Tag: respect

Decoding (Canine) Body Language with Funny Dog Drawings

dog-language-boogie-boston-terrier

Don’t you just love that great illustration by Lili Chin to help decode your dog’s attempts to communicate?

(This is a creative commons work. Be sure to check out Lili’s site! She deserves the recognition.)

Did any of them surprise you?

One of them really did for me.

All this time I thought my chocolate lab, Luna was giving me the cold shoulder (by sitting with her back to me)… she was actually giving me respect and trust.

(I feel like such a jerk about it now because sometimes I would mention it to her (disparagingly) and tell her that I felt sort of offended. Sweetheart that she is, she never seemed to hold it against me.)

 

Here’s a never-before-made-public excerpt from the book Luna helped inspire!

 

People who love and prefer cats, “cat people”, will tell you that cats are superior to dogs because they can take care of themselves. Cat people may flaunt the fact that felines don’t have some inferior gene that forces them to depend on others.
The sort of separation antics and hysterics don’t seem to happen to cats like they do with dogs. A cat may greet you, but it will hardly hang on your every word. Instead of nervously crying at the window like a dog does, a cat will get even. And it won’t get even because you left, but because you have overstepped your bounds.
It will pee on your pillow, for instance. It’ll turn on you in an instant with claws and teeth as you pet it. It will serve revenge ice cold.
“Dog people” prefer to be a dog’s reason for living rather than being a cat’s loyal subject. The biggest bruise to the human psyche comes from this situation: For the privilege of being a feline’s vassal it will tolerate you. 

Have you read the short book I wrote with Doug Jackson called “Dog in the Gap”?

There are 11 stories, tons of great photos, and a bunch of funny extras!

It is available on Kindle only. Installing the Kindle Reader App for your computer or smartphone is free. 

 

 

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Learn Transformational Leadership Theory in 15 Seconds

Screen Shot 2013-04-30 at 8.33.53 AMI’m writing the last paper for my class in Leadership and Administration. I’m concentrating on Transformational Leadership Theory.

Here’s the crash course for you!

30 years ago Transformational Leadership got some traction and it focused on something nothing else had: Followers.

What motivates and develops Followers created a paradigm shift in Leadership Studies that continues to be researched and written about quite a bit.

(The image shows 5 factors Transformational Leaders employ.)

The 4 Main Components that define Transformational Leadership

The four key components in play[1]:

  1. Intellectual Stimulation – In Transformational Leadership the leader challenges the status quo, encourages creative solutions, and leads followers toward exploring new ways of doing things while offering new opportunities to learn and grow.
  1. Individualized Consideration – In Transformational Leadership the leader offers support and encouragement to individual followers that help to foster supportive relationships among the team, and endeavors to help followers keep the lines of communication open to more easily share ideas. There is also recognition of team members’ unique contributions.
  1. Inspirational Motivation – In Transformational Leadership the leader has a clear vision that is articulated to the followers. With this clearly articulated vision followers may share and experience similar passion and stay better motivated to see the vision through to completion.
  2. Idealized Influence – A Transformational leader serves as a role model for her followers. She exemplifies the values she hopes to engender. This builds trust and respect for the leader. (This had been called “charisma” but has grown more nuanced.)

[1] Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations by Bernard M. Bass (1985)

The Book that started it all:

Updated and expanded in 2005

Snippets from the Dr Miroslav Volf seminar

The air was electric… a cross between a speech and rock concert…a nerdy electricity.

My school (where I now work) is small. Small but strangely mighty. Blessed.

And thankfully it is committed to excellence and honest inquiry. This quality is more rare than you might imagine, in liberal and conservative institutions alike.

Yesterday, Dr. Miroslav Volf was the featured speaker at the annual Ritter-Moyer Lecture. Go ahead, click on his name if you haven’t of him.

I’m still reflecting on his message and a richer response in warranted.

But, I can say this….His message seemed radical…but only because Christians have too often loved so poorly.

They were convicting words, for me, for those who claim to forward the Gospel, and also sadly–for most of humanity. The Gospel it turns out is highly subversive and radical because it turns the all too common bad bits of human nature upside down and refutes them. Love and Grace are downright scandalous. We get Grace wrong. Almost all the time.

But the lecture was far from depressing. It was heavily laced with hope. His topic revolved around honor.

I hope to revisit the themes, but for now here’s an anemic glimpse of the approx 3 hour lecture (yes, there was a 20 min break involved in the middle).

QUOTES:

“We have a religious duty to honor everyone.” (including those who persecute us)

“Misplaced fear is one of the primary reasons we fail to honor. We should replace the fear of each other with the fear of God.”

“The [American] founding is not a pretty story. It’s an ambiguous story. It’s drenched in injustice but also suffused with ideals and institutions that can be affirmed (by Christians). It’s also the story of our own hearts. We have no excuse and we have to own our own divided history.”

‎” [Grace means] I am not the sum of my deeds.”

“Everyone who loves or wants to be loved distinguishes between person and deed. Forgiveness is “unsticking” the deed from the person.”

‎”Fear undermines honor.”

‎”Forgiveness presupposes that sin & sinner are distinctive from each other”

“How do we know that we are speaking the truth in love? We are gentle.”

“We bear false witness (to the Gospel) when our words don’t match our deeds.”

“Peace is not agreement. It is sacrificial love…The means is the end.”

‎”1 Peter: command: “Have tolerance with others when (you are) persecuted.”

“But, more than tolerance, we must honor (and respect) them.”

“Gentleness is a servant of respect.”

(You can find more quotes from Volf on Twitter by searching #Volf, or on the Evangelical Seminary Facebook page)

Afraid of God

normal_FrightenedLady001 I was speaking with “Gwen” not that long ago, and she was telling me about an emotional subject. The words, “Oh my God” escaped her lips. She stopped. She looked around, and then with a look I would have to describe as panicked, she said, “I’m so sorry. I know God doesn’t like if I do that.”

I didn’t want to make anything of it, so I encouraged her to continue her story, but later I starting thinking about what happened. She was feeling afraid. It was fear she felt toward God when she apologized. 

 

Because God made us as relational beings, I wonder if we need to do better than being afraid of God. I know as a parent, I want to love my children and have them love me, not fear me. I want them them to respond to me and with me, not just respond out of fear of something happening to them. I enjoy my place as parent, rather than their peer. I do want honor and respect, and I try to offer that to them. But, if they operate in a way where they look over their shoulder every time they do something, I think I sense I have failed in some major way in relating to them, and parenting them. I will not have established a relationship of trust, and healthy love and caring.

I wonder if Gwen will feel close enough to God to feel unafraid one day. I wonder if she will feel he loves her dearly, and knows all about her, and still loves her just exactly the same. The fear comes from her own expectations, and probably what she has been told about God, but not God’s nature, and what God desires for her. He wants closeness, intimacy, and free reciprocal communication. He doesn’t want a cowering servant, always afraid to do or say the wrong thing that may displease him. Pagan gods were temperamental, but in contrast, Yahweh was and is not. I think the God image in her mind might look close to the dad she had, or some authority figure. But, the Lover of her soul, cares for her so deeply it would blow her mind.

Have you been afraid of God? Do you know someone who is? What has been the effect?