Where Life and Faith Meet
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4Ü #249

Leadership when your feet hurt

24 August 2006

WASSUP - I've been thinking about thinking

When looking for a good idea, it is as though the idea is lost and the thinker goes in search of the thought.

But what if, just for a moment, we looked at it another way?

What if the thought is already present but it is the thinker that is lost?

Good thinking is the ability to find thoughts that are available but as yet do not have a thinker.

So how does a thought find a thinker?

The starting place is to recognize that "thoughts come."

We then need to ask, how available is the thinker to the coming thought?

  • Create some thinking space. When and where do you do your best thinking?
  • Ask questions that have no obvious answer.

The answer is the misfortune or disease of curiosity - it kills it.

Maurice Blanchot

  • Change your thinking default settings. Your current settings eliminate the majority of new thoughts.
  • Change the pictures on your wall. Change anything you can. This opens the door to the new thoughts coming. For some people this is scary; it's a good indicator that the thinker is lost.
  • Be prepared to "waste" time thinking.
  • Ask, seek, knock - wait.
  • Treat new thoughts with respect, as friends and not as enemies.

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INSIGHT OUT - Dry tears

She pushes it down
prays it down
shouts it down
but like a weed
reappearing new
through the occasional cracks in her faith

He ignores the signs
becomes busy at being busy
afraid of his shadow
but like a storm
whose time has come
dry tears flood his soul in the night

(If this is you and you would like to read more, try Psalms 42, 69, 88 & 102)

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OUTSIGHT IN - Leadership when your feet hurt

Some people don't set out to be or even become leaders.

It seems as though leadership is thrust upon them.

The bus was crowded, and Mrs Parks found a seat at the beginning of the Negro section. At the next stop more whites got on. The driver ordered Mrs Parks to give her seat to a white man who boarded: this meant that she would have to stand all the way home. Rosa Parks was not in a revolutionary frame of mind. She had not planned to do what she did. Her cup had run over. As she said later, "I was just plain tired, and my feet hurt." So she sat there, refusing to get up.

Coretta Scott King 1969

The rest is history.

Was leadership in this case an expression of a people who had got so tired of hurting that the pain staying seated was less than getting up?

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SEE YA SUNDAY - Hope in Hard Times: Part 3 - Depression

This Sunday morning 8.30 & 10.30 am

This series will explore some tough issues that in one way or another touch all our lives; death, disaster, depression and divorce. While the topics in themselves look a bit depressing, the messages will be informative, provocative, practical and inspirational. If you know anyone one who needs some hope in the midst of hard times, invite then to come along.

Bread & Wine - 9.45am - Weekly Communion

Thanks for this time to chat.

Andrew
St Columba
Where Life and Faith Meet
andrew.norton@stcolumba.org.nz

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It's free but don't steal

If this is of help to others, you are welcome to forward it. This e-mail letter is 97% original - 3% cut and paste & 100% fat free. 4U is copyright to Andrew Norton. That means you can't cut and paste it and call it your own (that's stealing). I'm happy for it to be used but please refer to the author.

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LAST WORD - Consumers or producers?

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than to consume wealth without producing it.

George Bernard Shaw


© 2008, St Columba Presbyterian Church, Auckland