Tag: emotional

Update on the Time Machine

 

 

 

 

Interested in Time Travelers Mints?
CLICK HERE.antiueweather

 

Time to give you a tiny glimpse of what’s going on behind the scenes. (an update)

I’m building a time travel machine, as some of you know.

Well, sort of. That sounds really grand to say “I’m building a time machine”. It seems like it should involve a Delorean. It doesn’t. That’s just the movies. Real time travel is painstaking and boring hard work, like everything else that is a meaningful project.

OFFICIAL UPDATE:
So far, in the initial first tests the “machine” takes you back in time to a beautiful day or forward in time to a day with very poor weather. You can’t pick the day.
I was surprised and, to be honest, disappointed by that bit. I’m a novice at this stuff (obviously) and I got more than a few of my calculations and instrumentation configurations dead wrong. Correcting it completely could take nuclear power, and I just don’t have the resources for that…yet.
I’ve had to become more resourceful.

(This is another reason why my jetpack work got sidetracked in late summer. Shortly after learning to weld a mishap with a grey squirrel, a metal harshness and headset, and a PVC cannon style concept went awry, I settled in for a long, but probably safer, haul with short interval time traveling work and animals without bushy tails.

But, back to the weather travel.
Yes, I was hoping for a time machine in the strict sense, but maybe this glitch has happened for a reason. I do prefer late Spring to November weather. I’m still working on it and I have several other prototypes in the works too of varying sizes and capacities. All of it is in the very early stages.

Let me be clear:
I don’t have all the kinks worked out, and I haven’t actually traveled in time, personally, because I’ve been too frightening of being caught in bad weather with no chance of escape back to my own time, or of being stuck in the past on a gorgeous day. Never returning to family and friends isn’t something I’m up for, even on a good day.

I’ve been able to visually see and document what is happening through the power of properly placed technology (sort of like a periscope and a camera thing with some twisty bread ties and hot mess of petroleum jelly), but I haven’t made any trips yet myself. It’s risky, so I’m sure you understand.

Early RESULTS:
The test data seems to indicate that time travel occurred for about 11 seconds, until it didn’t.

Now before you are tempted to mock me because that is a rather meager number, I’ll remind you that the Wright Brothers only flew off the ground in the skeletal airplane-tpye contraption for just 11 seconds and everyone thought it was a very big deal.

Besides, I don’t want to get caught up in the hubris of mentioning statistics or worse: starting to show off, and besting myself as my own worst enemy. (For instance, listing the seconds as they increase during each trial, when they happen to. This could easily lead to emotional elation followed by terrible despair–the ruin of many creative people. Also I don’t want to shift my thinking to inadvertently assume I’m doing all of this just for your approval, and it could come to that.)

 

Again, it’s still early into the project.

The point is to stay focused and refine the instruments the best I can.

I’m documenting all the stories of my work, travels (or near-travels), and mishaps, and I’ll be sharing them with you in a collection in a few months (via a Kindle Book). God willing and if I don’t blow up…

or change my mind.

Now for the best part.
I’m synchronously building a few contraptions –one-off pieces– and other related ephemera for your own adventures, your personal collection of unusual things, or conversational props you can take out at cocktail parties. There will be a Kickstarter campaign to dole those out. More on that in time, so to speak. I’d like to see if it works out first in the future before I actually do it. But, if I can’t lengthen the traveling to a few months into the future to know, this will not be possible. Presently, that sort of result is “iffy” at best. I may just risk it anyhow. Clearly, I’m debating it with myself.

FOR FURTHER UPDATES
Tweets and reports to Facebook will be sent out from time-to-time using the hashtag #weathertravel.

If you want to keep up with the project or view the occasional pictures, see the occasional video, or learn when the items will be up for grabs search that hashtag. [Also my email list will get updates, so that’s another option, if you’d like to sign up in the side bar.] Many of the items will also come with their backstory included and written out for your amusement and records in short form. It will also include any usual related situations associated with it. There’s one about a prairie dog and a whiskey flask, for instance.

Another particular item is a ring device. It looks like jewelry but it is a non lethal (I think) mini travel device. I hope to get a photo up of it soon once it’s ready. It’s not as powerful as the bigger pieces, as you might imagine, but I think you’ll like it.

Bounce…Bounce… “OINK” [State of the Blogosphere]

OINK! OINK!

LEOL30 via Compfight

 

“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.”

Matthew 7:6 from Jesus‘s Sermon on the Mount.

Today, the people who haunt the blogs and freely spew their criticisms are known as trolls and I think there is a spot on parallel with that phenomenon and the point of this scriptural adage.

Here’s how the urban dictionary puts it:

troll
One who purposely and deliberately (that purpose usually being self-amusement) starts an argument in a manner which attacks others on a forum without in any way listening to the arguments proposed by his or her peers. He will spark of such an argument via the use of ad hominem attacks (i.e. ‘you’re nothing but a fanboy’ is a popular phrase) with no substance or relevence to back them up as well as straw man arguments, which he uses to simply avoid addressing the essence of the issue.

 

Not too many people troll around at this blog and make a mess. But once in a while. It’s not too often that I pontificate on a controversial topic. However, many do. I was at a blog recently where there were a few trolls about and the topic was a disputed sort. Antagonistic little buggers, cloaked (quite conveniently!) in anonymity were pig piling, gorging themselves on accusations and generally being unpleasant and ill-reasoned. (Note that Trolls tote suitcases! They are filled with lots of emotional contents. Baggage. The more baggage there is the more the trollish nature flares up.)

 

So, it reminded me of the deeper phenomenon, shown in the “pearls and swine” reference.

 

Rather than readers contemplating or valuing the expertise in any way, I heard the sounds, “Bounce, bounce, “oink!”

 

So why is that? And why pigs and dogs?
In the Middle East in Jesus’ time, dogs were rarely lovable pets (except maybe to a few the royal class who had time to breed and train them to be lap dogs or sporting dogs that were kept outside and used for hunting). They were not as we tame to be and treat them today. At best they guarded the property, lived on scraps and barked at strangers. Most had bad habits, went scrounging around like tenacious vultures with paws, and would ingest anything, like dead and rotting carrion. Frequently they’d get sick on the stuff and vomit. Then they would eat that too. Yuck.
They were cited in Biblical times as a cautionary tail…er…tale.
Proverbs 26:11
As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.
Pigs fit in the same category. Most people assume that the ancient world couldn’t prepare a delicious and diesease-free pork entrée. Not so. In ancient Summer, pigs were eaten frequently (like me, they adored bacon perhaps). But, in Egypt swine were considered gross and vile. This sentiment seemed to filter into the Levitical laws for the Hebrews who would have been exposed to that cultural norm and largely imitated those dietary preferences. That meant Pigs=yuck. Dogs too.

 

Even now, dogs and swine both are in the habit of eating most anything and undervaluing certain precious things, jewelry from instance. They will even eat their own excrement, so I’m told. Omnivores indeed! I can vouch for the the fact on dogs, but I have little experience with pigs. Nevertheless, both have undiscriminating tastes, or they have discriminating tastes that are arbitrary and illogical. They also write the worst restaurant reviews.

 

If a hungry dog or pig, especially if it is untamed, from the wild, and thinks you have food, it will take you out and gobble it up and maybe a few of your fingers too. (I saw Bear Grylls wrestle a Razor Back once.) Best not to bring true valuables to the barnyard or wilderness.

 

This leaves us with a problem as writers or even as blog comment-writers. Do we bother writing for the public with so many pigs about? With so many unappreciative trollers who are ready to eat us alive, we often end up writing for the folks who won’t value it. I can see why writers close down their comments sections. Pigs and trolls and dogs appear to have a lot of time on their idle hands!

 

But finding the right audience is hard, even among our friendships.
A friend of mine said something like, “When I write I think about what you’ll think; and if you’ll think it’s good or not. I don’t like the idea of you not liking it.”  I told her, “Well, if I don’t like it, then it wasn’t written for me–it was written for someone else, and that’s fine.”

 

We aren’t writing for everyone. We are writing for the people who are ready and able to hear us, best.

 

If pigs or dogs eat your pearls, remember that the jewelry was never for them anyway. They trampled you down because they don’t know any better and they couldn’t comprehend the value you offered. Hold the hope that you will find those who see your pearls for what they are: valuable.

 

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Are you Skipping “Brain Pain” but picking the Plague?

Fingertips

Professor Bop via Compfight

Most of us don’t realize that we spend a bunch of time avoiding a familiar “Brain Pain”.

Just below our radar, but deeply connected with our emotions is an unsettling sense that something isn’t right.

That’s because it isn’t. Though it’s a normal sensation it’s not well-received.

We order and reorder things to avoid this feeling. But, it persists. And, it’ll make us do the strangest things.

Simply put: This “brain pain” happens when we try to hold two or more conflicting ideas together.

It’s officially called cognitive dissonance.

Unidentified, you don’t like it either.

But, in fact most of life and love is full of paradox and contradictions. All the great thinkers and spiritual masters speak of it.

The big problem?

Our cognitions don’t live together in a good jive and comfortable harmony. Our ideas, beliefs, values or emotional reactions have pointy and mismatched edges and we keep wanting things to piece together nicely like a glossy jigsaw puzzle.

Instead of feeling and living with dissonance, we try to avoid it or reduce it. Anything from changing our beliefs to be in keeping with the situation (to make it bearable), to reducing our regret through irrational justification, to reaffirming our bias even if a logical reason is absent. We are very irrational creatures and the more we think we are NOT the more irrational it is.

(It’s dissonant to be a partially rational creature, see?)

In wanting everything to “make sense” we pick fiction and live by figments instead.

You do it. I do it.

What’s worse?
The social pressure to relieve this sort of brain pain will blast toward us from everywhere. Maybe nowhere more powerfully than from our leaders. People in the pulpit, or the podium, power players in the board room or on news and media outlets they let the zingers fly that force you to inconsistently choice a faulty form of consistency. On cable television and radio of all stripes it’s a full-blown-plauge.

Everyone will try to sway you to give up the dissonance and see it their way (which they call “the right way”). It makes them feel better. But, the dissonance is part of reality just like it is part of jazz music. Not every note sounds just right or fits together seamlessly. It’s off-pitch and off-tempo. It’s very hard to predict.

How tricky! How disconcerting.

It is a mark of maturity to accept that reality is chock-a-block with inconsistency and incongruence. (That’s worth reading again.)

Though it can be unnerving, an abiding peace can yet remain in what seems a spongy place. This place is a good and useful tension of balance. It’s very hard to find and even harder to keep.

So, what about you?

Think about the things that create the discomforting feeling of dissonance for you.

• What are they? (relationships, finances, politics, tragedy, redemption?) Narrow it down to one or two big ones, for now.

• Have you been dodging logic or minimizing regret for the fantasy of consonance because you want to avoid the pain (and reality) of dissonance? Let’s be honest.

What could you hold in dissonance and balance that you haven’t been?

(Thank you for reading today. I would love if if you would share this post. Also great? If you would sign up for the next post in the sidebar.)

xo

-Lisa

“The Tyranny of the Left Brain”: Thoughts from Len Sweet

wholebrain
(click photo to enlarge)

As promised, I’m writing a bit more to summarize the fascinating Leonard Sweet event at Evangelical Seminary this week. (Here’s the first one in the series.)

Dr Sweet had some interesting things to say about the legacy and effect of the Protestant Reformation which he calls “The 2nd Wave of Christianity”.

Wave 1: Catholicism (which is still growing in the global East and South).
Wave 2: Protestantism (which is in decline everywhere in the world and got its start by saying “no”.) It seems there is a shelf life to this version of Christianity. More on that in a second.
Wave 3: Pentecostalism (which is flourishing in the global East and South. Other Christian traditions are being influenced by its effect too.)

Sweet says that Pentecostalism is considered something other than Protestantism because it more fully integrates the Third Person of the Trinity (the Spirit) and perceives God as active and engaged in everyday life unlike previous versions of Christianity have done. He said that we in the West are slow to realize this seismic shift because we’ve been focused on Liberation Theology. L.T. accounted for the poor and was in essence created for the poor, but the poor didn’t pick it; instead they picked Pentecostalism.

In the West, we are in a post-Christian era. The “big-box churches” have put an end to most of the “mom & pop” churches, but mainly a reshuffling of Christians is occurring–not an increase of new devotees to Christianity. Sweet mentioned that on the West coast in the U.S. things have moved beyond simply disparaging Christians to open hostility. This promises to be the norm throughout U.S. culture, he says.

Why the “shelf-life” for Protestantism?
Protestantism was birthed just as a technological revolution hit. The moveable type of the Gutenberg printing press was one such breakthrough and Protesters of Catholicism used this technology along with their reforming ideas and desire to make the Bible available for everyone to create a major shift in how Christianity was practiced. According to Sweet, no invention was more anti-social and individualistic than the mass-produced book (you take a book and go off by yourself and absorb it). It seems, no worldview had been so individualistic until that time either (my note).

What happened soon because of that shift was the over-emphasis on the left-brain. “The Tyranny of the Left Brain”

And my what a power it’s had!
What was left behind? Mainly the arts, story using image, memories, relationships, emotional expression and recognition, intuition, creativity and a “whole person” view of Christian (body+mind+spirit).

What was favored? Reasoning, thinking, dissecting, apologetics/critical thinking, and textual language. Sometimes the right brain qualities weren’t just ignored, sometimes they were even despised. Whole sects of Christians took down art and have kept places of worship plain and non visual (More on left and right brain here). Logical left brain thinkers are often thought of as smarter even in our culture today, but it is the right side of the brain were some of the most meaningful things occur. And the combination of the hemispheres in balance makes us most fully alive.

We need both sides of our brain to be fully human.

Now something bigger than Gutenberg as come along: Google. All the information of the world is there for the taking, and the visual is back! Story is back again (and this is the format Jesus used too.) Word-heavy presentations are on the decline as many marketers have already noticed the shift and accounted for it (see ad below). Now we have interconnection of the internet and it’s been supercharged more recently by a new technological revolution even more significant than the internet: social media. (Apparently without Facebook the revolutions and movement toward democracy in the Middle East and in other important parts of the world wouldn’t have happened. So, yeah, it’s a big deal because it makes news and ideas travel so quickly.)

 

Social Media promises something we’ve been missing out on the interconnectedness. But, it cannot deliver fully on it’s promise, because face-to-face relationships are so transforming and vital. The internet and social media start to give us what we as humans crave, but a formidable wall persists that only the messiness of in-person interaction offers.

The shift is here and people are looking for a more holistic (whole) way of perceiving the world. Narratives, metaphors, image, story, and emotion are rushing back into the forefront and the it’s not a trend. It’s the new way the world works.

Future post: In the next post I’ll wrap up and focus on the “power of image” which includes metaphor, symbolism, and the affective powers of the brain and mind. Does Protestantism have a fighting chance?

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See how the narrative doesn’t need words much anymore?

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New Beginnings!

Today, I’m synching up with the Deeper Leader blog over the question:

ES-Blog-Contributor-Badge-250x250-1

 

What new beginnings will there be for you or your team?

Well! I just started my second 9 week class in my Masters of Arts in Christian Leadership. (It’s sort of like a power-packed Christian MBA)

This weekend we met for class (the rest of the learning happens online).

The time was packed with insights and new material, all of which will be so helpful not just with getting to know my fellow-learners, but in every environment I am leading in and will lead in.

The course centers on leadership theories and involves a lot of searching and self-awareness, learning of one’s strengths, temperaments, and personal leadership styles. Sometimes this is encouraging, but other times the process reveals blind spots, wounds, and flaws. 

I’ve realized that a wounded but healed leader is the easiest for me to trust.

The insights we gain from knowing ourself and others better works like getting bionic limbs just before we climb a mountain. Things that were confusing, personalities that seemed perplexing, and the power for gifts and talents laser into focus.

Here are a few of the books I’m learning from that I’ve really been enjoying. (Two Big thumbs up!)

Another test I took for the course has to do with using a social and emotional competency inventory tool (ESCI). Social and emotional intelligence is too rare a commodity in bosses, in case you haven’t heard. :)

Plus, I did the Myers-Briggs Test. (I’m an EN(F/T)P, almost split F&T)
Have you ever taken the Myers-Briggs test?  (If so, what are your letters?)

Have you taken the Strength Finder test (it comes with the book)?

I highly recommend it! You will be blessed and so will those you influence!