A Tribute to Hal

My friend Hal is the kind of leader I would like to be – or at least he has character traits that I aim to learn from. He is kind, sensitive, funny, and makes connections with people and with leadership principles by using magic tricks and experiential activities. We compared Myers Briggs types, and he is the exact opposite of me – my ENTJ to his INFP, for those who are familiar with the “types.” That’s why I asked him to team up with me in facilitating some leadership training recently. Creativity experts talk about the need for difference in group members, in environments, in senses accessed, and so on, if people are to generate creative and innovative solutions to problems. And I knew that those I was training would benefit from our differences.

And yet, there are many things that join us together, regardless of our differences and the benefits of “gifts differing.” And when Hal was recently felled by a major health tragedy, it was hard not to feel his and his family’s pain deep in the center of who I am. After all, we are both in business for ourselves. We are both trainers. We are both about the same age. We are both vulnerable to the vagaries of health, the economic climate, and many other things beyond our control. We are both humans who inhabit the same community. It escapes me how people can find their way out of such holes of vulnerability without appealing to something higher than themselves, however they define it. I certainly have, this week, called out for that Higher Power. Called out for a strength greater than my own.

And I know that the families of those shot in Aurora and Wisconsin are doing the same at this moment. As are Hal and his family. In fact, the maxim “Behind every good man is a good woman” comes to mind as I consider Hal and his wife’s current journey. The notion that “no one is an island” and that we all need one another takes central stage as I consider the shootings. And it brings me to the thought that we all need to be focused on what is really important in life, reaching for the best of what we have to offer, because we never know when our greatest strength or kindness will be needed. In fact, one wonders if there is ever a time that it is not needed. If we are not noticing the need, perhaps we are not opening our eyes!

And yesterday, I watched great strength and kindness in Hal’s wife. A gentle, tender, wise, hopeful woman whom most of us could do well to emulate. A woman tuned in to her husband’s needs of the moment. A woman reaching out to her husband’s community to inform them, trusting them to care and to do the right thing. A woman ready to do whatever is necessary. A woman who has created a loving family that is also gathering around Hal. A woman of faith – who will need great support in this time of tremendous challenge.

And I think, “Can any of us really afford not to aim toward being like this woman?” If we look around at our world, can we really accept that love and hope and encouragement and other character traits are not essential and needed in every moment of every day? Shouldn’t we take a little time each day to figure out how we can aspire to the higher? To our better selves? To what’s optimal – instead of the minimum necessary? I know that tragedies make me rethink these things. What about you? What will you do with the pain and tragedy around you? Will you join me in investing energy in love and joy and faith and kindness and . . . . ? Well, you get my point!

Springing into New Birth and Freedom

So, what does your family do for Easter or Passover -- on these two faith holidays that are important enough to warrant releases from school and work because of the dominance of Christian and Jewish faiths in American culture? Christian people celebrate the death and resurrection of a Savior, the birth of a faith, and the promise of new life, both on earth and beyond. Jewish people remember God “passing over” their households when carrying out a death sentence for the first born sons of their enslavers. They also celebrate release from slavery in Egypt and the beginning of a journey toward the Promised Land. Themes of release from death or darkness to new birth through saving grace are so prominent in faith and in our culture that it seems worthwhile to think deeply this spring about what they might mean in our family’s lives.

How do you celebrate spring or Easter or Passover in your household? How do you encourage your children to begin new journeys, to leave or “put to death” what isn’t working? What new journeys would you like to begin yourself? What encourages you to be truthful with yourself -- about parts of your life or about people that you need to leave behind? What empowers you to take the first steps on a new journey, in a new direction, in developing a new “you” or more helpful relationships?

Wouldn’t your family benefit from taking a break from busy-ness and becoming more intentional about the direction you want your lives to go? Take the challenge. Sit still for a period of time this week. Jot down or draw a picture of what your life looks like now, and of what you would like your life to look like. Share it with your significant others. Decide on specific steps to move toward your new vision. Make this the time to SPRING into your new vision, into new family conversations that can bring about greater happiness and family satisfaction.

Faith Makes All the Difference!

Cal Thomas in the Denver Post asks a very important question, “What difference does faith make?” He asks this question as a challenge to those who would make faith a central issue in the political discourse. And by the end of the article, he suggests that we should keep the realms of the earthly and heavenly kingdoms separate when it comes to presidential politics.

And yet . . . in all realms of life, politics included, my answer to his question, ”What difference does faith make?” is, “Faith makes all the difference!” It inspires us, challenges us to reach for what’s ultimate or optimal, strengthens us in difficult times, guides us in others, challenges us to live in caring ways toward ourselves, others, and our physical world. Just because we humans are not perfect and get it wrong at least as often as we get it right doesn’t mean that faith is to blame! Just because we can’t figure out how to manage in helpful ways the many different faiths living next door to one another doesn’t mean that faith is wrong or unhelpful or irrelevant! It merely means that we are fallible humans on a journey that is not yet complete. We haven’t figured it all out yet. We regularly do damage even when we intend to do good! And presidential candidates are no exception. They are no more perfect than the rest of us!

Perhaps if we quit running from faith and faced it head on, we would realize that faith is part of every facet of our lives. We can close our eyes to it, but it won’t go away. We choose on a daily basis what we believe in, what will guide our lives, what values are worth investing in, what our lives will be about. We can make those choices intentionally or they will “happen” unintentionally. We regularly have faith in one another – trusting others to show up at appointments when they say they will; trusting manufacturers to create quality products; trusting service providers to perform well what we pay them to do; trusting teachers to teach well, parents to parent well, and so on. And if they don’t, we let our feet do the talking!

In the political realm, we let our votes do the talking. We listen to the rhetoric, we listen to the arguments, we listen to what people stand for – including their religious and philosophical and political perspectives – and we decide who we will vote for. And even when we are prayerful and intentional about these choices, even when we seek wisdom or guidance from what is Ultimate or Infinite, we sometimes get it wrong. And our politicians sometimes get it wrong as well.

Ultimately, our faith has to be in something higher than mere humans. Initiating regular conversations about faith ought to come from hearts that believe faith will ultimately save us – and we ought to be encouraging one another to grow in that faith. Perhaps that loving approach to encouraging one another and inspiring one another ought to replace the condemnation and vilification of those whose faiths and behaviors differ from our own. Perhaps we need to get ourselves out of the way and let the One(s) in whom we believe carry the day!

Lower Case or Upper Case Morality

In his article, “The moral naturalists” (explanations for lower case letters to come), David Brooks points to research that points to a sense of right and wrong that we are born with and learn very early. Even “lower” animals such as rats and monkeys learn to cooperate. It seems that we have “natural receptors that help us recognize fairness and cruelty,” and we show preferences for goodness and fairness from infancy. Social norms, evidently, “fall upon prepared ground. We come equipped to learn fairness and other virtues.” Those who behave morally seem to do it because they are “more sensitive to other people’s points of view” and better at “anticipating and reading other people’s pain.” What researchers seem to be identifying as a moral sense is one that values such virtues as cohesion, cooperation, and empathy. However, Brooks complains that researchers’ perspective on morality seems to be “lower case” and that it might not satisfy “those who want their morality to be awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great.”

I find myself asking the following questions in response: If morality is inborn and starts so early, what happens along the way that people let go of it and allow themselves to choose such immoral behaviors? What do we have to do to encourage people to continue caring about the group, about other people’s pain, about respect and empathy and responsibility and courage (those lower case virtues)? Why are we seeing so many fall from grace? Fall from honesty and integrity? Right into our prisons. When will people understand that a lack of trust is the greatest risk to our society, to our psychological wellness, to our safety, and to our financial well being?

Personally, it is the “awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great” that motivates me. Without a powerful faith, my fears would overwhelm me and persuade me to take the easy, safe, and perhaps less than honest or kind path. That faith keeps me moving along the path toward greater character, remedying my faults, and striving for what’s optimal (believing that it is only possible with help from Beyond). Many of the people that I collaborate with on character issues also find their motivation in the “awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great.” So I ask the question – must we have “the awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great” to move us out of our moral depravity? Does it take something grand and holy to persuade us, to enable us to live differently?

If so, then the approach I have been using in the Eriksen Institute for Ethics is likely to fail. That is, I figured, given the clear relationships between our economic recession and the unethical behavior of mortgage and financial institutions, and given the clear relationships between long term profitability and developing an organizational culture centered on aspirational values, that businesses and other organizations would be hopping right in line to fully infuse aspirational values from top to bottom. I figured that because of the clear ethical needs in our society, we could, without calling on the “awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great,” feel justified in advocating for business ethics. We could justify our demands or expectations that businesses and corporations live according to a basic set of aspirational values without having a discussion of religion or faith or. . . you get my drift.

And yet, we seem to be a people who respond to crisis. We seem to need it to break through our inertia. If Haiti and the Gulf oil spill and a war in the middle east and an economic crisis can’t get organizations to put values first, then perhaps we really do need the “awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great” to empower our efforts. However, I personally have found that when I daily think the “lower case” morality, how to be more loving or kind or trusting or responsible, I feel less defensive and more willing to grow and work on myself. I believe that, despite a life time of the “awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great,” I am a better person from having, for a few short years, invested in “lower case” morality. Do we need to require people to take the larger plunge into the “awesome, formidable, transcendent, or great?” Or might they be more willing to begin with the smaller steps, with the “lower case?”