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I was listening to the Catholic Laboratory podcast by Ian Maxfield yesterday, where he was bemoaning a recent report in NewScientist magazine about the effects of mental practices on recovery from illness. Yeah, stunning, I know. If you are grounded in your thinking, this will help you recover faster. [...] This column today was so insightful that I thought I’d share it in full with all of you. Lloyd Thomas is a fellow coach here in northern Colorado for whom I have the greatest respect. If you want to subscribe to his weekly column, follow the directions at the bottom. [...] I’ve had a number of things happening in the last few months which seem to be trying to push me away from having faith – in myself, in my church, in God. They’re subtle, but after they start mounting up you start thinking there might be a pattern. But I find myself paying attention to [...] You might have heard the notion of leader as servant. I imagine that it might be based in the model of Christ as servant of His people, I’m not sure. But I have some experience with the idea that I might like to share. Here’s the core of the idea: The group is the ones [...] We lost a big chunk off of one of our big trees with last week’s snow storm, and I spent a lot of time today cleaning up the mess. It gave me some time to think about the importance of pruning, especially since this is the time of year that I look at trimming my [...] One of my other roles at church is to help out with our parish’s RCIA program. Yesterday, despite a somewhat tenuous weather situation, we all traipsed down to the Cathedral in Denver for one of the Rite of Election services with the Archbishop. As always, he was a wonderful Shepherd for his flock, helping our [...] This is a time of turmoil in my spiritual life. I won’t go into more detail, but it’s something that is causing me to lose a bit of sleep. And what little hair I have left. What to do? [...] My colleague Tony made this observation in a discussion last week: “We can be powerful without being perfect.” It really struck me as an important concept, one that I need to constantly remember on my journey of life. [...] “Life is not about avoiding broken eggs. Life is about presence (broken eggs and all)” – Terry Hershey There’s so many problems, so many things to be fixed. We live in fear of what is and what’s to come. And meanwhile, we spend our lives constantly focusing on the future. Here’s the deal: Your presence [...] I’ve observed a number of conversations recently where people are coming up against what appears to be a brick wall of tasks. There’s so much work to be done, an infinite number of problems to be fixed, a huge number of people to convince…. Daunting is a relatively weak word for what it feels like. [...] |