Category Archives: dreams

how are you using your voice?

By Posted in creativity, dreams, experience, voice Tagged , , , , , Leave a comment

Continuing my thoughts from yesterday, here is one of my favorite TED talks.  Eric Whitacre is a composer who used the medium of the internet to conduct a choir of 2,000 voices from around the world.  This project and its resulting song is one of the most moving I’ve ever heard.  Listen to what he learned from it:

“So two things struck me deeply about this. The first is that human beings will go to any lengths necessary to find and connect with each other. It doesn’t matter the technology. And the second is that people seem to be experiencing an actual connection. It wasn’t a virtual choir. There are people now online that are friends; they’ve never met. But, I know myself too, I feel this virtual esprit de corps, if you will, with all of them. I feel a closeness to this choir – almost like a family.”

The beauty of a choir is in its celebration of each unique voice.  A great question to ask is, “How are you using your voice?”  Are you using it to give to and build something greater than you?

all that’s beautiful is broken.

By Posted in acceptance, dreams, life, love Tagged , , , Leave a comment

The day following Christ became difficult wasn’t around the time that I failed my wife or smoked pot or started lifting cigars from the local grocery store.  It actually happened long before that, around the time I started noticing what kind of language the other kids were using.

They got to say words like “damn” and I didn’t.  One time, I innocently came home from school and dropped the F-bomb on my mother.  I was promptly scolded somewhere along the lines “Don’t let me ever hear that word come out of your mouth again.”  Emphasis on ever.

Following Christ then was hard not because I was on the verge of temptation or traumatic life change.  It was hard because I finally saw the delineation between hearing about Jesus and being different because of Jesus.

Since that time, I’ve lived between these notions that Jesus is a guy who says good things and that he’s the way to a new life.  I liked the guy who says good things because he can be followed fairly easy.  Just do steps 1-2-3.  He’s infomercial Jesus.

Following Christ to new life, now that’s another story.  I’m not talking about earning his love.  I’m talking about accepting his love enough to know that I didn’t have to curse like the other kids at school.

Man, I wanted to.  Confessional sidebar: I occasionally do curse but immediately follow it with prayer and feelings of regret. 

I’m a broken guy.  Not like a broken toy whose lost it’s functionality.  I’m not ‘scratched CD broken’. I’m more like ‘antique broken’.   A one-man’s-treasure kind of thing.  Except that one man is Jesus.  I’ve discovered that my brokenness isn’t because I didn’t buy his product or do steps 1-2-3.

Check it out: There’s not a sideline coach screaming “C’mon innate Christianity, don’t fail him now.  You can do it, tiger”.

The day following Christ became hard was when I associated my difference with this world to acting different on my own strength.  Those other kids cuss so I don’t and I don’t because I’m a Christian…right?

Wrong.  I follow Christ because he takes my brokenness and calls it beautiful.  I follow Christ because while I was so incredibly deep in the muck of sin he died for me.  What’s hard about that?  It’s humbling.  I think accepting his love to the degree that it affects my behavior, my thinking, my choices and perceptions…that’s hard.

In some ways I’m still that little kid.  Hoping that I can do and say things differently enough to be loved by my father.  It’s a good thing I have a big brother to look up to.  I think I’ll watch how he and his father love each other.  Talk about beautiful…

sweet baby [coen] james.

By Posted in dreams, hope, life, love Tagged , , , , 1 Comment

I’ve worn a lot of hats in my brief life and recently, I’ve added another: that of uncle.  This post is dedicated to new life.  Coen James was born to my brother David and his wife, Brittany.  He was born this last Saturday night, November 5th in Matthews, NC.

Unfortunately, Coen’s first 48 hours were interrupted when his parents noticed an irregular movement.  Instead of the typical outward spasms that newborns are famous for, Coen’s whole body would tighten up.  After the nurses noticed this, he was moved to the nursery for monitoring.  It was then observed that his oxygen levels dropped during these movements.  He was having seizures.  Coen was transported to the NICU at Presbyterian Main in Charlotte, where he resides to this moment.

So here we are 4 days into Coen’s life.  It’s a difficult conundrum to celebrate and hurt at the same time.  If you have faith in Christ and believe He hears you in prayer, lift up baby Coen.  He is still in the NICU undergoing tests and treatment for seizures.  Remember his parents as well, who want nothing in this world but to love and care for this precious gift from God.

the roaring twenties.

By Posted in dreams, failure, focus, future, goals Tagged , , , , 1 Comment

As the third decade of my life rapidly comes to a close, I’m faced with the same question I had at the end of my second decade: “What was I supposed to be doing again?”

Should I feel guilty that my twenties haven’t produced some meteoric trajectory for my life?  I mean, I haven’t found a cure for cancer, solved the economic quandaries of our age or ended world hunger.

I’m not talking about a discontentment with my job.  I’m talking about this notion that something was supposed to happen in my twenties.  This American ideal that pretentiousness is deserved for those who earned it.

As my friend, John Zimmer reminded us recently at a parenting workshop, there does come a time where our children must accept responsibility for their own choices.  My teenage years were racked with some pretty dumb choices but my license to fail didn’t make me an Einstein by 19 either.

In fact, my twenties became a seed-bed for testing how far I could stretch my ideologies and actions.  The result…well, just call me King Solomon.  He said vanity, I say selfishness and narcissism.  The last 10 years have been called “A Lost Decade“.  I can concur.

In the mix of all this forming and norming, I can no longer hide behind my adolescence.  My teenage years bred this false sense of security as I entered the twenties.  I told myself that life was in the doing – harder, better, faster, and stronger.  That if I worked hard enough at anything, I could see it accomplished, even something like a cure for cancer.

Now, these roaring twenties have brought a new level of reality.  That I’m frail.  I’m sensitive.  I’m imperfect.  I’m broken.

Now, these roaring twenties have bred another sense of purpose for me.  That life is in the being, the abiding, the loving, the obeying.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have visions of grandeur: the Riviera, the grand canyon, exploring space and all those boyhood dreams.  In fact, I’m confident the best is yet ahead.  I won’t let the mistakes of the last decade skew my optimism for the next.

What I will do is wrap my confidence, calling and vocation around the hope of the Cross.  Here’s to the next decade and here’s to more stretching.

why focusing on ‘platform’ might be your worst move.

By Posted in dreams, failure, focus, future, goals, leadership, life, mistakes, platform, success Tagged , , , , , Leave a comment
preaching

Image via Wikipedia

The retail buzzword is “brand”.  The health industry buzzword is “wellness”.  How about “postmodern and paradigm shift” for ethics or philosophy?  Or one of my personal favorites – “leverage” for business.

Relatively new to the scene is “platform” which by strict definition means “a raised floor or stage used by public speakers or performers so that they can be seen by their audience.”  Here’s the thesis: the greater your platform, the greater your influence.  According to this definition, the people interested in platform are public speakers and performers, but really it’s anyone who either has a voice or wants a voice.  I have this sneaky suspicion you’re one of the two.

I might compare ‘platform’ to “Search Engine Optimization“, the process of improving visibility of a website in search engines via “natural” search results.  SEO for websites and platform for speakers are increasingly synchronized in pursuit of that influential voice.  The difference (if there is one) is really only in your product, whether that’s a piece of plastic from China, a get-rich-quick scheme or some social justice.  My concern exists in the increasing dichotomy of platform and product.  The pendulum seems to be swinging from what we’re saying to how we’re saying it.

The potential danger intrinsic to this sudden and increased emphasis on platform is in exerting more energy and effort into the volume of our voice vs. what we’re actually saying.  Competition for your ear, your wallet and your vote is off the charts.  What we’ll see in this next presidential election is evolving socio-digital synchronization – where the candidate who stands on the most electronic soapbox wins.  Why not when you can actually pay for followers on Twitter?  It’s the new Direct Mail.  Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign proved it’s not what you say but how you say it.

So you want platform?  The first question to ask is “what are you actually trying to say” or “what are you contributing?”  This may sound like an old argument of chicken vs. egg or Jim Collins’ ‘get the right people on board before determining the destination.’  However you want to slice it, the bottom line is that our headlines are driving our business, not our content.  Do you want loyal customers and committed followers/fans?  Then build your platform on the content, not your content on the platform.

Your platform will grow and it will shrink with volatile markets.  Impulse will drive the consumer more than intent.  Is your product worth riding these storms?  Is your message changing lives?  Worry a little less about the size of your platform and focus a little more on quality product.  You’ll discover that this strategy delivers longer-term life-changing results.