Shifting Gears

“Baseball is for watching. From April to October I watch the Red Sox every night. (Other sports fill the darker months.) I do not write; I do not work at all. After supper I become the American male — but I think I do something else. Try to forgive my comparisons, but before Yeats went to sleep every night he read an American Western. When Eliot was done with poetry and editing, he read a mystery book. Everyone who concentrates all day, in the evening needs to let the half-wit out for a walk. Sometimes it is Zane Grey, sometimes Agatha Christie, sometimes the Red Sox.”
Donald Hall, cited here

I’m in “knowledge work,” meaning I work with ideas and read ideas and think about ideas and write about ideas and talk about ideas all day long. My work is thought work. I think before I’m on the clock and I think after I’m off the clock. I also think while I’m on the clock. Thinking takes place in meetings, sometimes in a journal, other times in a Word document, too often in email or on Teams, enjoyably so when according to schedule in a classroom with engaged students, periodically while on the phone, very occasionally from a pulpit, and most often in passing conversations. My area is Christian spirituality, Christian spiritual formation, ministry practice, and church leadership. I’m living this stuff, even when I’m not working on this stuff.

The product or result of this kind of work can be difficult to quantify. Sometimes the product is concrete, such as a paper or an article, even a blog post. Sometimes it is concrete but difficult to measure in terms of quality or effectiveness, such as a sermon or a lesson. A colleague, Elizabeth Shively, tells the story of a pastor who, after preaching, responded to congregants who told him “good sermon today” with the witty reply, “it is probably too soon to tell.”

What I want to remember here, and what I want to share, is that thinking takes a lot of energy, and when energy is expended, it can’t be renewed without rest. Thinking can be quite intense. As Donald Hall observes, there is a need to shift gears after long periods of concentration. We need to take a break. Our minds need to wander, to relax, to engage with something different. An activity like walking can help us get out of our head and back into our bodies. Hall writes that we need to let the half-wit out for a walk after a day of concentration. This can take the form of reading mysteries or Westerns or watching sports. It can also take the form of a literal walk.

Hall’s renewal activity of preference was watching baseball. I go with movies and television, and reading stuff other than theology, biblical studies, and practical ministry books. I like action movies and science fiction. I like watching the English Premier League. I don’t have the same attachment to soccer as I do the major American sports, where I get wrapped up in fan allegiances to the Cowboys, Rangers, Mavericks, Royals, or Chiefs. I watch stand-up comedy or listen to a podcast that make me laugh. I go on walks. I exercise. Sometimes I work in the yard or clean the pool.

But honestly, when I do the fun stuff–the gear shifting, refreshing, relaxing, renewing stuff–I can feel guilty about it. I think I should be doing more, you know, work. It doesn’t help that as soon as I’m done with one thing, I’m on to the next thing. Once I scale one mountain peak, my eyes are on the next one. Without fully appreciating the view from the top, and having not yet completed or even begun the descent, I’m already planning the next climb.

There are a couple of spiritual disciplines that apply here. One is sabbath keeping. Another is celebration. A third is confession.

A family commitment we’ve articulated together concerns establishing sustainable rhythms of work and rest. I’m working on routines and rhythms that help me identify my most important priorities and projects and establishing timelines for completion that are reasonable and realistic. When I say I’m working on them, I mean I’ve been working on them for the duration of my adult life. Now in my forties, I’m working on them with greater intention and clarity than even before. I want to work at a human pace. These processes are always being fine-tuned and refined, even as I make adjustments that are bringing me closer to where I want to be. But life is in flux. The moment I’m dialed in, something changes.

Recent initiatives: I’ve built in time each week to assess what I’ve gotten done so I can celebrate and what I can calendar time to work on in the week ahead. Beyond weekly plans, I’ve added a monthly plan, widening the time scale so that I can think about the things that would make me most happy to finish over a longer period. Stuff that comes up that is new and that I know I can’t get to immediately I place under a “future” heading. These are projects that are interesting and could be important but are not urgent. I clean up this list every month, promoting some projects to active, and deleting others altogether, having determined some things are not mine to do or were just passing fancies.

A growth area, I think, is formalizing my shut down rituals, actively putting aside “work” and formally closing down the shop for the day. I’ve got some ideas that I think will help, like shutting off my computer in the evenings, establishing a routine window of time during the week to turn my phone off, and choosing to shift gears in a way that names the change of focus, allowing for enjoyment, guilt free.

When it is the time for working, I work. When it is time to cease, I need to learn to celebrate and release. More work will always be waiting in the morning. I want to enjoy the downshift, and not burn out the engine.

An Aegis Against Online Negativity: Kyle Webster’s Proof Folder

opened folder for documents on table — Photo by Anete Lusina on Pexels.com

I’ve been playing around on the internet since about the mid-nineties, and I’ve noticed something: there is a lot of negativity on the web.

This was true in chat rooms, true on message boards and bulletin board services, quickly became true in the comments sections of blogs, and is now ubiquitious on social media. If you are on the web, you encounter negativity.

If you make stuff, whether it be photogaphy, video, digital artwork, music, articles, sermons, blog posts, academic lectures, poetry, logical arguments, jokes, lesson plans, or whatever, you’ll attract negative vibes. Some won’t like your work. Some won’t like that you are working. If it isn’t you they don’t like, you’ll be adjacent to someone enduring an onslaught of criticism. And it will make you wonder about your own work.

To lead, to make, to do, is to invite criticism.

When we are criticized, it hurts. Even when it comes from someone we don’t know.

Kyle Webster recently wrote about the negative reactions he received on social media after selling his collection of digital brushes to Adobe (the post includes a few graphic remarks). He asks, “Why do negative comments have so much power over us?”

He acknowledges they take hold of us. He offers a few reasons why they do so. Then, he offers one way to disarm those attacks and one way to prevent being overwhelmed by them. What does he propose?

Webster writes:

First and very importantly, you must know and accept this about the vast majority of comments you receive online about you or your work: the people writing them have never had the pleasure of getting to know the real you. They are not your family members or friends, or even acquaintances. To them, the entirety of your being is comprised of a brief bio with a profile picture — nothing more.

Are they insulting your character, your integrity, your true self? Of course not. They are literally attacking some pixels and a few words on a screen—not a human being. Not YOU.

Let this sink in and acknowledge it as an absolute truth.

Second, try this:

Create a folder on your desktop, your tablet, or your phone that reads, “Proof.”

Find any email, tweet, post, comment or message from somebody who has thanked you for something you have created or written something positive about you/ your work.

Copy and paste these positive notes into your “Proof” folder.

Read as many of them out loud as you can any time you are letting the trolls get to you.

Repeat as necessary.

Even if you only have a handful of these friendly comments, remember that they are of huge importance because they are undeniable proof that your actions have had a positive impact on others.

I think that is helpful stuff. I also think we can apply this more broadly.

There isn’t only a lot of negativity on the web. There is negativity out there in the world. The internet just amplifies, concentrates, and directs it, making it possible for us to hear more voices than we used to, and much more quickly. People don’t just make negative remarks somewhere we might read them or hear about them, they can get directly in touch with us, and they don’t even need a phone book.

When the criticism isn’t coming from “out there,” there is the inner critic. I subject myself to self-criticism. And because of the internet, I have more examples I can compare myself to, people who I think speak better, write better, or lead better. The internet has probably trained my inner critic in more ways than I realize. I analyze ways I could have done or said things better. This can leave me feeling as though I’ve had more failures than successes. This can leave me feeling pretty discouraged.

As a Christian person, I’ve had to learn how to defend myself against these feelings theologically. In Romans 8, Paul writes eloquently about the sufferings we now face, the life with God those in Christ have now, and the hope of a coming, future glory. Every sentence in this majestic chapter is part of a larger argument. But Christians are reminded here that we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, that God sanctifies us through our trials, that we are held fast by the love of God, and that even if we are opposed and persecuted by people, even if we are killed, we have been embraced and accepted and approved of by God in Christ Jesus, who died for us and intercedes for us even now. Criticism is for a moment, but Christ is ours forever.

While this theological truth has bolstered me (and it has helped me quite a lot!), an “Encouraging” or “Happy” folder has helped as well. It gives me a collection of temporal things that I can pair with the eternal things, things I can see and touch and experience while I await that day when the unseen becomes sight. I can be thankful for the good things, even though they are passing. I can hope in the things that will last. I have a folder like this in my desk drawer at work. I keep scraps. Pictures. Positive notes. Reminders from when things went right.

This is just another version of the “Proof” folder. Create one. Keep one. Build one. Maybe include more than something someone has thanked you for or said positively about you. Maybe include what God has said about you, the lasting things, the things that are true not because of what you have done, but because of what God has done, and who God is.

What are the basic tools for living a calm, meaningful, and productive life? Consider Newport’s Four Keys

I listen to Cal Newport’s Deep Life Podcast. In Episode 272, Cal begins the show by identifying four foundational tools for productivity. Watch the first ten to fifteen minutes. What are these tools?

Calendar
Obligation/Status List (More than a to-do list, could be mangaged with a project board like Trello.)
Multi-scale Planning Documents (Daily, weekly, and quarterly outlooks, and a review framework like you find in David Allen’s Getting Things Done.)
Core Systems Document (A snapshot of how you work and the tools you use.)

These tools are applicable to your job but can be useful in other dimensions of life. They can help you manage your household, lead your family, pursue your hobbies, priortize your volunteer pursuits, or practice your craft. They can help you be a better student if you are in school. How? These tools help you organize your time (calendar), capture your tasks and ideas (obligation list), methodically complete projects (timelined planning documents that interact constructively with your obligations and calendar), and focus your approach to accomplishing your goals (core systems reflect your process–you know how you do it).

When students ask me for advice on ordering or stewarding their life as a follower of Christ, I talk to them about calling, vision, giftings, discerned commitments, and time. Reflection in those areas defines the framework for moving forward. Then, calendar, tasks, pace, and process become tools that can serve us in working out the call, living into the vision, faithfully sharing our gifts, keeping our commitments, and ordering our days as servants of God.

These tools are not only useful for doing more things more efficiently in our jobs, they are also useful for the keeping of time and space to contemplate great truths, rest in God, pursue leisure, find renewal through practices such as retreat and Sabbath, involving oneself in a community of faith, appreciating the riches of human culture expressed in music, art, theatre, and film, and building meaningful friendships and relationships through the intentional cultivation of and participation in community.

Proverbs 6:6-11 says:

⁶Go to the ant, you sluggard;
    consider its ways and be wise!
⁷It has no commander,
    no overseer or ruler,
⁸yet it stores its provisions in summer
    and gathers its food at harvest.

⁹How long will you lie there, you sluggard?
    When will you get up from your sleep?
¹⁰A little sleep, a little slumber,
    a little folding of the hands to rest—
¹¹and poverty will come on you like a thief
    and scarcity like an armed man.

And Proverbs 21:5 says:

⁵The plans of the diligent lead to profit
as surely as haste leads to poverty.

The diligent person approaches their life deliberately and with wisdom. They learn how life works, how the world works, and come to an understanding of matters human and divine. They develop a vision of human flourishing, which in the Christian worldview, includes reconciliation with God and ambassadorship in Christ’s kingdom, not only as bearers of a message, but as witnesses to a redeemed, restored, and renewed way of life.

The outworking of this life finds expression, then, in our families, workplaces, churches, and our broader community, whether city, county, state, nation, or across the globe. We have agency and responsibility. There is an element of life that must be worked out, and faith, in this respect, is not only something we have but something we exercise and learn. We order our lives, not so that we can produce more, though we may, but so that our lives might be used as God would intend, toward the end of blessing our neighbors and, ultimately, the glorification of God (Matthew 5:16).

Calling: Adjusting the Dials

We think that a correct theology of calling can and will apply to all Christians, but not so the all-too-popular individualized understanding. Or better yet, we contend that a more faithful theology of calling will help direct the shape of a believer’s life no matter what their current circumstances. Put still another way, we contend that a theology of calling that is truly faithful to Scripture and not just pious language must apply to all Christians at all times and in all places. An overly individualized and specific view of calling as popularly presented just does not work. It ends up limiting more than it liberates.
William W. Klein and Daniel J. Steiner, What is My Calling? A Biblical and Theological Exploration of Christian Identity

This summer three new titles on vocation and calling landed on my desk for review, and the first of those titles I have picked up to read has been published by Baker Academic: William W. Klein and Daniel J. Steiner’s What is My Calling?

Klein and Steiner contend that current Christian discourse on calling, or the words we use and how they shape culture, distort, mislead, and malform Christians more than they clarify, direct, and aid in faithfulness. In a survey of the literature, the authors find that the vast majority of the current writing on calling focuses more on the individual and unique circumstances than it does the universal call to follow Jesus as his disciple.

Furthermore, by equating job-as-vocation with the idea of calling, the authors observe that the stress is frequently misplaced. Christians downgrade a variety of jobs and fields as possibilities because of a subjective feeling that it is not right for them. Christians can also identify job satisfaction or fulfillment (“living your passion”) as the key signifier they are living according God’s will. A great deal of modern discourse on calling puts the individual at the center of inquiry, and not God. That’s a mistake.

This way of approaching calling introduces a variety of problems. These criteria may work for some, but not all. Klein and Steiner ask us to consider the biblical witness and the ways Christians in other eras have approached calling in an effort to free us from our current individualized approach.

As I’m reading this book, I think that project is worthwhile. But I also suspect that Klein and Steiner have swung the pendulum too far in the other direction.

In an effort to standardize our discourse on calling and avoid the pitfalls of subjective assessments Christians attach to their testimony about calling, they draw our attention back to the universals, such as the calling all people have to live as disciples of Jesus.

But in doing so, they minimize the biblical witness concerning the leading of the Holy Spirit, the responsibility of the believer to discern God’s will, and the active and near presence of Christ as advocate, counselor, teacher, and guide. In an effort to clean up the messes created by our commonly used words about calling, they sterilize the environment in which callings are clarified and worked out–the chaos and disorder of our everyday lives.

I’m still thinking about these ideas. When I speak with brothers and sisters in Christ, I do make distinctions in our understanding of calling.

First, I emphasize the calling of all Christians, which is to take up the cross and to follow Jesus, to become his apprentice, to learn his way, to declare allegiance to him, and to demonstrate complete trust and confidence in him. This dimension of our calling to Christ is universal and shared.

Secondly, I invite everyone to consider everyday faithfulness and the specific, particular outworking of that first and primary calling. This dimension of calling is individual and unique.

Klein and Steiner’s point, however, is well taken.

If anything, I think the dial on universal calling needs to be turned way up, while the dial concerning individual calling needs to be turned way down.

Everyone wants to know and do God’s will but no one wants to follow Jesus and become like him.

We want to know what to study in college, where we’re supposed to work, who we’re supposed to marry, where we’re supposed to live, etc. And if we follow Jesus and become like him, that’s a bonus.

But if we inverted our pursuits, if we contented ourselves with following Jesus and allowing him to remake us according to his image and way, knowing and doing God’s will is assured. Those other identity pursuits have been satisfied; the associated idols have been long cast aside. We will have found our calling, because we have entrusted ourselves fully to the Caller.

Correspondence

Writers who do not make themselves totally available to everyone, all the time, are frequently tagged with the “recluse” label. While I do not consider myself a recluse, I have found it necessary to place some limits on my direct interactions with individual readers. These limits most often come into play when people send me letters or e-mail, and also when I am invited to speak publicly.
Neal Stephenson, “Why I Am A Bad Correspondent“

I like correspondence. I enjoy answering emails. I like writing letters.

But I also like doing the things that matter most. And correspondence can take a lot of time. For writers, the best way to continue connecting with readers might not be email. It might be more books, articles, and essays.

Stephenson adds:

There is little to nothing that I can offer readers above and beyond what appears in my published writings. It follows that I should devote all my efforts to writing more material for publication, rather than spending a few minutes here, a day there, answering e-mails or going to conferences.
Writing novels is hard, and requires vast, unbroken slabs of time. Four quiet hours is a resource that I can put to good use. Two slabs of time, each two hours long, might add up to the same four hours, but are not nearly as productive as an unbroken four. If I know that I am going to be interrupted, I can’t concentrate, and if I suspect that I might be interrupted, I can’t do anything at all. Likewise, several consecutive days with four-hour time-slabs in them give me a stretch of time in which I can write a decent book chapter, but the same number of hours spread out across a few weeks, with interruptions in between them, are nearly useless.

I’m thinking about ideas like this one a lot, because I’m thinking about the things I want to do in the next few years and how most of those things require blocks of uninterrupted time. That means there are other things I will need to say no to. Maybe not emails. Maybe not letters. Maybe other little things, even good things, that subtract from what would be otherwise.

Cal Newport: Time Management

I liked Digital Minimalism and Deep Work. I’ve been listening to Newport’s Deep Questions podcast. Sharp guy.

I have a lot going on, and I think often about stewardship, productivity, and flourishing. Newport talks here about how to capture ideas, how to configure that information, and how to be in control off the decisions you make in utilizing your time. That’s a three point outline, and it’s alliterative. Those are both things I like. Anyone who has ever heard me give a talk knows this is true.

Cal Newport is the grandson of Baptist theologian and apologist John Newport, and while Cal doesn’t identify with a particular religious tradition, he does spend time contemplating the “big questions.” Fun fact: John Newport was at Baylor from 1949-1951.

Maybe Cal’s love for alliteration is related. Check out his website here.

Spiritual Direction at Truett Seminary

In 2015 I completed a certificate program in the ministry of spiritual direction. I have since used the skills I learned in pastoral ministry, in teaching, and in day to day life.

Truett Seminary launched a Spiritual Direction Training Program in 2017. We have seen around forty students complete our program and will graduate our third cohort next spring.

Whenever I mention spiritual direction to someone in my circles, most don’t know what to think.

“Is it a Bible study?”

“A prayer meeting?”

“Is it like going to a sage for advice?”

“Is it counseling?”

“Is it an accountability relationship?”

“What does the director do?”

“Why would one meet with a spiritual director?”

Christian spiritual direction is a historic ministry of the church where one individual ministers to another individual through the practices of prayer, holy listening, clarifying questions, and gentle encouragement in order to help another discern God’s activity in their life.

I sought training as a spiritual director because I wanted those I serve to pay better attention to God. I wanted to help others know God personally, to learn to recognize God’s prompting, and to then discern God’s will. I wanted this to be true for those I discipled individually, as well as for the groups I would shepherd.

We put together the video above to help people better understand what spiritual direction is, and to help a broader range of people discern whether God was calling them to this kind of service.

Three Campus Cultures

In A Time to Build, Yuval Levin identifies three predominant campus cultures which are distinguishable, interacting, and sometimes overlapping. Levin labels these cultures, “a culture of professional development, a culture of moral activism, and a culture of liberal education.”

The culture of professional development’s end is obvious: jobs. Levin writes, “The way we often think and argue about higher education policy generally suggest the same: the question is whether students and parents get their money’s worth in terms of postcollege employment and income.”

The culture of moral activism’s end is more amorphous. It has shifted depending on the morality. Levin writes:

Now largely shorn of its religious roots, [the moral aim] often looks like classroom instruction and campus political activism that demand of the larger society a kind of mass repentance for some grave collective sins. The nature of the alleged transgressions reinforces the worldview of America’s elite culture, which today is largely a progressive-liberal one. The content of the doctrines advanced by campus moralists has changed a lot, then. But the motivations of the students and some of the faculty engaged in moral activism today would be quite recognizable to activists of prior ages. Some of their methods, too, and even their excesses, would not have been altogether unfamiliar to their Puritan predecessors.

Harvard and Yale were initially Puritan institutions and were committed to a certain orthodoxy. Today’s moral activists are no less committed, albeit to different doctrines.

The third and final campus culture is that of liberal education. Here’s how Levin defines it:

Liberal education is so called because it involves the kind of learning and formation required to mold free citizens. The idea reaches back to antiquity in the West, and it has long embodied the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy) said to make up the liberal arts of the classical curriculum. The concept does more than describe certain fields, though. It constitutes a mode of learning as formation, and an approach to education that seeks the true, the good, and the beautiful.

Problems often arise when people have fundamental differences with regard to what the university is for and how then we should pursue our educational mission. Levin writes, “Each of the three cultures believes it properly owns the university’s core ethic, and at least tacitly looks at the others as inadequate if not illegitimate.”

I think there is a place for all three models. But I think the third model is the right one, that it is the best. That’s the kind of education I received, so I have subjective bias.

I also think that it best aligns with a Christian vision of education, which has as its end the formation of the human person such that they can flourish in accordance with their divine design, becoming people of wisdom as they learn from a breadth of human knowledge, discovering they are endowed with purpose and entrusted to steward their lives in service to God.

This third culture, however, is in the minority, I think, not only within the realm of higher education, but also within the popular imagination.

Finish Line

This week our office will submit grades, tie up administrative loose ends, and then transition to thinking forward to the next academic year.

I’ll admit, I am tired.

This year we’ve adjusted to new health protocols, remote work, and online teaching and learning. Thankfully, most of our instruction took place in the classroom, albeit more distanced and with faces partially veiled. And while I did not have as many opportunities to connect with staff, faculty, and students this year over lunch or in the hallways, bonds were strengthened nonetheless.

In the next few weeks I’ll take time out of the office. I have a couple of personal projects to complete, books I want to read, and hikes I want to take. I want to rest, too. Be present with my family and friends. Maybe make art.

The year to come will be filled with transition. It will not carry the same stresses and tensions as this one did. The possibilities ahead of our family are positive developments, filled with hope. My service with Truett moves to full time in August. Molly begins a new appointment at First Methodist Killeen in July. She also will start work on her D.Min. at Truett.

Our family will make adjustments.

We’ll be busy. Galatians 6:9 reminds us, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

Lord, give us strength.

What is ASMR?

According to Cal Newport:

Around 2010, a curious new term arose in obscure but energetic internet chatrooms: autonomous sensory meridian response. ASMR, as it was soon abbreviated, described a peculiar form of paresthesia experienced as a tingling that starts in the scalp and then moves down the back. It’s often triggered by specific sounds, like soft whispering or a paintbrush scraping canvas. Not surprisingly, those sensitive to ASMR sometimes found Bob Ross reruns to be a reliable source of the effect.

Examples include Charles Dickens’ writing room (above), Newt Scamander’s study (Harry Potter universe), and this strange collection of sights and sounds: