An Unspoken Sermon: Riff On A Refrain

I have formed the habit of posting a message on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus each Sunday: "Your sins are forgiven. That is all. Spread the word!"

I intend to keep doing so until I no longer can.

But...

There ain't no free lunch.

"Free" just means, "Paid for by somebody else."

I've experienced enough "free" to know that when something comes that way, the most appropriate single response is gratitude. And sometimes that's the ONLY appropriate response. Sometimes, "Thanks!" is all that needs to be said.

At other times, nothing needs to be said, but something needs to be done. Some demonstration of gratitude.

So today I will add, in keeping with the season, that the forgiveness of our sins is free for us because Jesus paid for it with his life.

From the minute we believe that, our lives should be suffused with gratitude towards both the Father and the Son, a gratitude that flows from the Spirit, and is bigger than every fear, bigger than every resentment, bigger than every sorrow.

If you aren't there yet, know that you can be, by growing your gratitude. Remember every day that your sins are forgiven, and thank both Father and Son every day for that fact. If you do nothing else on any given day, do that: speak gratitude.

Want to grow your gratitude further? Learn more about what God has done beyond forgiving your sins, like giving you (already, not in the future) every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms (yes, the Bible actually says that. Want to have your mind blown completely? Read the first three chapters of Ephesians in one sitting.).

Then, if you do only one other thing every day, do this: act from gratitude. Having chosen to be grateful, let gratitude govern your other choices: "Because of what Jesus has done for me, I now choose to do x (rather than y or z - which I might have done if it were just about me)."

In short, as people who share the life of the resurrected Christ, let our expression of that life begin with gratitude for that life. At the very least, speaking gratitude and acting from gratitude will strengthen our bonds to God Himself, and make us less subject to the willy-nilly of our other emotions.

Beyond that, who knows? Maybe the people we care about who do not yet believe will find it much easier to do so, when every Christian they know shows gratitude for being forgiven.

B.C. and Me, Part 1: Rediscovering Fire

If you've been with me for a while, you know that I have several business ventures underway, and that one of them is being an independent representative for LegalShield. About a month ago, my mentor in the business, Phil Berger, loaned me a copy of "Building an Empire:The Most Complete Blueprint to Building a Massive Network Marketing Business," by Brian Carruthers. Mr. Carruthers is one of the highest earners in the history of LegalShield; the book's cover says he has more than 350,000 people in his downline team.


             

Phil told me that the book would be a quick read.

Maybe it is for most folks. In my case, I started off fairly quickly, but soon had to slow down - not because I found it hard to follow, but because I found it hard to swallow.

My first speed bump was on page 16, where Carruthers says that there are three things required to succeed in network marketing, and the very first thing he names is "having a burning desire."

I had heard that before and had always recoiled from it, telling myself that a burning desire was not necessary, that the only thing necessary was a specific set of behaviors.

I told myself that for years. This time, when I saw "having a burning desire" listed as the first requirement for success in network marketing, something different happened: I questioned my own response. WHY was I so turned off by the idea?

After all, even if it's true that the only thing really necessary to success is a specific set of behaviors, does not a burning desire make those behaviors more likely? So what was my problem?

Once I asked the question, the answer was all to familiar: Fear. This time, the fear of disappointment, rooted in the experience of having been disappointed so many times.

Then, it occurred to me that many of those disappointments resulted from failing to do what I might have done had I maintained a burning desire. So I have gotten caught in a pattern in which fear dampens desire, which in turn inhibits behavior, thereby producing results that confirm the fear....ARRGGHHHH...

Here's the real kicker: I ENJOY HAVING A BURNING DESIRE. It feels GOOD! Heck, it feels GREAT!! Especially when the burning desire is not merely for something as paltry as a certain sum of money, but is on the order of changing the world.

So given the benefits of having a burning desire, and the extent to which the fear of disappointment suppresses burning desire, the next question was, "What can obliterate the fear of disappointment?" Not, enable me to work around it or trudge through it. Obliterate it.

The answer came instantly: confidence obliterates fear. Mega-confidence. Hyper-confidence. Faith.

And what bases do I have for such confidence? The list came quickly:

1. Other people's experiences: there are a whole bunch of people who have done well with LegalShield, and some who have done ridiculously well. Brian Carruthers is one of the latter.
2. My own experience: Last year, I finally engaged in some very basic behavior as a LegalShield rep that could get me paid, and it did.
3. The law of numbers: The more people I talk to about LegalShield, the more will say yes. Simple.
4. The power of practice: The more I pay attention as I talk to more people, the better I will get at it, and the more people will say yes.
5. The help and encouragement of peers and mentors: I am part of a group of LegalShield reps who meet monthly to help each other along, and I recently learned of a weekly meeting nearby.
6. The company: Formerly Pre-Paid Legal, LegalShield has been around for 40+ years. If I do my part, they'll send the checks.
7. Ephesians: Seriously - how can I believe that and not have mega-hyper-confidence?

Discovering that list within myself sparked an emotion that I had experienced too little in recent years, and that I want to prime myself to experience much more of in my remaining years: eagerness - the energizing blend of confidence plus urgency, often topped with curiosity: "I can't wait to see what happens!" 

With all that in mind and in heart, the flame of desire begins to stir. There are some things that I really want, dang it:

I really want to establish a passive income of $50,000 a year. Because I want to devote myself to changing the world, not to paying bills. And because I want to play with money, not toil for money.

I really want to enroll 500 people as LegalShield members so that they can to live more wisely, more powerfully, more confidently and more prosperously by having access to a national network of law firms.

I really want to help 50 people to earn $100,000 - or to otherwise achieve their dreams - as LegalShield representatives.

There's more, but I want to define it more clearly before declaring it. And those three are enough to expand me; they're enough to make my flame grow.

*****************
NEXT: B.C. And Me, Part 2: Humbling Myself

I Didn't Intend To Write This, Until I Did

Lately I have been toying with the idea that all behavior comes down to one of two things: intention or distraction. At any given moment, you are either pursuing a clear intention, or you are being distracted from doing so.

More than that, it has occurred to me that perhaps all of the things that I say have kept me from reaching my goals - fear of failure, fear of success, discouragement, confusion, ignorance - boil down to one thing: distraction. That anything that draws attention away from achieving an intention is just a form of distraction.

Even an intention serves as a distraction from other intentions; but at least pursuing any given intention strengthens the intentional muscles, so to speak. It's the periods of time without conscious intention that suck the power out of my life. So, lately, I have been monitoring myself, by simply asking myself occasionally, "What am I intending right now?"

It's a bracing question, and sometimes asking it helps me to shift gears - to re-focus on an intention.

That's what started me writing this piece - I caught myself being unintentional, and decided to give my attention to writing about intention. Which I've wanted to do for a while, anyway.

So here we are. This is what I am working/playing with:

1. All behavior may be described as enacting an intention, or engaging in distraction from intention.
2. By the very act of giving my attention to something, I either advance an intention, or I distract myself from intentions.
3. I can choose at any moment how to direct my attention. 

That last proposition seems huge to me. The ability to choose what to give our attention to may be the greatest power we possess - and I think that for most of us, it is undervalued, overlooked, and underdeveloped (it may be severely curtailed or even shut down in people with malfunctioning brains).

Indeed, the ability to choose what to give our attention to may be described as the ability to distract ourselves from distractions, according to Columbia psychology professor Walter Mischel.

Mischel authored "the marshmallow test," an experiment in the 1960s and 70s (when he was at Stanford), in which young children could receive a marshmallow (or cookie) immediately or receive two by waiting 15 minutes. The self-control exhibited by the children who waited has been linked to them generally going on to live more successful lives.

In a New York Times piece about Mr. Mischel's work, Pamela Druckerman writes (italics mine):

Part of what adults need to learn about self-control is in those videos of 5-year-olds. The children who succeed turn their backs on the cookie, push it away, pretend it’s something nonedible like a piece of wood, or invent a song. Instead of staring down the cookie, they transform it into something with less of a throbbing pull on them.
Adults can use similar methods of distraction and distancing, he says. Don’t eye the basket of bread; just take it off the table. In moments of emotional distress, imagine that you’re viewing yourself from outside, or consider what someone else would do in your place. When a waiter offers chocolate mousse, imagine that a cockroach has just crawled across it.

That chunk of advice could be useful for almost anyone at some point - I'll tell you in my next post how a visualization changed my eating habits instantly years ago. For Christians, I think "Imagine that you're viewing yourself from outside" is downright Biblical.

Consider that in Ephesians, Paul goes to considerable length to establish that Christians are, as parts of Christ, seated at the right hand of God in the heavenly realms. Anyone who really believes that of him/herself is bound to view everything in this life as from the outside - at least occasionally, if not perpetually.

This is the literal meaning of "ecstasy" - mentally standing outside of oneself (it is not specifically an emotional state, although that has been attached to it). So I'll go ahead and say that having an ecstatic mind is part and parcel of being Christian, and that the most apparent benefit of said mind is self-control.*

In any case, many people, Christian or not, could benefit from Paul's instruction to exercise care in what we give our attention to:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things. (Philippians 4:8)

May more and more of your attention be given to conscious intentions.

___________________________
*How would a group of people who believe this interact with each other?

The Night My Brain Exploded

(ALERT: NSFW language)

Here's a story:

My mom passed away on May 14, and we held her funeral on Tuesday, May 20. That night, I went to bed around 12:30. That's early for me - I wanted to be well rested for the drive back on Wednesday.

I don't know when Janet came to bed; that didn't rouse me. But when she came back to bed after getting up to use the bathroom, I woke up.

I did not wake up drowsy and tired. I did not wake up merely refreshed. I woke up surging with energy, feeling as if I were ready to explode, because of the dream I had just had. I said something to Janet about wondering whether I should tell her about the dream, but I needed to go to the bathroom.

Dreams fade quickly; by the time I wrote about the dream in my journal, some details had faded. But it went something like this:

I was, it seemed, a new employee in the marketing department of a large company. And somehow I was chairing a meeting of honchos. And I left the meeting and ran into someone from the design department - bumped into him so that he dropped his stuff - and as I was helping him pick it up, either I saw this phrase on one of his papers, or he spoke it: "Change the fucking world."

And it penetrated like a bullet, and set me on fire.

And I went back to my meeting, which was running late, or running long, or both, and instead of feeling scared because of that or apologizing for that, I went in with total swagger because it didn't matter that the meeting was late or long or both, what mattered was that we were going to change the fucking world. And I said so.

And I saw "change the fucking world" becoming a global mantra, with me as chief guru for the attendant movement. I saw myself, like Anthony Robbins (Has he stopped being "Tony"?), onstage in an auditorium filled with thousands - no, tens of thousands - pouring out verbal fire to help them change themselves so that they could change the fucking world.

I saw T-shirts emblazoned with a four-color logo: CTF*W. I saw bumper stickers with the same. Coffee mugs.

I saw myself re-ordering my personal relationships, putting family, friends and acquaintances on notice: "I want people around me who want to change the fucking world. If you don't want to change the fucking world, that's okay - but I gotta ask, 'Why not?'"

And there was was music - a throbbing anthem for full orchestra, led by brass.

And I woke up ready to change the fucking world, NOW.

On my way to the bathroom, I glanced at the wall clock in the kitchen and thought it said 6-something, and concluded that I may as well stay up, because there was no way that I could fall back asleep. I'd do better to start getting ready to leave - I felt like I could drive a thousand miles.

The music was filling my brain, along with the images of T-shirts and bumper stickers and me onstage before tens of thousands ("Now get outta here, and CHANGE THE FUCKING WORLD!" Crowd roar: "YEAAAHHHH!!!"). And, and...

I was linking "Change the fucking world" to the call of Christ and the identity of the Christian:

For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to devote ourselves to the good deeds for which God has designed us.     (Ephesians 2) 

"We're created in Christ Jesus to change the fucking world," I said.

And all of this is happening on a trip to the bathroom, and I want to ACT, so I pick up my phone to check the availability of the website address, changethefuckingworld.com, and I see that...

...it's 3:26 a.m.

WHAT???

I was totally jazzed emotionally, I was almost exploding with physical energy, and my mind was focused like a laser and racing like a lightcycle...

...on three hours of sleep????

I immediately wanted to know, "What brought about this phenomenal state, and how can I get it again?"

My best guess, then and now, is that my state was fueled by having drank multiple glasses of punch at the funeral meal, followed by two cans of Pepsi later. Both my body and brain may have been sent into overdrive by sugar and caffeine.

That answer's a bit disappointing, as I don't want to make massive doses of sugar and caffeine parts of my regular diet. But the question of how to place myself at will into a state of high energy, high confidence and high clarity remains intriguing, to say the least.

It's also possible that my state was fueled in part by a heightened awareness of mortality. I was already working at maintaining an awareness of mortality, so to the extent that that may have been a factor, re-experiencing the state would just be a matter of getting better at that.

For now, I am finding that the very act of recalling the event elicits at least an echo. I do, in fact, want to change the fucking world (tm).

No. Not "want to."

Intend to.

BROKE

NOTE: I am not sure when I first wrote the following; I think it was in early April. I put it away because it seemed too raw. Then, on April 23, I added the commentary below the asterisks. But still didn't publish it, maybe because things were still too dark.

Things are looking up now. The tax refund came in May, last week I got a part-time gig, and yesterday I had my first LegalShield group enrollment (my mentor, Phil Berger, did the actual presentation; we're splitting the commissions). Sharing this as "something I'm looking back on" is easier than sharing it as "something I'm going through right now".

For those of you who have never been broke (I refuse to say "poor"), this is part of what it is like (for me).
______________________________________________________________________________

Stages of broke-ness:

1. I start to wince, to flinch, at the price of groceries. The day comes when I don't buy ground turkey, although it's on the shopping list, because it's just too expensive.

2. In the magazine section, my eye drifts from Forbes and Fortune, to Small Business Opportunities.

3. I stop answering our landline phone. Actually, I stopped doing that years ago, during an earlier spell of broke-ness, and never resumed. But what is signficant here, is that, more and more of the calls on that phone are now for me, again.

4. I stop opening mail. It's all bad news, and I feel unable to do anything about any of it.

And that feeling of powerlessness is the stupidity generator. Because it makes it seem pointless to even keep track of the damage. For the same reason...

5. I stop checking my accounts online. I don't want to see how badly they're overdrawn.

6. I stop answering my cell phone.

7. I stop retrieving messages on my cell phone.

8. I silence my cell phone. I don't want to hear it ring.

It's all avoidance - not as deliberate irresponsibility, but as anesthesia, to dull the pain of powerlessness.

9. I tell myself, "I am not powerless."

I have the power of thought. I have the ability to learn. I have the ability to imagine possibilities. I have the ability to speak.

Do I have the ability to get a job? Something to make ends meet until something - Legal Shield, Homewood Nation, Homewood Capital Partners - takes off?

10. I begin looking, and experience a whole new wave of pain. Am I really good for anything anymore?

After all of these years of breathing and taking up space, what am I really good for?

Stop. Don't go there.

******************
It's April 23. I wrote the first draft of the above...when? A week ago? Two weeks ago? Laid it aside. Too raw. But worse, too self-involved. Why put that out there? What value could it have for anyone else?

Maybe this: for someone else to know that someone else knows. And to help keep accounts honest, so that when better times return, no one can paint me as a magician. This is part of the record: sometimes I made hugely wrong decisions, and the consequences of them reverberated long and deep, and being me hurt. And I was forced back, and am forced back, time and again, to the question, "How do I use what I have to deliver value for others?"

And answers come, but compared to the urgency and certainty of my financial distress, they all seem so slow and uncertain. I can make five or 50 prospecting calls for Legal Shield; how long will it take to get paid? I can create and assemble marketing materials for Homewood Capital Partners; how long will it take to get paid? I can knock on doors to sell Homewood Nation sponsorships; how long will it take to get paid?

I have crafted all of this uncertainty, staking all on the belief that if I press forward in each arena, I will indeed get paid in each. And however much time may seem to be an enemy now, now is not the time to grow slack, to lower my arms or to slump my shoulders. Now is the time to take a deep breath - perhaps even to take a nap - and remind myself that before and after and beyond all of this, my life is hidden with Christ, in whom I am seated at the right hand of the Father in the heavenly realms. And to press forward with the energy and the confidence that flow from that position.

But not at 10:56 pm :)

Tomorrow, forward!

And don't make it more difficult than it already is.
________________________________________________________________________

Six weeks after writing all that, here's my takeaway: for me, being broke engenders stupidity, expressed in behaviors that only make things worse. As it happens, this is confirmed by a recently-published book, "Scarcity: Why Having So Little Means So Much." In it, authors Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir examine how the perception of scarcity affects our thinking:

"When we function under scarcity, we deal with problems differently because we are preoccupied by scarcity, because our minds constantly return to it, we have less mind to give to the rest of life. The experience of scarcity reduces one's bandwidth, or mental capacity. Being poor will reduce bandwidth, and the poor make bad decisions."

Yep, that's my experience. What's yours? Share in the comments below.

Three Priorities In Action: 1 - Encouraging the Body of Christ

In January, I declared three personal priorities for the rest of my life, the first of which was, "encouraging the Body of Christ." I said that one way that I want to do that is by gathering people - first, neighbors on Race Street, then residents from all of Homewood - for a recitation of Paul's letter to the Epheisans.

On April 2, I emailed 17 people on Race Street an invitation to "An Evening in Ephesus." On Saturday, April 5, I dropped off printed copies of the invitation at 77 addresses.

Three people responded - two of them to say that it sounded interesting to them, but they wouldn't make it.

Saturday, the 12th, I recited/performed Ephesians for my wife and one other person.

I had explained to Janet at length the night before that I had not expected any particular number of people to respond - that I was maintaining a "Do it, and see" stance. And I don't think that having only one guest affected my proclamation of Ephesians that much. But it did totally throw off the discussion that I had planned afterward: instead of talking about the questions, "How has this evening affected your view of Jesus Christ? Of yourself? Of your fellow believers?" and "What do you believe God wants to do with the people in this room?", we talked about "How can we get a larger audience for this?"

That question was theirs, not mine. I had no apparent success in conveying the idea that how many people hear it is less important than how they hear it. Maybe I need to highlight the idea that the outcome, in terms of attendance, is up to God. The question is not, "How many people can we get to see/hear this?" - it's "Which people do You want to see/hear this?"

Anyway, the Race Street piece is done. I may do it once more on Monticello Street, as a neighbor there has expressed an interest in having me do it at her place. And I intend, still, to do it in some larger venue, for anyone in Homewood wishes to attend. And I might preserve that presentation on video.

Beyond that, we'll see.

Three Priorities For 2014: 1 - Encouraging The Body Of Christ

Yesterday I wrote:

Given my beliefs, abilities, interests, position and location, it seems that as of now, the best uses of Elwin Green in Homewood will be:

• Encouraging fellow members of the Body of Christ,

• Growing businesses, and

• Redeveloping Race Street

...and I promised to outline projects and processes related to those priorities. Today, I'll talk about the first one, encouraging fellow members of the Body of Christ.

But first, this point: all three priorities are place-specific. All are part of my evolving answer to the question, "What does it mean to live in a place?" (as opposed to just sleeping there at night, for instance). For me, living in Homewood means pursuing the three priorities in Homewood.

Underlying the first priority is a desire for the rest of my life: to live out my faith in unity with other believers who live within walking distance.

I feel like I'm being radical when I say that, for several reasons. First of all, Western Christianity has been so co-opted by individualism that the idea of living out one's faith in unity with other believers is culturally heretical. Second, living out my faith in unity with believers who live within walking distance means going outside the construct of congregating on Sunday morning with people who live here, there and everywhere. Third, it goes against the tendency to forego relationships with neighbors in favor of relationships with other people in our lives (co-workers, fellow students, etc.).

Radical or not, this is my plan for encouraging fellow members of the Body of Christ in Homewood, on the way to living out my faith in unity with them:

1. Declare the word of God to them by reciting Scripture, and
2. Pray with them.

More specifically...

1. Declare the word of God to them by reciting Scripture. Most believers, most of the time, experience Scripture as a hodgepodge of disconnected numbered sentences. We memorize and analyze fragments called "verses" with no sense of the whole from which they are taken. We listen to preaching that strings together fragments and numbered sentences to highlight a thesis or theme. In pursuit of these theses and themes, we entirely lose sight of the fact that with a couple of exceptions, each book of the Bible is one thing.

Then, as if fragmenting Scripture weren't bad enough, we flatten it. We forget, or never realize, that the passages we read were written by human beings, for human beings, not as purely doctrinal treatises, but as stories, poems, arguments, illustrations, proclamations, with questioning, cajoling, complaining, criticizing, complimenting...the full range of discourse and expression, of thought and feeling.

This fragmenting and flattening of Scripture, hideous enough on its own, is made even worse when we read Scripture publicly. In our desire to show reverence for the word of God, we read it in a way that fosters not only confusion, but boredom.

The reading or hearing of Scripture should never be boring.

I hope to counteract both tendencies - the tendency toward fragmentation and the tendency toward flattening - by inviting believers (first on Race Street, then in Homewood generally) to an interpretative reading of Paul's epistle to the Ephesians. I will recite Ephesians in its entirety, in a way intended to convey the excitement - indeed, the ecstasy - which I believe Paul experienced when he wrote it.

I plan to do that in April. Stay tuned for details.

2. To pray with them. After sharing Ephesians, I will invite believers in Homewood to our home on the last Friday evening of each month for a night of prayer, to last until 6 a.m., followed by breakfast.

That's it. I make no predictions concerning results. Planting and/or watering may be my business; bringing forth fruit is God's.

Viva in locum! (took me 'bout half an hour of resurrecting my junior high Latin to come up with that!)

***************
Three Priorities: The Complete Series
Three Priorities For 2014 - And Beyond
Three Priorities For 2014: 1 - Encouraging The Body Of Christ
Three Priorities For 2014: 2- Growing Businesses.
Three Priorities For 2014: 2.5 - Why Build Businesses?
Three Priorities For 2014: 2 - Growing Businesses - Legal Shield
Three Priorities For 2014: 2 - Growing Businesses - Homewood Capital Partners
Three Priorities For 2014: 2 - Growing Businesses - Luminaria Productions
Three Priorities For 2014: 3 - Redeveloping Race Street
Three Priorities For 2014: Closing Thoughts