Inhabit the land.

Courage to live comes with right thinking.

It's not for self; that's anger or perhaps greed.
It's not for vengeance; that's murder disguised.
It's not for judgement; that's a fool's self-righteousness.

It's right thinking that gives root to courage.  Real courage, anyway.

Jump in, we're told.  Set your heart on understanding, not winning.  If you make insight your priority and won't take no for an answer, pursuing it like a prospector panning for gold, you'll find it.  Understanding, insight, wisdom, real truth, bought at a price and worth it all.

Then, and perhaps only then, you can pick out what's true and just, and find all the good paths.  Wisdom will be your friend, and knowledge your brother as you make your way.  Good sense will scout the trail ahead for danger, and insight will keep an eye on things; they'll keep you from making the wrong turns.  They'll keep you from following the direction of those who themselves are lost and can't tell a trail from a trap, those losers who make a game of doing evil and throw parties to celebrate their corruption.  They travel paths that go nowhere, wandering a maze of detours and dead ends.  They'll see, and so will you.

So then - join the company of good men and women, stay on the true paths.  Pour out your life on that which is right and good.  It's the men who walk straight who will inhabit this land, and the women of integrity who will endure here.

The corrupt will lose their lives and everything else in the end, and be gone.

Pv.2.

Whatever it was that he saw, it was not a gentle occasion.

It makes sense in a distantly understandable way.

In the earliest years among the Abrahamic tribes, if you fell on hard times, you might lose your land and your family's livelihood.  The equivalent of modern bankruptcy, the legal process took title to your land and transferred it to a buyer.  You had the right to buy back your land, and the terms were recorded in a cover document that was attached to the deed, such as,  “Redemption requires payment of 10,000…” The deed and redemption document were rolled up and fastened with a seal of some sort.

Now if a relative of yours came to town and found you in bankruptcy, he might bail you out and restore your land by buying it back as described in the redemption document.  That kinsman would go to the keeper of records, probably at the temple, and make claim to the property by fulfilling the requirements.  The deed and redemption document could be unsealed if you or your kinsman came and claimed the land by paying the stated price.  Thus, the kinsman redeemer.

So later when the apostle John writes about seeing the sealed scroll, it makes a little more sense.  We can perhaps understand his weeping when no one could open the seals.  He saw the deed and redemption document for everything which mankind had lost, and it was all lost forever; and he wept.  

Then, this kinsman redeemer came to open the seals and pay the price for everything that had been taken from mankind so many years before.  In a practical, non-religious way, it does make sense.

The way John tells it … and you have to try visualize what he saw, all the way through ...

I saw a scroll in the right hand of the one seated on the throne. It was written on both sides and fastened with seven seals. I saw another who stood forward, calling out in a voice like thunder, "Is there anyone who can open the scroll, who can break its seals?” But there wasn't anyone able to break open the scroll and read it.

I wept in pain that no one was found to open the scroll, to break the seals.
I wept, until one of the elders said, “Don’t weep. Look - the lion from tribe Judah has conquered. He can open the scroll, he can break the seven seals.”

So I looked, and there was a lamb, slaughtered but standing tall. He came to the one seated on the throne and took the scroll from his right hand. In that moment, the four creatures and twenty-four elders bowed down and worshiped him. Each had an instrument and each had a gold bowl filled with incense, the prayers of holy people. Then with great voices, they sang:

Worthy! Take the scroll and open its seals.
Slain! Paying in blood, you bought men and women,
Bought them back from all over the earth,
Bought them back for God.
Then you made them a kingdom, priests for our God,
To rule the earth!

I looked again. I heard a company of angels around the throne, the creatures and the elders - ten thousand times ten thousand their number, thousand after thousand after thousand in great song:

The slain lamb is worthy!
Take the power, the wealth, the wisdom, the strength!
Take the honor, the glory, the blessing!

Then I heard every creature in heaven and earth and in underworld and sea, all joining in, all voices in all places, singing:

To the One on the Throne! To the Lamb!
The blessing,
The honor,
The glory,
The strength,
For age after age after age!

The four great creatures shouted out, “So It Is!” The elders fell to their knees and worshiped. 

So it is, in John’s describing of what he saw  ... everything that was lost is redeemed by the only one qualified, the only one who could pay the price.

That’s not so hard to grasp objectively, I guess. Huge, though. 

And as for what he actually saw ... we can hardly imagine. Whatever it was that he saw, it was not a gentle occasion.  

Conflict Makers

MBA.502 - Conflict makers: How to 

screw up team productivity. 

    

1.  Focus on your division’s tasks and needs only.

2.  Remember, yours is the key part of the organization!   

2.1. It’s a power play, and the superior position is yours.

3.  Stick with your solutions!

3.1. If you don’t, you’ll never get what you want.

3.2. Remember if you compromise, you lose.

4.  No mediator!

4.1. Unless they side with you, you're screwed. 

5.  Stand firm! 

5.1. Don’t admit you're wrong.  It’s a sign of weakness.

5.2. Don’t acknowledge any of their position.  Same reason.

6.  Keep your distance!

6.1. They're hose-heads; not worth talking to anyway.

Easy Alternative:

1.  Engage.

1.1. Talk it through graciously.

1.2. Define the business problem.  This is, after all, a business.

1.3. Find the conflicting priorities.

2.  Work out a deal.

2.1. Converge on goals.  Insist on a win-win way through. 

2.2. Identify, clarify, and commit.

2.3. Follow through with quick meetings as needed to keep it on track.

3.  If that didn't work, engage with an impartial mediator.

3.1. Do (1) & (2) again with a senior staffer to mediate.

3.1.1.  Sides might meet just with the mediator first.

3.1.2.  The mediator can perhaps whittle things down to the core issues from a business perspective.

3.2. The mediation's focus will be on workplace performance (appropriately), not about how sides ‘feel’ about each other (a shrink’s task for somebody else). See MBA.501

4.  Affirm and Commit.

4.1. Identify, clarify, and commit.

4.2. Follow-up to see that the resolution worked.

4.3. Meet again, and regularly if needed, to support the changes.

By the way, where do you think all these quarrels come from? Do you think they just happen?  Think again. They come about because deep inside ourselves we want our own way, and we fight for it. We want what we don't have and are willing to do harm to get it.  Truth.  Deal with it.

Communication Killers

MBA.501 - Communication Killers: How to 
screw up  progress in the workplace.

1.  Listen just long enough to form a counter-strategy; then:      

2.  Invalidate! 

2.1. Challenge each premise as it emerges. 

2.2. Don’t wait to hear it all.  “Now, be reasonable …”

3.  Attack! 

3.1. Criticize!  “You always…,” is a good approach.

3.2. Attack their motives and accuracy.

4.  Defend! 

4.1. Adjust what you hear to fit your position. 

4.2. Deny their perspective. “No, you don't understand...”

5.  Escalate! 

5.1. Restate the offeror’s content in exaggerated and extreme form.

5.2. Then insert reasons why ‘it’ is impossible.  “The contract doesn't allow…”

6.  Withdraw! 

6.1. They're the problem, not you; make a strategic exit.

6.2. “I'll get somebody else to handle it,” is a great play.

7.  Play the ‘!#@*% you’ card!   Always a good cut-off. 

Easy Alternative:

1.  Give ‘understanding’ a try.

1.1. Listen to the subject matter and offered rationale.

1.2. Evaluate the non-verbal (the other 85%) content.

2.  Make sure you get it. 

2.1. Ask for insight. Why? What? How?

2.2. Feed it back for clarity. "If I understand, then ...."

3.  Keep it easy. 

3.1. Dial down each escalation.

3.2. Acknowledge each criticism according to its relevance and accuracy. 

4.  Brainstorm together.  Not why we can’t but how we can succeed.

5.  Affirm and Commit. 

5.1. Affirm the validity.  “Yes, you're right on that point.”

5.2. Affirm the value.  “Thanks.  I needed to know that.”

5.3. Affirm the individual.  “Keep it up.  I need your perspective.”

5.4. Commit.  “I understand and I’ll back you up on that.”

6.  Rinse; repeat. 

The principles illustrated here are applicable to pretty much any relationship whether it's between coworkers, friends, or marriage partners.  Or between parents and children, for that matter; especially teens.  :)  

The two authors of this particular short list spent 35 years in research, development, and screwing up.  Thanks and a hat tip to Russ whom I've known since the 70's and for whom I've worked since the early 90's.  Hard to believe he didn't fire me when I told him to. 

Letter to Peter Collinson

The entire letter from  Benjamin Franklin is rich and enlightening, but this excerpt says more worth laughing about than a weekend of comedy shows.

May 09, 1753

"...  The little value Indians set on what we prize so highly under the name of learning appears from a pleasant passage that happened some years since at a treaty between one of our colonies and the Six Nations; when every thing had been settled to the satisfaction of both sides, and nothing remained but a mutual exchange of civilities, the English commissioners told the Indians, they had in their country a college for the instruction of youth who were there taught various languages, arts, and sciences; that there was a particular foundation in favour of the Indians to defray the expense of the education of any of their sons who should desire to take the benefit of it.   And now if the Indians would accept of the offer, the English would take half a dozen of their brightest lads and bring them up in the best manner.  

The Indians after consulting on the proposal replied that it was remembered some of their youths had formerly been educated in that college, but it had been observed that for a long time after they returned to their friends, they were absolutely good for nothing being neither acquainted with the true methods of killing deer, catching beaver or surprising an enemy. The proposition however, they looked on as a mark of the kindness and good will of the English to the Indian Nations which merited a grateful return; and therefore if the English gentlemen would send a dozen or two of their children to Onondago the great Council would take care of their education, bring them up in really what was the best manner and make men of them.  ...."

America in a Box

Beauty in art, beauty in culture; one is wide open and free, the other is perhaps bounded by fairly rigid rules.

America's norms, created by tradition, formalized by law and policy, America is the land of the carefully constrained.  Citizens are expected to color inside the lines.  True?  Ask the occupiers how the police treated them.

... a game in a box.
A short list of places to stand.
Those are the rules.

Change 'in favor of all' is often resisted by power players in favor of their own interests.

Today's America  seems constrained by monied interests purchasing government backing and by government playing along with such special interests.  Our financial industry now touches virtually everyone in the the world, and as yet does so without  accountability.  The six billion or so who bear the burden of being so manhandled didn't give their permission, but Wall Street now controls the world price of corn, the staple for many of them, along with most other commodities.  Monsanto dictates their crops.  The U.S. Congress backs it all.

Here at home, debate is limited to the confines of left or right.  Nothing outside the box.  The public forum tolerates the narrow debate of liberal and conservative issues, but the resulting polarization cripples our progress.  Pro-life folks find themselves faced with a candidate who thinks the poor are lazy welfare-ites.  Pro-choice folks have to vote for a big-government/big-debt fellow.  Voting for the more 'Christian' candidates in Congress means backing big business, especially Wall Street, to the detriment of the nations poor and the developing world.  The media play along.  We're boxed, and without a venue for a real public forum.

Americans and the world are scrambling for an exit strategy.  'Occupy' has dozens of focal points and now spans the developed world.  'Green' is tackling resource issues.  'Revival' is in the wings in a brand new form.  'Globalization' is rewriting policy, trade, and finance. Worldwide protest in 436 cities targets Monsanto and GMOs (just 17 hours ago), and Ag-Gag is tackling farm animal abuse.  ....

The next decades will be a blast.  Only figuratively, we hope.

You've noticed.  Picked a path yet for your part in it all?