May and Change

The month of May is a time of change for many young people. It ends one grade and the movement to another. It can mean the end of High School and movement on to trade school or college. It can mean movement into the world of vocation. For some, it will mean new explorations in relationships and family. Change is in the air.

In 1908, Henry Ford created his remarkable route to personal profit with his revolutionary hand-cranked Model T “Tin Lizzie,” which sold for $825. By 1914, because of Ford’s production line, the car price dropped to $206. His Model T, which came in every color so long as it was black, achieved a 60 percent market share, and in 17 years 10 million cars were sold.

However, Henry Ford very nearly sat at the table too long, holding losing cards.

In the 1920s, the car market changed. General Motors offered new cars at competitive prices with conveniences that the Model T lacked — like an electric starter. Suddenly this novelty starter took on the characteristics of a desirable consumer product. 1920s drivers demanded conveniences.

Ford would not let go. Once when he returned from a vacation he found his engineers had updated a Tin Lizzie. Ford stomped in its roof and kicked out its windshield.

Finally, sales sputtered and Ford faced reality. He did not change just its color or its name — he changed tactics. In May 1927, Ford stopped the Model T’s production. He closed his factory for six months, retooled and then produced the Model A. The Model A was a winning hand. He still produced personal motorized transportation, but by abandoning the tried and true and experimenting with something new, Ford succeeded in recapturing the market.

When successful and beloved products fail, it is time to let go.

Practical and tactical innovation is key to any church that preaches Christ. Change not for change alone, but with one eye to improvement and the other to our real purpose, our real reason, for doing what we do as church.

Henry Ford built cars. When his car did not sell, he changed everything — except he still built and sold cars, only better ones. Nike builds shoes. When sales fell, they changed marketing, not tactics. Unfortunately, that is not enough.

Let go. Focus on the essential. Try a few things. See what works.

Inner Coach

Today, I am thinking about the voice in the head that guides you in your reflections on what to do with your life. Let us call it your internal coach.

Such a coach is often the voice of your parents.

On the humorous side, on this Mother's Day, we remember the things our mamas taught us. They were not only the voices in our heads, but around the kitchen table, the living room, just about everywhere.

- My mama taught me to appreciate a job well done: "If you're going to kill each other, do it outside; I just finished cleaning."

- My mama taught me religion: "You better pray that will come out of the carpet."

- My mama taught me time travel: "If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week."

- My mama taught me logic: "Because I said so, that's why."

- My mama taught me irony: "Keep laughing and I'll give you something to cry about."

- My mama taught me osmosis: "Shut your mouth and eat your supper!"

- My mama taught me contortionism: "Will you look at the dirt on the back of your neck!"

- My mama taught me stamina: "You'll sit there 'til all that spinach is finished."

- My mama taught me about weather: It looks as if a tornado swept through your room."

- My mama taught me about the circle of life: "I brought you into this world and I can take you out."

- My mama taught me about behavior modification: "Stop acting like your father!"

- My mama taught me about genetics: "You're just like your father."

- My mama taught me about envy: "There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don't have wonderful parents like you do."

- My mama taught me about anticipation: "Just wait until you get home."

- My mama taught me wisdom: "When you get to be my age, you'll understand."

            Sometimes, the voice might tell you other things, and they may not come from parents.

Guy hears a voice in his head. It says, "Sell all your stuff and go to Las Vegas."

So he does. He sells his car, his house, his boat ... everything.

He takes his money and buys a plane ticket. Goes to Vegas. He gets off the plane and the voice in his head says, "Go to Caesars Palace and go to the roulette table."

So he does. He goes to Caesars Palace and gets to the roulette table. The voice says, "Put all your money on Black Nine."

And he does. The wheel spins, and the ball stops on Red 10.

The voice in his head says, "Oops."

That's right. Oops.

There are many reasons -- some disturbing and unfortunate -- when people hear voices in their heads, and when people listen and act on those voices, the outcome can be a mess.

However, how about what Julie Bell calls a coaching voice in your head?

That is a different story.

Bell is a sports psychologist who claims she can help you hear your inner coach. "That coaching voice in your head sets you up to do your best," she says. Bell is the founder of the Mind of a Champion, a Dallas-based coaching firm.

She has found that some people have a strong coaching voice that sets them up well, while others need help. Bell's clients range from church teams to State Farm, and from a pro angler to the vice presidents of several Fortune 500 companies.

We need to protect this voice.

There is a Native American parable that says conscience is a three-sided stone with very sharp edges. It resides within the human heart. Every time people violate the dictates of conscience, the stone spins and causes them pain.

Something happens to those who ignore that nagging pain of that inner coach over the course of many years. Eventually, the stone's edges begin to dull from that incessant spinning. Eventually, the host individuals lose the ability to feel the stone as it spins. When that occurs, these people who have lost touch with their conscience achieve for the first time a superficial sort of "peace."

The story is told of the late Fred Rogers (of 'Mister Rogers' fame), a Presbyterian pastor, that he was addressing the National Press Club. He said that he knew that the room was filled with many of the nation's best reporters -- men and women who had achieved much in their lives. Rogers took out his pocket watch and announced that he was going to keep two minutes of silence. He invited everybody in the room to remember the people from their past --parents, teachers, coaches, friends and others -- who had made it possible for them to reach this point. As the seconds ticked away, he could hear, all around the room, people sniffling as they were moved by the memories of those, coaches if you will, who had made sacrifices on their behalf and who had given them countless gifts, the voice of wisdom and encouragement. The same could be said for our own journeys of faith.

On Change

Change is difficult.

 It is a challenge in families, in businesses, in churches, in communities and in entire countries.

Generally, I like changes in certain areas of my life. I like technology changes. I just wish I had the money to keep up with them. Since I do not, I must develop some wisdom as to know when a change occurs in this area that will impact my life in a positive way.

I realize that as I age, I am supposed to resist change, but I have not developed that take on life yet. In my lifetime, most of the changes I have seen have been improvements in my life.

Yet, I must confess that for many people, it seems like the only change they welcome is changing the wet diaper of a baby. That will create relieve all around!

I recently came across an informal list of people afraid of innovation.

German writer Johann Georg Heinzmann, who warned people in 1795 about reading. He said that consuming words leads to a "weakening of the eyes, heat rashes, gout, arthritis, hemorrhoids, asthma, apoplexy, pulmonary disease, indigestion, blocking of the bowels, nervous disorder, migraines, epilepsy, hypochondria and melancholy." Be careful about reading! Kind of an odd concern for a writer to have.

Then, in 1803, preacher Jedidiah Morse said, "Let us guard against the insidious encroachments of innovation, that evil and beguiling spirit which is now stalking to and fro through the earth seeking whom he may destroy." Safe to say that he was not open to new forms of praise music in his Sunday services.

In 1854, author Henry David Thoreau criticized the construction of a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas. He said, "But Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

In 1906, composer John Philip Sousa lamented that phonographs were causing "deterioration in American music."

In 1926, the Knights of Columbus warned that the telephone would "break up home life and the old practice of visiting friends."

About the same time, a dean at Princeton observed that cars were becoming a threat to America's young people. "The general effect of the automobile," wrote Howard McClenahan, "was to make the present generation look lightly at the moral code." He worried that youths with cars would begin to drive all over the place on Sundays ... everywhere but church.

Finally, in year 2008, The Atlantic magazine asked the question, "Is Google making us stupid?"

The jury is still out on that one.

Resistance to change is a constant in human life, even around innovations that have proved to be beneficial: Reading, telegraphs, phonographs, telephones, cars and the Internet. Yes, there are problems associated with each, but, on the whole, they have been a huge help to people around the world.

I am not suggesting that change is always good, of course. In my lengthening years on this earth, I could list some changes of which I am not so sure will prove helpful. That would be a quite different article, and maybe one worth exploring at another time. Personally, such reflections tend to make me feel pessimistic, and today, I do not want to go there. Right now, I feel a need to encourage the reader and the writer not to dismiss change too quickly. Consider a potential change prayerfully, being open to fresh winds from the Spirit.

On Illuminated Bible

http://www.saintjohnsbible.org/ 

If you are a musician and you want to use your talent for the Lord, you can perform in church or compose sacred music. If you are a show-off by nature, clown ministry awaits you. If your gift is hospitality, there is always a need for someone to oversee your church's coffee fellowship, and host funeral dinners.

However, what if your talent is calligraphy? You might wish to "calligrify" for the Lord, but what openings are there in the church for that skill today (beyond turning out nice VBS graduation certificates)? The invention of the printing press more than 500 years ago pretty well put scriptoriums out of business.

There are openings in the secular world. Donald Jackson, one of the world's foremost calligraphers, holds the post of Senior Scribe to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth's Crown Office at the House of Lords. However, he had a yen to use his gift in God's service as well. Back in 1970, he told Barbara Walters that he had a dream to handwrite the entire Bible. It was not until the late 1990s, however, that he was given an opportunity to do so, and then it took some 12 years to complete, and that with help of a team of artists, Scripture scholars and theologians.

The opportunity came by way of a commission from Minnesota's St. John's Abbey and University. They contracted Jackson to create a 2-foot-tall, 3-foot-wide volume, to be known as St. John's Bible.

Jackson and his team completed the project in May of 2011, consisting of 1,150 calfskin vellum pages of handwritten text using an ancient ink recipe and quills made from goose and swan feathers. The pages also include numerous gorgeous illuminations, colored with hand-ground pigments and gold leaf. When bound, the Bible will weigh 165 pounds.

Although the materials and processes used to create this volume were modeled on the work of monks in scriptoriums hundreds of years ago, the St. John's Bible reflects its 21st-century milieu. The text itself is that of the New Revised Standard Version (Catholic Edition), and the illuminations include such images as a satellite view of Earth, DNA sequencing, the Twin Towers, scenes of the Cambodian genocide by the Khmer Rouge and others from our time.

Actual pages from the Bible are now on display in various museums, and a very limited number of full-sized replicas are being prepared. The sale of those will help offset the $8 million cost of creating the St. John's Bible.

            Jackson, 73 when the project was completed, calls this Bible his "Sistine Chapel." He said his goal was the same as that of the monks of old, "to make these words look important, feel important."

Love

Ruth Haley Barton, in Sacred Rhythms, says that when it comes to deciding what to do in any situation, we need to step back, pause, and remember that the primary calling of all Christians is to love. What would love call us to do in this situation? What would love do? Love is our deepest calling. John tells us of Jesus:  

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. (John 13:1) 

She thinks that any decision that fails to ask the love question misses the point of Christian practice.

            I agree with her.

Yet, love does not solve everything. I find John Wesley intriguing on this point. He points out that even love in all its purity will not protect us from many mistakes.[1]  

1)      Many mistakes may exist together with pure love.

2)      Some may accidently flow from it. I mean, love itself may incline us to mistake. The pure love of our neighbor, springing from the love of God, thinks no evil, believes and hopes all things. Now, this very temperament, unsuspicious, ready to believe and hope the best of all people, may cause us to think some people are really better than they are. Here then is a clear mistake accidentally flowing from love. 

In this sense, “love” is not the only answer to life. We need the balance of other qualities, in particular wisdom, honesty, and discernment, in order to determine properly what God wants in a situation.

Clearly, we need one another. It is so obvious.  Or is it.  Do we really make relationships a priority?

Albert Schweitzer could say in his Memoirs of Childhood and Youth (1925, p. 87): 

When I look back upon my early days, I am stirred by the thought of the number of people whom I have to thank for what they gave me or what they were to me.  At the same time, I am haunted by an oppressive consciousness of the little gratitude I really showed them while I was young.  How many of them have said farewell to life without my having made clear to them what it meant to me to receive from them so much kindness or so much care!  Many a time have I, with a feeling of shame, said quietly to myself over a grave the words which my mouth ought to have spoken to the departed, while he was still in the flesh. 

            There is a little picture of a turtle on top of fence post.  The caption simply says, "If you see a turtle on a fence post, you know it had help." We need each other, more than we know.

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[1] John Wesley, Chapter 4 of Plain Account of Christian Perfection.

Coca Cola Life

Not the same old formula.

In recent years, companies have learned how dangerous it is to change the ingredients of a successful brand. Exactly 30 years ago, in April 1985, Coca-Cola changed its formula and introduced a product called "New Coke." The response was overwhelmingly negative, and within three months, the original formula was back on the market.

Just how bad was it? The company hotline received 1,500 calls a day, almost four times what they usually logged. Psychiatrists listened in on calls and heard people talking as though they were grieving the death of a family member.

Southerners saw the change through the lens of the Civil War, describing it as yet another surrender to the Yankees. Even Fidel Castro despised New Coke, reportedly calling it "a sign of American capitalist decadence."

Bottom line: Be careful when you change a successful brand. You might end up breaking something that does not need fixing.

Oddly enough, Coke has decided to change its formula once again, offering a new version called "Coca-Cola Life." It was launched in Argentina before being test-marketed in the United Kingdom, and came to the United States in September 2014. People are wondering if it is healthier than regular Coke, since its formula contains a sweetener from natural sources. "Coca-Cola Life" will get its sweetness from sugar and stevia, which is derived from a plant in the chrysanthemum family. Instead of regular Coke's 140 calories per can, Life will have 89.

It competes with Pepsi True, also made with stevia.

Coca-Cola has started offering Life. Here is what one person ponders about the new Coke.

For a moment, imagine the marketing meeting that must have taken place when they decided on the branding of this new product. Was there not anybody in that room who thought that naming it Coca-Cola Life was a terrible idea? What does that make normal Coca-Cola with its normal amount of sugar — Coca-Cola Death?[1]

            This move of Coke toward Life, and even Pepsi toward Truth, might suggest a sermon for some preachers.

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[1] Gary Bainbridge, "Coca Cola Life, and why you can't have it both ways," Mirror, October 9, 2014, mirror.co.uk.

On Solitude

           

This picture represents much of the spiritual formation view of solitude. An article in the Word World suggests that most people find being alone with their thoughts and with no distractions is unpleasant. Some people would rather give themselves electric shocks than sit alone thinking for even six minutes. Timothy Wilson and some colleagues at the University of Virginia and Harvard University conducted a series of 11 studies. The abstract, published in the July 4, 2014 issue of science magazine, summarized the results in the following way. 

"In 11 studies, we found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more, and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts. Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative." 

            Participants ranged in age from 18 to 77. Those conducting the study told them to entertain themselves alone in a room with just their thoughts. They could also imagine doing one of three pleasant activities, such as hiking. Regardless of age, the participants showed no fondness for being alone and thinking. On the nine-point scale, the average rating was in the middle. They would rather have something to do than have nothing to do. This was true, even if we are talking about a brief period. In one phase of the study, you had the option of being alone for 15 minutes or administering yourself an electric shock. 12 of the 18 males (67 percent) and six of the 24 females (25 percent) gave themselves at least one electric shock during the 15-minute period. The conclusion of those conducting the study is that the human naturally engages the world. Even when we are by ourselves, our focus is the outside world. Without training in meditation, people would prefer to engage the world.

            The point of the study is to highlight the challenges of the disengaged mind. By disengaging, spirituality wants to suggest that we focus upon the inner life, and consider in a meditative spirit the way in which we process our interactions with the external world. Much of spirituality focuses on limiting or modifying the influence of the external world. The failure to spend such time alone for considering such matters may well lead to spiritual issues. It highlights that we cannot really disengage from the world, but we can consider how we interact with it. I wonder how personality type, especially the introvert versus the extrovert, would relate to such a study.

            Does the difficulty in spending time alone mean that our society is working too hard? Does such a study indict our sinful nature? Does it mean we are hard-wired for external rather than internal reality? Wilson thinks our minds do have some hardwiring toward engaging the world rather than focus on our internal world. What does this mean for the whole notion of quiet time with God? It may well mean that spirituality is as much involved in our engagement with the world as it is sitting in silence.

            Maybe the truth is that we can be active and engaged in the world and thinking deeply at the same time. We may need to spend more time considering how active engagement and pondering join in our spirituality. Scott Peck writes of the importance of thinking well. It does not come naturally. We must learn to think well as we process relationships with people and our world.[1]

            Stan Purdum will say that the bicycle is a marvelous thought machine, combining activity with thought and silence. Brother Lawrence, a monk of the 1600s, wrote The Practice of the Presence of God. At one point, he writes that the time of business in the kitchen does not differ from the time of prayer. The point is that we need to find the means that works best for us to ponder the issues of life and the things of God.

            Here is something to ponder. 

Sloth is not to be confused with laziness. Lazy people, people who sit around and watch the grass grow, may be people at peace. Their sun-drenched, bumblebee dreaming may be the prelude to action or itself an act well worth the acting. Slothful people, on the other hand, may be very busy people. They are people who go through the motions, who fly on automatic pilot. Like somebody with a bad head cold, they have mostly lost their sense of taste and smell. They know something's wrong with them, but not wrong enough to do anything about it. Other people come and go, but through glazed eyes they hardly notice them. They are letting things run their course. They are getting through their lives.[2] 

 

 

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[1] Peck, M. Scott. The Road Less Traveled and Beyond. New York: Touchstone, 1997, 23 ff.

[2] --Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (Harper & Row, 1973), 89-90.