Leadership

I met with my mentor the other day, and we talked about leadership from the bottom.  I feel like I've been exploring this concept lately, especially at work where I am now starting to see some tangible changes, which I hope that I've contributed to at least in part.  If I have, then this process of transformation has come as the result of a huge number of seemingly insignificantly small nudges of influence which I have been able to impart upon the people around me.  Just like a heavy ship, many tiny actions, impulses of force, applied in the same direction will inevitably wield their influence.

I am not a manager in my work, nor do I hold a senior position.  In fact I am a bog-standard engineer.  But as a follower of Jesus, I can't leave this world alone.  I find myself in an environment, as is common in business, saturated with management but starved of leadership.  Management directs a group fulfill its purpose; leadership feeds it with identity and direction.  I exist in a community, with good qualities and destructive ones.  I can speak into this; I can call out the good, give voice to it and affirm it, offer it a direction, a plane of influence, of reality.

Leadership is a different language; a human language.

The call of a leader is to first identify with the their people, be of the community, integrate in the real meaning of the concept.  Then to speak into that corporate identity, provide meaning, location, reference and purpose.  The leader facilitates the group to fulfill its potential, he or she allows the people to go where they want to go, to achieve their goals, to live the dream.  The leader discerns, refines and articulates a direction, and is the architect of the "how" as well as the "what".  The leader liberates the people to be and do more fully.

The other thing I've realised is that it's easy to be the loudest voice when no-one else is talking.  In a vacuum of leadership, if you place a bit of this vision-food before a group, they will follow.

And so it is that I feel that I can lead.  Having spent six years being in my little workplace community, I now find myself with a vision for them; I can see what they could be.  There is room for growth.  In my particular case, I can see what they believe in, but I can also see such a low corporate self esteem that they fight it just to stay secure.

Here's the stupid thing:  The business wants the same thing they do; for them to do great work in a great way.  The problem is the relationship's a bit of a mess and communication is very poor.  What can I do?  Well I can't stand in the gap of communication- that comes in the form of a whole bunch of stressed out middle managers, that's not my place.  I can, however, whisper the simple truth, and the full potential I see, in the collective ear of the people.  Conversation by conversation, greeting by greeting and meeting by meeting, I can lay out a simple vision; that we raise the bar and fulfill that company believe in excellent engineering.  It's a simple message; "We can do it, let's!".

I try to be an example.  That sounds big headed, but I don't mean I do my job really well or I work really hard (but if my company's reading this, I do..).  I mean that I try to do it in a quality that speaks this vision.  I do endorse the good things in the company image.  I do try to improve our processes, our tools, our habits and our presentation.  I guess that secretly, I believe that our department can lead the business from the bottom.  We do things right, we do things well.

Sometimes I have nudged the boundaries, I venture beyond my specifically defined role.  It's been a journey, for my manager and myself, as I've tried to perform my function with meaning.  I always follow orders but I don't always tow the line, and I definitely challenge the underlying status quo.  I think we've found a peace, something like the way CS Lewis put it; "'Course he isn't safe. But he's good."; they know I'm effective, they know I change things, but they know I'm for them, not against them.

My company, just like my motley bunch of engineers, has some good qualities along with its inevitable flaws.  It could be the kind of company that changes the world for the better, that honors Jesus.  I aim to sow the seed of that possibility in the hearts and minds of my colleagues.  I guess that when you lead from the bottom, the only way is up.

Songs are for Singing

My mentor has posted a link to a blog on facebook.  The author was writing about writing.  More specifically, they wrote about loving your audience. 

And this has struck me. 

So far, my song writing has been for a context, for God and for me.  But I've always been a bit too evasive about the idea of 'performance' to really consider an audience. 

Now I think it's time to face up to the fact that music is for listening, and gifts are for sharing.  A context is nothing without people, God can hear the song of my heart without me needing to put it (badly) into transient fluctuations in velocity and pressure in a fluid, and I'm generally happier creating music than I am re-ingesting my own produce.  So it is to an audience that I now look.  I hope that it will change the energy of my songs, and I suspect it may change their subject matter too.

So, who?

Is that up to me?  Maybe not (maybe so), but given that that's a big question, I hope that it's enough for now to have gained the realisation that the songs I write have purpose, rather than just a large amount of identity.  They are for someone, and that kind of adds a bit of an edge to a media which is communication..

Right now, it feels different, so I'll give it a try.

Two Today!

So it's my daughter's birthday today.  And I have been challenged by my wife to write about that rather than some other random fodder circulating my mind.  And because it really matters to me, here goes..

Firstly, I'm just blown away by a whole person.  It's amazing that she is.  That we (well my wife) has given birth to another whole human being.  Not a mini-person, or a sub-person or a second-generation person.  An original, genuine, state of the art, complete and fully spec'd human being.  As valid, important, valued and amazing as anyone.  Wow, reproduction rocks!

Secondly, she is the ultimate hero.  I've discovered that children are.  Because heroes change, they are transformed.  That's what they do, it's their thing.  And unlike "adults", children actually expect this as part of basic existence.  My daughter develops.  In every dimension and direction, she is constantly on a forward trajectory.  It's like her life is made of just two components; love (of us, friends, family, the cat), and "education"; she just wants to learn and do new things.  She wants to say more words and better, communicate more things, express herself more clearly, jump higher and further with less hand-holding, swing higher, climb harder, sing more of the words, dance more groovy moves, do more stuff!!

And as we were discussing today, she has accomplished more in the last year than us by a good order of magnitude or two, and she will again next year.  Which of course is good and right.  But why do we ever stop expecting to change?  I'm sure that we all can (and should) keep on getting better, but the dimensions in which we grow should be deeper.

So here's to my beautiful girly.  A true heroine.  And here's my commitment to expect to change myself.  I can already use a potty, and I can already climb the stairs, and I've already got a little sister, but I'm sure there's room for some major growth in this particular child.

I thank God for my beautiful family and His love which I cannot understand.

A Thing

So here's a thing..

I am amazed at the in-everything-ness of God.  He is in it all and He defies all our instincts about a deity.  His ways are the inverse of our intuition (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RiboB3dlIQ). 

Maybe that's what we were meant to do.  The universe follows causality.  One thing happens, it causes something else.  Everything's the result of something(s) else.  The outcome?  Big and strong things persist, weak and small things decrease.  Our universe, evolution, nature, they all inevitably, necessarily exaggerate imbalance.  It has to be that way.  Entropy brings order but pulls us to the cold grey.  The non-linearity brings about stuff.  But how to go further?  How to take the cosmos higher?  How to make beauty and diversity not only physical but spiritual?  A leopard is beautiful, but violent.  Biology facilitates life, but generates pathogens, parasites and predators. 

Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”

How do you break the cycle?  What on Earth (or around it, or mind-blowingly distant from it) can subvert this convention?  Could there be some kind of creative leveler, some absurd, abundant, illogical return loop that could take things further forward?  Maybe life isn't the summit of creation. 

When God's living image enters the scene, things can be different.  Love is the active agent.  It causes the big and strong to nurture the weak and small.  It drives us to care.  To medicate, domesticate.  Us humans have an amazing capacity for technology and love, the creative flame.  We could take it forward, or we could reassert the old way.  Or worse.  We can use our authority for anarchy, destroy order and promote chaos.  Sometimes it seems that's what we've chosen; to decay.

We are shocked by our inhumanity.  But maybe we should be more inspired by our likeness.  What is more surprising?  That hurt and pain, exploitation and humiliation are given voice in the song of humanity?  (After all, this is the resident condition.)  Or that, despite the pain (there's so much pain in this world and this People), despite that, sacrifice and generosity and healing and forgiveness and hope and trust and goodness and love are?  Surely that is miraculous, it is certainly improbable, seemingly impossible.  Humanity is miraculous.  The occupying empire, the base state, the cosmological operating system may be flawed, but we are intrinsically, fundamentally, essentially made like Him.

In the beginning, He gave us work to do.  In the present, He works in us and out of us.  We are made in His likeness, reformed by Him Like Us, and revived with Him in us..

So let's get creative.

On the Road

Thanks to Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler for their works.

The Hero's Journey.  This is where I have been prospecting for revelation.  What is it?  It is the result of research.  It is the common essence extracted from the myths, legends, folklore and fairytale of many cultures around the world.  I've been going on the basis that the Hero's Journey is common throughout ages, places and cultures because it is somehow intrinsically present in the human nature.  My assumption, given that it speaks so richly of God's own actions, and resonates so strongly in His image bearers, is that this structure of story is God-inspired; God's plan, law and good news wrought in the hearts of men.  Everywhere.  Deep truths require the language of story, and Story has a heart, a fundamental core which has it's origin in The Origin, The Author.

It is a journey and it is a journey of transformation.  Transformation of the person though sacrifice; ultimate sacrifice; death- for a greater cause.  This is what rings in the human soul, it is our highest self, it is some dynamic part of the image of our maker, for the Hero's Journey is His journey, and the repeating journey of every human being.

So let me take you through the content of this thing.  It will be familiar, because you have followed this path yourself, many times.  It is also sewn into the stories we're told, through paper, voice and screen, because the Hero's Journey speaks to the soul.  There are twelve stages to the Journey, which the hero undergoes on the road of change.  Who is the hero?  The One who is Transformed, who makes sacrifice for the many and who on the journey deals with death.

1. The ordinary world is where we begin, but in this life there is an unspoken imbalance, the suppressed niggle of incompleteness.

2. The call to adventure comes when the balance is finally tipped.  Something's wrong, the hero needs to act.

3. But instead there is refusal of the call.  Who comes quietly when they really have to leave their comfort zone, and when sacrifice is finally a present possibility?

4. Meeting with the mentor provides the required kick and equipping for the adventure.  But..

5. Crossing the threshold requires the hero to overcome a guardian, by absorbing and redirecting their power the hero enters a special world of new rules and powers.

6. The special world has both allies and enemies to be identified, and challenges that test the hero's true character.  The stakes keep rising as the journey goes on.

7. But even this special world has an innermost cave, where the hero must venture to reach their goal.  This is the approach.

8. And in the deep dark of the innermost cave the hero finally undergoes the ordeal of sacrifice, dealing with death itself, but finding a rebirth.

9. And the ordeal wins them the opportunity to seize the sword, grab the prize and reflect on their rebirth from death itself.

10. But there is a greater cause still at steak, the prize must be taken home, so the hero must begin along the road back.

11. The battle isn't done, however.  The greatest confrontation takes place in Resurrection, where the final victory is sealed and the trouble overcome.

12. Finally the hero can return with the elixir to the ordinary world.  Bringing a gift of life and revelation and the fruit of transformation.

Surely the language, the wise truth, the blatant Jesus-ness has struck you?!  Sacrifice and suffering, death and rebirth, the elixir of life..   It is The Story.  God's Story.  Creation's Story as His subject.  Jesus's story as God in Matter and as our model, our leader, our example, our Way, our Reality, our Life.

Our story.  As we follow.

In fact it is played out like some fractal form in the realm of spirit.  Through ages, generations, lifetimes and moments it is played out as the journey of transformation.  Each lesson and adventure is woven of these incidents.

What does this mean?

1)  The Hero's Journey is all about transformation; God has changed.  Unchangeable, yes, but free to change- of course.  And He has chosen to.  His character remains, but now there is flesh on the Throne and humanity in the Trinity.  God has changed in order to regain us and we are called to follow.

2)  Our identity grows from our willingness to go on the adventure of engaging with our Origin and Destiny.  Life in contact with God is our Special World, where the very Life Force, the Essential Spark meets with us, flows through us and resides in us.  He makes us and remakes us.  He breathes life.  He Names us and He Chooses us.  A Hero is Chosen.  You are a chosen hero, called on a dangerous adventure of transformation in communion with The Maker. 

3)  Our purpose flows from the Journey of the World.  God's inevitable plan is that All Things will be transformed and made New.  Our purpose, our Road Back is to excercise this transformation in our world.

4)  Of course, this gives us insight into the practical things.  The Journey tells us that even the best heralded call to adventure will typically be refused, and the mentor is needed to catalyse a decision to act.  When we're Called the most normal and natural response is to deny it and carry on.  But how many mentors are involved in really early discipleship; before any decision..?  What on earth do we expect after people get baptised..?  Tests?  Allies?  Enemies?  They are all to be expected on entering the Special World.

But now to my question from the beginning;

Where are we now?

What is the context to "unanswered" prayer?  Why, when we believe God is all good and all powerful, and some things are just good, like healing and finding and loving?  What's the back story to this world around us; the horrific sick distortion, hatred and hurt and the miraculous radical uncompromising unbounded intricate and elaborate action of God seemingly randomly distributed and in such close proximity?

I believe that we are on the Road Back.  So, a little more flesh on the bones of this leg of the journey:

The road back follows seizing the sword.  That's the moment when you realise you are reborn, you've made it, come through the ordeal and now you sit, fresh and unburdened, on the edge of the alter, a new creation with the prize in your grasp.  You know that moment in the film, when the hero has apparently been overcome by their arch enemy but now, somehow, miraculously after all was lost, they have returned from the brink, or maybe even beyond it.  But now they realise that the job isn't finished, they must get back, rescue the captives, escape the enemy base, difuse the bomb, save the day or save the world.  Then comes the chase.  The crippled but maddened enemy lashes out in a final attack, often more vicious than before.  Now they are really threatened, their empire  crumbling around them already. They make one last ditch attempt on the life of the hero and their now hopeless ambitions.  The hero runs to win the Greater Cause, the enemy pursues. 

On the road back, the hero has to throw everything they've got back at the enemy simply to buy time to make good.  In myths and fairytales, the gifts of the special world often transform magically into great obstacles to the enemy as the hero casts everything down in the chase.  The Road Back follows the great crisis of the story, but it is only the final ascent to the climax to follow; the greatest conflict and the great refining of the hero.

So what?

This is the bit I find the hardest - conclusions.  Here's my start.  

1)  We're on the road back, not the home straight.  The crisis of redemption has taken place, but the climax is to come, followed by the final fruit.  It isn't an easy ride from Easter to New Heaven and Earth.  His Kingdom breaks in but this is not the final conversion.

2)  On the road back, a prize stolen is followed by fierce retribution, a prize divinely bestowed is accompanied by provision.  Our reconciliation and redemption are both; we have been snatched from death and decay, and through Jesus' sacrifice the Father joyfully calls us His very own.  What can we expect but ferocious attack and abundant treasure.  The present is the most extreme, intense time point in all history, and the intensity increases.  Sparks are flying as Love and sin clash, and we occupy the threshold.

3)  God has chosen the Heroic Way.  He will transform the world but through His own transformation and sacrifice.  He will not overpower Creation, but instead He has become it.
His road back, His re-commission to the cause of Creation, is to make His Church His bride, in unity with His Spirit; bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh.

God is love.  And with Him it is always personal.  His work in the world starts in us, our own transformation comes first.  We are called to die to our ego and follow Him before anything else.  His priority is the person.  But then we follow His way to join in His transformation of the World; through Love, the sacrifice of self for the thriving of another, we will invert the order of this plane.

It is confoundingly powerful and offensive, love and sacrifice subvert the occupying empire.  We are rebels of the revolution, the exiles reclaiming the land.  We are insighters of civil rest.  We can expect marvelous things but the base condition is still the mess.  We deal with life and death.  We draw from the deep.

And nothing sacrificed is wasted. 

His Kingdom will burst into this horribly wrenched world where we go.  Expect suffering, expect joy.  Expect brokenness and expect healing.  Expect to loose and expect to win.  Expect death, expect life, expect Resurrection.  Expect the whole world to be turned upside down and inside out on itself.  Expect to be transformed.  Expect change.

Watch the seed that falls to the ground and sprouts fresh new life.  Watch the tiny sparrows, when their heads rest in the dust it is counted.  Watch out because this world was created good and the Good Creator has launched His rescue mission. 

We are God's very children, called to know Him and sent out to do what He does.  He is the Hero of the World, and He is our Way.  Our reality, and our Life!

Step To

On that Friday I met with a mentor.  I was fortunate that he came bearing a gift; a key aspect of the mentor's part.  The gift was an insight; he declared me a theologian. 

Now I thought theology was what we called it when we tried to understand God; I considered it the study of the world's view of God.  But he put it differently, he described it as the exercise of seeing the world as God does; the pursuit of God's view of the world.

Another thing; reality.  God's view is the real reality.  He is the Definitive, the Absolute Prototype of being.  He gives meaning to everything, and everything finds its reference and context in Him.  In that image, part of the human role is to name, to identify, and to declare purpose and consequence, pattern and rule in our observation and participation in our world.  We are creation's voice to its creator, and the hands of God to the crops and creatures.  Yet we live in filtered realities.  Our perception is skewed and damped, our range restricted.  It is almost certain that we each live in a false reality, yet freedom lies in the light.

Now how God sees things has also risen out of conversation that I've shared over this topic of the seemingly conflicting rule of God and mess of the world.  If Jesus is the visible image of this invisible God, and He showed unrestrained hostility toward sickness, shame and death, then how is it that sometimes healing doesn't come and death perseveres?  How is it that God is over, in and through it all and the sickness persists?

I can accept the view of the free world, relinquished control and the restrained hand of judgement.  But Love cannot help but intervene.  God cannot help but hear.  I see miracles and I see the divine initiative.  The outworking is utterly personal.  There are no rules, only relationship.  But here's my crux.  I can't work out what His priorities are; the values applied to the decision to act.  I get stuck on the Barney story, which somehow becomes my ensign for all the suffering and disappointment I see.

God is in all, and He feels the pain and dwells in the heart of the victim.  He is the God who Hears, the God who Sees.  Is He the Great Overseer or the Abiding Witness?  What is the default condition of this age?  He refuses to destroy an evil city for the sake of a few good men within.  But I see the action of unconstrained love in Jesus. 

So where are we now?  What is the present reality?  I think we're on the Road Back, but what are the rules, and how is it with the residual enemy?  Finding the realty should resolve the conflicting projections.  Then there is freedom, and in Reality is life.

Entry No. 1

For now, this blog is for the writing, not the reading (except by me).

It is part of my journey into song writing and, for want of a better word, theology.  For some time, I have sensed God's permission and call to write songs.  I've started.  But more recently I've felt inspired to push for a deeper realisation of God in His Creation.  For me, the reality has to be greater.  God is utterly universal and fundamental.  The very fabric of creation; whatever essential substrate it is that we propagate through, is woven with His song and purpose.  The universe inevitably echos His beauty, which reemerges from even the most horrific distortion.  It revolves about Christ as it's origin, the focus of all things, all things.  And there is the Re-Creation, the renewal, the restoration, reconciliation of it all.

If His Gospel is woven into the very ether, then it must be an essential thing.  Not complicated or the stuff of reason, but simple mystery; beautiful, awful and utterly personal.  With God, it's always personal.  He is Love.  He is also wild, unconstrained by rules or principles.  He is fearsome.

I have been struck by the Hero's Journey.  If Joseph Campbell has extracted the common spirit from the legends, myths and stories of many cultures, this is likely to be riddled with the revelation of God in the hearts of men; Jesus Christ.

In essence, the Journey is transformation.  And that is the journey led by Jesus.  The incarnation was a transformational act in the very being of THE LORD. The crucifixion was a transformational act in the spiritual realm of creation.

We are called to follow; to enter the special world of relationship with our God (the Life Force) and be transformed.  It inevitably takes us to death, but the prize is transcendent life.  That's our identity.  Our purpose; to join in the transformation of the world.  To partake in the re-creation - we call it the Kingdom.  It is the same transformation we undergo in our beings, but we minister it as priests to creation, and the Image-Bearers who suffer under it's current distorted turbulence.

Recent events have served me with a call to adventure.  In the context of this strong desire to write songs which speak of deep truth, and my efforts to allow my faith to be formed into a more Christ-like, incarnational, physical acknowledgement of God in all, I have suddenly been disappointed and confused.  My view of God was broadening; I wasn't under the impression that bad and evil didn't pervade, but I did believe that anything was possible, and that Jesus, who has the will and the power to work in all situations, was available in all.  This sense was rocked by the events that culminated in the death of our cat, Barney.

First, a reminder of me and cats.  Since my earliest days I have been an animal lover, and this was most clearly exemplified in my love of our pet cats.  For most of my childhood, my cat was a very close companion, and as an adult I still consider the pet cat to be a full member of the family.

Just about a month ago, Barney our one and a half year old cat, went missing for a few days.  We were vey concerned as he was a creature of habit and we knew something must be wrong.  We searched literally day and night, we flyered the local area and put up posters.  We phoned vets and animal charities.  We followed up calls, we had an announcement on the radio.  We left the 99, stopped living and searched for Barney.  We prayed.  Our church friends prayed.  Our families prayed.  We doubt that a domestic moggy has ever had so many requests made to the almighty on their behalf!  And we trusted.  Our searching was not out of doubting God, but rather to live out the demonstration that the spiritual and physical are united.  The miraculous and the laws of physics go hand in hand as they are both ordained by God.  There is no conflict as both honour God, and He honours both.  We were concerned, but we felt peace.

Four days later we received a phone call.  Barney had just been run over and was dead.  I cycled from work to collect his body, it must have been only an hour or so after he'd died that I got there- the home owner had one of our flyers so had called us almost immediately.

The part that hit us was that he had been run over on his way home.  We had worked out from the reports and responses we'd had from neighbours, that Barney had most likely ventured off our housing development and into the nearby allotments for the first time.  He was probably either lost or trapped in a shed or greenhouse.  I had searched the allotment a number of times and put up posters.  It seems that we were right, as Barney was hit as he crossed the road back from the allotment to our estate.

He had survived the ordeal.  He was on his way home.  And then it was all ended in a moment.

And our question was: why?

We know many of the arguments or explanations used for suffering in the world (by the way I realise this is nothing- the insane horror of our world is not aptly represented by the death of a pet cat).  But none of them seem to fit..  Sure, the driver had free will to drive fast or not spot a cat or not swerve or brake or whatever.  But Barney wasn't human; there's no principle of free will that has to be upheld to prevent a cat from waiting a few more seconds to cross..  Or maybe we've dragged an innocent cat into our fight and he's taken a hit for our faith, maybe he's now a Christian cat..  So why not whisper a word of warning to him.  Maybe we're taking it all to seriously, but if that's the case why not knock out a small favour; it means a lot to us after all and we've got loads of people praying.

I could go on.  The truth is that God has spoken on the matter.  Rosie and I have both felt Him say that actually Barney means more to Him than us, and that God feels the hurt of the event even more intensely.  God values Barney more than we do, and he feels the pain of the sick irony more strongly too.

And so my call to adventure.  The scope of my search has widened to try to make some kind of sense of the terrible wrenching pain of this world, as well as discover God saturating it all through the depths and heights.  I have been unsettled, disturbed, and I can't go back.

So how to go forward?  I need to forge time for writing; expressing; praying and worshiping.  I will let God have His portion.  Of course His portion is it all, but I shall give it intentional expression - manifestation in time and attention.

But I know that this Jesus has be be experienced.  And He demands action.  So I find myself searching the things I've felt called to in the last few years.  In a list:

My Family (wife, toddling daughter and unborn daughter)
Sex & Marriage (theology of..!)
Slavery (ending of)
Fairtrade (spreading of, especially at my workplace)
Music (song writing, performing)
Worship Leading
Wanting to speak in Tongues (complicated)

Where next, who knows?

I've received the Call.  In my heart I deny it as I still seem to hold Barney's death against God, emotionally if not consciously.  I need His help on this.  Next; meeting with the mentor, which looks well lined up for Friday morning.

And that's where I am.

Ends.