazingly, simply spending a lot of time (and I mean a lot of time) with someone breaks down these questions and fears. It happens on a car trip. And it happens as you run the craft room at the summer camp. Or when you show up yet again to stand side-by-side gutting a 100 year old house. And amazingly, it can also happen when working cubicle-by-cubicle with work colleagues—but the key is the small open windows of insight we give each other over time. Those small windows can add up to real insight and relationship building.
So—a Monday resolution: resolve to not waste this week complaining and gossiping again about the director or your boss or the arses in accounting. That talk just slams windows shut and puts nails through the sill. There’s nothing expansive or unspooling about it.
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Image Credit: Stiknord
“Funny You Say That”
How to recognize an awake moment and what to do about it
I heard this again the other day. Clearly this points to a glitch in The Matrix.
I was talking with a friend from a company we both worked at a lifetime ago. I mentioned a client I had been working with and he said, “It’s funny you say that.” He had just had a conversation with someone at the company and the firm had been on his mind.
“Not so strange,” you counter. “You both worked at the same company, it’s likely you had similar work trajectories.” Agreed. That is likely.
But it happens often: you mention something you read or see or hear. Or someone you know or talked with. And the person you are talking with makes a connection with something they recently heard or thought, or with someone they recently talked with. There is a leap of awareness and understanding. And out of that emerges a way forward.
Maybe it is just like what Trinity said about déjà vu: it’s an indicator something is changing. That sounds reasonable to me. In this blog I’ve been tracking how our conversations affect us in the most unwitting and unexpected ways. I wonder if “it’s funny you say that” is something of an open door through which we actually indicate we are consider/reconsidering/rethinking something. Or that we’re open to any of the above. And there is the possibility something much larger is happening behind the language we so easily pick from the moving racks of words in our heads.
Something to think about.
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From Watergate to the Arab Spring to Votes in Mexico: Our Views on Authority Keep Changing
Approach Authority with Grace and Questions
It’s been just over 40 years since the Watergate break-in. Nixon’s long gone. Colson’s newly gone. Woodward and Bernstein still don’t know who ordered the break-in. I was a kid back then and Watergate was my first taste of big authority gone terribly wrong. Since then, those in authority continue to take advantage of their positions with breathtaking hubris. Every day shines the spotlight on yet another leader: a few weeks back it was the investment bankers tilting the Facebook IPO in favor of their friends. Yesterday it was the Barclays CEO Bob Diamond resigning over manipulating loans.
And globally the despots are disappearing and sometimes returning: Tunisia’s Ben Ali gone. Egypt’s Mubarak gone/jailed/hospitalized. Libya and Yemen, gone and gone. Syria’s Assad holds on but his well-publicized homicidal sprees among his own people make him the latest Hitler wannabe. Putin is hard pressed to control the growing awareness and unrest in Russia. And yet in Mexico, the PRI party that ruled corruptly for much of the 20th century is…back? The student movement in Mexico promises to keep shining light—just in case that group has not changed its ways.
Shining light is the key. Smart reporting that shines light on wrongdoing has played a huge role in getting rid of the bad guys. I believe social media has also opened a way for people to share information outside of heavily regulated state channels controlled to the interests of the leaders.
Are all authorities corrupt? No. Authorities all over the world continue to create order and move groups toward larger goals. It’s just that when a corrupt leader gets payback, it becomes an irresistible story to us commoners.
How should we respond to leadership and authority? With grace and questions. Grace because leadership and authority takes its toll on the leader. Sacrifice is involved. That old dead letter writer Paul had it right when he wrote that authorities are placed on purpose and in the end are subject to the Creator’s command. Questions because we all need the benefit of each other’s wisdom. Some leaders and authorities just don’t yet realize it.
This is why it remains important for me and you and the employees of United Health Group and Target to regularly read about how CEOs like United Health Groups Hemsley or Target’s Steinhafel are rewarded like robber barons for their role at the top of the pyramid. A bit of light helps us formulate questions.
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Image Credit: Olga Ziemska via 2headedsnake
How to Pitch a Medical Device Company #5: Be Amazed
We had just hired a new advertising agency to help rejuvenate the brand of our chronic back pain therapy. I had been sitting in a meeting with several team members of the agency. After a couple hours where I and a few others described how the therapy worked and talked about the outcomes, the science behind it, the competition and the main messages and positioning, we broke for questions.
“Wow,” said the creative director. “That is cool. You guys are doing amazing stuff!” And between the lines that team communicated to me a kind of respect for the work our corporation had been doing.
Was this enthusiasm real or feigned? Yes. The agency had already been hired, so there was no need to pretend. And since advertising agencies typically run on enthusiasm, the comment was not unexpected.
But neither was it expected. Whether real or fake, their enthusiasm hit home. It was a refreshing meeting in a sea of corporate meetings ranging from dull to throat-slitting painful. Life in a medical device company—like most any company—can seem like slow-motion meetings followed by mad rushing to fulfill promises before the next slow-motion meeting. During that rush you forget your company does something exceptional.
I’ve sat on the other side too, where the product manager is telling details and showing outcomes. Even if they start subdued with facts and charts, their excitement grows as they talk through the story. A good creative team picks up on this excitement because it is contagious. New and possibly extraordinary things happen when every member of the team gets the contagion. But it cannot be an act: because feigned excitement is hard translate to the customer.
An amazed creative team can become a set of cheerleaders. This makes the internal champions of the product feel surrounded by allies—especially when the cheers are in the language their customers speak. But the amazement has to be real. The key is to find the amazing thing.
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Image Credit: itsraininghens via 2headedsnake
Just How Bad Were You?
When I was a kid going to church, there was a lot of excitement generated around the story of how you came to faith. Being a good kid (in the generalized sense of comparison to people, but not in comparison to God, you understand), I didn’t have much of a story. In conversation with friends once, we lamented not having amazing from-the-pit-of-hell stories. We were convinced that was the whole essence of Christianity—that story of how you were a junkie/homicidal maniac/generalized ass but now you are a teetotaler/upright citizen/polite human of seeming different coinage.
It wasn’t until years later I realized that conversion story was only one small story that became a kind of exploded view in my church culture. We encouraged it to show the difference our faith made—sort of like baiting the hook. Our church was constantly inviting others in and we thought this was why they would come. But once in—then what? Life as usual, I guess. We seemed to drop the topic or just worked on becoming more polite and avoiding being a self-righteous ass. (I generally failed at this).
We seemed not to know what to do beyond inviting and converting. There was no place in our theology for the wisdom of God to penetrate into our work relationships or to investigate story-telling in art and theater and music. Those were off-base tools of the dark lord. I never heard about boldly moving forward in faithful work.
I thought of this after reading the Coracle Journeys post on beauty and seeing again that old emphasis on witnessing. I’m not against witness, in fact I’d like to take the word to rehab along with fellowship and strategy. But life is a fully-orbed thing, not a single set of words that when uttered complete you. Life is full of gifts to give away out of crazy chesed to any and all—just like God does it.
Think about that as you go to church today, and step out of the straight jacket and into the sprinkler.
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Image Credit: marina molares via 2headedsnake
conversation is an engine 
