LeadershipConneXtions

Quotes (December 09)

Here are this month's quotes, minus the ones on books and reading which appeared a few days ago, click here to see them.

The full list of this month's quotes are found on the Quotes Page in the Right Hand column.

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 AGE:  The older one gets, the more one feels that the present moment must be enjoyed, comparable to a state of grace. Marie Curie

DEPRESSION: Depression is the inability to construct a future. Rollo May

DYING:  The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.  Sir Thomas Browne
 

In particular, I liked these next quotes on EXCELLENCE.
 

 EXCELLENCE:   The rareness of excellence should not be made into an excuse for the failure to recognize it.  John Ciardi

EXCELLENCE:  Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.  Warren G. Bennis

EXCELLENCE:  The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy; neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.  John W. Gardner

LOST:  It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way. Rollo May (pictured to the right.)

POETRY:  Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind. Thomas Macaulay

PRAYER:  Whoever wrestles with God in prayer puts his whole life at stake.  Jacques Ellul

 



SELF:  The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly.  Soren Kierkegaard

SELF:  The self is not something ready-made” but something in continuous formation through choice of action. John Dewey

Brian K Rice
Leadership ConneXtions International
www.lci.typepad.com

For a Better Church You Need Better Followers of Jesus...

For a better church, you are going to need better followers of Jesus. And while I do not want to ignore the fact of community, we need to turn the gaze inward first, before we start to put the blame on how others are inadequate.

I've been on a bit of rant and rave lately, thinking about the critics who love to complain and put the blame everywhere but on themselves. In a post a few days ago (What is Wrong With the Church: Dear Sirs...)  I mentioned that this is bad psychology, spirituality, theology, etc. Here are the insights of a few others on this issue:

You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for our own improvement and at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.  Marie Curie 

I like this word from Marie Curie quite a bit. If you don't like something you are a part of, then get to work to make it better… but first, make sure you are becoming a better person yourself. If that (you becoming a better person) doesn't happen, it is doubtful that you will be able to make a better world (or church, or team, or mission, or organization).
 

Huxley, in the same vein, had this to say:  
I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.  

And for every one who has worked very hard to change your "self" you know how hard it was/is just to change your self...  Now, think about trying to change an entire organization of "selves!" That is a whole lot harder.
 

And how about this thought from Erich Fromm. 
Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself. 
I don't think I go quite as far as to say this is THE main task in life, but it sure does rank pretty high and deserves a spot on the short list.
 

Neither Curie, Huxley or Fromm are talking about a narcissistic self-centered preoccupation with one's self that ignores community. They are describing the Brute Fact - that if any external, organizational change is to happen, it is launched from within, by changed individuals.

My friend Brian Newman talks about the need to move from Critic to Contributor. I think a huge part of that process is the journey of self-awareness and personal development of one's inner world.  

Brian K. Rice  

Leadership ConneXtions International
www.lci.typepad.com

Quotes (November 09)

Here are this month's quotes. A number of them are from Kenneth Boa and his book, Conformed to His Image. Remember, I don't always subscribe to the sentiments of a quote. For me a good quote is not so because it is true, but because it is thought provoking.

-bkr-

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ATTITUDE:  If you think you can… or if you think you can’t… you’re right.  Henry Ford

CALLING:   The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.  Frederick Buechner

CRITICS:  The main reason people rain on my parade is because they have no parade of their own.  Jeffrey Gitomer

DISCIPLESHIP:  The bulk of Christian churches and denominations pitch their message so low that even if their members practiced the spiritual regimens they propose, it is unlikely that they would be distinguishably different from their neighbors.  Ken Boa

GOD:  It is easy and comforting to reduce God to a set of biblical propositions and theological inferences rather than a living person who cannot be boxed in, controlled, or manipulated by our agendas.  Kenneth Boa

GROWTH, PERSONAL:  The one who stops being better stops being good.  Oliver Cromwell

HISTORY:  The study of history moves on, remorselessly, like time itself. Today’s sensation becomes tomorrow’s irrelevance. The best-seller of one decade becomes the embarrassment of another. The revolutionary theory which convulses the academic world gets cut down in the next age to an ironic footnote.  Paul Johnson

JESUS, IMITATION OF:  To ask the question, What would Jesus do? Without practicing the habits we know he practiced is to attempt to run a marathon without prior training.  Kenneth Boa

JESUS, IMITATION OF: We have bought the illusion that we can be like Christ without imitating his spirituality. If we wish to be like our Master, we must imitate his practice.  Kenneth Boa

SUFFERING:  I know God will not give me anything I cannot handle. I just wish He didn’t trust me so much.  Mother Teresa

VOCATION:  Whatever you are be a good one.  Abraham Lincoln

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To read additional quotes for this month, check out the New Quotes on the Quotes page in the right column.

Brian K. Rice  
Leadership ConneXtions International  
www.lci.typepad.com

Quotes (October 09)

This month I had a lot of quotes from a lot of reading. In fact, I had so many I postponed some of them for next month. Enjoy this sampling, and as always you can find the entire list updated on the Quotes Page to the right of this column.   -bkr-

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ADVENTURE:   Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.     Helen Keller

ADVENTURE:  The real adventure in 'Moby Dick' is the one that happens inside Captain Ahab.  The rest is a fishing trip.    Salman Rushdie

AWAKENING:  A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain. Jessamyn West

BILLION:  A billion minutes ago, Christianity appeared. A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music forever. A billion Coca-Colas ago was yesterday morning.  Robert Guizueta, former president Coca-Cola

CHANGE, TRYING TO CHANGE OTHERS:  There is perhaps no surer mark of folly, than to attempt to correct natural infirmities of those we love.  Henry Fielding

CONSUMERISM:  We are not concerned with the ability to pay, but with the ability to want.  Emily Fogg Mead, marketing expert

CONSUMPTION:  Consumption is our system of meaning.  Jean Baudrillard

DIFFICULTIES:  Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on. Rabindranath Tagore

DIFFICULTY OF LIFE:  Be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.  Philo of Alexandria

GOALS:  Perfection of means, and confusion of goals seems, in my opinion, to characterize our age. Albert Einstein

INSPIRATION:  Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance. Edgar Degas

MALE-FEMALE DIFFERENCES:  Men and women belong to different species and communication between them is a science still in its infancy. Bill Cosby  (By the way, enjoy the cartoon at the bottom of this blog, from one of my favorite comic strips - Zits.)

PAST, LEARNING FROM IT:  When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness. Alexis de Tocqueville

REALITY, DENIAL OF:  I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it."  Garrison Keillor

SELF-IMPROVEMENT:  If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow-creatures, let him begin the long, solitary process of perfecting himself.  Robertson Davies

WISDOM:  A word to the wise ain't necessary-- it's the stupid ones that need the advice. Bill Cosby

  
Brian K. Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International
www.lci.typepad.com   

Quotes (September 09)

Here is a sampling of quotes for the month of August. My reading was down a bit since I was doing a lot of writing. As always, you can find the full list of monthly quotes on the Quotes Page.

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CHANGE:  People change and forget to tell each other.  Lillian Hellman (pictured)

What a great thought to remember. Life involves change. We are always in progress and in process. We are constantly improving, growing, "evolving." And we don't always remember to clue others in to what is going on and how we are changing.

CUSTOMER:  There are two essential rules to management. One, the customer is always right; and two, they must be punished for their arrogance. Scott Adams, Dilbert 

I love it!

DISCOVERY:  Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

DREAMS:  Sometimes we have the dream but we are not ourselves ready for the dream. We have to grow to meet it.  Louis L’Amour (pictured)

Sometimes the right idea is not at the right time because we are not at the right place for that idea. The one problem with having external BHAGS is when we don't have the inner Bigness and Deepness to pull them off, or to sustain them.

ECCENTRIC:  Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won’t think you’re going gaga.  David Ogilvy

This one is for all my eccentric friends, which are many. For all of those with layers and multitudes.

LIFE LONG LEARNING:  You must learn day by day, year by years, to broaden your horizons. The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about- the more you have left when anything happens.  Ethel Barrymore (pictured)

PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH:  A man must himself be cleansed before cleansing others; himself become wise, that he may make others wise; become light, and then give light; draw near to God, and so bring others near. Gregory of Nazianzus

PROBLEMS: There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives. Scott Adams, Dilbert  (pictured)

To which we all say, yes and A-men.

Brian Rice
Leadership ConneXtions International
www.lci.typepad.com

Quotes (July 09)

Here is a selection of quotes for the month of July. If the longer version does not appear on the Quotes Page in the right hand column, it means I am still having some problems posting PDFs.  bkr

CHANGE:   The real sadness of fifty is not that you change so much but that you change too little. Max Lerner

CONVERSATION: Conversation is not simple. Good conversation is rare. Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, Caring for Words

EDUCATION:  Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.  William Butler Yeats

GOD:  We are talking about God; so why are you surprised if you cannot grasp it? I mean, if you can grasp it, it isn’t God.  Augustine

INTUITION:  A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty.  Kipling

MARRIAGE:  To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you’re wrong admit it, Whenever you’re right, shut up. Ogden Nash  (By the way, here is the Home Page for Ogden Nash where you can read more of his verse.)

MESSY and MYSTERIOUS:  Our broken world is poised on a precarious fulcrum and wobbles between glory and the grotesque, beauty and brokenness, grace and tragedy. Saints are those who live their faith close to this tottering hinge.  James Smith

MOTIVATION:  Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.  Stephen Covey

PASSION:  It is stern work, it is perilous work to thrust your hand in the sun and pull out a spark of immortal flames to warm the hearts of men.  Joyce Kilmer  (Great poet who died very early in the first world war.)  Pictured to the left, Joyce was his middle name, Alfred his first

PROGRESS:  Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long. Ogden Nash  

RISK: Take into account that great love and great achievement involve great risk. 14^th Dali Lama

STORY: The stories that matter also complicate our lives. Good stories are always slightly precarious places to go. Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, Caring for Words

TRUTH:  You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.  Flannery O’Connor

Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

Quotes (June 09)

I had a lot of quotes this past month, 139 of them. Here are some of my favorites from June. As always, you can find the full list posted on the Quotes Page.

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ADVERSITY:  Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist; it reduces him to his fighting weight.  Josh Billings

ANSWERS:  Someone, somewhere has to have a better answer.  Jack Welch

ATHEISM:  There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.   William B. Provine, professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University

BOOKS:  Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me.  Anatole Francois Thibault

CHANGE:  We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

CHARACTER:  No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

CRITICISM:  He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help.  Abraham Lincoln

DETERMINATION:  Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.  Abraham Lincoln

ENEMIES:  Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them.  Abraham Lincoln

FAITH:  Faith is not belief in spite of evidence, but life in scorn of consequences.  Kirsopp Lake, New

FAILURE TO LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE:  Human beings, who are almost unqiue in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.  Douglas Adams

FAILURE TO LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE:  One never believes other people’s experience, and one is only very gradually convinced by one’s own. Vita Sackville-West

FAILURE TO LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE: Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.  Franklin P. Jones.

FEAR:  We must travel in the direction of our fear.  John Berryman

GROWTH:  We aim above the mark to hit the mark.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

LIFE:  life is a long lesson in humility.  James Barrie

OPPORTUNITIES, MISSED:  Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

OPPOSITION: Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

POLITICS:  If you do not know how to lie, cheat, and steal, turn your attention to politics and learn.  John Billings

REALITY:  Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd. It is not neat, not obvious and not what you expect… Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed.   C.S. Lewis

WOMEN:  Women have for centuries been recognized as talented listeners, nurturers, motivators, excellent communicators. These very qualities that we once were told were unbusinesslike are precisely the qualities that business needs most to tap human potential.  Mary Cunningham Agee

Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

Quotes (May 09)

Here are some of my favorite quotes from this past month's reading. As always, you can find the complete list on the Quotes Page that is in the right hand column.

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CREATIVITY:  Creativity is about coming out of hiding and exposing yourself. Practicing creativity is about humiliating yourself in public.  Doug Hall, Jump Start Your Business Brain

EXPOSURE: The fact is, you’re always on the record, everyone is a critic (or could be), and the Web remembers forever.  Seth Godin,  Meatball Sundae

GRACE:  Grace is a curious thing. We love receiving it, but we really don’t like seeing it given out so lavishly to others.   Ed Cyzewski

HISTORY:  History rhymes, it does not repeat.  Mark Twain (pictured to the left).

IMAGE:  Thinning hair, splotchy skin, love handles, cellulite, stretch marks, and wrinkles become sources of preoccupation, depression, and great effort. The funny thing is Jesus never talked much about thick hair, ripped abs, youthful skin, or sexy legs.  Shane Hipps

LEADERSHIP: A leader is best when people barely know he exists; not so good when people obey and admire him; worst when they despise him.  Lao-tzu (pictured to the right)

RESURRECTION:  Resurrection was always bound to get you in trouble, and it regularly did.  N.T. Wright

SAMENESS:  That sea of similarity.  Scott McKain,  The Collapse of Distinction

TRIBES:  If oral culture is tribal and literature culture is individual, the electronic age is essentially a tribe of individuals.  Shane Hipps

 

Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

 

 

Quotes to Ponder (May 09)

This past month was a month rich in reading good sources and coming across many fine words worth repeating.  Here are a few of my favorites and as always, the full list of 85 new quotes is updated on the Quotes Page, available to the right.

ANGER:  If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?   Sydney J. Harris

BUSY:  The Chinese pictograph for busy is composed of two characters:  heart and killing.

CONSUMERISM:  The idea that Christianity and consumerism are completely compatible . . . is the great insanity of our times.  Win Butler

DIALOGUE:  Crushing truths are lightened by their acknowledgement. Remember again. Remember rightly. Re-vision.  David Dark, Sacred of Questioning Everything

DISSATISFACTION, OF SELF:  We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves. William Hazlitt

HAPPINESS:  If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.   Richard Bach

INSPIRATION: We’re on the prowl for inspiration. We want something extra-authentic, something to shake our nerves and rattle our brains. We need something to keep us from throwing in the towel and losing our minds – something to get us out of bed. Gospel, the news we call good, is always a media issue.  David Dark, Sacred of Questioning Everything

PEACE, LACK OF INNER:  Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves. William Hazlitt

PRAYER:  Act as if everything depended on you, pray as if everything depended on God.  Ignatius  (And its opposite:  Pray as if everything depended on you. Act as if everything depended on God.)

SELF-AWARENESS:  If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people.   Virginia Woolf

TOOLS:  If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.  Abraham Maslow

 

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Remember, if you ever have any good quotes, send them to me.

Blessings to all of you as a new month begins.

Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

New Quotes (a few days late)

Here is the March list of quotes and a few other items as well.

QUOTES:  The 43 new quotes are updated on the Quotes Page. Here is a representation of this month's offerings.

COMMITMENT:  I saw the shallowness of my commitment. I saw the incompleteness of my love. Mine was a negotiated abandonment, and that meant it was not a true abandonment at all.  Anne Rice, Called out of Darkness  (to the left)

COMMUNICATORS:  What orators lack in depth, they make up in length.   Charles de Montesquieu

CURIOSITY:  The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

GREAT COMMANDMENT:  He (St. Ignatius) loved God and loved the world, and those two things he did quite well.  James Martin

GROWTH:  It’s never too late to be who you might have been.  George Eliot

GROWTH:  One grows or dies. There is no third possibility.  Oswald Spengler

HABITS:  The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.  Fyodor Dostoevsky (pictured to the right)

LONLINESS:  We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.   Dorothy Day (to the left)

PASSION:  Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.  Howard Thurman

 

And here is one of my favorites:

STORY:  God writes straight with crooked lines.

 

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If you love music and want to have some fun, check out this site. It is free and I've found a lot of music in my favorite genres that I didn't know about.  Create your own Music Radio Station and Set Lists at Pandora.com

Out of Ur is a blogsite hosted by Christianity Today and you can always find up to date and very substantial conversations there. Worth bookmarking and subscribing to.

Life on Mars was a one season TV series that was creative, clever and had an awesome ending. It was one of those ending that was like the movie, The Sixth Sense, where the final minutes pull everything together and suddenly it all makes sense. Becky and I just kept looking at each other and smiling and saying WOW.  If you didn't watch the series this final episode won't make a lot of sense. But if you did and want to see it again - here it is. It was a great, loopy, postmodern kind of ending.

Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

 

Collected Treasures From Leadership Blog (Miriam Phillips)

My friend Miriam is a developer of and mentor for leaders, Miriam is a relentless searcher after resources. Here you get some of the rewards of her labors. Thanks for sharing these with the LCI readers. Plus thanks for asking those questions about the presence (or lack) of women producing these things.  (bkr)

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My friend Johan passed on this free resource of 281 pages of worthy quotes from leadership blogs compiled by the people from Exponential Network and Passion for Planting. Check out the first quote to get an idea of the kind of thought-provoking perspectives represented in this collection.

Link for the Leadership Blog Quotes

“Even the most creative people are tempted to stop being innovative when their ideas become successful. They subconsciously create a rule that says, "This idea worked, so don't do it differently." They "rubber-stamp" instead of "re-create." I'll say this as clearly as I can: If you are executing the same creative ideas you did last year because they worked, you are already on the decline.”

Posted by: Ben Arment, Innovation

I intend to work my way through the whole collection…which includes quotes from 20 bloggers including Alan Hirsch (co-author of The Shaping of Things to Come, The Forgotten Ways, and ReJesus) and a bunch of churchplanters I’d like to get to know better.

I do, however, notice that there aren’t any women’s voices in the mix.  

When Al and Deb Hirsch were with us at Crossroads International Church, her input was as valuable to us as his.  Are women less likely to value their own thoughts enough to write them out?  Are blogs by women less likely to be posted in places where they would be discovered for such a compilation? 

Do we (both women and men) value the contributions of women less if they are less theoretical and more practical? 

Miriam Phillips

The Netherlands

Quotes for March 2009

This past month of February was a "winner" in terms of reading and finding lots of great quotes. The attachment has twice as many quotes as normal and it was a real challenge to sort through and pull out a few of the best of the best.

Quite a few quotes are from my reading of Reordered Love, Reordered Lives by David Naugle, as well as I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like.

Here are a few of the many more you can find on the Quotes page.

COMEDY:  God writes a lot of comedy. Garrison Keillor (pictured)

COURAGE:  When the Nazis came to get the Communists, I was silent, because I was not a communist. When they came to get the Socialists, I was silent. When they came to get the Catholics I was silent. When they came to get the Jews,I was silent. And when they came to get me, there was no one left to speak.  Martin Niemoeller, Confessing Pastor of the Lutheran Church (pictured to the left)

GODs:  The gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.  Emerson

HAPPINESS:  For certainly by sinning, we lost both piety and happiness; but when we lost happiness, we did not lose the love of it.  Augustine

IDEAS:  Ideas are dangerous.  G. K. Chesterton

LOVE:  Such is each one as is his love.  Augustine (pictured)

PERSPECTIVE:  A proper perspective is worth 50 IQ points.  Dave  Gibbons, The Monkey and the Fish

POWER:  Power intoxicates men.  When a man is intoxicated by alcohol he can recover, but when intoxicated by power, he seldom recovers.    James F. Byrnes

PROPHETS/RADICALS:  Christians should be trouble makers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society.  Robert Ellsberg

SAINTS:  The saints differ from us in their exuberance, the excess of our human talents. Moderation is not their secret. It is in the wildness of their dreams, the desperate vitality of their ambitions,  that they stand apart from ordinary people of good will.  Phyllis McGinley

SIN:  What am I to myself but a guide to my own self-destruction.  Augustine

UNHAPPINESS:  Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it.  Don Herold

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Also, FOR COMMUNICATORS AND TEACHERS, I have provided a link to a great post on the kinds of presentation tools that are now available for us to use. Check it out whever you want on the Make It Stick page (right hand column).  Or check it out now at: Current Presentation Tools.

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Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

February 09 New Quotes and New Sites

It is the first of the month and that means new quotes are available on the Page - New Quotes. This time I had quite a few quotes from the book, I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like by Mardy Grothe. Here are a few of my favorites out of the 77 new quotes.

BOOKS:  If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?  Franz Kafka

BOOKS:  No furniture is so charming as books.  Sydney Smith

DEBATE:  it is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others. Michel de Montaigne

DISCOVERY:  One does not discover new continents without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.  Andre Gide

EGO:  Remember, you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.  Franklin D. Roosevelt

GOVERNMENT: Giving money and power to the government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.  P. J. O’Rourke  (ouch)

HEROISM:  let him who writes heroic poems make his life a heroic poem.  John Milton

LOVE:  The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.  Henry Scougal, 17^th century Puritan pastor.

SELF-AWARNESS:  For this is the journey that men make; to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn’t much matter what else they find . . .  James Michener

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I have also added these new websites/blogsites.

The Burning Man  (a massively "different" cultural experience in the Black Rock Desert).

A Pop Culture Blogsite with lots of fun things on it. conistently good humor. 

Wit, Wordplay, Metahpors and More are available here by Dr. Mardy Grothe.

Reordered Love, Reordered Lives is my favorite book of 2009 so far (and it will be hard to beat). here is a website devoted to exploring the book.

The Riddleblog  which is devoted to Reformed theology and eschatology. Some pretty good level discussions taking place here.

Vertical Creativity is a blogsite by deAnn Roe, Director of Creative Arts at LWCC.

Sacred Encounters is a blogsite by Deb Turnow, Director of Spiritual Direction at LWCC.

 

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Have fun learning, growing, emerging, moving, morphing, becoming all you can become this month of February.

Live well, lead wisely, love deeply, learn gratefully . . .

In Christ,

Brian K. Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

New Quotes, New Sites, a New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR'S EVE to everyone.

May you have wonderful times this evening with your friends and family and may the New Year be full of God surprises for you.

I have uploaded the New Quotes file on the  Quotes Page.  Here are a few of my favorites for this time:

ENEMIES:  Pay attention to your enemies because they are the first to discover your mistakes.  Antisthenes

JESUITS:  We study like students. We clean like housewives. And we still have to find the time to pray like monks. Aside from that, we kind of get on each other’s nerves.

JOURNEY:  With what end in view do you again and again walk along difficult and laborious paths?  Augustine

KNOWLEDGE:  I shall need to have been dead several years before I shall thoroughly understand the meaning of creation and the omnipotence of God.  Martin Luther

PERSPECTIVE, LIMITED.  Because we cannot see the paths we have not taken, we become, by default, advocates for the path our life is on.  Ethan Watters, Urban Tribes

STORY:  We tell ourselves stories in order to live.  Joan Didion

In addition, I have listed some new blog and websites for you to check out. There are so many good ones out there. But these are some that I have been reading this past month.

Plus new books and new music.

It's just a lot of fun.

Again - Happy New Year to you.

Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

tomorrow - Curious Leaders

Learning from the Past

Here are three quotes:

What has been will be again.

What has been done will be done again.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say,

“Look! This is something new?”

It was here already, long ago.

It was here before our time.

There is no remembrance of men of old,

and even those who are yet to come,

will not be remembered,

by those who follow.

Ecclesiastes 1:9-11

 

 

Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

George Santayana

 

 

We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.    Bernard of  Chartres

 

 

To continue reading my reflection on learning from the past, just click on the file.

 

Download learning_from_the_past.pdf

 

Brian K. Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

 

"Muchness" and "Manyness" (Hurry and the Devil)

Here is a reflection for today on an issue that all leaders (or almost all leaders) struggle with.

In contemporary society, our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, crowds. If he can keep us engaged in "muchness" and "manyness," he will rest satisfied. . . . Hurry is not of the Devil, it is the Devil.   Richard Foster, Celebration of  Discipline

Strong words . . . but necessary words.

Most of the time, if I ask a leader how she or he is doing with ministry, I'll hear, "Too busy, too overloaded, too much to do, not enough time to do it, feeling stressed with all my responsibilities..."

I recently had a bit of a self-awareness chuckle when someone asked me how I was doing. I said, "Well, I'm a little too busy, probably about 10% too busy, but that is a lot better than being 30-40% too busy."

Spiritual directors will tell us that we need regular doses of silence (to over come noise), life rhythms (to resist hurry) and solitude (as the antidote to crowds). Leaders move back and forth between these "dualities."

From noise to silence and back to noise, words, speech . . .

From hurry to sustainable rhythms and back to hurry . . . (the tendency is always there)

From crowds to solitude and back to crowds where we do our ministry.

Jesus had these dynamics operating in his life. Check out Mark 1:29-39.  These movements are inevitable. Our error is thinking we can live in one of the polarities when life is a constant movement back and forth.

With all that said, Foster is right. The spiritual forces of evil would love to emesh us in "muchness" and "manyness."

Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

Self-Awareness and Not Taking Too Seriously Your Own Press Clippings

About two weeks ago, I did a post on denial and the role that it plays in harming our organizations.  You can click here to go to that post.

Here is a related thought. Sometimes we are in denial about the wrong we are doing or the good we are neglecting. Other times we are living in a state of exaggeration about who we are and what we are doing. 

That's a human tendency. We are all Spin Doctors (to some degree) when it comes to ourselves. We have a disposition to believe the good press we get (and give ourselves). I know I do. With enough practice, any of us come easily become a Legend In Our Own Mind. 

Leaders may be especially suspectible to this tendency for exaggeration of self and their success in mission. This reality made it all the more striking when I came across a thought from Sir Edmund Hillary. Hillary was one of the first to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. He eventually was knighted and became a celebrity, but a celebrity who was also a humanitarian. You can read a very nice bio of Hillary here.  Here is the thought from Hillary that hit me.

I was just an enthusiastic mountaineer of modest abilities and determination. I was just an average bloke. It was the media that tried to transform me into a heroic figure. But I've learned through the years, as long as you don't believe all that rubbish about yourself, you can't come to too much harm.

What a concise few sentences teeming with self-awareness and humility! And a good word for all of us, not to believe all that rubbish about ourselves.

Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

By the way, I came across this in Three Cups of Tea, by Mortenson and Relin, page 129.

 

New Quotes, New WebBlogSites, New Communication Article (Sticky Page)

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from this month's Quotes. You can find all the new quotes on the page Quotes under Important Information.

 

FAILURE:  A leader’s failure is never isolated, involving only the leader. Usually the failure of a leader involves basic patterns of hiding and blaming throughout the whole organization, patterns that must be uprooted.  Dan Allender

GREAT MINDS:  Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.  Admiral Rickover

SELF-AWARENESS:  Getting to know yourself is extremely difficult.  Thales

VIRTUE:  Before virtue, the gods have placed sweat.  Hesiod

 

Also, see:  A Slighty Whimsical Look at Communicating,  under Important Information, on the page - Make It Stick.

And check out a lot of new blog and websites on the right hand column as well.

Brian Rice

Leadership ConneXtions International

New Quotes for August 08

Here is the list of new quotes.

Download NewQuotes.pdf

I did a lot of reading this past month and so the number of quotes is higher. There are 75 of them.

Here are a few of my favorites from this month.

EMPOWERING:  If you want to build for one year from now, grow wheat. If you want to build for ten years from now, grow trees. If you want to build for one hundred years from now, grow people.  Chinese proverb

IGNORANCE:  The problem wih interviewing famous people is that - much of the time - they don't know anything . . . Celebrity journalism is usually just attractive people trying to make up answers to questions they barely understand.  Chuck Klosterman

PRACTICE:  Practicing a thousand days is said to be discipline, and practicing ten thousand is said to be refining.  Miyamoto Musashe

STEWARDSHIP:  Anyone can make a world suffer and cry. It requires no imagination. Child's play, and no challenge at all. But to fix the broken jugs of despair, unkindness, illness and ill fortune - this takes a creative mind.  Tanith Lee

Brian Rice

New Quotes are on the Quotes Page

New Quotes are available on the Quotes page (right hand column).

Here are two of my favorites for this month.

CLUELESS:  Unfortunately, the disciples were more often the "duh!-ciples" because they just didn't get it.  Len Sweet

TRANSFORMATION:   The opportunity for conversion is brief, and our lives are littered with missed opportunities. Alan Jones

Brian Rice

Selling Sugar Water or Changing the World

Here is an "in your face" question.

"Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?"

Leander Kahney says, "It's perhaps the most famous challenge in the modern business history. It's an insult, a compliment and a soul searching philosophical challenge rolled into one question."

And it the question the young Steve Jobs asked of John Sculley. At the time Sculley was the enormously successful president of Pepsi Co who recreated that company and transformed it into a dominant rival to Coke. In 1983, with Apple just six years old and rapidly growing, CEO Jobs wanted Sculley to come and be the new CEO of Apple.

In the end Sculley said, "If I didn't accept, I'd have spent the rest of my life wondering if I had made the wrong decision."

There are a lot of people who are devoting their lives to making sugar water.

As leaders and mentors, we throw down the gauntlet and invite others to a greater engagement in the world. Sometimes, but not necessarily, leaving their vocation.  But certainly changing the focus in their vocation.

God invites us to be world changers.

What have you done toward that end?  And . . .

Who have you challenged this week to that greater engagement?

Brian Rice

New Quotes are on the Quotes Page

Just a reminder for those who like to check out the NEW QUOTES each month, I messed up.

I had about 50 new quotes that I thought I had saved, and then it turns out that I did not save the New Quotes page. They are however added in to the much bigger QUOTES pdf. However, they are just blended in there and not highlighted. So the only way you would know the new quotes is if you had kept a copy of the previous pdf.

It would take too much work to reconstruct May's New Quotes. Sorry about that.

Brian Rice

The Leader as Imaginator (Creative Imagination)

One of the graduate courses I team in Latin America is Emerging Paradigms of Leadership. It is a course that looks at the emerging culture and the Christian engagement with that culture and the new kind of leadership needed for serving the purposes of God in our historical situation.

I will be teaching that course this fall at Lancaster Bible College and Grad School and I am doing some re-reading of key texts to be covered in that course. It hits me again that so many of the emergent authors give a central place of importance to imagination. Tim Keel (Intuitive Leadership) and Alan Roxburgh (The Missional Leader) are just two of these voices.

Now, I guarantee you, that if you work through the standard texts on leadership, you will be hard pressed to find imagination listed in the top ten leadership skills needed for today (for example, check out Kouzes and Posner, the Leadership Challenge) unless the author sneaks it in when discussing visionary leadership. But even then, it is not being used the way the emergent leaders talk about imagination.

I think Keel and others are on to something important.

We live in a post-modern world and in that world, rationality and logic, while still important, are not enough.  Imagination, creativity, intuition and more are just as vital. Leaders will have to cultivate their creative side in the season of life that is ahead of us.

The Leader as Poet, Leader as Artist, Leader as Story-Teller and even Leader as Fool are all useful metaphors for the new kind of leadership in a "post" world.

With that said, here is a great thought from Jeffrey Sobosan in Romancing the Universe:

My increased years have taught me that, like competence in all other things, competence in imaginative effort also takes deliberate and focused attention. The listlessness of mental effort that often characterizes our behavior, the refusal to attend to anything that is not immediately apparent or useful - the narcissistic temperament - can give way to intellectual passion only when the mind is diligently and carefully exercised over a wide variety of experiences.

This challenges me. Like everything else, I can practice imaginatino. When I practice and exercise the imaginative aspect of life and leadership, it can grow.

In the last two months, I have posted several times on practice.

What are you doing these days to practice being imaginative?

Brian Rice

The Final Words on Leadership from Leadership ( by James Macgreggor Burns)

Leadership by James Macgreggor Burns is one of those magisterial and challenging books on leadership.

On a scale of 1-10, if John Maxwell is one or two on that scale, Burns is nine or ten. This book was a challenge to read, but the insights in it were profound.

Here is the final paragraph of the book. It is short and to the point.

Woodrow Wilson called for leaders who, by boldly interpreting the nation's conscience, could lift a people out of their everyday selves. That people can be lifted into their better selevs is the secret of transforming leadership and the moral and practical theme of this work.  (pp. 462)

I am going to resist commenting on this. Instead, I'd recommend you just reflect on each key word in this short paragraph and apply it to your situation.  I think these words are powerful and profound and at the heart of spiritual leadership.

Brian Rice

Learning by Pain and Contradictions

Here is a quote from a French Jesuit, Jean Pierre de  Caussade in his book, Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence.

God teaches the heart, not by ideas, but by pains and contradictions.

I post this as a follow up to John Hilliard's comments a few days ago.

Growth in leadership always involves spiritual formation. Spiritual formation always involves some kind of reflection on the experiences of life. And the most formative experiences of life are often those involving pain and contradiction.

We sometimes think that growth comes from simply having experiences. It doesn't work that way. Growth comes from reflection on our experiences and then integration into one's life of the insights gained from reflection.

It looks like: 

Experience + Reflection + Integration of Insight = Growth.

Lately I've been reflecting on issues of margins, friendship, and calling. And each reflection has come out of some sense of pain and contradiction.

Brian Rice

p.s.  If you are interested in a copy of the book I mentioned, check out Catholic Spiritual Direction Website. You can download free copies of a variety of books.