A Good Book

Note: Cross posted from STATIC Youth’s Weblog.

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This past Saturday I attended a men’s conference. This was a state wide Catholic men’s conference and the first one I have ever attended. The list of speakers was impressive, but the one I wanted to see was Mathew Kelly, an …

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Compassion

Note: Cross posted from STATIC Youth’s Weblog.

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Image by Rosie O’Beirne via Flickr

Ok, so here it is, I have been listening to talk radio on the way into work, and the big topic The Arizona law on illegal’s.  The Catholic Bishops seem to think the law is inhuman and some how degrading. The liberal bleeding hearts feel that the law is unjust and takes away the …

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The Family Dynamic

Image by littledan77 via Flickr

The family dynamic is a very complex thing, it offers great joy and great sorrow. People have write songs and preformed plays concerning the family. Most TV shows are based on the family dynamic and certainly we have read many many books on the topic.

My family is no different, we have dynamics. We have out moments of great joy and great sorrows, and often times the co-exist. But at times one will override the other, the great sorrow of the loss of a parent or child will trump the great joy, becoming the dominate dynamic. Yet other times they seem to mingle and and the line between the joy and sorrow becomes fuzzy at best.

This gray area of the family dynamic seems to me to be the area were it sits the most. We seem to exist in a void of high and lows and allow ourselves to tread lightly on the soil of betweenness. Nothing wrong with that, for the most part. The great joys and great sorrows can be extremely taxing on ourselves and the over all dynamic of the family.

This is were I find myself, I am currently walking in the land of betweenness.

I feel no great joy or sadness within the dynamics of my family. Currently I am having “issues” with most of my family members. Not a good place to be… Some of the “issues” are of my doing and some are not, as is the case with most family dynamics. But what is different now is that I do not feel and great emotion over this riff. This saddens me in a way, but in other ways it does not. I am at a point in my life were the fight is not something I want to do. The battle field seems a long walk and I am not up to the walk to the battle field, nor the battle itself.

This fact bothers me, why am I willing to let the battle defeat me with out even a fight? Why am I willing to allow the dynamics of the family triumph over me? Family Dynamics are a powerful adversary to have.

To me, it seems that I have been beaten up for way to long, that I have allowed the family dynamics to control me and now I am just tired of it. I no longer want to be beaten up or controlled. I have bent to the will of others to keep the dynamic in a joyful mode and in doing so place myself in a field of regrets. I no longer want to walk in that field. I now want to walk in a field that I choose, be it joyful or not, it is my choice.

I am sure the family dynamic will mend itself, one day, but I do no that it will not be the same as it was. Each of us have changed and that change will affect the overall dynamic. The new family dynamic will still be filled with great joys and great sorrows but they will be defined a little differently now.

Paul

 

Complex Dynamics: Families and Friends

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Just something to question…

One of my favorite people to look to or to quote is Albert Einstein. I think is because we both are so much a like…. (I’ll let that one sink in a bit before I move on…….)

Truthfully I do see a lot of similarities between us, no I am not as smart as him, no were near, but we both share a thinking pattern. For anyone who reads my blogs or knows me personally will know that I am a person with an imagination and a positive attitude. Albert also has this trait, and I have quoted him several times, in fact I have a small postcard of his hanging in my office and I have read biographies on him. I find him to be a very interesting person. I have no ability to understand his math or his logic (most of the time), but I can understand his outlook and his way of dealing with the world. Today as I was thinking I should blog about something, but I didn’t know what. I didn’t want to blog about politics again, not because I don’t have anything to say, because I do, but because both of my blogs are not primary political they are primarily spiritual. So my latest rant concerning Obama will have to wait…. So what than do I blog about. As I often do when I don’t have a solid idea I will look up quotes on the internet (God’s gift for writers block). What I found was this quote from Mr. Einstein:

The important thing is not to stop questioning. -Albert Einstein

I like that, in fact I teach that… I have from the start, I have always valued questions. To me if you are not questioning that you are dead, dead to the topic at hand, dead to the presenter, dead to the faith, dead to what ever it is you are not questioning.

To an insecure presenter or teacher the questions may come across as attacks, as if the questioner is challenging there domain. And they very well may be doing just that, and that’s ok. Hell if it was good enough for old Albert, than it’s good enough for me!

My overriding passion is my faith and teaching my faith to youth. In fact this will be the first time since 1990 that I will not be actively involved in a teaching ministry, but back to my point… My passion is my faith and the passing on of my faith (teaching). Part of this passion is also learning more about my faith on my own and taking formal classes. It is the process of questioning my teachers and my students that grow and learn more. It is the process of questioning that allows my mind to explore other areas it normally would not travel. It allows me the freedom to play the “devils” advocate in the name of knowing.

Questions are what makes America a land of the free, if were are not allowed to question of government, than we are no better than and no different than present day Cuba. Our ability to place our public officials under the microscope of public questioning is our key to freedom. My ability to question my faith is what makes my faith mine is my ability to question her teachings and to question my understanding.

Albert got it right, The important thing is not to stop questioning.

Think about a toddler and there constant why? why? why?, it is their ability to ask why that allows them to grow, why should that be any different for a pre-teen or teen, a parent of grandparent. Our ability to grow never ceases, just our own limitations placed on ourselves do. We have that same power as the curious 3 year old, the power of WHY… That power to change the course of events is not limited to the mind of a 3 year old, it is innate in all of us, it is our nature to question. God created us to question and he celebrates us when we do so.

A single question has changed the course of history, a single question can place common scene on it’s ear and turn right to wrong and evil to good. The power of a question should never be over looked nor should it be played down or belittled.

The question was asked of Jesus, “Are you the Messiah, the King of the Jews?” and all of history was changed for ever. The question was asked, “What is the price of liberty” and a new nation was born.

The ability to question is our basic right as part of humanity, to stop questioning is to stop participating in humanity. Teacher and politicians and parents that stifle the questions of those they are charged with not only stifle that individual but also all of humanity.

Just imagine if:

• Edison never question electricity
• Ford never question the assembly line
• Jefferson never questioned Liberty

It is the questions that have created the humanity we know today. With each stifled question our next Ford, Edison, Einstein or Jefferson might never be able to ask that all important, life changing question.

If we do not allow questions, than who will question poverty, hunger, global war’s and the outer limits of space or the inner limits of the mind? Sniffle one is the same as stifling all.

 

 

Just something to question….

Paul

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The Crash

Sometimes I think God just like to mess with me, I think he get great pleasure out of seeing me get upset or thrown off task. Take this morning for example, I posted my first blog with no problem, I stat in on this blog with a solid idea of what I want to write, and BAM! My laptop decides its a great time to reboot with an issue.. So now as I write this I am running every security check, registry cleaner and spy program I have, to make sure it don’t happen anytime too soon, and to make sure all my data is safe.

Now I know God didn’t do this, but sometimes I wonder, maybe He didn’t like the topic I was going to blog about or maybe He just likes to see me get frustrated…. No matter, I can’t remember what the topic was, so it must not have been that great of an idea and I was able to get to some real work (my 9 to 5 job stuff).

But now I sit here with no real idea of what I want to blog about, no words of wisdom to give…

Funny how things work out, I had a “great” idea, or so I thought, all pick out for today, one little distraction and BAM, it’s gone… Life can be that way, we are moving along, and BAM, everything changes, we get distracted by the death of a loved one the loss of a job or a child is ill, and life seems to change, be it good or bad it changes.

What matters is how we deal with the BAM’s in our life, take my computer crashing this morning, I had a few options I could have taken, 1) Get mad 2) Fix it 3) Do nothing, or any combination of the 3, I chose to fix it, I didn’t get mad, I didn’t do nothing, I stopped what I was doing and resolved the issue, well in truth I had to my laptop went down.

When death or illness hits we have the same basic options, get mad, deal with it (fix it) or do nothing. Once again we can combine them anyway we like.  But what we choose to do will change the rest of our life… So choose wisely…

Paul

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‘Liar in Your Life’ Author Feldman: Why We Lie So Much

This is take from an online article in Time magazine…..

 

• By EBEN HARRELL Eben Harrell – 29 mins ago

A professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Robert Feldman has spent most of his career studying the role deception plays in human relationships. His most recent book, The Liar in Your Life: How Lies Work and What They Tell Us About Ourselves, lays out in stark terms just how prevalent lying has become. He talked to TIME about why we all need a dose of honesty.

What are the main findings of your research?
Not only do we lie frequently, but we lie without even thinking about it. People lie while they are getting acquainted at an average of three times in a 10-minute period. Participants in my studies actually are not aware that they are lying that much until they watch videos of their interactions.

One of the reasons people get away with so much lying, your research suggests, is that we are all essentially dupes. Why do we believe so many lies?
This is what I call the liar’s advantage. We are not very good at detecting deception in other people. When we are trying to detect honesty, we look at the wrong kinds of nonverbal behaviors and we misinterpret them. The problem is that there is no direct correlation between someone’s nonverbal behavior and their honesty. "Shiftiness" could also be the result of being nervous, angry, distracted or sad. Even trained interrogators [aren’t] able to detect deception at [high] rates. You might as well flip a coin to determine if someone is being honest.

What’s more, a lot of the time we don’t want to detect lies in other people. We are unwilling to put forward the cognitive effort to suspect the veracity of statements, and we aren’t motivated to question people when they tell us things we want to hear. When we ask someone, "How are you doing?" and they say "fine," we really don’t want to know what their aches and pains are. So we take "fine" at face value. (Read a TIME story on ground rules for telling lies)

Do you feel deception is a particularly relevant topic to our society?
We are living in a time and culture in which it’s easier to lie than it has been in the past. The message that pervades society is that it’s okay to lie; you can get away with it. One of the things I found in my research is that when you confront people with their lies they very rarely display remorse. Lying is not seen as being morally reprehensible in any strong way.

You can make the assumption that because it often makes social interactions go more smoothly, lying is okay. But there is a cost to even seemingly benign lies. If people are always telling you that you look terrific and you did a great job on that presentation, there’s no way to have an accurate understanding of yourself. Lies put a smudge on an interaction, and if it’s easy to lie to people in minor ways it becomes easier to lie in bigger ways.

You say in the book that recent DNA evidence suggests that 10% of people have fathers other than the men they believe conceived them. So is lying pretty widespread in our intimate lives, too?
Research shows we lie less to people that we are close to. But when we do, they tend to be the bigger types of lies. And the fallout is greater if the deception is discovered.

You show how lying is a social skill. Does that mean it’s part of an evolutionary legacy?
I don’t think lying is genetically programmed. We learn to lie. We teach our kids to be effective liars by modeling deceitful behavior.

In your book you offer a way to cut back on lies. What’s the "AHA! Remedy?"
AHA! stands for active honesty assessment. We need to be aware of the possibility that people are lying to us, and we need to demand honesty in other people. Otherwise we will get a canned affirmation. At the same time, we have to demand honesty of ourselves. We have to be the kind of people who don’t tell white lies. We don’t have to be cruel and totally blunt, but we have to convey information honestly. The paradox here is that if you are 100% honest and blunt, you will not be a popular person. Honesty is the best policy. But it’s not a perfect policy.

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Pride

Pride is a very strong emotion, one that has driven people to extremes. We have witnessed the pride of a man (or a woman) bring them down in a blaze of fire, and we have seen pride rebuild a man (or a woman) from the deepest despair life can offer.

Why is this, what makes one emotions so powerful and at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

This I can not answer, but I can offer my own insights on the topic. Anyone who reads my blogs an a regular basis will know that I often times return to the subject of EGO (Edging God Out), well I think Pride has a small place in EGO.

The pride that causes harm, pride that drives a man to extremes is a pride that is unhealthy.

To have pride in your work, in your life and in yourself and family is a very healthy, and necessary thing. It is when that pride overrides all, when that pride becomes the end all to all that is when it enters the EGO, that is when it becomes a destructive force, not only in your life but all around you.

When we feel that what we do is more important that others, or when we think that our actions are defining moments, when we place ourselves at the very center of life, the EGO has began its destruction.

How do we know when pride becomes EGO, were is that line? I think we all have a different thresh hold, but I also think we all know, internally, were it is.

For me, EGO is the evil part of my being, it is the original sin of Adam and Eve, it was there EGO’s that told them to eat of the fruit, to want to become god’s themselves. Pride, the feeling of being more than they were.

We need to be proud, we need that feeling and that emotion, but we need to control it, and not allow it to take over, when it takes over, that is when pride becomes EGO, a destructive force.

I am very proud of a the volume of work I have created, the programs I have developed but I am also very aware that there is always something more, something better out there, that what I have created is good, maybe even great, and I take great pride in the work, but I know I am only one of many. I will not allow my EGO to take hold of it, I do not, for one minute, think that what I have created is anything more than what it is.

Pride and EGO often times share the same fine line. It is easy to step on way or the other, Pride becoming EGO and EGO becoming pride. Careful where you step, look and see were you are headed and say on the side of pride.

Paul

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The 3 Me’s, so far…

It seems I have gone blog crazy, I have 3 blogs going now, this one, You can be new, and two others, STATIC Youth and Faith and Life. The Faith and Life blog is the latest blog I have started. Each blog had a purpose, each one helps me examine a different part of my make up.

Each blog represents a side of me that I feel in need to dive in to a little bit more deeply, but at times all 3 cross over each other. For example my new blog, Faith and Life is the more political side of me. But readers of this blog or my STATIC Youth blog will know that I have made political statements here. Were-as this blog, You can be new, is more of a blog for my self-help look deep with in you side of me, but that has also spilled over in to my STATIC Youth blog and I am sure it will slip in to my new Faith and Life blog before long also. The STATIC Youth blog is my Catholic faith blog, allowing me to share my faith with the world, but as you know my Catholic faith has entered in to discussions here and it is part of my Faith and Life blog also.

I say all this not to just shamelessly promote my 3 blog, but to illustrate a point. We are made up of different part, but each part is not separate from each other. I have three interest that truly define me, my faith, my need to help others and my political values, each is unique but each is also me. I would not be the same person I am today if anyone of them were not part of my being.

Our DNA defines us, our eye color, hair and body shape, our parents mold us into good little people, teaching us moral and our faith and society leans onus to conform to the norms of the times. But in the end it is us who truly defines us, we choose to follow our parents lead or if we will bend in to social norms, it is us, our individuality, that creates new possibilities for ourselves.

All three parts of me, represented by my blogs, help to shape me, guide me and in some ways define me, but only if I allow them to. My parents help create them, my faith help shaped them and the social/economics of society help bend them in to what we see today. But ultimately I allowed them to.

How can I say this, what proof do I have that in the end it is my choice. I have 4 case studies, my brothers and sisters, all raised by the same two parents, all raised with in the same faith and similar social/economics as me, each of us are different, we each chose how we would allow each force mold us.

So yes I am at times divide between my Faith, political and self reliance sides of me. Sometimes what I write in one blog may seem like it is in opposition to what I wrote in another blog. But in truth it can not be in opposition with anything else I write, it is just taken out of context. When I write purely for one blog, not allowing my other 2 sides to enter in to the conversation I create a conflict of sorts. This conflict is internal, wanting to establish the links between all three major forces in my life. This is a choice I make, not allowing the overflow of the other two in to what I am writing. I want to allow myself the freedom to dive into the topic unhindered by my own confines, to allow the organic growth of the thought, and than at a latter time see how it fits in to my over all person. No conflict, only growth.

So please if you get a chance check out my other two blogs, let me know what you think, and tell your friends to give me a read, who knows maybe someone somewhere will like what I wrote, they may even think I am smart. But I am not holding my breath for that, I don’t write for others, but for myself.

Paul

STATIC Youth  —  Faith and Life

 

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Open Ears

How often do we participate in a conversation, but in truth we are only really waiting for our chance to speak? I know I do this, especially when it is a heated debate, I want so badly to speak my mind. I have been working on not doing that to much, but its like a favorite candy bar, you walk by it and have to have it. I just can’t always control myself, i just have to have that candy, i just have to get my argument out, its all the same thing to me.

We know, just from our own experience that when people listen to what we have to say and we listen to them, the debate or argument or just plan conversation goes better. There is a natural pace and flow to it. Now to listen does not mean agree with, but to just listen and take it in, allowing it time to settle in your mind and to form a thought.

Listening is a skill we all need to improve at, we all need to be reminded every now and than to just shut the mouth and open the ears. To listen to the sounds of everydayness and to the voice of reason. Listening is not just a skill for conversations with others, but it is also a skill for conversations with nature and self. The quit time we spend just sipping our coffee in the early mornings, or out on the front porch with a cup of tea at dusk.

The skill of listening to the silence is difficult, but not unattainable. Simon & Garfunkel stated it best in there song, The Sounds of Silence:

Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

The seeds that are planted when we listen to the silence of self and nature can grow in to the changes we dream of, the new creation of self, only if we can learn to listen to the silence of self.

The task is daunting the reward is great. The other day I posted about self time, and in the past i have written about this topic and I will come back to it often. It is a skill that seems to be lost in a modern world where silence is looked at as unproductive or a waste of valuable time.

In days gone by silent time was treasured and looked upon as a treasure for only the well off. In today’s world we look at silence as a sign of laziness and a sign of the less fortunate.

Look at any great leader of the spiritual ways, Jesus, Buda and Krishna all call for and practiced moments of silence. As a Catholic we have moments in our celebration of of Mass that incorporate silence (or it should be, but not all Churches recognize this) we have seasons that calls us to prolonged silence and intense soul searching. The Church sees the importance of listening to the silence.

Listing to the silence of the soul allows you the intimacy of self, the oneness of time and growth and the universality of joining in the the silence of the ages. Silence offers a sort of magic that transcends time and space, giving us the freedom to listen to the voices of the past or future with the present always there.

I am not saying that through silence we can communicate with the dead or travel through time and space, but I am saying that through silence we free our mind to imagine the possibilities of our many tomorrows by  listening to the echo’s of yesterdays.

I have fixed many a problem through the quietness of listening to the silence, allowing my mind to freely flow over the waves of nothingness. Creating a openness that allowed the sounds of reason enter into my soul planting the seeds of forgiveness or love, plucking the hatred out by its roots and allowing the waters of creation to feed me.

So today, sit and have a conversation with the silence, open your ears and listen to the nothingness of the universe and hear the voice of God speaking.

Paul

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Intimate Conversations

Last night I had a intimate chat with my nephew, he is a 17 year old young man who originates from Cameroon Africa. He has only been in this country for a few years, and I have only known him for 1.5 years or so, well maybe closer to 2 years now, but what ever. In truth he is not my natural nephew, I knew his dad, not very well, through the church I am youth minister at. His son was in the youth group, and to make a long story short, to help him and his boy out, i let his son move in with me, so now he is my nephew. But back to that chat.

Last night at dinner he is usually very quiet, and does not offer up much information, not much more that a grunt or two. But some of that is typical teen age communication but with him it’s also a cultural thing, he was taught to be seen not heard. And that’s what he tries to do, over the last year or so I have worked very hard to get him to open up, to talk to me and other adults more freely. It’s been a hard road, but it has had it’s moments, like last night.

the topic of our conversation is of no real concern for the point of this blog, what is of concern is the importance of intimate conversation. We have gotten away from intimacy in general, our conversations are done via text messaging on our cell phones, one of the latest trends is to text your boy friend or girl friend that you are breaking up. My nephew asked a young lady out via a text message. I was not happy and told him so, to me, asking someone out is an intimate act and should be done face to face, or at least over the phone, voice to voice. The ability to text someone removes the direct contact, removes the personal touch. It makes it easer to have no investment in to the relationship. Sure there are times that texting is called for, or Instant Messaging (IMing) someone one. I IM people all the time, unless it is important, unless it calls for intimacy than it is a face to face contact.

The body often times speaks more that the voice, we can learn more for the language the body is using than the language the voice is using.  With text messages and such, all that is lost, we speak in bits and peaces, using icons to display emotions and words that haven’t even been added to any dictionary as of yet.

When I talk with my nephew I always make sure I can see him and that he is looking at me, often times he looks down or away, and misses the body language of the conversation. I try to explain the importance of looking someone in the eyes when you talk to them, but in this world of texting it seems to make no cense. I am sure he would rather just text me a reply and be done with it.

This all to often is what most teens, and now even adults would rather do. We are loosing the ability to have intimate conversations by allowing our youth to continue hiding behind there phones. As parents and care givers we have a responsibility to teach our children how to be intimate, and we do this by example, but forcing them to look at us when they talk to us, but explaining that texting does not replace face to face or voice to voice, that important things are not reduced to “OMG” (Oh my god) or other such abbreviations, and that a 🙂 does not truly equal a smile.

If we continue down this path we run the risk of living in a world of no intimacy, just a quick text and off we go. So last nights conversation was truly of no great importance except he did communicate with me, he looked at me and he smiles and responded with feeling in his voice. That is much more than a text message ever can be.

ttyl

Paul

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