100 Skills Everyone Should Master

Mighty Girl (here) produced a list of 100 skills everyone should master

Here's a few from her list I still need work on

3. Care for a baby, 12. Remember names, 24. Ask for exactly what you want, 50. Travel light, 64. Organize your home, 87. Dress to flatter your shape

I wonder what the spiritual skills that require work are. Patience and faith are right up there. Trust and assurance also near the top. But even before this is the need to be dissatified with the way things are and wanting change. The old joke says "How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb?" " It doesn't matter what's important is the lightbulb has to want to change!"

Intimacy involves distance

Intimacy between people requires closeness as well as distance. It is like dancing. Sometimes we are very close, touching each other or holding each other; sometimes we move away from each other ... To keep the right balance ... requires hard work ... A perfect balance seldom occurs, but the honest and open search for that balance can give birth to a beautiful dance ... Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, in other words being away increases love. Perhaps it would be absence helps love grow stronger. The metaphor of the dance is also good for our relationship with God, but God is not absent rather gives us space to grow, to practice good decision making and exercise good judgment and learn. We need doubt and free will to grow and we need the space to exercise both and the courage to step out into that space.

Allergy proofing

I need to improve my health more and allergy proofing is an issue I was reading a list of things to do the improve the home and guess what I read at Apartment therapy?

4. Focus on your bedroom. This is where you spend the majority of your time at home, and mattresses and pillows naturally develop dust mites over time. ... 5. We all love to read in bed, but bookcases in the bedroom are a no-no for allergy sufferers too, as books gather a ton of dust.

And guess what? I have my library, a ton of books and music in my ... bedroom! The changes in my life look like they will be continuing and fairly drastically. However to get rid of some of the coughing, wheezing, and sneezing would be great.

Persuading or inviting

Before Christmas I went on some training about invitation and recently revisited a book on encouragement. These have forced some thoughts on persuasion and methods.

Dr Robert Cialdini is a scholar in persuasion and marketing. In his work he lists six “weapons of influence”:

• Reciprocation - People tend to want to return a favor.
• Commitment and Consistency - If people make a commitment to something, verbally or in writing, they tend to keep it.
• Social Proof - People will do things when they see other people doing it.
• Authority - Even with uncomfortable action, people will tend to obey authority figures.
• Liking - People are easily persuaded by other people that they like.
• Scarcity - A perceived scarcity will generate demand for something.

Something I found in Neuro-linguistic Programing, which has very similar ends to influence people, was rapport. There seem to be key ways to establish rapport such as mirroring the body position and language of the other person. Similarly this is also done in the verbal language. In matching the other person's model of the world/worldview, and in conversation matching the scale of information being exchanged. if the other person works with large categories or large chunks of information then working on that scale will establish rapport and therefore influence. If the person works on the detailed level or micro chunks, then conversing on the large chunk level will necessarily fail. However get on the right level and rapport being established influence is possible.

The trouble is where does manipulation and brainwashing start and the sharing of a great idea or belief? So when is it inviting, influencing, persuading, or brain washing? Not easy... That's why we need ethics.

One relation and another

Human relationships easily become possessive. Our hearts so much desire to be loved that we are inclined to cling to the person who offers us love, affection, friendship, care, or support. ... It is very hard for love not to become possessive because our hearts look for perfect love and no human being is capable of that. Only God can offer perfect love. Therefore, the art of loving includes the art of giving one another space. Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey

One relation offers much hope and yet another can cause so much pain and perhaps Nouwen's insight is very deep for me because when I do seek to offer some of God's love to others there are risks. The last few weeks have been a combination of being very heavy and feeling unable to move and also being carried by her. We need people who can offer and be with us in moments of sorrow. The danger has been that I'd forgotten or not realized this truth of the other wanting to possess. But now things have changed and must also change deeper down.

Listen

Listen to your life.
See it for the fathomless mystery it is.
In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness:
touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it
because in the last analysis all moments are key moments,
and life itself is grace. Frederick Buechner

I must continue to learn to enjoy the present moment but I still worry and anticipate or plan about the future. Can I let go at times? Even in the middle of pain, sadness and anxiety it is possible to find the hand of God at work in my life. Perhaps I live too much by desiring to see and not enough by the other senses of listening, feeling, tasting or smelling.

The hand of God

What can I believe? I carved this hand based on the verse in Isaiah 29:16 "I have engraved you on the palms of my hands."

I need faith and prayers that things will work out and our relationship will run its course because so many miracles have come together to bring us together and to make us one. Today in a meeting we were asked where the limits of our faith are in what God might do regarding our ministry. But this applies to this relationship and the many questions around family permission and visa.

Our names are carved into this hand to remind us that there is a truth that God will not forget us, especially as he has brought us so far.

Eyes to see

Martyn Lloyd-Jones has asserted that rather than judging Scripture by our own experience (or our lack of it) we should be judging our experience by Scripture. C S Lewis put things another way. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

With the massive suffering in Haiti, and the smaller stuff but equally deeply felt by those close to me, we can get stuck in the "Why?" question. Rather than seeking to find God wherever we can, in whatever way possible. In the 9/11 tragedy the stories took sometime to come out to expose the hope and light in the darkness. Look closely, have eyes to see. But also we need hands to work to bring light and hope in difficult situations. Compassion should flow from the loving relationship we have with God.

Love and Friendship

Friendship is one of the greatest gifts a human being can receive. It is a bond beyond common goals, ... interests, or ... histories. ... more intimate than the bonds of marriage or community. Friendship is being with the other in joy and sorrow, even when we cannot increase the joy or decrease the sorrow. It is a unity of souls that gives nobility and sincerity to love. Friendship makes all of life shine brightly. Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey

I learned personally a long time ago that no-one can take away personal pain. We can numb it, deaden it using alcohol or pain medicine, but actually it is still there underneath. We can seek distraction but it is still there. She cried much of yesterday when I was away from her and later when she was with me. Words can cause so much pain and given in rejection. But I cannot take away the pain, only be a friend.

Friendship is an important aspect of human relationships and essential to being-with another person. A spiritual director is sometimes called soul friend, someone who accompanies another. I am learning the importance of being a friend in every situation. for friendship can make all of life shine brightly even in the middle of the darkest night. I know that for the many I call friend in their difficult life situations. God give them his shalom.

Love and weakness

There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control, and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control over its development, and to make it available in large quantities. Success brings many rewards and often fame. Fruits, however, come from weakness and vulnerability. And fruits are unique. Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey

I'm learning that love requires vulnerability and openness. When love is exercised in strength there very different products or results to when we operate out of weakness. In weakness we need the other, in fact we recognize our need of the other when we recognize our weakness rather than strength. Life is fragile and walking in the snow might seem a beautiful thing, however when we see it as a comforting duvet in which we want to rest or sleep, life becomes fragile. A dangerous episode.

Seoul had 25 cm of snow yesterday worst snow fall for 41 years and the city ground down to a halt. The Korean determination or will power or strength of will I love but is also contains danger or risk when exercised without care.

nick name, love, and the future

I got the wrong animal my 다람쥐 is a chipmunk and not a squirrel. Similar animals but one is cuter and not called a tree rat. She really is a challenge and a joy.

Life takes incredible turns. I've decided to take a leave of absence for a year from the Dmin. Too many major life changes. increased responsibilities in my employing agency and this possible soul mate and help mate as well.

I felt it was a wise decision to put everything academic on hold to sort out these major aspects of my life. I'm happy to put things on pause with the stresses of relationship to run its course. The current situation is exposing God's providence and grace are bringing forth new depths to my experience of the divine in daily life. Every day is a bit of a struggle with highs and lows. Somehow we assume love smoothes everything out. But that's not true. Shakespeare's Love is Blind is really a lie. A Korean saying says you cannot hide a cough, sneeze or love.

As I prepared talks over the Christmas period I realised the Christmas is about love and a desired relationship. The cost was extremely high and involved great vulnerability and the possibility of rejection. But the love wasn't blind, it was a clear chosen act, a giving of self.

... love also takes the form of the incarnation of God. The divine Beloved becomes man. he enters the realm of God's created love. He is now loved as one of creation. Reversely, being united to the Word made flesh, human persons enter the realm of God's immanent love. To be one with the Christ means to share the divine filiation and to receive the Father's love. George H Tavard A Way of Love page 66

For my current situation seems providential with miracles, voices, and discernable divine action - what remains is whether for a season or a lifetime? I have to trust that things will work themselves out.

Love languages

I gave her the plant first a while ago and it grew and had to be cropped and it is now two plants. But 10 days ago I carved this spoon for her. A fusion of cultures. The practice or carving love spoons is a Welsh habit I don't know when it dates from but I wanted to do something special. It has Chinese and Korean carved into the surface and then stained. The inner wood takes the staining more intensely, hence the dark lettering.

Chapman's 5 languages of love are words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. These in a sense are the communication mediums of love. I'm weird because I like all and love to do all. perhaps its more a matter of balance not to exclude one. But love needs to find its roots, source and sustenance in God. For love is like a plant which need feeding and being watered.

God has so impregnated the soul with his own life that it can no longer love itself except in God and for God. God always remains the primary object of our love (177) Marriage is a synthesis of every love known to the heart of man. Nothing could be truer, for it makes it appeal to the most physiological love , which is sexual attraction, as well as the most spiritual love, which is charity [read charitas, agape, or Christian love] (187) Charles V Heris The Spirituality of Love