Our education system is under a lot of pressure. There's teacher burnout, student mental health challenges, unrealistic expectations; the list goes on.
In my work, I hear that list and more all the time. It can feel dire, especially as a dad of two teens in that education system. Especially has a human who cares deeply about this generation and the next. It can feel dire, that is, until you sit in the midst of folks who are deeply invested in that system. You sit with them and hear them talk about improving, not escaping. I had the privilege of presenting to a group of educators last night who are part of a local school system. They've come together as a cohort of school educators and support staff committed to gaining a deeper understanding of what it means to be a trauma informed school system. There were about 20 of them. They've committed to meet every Tuesday from 4:30-7:00 to give and receive education about trauma informed care. Other than a break this summer, they will do this all year. It struck me as I was sitting there, these folks raced from a long day of leading a classroom or supporting students in classrooms to sit for 2 1/2 hours in a classroom of their own. And yet, they didn't look like people exhausted from the day, they looked energized by the opportunity to be there. I've come to believe, in a most general way, that there are two kinds of living. There is living one step closer to the end, or one step into the beginning. I confess, I spent a fair amount of my life stepping into the end. It's a life of coasting, expecting the worse, always plotting an escape, and believing the end might just be the best part of the whole stinking story. That is not the today me, though. The today me believes each day is a new step into the beginning. Life is always beginning. Which means there is always something to learn to better prepare you for the next step into the beginning. Little energizes that way of living more than hanging out with people who are also stepping into new beginnings. And getting the chance to feed life into them. What struck me most about these educators last night, all of them coming from different schools and different positions, is there was no venting. When it could have turned into a who has it worst session, they all turned it into a who can encourage each other best session. I've come to know, when I get these chances to speak I'm going to contribute something. I'm sure of that. But I am even more sure that something bigger will be contributed to me. That was certainly the case last night. Sometimes things feel dire. Maybe they are. But there are usually some folks who believe that, although dire, the story isn't over. Find those people. Sit with them. And discover you aren't meant to be taking steps into the end. You are meant to live steps into the beginning. Today, live those steps.
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I am imperfect. That has always been true, it still is, and it will always be.
There are parts of me that are unfinished. That has always been true, it still is, and it will always be. And the story of my life today doesn't exactly look like the story I wish I was living. That has always been true, it still is, and it will always be. Those are three giant truths I bring to this new day and this new week. Knowing those truths sets the stage for making one giant choice about how I'll approach this new day and week. Are those truths my prison? Or are those truths showing me the way? Because every bit of unfinished business in our lives, every imperfection, ever way that life shows up that we wish would be different, every one of those things is either a blindfold or a magnifying glass. Every one of those things is either closing doors on us or opening a whole lot of them to show us the way. Which? That is up to us and not to those things. We get to decide whether we slip the blindfold over our eyes or pick up the magnifying glass to better see which way to go next. Because if you're breathing, here is another giant truth. The possibility of next is in front of you. If you've lost a job, there is either never going to be another job or the next one is waiting on you. If you've lost a relationship, there is either no new relationship ever or you're being better prepared for the next one. If you're battling a habit or an addiction, this is either the day it tightens its grip on you or the day you pry loose from that grip and start doing a little gripping yourself. If you wish you could run a mile but can barely run 100 yards, then you get to decide. One hundred yards isn't good enough, or 100 yards today is a beautiful opportunity to get 100 yards closer to my wish. You get to decide. Blindfold or magnifying glass. You get to decide. Prison forever or this is part of the process. Sometimes those truths suck. Bad. I have unfinished business. I have a boat load of imperfections. Life doesn't look like I would prefer life to look. The weight of all of those truths can sometimes be overwhelming. I get it. I get that they are overwhelming, but please don't let them bury you. Find someone today and just be real about those three truths in your life. My guess is that someone will confess the very same truths in their life. Then, commit to each other. We will not let each other take those truths into a prison. Commit to always showing each other the way. Not to finished business. Not to perfection. Not to an ideal life. Not to any of that, but instead, commit to showing each other to the next step. Because once we believe in a next step, once THAT is the greatest truth in our life, we will always find it. We will never pick up a blindfold again. I heard a pastor say something this week that has had me reflecting on the idea of evil.
Mark Moore said, "there's a lot of evil when bad people do bad things, but I wonder if there's even more evil when good people don't do good things?" The first thing his statement got me wondering was - what is evil? So, I asked my trustworthy AI friend that very question. What is evil? And AI said, "in everyday language, "evil" is often used to describe actions, intentions, or situations that result in harm, suffering, or injustice, particularly those that arise from malevolence or deliberate wrongdoing." That definition confirmed what I was pretty sure of. In our culture, evil is predominantly associated with people doing harmful things. The definition made me wonder even deeper, though. Can I cause harm and suffering and injustice by NOT doing something good? If an evil man is the one who does the bad he is clearly capable of doing to harm someone, am I an evil man for not doing the good I am clearly capable of doing to ease someone's harm? How big, really, is the gap on the evil scale between intentionally causing harm and intentionally neglecting an opportunity to ease harm? So much of our society, when it comes to evil, is built on addressing the bad things people do. We arrest them. We write headlines about them. We revoke their right to vote, among other privileges. We kick them out of school and out of jobs and even out of churches. In many ways, we are all in on accepting and addressing evil as the bad things people do. What if there was any remotely similar pressure on the people capable of doing good to do good. Which, by the way, is all of us. We are ALL capable of doing both good and bad. It's just in the culturally accepted context of evil, good is simply not doing bad. But what if evil was not doing good? What if I was arrested for eating at a fancy restaurant without paying a lick of attention to the homeless person I walked by on the way in? What if in the newspaper article about my latest offense, my rap sheet included all the times I could have helped someone in distress but didn't do it? What if that same didn't-do-good rap sheet prevented me from applying for certain jobs? What if I live my life never harming a soul in an evil way, but also never help the many thousands I could have? Does that make me anything like a serial killer? I don't know is the answer to all of that. I'm not suggesting anything as a result of all my thinking out loud thoughts. And in the grand scheme of things, I'm not even wondering about our world so much. But I am wondering more this week about God's view of evil. I am wondering when I get my chance to stand before God if he's going to be more interested in the horrible things I could have done and didn't do, or if he's going to be more heartbroken about all the beautiful things I could have done but simply chose not to. I am thinking about his son, Jesus. The stories we Christians tell about him as we hold him up as a model. Almost none of those stories are about the horrible things Jesus could have done to others but somehow resisted doing. To the contrary, the stories we tell of Jesus are about all the horrific things people were suffering that Jesus couldn't resist helping them through. I guess my takeaway is I want to keep becoming more and more aware of the good I am capable of. I want to be more and more grateful for the gifts I've been given and use them to heal as many people as possible who are hurting. And for me personally, I do want to consider more strongly that it's possible not doing so is in its own way evil. There's a lot of pressure in this world to refrain from evil. For me, I just don't want it to look like refraining from doing the good I'm capable of doing. I had lunch with my friend Chuck yesterday. I've known Chuck for over a decade but hadn't seen him in over five years.
A lot can change in five years. Since the last time I saw Chuck, I've experienced divorce and Chuck's wife Kim has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD, as in Bruce Willis dementia). Chuck has shared openly on social media about the challenges of caring for someone battling this disease. Not just someone, but his best friend, the person he loves most. Every time I saw one of Chuck's posts, something told me to reach out to him. Yet I kept saying no to that something. I'm not sure why that is. It's worth wondering about, though. Maybe when the battle is something I am completely unfamiliar with, I feel completely incapable of being a part of a healing conversation. Maybe when my own battles, as hard as they've been, seem so insignificant in comparison to Chuck's battle, I'd feel guilty sitting in Chuck's presence. Maybe when I get to believing a battle is beyond anyone's help at all, I excuse myself from exploring the truth of that. I don't know. I don't know why I hesitated to do something I continually felt called to do. But a couple of weeks ago the call got too loud, and it became clear it wasn't going away. So, I reached out. I sat and listened to Chuck tell his story yesterday. A story that seems to flow between confusion and fear and anger. Flow is probably the wrong word; it sounds too peaceful. Maybe torrent is a better fit there. I told Chuck at the beginning of our conversation that I had no advice. That I'd likely be at a complete loss of words. But I also told him I had an endless ear. I could listen and hear anything he had to say without judgment or diagnosis or assessment of any kind. That's a helpful thing to do, I've discovered. In the act of listening, relieve yourself of any responsibility to judge or assess or fix. I was reminded of that powerfully yesterday. That listening itself is a sweet and precious form of energy that connects two or more people. Sweet and precious listening. Not listening AND response. Not listening AND advice. Not listening AND deciding how I feel about what I just heard. Just. Simply. Listen. Listening is like invisible glue, and maybe that explains in some part why we are all in many ways unglued. I hugged Chuck when I left yesterday. I don't know if Chuck felt better. I don't know if I helped. And I don't care. Not because I don't care about Chuck, but because I didn't show up with the intention of helping, I showed up with the intention of listening. Silently listening is one of the most powerful ways to shout, I am here to help if you ever know of something I can do that will be helpful. And listening isn't always about helping the other, it's often about helping ourselves. Chuck's story was personally challenging, challenging in a good way. It's a story of immeasurable courage. I left wanting to be more courageous. It's a story of going all in on having the back of the person he loves most. I left wanting to double down on having my boys' backs always. It was a story of just taking the next step. I know most days the last several years Chuck has had zero idea what the next best step is. But he's always known how to take A next step, no matter what, and that's what he's done. I left reminded of the power of taking A next step. I left Chuck a little ashamed I took so long to answer the call to reach out. But I left reminded of the power of listening no matter when it is that you show up. A power I know I will feel the next time I feel the nudge to reach out to someone. If you're ignoring a nudge today because listening is all you have, don't ignore the nudge. If listening is all you have, then all you have is a superpower. Share it. Share it for the one you'll listen to, and maybe most of all, share it for you. Share it because listening truly is the glue. had to go to the dentist yesterday. In the grand collection of life challenges, I realize the dentist isn't the biggest one. Yet, you couldn't have convinced me of that on my drive there.
Me and the dentist have always been at odds. Not my dentist, but the all caps DENTIST. In my anxiety driving along, I felt and heard those famous Christianese words: take it to God. It made sense. I was going TO the dentist, which left me in nothing but unease, so no better time to take unease TO God. That's when it hit me, we spend so much time going TO things for help in life: to the doctor, to the therapist, to the supervisor, to the loan officer, to the principal, to the gym, to the DENTIST 😢 - we spend so much time going TO help that we often forget the greatest help of all never leaves us. The greatest gift in my life is knowing God is with me, but so many practices have trained me to believe I have to go to God when I need his help. I've become programmed to believe I have to reach out for something that refuses to let go of me. It also made me wonder, how many times do I reach for help in this world because I forget my help is already here? How many times do I go reaching instead of accepting that I've already been reached. I have heard it said that we are spiritual beings on a human journey. Maybe the biggest complication of that journey is how easy it is to forget that our greatest healing from human struggles is a spiritual encounter. All human help has a finish line; this human journey does end. But for us spiritual beings, life is only beginning. That journey is eternal. We forget that at times as we seek to survive the human journey instead of turning to the help that wants to prepare us to thrive in the spiritual life without end. I am grateful for the gift of human help. I am privileged to be surrounded by it, to have access to it. It's a blessing. A blessing, that is, until I come to forget that all the human help in the world is but a pebble compared to the rock I am always invited to stand on, the rock that is already here. And if you think about it, when you stand on that giant rock, all that human help is much easier to see. Reach out for help. Embrace it. But don't ever forget, the most helpful help of all is already embracing you. I had lunch with a former boss yesterday. I reminded her that she's one of the best leaders I've ever known. I believe that because of her ability to see what the people around her are made of; she often see things in them they would have never seen without her.
I get to do work I love these days, work I'd truly feel lost without. It is also work I would likely have never chosen for myself without a leader who could see that it was work I was capable of doing. And more than that, really, not only did she see it was work I was capable of doing, she somehow knew it was work I needed to do. Not just for the communities we serve, but for me. You know, the things we end up being best at in life, the things we discover we are most gifted to do, they are many times not the things that come easiest to us. They are often things we would have overlooked if someone else wasn't looking for them. Before I began my work promoting trauma sensitive care and healing centered relationships, I had become stale in my job. You become stale when you do the same things over and over, when you do only the things you know how to do, only the things you think you believe you're capable of doing. Then one day you hear something that sparks your interest, but your fist thought on the other side of that spark is but. But I have no clue what to do with this spark. But I've never done what needs to be done with this spark. But I don't know that anyone else will feel the same kind of spark that I have felt after hearing this. There are a lot of buts that stand in our way of doing work we are truly built to do. Work we are called to do. Needed to do. There are a lot of buts that hold us back until a leader reaches in and snatches them up. Snatches them up and tosses them out right before our eyes and reminds us that the world can't afford for us to grow stale. The world can't afford for us to be overlooking things in ourselves that others so desperately need to see. Things the leader has already seen. I talked with a friend last night who was telling me about some intentional practices she and her fiancé have that guide them to better understand who each other are. They are intentional about making sure neither of them overlook what the other is made of. Leadership comes in all forms. It comes in romantic relationships, in friendships, in peer groups. It comes from pastors and elected leaders. And sometimes it comes from bosses, whom even after they retire show up and remind you that you are still assigned. You have an assignment I chose for you, and I'm still choosing it for you. We can all be leaders. We all need leaders. We can all be responsible for seeing the things in the people around us they'd never see without us. We all need to surround ourselves with people who will always accept us for who we are, but will also be deeply committed to helping us chase who we can be. I believe the world needs more leadership. I elect us all to fill that need. Last night, as Ross and Phoebe and Rachel and Monica and Joey and Chandler laid their keys on the table and walked out of the apartment for the final time, I was conflicted.
Do I wish they were staying, or am I glad to see them go? A couple of months ago, I told you I was about to begin watching the television series FRIENDS for the first time. I'd never seen it, but had recently read Matthew Perry's memoir: Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing and I had to watch the show. Most of you said I'd enjoy it. You said I'd laugh endlessly. I did. But included in the laughter was a sadness I could never fully shake. Not even for an episode. I never settled into the rhythm of a comedy. I loved all the FRIENDS characters, but I always found myself looking for Chandler. In every scene. Like a protector. And because of his memoir, I knew no matter where I found him, no matter where he was on the set, or where he was in a particular scene, or no matter what line he was speaking, I always found him hiding. Hiding and acting his way out of a personal hell. If you read the memoir, you know there wasn't a single season of FRIENDS when Perry wasn't actively using alcohol and drugs and battling the grips of addiction to both. Even when he was winning the battle, he always knew he was on the verge of losing it again. Losing it in more destructive ways than the time before. When the FRIENDS show began and it was clear it was about to become a monster hit, Perry recalled thinking in his book, "I was going to be so famous that all the pain I carried with me would melt like frost in the sunlight: and any new threats would bounce off me as though this show was a force field I could cloak myself in." If you read the book, you know few predictions ever failed harder. Perry's pain only intensified as the series went on; new threat after new threat pummeled him. Some episodes I found myself sad that Perry had to keep showing up pretending. He talked at length in the book about the obligation he felt toward his FRIENDS co-stars and to the audience to keep showing up funny. He talked about becoming nauseous when a funny line didn't land. Other episodes I found myself amazed that he could show up at all. Even though I could see the ebbs and flows of his health as the seasons progressed, most episodes he looked like he'd showed up ready to go. If you read the book first and then watch the series, this feels like witnessing a miracle. I think the happiest moment of the series for me was when Chandler married Monica. I'm sure it is. The biggest thing I took away from the book about Perry was just how lonely he was. He went through countless casual relationships in search of something he really didn't know he was searching for, only to never find it. I remember shedding a few tears at his wedding to Monica. I remember thinking that this made for television scene, this holy matrimony made up by some writer to entertain me and you, might have been the closest Perry had or would ever come to finding this thing he was looking for. True connection. Part of me wondered at the time if the writers knew this. If this was their way of honoring Perry's always showing up to help the audience find something they'd been looking for. At the end of the book, Perry reflects on some childhood friends. Friends who weren't famous. And he said, "none of them had battled their whole lives with a brain that was built to kill them. I would give it all up to not have that. No one believes it, but it's true." As I watched Perry set his key on the table and walk away, I believed him. Unequivocally. Acting can be exhausting, whether you're doing it to entertain or to survive. So I think I am glad it is over. The show AND Perry's battle. But his book is such a powerful reminder that what often looks entertainment around us, what often looks like joy and happiness and well put together, it is sometimes actually falling apart. Sometimes acting is not for our sake but for theirs; it's helpful and loving to be curious about the people around us with a heart for knowing the difference. You were a good friend Chandler Bing. Thank you for openly sharing your battle with that Big Terrible Thing. I hope it will encourage more of us to be open about the battles with our own big terrible things. I hope it will give us all permission to be a little more real, and a lot less reliant on being good actors and actresses. I grew up on a farm. One of the greatest joys of that was watching seeds become plants that ultimately became harvest. Every fall, when the big machines would take the crops from the field, it was easy to remember that just months earlier those fields were endless rows of sprouts.
I wish I'd known as a kid the symbolism I was witnessing. I wish I'd known just how often that cycle would repeat itself in my life. Seed. Grow. Harvest. And I wish I'd known that not all seeds are easy to watch grow. That even though the seeds in the fields around me more often than not grew up with limited obstacles and were a joy to watch grow, not all of life's seeds grow so unencumbered. There have been many seeds in my life I could have never imagined growing into a harvest. As a result, I think, I spent a lot of time believing the seed was the story. And since that story at times felt dead, like an enemy, I never saw those seeds as something that would grow. Believing anyplace we are is the starting point for growth and not the end, that is hope. Hope is always the fuel we need to keep going. Going to the harvest. I had a significant gambling issue in my younger years. To support it, I got good at stealing from people. And lying to them. You destroy a lot of things on the way to destroying yourself. I remember one day driving home from a horse track. I'd lost a lot of money, money that I'd stolen. It's one of the first and most vivid memories I have of wanting to end my life. Drive off the road and be done with it all. It honestly felt like the best option among none. I didn't drive off the road. I'm not sure why. I don't have some God came down and took wheel story. I just didn't do it. That day is a dark day in a life full of them. It would have been impossible for me to have ever seen that day as a seed. The other day I was talking to a dad friend. He was talking about a young person who has been experimenting with online gambling. He said it seems harmless, but he's starting to worry, at least a little, that the young person might be a little too into it. I told him the story about the harmless two dollar wager I made at a horse track a few decades ago. I told him how quickly harmless goes from simply fun and experiment to driving while trying to determine the best destination, home or into a tree. As more and more people have access to gambling, and face the challenges it brings, I am given more and more opportunities to share my experience. I am given more and more opportunities to feel a day I wanted to call it quits as the day a seed was planted. I don't think God scripted it that way. I don't think my seed to harvest path when it comes to gambling was anyone's plan. It was just life. And life doesn't always look like a smooth road. It sometimes looks like a dark one you don't want to be on. The key is to, as often as you can, recognize everything is a seed. Even the seeds we can't possibly imagine growing into anything, they will. They will if we can begin to imagine them as a harvest story and not a death story. I don't know what you're struggling with today. Maybe for some of you it's a really dark struggle. I don't want you to imagine what the harvest might look like from that darkness; it's impossible to imagine in many cases. But I do want you to believe in a harvest. Believe that one is waiting for you. Believe that you are a part of a seed that is growing you and not ending you. Believe that one day you will be telling the story about some of your deepest shame or guilt or grief or hardship and realize the thing you couldn't stand being a part of, the seed you couldn't bare to watch grow, it miraculously became a beautiful harvest. Not all seeds are easy to watch grow. But every seed can become a harvest. Believe it. I've learned two major things from being in the pits of my life. One, you don't rise from your pits alone. And two, neither will anyone else.
There is a story in the bible that tells us the prophet Jeremiah was thrown into a cistern. The cistern was full of mud, and Jeremiah was certain to sink to his death. But there was a man named Ebed-Melek. He was a slave forced into service to the king. He was an outcast, an unlikely hero, and really, in so many ways, he was in the pits of his own life. It was in those pits, though, that he had access to the king. When Ebed-Melek heard about Jeremiah's plight, he went to the king and pleaded for the chance to rescue Jeremiah. The king granted him this opportunity. I wonder what Jeremiah thought, what Jeremiah felt, when he was pulled from that cistern with a rope and realized it was an Ebed-Melek, a no one in the grand scheme of that culture, who was holding the other end of that rope. Actually, I guess I don't wonder much about that. The last several years, I have been steadily rising from one of the deepest darkest pits of my life. And time and time again, an Ebed-Melek has shown up with a rope to support that rise. Unexpected friends lending an ear. Unexpected friends lending their resources. Unexpected friends simply reaching out to check up on me. Time and time again, from unexpected places, Ebed-Melek has shown up. It has certainly made me thankful for the rope, but maybe even more, it has left me constantly wondering, asking myself, who else needs a rope? Who else needs pulled from the sinking mud of their lives, because certainly I'm not the only one prone to sinking. In the emotions of our own pits we can get to thinking we don't have anything to contribute to the rescue of another. But what did Ebed-Melek have? All he had was courage. The courage to speak up on the behalf of another. The courage to advocate for another. The courage to see a wrong and know it would be an even greater wrong to see it and not use all resources he DID have to do something about it. It was in the deep pits Ebed-Melek had faced in his own life where he came to be able to feel the current pit of Jeremiah's life. In that feeling he - and we - get to decide, do I feel sorry for my own pit, or do I go to work trying to rescue someone else from theirs? Most days, I find myself trying to speak encouragement into the pits of others. I find myself trying to lower ropes where I can. I find myself wanting to scream with urgency, that far far more of us are living in pits than people often realize. My pits in life have left me deeply longing for the day when we will all join hands on the same rope. When we will all come to realize that life is really one giant rescue operation. A rescue operation that requires us all to rise from our own pits and reach into the depths of another. I long for the day when we will stop judging people for their pits, blaming people for their pits, ignoring people in their pits, throwing people into pits; I long for the day we'll stop doing all of that and start grabbing ropes. I long for the day that in addition to praying for God's rescue, we will be God's rope in the rescue. God never left Jeremiah in the pit. Ebed-Melek was ultimately how Jeremiah came to be sure of that. Someone is in a pit today. Help them come to know God has not left them. Lower them a rope. 3/10/2024 0 Comments Don't Wish For Joy, Embrace itI traveled a couple hours south yesterday to watch the club volleyball team my good buddy Joe coaches. The Barracudas.
(Anyone hearing the 70's song by Heart right now 🎶?) I digress. And age myself. 🙄 The Barracudas have won several big tournaments across the south the past few months. Them being reasonably close, it felt like the perfect time to check them out. As I watched these young women play, several thoughts came to mind: ATHLETIC; good Lord can they jump. STRONG; warning, duck if you are in the path of their spikes or serves. COMPETITIVE; down 8 points in their first game, they willed themselves back and won the game - and didn't come close to losing a game the rest of the day. And maybe most powerfully, I saw JOY. For a moment, I confess, in their joy I became very reminiscent of my own middle and high school sports days. Sports were certainly the source of some of my most intense moments of childhood joy. In the reminiscing, it was tempting to wish my way back there. Oh, if only this aging and aching and slowly deteriorating body could just go back THERE. That was only for a moment, though, because I quickly shifted to being so very grateful I was EVER there. So very grateful to KNOW the joy those young women were experiencing out there on the court. I didn't have to imagine it; I had been there. I am here to tell you that there is joy to be found right here in now tapping into the joy that was once back there. Joy only dies when we let it. When we forget it. The memory can be a nightmare, for sure. I know that. But the memory can also be a source of sweet reminder. A reminder that we have joy stored inside us. It is there. A joyful gift born from our own experiences, and sometimes unexpectedly re-gifted to us by young women playing volleyball. Re-gifted if we'll let it. If you look into the eyes of another's joy, and find yourself beginning to wish, don't go there. Do not waste joy on wishing. Dedicate it to gratitude. Dedicate it to the beautiful gift of deeply knowing the joy you are witnessing, and let it become your own joy. Rock on Barracudas. With joy.😊 |
Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
May 2024
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