Restoring Power

When hurricane Sandy hit the east coast this week millions of people lost power.   As we have been hearing since Tuesday when the storm hit losing power can have wide effects on people from minor inconveniences such as not being able to use a hairdryer to major consequences such as when people need electricity for medical devices.  One side effect that is new in the last fifteen years or so is that when people lose their electricity for an extended period of time, they also lose the ability to use their cell phones.  Because many people no longer have land lines, losing the ability to charge and use one's cell phone means that one loses their connection with the larger world. I heard a report on the radio this week of a woman in New York City who has been without power since Monday evening and so finally yesterday she walked thirty-eight blocks just to be able to charge her cell phone at her friend's apartment!   I heard other stories of a  post office that was allowing people to come and charge their phones and  of a television station's mobile broadcasting truck that was offering free charging services for people who were willing to stand in long lines to recharge their phones.  Both places experienced such high demand that they had to limit people to fifteen minutes of charging time.

There are probably many stories coming out of hurricane Sandy of far greater significance, but these stories of people helping one another recharge their cell phones were poignant for me because they illustrate some fundamental lessons when it comes to wellness and wholeness.  The first lesson is that whenever we are going through any kind of storm in our lives we experience a universal longing to be able to stay connected with people we love.  I doubt that people were going to great lengths to charge their phones in order play games or play with apps on their phones.  I'm quite sure they were charging their phones so that they could reach out to  friends or family members to let them know they were okay, and to receive the love and support of those friends or family members.   Whatever kind of storm we may find ourselves experiencing--meteorological or otherwise--we all need to stay connected in order to help us get our feet back on the ground.

There are times when we are the person who has lost our power due to a storm, and at other times we are the person who is blessed to have power and are therefore able to share it with others.  That is the second lesson from these stories of people helping one another recharge their cell phones.  Perhaps you know someone who is going through a hard time right now, whose power is running a little low these days.   When you take time to offer that person a caring word, a listening ear, a thoughtful note, or caring gesture, you are helpinging them to recharge their batteries.

Powerful storms of any type always bring stories of heartache and loss, and yet, at the same time, they always seem to bring stories of both small and large sacrifices that people make to help one another.  Our wholeness and wellness depends on our being able to play both roles well, admitting when we are the person who has lost our power and realizing when we are the person who has power to share.  We need to allow others to plug into our power when necessary, and to be able to ask for power from others when ours is running low.  We don't have to live in an area devastated by an actual hurricane like Sandy in order to find people who are going through their own private storms, look around and you will most likely see someone you know who could use an energy boost from you.  And let someone know if you are the one in need of such a boost.  The world is a better place when we all take turns caring for each other!

Hallowed Be...

"Halloween is my favorite day of the year," exclaimed an elderly woman I spoke with this week. She has been a widow for twenty years and continues to live in the house she and her husband bought fifty-two years ago and where they raised their family who is now grown and gone. "It's the only time when all the children from the neighborhood come and knock on my door and want to talk with me. I can't wait for 'trick or treat' this Sunday. In fact, I wish we had 'trick or treat' every Sunday!" In this woman's neighborhood, the kids are clearly not the only ones who will be receiving something sweet this Sunday. The kids, thinking they are the ones who are getting all the goodies, will in fact, with at least one of their neighbors, be giving just as much sweetness as they are getting. Each of us longs for connection with our neighbors, old and young alike Those neighbors may be our friends, our coworkers, our family, or the people who live near us. Halloween is not just a fun time, it is also a sacred time, giving us all plenty of opportunities to enjoy and connect with "our neighbors". Halloween, as simply a fun time, can be enjoyed by people of all ages. Even pets get in on the action it seems as I just learned that $370 million will be spent on pet costumes alone this year!

Some people do not know that Halloween has a religious origin. All Saints Day is a Christian holy day that is celebrated on November 1 every year. It is a day when the Church celebrates the lives of the great saints who have been exemplars of the faith. All Saints Day has also been known as All Hallows Day. The word hallow means holy or sacred, as in the line from the Lord's Prayer, "hallowed be your name." The word Halloween, then, is a contraction of the words "hallows eve." And so Halloween always occurs on October 31, the eve of All Hallows Day, of All Saints Day.

When we think of things that are hallowed, things that are sacred or holy, we probably tend to think of things that are pretty serious and things that are stereotypically religious. Ancient saints of the church come to mind, or a high, holy worship service at a beautiful cathedral or synagogue, or perhaps a beautiful stained glass window. For many people, these are indeed holy and sacred.

Halloween is a reminder though, that the holy and sacred are also found in the everyday, less serious moments of life. This is how Halloween ends up being an annual holy day for an elderly women who cherishes the simple, sacred connection with the children in her neighborhood as they make their way to her door with open bags and smiling faces. There are other ways, too, in which Halloween reminds us that the sacred can be found in everyday moments. When I see my friends posting on Facebook pictures of their children in their Halloween costumes, I think of all the love (and angst, no doubt, as well) that went into creating those costumes- and know that this is sacred, too. When I see the playful side of adults coming out in their choice of a Halloween costume or bobbing for apples, I see the sacred joy of laughter and the holy delight of just being silly. Watching the faces of parents as they delight in watching their children enjoy the tradition of trick or treating or carving out a pumpkin is sacred as well.

Happy Halloween and Happy All Hallows Day to all of you. Be on the watch for those ghosts and goblins that are sure to knock on your door this time of year. Be on the watch, also, for the everyday sacred and holy moments that are sure to show up. And remember, too, that they may be one and the same. Hallowed be all of our moments, fun and serious alike.

Driving With Our Lights Off

The days are getting shorter and darkness is coming earlier each day, and so in just the last two nights I have had the experience three different times of driving down the road and encountering a car coming towards me with its lights off.  On each occasion I flashed my lights at the oncoming cars to signal  that their lights were off and each time the drivers immediately turned them on, most likely grateful, I assume, for the feedback I had given them.  I am sure we can all relate to this experience as we have all been on both sides of this exchange countless times. These simple exchanges between myself and these three drivers who were completely unaware that they were driving with their lights off, led me to thinking about what a great metaphor this is for thinking about our personal well-being.  I know for myself, that when my wellness is compromised, when I am tired or irritable, or when I'm just out of sorts emotionally or spiritually, I am often the last person to realize it.  It's as if I'm driving down the road completely unaware that my lights are off.  It's often not until a loving family member, friend, or colleague signals to me that my lights are off that I become conscious that I have been moving full speed ahead, but completely in the dark.

While this metaphor may work up to a point, in reality it is much harder to give and receive feedback regarding personal wellness than it is regarding driving with one's lights off.  It takes courage to offer honest feedback to someone you care about when you experience them as not being in a good place.  It's not easy to tell someone you care about that you are concerned about their increased negativity, their rising level of stress, their increased use of alcohol, or the growing distance you experience between yourself and them.  It takes, perhaps, even more courage to be open to receiving such feedback.  And yet I truly believe that the ability to engage in such authentic and honest conversations is one of the most essential keys to creating and maintaining personal wellness and wholeness.

Both our personal wellness and the wellness of our relationships are created and sustained by the commitment to having courageous conversations based on honesty and transparency.  Relationships that encourage open and honest feedback  are relationships that are healthy and growing.  This is equally true within families, between friends, and relationships in the work place.  Being able to kindly let someone know that you have experienced them as being a little out of sorts lately means that a relationship with the person has been created that is emotionally safe and trustworthy.  Relationships with low levels of trust and emotional safety are created by just the opposite types of communication--by an unspoken rule that the truth will not be spoken and that people will pretend that things are okay even when they are not. Driving with our lights off--both literally and metaphorically, is clearly a safety hazard, both to ourselves and to others.  It can and will happen though to all of us from time to time.  As long as we have others around us who can let us know, and as long as we are open to receiving their feedback and making the necessary changes, we'll all be okay.  We truly need each other from time to time to help us get our lights back on so we don't drive around in the dark.

Walk The Talk

More and more people today describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious.”  This description can of course mean many different things to different people.  In my experience, when people make a distinction between spirituality and religion they ususally associate spirituality with one's private beliefs and practices and religion with a public, organized set of beliefs, rituals, and practices.  I regluarly hear people say that spirituality is how a person lives and religion is how or what a person believes. While I find the distinctions between spiritualty and religion helpful, I do have some concern about how the discussion often unfolds.  Today, spirituality is almost always described in positive, life-giving terms, while religion is quite often described in negative terms.  People who are religious are often seen as hypocrites whose lives often to not reflect in any way the beliefs and teachings of their religion.  People who are spiritual are often seen as more enlightend, more authentic, and more true to living in alignment with their Higher Power, however they may define that Higher Power.

I was thinking about this distinction between spirituality and religion yesterday when tens of thousands of churches around the world were celebrating St. Francis Day.  St. Francis of Assisi, who lived eight hundred years ago, remains one of the most poplur of all saints.  Six million tourists visit Assisi, his hometown in Italy, every year to see where Francis lived, prayed, and taught.  There are no doubt many reasons for his popularity--his commitment to serving the poor, his personal renunciation of his family's wealth to live with the poor, his connection with nature and with animals, and his beautiful writings and teachings.  Perhaps, though, there is one other key to his continued influence today:  St. Francis was a man who was both spiritual and religious.

Francis was clearly a devout Christian and a devout Catholic.  His commitment to give his life to God and to serving the poor followed a conversion experience he had while praying in church one day.  He clearly participated in all of the public rituals and celebrations of the church.  This made him a religious person indeed.  But it was Francis' spirituality--the way he lived his life, his committment to the poor, and his love for all of God's creation that inspires people today as much as it did eight hundred years ago.   Francis would most likely be confused about today's discussions focusing on the distinction between spirituality and religion.  For him, the former flowed from the latter and both were seamlessly connected.  For him, he walked the talk because the walk flowed from the talk.

How does all of this relate to you and me?  In honor of St. Francis, it might wise for us to reflect on our own deepest beliefs and how fully they influece and are integrated into our daily lives.  What are your most passionate and most important beliefs?  What do you know to be most true and sacred in your life?  What are your core values?  And most importantly,  how fully does your life reflect what you believe to be true and sacred?

St. Francis, once said, “Preach the gospel always, if necessary use words.”  St. Francis did just this.  What about you and me?  Can people detect what our deepest beliefs are simply by observing the way we live our lives?  Do we truly walk the talk and through that profess what is most true and sacred in our lives?  Clearly this is a life long journey for all of us, but along the way it's nice to find inpsiration from people like Francis of Assisi who showed us the difference it can truly make when our lives are fully integrated with our beliefs.

Learning To Be A Good Referee

Watching youth soccer was a big part of my life while our three kids were growing up. I then made what I thought was the ultimate commitment, agreeing to coach all three of our kids' teams for many years. I soon found out, however, that there was an even greater commitment that a person could make when it came to youth sports, a commitment that demanded a much greater sacrifice and much thicker skin. In response to the fact that we could never find enough people to become certified and serve as soccer referees, my son and I decided to go through the training and both served for many years as referees for an untold number of youth soccer games. It did not take us long to find out why there was a chronic shortage of people willing to serve in this role! Being a referee is a thankless job. When you do your job well, no one notices and little attention is drawn to what you do. That all changes when you a make a call that is perceived as the wrong call by the kids, parents, and/or coaches. I can safely say that at no other time in my life have I been talked to with such open disrespect as when I was a soccer referee. And so it has been with great empathy that I have felt the pain of the recent replacement referees in the National Football League as they have endured so much hostility and criticism these last three weeks. While their time is now over, and the regular referees will return this week, there are a few things we can learn from all this recent attention on the role of the referee.

While making difficult calls is part of the job description for a referee, it is also part of the job description for everyone of us in regards to our own lives. We all have to make hard calls on a regular basis. Leaders have to make difficult, close calls. Parents make difficult judgment calls everyday. Each of us has to make difficult calls every day. Is this the right person for me to marry? Is it time to retire? Is it time to look for a new job? Is this the right course of action regarding a medical decision? Is this the right way to handle my child's behavior? Am I on the right spiritual path? Is this the moral or ethical thing to do in this situation?

The word referee means "one who is referred to as an authority." So, for example, if you are referred to a doctor for his or her opinion on a health matter, that doctor is the "referee"--the one who is referred to for his/her authority on such matters. You are the authority on your own life and so you are the referee for making tough calls for your life. And when you find yourself in any kind of personal or professional leadership position, you have been given the authority to make difficult calls regarding the people you are leading.

Here are few additional tips I picked up during my time as a referee that can help all of us whenever we have to make a tough call in our lives.

*A good referee knows the rules and guiding principles of a sport well and applies them consistently. We need to each know what our own guiding rules and principles are for our lives. This relates to our sense of spirituality. We need to be clear regarding our foundational beliefs and core values before the tough call has to be made. The call may still be difficult, but it should never be difficult because we are unsure of what the "rules" are. We should be clear about the rules--and about our core beliefs and values.

*Whenever possible, ask for help in making the right call. Good umpires and good referees are comfortable huddling up with their colleagues to discuss important calls, especially when they know someone else may have had a better perspective on the situation. Asking for help in making a call is a sign of strength.

*Do not be afraid to reverse your call, if upon further review, you realize you have made the wrong call.

*If you realize later on that you made the wrong call, make amends and move on. Last year an umpire realized he made the wrong call that cost a pitcher a perfect game. It was too late to reverse the call, but he apologized and learned from his mistake.

*When you make your call, do it with passion and conviction based on what you believe. Be clear, concise, and committed to the call you are making. It is hard to respect or follow a referee who seems unsure of the call he/she is making.

*Be fair and consistent in the calls you make. People who follow you will feel secure and respect you when you are fair and consistent over time.

*Be patient and forgiving of your mistakes. Players fumble, make errors, commit fouls, and make errors of judgment. So do coaches.

So to referees. Learn from your mistakes and move on. So get your whistle out and put on your zebra striped shirt. There are important calls to be made out there. Learn to enjoy the work of being a referee in your own life, because in the end there are no replacement referees--only you can do the job!