A Christmas Disturbance

In Isaiah 35, the prophet speaks the word of the Lord saying, “Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.”

I don't know about you, but the more I think about the coming of the day of the Lord, the more I am disturbed. While my first impulse is to find comfort in the words of this new day that God will usher in, I quickly begin to ask myself - what if I am part of the overall problem?

I believe being disturbed by God is okay. It causes us to sit up and listen. Edgar Shein, the father of organizational culture and leadership and former professor at MIT, points out that all people and organizations work hard at maintaining equilibrium (we don't want to change). We are only motivated to change when enough disconfirming data is introduced into the system (our life) to cause serious discomfort and disequilibrium.

In Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, we see that Scrooge is impacted by the Spirits of Christmas Past and Present, but is only when serious level of disturbance is introduced by the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come that Scrooge finally changes. Scrooge is confronted and disturbed as he sees the result of his unreflective life. His grasping, greedy, and relation-less life ends with no fanfare and no compassion. The Spirit takes him to a back alley shop where a woman is selling Scrooge’s bed curtains. Scrooge hears her say, “If he wanted to keep 'em after he was dead, a wicked old screw, why wasn't he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he'd have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself."

The consequence of Scrooge's unreflective life, which he lived only for himself, is highly disturbing.

And this is our danger; most of us are unaware of how selfishly we live our lives. We are so comfortable that God must disturb us to get us to see ourselves honestly. Most of the time, we don't realize how clouded our vision really is.

Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book An Altar to the World, writes, “We have just enough religion to make us hate one another but not enough to make us love one another. Because we are human, which is to say we are essentially self-interested, we are always looking for ways to add a little more authority to our causes, to come up with better reasons to fight for what we want than to just say, “Because I want it, that’s why.” If we can convince ourselves that God wants it too – even if that means we cast God in our own image so we can deny the image of God in those not like us – than we are free to harm others not for our own reasons but in the name of God, which allows us to feel holy about it instead of feeling bad.”

While it doesn't really excite me, the truth is I need to see my name on that tombstone. I need God to shake me on a regular basis and disturb me to the depths of me being.

For my welfare? The best thing for my welfare is to stay blind and comfortable.

For my reclamation, then.

Longing for a Silent Night

Psalm 62:1-2
For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken.

I am amazed each Christmas season at the amount of noise. Noisy lights, noisy music, noisy kids, noisy homes and noisy stores barrage my mind – an assault on all my senses. We even have Christmas cards now that make noise. It’s not enough to have a card one reads – now it has to sing and make fun of us.

The irony of all the noise is the birth of Christ. God comes to us in the quiet of the night. Shepherds on a hillside were inundated with sounds of angels, no doubt, but before the angels announced the birth Joseph and Mary were quietly finding their place of solitude. A quiet night and a simple stable: it is into this setting that God chooses to make Himself known. No prophets in the wilderness crying out on this night. That would come later. A simple, pastoral scene ushers in the greatest moment in history.

What is also ironic is what we have made of this quiet and simple message. Humanity has taken what was pure and simple and distorted it into our image more than God’s image. I wonder if this Christmas we could find time for silence and solitude? As Thomas Merton writes,

“Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else. They constantly defile the silence of the forests and the mountains and the sea. They bore through silent nature in every direction with their machines, for fear that the calm world might accuse them of their own emptiness. The urgency of their swift movement seems to ignore the tranquility of nature by pretending to have a purpose…It is the silence of the world that is real. Our noise, our business, our purposes, and all our fatuous statements about our purposes our business and our noise: these are the illusion.”

Maybe we need to find a place to actually live a silent night rather than just sing about it on Christmas Eve.

Mercy and Justice

"But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved" - Ephesians 2:4-5

In my personal experience, I know for a fact that actions have consequences. If my daughter doesn't turn in her homework, for example, she will face some consequence for the fault. Now she may have good reasons for not doing her homework, or maybe the dog actually ate it this time, but the reality is that while she may receive forgiveness, the consequence for the wrong remains.

I remember counseling a couple where sin was committed. The offender asked forgiveness and it was ultimately granted, but it could not repair the breech of mistrust. The sin was forgiven, but the mistrust could not be forgotten.

Somewhere along the way, many of us were taught that forgiveness and mercy means we shouldn't have to pay for the effects of our poor choices. I'm not really sure where this came from. Maybe our society let us get away with way too much. Maybe too many of our teachers said it was okay that we didn't turn in our homework on time. Maybe too many preachers proclaimed mercy to exclude any kind of justice from God. But the scripture points to both God's mercy and God's justice.

Thomas Merton wrote, "The mercy of God does not suspend the laws of cause and effect. When God forgives me a sin, He destroys the guilt of sin but the effects and the punishment of sin remain. Yet it is precisely in punishing sin that God's mercy most evidently identifies itself with His justice. Every sin is a violation of the love of God, and the justice of God makes it impossible for this violation to be perfectly repaired by anything but love."

Mercy is a part of God's nature, but scripture is replete with examples that God's mercy does not do away with the consequences of our sin. Why? Because God's justice makes it impossible to perfectly repair any violation outside of love. God's justice makes love a necessity for reconciliation.

For those who have tried to repair their violations in ways outside of love, heartache is the typical result. Is it possible to thank God for God's justice, knowing that it pushes us toward a greater need for love?

I thank God for God's mercy AND justice. (Even if I do prefer the mercy.)

How Do You See Others?

"Your idea of me is fabricated with materials you have borrowed from other people and from yourself. What you think of me depends on what you think of yourself. Perhaps you create your idea of me out of material that you would like to eliminate from your own idea of yourself. Perhaps your idea of me is a reflection of what other people think of you. Or perhaps what you think of me is simply what you think I think of you.
"Our ability to be sincere with ourselves, with God, and with other men[sic] is really proportionate to our capacity for sincere love. And the sincerity of our love depends in large measure upon our capacity to believe ourselves loved. Most of the moral and mental and even religious complexities of our time go back to our desperate fear that we are not and can never be really loved by anyone."

- Thomas Merton

One of the reasons I am continually fascinated by Thomas Merton is that he seems to know me so well. Maybe he knows us all well.

If I am honest, I must admit that I have not always reflected upon why I respond to people as I do. I have not always reflected upon why I view people the way I do. But as I grow older, I spend more time in self-reflection... in contemplation. This helps me to see more clearly at 40 than I ever did at 20.

When we are young, we lack sincerity and humility. When we view negativity, frailty or flaw in another, we are convinced that it is all about them. They are the broken ones in need of repair and therapy. When I see the flaws of others, I feel better about myself. But why is that?

The irony is that the negative flaws and frustrations I see in others really are reflections of my own insufficiencies. If I am honest, there were many experiences in my life that caused me to feel unloved or unworthy. This brokenness is manifested in my understanding of others. I've known this to be true for others as I engage in pastoral counseling - I can see their problems! It has taken many years for me to realize that it has been my problem.

Do I believe myself loved? This is the real question. When we believe we are loved and when we believe we are who God desires us to be, it is amazing how we see people differently.

Words of Life

I often wonder why it is that I can see so clearly the flaws and blemishes of others, yet rarely see them in myself. My own inadequacies shape my worldview, particularly as it relates to how I view others. Am I mistrusting? Maybe the lack of trust is more about me. Do I look upon others with a lack of hope and optimism? Maybe it is the fear of my own failure that I despise.

Thomas Merton said it best,

They want me to be what I am in their sight: that is, an extension of themselves. They do not realize that if I am fully myself, my life will become the completion and the fulfillment of their own, but that if I merely live as their shadow, I will serve only to remind them of their own unfulfillment.

"Do others merely live as our shadow?"

We must dig deep into the interior of our own lives and motives. Who are we? Why do we look at others the way we do? These questions and many more call me to not only dig deeper inside myself, but they also encourage me to speak words of life to others, especially to those I have influence over. Is it possible that if we build healthy spirits in our children, our spouses, and our loved ones that it will affect how they view others? Can our encouragement have influence beyond the walls of our home? If my family is filled with a clear understanding of who they are in Christ, won't they find the 'completion of self' Merton speaks of? Won't they view others not from the shadows of their fear, but from the fullness of grace?

Kathryn Stockett, in her book The Help, reflects this through a beautiful interaction between the house maid Aibileen and the white child she cares for, Mae Mobley Leefolt;

I touch her cheek. “You alright, baby?” She say, “Mae Mo bad.” The way she say it, like it’s a fact, make my insides hurt. “Mae Mobley,” I say cause I got a notion to try something. “You a smart girl?” She just look at me, like she don’t know. “You a smart girl,” I say again. She say, “Mae Mo smart.” I say, “You a kind little girl?” She just look at me. She two years old. She don’t know
what she is yet. I say, “You a kind girl,” and she nod, repeat it back to me. But before I can do another one, she get up and chase that poor dog around the yard and laugh and that’s when I get to wondering, what would happen if I told her she something good, ever day? She turn from the birdbath and smile and holler, “Hi, Aibee. I love you, Aibee,” and I feel a tickly feeling, soft like the flap a butterfly wings, watching her play out there. The way I used to feel watching Treelore. And that makes me kind a sad, memoring. After while, Mae Mobley come over and press her cheek up to mine and just hold it there, like she know I be hurting. I hold her tight, whisper, “You a smart girl. You a kind girl, Mae Mobley. You hear me?” And I keep saying it till she repeat it back to me.

As for me, I will speak words of life and encouragement. I hope it will shape my view of others. I hope it will shape my children's view of the world.

Tradition vs. Convention

Okay, so I realize it's been May since I posted on my blog, which actually discounts it from being a blog. But when you live on St. Simons Island and you take a summer break, well..., the summers last quite a while here.

Anyway, I am back to posting excerpts from Merton that we use for discussion in staff meetings at Wesley. While I realize it isn't original content, it is transformative nonetheless. Let it get in you and you to can fall in love with Thomas Merton. Now that evenings on the back porch are more bearable (and enjoyable) you may even see some original gleanings before too long.

Matthew 15:1-20
1Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.” 3He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4For God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ 5But you say that whoever tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,’ then that person need not honor the father. 6So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God. 7You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: 8‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; 9in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’”
10Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: 11it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” 12Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” 13He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. 14Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” 15But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” 16Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? 17Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? 18But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. 19For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. 20These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

Excerpts from No Man is An Island, “Vocation – Tradition in the Monastery” by Thomas Merton

• The first ones to condemn the monastery that has become infected with worldliness are those who, in the world, are themselves least monastic, for even those who have abandoned their religion often retain a high and exacting idea of religious perfection.
• Where the sense of monastic tradition is lacking, monks immediately begin to lead unbalanced lives. They are unable to learn true discretion. They cannot acquire a sense of proportion. They forget what they are supposed to be. They are not able to settle down and live at peace in the monastery. They cannot get along with their superiors or their brethren. Why do all these things happen? Because the monks who have never learned how to be real monks are driving themselves crazy trying to live the monastic life with the spirit and the methods appropriate to some other kind of life.
• It must be learned. And it cannot be learned without direct contact with the channels of life through which it comes. That is why St. Benedict urged his own monks to read Cassian, St. Basil, and the Desert Fathers. But the reading of ancient monastic books is only one of these channels, and by no means the most important. The only way to become a monk is to live among real monks, and to learn the life from their example.
• Tradition is living and active, but convention is passive and dead. Tradition does not form us automatically: we have to work to understand it. Convention is accepted passively, as a matter of routine. Therefore convention easily becomes an evasion of reality. It offers us only pretended ways of solving the problems of living—a system of gestures and formalities. Tradition really teaches us to live and shows us how to take full responsibility for our own lives. Thus tradition is often flatly opposed to what is ordinary, to what is mere routine. But convention, which is a mere repetition of familiar routines, follows the line of least resistance.
• Tradition, which is always old, is at the same time ever new because it is always reviving—born again in each new generation, to be lived and applied in a new and particular way.
• Tradition nourishes the life of the spirit; convention merely disguises its interior decay.
• Finally, tradition is creative. Always original, it always opens out new horizons for an old journey. Convention, on the other hand, is completely unoriginal. It is slavish imitation. It is closed in upon itself and leads to complete sterility.

Thomas Merton: Being and Doing, Part 3

I continue to be amazed at the insight Merton had on the human soul. In this final reflection on "Being and Doing", Merton pushes all of us to reflect on work and rest, sound and silence, being and doing. His line, "If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life’s leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth." My prayer is that our lives will not be a hell on earth. -JES

Matthew 12:1-6
At that time Jesus went through the cornfields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.’ 3He said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. 5Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests in the temple break the sabbath and yet are guiltless? 6I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.

From Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, Chapter 7: Being and Doing (Part 3, pp. 127ff)
• One who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly. One who is content with what they have, and who accepts the fact that the inevitably miss very much in life, is better than one who has much more but who worries about all he may be missing. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony. Music is pleasing not only for the sound, but because of the silence in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life’s leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth. If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest, God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will silently withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty. May we learn to pass from one imperfect activity to another without worrying too much with what we are missing. It is true that we make many mistakes, but the biggest of them all is to be surprised at them: as if we had some hope of never making any.
• The relative perfection which we must attain to in this life if we are to live as children of God is not the twenty-four hour a day production of perfect acts of virtue, but a life from which practically all the obstacles to god’s love have been removed or overcome. We have this selfish anxiety to get the most out of everything, to be a brilliant success in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. We can only get rid of this anxiety by being content to miss something in almost everything we do. We cannot master everything, taste everything, understand everything, drain every experience to its last dregs. If we have the courage to let almost everything else go, we will probably be able to retain the one thing necessary for us – whatever that may be. If we are too eager to have everything, we will almost certainly miss even the one thing we need. Happiness consists of finding out precisely what the “one thing necessary” may be, in our lives, and in gladly relinquishing all the rest. For then, by a divine paradox, we find that everything else is given to us together with the one thing we needed.

On Being and Doing: Thomas Merton

Continuing to struggle with Merton, pushes me deeper to discover who I am and how I understand my vocation and calling. Merton's great, probing reflection for me in these thoughts from his work, "No Man Is An Island", is "The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am. My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to imitate one another’s imagined greatness." May we always struggle to be only who God calls us to be (I wish that were always easy).

Isaiah 58.13-14
13If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honourable;
if you honour it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;*
14then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

From Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, Chapter 7: Being and Doing (Part 2, pp. 120ff)
• It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from effects that are beyond our control and be content with the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of our interior life. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting immediate reward, to love without instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition.
• Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.
• When we are truly ourselves, we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.
• We do not live just to “do something”. We must engage in a wise alternation of activity and rest. We do not live more fully merely by doing more, seeing more, tasting more and experiencing more than we ever have before. On the contrary, some of us need to discover that we will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience much less than usual. Everything depends on the quality of our acts and expressions. There are times, then, when in order to keep ourselves in existence at all we simply have to sit back for a while and do nothing. And for a man who has let himself be drawn completely out of himself by his activity, nothing is more difficult than to sit still and rest, doing nothing at all. The very act of resting is the hardest and most courageous act he can perform: and often it is quite beyond his power.
• The value of human activity depends almost entirely on the humility to accept ourselves as we are. The reason why we do things so badly is that we are not content to do what we can.
• The fruitfulness of our life depends in large measure on our ability to doubt our own words and to question the values of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility. All he asks of any act he performs is that it be his act.
• The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am. My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to imitate one another’s imagined greatness. Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire, I would really begin to live after all. I would be liberated from the painful duty of saying what I really do not think and of acting in a way that betrays God’s truth and the integrity of my own soul.

S3 for South Georgia - A Sanctuary in Time

“S3 has helped me develop the discipline and self-awareness to have an eye on my reserves. I believe that this is an important guard against burnout.”

– Rev. Dr. Jimmy Asbell

“. . .the difference between wandering through a barren land all alone or travelling with deeply loyal friends…”

– Rev. Creede Hinshaw

“What I did not know when we first began was that the time we would spend together investing in building relationship with God and each other would spill over into ministry and life.”

– Rev. Teresa Edwards

“The luxury of spending two or three days with people you respect, trust, and love has been a real gift. It has given us a safe place to fall and a nurturing place to grow.”

– Rev. Karen Kilhefner

I continue to grow in my understanding of Sabbath. As an ordained United Methodist elder, I continually experience the deep need for margin and reserves in my life. I don’t control when the crises will inundate me. As I pastor, I try to focus on the urgent needs of the week. Unfortunately, the reality of ministry tends to be extremely chaotic. Just two weeks ago, three tragedies struck in one day. But I was not overwhelmed. I was ready to minister. How? I am learning to remember and observe Sabbath practice.

I wish I could tell you that came naturally. It does not. My cultivation of Sabbath came through a unique blessing called S3. The S3 learning experience offered me and seven other elders from South Georgia the opportunity to create a sanctuary in time - providing a Sabbath environment for us. Through the S3 program, we were afforded a significant amount of time together over a two year period. Through Sabbath, study, and service (S3), the experience created deep relationships with God and one another.

We studied Centering Prayer. While other members of my group thought I didn’t get that much out of the prayer videos, the experience has broadened my spiritual practice. I am a better and deeper preacher. It encouraged me to develop contemplative practices in the local church. It transformed my ministry.

We gathered for Sabbath experience five times per year for two years. We played golf. We ceased labor. We experienced the gift of life and friendship. We laughed, ate, drank, and shared our lives with each other. Even though we no longer receive funding, we still meet three times per year. The same is true for every other S3 group!

We committed to service by mentoring new S3 groups. Our group started new groups in South Georgia and we are now laying the groundwork for birthing the S3 program in South Georgia.

S3 speaks for itself. Take time to call up and ask a S3 participant (South Georgia has 20 graduates), “What difference has this made in your life and in your church?” Every single one will tell you it has been effective and powerful.

If you are a lay person, encourage your ordained elder to participate. Give them the time and support to engage fully in S3. It will make all the difference in their life and it will make a difference in your church.

Very soon, we will have detailed information, a helpful video for churches and clergy, and an application on the conference website, www.sgaumc.org

Thomas Merton on Being and Doing, Part 1

During Wesley staff meetings each week, we wrestle with the writings of Thomas Merton who challenges us to BE in God more than to DO for God. This week, Tommy directs us to examine how we understand our being and if it is tied negatively to our doing.

Genesis 2.2-9
2And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. 3So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.
4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; 6but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— 7then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,* and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. 8And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

From Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, Chapter 7: Being and Doing (Part 1, pp. 117ff)
• We are warmed by the fire, not the smoke of the fire. We are carried over the sea by a ship, not by the wake of a ship. So too, what we are is to be sought in the invisible depths of our own being, not in outward reflection in our own acts. We must find our real selves not in the froth stirred up by the impact of our being upon the beings around us, but in our own soul which is the principle of all our acts.
• My soul is hidden and invisible. It is hidden from us. We cannot see our own eyes, but we know they are there because we can see. Our soul can reflect in the mirror of its own activity, but what is seen in the mirror is only a reflection of who I am, not my true being. Much depends on how the soul sees itself in the mirror of its own activity.
• Our soul only finds itself when it acts. We must act. Stagnation brings death. I do not need to see myself; I simply need to be myself. I must think and act like a living being, but I must not plunge my whole self into what I think and do, or seek always to find myself in the work I have done. The soul that projects itself entirely into activity and seeks itself outside itself in the work of its own will is like a madman who sleeps on the sidewalk in front of his house instead of living inside where it is quiet and warm.
• Being means nothing to those who hate and fear what they themselves are. They must struggle to escape their true being. They verify a false existence by constantly viewing what they themselves do. They keep looking in the mirror for reassurance, but they do not expect to see themselves. They are hoping for some sign that they have become the god they hope to become by the means of their own frantic activity – invulnerable, all powerful, infinitely wise, unbearably fruitful, and unable to die.
• When we constantly look in the mirror of our own acts, our spiritual double-vision splits us into two people. We strain to see and we forget which image is real. In fact, reality is no longer found either in himself or in his shadow. The substance has gone out of itself into the shadow and he has become two shadows instead of one real person. Then the battle begins. Instead of one shadow praising the other, it accuses the other. The activities that were meant to exalt us now condemn us. We can never be real enough or active enough. The less we are able to BE the more we must DO. We are now our own slave driver – a shadow whipping a shadow to death, because it cannot produce reality out of our own nonentity. Then comes fear. We who “are not” become terrified by what we cannot do. We had illusions of power and sanctity, but now tidal waves of nonentity, powerlessness, hopelessness surge up in us with every action we attempt. The shadow hates and judges the shadow who is not a god and who can do absolutely nothing.
• In order to find God in ourselves, we must stop looking at ourselves, stop checking and verifying ourselves in the mirror of our own futility, and be content to BE in God and to do whatever God wills, according to our limitations, judging our acts not in the light of our own illusions, but in the light of God’s reality which is all around us in the things and people we live with.

Thomas Merton on Asceticism and Sacrifice, Part 2

2 Thessalonians 3:6-15
6 Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. 7For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, 8and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. 9This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. 10For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. 11For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. 12Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. 13Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.
14 Take note of those who do not obey what we say in this letter; have nothing to do with them, so that they may be ashamed. 15Do not regard them as enemies, but warn them as believers.

From Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, Chapter 6: Asceticism and Sacrifice (Part 2, pp. 106ff)
• The real purpose of asceticism is to disclose the difference between the evil use of created things, which is sin, and their good use, which is virtue. We must gain possession of ourselves, by asceticism, in order that we may be able to give ourselves to God.
• The only sacrifice of ourselves that God accepts is the purity of our love. Any renunciation that helps us to love God more is good and useful. In order for us to spiritualize our lives and make them pleasing to God, we must become quiet. Peace of the soul does not depend on physical inactivity – some people are perfectly capable of tasting true spiritual peace in an active life. Our culture does not provide ideal conditions for entering ourselves. Everything in modern life is calculated to KEEP us from entering into ourselves and thinking about spiritual things. The whole mechanism of modern life is geared for a flight from God and from the spirit into the wilderness of neurosis. There is a world of difference between work and agitation. Work occupies mind and body and brings peace to the soul that has a semblance of order and spiritual understanding. Agitation, on the other hand, destroys the spiritual usefulness of work and frustrates its physical and social purpose. Agitation is a fruit of tension in a spirit that is turning dizzily from one stimulus to another and trying to react to 15 different appeals at one time. Work leads to peace (if there is balance). Agitation leads to the death of the interior life.
• Good habits are only developed by repeated acts – we cannot discipline ourselves to be consistent with any degree of intelligence unless we go about it systematically. We must have structure. To desire the spiritual life is to desire discipline.
• Asceticism is utterly useless if it turns us into freaks. The cornerstone of all asceticism is humility, and Christian humility is first of all a matter of supernatural common sense. It teaches us to take ourselves as we are, instead of pretending (as pride would have us imagine) that we are something better than we are. Pride makes us artificial, humility makes us real. In II Thessalonians 3, work and supernatural acceptance of ordinary life are seen by the Apostle as a protection against the restless agitation of false mysticism. We are to work and live in simplicity, with more joy and greater security than others, because we do not look for any special fulfillment in this life. We are to live in peace among transient things. It is supreme humility to see that ordinary life, embraced by perfect faith, can be more saintly and more supernatural than a spectacular ascetical career. Such humility dares to be ordinary, and that is something beyond the reach of spiritual pride. Pride always longs to be unusual. Humility not so. Humility finds all its peace in hope, knowing that Christ must come again to elevate and transfigure ordinary things and fill them with his glory.
• God is more glorified by one who uses the good of things of this life in simplicity and with gratitude than by the nervous asceticism of someone who is agitated about every detail of his self-denial.

Thomas Merton on Ascetism and Sacrifice, Part 1

I'm continuing to post thoughts from Thomas Merton that we are using for our time of spiritual formation at Wesley staff meetings. Tommy always causes deep reflection and a lot of discussion in our time together.

Romans 8:1-10
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit* of life in Christ Jesus has set you* free from the law of sin and of death. 3For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin,* he condemned sin in the flesh, 4so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.* 5For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit* set their minds on the things of the Spirit.* 6To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit* is life and peace. 7For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, 8and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit,* since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit* is life because of righteousness.

From Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, Chapter 6: Asceticism and Sacrifice (Part 1, pp. 96ff)
• The spiritual life is not merely a negation of matter. When the New Testament speaks of the “flesh” as our enemy, it takes the flesh in a special sense. When Christ said, “The flesh profits us nothing,” in John 6:64, he was speaking of flesh without spirit, flesh living for its own ends, not only in sensual but even in spiritual things. As long as we are on the earth, our vocation calls us to life spiritually while still “in the flesh.”
• We cannot become saints merely by trying to run away from material things. To have a spiritual life is to have a life that is spiritual in all its wholeness – a life in which the actions of the body are holy because of the soul, and the soul is holy because of God dwelling and acting in it. When we live such a life the actions of our body are directed to God by God Himself and give Him glory, and at the same time they help to sanctify the soul. The saint, therefore, is sanctified not only by fasting when he/she should fast but also by eating when he/she should eat. He/she is not only sanctified by his prayers in the darkness of the night, but by the sleep that he takes in obedience to God, Who made us what we are. Solitude not only contributes to union with God, but also God’s supernatural love for friends and relatives and those with whom we live and work.
• It gives God great glory and pleasure for a person to live in this world using and appreciating the good things of life without care, without anxiety, and without inordinate passion. In order to know and love God through His gifts, we have to use them as if we used them not – and yet we have to use them. To use things as if we used them not means to use them without selfishness, without fear, without afterthought, and with perfect gratitude and confidence and love of God.
• Self-denial is sterile and absurd if we practice it for the wrong reasons or, worse still, without any valid reason at all. Therefore, although it is true that we must deny ourselves in order to come to a true knowledge of God, we must also have some knowledge of God and our relationship with Him in order to deny ourselves intelligently. First of all, our self-denial must be humble. Otherwise, it is a contradiction in terms. It must also be supernatural – ordered not only for our own perfection or the good of society, but ordered to God.
• Although the grace of the Holy Spirit teaches us to use created things “as if we used them not” – that is to say, with detachment and indifference, it does not makes us indifferent to the value of things in themselves. On the contrary, only when we are detached from things can we really value them as we should. It is only when we are “indifferent” to them that we can really begin to love them. The indifference of which I speak must, therefore, be an indifference not to things themselves but to their effects in our own lives.

Reflections on Suffering by Thomas Merton, Part 4

The staff at Wesley is continuing to struggle with the writings of Thomas Merton in our spiritual formation time. Wanted to share some of it with you.

2 Corinthians 12:1-10
It is necessary to boast; nothing is to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. 2I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. 3And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows— 4was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. 5On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. 6But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, 7even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. 8Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, 9but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

From Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, Chapter 5: The Word of the Cross: On Suffering (Part 4)
• When is suffering useless? When it only turns us in upon ourselves, when it makes us only sorry for ourselves, when it changes love into hatred, when it reduces all things to fear. Useless suffering cannot be consecrated to God because it is fruitless and rooted in sin. Sin and useless suffering increase together.
• But the grace of Christ is constantly working to turn useless suffering into something fruitful after all. How? By suddenly stanching the wound of sin. As soon as our life stops bleeding out of us in sin, suffering begins to have creative possibilities.
• The great duty of the religious soul is to suffer in silence. Too many people think they can become holy by talking about their trials. The awful fuss we sometimes make over the little unavoidable tribulations of life robs them of their fruitfulness. It turns them into occasions for self-pity or self-display, and consequently makes them useless. Be careful of talking about what you suffer, for fear that you may sin. Job’s friends sinned by the pious explanations they gave of suffering: and they sinned in giving Job a superficial explanation. The only decent thing is silence – and the sacraments.
• In order to face suffering in peace: Suffer without imposing on others a theory of suffering, without weaving a new philosophy of life from your own material pain, without proclaiming yourself a martyr, without counting out the price of your courage, without disdaining sympathy and without seeking too much of it. We must be sincere in our sufferings as we are in anything else. We must at once recognize our weakness and our pain, but we do not need to advertise them.
• We cannot suffer well unless we see Christ everywhere – both in suffering and in the charity of those who come to the aid of our affliction.

On Suffering, Part 3: From Thomas Merton

2 Corinthians 4:8-11
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

Each Tuesday, our Wesley UMC staff engages in time of spiritual formation. We have been journeying through Thomas Merton's, No Man is an Island. I'm posting the excerpts from Merton as we discuss suffering, which has always been difficult for me to process and understand. Maybe, as Merton points out, I'm too selfish.

Excerpts from Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island, Chapter 5: The Word of the Cross: On Suffering (Part 3)
• Heroism alone in the face of suffering is useless, unless it is born of God. Divine strength is not usually given us until we are fully aware of our own weakness and know that the strength we receive is indeed received: and that is a gift. The fortitude that comes is from God. It is God’s strength, which is beyond comparison and not complicated by pride.
• To know the Cross is to know that we are saved by the sufferings of Christ; to know the love of Christ who underwent suffering and death in order to save us. To know God’s love is not merely to know the story of His love, but to experience in our spirit that we are loved by Him, and that in His love the Father manifests His own love for us, through the Holy Spirit.
• The effect of suffering upon us depends on what we love. If we love ourselves selfishly, suffering is merely hateful. It must be avoided at all costs. It brings out the evil that is in us. The person who loves only themselves will commit any sin and inflict any evil on others merely in order to avoid suffering himself/herself. Worse, if one cannot avoid suffering, they may even take perverse pleasure in suffering itself – showing that they love and hate themselves all at the same time. If we love ourselves selfishly, suffering brings out selfishness. Then after making known what we are, suffering drives us to make ourselves worse than we are.
• If we love others and suffer for them without the love of God, we may gain a certain nobility and goodness. It may bring out something fine in us and even give glory to God, but in the end a natural unselfishness cannot prevent suffering from destroying us along with all we love.
• But, if we love God and love others in Him, we will be glad to let suffering destroy anything in us that God is pleased to let it destroy, because we know that all it destroys is unimportant. If we love God, suffering does not matter. Christ in us, His love, His Passion in us: that is what we care about. Pain does not cease to be pain, but we can be glad of it because it enables Christ to suffer in us and give glory to His Father by being greater, in our hearts, than suffering would ever be.

On Suffering, Part 2: From Thomas Merton

I Corinthians 15:51-58
51Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, 52in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For this perishable body must put on imperishability and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
55‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?’
56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

From Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island,
Chapter 5: The Word of the Cross: On Suffering
• Physical evil has no power to penetrate beneath the surface of our being. It can touch flesh, mind, and sensibility, but it cannot harm our spirit without the work of that other evil – sin. Sin strikes deep. It attacks personality, destroys our true character, identity, and happiness – it works to destroy our fundamental orientation toward God.
• Physical evil is only to be regarded as a real evil insofar as it tends to foment sin in our souls. That is why a Christian must seek in every way possible to relieve the sufferings of others, and even take steps to alleviate some sufferings of his/her own: because they are occasions for sin.
o According to Merton’s statement here, he would be an advocate of social justice as an integral part of our faith (unlike some television personalities)
• Compassion for others is good, but it does not become true love and charity unless it sees Christ in the one suffering and has mercy on him/her with the mercy of Christ. Jesus had mercy on the multitudes not only because they were like sheep without a shepherd, but also simply because they had no bread.
• Bodily works of mercy (acts of mercy) look beyond the flesh and into the spirit, and when they are integrally Christian they not only alleviate suffering but they bring grace: that is, they strike at sin.
• Human Sympathy: Alone, it can only offer loneliness in the face of death. Flowers are an indecency in a death without God. The thing that has died has become a thing to be decorated and rejected. May its hopeless loneliness be forgotten and not remind us of our own. How sad a thing is human love that ends with death. This is why many of us fight off suffering and death as long as we can, unless it block our human love forever.
• The Name and the Cross and the Blood of Jesus have changed all this. In His Passion, in the sacraments which bring His Passion into our lives, the helplessness of human love is transformed into divine power which raises us above all evil. It has conquered everything. Such love knows no separation. It fears suffering no more than young crops fear the spring rain.
• Why is there peace for the Christian in suffering? Because Christianity is Christ living in us, and Christ has conquered everything. He has united us to one another and to Himself. We all live together in the power of His death which overcame death. We neither suffer alone nor conquer alone nor go off into eternity alone. His love is so much stronger than death that the death of a Christian is a kind of triumph. And while we rightly sorrow at the separation of the one we love, we rejoice in their death because it proves to us the strength of our mutual love. This is our great inheritance – which can only be increased by suffering well taken: We belong to God and no one will snatch us out of God’s hand!

Thomas Merton on Suffering

I Corinthians 1:18-25
18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19For it is written;
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’
20Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. 22For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, 23but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

From Thomas Merton's No Man Is An Island, Chapter 5: The Word of the Cross
• The Christian must not only accept suffering: he/she must make it holy. Nothing so easily becomes unholy as suffering. Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them. Endurance alone is no consecration. True asceticism is not a mere cult of fortitude. We can deny ourselves rigorously for the wrong reason and end up by pleasing ourselves mightily with our self-denial.
• Suffering is consecrated to God by faith – not by faith in suffering, but by faith in God.
• Suffering has no power and no value of its own. It is only valuable as a test of faith. To believe in suffering is pride; but to suffer, believing in God, is humility.
• Pride tells us we are strong enough to suffer, that suffering is good for us because we are good. Humility tells us that suffering is an evil which we must always expect to find in our lives because of the evil that is inside of us. But faith also knows that the mercy of God is given to those who seek Him in suffering, and that by His grace we can overcome evil with good. Suffering, then, becomes good by accident, by the good that it enables us to receive more abundantly from the mercy of God. It does not make us good by itself, but it enables us to make ourselves better than we are. Thus, what we consecrate to God in suffering is not our suffering, but our selves.
• The Cross of Christ says nothing of the power of suffering or of death. It speaks only of the power of Him Who overcame both suffering and death by rising from the grave.
• What after all is more personal than suffering? The awful futility of our attempts to convey the reality of our sufferings to other people, and the tragic inadequacy of human sympathy, both prove how incommunicable a thing suffering really is. When a man/woman suffers, they are most alone. Therefore, it is in suffering that we are tested. How can we face it? What shall we answer in the pain? Without God, we lose our humanity.
• When suffering asks, “Who are you?” we must be able to answer distinctly, and give our own name. By that, I mean we must express the very depths of what we are, what we have desired to be, and what we have become. All these things are sifted out of us by pain, and they are too often found to be in contradiction with one another. But when we live in Christ, our name and our work and our personality will fit the pattern stamped on our souls by the sacramental character we wear. We get our name in baptism. Our souls are stamped with an eternal identification. Our baptism, which drowns us in the death of Christ, summons upon us all the sufferings of our life.
• Suffering should call out our own name and the name of Christ.

Thomas Merton on The Will of God

Romans 12:1-2
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

From Thomas Merton's No Man Is An Island, On the Will of God (cont)
• A right intention (which we should have as we follow the signs of God’s will) is a transient intention. It is proper to the active life which is always moving on to something else. We pause from one particular to another, reaching ahead into many plans – the works done and planned are all for the glory of God. They all stand ahead of us as milestones along a road with an invisible end. And God is always at the end.
• Right intention is more common than a really simple intention. It reaches out for merits, sacrifices, degrees of virture, etc. We need a simple intention – the aim of the contemplative life – no merely to enable a person to say prayers and make sacrifices with right intention: it is to teach us to live in God. A simple intention is perpetual death in Christ – keeping our life hidden in Christ. It seeks treasure nowhere but in heaven. It prefers what cannot be seen, touched, weighed, tasted, or seen.
• A right intention only aims in the right direction. But even in the midst of action, a simple intention renounces all things but God alone, seeks Him alone. The secret of simple intention is that it is content to seek God and does not insist on finding God right away, knowing that in seeking God we have already found God.
• Whatever is offered to God with a right intention is acceptable to Him. Whatever is offered to God with a simple intention is not only accepted by Him by reason of our good will, but is pleasing to God in itself.
• Our intention cannont be completely simple unless it is completely poor. It seeks and desires nothing unless it is completely poor. It seeks and desires nothing but the supreme poverty of having nothing but God. True, anyone with a grain of faith realizes that to have God and nothing else besides is to have everything in Him. But between the thought of poverty and its actualization in our lives lies the desert of emptiness through which we must travel in order to find Him.

On the Will Of God: From Thomas Merton

Luke 9.23-27
23 Then he said to them all, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. 25What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves? 26Those who are ashamed of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. 27But truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.’

From Thomas Merton's No Man Is An Island, On the Will of God
• Prayer must be first as we seek God’s will – not only to discover God’s will but above all to gain the grace to carry it out with all the strength of our desire.
• The will of God, which the Holy Spirit teaches us in the secrecy of our inmost being, must always remain as much a mystery as God Godself. Our desire to know God’s will implies rather a desire to recognize certain signs of the mystery of God’s will, than to penetrate the mystery itself. If I do not remember this distinction, we no longer revere the holiness and the mystery of God’s will in itself.
• When we speak of God’s will, we are usually speaking only of some recognizable sign of God’s will. The signpost that points to a distant city is not the city itself, and sometimes the signs that point to a great place are in themselves insignificant and contemptible. But we must follow the signpost if we are to get to the end of our journey. It is one thing to see a sign, another to interpret it correctly.
• To know God’s will (which is mysterious) we must be silent in the presence of the signs whose meaning are closed to us. Otherwise, we begin to incontinently place our own superstitious interpretation upon everything – the number of steps in a doorway, a card pulled out of a pack, the shadow of a ladder, the flight of birds. God’s will is not so cheap a mystery that it can be unlocked by any key like these!
• Nevertheless there are some real signs that everyone must know. They must be easily seen and read, and they are simple. The come sparingly and are few in number. They show us clearly enough the road ahead, but not more than a few paces. Once we take those steps, what then? We must learn to be poor in our dependence on these signs, to take them as they come, not to demand more of them than we need, not to make more of them than they really tell.
• If I am to know the will of God, I must have the right attitude toward life. I must first know what life is and know the purpose of my life. God does not need our sacrifices, God asks for ourselves – charity, divine union, transformation in Christ: these are the end.
• This is why the will of God so often manifests in demands that I sacrifice myself.
• God’s will for us is not only that we should be the persons God means us to be, but that we should share in God’s work of creation and help God to make us into the persons God means us to be. God’s will for me is that I should shape my own destiny, work out my salvation, forge my own eternal happiness, in the way God has planned for me. And since no man is an island, I cannot work out my God’s will in my own life unless I also consciously help others work out God’s will in their lives.

Reflective Practices and Mental Models: From Peter Senge

Matthew 7:21-28
21 ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven. 22On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” 23Then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.”
24 ‘Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. 25The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. 26And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!’
28 Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, 29for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

From Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization
On Reflective Practice and Mental Models

• The most important mental models (our internal picture(s) of the world, i.e. our worldview) are the ones shared by the key decision makers. They must be constantly reexamined. Managers also must develop reflective and face to face learning skills. We must become “reflective practitioners”.
• The problem with most managers is they are ultimately “pragmatic” – they are generally “reactive”, not generative. If we are going to be a true learning organization, people at every level must surface and challenge their mental models BEFORE external circumstances compel them to do so. (Proactive approach)
• Espoused Theory vs. Theory in Use: Espoused Theory is what we say we are, what our mission statement says we are, what we profess, (the manifest culture) : Theory in Use is what we actually believe, our mental model, and dictates our actions (the latent culture)
• My espoused view may be that people are basically trustworthy, but I may never lend friends money and jealously guard all my stuff – obviously my theory in use (my deeper mental model) differs from my espoused theory.
• We have gaps between our espoused theories and our theories in use. This is a consequence of vision, not hypocrisy. The problem is not in the gap, but our failure to tell the truth about the gap (remember last week and dealing with the structural conflict??) The first question is: Do I really value the espoused theory? Is it really a part of my vision? Truth telling is vital here. One or two people might really value the espoused theory, but does the whole embrace it? Is the vision shared?
• As we strive to develop our reflective skills, we need ruthlessly compassionate partners who will tell the truth.
• Truth Telling
  o Learn to Recognize Leaps of Abstraction: these slow our learning when we jump to generalizations so quickly we never test them. For example, coworkers say Laura doesn’t care about people: she rarely offers praise, she stares into space when people talk to her, she cuts people off when they speak, she never comes to parties, THEREFORE her coworkers conclude she doesn’t care much. Without testing the generalizations, they became truth – actually Laura has a hearing impediment. While based on facts, her coworkers drew inferences and they were never tested. Key: We must test generalizations directly. Inquire the reasons behind people’s actions.
  o The Left-Hand Column: This reveals how we manipulate situations to avoid dealing with how we actually feel and think. When we are interacting with people regarding a situation and it is not working (not producing learning or moving ahead), we form a script of our conversation with two columns. In the right hand column I write down what I am saying. In the left hand column, I write what I am thinking but not saying at each stage of the exchange. It always brings forward hidden assumptions. Usually, rather than face the subject, we talk around the subject. Knowing this, how can we both learn? Key: We must honestly look at how we undermine learning opportunities by not being honest.
  o Balancing Inquiry and Advocacy: Most managers are advocates – they fight for their areas and their people! If they don’t learn to push the inquiry skills, they cut off learning. Advocacy without inquiry begats more advocacy. My way is right, my way needs to win – we push and push, while other managers push back with their advocated issues. Escalation. Rather than ask what brings one to their position? Or, Can you illustrate your point? (Questions of inquiry) We get more vehement and more threatened. Key: When we balance advocacy and inquiry, we are open to disconfirming information as well as confirming information – because we are generally interested in finding flaws in our views.
• The Goal??
  o The best mental model on a particular issue is supported. We focus on helping that person/mental model succeed.