May 28
Kansas Spring Cummulonimbus II
Three quotes to ponder for the first long weekend of summer:
The trouble with the rat race is even if you win, you’re still a rat.
– Lily Tomlin
—
One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover solitude.
– Carl Sandburg
—
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.
– Blaise Pascal
May 23
Time to Reflect
It is a short step from leaving a question unasked to forgetting that it can be asked at all.
– Jeff Koeze
May 16
Climber in Spring
Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything…
The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.
The next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and your witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.
May 6
View from the Conductor's Circle
A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.
– James Crooks
And a TED talk by a conductor: “Itay Talgam demonstrates the unique styles of six great 20th-century conductors, illustrating crucial lessons for all leaders.”
Apr 27
View from the Bloch Building
I’ve been pondering a short opinion piece that I read today in the New York Times and a couple of quotes:
… I believe there’s no such thing as false hope: all hope is valid, even for people like us, even when hope would no longer appear to be sensible.
All I wanted was ordinary life back, for ordinary life, it became utterly clear, is more valuable than anything else.
And so, I stop to reflect on hope and gratitude for ordinary life.
Mar 31
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
– Albert Einstein
Mar 7
If your organization is involved in giving presentations either internally or externally, it’s worth reflecting on whether your presentations are effective. Garr Reynolds posted the following link and information on his blog, Presentation Zen:
Thanks to Tim Longhurst (The TED Commandments – rules every speaker needs to know) you can see the list in an easier to read format below.
And if you don’t know about TED, you should! You can find inspiration by clicking here.
Feb 28
For further reflection: a set of rules for “intelligent design” (with apologies to Darwin) from Tim Brown of IDEO:
– Tim Brown in Change by Design (p.73-74)
Feb 27
I’m constantly running across ideas worth pondering. So here’s one for reflection . . .
My work with music … has taught me the deepest respect for the emptiness between the notes. Of course, there is no music without the silence. It is silence that actually gives life to sound.
– Jane Lowey quoted in Listening Below the Noise
Friesen Group 