Empty Chairs

In honor of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's birthday today, we remember. Bonhoeffer, a theologian who was martyred by the Nazi regime, stated: "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."

When we were in Krakow, Poland once, we visited the "Plaza of the Heroes of the Ghetto", the site of mass shootings of elderly and infants. The Empty Chairs monument erected in this square was inspired by a ghetto survivor's story of having witnessed schoolchildren, evicted from their school, carrying their chairs through the streets. I wrote this poem after visiting this memorial to the Holocaust.


Empty Chairs

Children walked the sidewalk that day
Chairs above their heads
Like chains keeping them in line
On a strange field trip of kind

It was the hour when lessons were taught
But ethics and truth were not
Did fear fill their eyes?
Was it palpable?

Did they chatter unknowingly?
I cannot comprehend
What they felt in the end
The mind, the emotions have limits

This hour and every one chiming, in remembrance 
Empty chairs line the square
Once soaked in red
Life-shattered, dream-spattered pools

The aged, the youngest, the child
Whose life would have spanned 
Even till now
It was a second ago

Do you understand? It was a second ago
When madness tried to rule the world
Can we derive meaning from vile hatred?
A senseless slaughter of innocents

Being’s right cries Evil
Evil demands Justice
Justice embodies 
Love and Goodness – Vinco Vici Victum

Plaza of the heroes of the ghetto
This is why we must remember, to stop its recurrence
So there will never be
Another empty chair

Shaped by Words: The Daily Adventure of Reading

Words, when taken to heart and acted upon, move from the stratosphere of ideas into life-changing reality. We live in a world of images, but moreover, in a world of words whispered or shouted in our minds from waking to sleeping, even stirring us in our dreams. All the more reason we should be deliberate about the words that shape our lives.

From early childhood, books have been a major part of my life. I always have a list of books I want to read, seeing them as part of a trajectory leading me in the direction I am pursuing. The first one on my list is always a daily dose of Bible, authored by the Word who became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth.

Since we left most of our library overseas, I’ve had to beg, borrow, buy and occasionally get a freebie on Kindle to have enough books around to whet my appetite. Here is the list of books I read in 2012. And now in 2013 I’m reading on, pursuing God, and allowing words to shape me and to motivate me to change our world.

For life, daily:

The Bible
This year I'm reading the YouVersion One Year Bible and loving it because of the daily readings from the Old & New Testaments, Psalms and Proverbs.

For ministry, understanding orphans, understanding the Russian-speaking world:

The Grace Effect: How the Power of One Life Can Reverse the Corruption of Unbelief

by Larry Taunton

For counseling, written by an experienced, professional counselor:

The Wounded Heart

by Dan B. Allender

For inspiration:

Poems by Emily Dickinson (Kindle freebie)

For knowing God and ministering to others:

Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe

by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breashears

For challenge, encouragement and wisdom. Definitely a favorite:

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

by Eric Metaxas

For living the Gospel and coaching others in ministry:

Gospel Coach: Shepherding Leaders to Glorify God

by Scott Thomas

For the intellect:

Paradise Lost (Kindle freebie)

by John Milton

For learning discipleship and mission:

Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Form of Discipleship

by Alan & Debra Hirsch

For depth of mind and heart:

Czeslaw Milosz: New & Collected Poems (1931- 2001) (still reading)

For learning to live better in the now, with gratitude. Difficult for the visionary type:

OneThousand Gifts

by Ann Voskamp

For understanding past and present Europe:

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 

by Tony Judt (still reading)

For knowing Jesus and better communicating who He is to others:

Who Is This Man?

by John Ortberg

"You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me." – C.S. Lewis

Proverbs 16:3
“Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.”

Proverbs 3:5-6
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;  in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”

“The Six Thinking Hats” and Eliminating Time Wasters on a Crisp, Autumn Monday

The crisp, cool air invigorates me as I walk along the sidewalk drinking a warm coffee to start the day. Taking in the beautiful display of orange, reddish and gold fall foliage, I sit down to plan my week. It’s Monday. A new beginning. The weekly cycle repeats with the regularity of the changing seasons. I work on projects that require focus and self-discipline since I manage my own time. I need to remain motivated and inspired to pursue goals that are not only for my benefit, but for the benefit and encouragement of people in other parts of the world so I pray, plan, read a chapter of the Bible, read a chapter of the book I’m studying, then get to work.

I came across a new idea yesterday that captured my attention: “Six Thinking Hats”, a parallel thinking process developed by Edward de Bono to help people become more productive, focused and mindfully involved. The image of hats made the idea stick as I remembered passing my favorite tea shop last week where I saw a group of ladies in their late autumn years delightfully sipping tea from ornate cups while wearing distinctive red hats. De Bono’s Red Hat signifies feelings, hunches and intuition. When wearing this hat, you can express emotions and feelings, likes and dislikes, or stronger loves and hates.

But what if you are sitting in a group of red hat ladies wearing a lone, White Hat, which represents the concrete realist who thrives on information? You want the facts, just the facts. A woman left a meeting the other week in frustration over the “feelings-centered” focus of the group. I think she was wearing a white hat in a group of red hats.

Think of the possible glee and relief she might feel if a team, gathered for whatever objective, separated thinking into six clear functions? And think of what ruts people could get out of by wearing a different hat. By mentally switching hats, you can redirect conversation or the flow of a meeting. Or you can use it as a personal tool to redirect your thoughts when you are in a quagmire. Sounds like a great idea! I am eager to try it.

Ok, so I told you about the red and white hats. Here are the other four:

The Yellow Hat

This hat symbolizes brightness and optimism. The wearers of this hat shift towards exploring the positives of whatever is being discussed or worked on as a team. You can only consider the positive values and benefits.

The Black Hat

This is the hat of judgment. While wearing this hat, you play the devil’s advocate and consider why something may not work. It is important to spot potential problems, so this hat is both necessary and useful if worn for brief periods. Never overuse the black hat.

The Green Hat

Your innovators will enjoy wearing this hat, but they will want to wear it all the time. This hat focuses on creativity, possibilities and new ideas.  It is an opportunity to offer new concepts, new ways of doing things.

The Blue Hat

This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. If the group is stymied because ideas are running dry, they may direct the group into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they can ask for Black Hat thinking, etc.

This sounds like a great way to foster productivity, creativity and to get people out of familiar thought patterns.

I tend to prefer the green, yellow and white hats.

Another boost to productivity is getting rid of time wasters. Here are a few common ones:

External Time Wasters

1. Personal interruptions

2.  Phone calls and text messages

3.  E-mail barrages

4.  Short attention span

5.  Social media (limit number of minutes per day)

6.  Your daily energy cycle (do the work that requires the greatest focus and energy before 2pm)

7. Choosing to work in places like Starbucks, unless you are energized by noise.

Internal Time Wasters

1. Lack of delegation

2. Tyranny of the urgent

3. Procrastination

4. Perfectionism

5. Lack of planning – try adding the following segments of planning to your schedule

            daily (10 - 15 minutes)

            weekly (30 - 45 minutes)

            monthly (a few hours)

            quarterly (half a day)

            yearly (1 to 3 days)

6. Lack of a Gospel life plan or personal mission statement - we all need purpose and vision for our lives to keep us from distractions and discouragement. God has a mission for each of us.

So let’s move forward into a more productive week impacting our world.  Hat's off to you.

One Girl's Fight for Education and Hope in a Beautiful, Mountain Valley

The value of the life of a girl is unfathomably measured by man based on where she is born.  If she is even given the chance to be born in some countries, her value is less than that of a boy. But if she is born in Taliban-controlled regions of Afghanistan and mountainous Pakistan near the Afghan border, her life is smothered by oppression and if she dares to cross the threshold of her home to simply get an education, she does so at risk of her own life.  In great struggles that come to light on the world stage, there is usually a protagonist with whom we can identify, with whose story we can feel compassion. In the struggle for the rights of female education in her country, that protagonist is Malala Yousafzai.

The bright-eyed, amazingly poised, 14-year-old girl was targeted by masked Taliban gunmen who boarded her bus on the way home from school, and was shot in the head and neck, leaving her fighting for her life in a struggle she began in her beloved Swat Valley three years ago. After the shooting, a Taliban spokesman said his organization considers Malala’s crusade for education rights an “obscenity” and if she survives, the group promises to try to kill her again.

Malala, named after a mythic female figure in Pashtun culture, once dreamt of becoming a doctor, but recently she became interested in politics to end the crises which have threatened to destroy her country for years. In 2011, she was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize for her bravery in standing up for girls’ educational rights amidst rising fundamentalism during a time when few adults would take a stand. Malala came to public attention in 2009 as the Pakistani Taliban, their faces covered by dark turbans, swept through her valley home, once a beautiful vacation spot famous for its music and tolerance, and unleashed a wave of violence. Her father ran one of the last schools that defied Taliban orders to end female education. As an 11-year-old, Malala began writing a blog about her struggle to be educated under daily threat and danger. “She symbolizes the brave girls of Swat” said Samar Minallah, a documentary filmmaker. “She knew her voice was important, so she spoke up for the rights of children. Even adults didn’t have a vision like hers.”

In neighboring Afghanistan, girls have been maimed by acid attacks, targeted by bombers, and had their drinking water poisoned simply because of their desire to be educated. While this happens under the oppressive Taliban, the overall education of girls in Afghanistan is improving. "Basically, you didn't have girls educated in 2001,” said Christine Roehrs, spokeswoman for Save the Children in Afghanistan. “And now we have 3 million girls in school."

The region awoke to the barbaric rule of the Taliban eleven years ago. Its regime in Afghanistan was known for brutal repression and subjugation of women who were not allowed to work or attend school. Women could not laugh out loud, wear bright colors, and their fingernails were ripped out for the crime of wearing nail polish. Taliban religious police on patrol daily beat women who went out alone or who were not dressed properly. Needless to say, the internet was banned, but imagine a country where even kite flying was outlawed.  It seemed that hope itself was extinguished.

While the Taliban has largely been pushed back and its ability to attack Pakistan’s major cities has waned in the past year, there are still rural areas along the Afghan border where militants have intensified their efforts to silence critics and impose their will.

As I watched a documentary about her struggle and listened to Malala and her father share their simple dream to live at peace and pursue education for girls in their mountainous home, I was deeply moved. Draped in vibrant colors, which would be banned under the Taliban, she spoke with the innocence of a young girl and the clarity and purpose of someone far more mature.  I couldn’t imagine anyone shooting her.  As I pray for her I am reminded of a Jewish carpenter who elevated the situation of women in the Mediterranean and Greco-Roman world.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Jesus gave women human dignity. . . Prior to Jesus, women were regarded as inferior beings, religiously speaking.”

But not only in relation to religion.  During the time of Jesus, women were usually not educated and often remained indoors. When a girl was born, she was often left to die. Yet the longest conversation recorded between Jesus and another person is in John 4 when he asked the Samaritan woman at the well for a drink to the surprise of his disciples.  He engaged in a deeply theological and personal conversation with her, taking seriously her thoughts and questions. As John Ortberg observed in his book Who is this Man?, “Is it any wonder she could not stop talking about this man? Jesus was doing something very subversive. He was treating a woman like someone who had her own identity.”

Often people teach the story about Mary and Martha in the Bible as a lesson about avoiding busy-ness, but no one in the first century would have seen it that way. “To sit at someone’s feet” meant to be someone’s disciple. Martha did what the culture valued in women, she was busy cooking and cleaning, while Mary did what the culture valued in men.  She became a disciple. And Jesus honored her choice. He invited women to be His disciples.

We value education for our daughters who have never experienced barriers based on gender or otherwise in pursuit of their education, faith and dreams. But it is not enough for me to be grateful for them, I pray this will be the experience of every girl no matter where she is born. 

The Eeyore Antidote: Looking at Life through Grace-colored Glasses

Our childhood stories made us feel cozy and warm. While snuggling in a blanket, we were transported to another world learning lessons about life as we listened to a grown-up read to us. I love to enter into story from time to time because stories found in books, film and biography resonate with our lives - the hopes, joys, conflict, dissonance, pain and, sometimes, resolution. In the classic stories of “Winnie the Pooh”, there was a gloomy donkey, Eeyore, who always anticipated a negative outcome.  He never looked at life through rose-colored glasses, although some may say he was simply a realist.  To give him credit, some of his gloom could be attributed to being an introvert who didn’t want to be bothered by intruders, “He turned around angrily on the others and said "Everybody crowds round so in this Forest. There's no Space. I never saw a more Spreading lot of animals in my life, and in all the wrong places."  So that’s my theory.

In our world far from the Hundred-acre Wood, while many of us experience life’s wonders and joys, the stresses of life can threaten our well-being on a consistent basis so we must find a way to deal with the negatives. After our bedtime routine when our girls were young, which, yes, included stories, one of the girls would often come untucked after a scary thought took over her imagination. I would tell her every time to say “God is with me, I am not afraid.” As adults, we can still be fearful of things that go bump in the night. Only they are all too real. News affects us. We face our own trials while living in an unprecedented world of information.  We don’t want to be the Eeyore in the bunch. We must have faith. We face the challenge of sifting through a bombardment of information on a daily basis and must choose what to meditate on. Faith comes from hearing what God is saying to us.  The primary means is through studying the Bible daily. Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)  

But where do we place our faith, how does faith play out in our daily lives, and is it simply positive thinking or optimism? Here are a few approaches many take to faith.  Do you recognize yourself in any of these? 

Rose-colored Glasses

Those who chose to look at life through rose-colored glasses view life with optimism.  Here are a few common phrases: Everything will turn out well if you only believe. You can have your best life now if you follow God’s principles.  Look at the bright side. If you make positive confessions, positive things will happen. But rose-colored glasses leave out the tint of suffering, the problem of pain, and taking up our crosses daily as we die to self and live for God. Positive thinking turns faith into a formula, leaving people with a watered-down truth devoid of rich fellowship with God and the power of living beyond ourselves.

Practical Atheism

The practical atheist pays homage to belief in God, but struggles with the dissonance we often encounter in life and within ourselves. Our actions and attitudes don’t always line up with what we say we believe.  So the practical atheist lives out daily life as it God isn’t really intimately concerned with our lives, and as if everything in life is up to them. Such a view makes it possible to go through rote prayer and Bible reading in the morning while living in fear, disappointment and doubt as if God is not in the equation the rest of the day. Developing a fresh, firm foundation on the biblical view of God and who we are in Christ can free people from this truncated view of faith, leading to peace and joy. 

Faith If

God, I will have faith in you if you heal me (my mother, my brother).  If my favorite candidate wins the election.  If I win the gold medal.  If you give me the woman/man of my dreams.  I will have faith if . . .  Faith is sometimes shipwrecked when expectations are not met. God help us. We need to remember that He is God and we are not.

“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” (Heb. 12:1-3)

Grace-colored Glasses

A healthy faith looks at the world and the self through the lens of grace. When we understand the redemptive power of the Gospel through the sinless life of Jesus, His death on the cross for our sin, and his resurrection offering forgiveness and new life to all who believe, everything changes. The dissonance takes on a perspective of grace because His work in us was finished on the cross.  We don’t have to earn our salvation. When the greatest story grips us, we live differently.  We live by faith. And we view the world redemptively.

"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." Matt. 11:28-29. (MSG)

“Abounding sin is the terror of the world, but abounding grace is the hope of mankind.” A. W. Tozer