Please Hold

It is snowing like crazy. Roads are closed down. Cars are in the ditch. Businesses are closed due to the weather. Grocery stores are short on eggs. Flights are being cancelled. Schools are on snow days. Plans are being put on hold. Earlier this morning our neighbor came to plow our road, and in the process got his rig stuck in the ditch. A few minutes later my husband and two other neighbors rallied together with snow shovels, tow straps, and pickup trucks to pull him out.

In short, it’s winter. The days are short, the nights long, and there is an otherworldly stillness that fills the air with the sound of silence.

Winter is a reminder that life is unpredictable. It can change in a heart murmur, a snowstorm, an icy patch of road, or a power outage. It’s a time to remember that we are meant to rely on one another. Check in with each other. Share a meal, lend a hand, and maybe a snow shovel.

Winter is a reminder of the importance of slowing down and allowing life to come to just short of a halt. We ignore these slower days at our own peril. Times of dormancy are necessary for life to spring forth in new ways. In nature, and, in our bodies, our work, and our souls.

Winter is a reminder to be present to the here and nowness of our lives. It invites us to set aside our to-do lists and settle in for a spell. Lord willing and the creek don’t freeze, there will be ample time to get back into the groove of doing. This short season offers the possibility of establishing a pace and a rhythm for the year before the year establishes one for us.

I’m writing this as I am on what might be a five-hour hold time to book reservations for a much anticipated trip to Scotland later this year. The snow continues to fall outside my window. There are good leftovers in the fridge for dinner, firewood is stacked on the porch, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are in the playoffs, and I’m at my desk writing.

Winter is life’s way of putting us on hold. Minus the elevator music.

Swimming In Circles

“There is so much we can do to render service, to make a difference in the world—no matter how large or small our circle of influence.”

— Stephen Covey

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Just when it seems it can’t get any worse, scarier, more hateful or batshit crazy, it does. An autocratic bully wages an unprovoked war against a neighbor, a Lone Star governor declares war on one of our most vulnerable populations, and the possibility of finding common ground with our fellow citizens seems like a bridge so too far that we can’t imagine ever finding our way across it to one another.

Given the sorry state of our beautiful but broken world, the temptation for many of us is twofold: Doom scroll through our usual sources of information that keep us solidly entrenched behind our ideological bunkers, and/or turn a blind eye to the world and go about our business, hoping it will be better tomorrow. Spoiler alert. It won’t. Not without our help. As in, all of our help.

So, just what in the hell are we supposed to do for heaven’s sake?

Always a fan of any tool that can help us make sense of complex things—like say, the state of the world—I can’t help but think of Stephen Covey and his model of our circles of concern and influence found in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Here’s my take on his model:

Imagine three concentric circles. Better yet, grab a piece of paper and draw them. (See mine below. Fill in your own accordingly.)

Label the outer, and obviously largest one circle of concern. Herein lie all of those things that keep us awake at night. Issues that try as we might, we can’t change, fix, or eliminate. From unprovoked war to extremism of every ilk, global warming to the inflation rate, hunger to homelessness, and oh-so-many-more, all are worries that are out of our control. It isn’t that they don’t matter. It’s that they are beyond our reach.

Time spent here is foolish.

Name the middle one circle of influence. This is where our rubber meets the world’s road. It’s where who we are and how we show up can have a direct impact on the people, issues, and problems we care about. Covey suggests, and rightly so, that as we invest our time, efforts, and resources here, our circles of influence expand, bringing a little more of the world and our concerns within our reach.

Time spent here is fruitful.

Finally, let’s label that small inner space circle of control. Smack dab in the middle of it all, we get to choose. It is up to us, and only us, to decide who we are and what we care about. In here we equip ourselves—body, mind, and heart—so as to bring the best of who we are to whatever time we have left on the planet. Our greatest chance of making a positive difference “out there” hinges on our willingness to take ourselves on “in here”.

Time spent here is foundational.

Every day we have a choice to make. Will we drown in our circles of concern, or learn to swim in our circles of influence? Our shared future hangs in the balance, and we will sink or swim together.

We Are The Mountain

For us humans, emotions are a tricky thing. They can come and go in the blink of an eye, drop in without notice and drop out just as quickly, or decide to settle in and stay for a spell. Most of us relish what we deem the good emotions, and resist having to endure the ones we’ve come to see as bad or negative. The ones that don’t, well, feel good.

I’ve always been a feeling kind of girl. Emotions, even big, hard, painful ones don’t scare me. However, they can snag me, and before I know it, I’m wrapped around some kind of axle and in full reactive mode. It’s like I am the emotion, rather than me experiencing that emotion. It can be exhausting. For me, and for the people I share life with.

This morning, as most mornings, we sit on the front porch, coffee cups in hand, and read the daily offering of Fr. Richard Rohr, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

His focus this week is Wisdom.

CAC faculty member, Cynthia Bourgeault, suggests that, “Wisdom is not knowing more, but knowing with more of you, knowing deeper.”

To help us dig deeper into wisdom, what it is, and how to grow more of it, Fr. Rohr created a list of 7 pathways, or ways of knowing, that can help us along our own wisdom way.

One of those pathways is emotion.

“Emotion: Great emotions are especially powerful teachers. Love, ecstasy, hatred, jealousy, fear, despair, anguish: each have their lessons. Even anger and rage are great teachers, if we listen to them. They have so much power to reveal our deepest self to ourselves and to others, yet we tend to consider them negatively. I would guess that people die and live much more for emotional knowing than they ever will for intellectual, rational knowing. To taste these emotions is to live in a new reality afterward, with a new ability to connect.”.

As we sat reflecting on our emotions as a way of knowing with more of ourselves, the changing light hitting Mt. Adams seemed to underscore what we had just read.

We are the mountain.

Emotion is our teacher.

Read the todays meditation in its entirety

1-2-3

For two days in a row she found herself sitting at a red light. When it turned green, before putting her foot on the gas to pull out into the intersection, she counted to three.

1-2-3

On each of those two occasions another motorist, in an SUV, ran a red light and sped through the intersection, barely missing her. Had my best friend of more than 45 years pulled out before counting to three, the results could have been terrible. Or worse.

It was her dad who taught her to always count to three after the light turned green and before pulling into the intersection. He knew that while green might mean go, there was wisdom in waiting. To allow a sliver of time in which to more fully assess the situation before pulling ahead.

Life is full of green lights. What was not a possibility until now suddenly is, and we are given the green light. When it does, there is wisdom in waiting, just long enough to allow a sliver of time in which to more fully assess the situation before pulling ahead.

1-2-3

(With gratitude to Phil Patterson for teaching her to count to three, and to Kristine Patterson for always counting.)

Photo by Davis Sanchez from Pexels

A Buffer

A buffer serves as a shield or defense. It is a protective barrier that prevents contact between things. There are times when we are called to serve as a buffer for others. To protect them from the raging storm that threatens to overwhelm and overtake them.

And.

There are times when, as difficult as it is, we are called to move out of the way and let things collide in order for a reckoning with what is to occur. This is true everywhere. Whether talking about the workplace, financial realities, a family, a friendship, a marriage, an athletic team, or a corner office on the C-Suite, change and transformation can’t occur without rubbing directly up against the truth.

Serving as a buffer is an act of love.

So is stepping aside.

Photo from pexels.com

On A Dime

All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given us.

~ GandalfJ.R.R Tolkien: The Fellowship of the Ring

It is good to remember that our days are numbered. It is hard to be reminded of how quickly our number can be up. Let’s make our lives count.

It is good to remember that life is the currency given to us to spend as we choose. It is hard to be reminded that life can turn on a dime. Let’s spend our lives well.

For Weekend Reflection

Maturity is not a static arrived platform, where life is viewed from a calm, untouched oasis of wisdom, but a living elemental frontier between what has happened, what is happening now and the consequences of that past and present, first imagined and then lived into the waiting future.

~David Whyte: CONSOLATIONS

What does your past tell you that can help you live more fully into your waiting future? 

The Conversation

I am convinced that we have access to an innate inner wisdom that stands at the ready to assist us.

This past week I saw this inherent sense in action in the participants in the workshop I had the privilege of leading. Focused on the opportunities that await each of us to engage in important, meaningful, and necessary conversations, when asked if they could identify such an opportunity waiting for them, an interaction where the stakes were high and the emotions probably were too, there wasn’t one shake of the head in the room. It was all nods. To a person, everyone knew of at least one conversation waiting for them, and to a person, everyone knew that they were the one to start it.

We know the conversations waiting for us, even if, and perhaps most especially if, we are reluctant to have them. Call them courageous conversations, crucial conversations, inconvenient conversations, or fill-in-the-blank conversations, we know what they are, and why they are. We just don’t want to have them. We don’t want to have to muster the courage in the midst of our vulnerability. We don’t want to start something without knowing how it will turn out. We don’t want to enter the arena knowing we might need to be stitched back together. We don’t want to give voice to something fragile and important that might go unheard. We don’t want to show up and be the only one at the party. And yet, in spite of all of that, the conversation is still waiting for us.

It continues to be my experience that the more I am willing to engage in the conversations that matter, regardless of how scary, challenging, or difficult they may be, the deeper my connections grow. To others, to my convictions, and, to myself. .

Is there a conversation waiting for you?

Remember

The Ranch is a reminder to trust the wisdom held deep within our bodies. 

Remember who you were before the world told you who you were supposed to be. 

Remember who you are and what you stand for, and never apologize for being true to yourself. 

Remember to trust the voice within. 

Remember to hold on to yourself. 

Remember to care well for yourself. 

Remember your strength. 

Remember that you are never alone.