I am currently blogging at the …&Following blog.

This project was started at the beginning of February to run concurrently with a class I’m co-teaching at church. We’re working our way through a discussion of N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope. The blog will help me organize my thoughts before each week’s class as well as act as a record for where we’ve been.

I am running a series on the blog I call Resurrection Songs. I’m featuring songs that have something to do with the afterlife or the resurrection. It’s a fun way to concentrate on how resurrection has inspired songwriters and poets through the ages.

I am, however, running out of songs. I need your help. If anyone’s still out there, navigate to the …&Following site and leave any suggestions you might have for a featured song. I’ll be eternally grateful. Thanks.

rjjf

This year I’ll be again reading from the lectionary during Lent.

Why do I do this? Isn’t this weird behavior, even for an ex-Catholic?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Sometimes I think reading from the lectionary every day gives one the impression of moving through the text too quickly. Keeping that kind of pace through the entire year can lead to a kind of burn-out.

But there are times – Advent and Lent specifically – when moving quickly to get a wide view is beneficial. I’ll still meditate over the one passage for a week at a time. I will, however, also add to my routine extra reading from the lectionary. The lectionary is only a device I use to my reading a bit of structure.

Interesting article here by Malcom Gladwell on the New Yorker’s website.

We generally think that precocity and genius go together. In fact–or so we think–genius appears at a very young age. The old saw that states “if you don’t ‘make it’ by age thirty-five that you never will” is almost universally accepted. But it’s not always true.

Thank God for that.

I find it even more interesting younger people and older people approach the creative process differently: The young favor a conceptual approach whereas older creatives favor an experimental approach.

For those of us advancing in years, this is good news. But it comes at a price. Gladwell quotes University of Chicago economist David Galenson in the middle of a discussion about Picasso and Cézanne:

The imprecision of their goals [by using an experimental approach] means that these artists rarely feel they have succeeded, and their careers are consequently often dominated by the pursuit of a single objective. These artists repeat themselves, painting the same subject many times, and gradually changing its treatment in an experimental process of trial and error. Each work leads to the next, and none is generally privileged over others, so experimental painters rarely make specific preparatory sketches or plans for a painting. They consider the production of a painting as a process of searching, in which they aim to discover the image in the course of making it; they typically believe that learning is a more important goal than making finished paintings. Experimental artists build their skills gradually over the course of their careers, improving their work slowly over long periods. These artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration at their inability to achieve their goal.

Key takeaway? You gotta love the process if you’re over thirty-five. And you’ve gotta have someone (or a couple of someones) who love you.

I’m still thinking about “practicing in public.”

I don’t want to make too much of this idea. What we do in public is only a portion of the whole. What we do in private is also important, maybe foundational.

In private is where intimacy occurs. In private is where promises are made. In private is where forgiveness is confirmed, where learning occurs, mistakes are corrected, decisions are made, courage is fostered, faces are set, spirits are strengthened and hope takes root.

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail and the soon to be published Free, is quoted in the December issue of Writer’s Digest:

“I don’t come from the book or media world; I’m trained as a computational physicist,” Anderson says. “We in the software world wrote our code in public. That’s what beta testing is all about. Doing things in public is the norm. I took the habits that were most conventional, just like getting peer reviews in science, and applied it to my books.”

Anderson’s quote reminds me of something I read about Bob Dylan:

Dylan said he needed to practice in front of people. He could not sit in a room by himself and play. For all intents and purposes, Dylan practiced in public. He said that what he was practicing was what he was becoming.

I like that. Blogging is like practicing in public. So is Christianity. What we are is what we will become.

Whether we are writers or musicians or Christians, when the thing is done in public, something special happens.

CCEL has just made Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief available on their website.

You may read online for free. You may also download a .pdf for a nominal charge.

For those with a philosophical bent, this is a great book.

Mondays are always difficult. I need to get up early and re-program myself to my work-week existence. My mind is still in relaxation mode. Last week’s work-week tension just left my body last evening while watching TV.

I suppose, in this day and age, any day can be Monday. I once worked on Saturdays and (sometimes) on Sundays. My weekend was Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday was my Monday.

It doesn’t matter which day of the week Monday falls on, it still feels like Monday. I’m too far entrenched in the culture-wide hatred of Monday to quibble about whether it’s really Monday. Monday–to my way of thinking–is a generic term for the worst day of the week.

I know that’s bad. I’m working on it.

What is writing? Is it paper or process?

Most people would probably say paper. I’m not so sure. I’m becoming more and more aware of writing as process, though I’m willing to concede this is somewhat a false choice.

How can I say that writing is process? Writing must be the end result, right? In other words writing is most definitely paper. I’m using the idea of words on paper as a representation of the end result. (I could use “screen” rather than paper to keep current with the idea of writing as it appears in the blogosphere. However, the idea of writing as “screen or process” was not quite as alliterative as “paper or process”.)

One writer using tools to aid the writing process may write more and better than if that same writer paid no attention to tools. Tools may enhance creativity. Tools that hinder creativity should be avoided.

Tools fall under the category of “process and format.”

Process and format may aid the writer with completion of his or her work.

Although I’m suspect of reducing creative activities to process and format, I’m wondering-long-term-if creativity is to be sustained as a life-long pursuit, process and format should be defined, refined and articulated.

Ritual is an important part of the writing process. What I mean by ritual can vary from person-to-person. For example, I cannot any longer write using a number 2 pencil. I can however write using a smooth gliding gel pen or fountain pen. I don’t any longer write in a spiral bound notebook. I currently write in a hard-back notebook with a sewn binding, or maybe, on a legal pad or into a computer.

This may sound foreign to someone unacquainted with how the creative mind works, though we find examples everywhere. For writers it might be the kind of pen used, for mechanics the kind of wrench.

Even with something as fickle and spontaneous as creativity, paying attention to format and process may contribute to what goes into the final product. This kind of idea gives writers that reputation for weirdness. What I am saying-and what I know for sure-some things the reader never, ever sees are as important as the final product because they move the writer towards writing in the first place.

Is this an odd way of approaching this subject? I could ask “What is your preferred method celebrating your anniversary?” or “What is your preferred method of loving your children or or your siblings or your parents or your spouse?”

You’d be able to tell me something that can be indentified as a method. The method, however, is not the thing itself. Relationships are not sustained by a methodology.

Or are they?

The initial post stopped right there.

I had my reasons for stopping there. I wanted to think more about the idea before I wrote everything out. I wanted to let it simmer under the lid for a while. It’s easy to jump to conclusions, to take this side or that and not think about how intertwined they are.

This is a great discussion question. I might use it in a small group study on spiritual disciplines. It’s also the kind of question that prompts people to think I split hairs too much. “You don’t really think about this that much, do you?”

I still believe there’s a value to thinking about things. The thinking, however, must be done in community. It’s no fun to think this way all by myself: I’m too prone to making unilateral errors. But thinking can somtimes be painful.

I sometimes need help getting things done. I don’t need a lot of help. Once I start, I’m fine. I just need help keeping my focus on whatever it is I’m doing until I finish it. Once I do that, then I need help with deciding what to do next. On and on and on.

I’ve read David Allen’s Getting Things Done and his system works, to a point. He says that you should call something a “project” if it contains more than two tasks. The individual tasks can then be added to a Next Actions list. At any given time, according to Allen, I could have 75-80 projects with God only knows how many Next Actions. These discrete actions, then, should be classified further and placed on lists according to context and labeled: @phone, @computer, @home, @waitinguntildaughtergetsoutofbathroom, etc.

I don’t know why, but I’ve never been able to get the context thing to work like how it’s billed.

I found myself counting the number of Next Actions completed to determine the success or failure of my day. A large number of Next Actions signaled a success, a low number failure. I was running at a breakneck pace for a long stretch of time. I was completing actions like there was no tomorrow. Average task completions per day–a key metric–were at an all-time high. But I was padding the list with relatively insignificant Next Actions. Meanwhile, important projects languished from inattention.

ENTER SCORING TASKS

I decided I needed to do something to shake things up and alleviate boredom. I was completing tasks by the dozens every day but still seemed to be in a kind of slump. Completing tasks never seemed to get me any closer to completion of anything bigger. I felt I was on the proverbial treadmill. Running a treadmill is fine, unless you want to run to a place other than where you are.

My first thought was that I needed to weigh individual tasks on my list. Some tasks weighed more than others. Some tasks, for a variety of reasons, stayed on my lists for 3 or 4 weeks, or more. These were either the most difficult tasks on my list or they were tasks I was psychologically blocking for whatever reason. Either way, I needed either to complete these tasks or remove them from my lists.

In my new system, I score tasks by degree of difficulty, by how long they take to complete or by how long they’ve been on any particular list. I’ve not yet figured out a system for scoring tasks. Covey talks about this at length in First Things First. My first priority was to keep things as simple as possible. As with anything, if the system is not elegant and simple, I won’t use it.

I use a blank sheet of paper and list numbers one through nine. I score my tasks in the following way:

• 5 Points for tasks 1-3 on the list. These are what I call the “biggest bang” tasks.
• 3 Points for tasks 4-6 on the list. These tasks are important and usually a bit easier to complete than the 5 point tasks.
• 2 Points for tasks 7-9 on the list. Tasks in the this place fall within the category of maintenance or administration and, although obviously important, are tedious and boring and are typically ignored when I’m racking up a large task completion score.

I leave the bottom of the sheet for a list of tasks that emerge during the day. I assign 1 Point for each of these tasks. They’re not worthless. By the same token, they’re not strategically significant. If I complete a large number of these tasks every day I’m not thinking clearly enough about what I should be doing.

RESULTS

I kept a record of daily scores for the month of September in a spreadsheet. I’ve found I can more accurately say on any given day I was either productive or wasting time. I’ve noticed trends and can more accurately predict lulls. If I get a high score-what I call sweeping the list-I feel confident I’m completing tasks of relative importance. If I get a low score and 1 Point tasks dominate the list, I can re-think my approach to what is most important.

So far, here are the benefits of this system:

• I’m more organized, relaxed and confident I’m completing the best tasks on any given day. This system helps me prioritize which tasks are most important on any given day.
• I’ve determined a more objective way of determining performance aside from how I feel or aside from sheer number of inconsequential tasks completed. On two occasions I’ve made adjustments when I noticed I was slipping and calmed myself when I thought I was slipping.
• I am more engaged in making strategic decisions on a daily rather than a weekly basis.

[HT: David Seah. Although I don't specifically use his template designs, they were the basis for the idea of scoring individual tasks.]

It’s time for a return to the archives and repost an entry first posted in May 2007. It seems more approriate today than it did then. If I ask myself whether I still feel this way, I might answer: Yes, even more so.

C. S. Lewis is said to have hated conversations about politics. There was no subject that bored him more.

I have great respect for C. S. Lewis; but this was one area where I disagreed with him. I thought that he was dead wrong about this.

At least that is what I once believed. My mind is changing and I’m beginning to understand what I think Lewis hated about political conversations.

I’m guessing, but what I think he hated, and what I am only beginning to hate, is simply this: People derive meaning from politics. But it’s a meaning that is, in the end, meaningless. Politics is a system of identification in America. This is especially true if you are way out on either end of the political spectrum. (There’s identification in the middle of the spectrum, as well–but it’s a different kind of thing and more dangerous.)

Meaning should not come from politics. Meaning cannot come from politics. If meaning does come from politics, it’s false. If your sense of purpose is culled from your voting record, you’re deceiving both yourself and others. Politics as currently practiced is, at its root, deception, nothing more, nothing less. I’ve tried making the argument that politics is neither good nor evil, but I’m afraid that only works in arguments. In practice, politics is most usually evil.

I don’t have time to nuance this further. I’ll let my comments stand as they are, even though what I just said took years to formulate. I realize that I might be—and forgive the metaphor—skewering a sacred cow. If that is the case—if that’s how you feel—and I felt the same way when I first thought about it—then maybe, just maybe, I’m getting close to something that should be discarded.

And my hope and my prayer is that the Evangelical church in America would dispense with all the political wrangling, on both sides, Republican, Democrat and (ha!) Independent.

Someone might object by saying, “Jesus was very political!” and then point to places in the gospels (or worse, to contemporary authors who point to places in the gospels) where Jesus’ politics came to the forefront. My answer, weak as it is, is that Jesus’ politics was not politics in the way we think of politics. This is why he frustrated both the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Jesus didn’t derive meaning from his politics; his political thinking was informed and illuminated by his sense meaning, his purpose, his sense of mission, or whatever you wish to call it. Jesus didn’t rail against one group at the expense of another group; he offended both groups.

But why were they offended?

Yesterday, before work, I saw this guy out our kitchen window. I scrambled into the bedroom to grab the camera and, when I went back to the kitchen, he was still there. I needed to hurry the shot because he was trying to decide whether or not he should be watching me through the window or running from the neighbor’s beagle. A few seconds later, he was gone. Life in the suburbs!

Phyllis Tickle has written an excellent book called The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why.

I’ll devote later posts to a more detailed discussion of the book, but for now I’ll highlight one idea gleaned from a cursory reading while still standing in line at the bookstore.

She teases an idea about To Do lists being respositories of our knowledge of what we need do next. Calculators become crutches used for running simple sums once run inside our own heads. Part of this, of course, is cultural. The speed at which life happens makes machines necessary for us to keep pace.

The result, as she says, is that “we are storing more of our selves outside ourselves and thereby creating a dependency that is, at the very least, unsettling.”

And yet, at the same time, David Allen, author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, advocates the very thing Phyllis seems to deride. We must, according to David, store things outside ourselves in a trusted system we can use to recall what it is we need to do at any given time.

To be fair to both writers, I may be comparing apples and oranges.

Are machines the issue? Does the same kind of disassociation occur in people using an analog system? (David Allen’s methodology does not hinge on an electronic medium. A pencil and a ream of newsprint will get you started using the GTD methodlogy.)

For me, though, an analog system is better. The physical act of writing things on paper enhances my memory and brings with it physical memory as well. An analog system is simpler. It is more elegant. It is more open to improvisation. Some say it’s slower, but I’m not so sure. Because it’s written–hand to pen to paper–it’s less removed than items entered and stored in an electronic system.

A compromise? Maybe. What do you think?

Allow me to provide an overly simplistic paraphrase of an idea Kenneth Atchity puts forward in A Writer’s Time: Writing is nothing more than a transcript of an argument you have with yourself. You begin any writing project by making a decision. A portion of your mind will reject that decision. This causes the creative tension neccesary to write something down.

 Atchity says that a process precedes even “the decision.”

It’s somewhat dangerous to determine the workflow of the creative mind. That is, of course, if the creative mind only works when inspired. On the other hand, for writers who need their creative mind to work while uninspired, a knowledge of process (or at least a view of the process) is quite helpful.

Dreaming

Most writers say their first exposure to the compulsion to write comes in the form of an image. Atchity calls this “dreaming.” It doesn’t matter whether or not the dreamer is awake or asleep, the dream is the first step in the creative process. A faun carrying an umbrella was what C. S. Lewis “saw” before starting the first book in The Chronicles of Narnia series. I might even stretch the idea of image to include the sound words make when they bump into each other. Loud visions, I call them.

Atchity says, then, the “image coaleces and is spoken aloud.” This is the official beginning of “inspiration.” We can talk more about the “speaking aloud” part and whether or not he meant it literally or figuratively. The importance of this stage should not be understated. I’ve felt the power and satisfaction of a previously unknown and unthought thought as it trips off the tongue as though it had been there forever and rehearsed in meticulous detail. It is most times the ear, rather than the eye, that determines the viability of an idea.

After breathing in the dream and breathing out the idea, the writer must “enlist the will” in some plan to complete that which was started. The writer gets nothing written without the will.

Then comes the “decision to act.”

Doodling

A writer can know they’ve made a decision to act when they begin “doodling.” This stage consists of an “assembly of the elements.” As the elements come together, the piece takes on shape. The shape may not be clear, but the contours can be indentified.

Some elements are scratched during the period of “contraction.” We think to ourselves, “This doesn’t belong here, but over there.” or “That doesn’t belong at all.”

Contraction comes to a natural end. But it’s not the real end. The writer goes on “vacation” and the material percolates during a period of “gestation.”

The process begins again during “revision.”

This is, of course, Atchity’s view of the creative writing process. I’ve seen where two or three steps of the process become combined past recognition. Armed with the knowledge there is a process, however, is great ammunition in the argument with yourself and can keep you sane while enlisting the will to act.

I am compiling information about what we like to call spiritual disciplines. The following is a sober warning to beware about thinking we’re accomplishing too much in the spiritual life.

From a letter C. S. Lewis sent to Arthur Greeves, 15 June, 1930:

“Another fine thing in The Princess and Curdie [by George MacDonald] is where Curdie, in a dream, keeps on dreaming that he has waked up and then finding that he is still in bed. This means the same as the passage where Adam says to Lilith ‘Unless you unclose your hand you will never die and therefore never wake. You may think you have died and even that you have risen again: but both will be a dream.’

“This has a terrible meaning, specially for imaginitive people. We read of spiritual efforts, and imagination makes us believe that, because we enjoy the idea of doing them, we have done them. I am apalled to see how much of the change which I thought I had undergone lately was only imaginary. The real work seems still to be done. It is so fatally easy to confuse an aesthetic appreciation with the spiritual life with the life itself–to dream that you have waked, washed, and dressed, and then to find yourself still in bed.”

Mundane Mondays

My posts on Mondays will focus on the seemingly mundane things related to how I approach work. Today’s post will concentrate on determining VALUES.

I conducted seminars and a question and answer session in western Michigan this past Friday. My audience was to a group of public school educators. After one of the sessions, a lady approached to thank me for my presentation. She said that she wrote in the evaluation that I was “well prepared, knowledgeable, a fine educator.”

I think it ironic that the only people who see me as an “educator” are other educators. This is similar to the idea that the only people who see me as a writer are other writers.

I work hard at my job and my hobby. It’s good, every once in a while, to be recognized for those efforts.

There’s plenty of work that goes on behind the scenes. Some time ago, I engaged in an exercise to identify what were to be my priorities or values in teaching or presenting. This is what I decided:

1. Truth or Accuracy. This didn’t take much thought to put this first on the list. Although I’ve not told anyone anything wrong on purpose, I have unwittingly stumbled and made an inaccurate statement. Placing it first on the list caused me to formulate a working plan that would enable me to communicate with my audience after the session to communicate any errors or to correct misunderstandings.
2. Clarity In all of the good teachers/presenters I’ve seen or heard over the years, the ability to translate complex ideas into easy-to-understand language is what set them head and shoulders above their peers. Work on the language ahead of time for sure. But it’s also important to monitor–in real time–how your message is being received. The best way to do this is to look at the faces of the audience. If they’re confused, you should be able to tell and recalibrate on the fly.
3. Passion for the people being taught. This, again, is a no-brainer. Why do this at all if I don’t like my audience. This isn’t to say that I’ll never be placed in front of a hostile audience. Placing this on my list of values keeps me accountable and keeps me from writing them off because they don’t like me.
4. Passion for the subject matter. This is more difficult. How many times have I presented material I’d never consider teaching unless I was assigned to teach it? This happens frequently. I try to find something interesting or fascinating in any subject.
5. Interesting, entertaining or creative arrangement of the material. It’s surprising how easy this can be if I like my audience, think my subject is interesting and attempt to be as clear as possible.
6. Identifiable ways for students/attendees to find more information away from the classroom or presentation hall. In a two-hour session, chances are very good that people will not remember everything. Archiving a recording of the presentation or pointing to resources on a website makes sense to help people answer the questions they thought about while driving home.
7. Engagement between me and the other people in the room. I guess my credo here is to talk to them, not at them.
8. Transparency. Sometimes I have bad days. It’s good to be up front with the audience about little things that might be happening that they might need to know. Once I had a bad headache during my presentation. I started the session by telling my audience what was happening and that they should disregard any facial contortions I might make. This got a laugh and some sympathy. The ibuprofen kicked in about twenty minutes into the session and went well from there. If I didn’t say something right away, my behavior may have been misinterpreted.

 

We might say the reason John wrote the letter we call 1st John was to refute a kind of proto-Gnosticism. This is not wrong; it is a valid statement. But his reason to write the letter amounts to so much more than that.

In addition to John’s own stated reasons for writing his letter, we must note that he wrote to real people in the real world who were navigating through the thick fog of inarticulate rationalization posing as concrete theological thinking. His tone is refreshing; it’s simple and without intellectual adornment. That isn’t to say John is overly simplistic. Like in his gospel and in the book of Revelation, John’s literary structure is intricate. John’s theology is not necessarily difficult to understand; it may be, however, difficult to accept, at least for someone flirting with gnosticism, posing as a “spiritual” leader (who desires some of the recognition which is owed only to Christ) or to followers a so-called leader (who want a convenient way to justify unacceptable behavior).

It is easier to tell people that it’s the body that sins while the spirit remains clean. One may appear smarter to say the whole Jesus story was a metaphor to teach a more profound and hidden truth.

But what may seem easier and smarter may be akin to the employee who spends inordinate time and energy avoiding work when it might be as easy, or easier, to just work.

A consensus of scholars say John wrote this letter around 90 AD, some sixty years after the resurrection. Some scholars make a case for earlier but, for our discussion, I’ll just say that he wrote at a crucial moment in Christianity’s history. The first-hand witnesses were passing away. Second or third generation believers were being influenced by a contrary opinion, one that cast doubt on the story or twisted the story to mean something quite different.

You’ve probably heard it before: Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead. His message was in code. Someone claims to know the code and they’ll tell you, for a price. This message can be yours if you agree to keep the secret.

It happens to this day.

But John, at the beginning of this letter, stands by the story. He was there. He was an eyewitness and participant. Jesus was more than a metaphor; he had flesh and bone. John knew this because proof came in the touching. People you can touch. Metaphors dissolve like airy apparitions when you bid them come out to play.

John the Apostle

Tonight, in our Life Group, we’re beginning a study of the New Testament book of 1st John.

In every study of a book like this, I try to determine just why the author wanted to write the book in the first place. John makes this task easier: He tells us. Twelve times he prefaces a remark with the phrase “I am writing…” These can then be classified into seven distinct reasons for writing:

John is writing the letter to:

• proclaim the Glory of God and what was accomplished through the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is emphatic that it wasn’t just a story or legend, that it was a matter of historical fact. (1:14)
• exhort his readers not to sin. (2:1)
• remind his readers to think “new” about “old.” (2:7)
• maintain continuity through a time of great change. 2:13-14)
• exhort readers to remain faithful to Christ. (2:21)
• warn readers about false teachers. (2:26)
• encourage readers to think eternally. (5:13)

Does this match with why you think John wrote the letter?

Passing years have given me the option to relax about writing more than when I was in my thirties.

I once thought that if I didn’t write something, anything every day, the world as I knew it would end. And it did end. The old world ended and the new world began, with every missed deadline, with every unproductive writing day.

In the new world I was given the chance to view things differently, sideways maybe, or upside-down, but differently. The difference changed the shape of every writing project I ever set my mind and body to
complete. It would become a new project.

I’m not going to get into an explanation of being guided by the hand of God, mostly because I don’t know that much about such a thing and think it might be reading way too much into something ultimately quite simple: With every draft comes change.

“But it doesn’t match what’s in my head,” you say.

That’s the point! That’s exactly the point! That’s the joy of it! That’s the adventure!

“But it’s less than I imagined it to be,” you say again.

Imagined it to be? Yes, yes. That’s it—the imagination. Inside our greatest blessing lives an insidious curse we also call the imagination. The cursed part of the imagination can sometimes be cruel task-master, don’t you think? It can be a royal downer, a party-pooper, a veritable plethora of negativity … on steroids. It doesn’t match what you imagined? Of course it doesn’t—because what you imagined wasn’t really real.
The shaking, tottering mess you have in front of you, however, is real. Learn to love that. Nurture that. Allow your imagination to free that mess and make it better than you imagined.

I’ll say it again: That’s the joy of it! That’s the adventure!