Life as a “Roller Coaster” Is The Wrong Analogy

May 14, 2013 — 1 Comment

We’ve all heard it said that life is like a roller coaster, a series of highs and lows. It gives the impression of regularly spaced mountaintop experiences followed by corresponding lows. That’s not an accurate image. 

 

In my experience, life is much more like train tracks with highs and lows in close proximity. Pain and pleasure, joy and heartache are experienced together.

 

train tracks

 

Never was this analogy more apparent to me than this weekend.

 

Sunday began with excited children rushing into mommy’s room delivering eggs and bacon along with homemade cards to celebrate Mother’s Day.

 

At church, we celebrated the baby dedication of our friends’ daughter.  Wearing an adorable white dress with pink sweater and bow, she was presented by her parents who dedicated their precious gift back to God. The dedication was all the more meaningful as our friends had waited a long time for her. 

 

But in the afternoon, I attended the funeral of my friend Pastor John Layman. John was gregarious, full of life.  No one did a better job of loving people than John. He has been a constant supporter of HOPE and our family. Yet his life felt too short due to cancer. He left his precious wife and family at age 64.

 

Heading to bed, I couldn’t shake the train tracks analogy and it made me want to:

  • Seek joy amid pain.  At John’s funeral, I felt the need to text Laurel to tell her how grateful I was for her presence in my life. Pain and loss clarified the things that were important—relationships, faith.
  • Look for pain amid joy. Conversely, even on the highest mountaintop experience, there still are challenges all around us. As joyous as Mother’s Day is, there are some who long to be mothers and that day has not yet come. Even as we celebrate, we want to find ways of becoming increasingly aware of others’ needs and actively  enter in the pain of others.

A train tracks approach doesn’t negate the pain, but it helps us live fully and celebrate until the day we experience full joy and there truly is no more suffering.  At John’s funeral, we sang the timeless words that are a constant reminder for us in times of joy or in times of pain:
“Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.”

 

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Andrew Carnegie once said, “The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.” His belief fueled a passion for philanthropy that spread among some of the titans of industry of the last century. Carnegie was joined by John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, J. Paul Getty, J. Howard Pew, and many others who created massive wealth – and then used their wealth in service to others.

henry ford

In reading their biographies in The Foundation Builders, a book with concise biographies of twelve of the greatest philanthropists (written by Martin Morse Wooster), I realized they shared several principles of philanthropy:

  1. Why wait? Almost without exception, these philanthropists did the majority of their giving while they were living.  Perceiving the challenge of donor intent, they recognized the best way to ensure funds were used as they intended was to give their wealth away while earning it. Construction titan Joseph Jacobs wrote, “I believe that, after the first generation, inherited wealth loses the spirit and the values of the people who earned that wealth. There comes a disconnection between the funds and the source of the funds …”
  2. Money can break down the family.Most limited the wealth they passed on to their families—believing that it would spoil initiative and actually harm them. Andrew Carnegie wrote, “Wise men will soon conclude that, for the best interests of the members of their families… [giving large amount of money to heirs] is an improper use of their means.”
  3. Wealth can destroy others. Most philanthropists seemed to be obsessed that their giving would not reward slothfulness, but rather stimulate hard work and dignity:John D. Rockefeller’s “constant nightmare was that he would promote dependence, sapping the Protestant work ethic. He dreaded the thought of [many people being] addicted to his handouts.” Henry Ford explained, “We believe that what is called being charitable is a particularly mean form of self-gratification – mean because, while it pretends to aid, it really hurts.”
  4. Hard work and modesty were always part of their secret sauce. Instead of megalomaniacs, the vast majority were rather humble and hard-working. Andrew Carnegie: “This is the duty of the man of wealth: To set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him, and, after doing so, to consider all surplus simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer… in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results…”
  5. Forgotten good: Their business. These stories celebrated their philanthropy, but I found myself amazed at the way they ran their businesses. Henry Ford regularly would hire people others wouldn’t. He took great satisfaction seeing them become productive employees: “In 1919, nearly 20 percent of his workers had some sort of disability… Former criminals – including violent ones – were also given a second chance at Ford plants.” It wasn’t just their philanthropy that impacted the world; the way they grew their businesses had an even more dramatic impact on improving families. 
Posted on May 7, 2013 In Leadership, Uncategorized , , , , , , ,
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Poetry and Potty Talk

April 30, 2013 — 8 Comments

A few weeks ago, a friend sent me a link to a poem, “The Affliction,” by George Herbert: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173622.

I opened it at work but between new emails popping up and my “to do” checklist, I couldn’t comprehend it.

I just didn’t have the space necessary to soak in the poetry.

It wasn’t until the weekend when I opened it again that I finally was able to slow down sufficiently to understand the beauty of this poem.

poetry

Image credit: monticello / 123RF Stock Photo

Poetry doesn’t exist with a hurried pace of life – bullet lists do. In my blogging, I know how busy people are and how bullet lists succinctly communicate. Similarly, with our field operations, we try to turn all key procedures into checklists.

But sometimes efficient communication isn’t enough.

We miss beauty. In our on-call world, we run by vistas without stopping to take a look. Or we rush to eat lunch instead of truly tasting our food and enjoying a meal with friends.

It wasn’t just the George Herbert poem that made me realize rushed life spoils focus and creativity. Around the same time, I came to the disturbing realization that a disproportionate number of my ideas and creative thinking happens when I’m in the shower, the one remaining haven in our overly-connected world.

Creativity flourishes when it’s given space to flourish. It flourishes when we aren’t bombarded with other noise and information. When we put the world on pause.

Now more than ever, we need a few unhurried moments – beyond the bathroom. Times when our phones are out of sight. A day of Sabbath where we don’t measure our day’s effectiveness by how much we accomplish.

Where we take Selah – a time for pause and reflection. A moment to slow down and breathe deeply.

Maybe it’s time to bring poetry back into our lives – and along with it, the discipline of Sabbath and Selah.

Try it this week:

  • Rediscover the beauty of the Psalms and take time to slowly. Read. Each. Line. Slowly. Here are a few Psalms to get you started: 40, 63, 51
  • Take a Sabbath rest. I am trying desperately to protect one day a month where I unplug. I focus on important but not urgent tasks. Where I might just read a bit of poetry and think about ways of doing our work differently.
  • Read from Poets.org. Poets.org is an incredible archive of poetry, poet biographies, as well as videos of poems read by the authors, presented by the Academy of American Poets.
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Open Source Everything

April 23, 2013 — 11 Comments

Not long ago, I saw a HOPE photo used in the fundraising campaign of another organization. A different ministry was employing our tagline of “investing in the dreams of the poor” in one of their brochures.  An additional organization had created field manuals that looked strikingly similar to some of ours. It didn’t look like a coincidence.

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If we were a for-profit company, we’d probably have meetings on how to respond. Most likely, we’d be a little ticked off.  Perhaps, we’d be talking to lawyers and drafting cease-and-desist letters.

But if we prioritize impact above organizational fame and identity, I have to celebrate that some of the pieces we’ve developed are being used by others. Nonprofit accountability isn’t tied to shareholder return, but to lives impacted. We should be most generous in supporting others eager to impact our broader mission. When we share information, causes win.

So I’ve started wondering, what would happen if we completely adopted the open-source model as an industry?

Here are a few case studies of ridiculously generous sharing of information and open innovation:

At HOPE, we hold no patents. We have no intellectual property. No covert operations. No worrying about whether or not someone might replicate what we do. And if there is anything we can do to help peer organizations, please let us know.

We’ve had other organizations share their learning with us – and it a privilege to share with others. Freely given. Freely give.

Let’s celebrate the shared outcomes and be more generous with anyone eager to join us in maximizing the good we can do.

P.S. But in the future, if you’d like to use something we’ve developed, please ask. We’ll be happy to share!

 

 

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