Archive for ‘Education’

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February 2, 2024

Hold on….

by Rod Smith

When it seems that things are coming at you from all sides….

Hold onto yourself. 

Even if you are surrounded by supportive loved ones, you are all you’ve got. 

You are your own constant companion and your relationship with yourself is the longest relationship you will ever have – so you might as well be best friends.

You might as well learn to enjoy yourself.   

How you treat yourself is (already) the platform from which you see others and it forms the lens through which you see all things. 

When under pressure, don’t talk to everyone about what you are facing. 

It’s a hopeful myth that all talking is helpful.

It’s not.  

Choose a few trusted people and talk only to them

Spewing – freely-recalling, random mumblings, blaming others, yelling,  speaking from a place of confusion or anger  – has limited and few benefits. 

Holding onto yourself involves planning what you will and will not share.

You are allowed to keep things to yourself. 

You are allowed to plan and decide how you will behave, who you will be. 

All this, and more, is all part of learning to hold onto yourself.

When you hold onto yourself, some will tell you are being selfish.

Self-awareness and selfishness are poles apart. 

[I will be in Durban in February and April — not March — and would love to speak at your church, school, or fundraising event — make contact by email or private message.]

From a recent lunch in Cuba — note the hat and cigar. This vegetarian did not partake!

Posted in Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Business, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Divorce, Domination, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Leadership, Listening | Leave a Comment »

January 28, 2024

Eavesdrop

by Rod Smith

Listen to your conversations, yes, eavesdrop on yourself.

I try to do this and I am often embarrassed how regularly I’m on auto-play. I hear the same stuff – the same stories and one-liners – coming out of me over and over again. 

It is as if I am bored with myself and those who are part of the “conversation.”

I don’t like this about me and I don’t particularly like it when I’m caught in someone else’s well-worn loop.    

Sometimes I hear traces of contempt and sarcasm in my conversations.

I am very careful about avoiding swearing and blasphemy, yet there are times I am apparently okay with using words as clubs and bullying others with snarky sarcasm. These verbal habits are surely at least as toxic as possessing a foul mouth.

The gift of thoughtful conversations, where people listen without waiting to talk and people hear what is really being said is something to which I deeply aspire despite what sometimes comes out of my mouth. 

By the way, I am heading to Duban during much of February. 

I would be delighted to speak at your school, church, business, or club – and I promise to watch my mouth. 

Drop me an email if you are interested. 

Let’s see what time permits.

Two new pieces in our home — picked up in Lome, Togo and framed locally.

Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Education, Family, Friendship, Grace, Leadership, Listening, Love, Responsive people, Space, Teenagers, Triangles, Trust, Voice, Womanhood | 1 Comment »

January 20, 2024

Life As Art

by Rod Smith

Consider your life a Work of Art. 

Take time, lots of it, yes, weeks, perhaps even months, to think deeply about your life and to write about it.

Great art deserves careful consideration and meticulous planning. Such contemplations will not require, in the meantime, you to stop functioning. Humans are vastly capable and can think and plan and ponder their unique works of art while engaged in day-to-day life as it is.

“Am I going where I want to go and doing the things I really want to do with the people who are most important to me?” is the backdrop question.     

Articulating goals, even if they are unsure, generic, will bring you an added confidence as you pursue your ArtLife.

Identify which people are really important to you. 

Evaluate what activities are really important to you. 

Assess your direction. 

Some people will tell you that this is a selfish way to live and, sadly, some will indeed plan selfish lives and reap the disappointment such planning will bring. 

A life seen as art, planned as art, results in fulfilled, generous and thoughtful people.

Haphazard living, pointless, random existing, dependent on others for a sense of meaning and purpose, is a selfish life if I ever saw one.

My son (25) on vacation in Paris

Posted in Communication, Education, Faith, Family, Friendship, Grace, Love, Responsive people, Trust, Young Love | 1 Comment »

January 3, 2024

Listen up

by Rod Smith

To listen is to love.

Listening, no matter how skilled you are, cannot be faked. 

You may be a skilled multitasker but even you can’t listen and, at the same time, do other things. 

Even if you’re one of those people who can “spin a lot of plates at one time” or whatever the metaphor is, even you can’t do other things and listen and really hear the person talking to you.

Listening takes more than both ears. It takes both ears, both eyes, a closed mouth, and your whole focused body. 

Even thinking about or wanting to check your phone, let alone the shifty reptile-like quick glances you give it and think no one notices, upsets your capacity to hear and it disturbs the speaker’s ease in talking to you.

Another thing that really upsets listening is your own unresolved stuff with other people, living or dead. As soon as any person “goes deep,” the millisecond he or she approaches anything close to something unresolved in your life, even if it’s from years ago, it’ll set you off inside, close your ears, or start you talking. 

That’s how we ward off stuff, manage triggers, fight to keep things buried. 

To listen is to love.

It’s often the only thing someone may want from you.

No distractions

Posted in Boundaries, Business, Communication, Differentiation, Education, Faith, Family Systems Theory, Friendship, Grace, Grief, Leadership, Listening, Recovery, Responsive people, Space, Therapeutic Process, Trust, Young Love | Leave a Comment »

December 26, 2023

Shed the bracelets……

by Rod Smith

WWJD?

“Now what would Jesus do?” asked the woman glancing at her WWJD bracelet. 

“Grape nuts,” replied the companion instantly, as if he’d served Jesus breakfast that morning. I slipped away pondering how the will and the ways of the greatest political, religious and social reformer of all time got reduced to a formula for grocery shopping. 

I am glad the use of these bracelets appears to be waning. It remains a great question, but wearing it on a wrist somehow suggests that the answer is easily accessible. It suggests that if you will simply stop and think a little, having eyed the bracelet, you’ll get the answer. Then, as you act on your newfound knowledge, your predicaments will be resolved, you will have a better life, and conditions in the world will improve all around for everybody. 

Quite the contrary: Answering the question and doing what Jesus would do in any situation is neither easily established nor executed. Finding the answer itself would take a lot of work, like tunneling back though a couple of thousand years, researching culture, geography and weather conditions and the varying political and religious climates. Then we’d have to identify, and then decipher, metaphor, understand and interpret tone and intent, and immerse ourselves in at least a few ancient languages. Besides all this, we’d need a working knowledge of the subcultures and the prejudices that existed within those subcultures. Then, with all this done, we might be able to decide what Jesus would do given some, but not all, situations we face. 

The next challenge, once we’ve established the answer, would be to have the courage to do what Jesus would do. WWJD is not about “doing the right thing.” Jesus did not always do the “right” thing. If that were so, no cross would have awaited him. Doing the “right thing” would have endeared him to those who mattered and would not have required him to buck authority.

Essentially Jesus laid a platform for his followers to live differently. It doesn’t take more than a reading of the New Testament to see that he despised pretentiousness and empty religious “performance” and was particularly vocal wherever he found religious zeal that was without internal transformation. He despised abusive systems and was a particular critic of those who ripped off others. 

I do not think Jesus cares what cereal you buy, or for that matter, what dress or suit you wear or how your hair is or is not cut. But I do believe he cared about what kind of person you are and whether you love mercy, humility, truth and justice, and challenge the systems where these qualities are absent. It is apparently forgotten that Jesus was hardly a nice guy. Today he’d be a threat to our political order and might not be able to find a church he’d attend, let alone one that would permit him to preach! Consequently doing what Jesus would do could significantly reduce your popularity, The real question, by the way, is not “what would Jesus do” but rather what will you do in response to what he has done?

Shed the bracelets. It’s not grape nuts or cheerios, but love and truth, mercy and justice, that might bring us all a little closer to reflecting who and what Jesus was. But be careful, you might shed the bracelet and exchange it for a cross – and it won’t be hanging around your neck.

—————————

When published in The Indianapolis Star, this column certainly got me some fans – and enemies. The morning it appeared my email was as hot! I was called brilliant, I was called stupid. One reader said that finally he’d read something by an intelligent Christian about a really stupid gimmick. Another said he’d be praying for my salvation even though he was convinced I was a lost cause.

Posted in Education, Faith, Forgiveness, Grace, Grief | 1 Comment »

December 25, 2023

Getting ready for new year resolutions?

by Rod Smith

It’s time for New Year’s resolutions. 

The louder and bolder mine are, I’ve learned over the years, the less likely they are to last. 

I do tend to follow through a little better on silent, private resolutions. 

Prior to making hopeful decisions about the coming year I also try to elucidate three or so learnings or observations from the last 12 months. 

Repeated questions gave shape to my 2023:

“What kind of person do you want to be?” I asked myself almost daily. Answering it, trying to live according to my answers, I believe saved me some pain and expense. The joy of the question is that it removes others from the equation. It removes all elements of blame and any potential desire for pay-back. It obliterates all traces of victim thinking and victim living.

“How would you like your sons to behave in any parallel circumstances at a similar age?” Trying to live the answer to this question has, I believe, provided me with safe guidance. 

“Seed or stone; bloom or tomb?” Answering this question, posed in a poem by Dennis and Mathhew Linn, has been life-transforming. Seeds grow, feed — represent life; stones are hard and lifeless, can hurt and wound. It’s far easier to stone others than it is to resist the urge and transform whatever it is into life-giving seeds. This metaphor has guided my responses to many challenging circumstances. I like to think I have chosen seeds and have been determined to throw no stones.

Greetings from my sons, from me, and from Duke

Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Education, Faith, Family | Leave a Comment »

December 24, 2023

Is there a better birthday gift?

by Rod Smith

This arrived on my phone from my younger son’s girlfriend this morning;

Posted in Communication, Differentiation, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace | 2 Comments »

December 20, 2023

A note to my sons — shared also with you — about love

by Rod Smith

Love one another is surely among life’s hardest, crucial, most fabulous assignments.

Jesus commanded it. 

He did not suggest it or consider it a good idea. 

If we claim faith in Jesus, His commands leave us no options, no outs, or off ramps.

We are to love those who love us back and those who do not. 

We are to love even those who for whatever reason, have chosen to reject and hate us. Hardest perhaps, we are to love those for whom we are invisible, those who regard us, if they even notice we exist, with indifference. 

We are to love modern day Samaritans (the commonly rejected change from culture to culture, group to group) and Pharisees (today’s know-it-all blowhards who peer down at we lesser mortals) and teachers of the law and hookers and addicts and bankers and Rev. Private Jet pastors and prostitutes. We are to love those who treat us with the contempt shown to New Testament Samaritans. 

Yes. 

Everyone.     

As you, my sons, love others well and as you learn to love even more people – it doesn’t come naturally – from the most distant or platonic of relationships, to the most intimate and sacred love and trust in marriage, you will be guided, sometimes cajoled, driven, even bullied by deep inner impulses. 

Strong tides, forces unseen, forces felt but unknown will rise within you.

These inner pressures are sufficiently powerful that words expressed on any page will not be able to quell the force they will try to exert over you.

Love drills down deep for discovery of the opposite spirit, the counter-intuitive approach, the unexpected, the unanticipated means toward a loving, kind end. 

Love your enemies is not some insurmountable-Jesus-hurdle. 

He did not command it to trick anyone. 

Loving your enemies is the gateway to loving all people, even to love those whom we may consider easy to love.

No one is easy to love. 

Remember, what you can do to anyone you can do to everyone. 

Love is really understanding the parable of the “good” Samaritan and trying to live it out daily.

Love, to imperfectly and briefly quote Paul, the Apostle, doesn’t return evil for evil.

Finally, read Paul’s summary of love in 1 Corinthians 13 and remind yourself over and over again, Paul did not have wedding sermons in mind when he put his heart on paper.

Go into all the world…..

Posted in Attraction, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Education, Faith, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Leadership, Listening, Love, Trust, Voice, YWAM | 2 Comments »

December 13, 2023

Who and what do you want to be?

by Rod Smith

What kind of person do you want to be? 

May this question help you to plan your day. I confess, it’s constantly in the back of my mind with almost all my daily interactions. 

You’ve seen him demanding to see the boss, insisting on getting his way, banging fists on the counter. He becomes aggressive and threatening when things don’t go his way. You can be this person if you want. It all depends on what kind of person you want to be.

You’ve heard and seen her, raising her voice at a waiter in a fine restaurant because something wasn’t up to her standards. She plays dirty and attempts to humiliate helpers to land a free meal. You can be this way if you want. Everything depends on who you want to be.

You’ve seen him, kind and patient under stress, generous and openhearted, even when facing difficulties. You can be this way if you want. It’s always, and there are no exceptions, up to you. 

You’ve seen her, helping the poor, serving the sick, making meals for neighbors, all-the-while undergoing her own stresses, suffering beneath her own burdens and loads. She serves while she herself deserves to be served. You can be this way if you want. Everything pivots on what kind of person you want to be.

My friend Michael — a finer human (than Michael) I’m yet to meet.

Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Education, Faith, Family, Forgiveness, Grace, Leadership, Recovery, Responsive people | 1 Comment »

December 12, 2023

Kindness

by Rod Smith

Genuine kindness expressed today, among us all –– colleagues at the office, the teachers in the staff room, doctors and nurses who pass each other running the hallways of a busy hospital –– wherever we find ourselves at work or at play, expressed kindness will be helpful to all. 

Expressing kindness will change your mood and enhance your day. 

Small acts of kindness might not change the world, but they will enhance our individual experiences of work, and add joy and meaning to the most repetitive of tasks.

Kindness in a nutshell: 

Don’t gossip, or spread rumors, or tell tales about others. Don’t speak negatively about other people. Don’t lie. Try not to ignore people, or regard others as a means to getting your way — no one wants to be your stepping stone.

Be generous, and wide-hearted, open-handed. Offer accurate compliments to those who might least expect to hear kind words. Tip well, even if the service or food is not up to scratch. How you tip is about you, not the service or food.

Most of all, and this is a well-known secret to great fulfillment, do your job — whatever it is — very well. It is a powerful way to be kind both to yourself and to your boss!

Thulani (center) in Togo in 1999. We were there for a week after being refused entry into Ukraine. We were returned to Frankfurt, spent the week in Munchin, flew to Togo, before returning to the USA.

Posted in Children, Communication, Education, Faith, Family, Grace | 1 Comment »

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