Contribution – Page 14

The Roots of Our Stories

That story that helps you begin the day with energy, to engage the world with insight and empathy… Where did that story come from? Can attending to the roots of that story amplify it, or help you to grow similar stories?

And that story that closes you off, makes your thoughts spin without effect or love… Where did that story come from? Can naming and letting these stories go then release you from their negative effects?

The stories we rehearse form us profoundly. It is right to inspect their roots.

Teaching That Takes Something Away

When both of our sons were learning to eat solid food, they would occasionally stuff so much in their mouths that they could no longer eat. The only way forward was to take all the food out and start again. Teaching them to eat, then, meant taking food away.

The best teachers, I think, do something similar. If a learner is stuck on a limiting belief or an idol of the mind, the savvy teacher does not add more input. Instead, she works to relieve the learner of the limitation. Once this idol is removed, the learner has more space to see what is real.

Frustratingly, our brains protect these idols with brutal force, namely through confirmation bias, making giving up limiting beliefs uniquely difficult. The idol’s bodyguards can live inside the texture of our own thinking.

While difficult, relinquishing a limiting way of thinking is some of the most important learning we can do. Giving up the “information” that limits our intelligence, imagination, and love can save our lives.

Who Is Thriving?

When I am at my worst, I consider the constraints in my life with the mindset of a victim. (“This is terrible! I don’t have x! I cannot do y!”)

Two things help break this cycle:

First, I realize that many other people have the same constraints that I do.

Second, I realize that many of these people with the very same constraints are thriving.

I escape from my impoverished mindset when I ask: Why are these people thriving? Can I do the same?

Insurance Policy or Treasure Map

These are two very different pieces of paper. Humans relate very differently to each one.

Sometimes I wonder: Is my relationship with the Gospel more like that of an insurance policy or a treasure map?

An insurance policy makes me feel secure for minimal input. It leads me nowhere and exerts no attractive moral force over my life.

A treasure map leads us on an adventure and gives us hints about where the good stuff is.

Tea for the Missions

I once heard a Mennonite missionary tell the following story.

When he was growing up in the US, their family would, after steeping a tea bag, dry it out on the counter. When they had a good number, they sent them overseas to families doing relief and development work with Mennonite Central Committee. The idea was that the missionary would enjoy the tea left over in the bag.

Yes, the gesture was rooted in a place of generosity and one has to marvel at this superlative frugality. But the error is fairly obvious. Why didn’t the supporting family just send new tea bags? Then, the recipient could enjoy the first use themselves, as well as the subsequent use.

While this seems obvious, I am often guilty of a similar mindset. That is, generosity often does not receive pride of place in my plans.

In our culture, big things (career, large projects) are often dedicated to the accumulation of money or status. The leftovers (of time, money) are for generosity. Sometimes.

But what if we committed to the opposite? What if we offered the big things to generosity?

This is the idea behind our dedication of all profits of Sorin Starts a School to the work of the Holy Cross in Dhaka, and namely the flourishing of Notre Dame University Bangladesh.

We are pumped to share that we are on schedule and set to ship out the books this May. Here’s to offering the big things to generosity, to love.

Not Choosing Functions as a Choice

Today, there are far too many things to pay attention to, and there is far too little time to attend to them.

On my better days, I aspire to deal with the above problem accordingly: I desire to consider what I value most, and to structure my time accordingly.

Often, instead, I allow my attention to be scattered by the next email, the next text, the next darn thing, instead of ordered by what I consider to be of ultimate importance.

In this second instance, my failure to choose functions as a choice.

Later

My younger son (almost two) has started to do something fascinating.

When I ask him to do something that he does want to do, he doesn’t say, “no.”

He says, “later.”

I know that I can do this too, in tasks I desire to have done, but often fail to start. Reaching out to a friend, thoughtfully planning for the future, general household maintenance… I don’t tell myself that I won’t do it. I say that I will do it later. This dynamic does not enhance my life.

“Later” can be a trap, a way to avoid a strenuous but generous path.

Restaurant or Kitchen?

Is our relationship with the church more like that of a restaurant or a kitchen?

Is it a place where we wait to receive something that another prepares, and then evaluate the offering?

Or is it a place where we are part of a creative team with a mission? A place where we hone productive habits and generously share our gifts?

Actionable, Specific, and Kind

When I was learning to program, the first thing the instructors taught us was a framework for effective feedback. The feedback we offered to our partners was to be actionable, specific, and kind.

And “kind” was not “nice.” We were not to be vague and falsely flowery. Instead, we were to courageously offer a partner the gift of constructive feedback, a gift of growth.

Knowing how to give feedback, we were now on the hook to actually offer it when the time came, to take the risk that the exercise implied.

How often do we, when we see a situation in need of insight and compassion, neglect to even engage the dynamic? It is far easier to complain about the person concerned or fold our observation into the other noise in our head.

Though it is not easy, the risk of actionable, specific, and kind feedback is a risk worth taking.

How’s the Moral High Ground?

How is that moral high ground you’ve claimed?

Feels amazing, doesn’t it? The high of claiming the moral high ground is intoxicating.

The thing is, though, that this high keeps us from actually creating the relationships that would enable generous principles to enter the world. If stuck on the high ground, we spend time protecting and purifying our position (that is, polishing our idols) which further limits what we are able to see and do.

Often, those who lead the most compelling lives don’t pay all that much attention to the moral high ground. Certainly, they are principled, but they focus their energy instead on encountering people as they are and inviting them along to build a world in which it is easier to be good.