“The things which are most important don’t always scream the loudest.” —Bob Hawke
squeaky wheel
on Category: reading
on the myth of multitasking
on “To do two things at once is to do neither.” —Publilius Syrus
all things being equal
on “When everything feels urgent and important, everything seems equal. We become active and busy, but this doesn’t actually move us any closer to success. Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of business.”
from The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan
on goals unrealized
on “We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal.” —Robert Brault
from The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan
on multitasking
on “Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time.” —Steve Uzzell
from The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan
Confession and Absolution
on This is an excerpt from the confession and absolution during a recent Lenten service at my church, St. Matthew Lutheran, that was particularly meaningful to me:
Pastor: Talk is cheap. There is an enormous gulf between a word said and a deed done. We know too well the pain of broken promises and the hurt caused by empty assurances. People have failed us. But we know that we also struggle to keep our word. We have caused and continue to cause our own hurt and pain. We have failed others. We have failed God.
Congregation: Lord God, I have not been faithful. I have made promises that I could not keep. I have spoken a word of agreement and then forgotten to uphold it. I have given assurances and then failed to follow through. I have committed and then changed my mind when it became difficult. Forgive me for my empty words. Forgive me for my broken promises. Forgive me for being faithless.
Pastor: When we are faithless, He remains faithful…
manuscripts and melismas
on Today I worked with Jann Cosart and her Medieval music history course to facilitate the exploration of Baylor’s Medieval music manuscript collection (the Jennings Collection). It’s always a joy helping introduce students to these amazing artifacts, dating from the 11th to the 16th centuries. It’s hard to get their heads (and mine too!) around the idea that we’re looking at a document that’s nearly 1,000 years old.
For whatever reason, sleep slipped out of my grasp about 4am this morning and no matter how much or how long I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep. Instead I got up and relished the quiet, dark, drinking an unhurried cup of coffee and re-acquainting myself with a book I rediscovered on our bookshelves just yesterday but fondly remembered from fifteen or so years earlier. The book was Meditations On the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life by Thomas Moore.
Two meditations caught my eye as I thought about meeting with the class today:
What is the difference between an illuminated manuscript created by a monk and a page freshly spewed out of a modern word processor? The computer page is eminently legible, quickly produced, perhaps beautiful, and created by the collaboration of human and machine. The illuminated page is beautiful, slowly produced, not terribly legible, and printed in solitude. The monk works with his hand, close to his ink, ready for a slip of the pen, meditating as he works. Is there a way to bring the spirit of the monk to the computer, and by extension to all our machine work, without making either an anachronism?
And one that was perfectly fitting for the day and the way it started:
Sometimes in their chanting, monks will land upon a note and sing it in florid fashion, one syllable of text for fifty notes of chant. Melisma, they call it. Living a melismatic life in imitation of plainchant, we may stop on an experience, a place, a person, or a memory and rhapsodize in imagination. Some like to meditate or contemplate melismatically, while others prefer to draw, build, paint, or dance whatever their eye has fallen upon. Living one point after another is one form of experience, and it can be emphatically productive. But stopping for melisma gives the soul its reason for being.
on running
on Ran across a phrase this weekend that spoke to me and that summed up nicely what running has meant for me lately. It was in an editorial by David Willey, Editor-in-Chief of Runner’s World magazine:
” . . . [I] felt my senses shift from desk-bound and stressed out to alert and alive.”
Chores as Fun?
on i’ve been listening to the audio edition of Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, by Jane McGonigal and it’s full of fascinating ideas. Just mentioned in the book is an example of an augmented reality game (that is, a game that influences real life, rather than existing in a virtual realm) called Chore Wars. If you’re intrigued by the idea that it’s even possible to make chores fun or enjoyable or engaging, you should check this out.
resonating quote
on Ran across this quote this weekend that has a universally applicable message:
“Part of her initial task on arrival was to understand the history and community that she was becoming a part of.”
Over and over again in life I see so many people that fail to embrace this listening, observing, learning spirit. They rush in and take charge, looking to make a name for themselves, having no regard for the history and culture of a community. If each of us sought to understand first, to listen first, we would all be wiser and the world would be a better place.
This quote comes from: Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle by The Countess of Carnarvon – a fabulous must read for any Dowton Abbey fans!