View From Here

Change is a constant. Always has been. Always will be. Things exist in this moment and remembered in the next. Future is hoped for, dreamed about, made up, engineered, and maybe planned. But it is not real until the present shifts into what exists in the next moments, the future. Organizations plan. People plan. Governments plan. If we care about what we are doing and value what we believe, we will imagine the future and try to make it happen. Saying it is so does not make it so. A lot of energy, resources, ideas, effort and cooperation must be present to build a plan and produce results. There is no guarantee that the future will unfold as we wish. No, it is most likely going to be whatever it will be, with or without our help. With certainty, I believe we can improve on results if we plan for them and work for them. It means changing our behavior, our actions along the way. It does not mean we have to change what we believe or value. However, reality forces us to accept the unple...

I was once asked if I ever felt called to do something, like the call to ministry. Some of you know that I attended seminary back in 1968. And yes, I felt the call to enter seminary. Gave up my job and career to explore a major departure in what I needed to do. That was a calling. Major. Since then, however, have there been other callings? I answer yes, but nothing quite as extraordinary as entering seminary. Instead, my career goals had less to do with money than purpose. Of course, I needed compensation to pay bills and support a family. Rather than focusing on that, however, I dwelled on what changes in the world I hoped for and what role I would play in those changes. Purpose became mission. Defining it was not easy, but I knew I would know it when I saw it. Meanwhile, helping others became a steady theme in my head. Each job I had thereafter truly served those ends. The core of each was helping others find purpose in their lives and in their organizations. More and more th...

I have several trips in mind. I think of them often. One I have never been on, the one to Glacier National Park in Montana. That is a long trip to unfamiliar territory. Also unknown, expenses. How much to budget such a trip is difficult and likely not possible on that basis alone. Other trips are back to New England, this time to Vermont and New Hampshire with a few other stops along the way. Easy peasy. Familiar region and known expenses, timelines and driving conditions. Another trip is back to New Mexico and Arizona. So many favorite sites on that trip! Restrictions on travel for me are more than money. Stamina, balance, ability to walk and stand, and the danger of falling. All of those conditions apply everyday wherever I am, not just travel. The addition of travel, however, expands the opportunities for falling – in and out of the car for gas, meals, motels and so forth. Getting settled in a motel room is hard enough even with an elevator. Imagine dealing with the variables of...

An idea pops to view. A thought about it expands the idea. Feelings may emerge on that same idea, and possible connections with other ideas that populate the mind. This is what a writer does. Ideas come and words follow. Inevitable. A lot of them. Boring to some, interesting to others. Utterly fascinating to a very few. Such is the life of a writer. Becoming a writer is weirder. I didn’t set out to be one. I just allowed the mind to wander to many places. Nooks and crannies of life, thought, history, and experience. Even feeling, emotion, touch, smell, love, whatever. The urge to explain something. Everything? Wonder as allure to writing? Completing some unsaid cycle of making sense about the complex world surrounding each of us? I cannot say the what or the why. I can only wonder about it all and let it happen. Let it happen. Just let it happen. There were days and years when I didn’t give myself permission to write much of anything. Letters, yes. School assignments. A random po...

Just because I say something doesn’t make it so. It is an opinion until proven it is a fact. Some things are factual on their face – the earth is round; the day is when the earth’s surface faces the sun whether seen or not; nighttime is the absence of daylight; snow happens when temperatures are near or below freezing, 32 degrees Fahrenheit. And so on. Most facts are proven by science or happenings with documentary record. Opinion is what I think or value something as. He is an old man is fact, not opinion. He is a dotty old man is an opinion, not a fact unless proven so. She is a great administrator may be a fact or opinion; the matter must have substantive facts to back it up to erase opinion. The style of a car or suit of clothes is an opinion, well, the liking of it is. In its own right, style exists. Whether it is liked or detested is a matter of personal opinion. If popular, the style is a winner established by facts. Politics is a lot of opinion. There are facts, of course, ...

I mulled this thought over and over one night. Awoke from a sound sleep to this idea: we keep a sense of time in our brain. How does this compare to keeping a sense of place? Does it even exist? I concluded we do have a place keeping mechanism. Each of us. How does this work? I moved to various locations in my early life. Dad was a defense engineer on many Navy projects. He first worked in southern California. A lot of work with Cal Tech, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and several Navy bases. He worked with civilian contractors and corporations in that line of work, eventually moving from Naval Civil Service to private corporate employment. We lived in three homes in California. Altadena (a suburb of Pasadena) at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. Then Inyokern in the center of the Mojave Desert, back to Altadena (same house), then to a new home in Glendora. While living there in the first 6 months, Dad took a job in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Then transferred to Syracuse, New ...

When I first had GPS on my car, I used the system to find a new client’s address. The system led me to an unlikely spot. Once a residential area, it was now spotted with street front shops, some offices, a few auto repair sites and the rest, homes. The system’s voice simply said, “you have arrived at your destination.” Well, it was a curbed parking space in front of an elevated wall next to the sidewalk. An opening in the wall presented a short set of steps through a hedge which over hung the sidewalk and wall below. No address was evident. I rechecked the GPS setting and the client’s address. I noted I was on the right side of the street. Odds and evens of the street numbers told me that. So, I walked up the steps to a front door and rang the bell. Yes. This was the place proven when the client appeared at the door and welcomed me. The experience made me value the GPS more, but the doubt seeded by the difficulty of knowing where I was, kept me nervous about GPS for some time to co...

Stubble. Not stumble. You know, the short, gristle, stiff barely visible growth of beard. The appearance of so many men these days. A few more days and the growth would be an unshaven beard. I was taught to look presentable always, especially at work and church. That covered just about everything else as well. I took that to heart and just got in the habit. Shaved every day. Rarely did I skip a day. Rarely. But then my beard doesn’t grow quickly or dark. My son started doing this a few times, so I had a chance to see the phenomenon up close and personal. Didn’t like it much. But when colleagues at work began doing this, I took special notice. More and more guys were going unshaven. I didn’t think it was a good practice or look. Back then or now. Just doesn’t fit the sense of a people, a social order, that is prepared and proper for a day of work in this world. At this time. Keeping standards, is my feeling. Of course, there must be people who think this is sexy, or feel it is sex...

With more experience, I see things differently. From time to time, ideas expand, understanding shifts, new possibilities of meaning take shape. Getting into another’s head space or shoes, I sense how they must have felt in various situations. I’m a guy, so don’t know what giving birth is like. It must be painful, what with all the screaming and pain medications. I can imagine how it must feel, however. I do try but it is not the same as actually feeling it. As a financial services person in the past, I have helped single mothers with loan applications and struggles saving money. I have seen what they have gone through. Burned out apartments where the landlord doesn’t help at all; no utilities; water damage everywhere; the smells of dampened building materials, rot, too. So, I wrote letters to the landlord and the city. I gave the lady a loan, helped her lower spending (I actually placed her credit cards in our credit union safe!). We withdrew just enough cash each payday to get her t...

Living life, we see things. we feel things. We come to know more about things. meanings emerge. Connections become evident. Cause and effect grow to significance. We understand more about our life and its relations with others. This matters to me. I bet it matters to you, too. I have thought this way most of my life. I followed this path of interests. I discovered for myself so much in life. Understanding their significance to other discoveries attracted my attention. It changed me. It impelled me to live expansively on the one hand, and in the gritty details on the other. This way of living initially attracted my attention and kept it for life. Along the way I tried new things, did different things. Risking failure in the new, I learned much. Like the best lessons in life, failure teaches the most. Success is hardly known to teach. Success blinds us to why it is a success. Failure, however, uncovers what doesn’t work and the why. Those lessons are clear and helpful as we step in...

A trip planned twice but never taken is a visit to Glacier National Park in Montana. It is located in the northwestern corner of Montana near the Canadian border. A swatch of the Rockies, Glacier Park is a wonderland of mountains, peaks, valleys and rocky ridges. Forests, too. And rivers. Lakes. Sweeping views up and down altitudes flatlanders can only wonder at. The Road to the Sky is a feature of the park. It is a two-lane road that climbs, curves and swirls upward through dizzying heights and switchbacks. Seemingly toward the sky, the road is magical and one of our nation’s highest roadways normal drivers can manage. Opposite altitudes are the valleys and plains. Surrounding the two entries to the park are Indian lands still occupied and controlled by tribes long ago moved by the white man. This is still their home, and they guard it with honor and commitment. While getting to the park is long and arduous, it is worthy of our time and notice. This is America, central and spaci...

Grit as in grittiness. Granular. So much of life is granular. The bits and pieces we see and work with every day, every hour and minute. The little things that add up to big in a hurry. We don’t always know this, the grittiness is that compelling and alluring of our attention. Think about the country lane you may walk upon. Some of it is paved, much of it isn’t. small stones and pebbles along with sand. Gritty in texture. But the road appears solid and worthy of travel. It is hale and hardy until too much rain or snow turns it to soup and mush. Much of life is like that, too. Isn’t it? I am not telling tales here. I am reflecting on fact and reality. Grit allows us to appreciate the whole while dealing with the tiny piece of that whole. We see how it is put together and functions in our world. Grit also provides traction in slippery conditions. Like thought in confusing times, grit ideas provide the logical steps toward a broader understanding. This is how knowledge is built, a...