Loss

A friend's mother died suddenly early this morning. I got the call at 3:30am. After comforting the family, I found myself plunged back into my own experiences of grief--my own mother's, years ago, and a few more recent ones. I also found myself tumbling back into experiences of loss I thought would undo me, but didn't. Loss is inevitable. And it hurts. Frightens us too. Loss is a reminder of how vulnerable we are, how much we're not in control after all. Loss of any kind can send us spinning, craving firm footing again.

When we do so, it's not hard to bury ourselves in work or anything else that might distract us, numb us, and help us avoid the pain.

But loss is an invitation. There's grace in it, hidden beneath the pain. Through loss we can come to greater clarity about what really matters in life.

Through some losses I thought would destroy me, I've learned that a lot of what I thought I needed, I don't really need, and so much I thought I could not live without, I can, in fact, live without.

Grief has taught me how involved I am in humanity, how much I'm made for love. And loss has taught me that the one thing I need most can never be taken from me.

Perhaps that's what it means to live Holy Saturday, halfway between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Intention: Today, I'll let my losses shift my priorities again. I'll look back upon them gratefully--even through my pain--and realize they can be my teachers.  Every loss can open me to embrace life more fully.

Ahhhh

Kon Leong is co-founder, president and chief executive of ZL Technologies in San Jose, California. Adam Bryant of the New York Times recently caught up to him and chatted about leadership and life and advice for students fresh out of college. "Experiment," he says. "You can go in any direction. So experiment and you'll have a much better chance of finding your sweet spot. And the sweet spot is the intersection between what you're really good at and what you love to do. A lot of people would kill for that because, at 65, they're retiring and never found it. Try to find your sweet spot and, once you find it, invest in it."

Yes, to be spiritually and vocationally alive you must lean into your own God-breathed originality. There are so many bullying voices--inside and outside your head. If you can refuse them and find the sweet spot God's made you for--what you're good at and what you love to do you'll not only live a better live, you'll made life better for others.

Intention: Today, I'll take note of those times when I'm in the zone, doing me and doing me well. I'll look for those times when I'm happy, feeling good, and see if I'm doing things well at the same time. That'll tell me something I need to hold on to.

Thoughts

You know, don't you, how your thoughts crowd and push inside your head, almost incessantly, from the moment you rise to the moment you fall asleep. Even sleep is no vacation from the thoughts that assault and confuse and entertain. Because of this mind-parade of incessant thoughts, most of us are living a spiritual catastrophe. We float along in the flotsam of thoughts, carried somewhere, and often feeling we have very little power to escape them. One long, sleepless night is evidence enough that you're among that mass of sufferers. Or maybe you anesthetize yourself by falling asleep to the TV, or getting a little help from a drink or drug.

Truth is, you are not your thoughts. The very fact that you can think a thought, watch a thought, even exchange thoughts is proof that there's a you beyond your thoughts.

St Paul said, "Take every thought captive" (2 Corinthians 10.5). Paul knew that there's a you who can take your thoughts captive, who doesn't have to be a slave to the stuff parading through your brain.

How?

This kind of spiritual freedom is the fruit of the prayer of the heart--a form of prayer that can occupy you for a lifetime, but is so simply a child can practice it. The prayer of the heart is simply the practice of the steady, patient, and habitual drawing the mind down into the heart using a simple prayer like the Lord's Prayer or the words "Jesus have mercy." By repeating the prayer, reverently, mindfully, you'll find yourself resting there in your heart with the Christ who dwells within you. It can be practiced even during the busiest moments of daily life.

"The head and hands at work," the saints instruct us, "and the heart at rest in prayer."

Intention: Today, I will pause periodically throughout the day; whisper a simple prayer silently in my heart, and commune with Christ for awhile and give my mind a break from the steady stream of thoughts within.

Voice

I was working with a group of preachers this morning to help them find their voices.  On a regular basis, preachers use their voices publicly.  But as these preachers recognized today, the voice they use publicly isn't always their real voice--their own voice. Your voice--my voice--is deeply spiritual.  Your voice arises out of who you are--your own God-breathed originality.  Your voice is different from the words you may speak.  Your voice is the living witness to all that makes you who you are; it comes directly out of the experiences that have shaped you, the truth that's real to you, your intimate connection with the Divine.  It is the true you God's made you to be.

If you know your distinctive, God-breathed voice, you're on your way to owning the gift you have to offer for the healing of the world.

The trouble is, our voice is usually hijacked by the voices in our heads that come from parents, older siblings, friends, enemies, religious leaders, affinity groups, and so on.  The voice we usually present to the world is the voice we think the world around us wants to hear.

If you want to live with integrity, to live as God desires you to live, you must find your own voice--peel back the masks we wear, strip away the falsehoods, stop the charades.  Only then can you live as the unique person you are meant to be.

Finding your voice is critical if you want to live a more focused, strategic, purposeful life--a life aligned with the God who made you--and to make a real difference in the world.

Intention: Today I will begin my search for my one, authentic God-breathed voice--so that I may live a more focused, compassionate, purposeful life.

EXTRAS . . .

Here's a witness to a young Indian woman who has found her voice and is leveraging it for good:

Pranitha Timothy: a voice for the voiceless

Here are two good pieces that can help you find your voice:

4 Steps to Finding Your Voice

10 Questions that Will Help You Find Your Voice

Less

"Objects tend to crowd out the life they are meant to support," says Graham Hill. He's a guy who made it big, very big, before he was thirty. A windfall from a tech-startup put more money into his bank account than he knew what to do with. So he bought stuff. Lots of it. Eventually, owning two residences on the west and east coast, a bunch of nice cars, techie equipment, and so on, he came to realize that he wasn't owning any of it; it was owning him.

So he quit the consumerist trap. Cold turkey. He now says, "I sleep better. I have less--and enjoy more. My space is small. My life is big."

If you want God, then I want you to know Graham Hill. You can read more about him in this short article from yesterday's New York Times, Sunday Review.

All of us can do what he did, but most of us will choose not to. Nothing necessarily wrong with that. What matters is that you and I do something now to let go of what is nonessential so that we can find the freedom to hold on to what is.

Look around yourself. You'll find there's so much that's nonessential . . . non-essence . . . so much that's not part of the life, the essence, God is holding out to you.

Intention: Today, I'll stop, momentarily, a couple times throughout the day. I'll look around and notice how much of my stuff is nonessential, how much of it clutters my life, keeps me from the life I long for. I'll bet I can find at least 10 nonessential things for every 1 that is. I'll toss at least one thing I can do without.