Month: July 2024

Open your gift.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

How would you complete this sentence?

Life is a/an —-.

  • Adventure
  • Contest
  • Marathon
  • Burden
  • Race
  • Test
  • ?

It certainly changes things depending on your perspective. Someone who thinks of life as a contest is always striving, comparing what he has to others. The one who views life as a burden might sigh a lot. And so on.

But what if we thought of life as a gift? Unearned, given out of love, no strings attached. Something to be grateful for. Something to savor and enjoy but also something to treasure. Would that affect what we see when we open our eyes in the morning? Face challenges? Greet people? Pick a career?

Brian Zhand says:

Most of us are scripted to think that life is a game and the purpose of life is to win. But the divine truth is that life is a gift and the purpose of life is to learn to love well.

The truth is being here is a gift, an opportunity, a chance to do some good. Open your gift.

Self control in an out of control world.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Not gonna lie. These days are wild. The news cycle is intense, and it can feel dizzying. I wonder what students in school in the future will study about these years. It will definitely be a large chapter with tons of footnotes! And yet, as we work our way through this present, how can we keep our psyches from spinning out of control right with the swirls of events?

One thing to keep in mind is to focus our attention and efforts on the things over which we have control.

Consider this graphic:

Try to let the things in the gray area consume less of your time and attention, focusing on what is in your control. It can be frustrating, no doubt, but therein lies our sanity in crazy times.

Courage over comfort.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Life is full of hard choices. Particularly when you aren’t the one in danger. Making those tough choices, entering the fray, speaking truth to power, defending the defenseless are vital actions for our collective survival.

As Brené Brown says,

Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; it’s choosing what’s right over what’s fun, fast, or easy; and it’s practicing your values, not just professing them. 

Practicing our values, not just professing them. What are your values? How can you bring that to bear in the choices confronting you today?

Choosing joy.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Sometimes joy is a matter of perspective. It’s reaching down and being grateful for it all, the mess, the euphoria, the triumphs, and the tragedies. Grateful to be here, to have a voice, to have people to care about, to have a chance to make a difference. Joy in it all is a choice.

In Bread for the Journey, Henri Nouwen unpacks this further:

Joy is what makes life worth living, but for many joy seems hard to find. They complain that their lives are sorrowful and depressing. What then brings the joy we so much desire? Are some people just lucky, while others have run out of luck? Strange as it may sound, we can choose joy. Two people can be part of the same event, but one may choose to live it quite differently from the other. One may choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise. The other may choose despair and be destroyed by it.  What makes us human is precisely this freedom of choice.

What is the promise behind the circumstances that threaten to steal your joy? Is there something hopeful there? Seeing that promise may just be the key you are looking for.

A dose of funny.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

The world lost a great comedian last week. Bob Newhart, the mild-mannered former accountant with his disarming stammer and boy like charm, always delivered the funny.

Here’s a classic to enjoy in honor of his passing:

https://youtu.be/hGZ3oVi1sUs?feature=shared

He told us:

People with a sense of humor tend to be less egocentric and more realistic in their view of the world and more humble in times of success and less defeated in times of travail.

To be humble in times of success and less defeated in times of travail is a worthy goal because no matter what comes, there will always be ups and downs. Such is life.

Admiring loudly.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

How often do you admire someone but keep that thought to yourself? Perhaps someone took a risk, spoke truth to power or behaved well in a tough situation. You admired them for it but kept that admiration to yourself. How much good might that have done if you told them, perhaps given them a bit of encouragement to stand strong again? How much might your words give them much-needed support when they were feeling low?

Chimamanda Adichie encourages us to never admire quietly. She says:

If I admire something about someone, I tell them. We humans are so fragile. It’s important we give people their flowers while they are here. Never admire quietly.

Don’t be stingy with kind words and compliments. They could very well be the fuel that keeps those good deeds coming.

The extraordinary in my cup of coffee.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Sometimes we see the extraordinary in the ordinary. This poem perfectly captures the blessing in such a day:

Lord, here I am.

How strange it is,

That some days feel like hurricanes

And others like glassy seas

And others like nothing much at all,

Today is a cosmic shrug.

My day planner says, 

Rather conveniently,

That I will not need you,

Cry for you, reach for you.

Ordinarily, I might not think of you at all.

Except, if you don’t mind,

Let me notice you.

Show up in the small necessities

And everyday graces.

God, be bread.

Be water.

Be laundry.

Be the coffee cup in my hands

And the reason to calm down in traffic.

Be the gentler tone in my insistence today

That people pick up after themselves for once.

When I catch my own reflection

Or feel my own self-loathing

Fluttering in my stomach.

Calm my mind,

Lift my spirit,

Make this dumb, ordinary day

My prayer of thanks.

Be the reason I feel loved.The Lives We Actually Have, by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie

Only the lonely.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

In the midst of technological connectedness, loneliness is ever present. That need for close human connection isn’t satisfied by clicks and emojis or political jousting. It requires a deeper sharing of oneself. And how frustrating to have stories to tell but no one to share them with.

Imagine what good you can do simply by being that person who can listen to another’s stories. To ease their loneliness.

Emily Dickinson captured this well:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one lonely person

Into happiness again

I shall not live in vain.

Who do you know that might have stories to tell if only there was someone to listen?

Astonishing a mean world.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Astonishing a mean world is quite the life goal. Flipping the script. Not buying in to the smallness, pettiness, and cruelty you see around you.

Imagine the ripple effects of such kindness.

Perhaps you’ve heard the story of the man and the starfish. In sum, a man is walking along the beach at low tide finding starfish that have landed too far above the water line to survive. He dislodges them and throws them back into the ocean. A bystander is astonished and scolds him, saying that he will never be able to make a difference as there are miles and miles of beach with hundreds of stranded starfish. The man responds, tossing another back into the ocean, “Made a difference to that one,” he remarks.

Making a difference doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. It can be quite small, perhaps only affecting the person in front of you right now. Perhaps the difference is choosing an unexpected response to cruelty. Perhaps the response is to not lose hope.

Hang in there. The starfish are right in front of you on your path if you choose to see them.

An infinite succession of presents.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

This moment we are in is but one in the collection of moments that make a life, a story, a history. Each moment building on the last, forward toward a powerful culmination. To stay hopeful and earnest in each moment, no matter how dire, is a testament to what we hold dear, to hope, to a belief that all things will ultimately work together for good.

As Howard Zinn says,

TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Do not give up on the beliefs you have. To be decent, kind, not returning hate for hate, to speak truth to power, to retain hope for a brighter future, a future willing to work for. That is a marvelous victory.