Tag Archives: David Brooks

All Good Gifts, Attending or Focus, Attitude, Beauty of God's Creation, Books, Community, Conversations, Crucifixion, Culture & Religion, Easter and Lent, Film, Finishing Strong, Friday Faves, Friends, Guitar, Habits, Holidays, Home, Hospitality, Jesus, Kindness, Loneliness, Love Your Neighbor, Music, Neighbors, Walk with God

5 Friday Faves – Good Friday, Beyond the Guitar’s Rendition of Dune, How to Know a Person, Scruffy Hospitality, and Flowering Trees

March 31, 2024 admindeb 3 Comments

Real fast. 5 Friday Faves.

1) Good Friday – Holy Week 2024 is coming to an end. Every day, I join many around the world reflecting on the events and meaning of each day of that last week of Jesus’ earthly life. Up through the crucifixion and onto Resurrection Sunday. You can read my countdown here.

“It was not nails that held Jesus to that wretched cross; it was his unqualified resolution, out of love for his Father, to do his Father’s will—and it was his love for sinners like me.” – D.A. Carson

And as You speak
A hundred billion failures disappear
Where You lost Your life so I could find it here
If You left the grave behind You so will I
I can see Your heart in everything You’ve done
Every part designed in a work of art called love
If You gladly chose surrender so will I
I can see Your heart
Eight billion different ways
Every precious one
A child You died to save
If You gave Your life to love them so will I

Like You would again a hundred billion times
But what measure could amount to Your desire
You’re the One who never leaves the one behind – Hillsong (So Will I (100 Billion X)

Jesus and Holy Week – Good Friday – His Trial, Crucifixion, & Burial – It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Coming

Don’t leave until you watch and listen to Pastor S. M. Lockridge‘s powerful 3 1/2 minute oration below!

Or listen to Atlas Rhoads song He Cries with scenes from The Savior film.

2) Beyond the Guitar’s Dune – As usual, Nathan Mills of Beyond the Guitar captures the exquisite beauty of Hans Zimmer‘s compositions (this time, from the film Dune Part 2 soundtrack).

Here’s Nathan’s rendition on classical guitar. So moving!

3) How to Know a Person – How to really know a person? David Brooks’ book delves into that so practically. I hadn’t heard of this book until someone I follow on social media described it as a masterpiece. then I caught Brooks’ interview on The Next Big Idea podcast.

So far, I love everything I have heard and read about this book. A few quotes from the book follow:

“The real act of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete social actions well: disagreeing without poisoning the relationship; revealing vulnerability at the appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to end a conversation gracefully; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to let someone down without breaking their heart; knowing how to sit with someone who is suffering; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another’s point of view.” – David Brooks, How to Know a Person

“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them,” George Bernard Shaw wrote, “but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.” – David Brooks, How to Know a Person

“On social media you can have the illusion of social contact without having to perform the gestures that actually build trust, care, and affection. On social media, stimulation replaces intimacy. There is judgment everywhere and understanding nowhere.” – David Brooks, How to Know a Person

“As the Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan has observed, what the eye sees more deeply the heart tends to love more tenderly.” – David Brooks, How to Know a Person

Brooks offers story after story of human connections, the kind we all long for…and how they happen. With curiosity and care and a measure of intentionality. Get the book!

How to Know a Person by David Brooks – Review, Summary, Analysis & Facts – Mental Branch – excellent review!!

David Brooks: We Change People for the Better by Knowing Them More Fully – Justin Whitmel Earley – also super helpful!

4) Scruffy Hospitality – Hospitality follows along the same thinking as David Brooks’ book on knowing people. When we put out the welcome mat for folks, we gain as much as we give, and it doesn’t have to be perfect.

“Scruffy hospitality means you’re not waiting for everything in your house to be in order before you host and serve friends in your home. Scruffy hospitality means you hunger more for good conversation and serving a simple meal of what you have, not what you don’t have. Scruffy hospitality means you’re more interested in quality conversation than the impression your home or lawn makes. If we only share meals with friends when we’re excellent, we aren’t truly sharing life together.

Don’t allow a to-do list disqualify you from an evening with people you’re called to love in friendship. Scheduling is hard enough in our world. If it’s eating with kind, welcoming people in a less than perfect house versus eating alone, what do you think someone would choose? We tell our guests ‘come as you are,’ perhaps we should tell ourselves ‘host as you are.’” – Jack King

In Praise of ‘Scruffy Hospitality’ – Robin Shreeves

Families are embracing ‘scruffy hospitality’ — should you join the trend? – Rosie Colosi

Scruffy Hospitality – Poems of Lived-In Places – Sarah Ann Winn

What We Gain When We Forget That Scruffy Hospitality – Tara K. E. Brelinsky

I was reminded of this sort of hospitality when a neighbor dropped by recently without notice. I felt a bit embarrassed by the piles of books on my coffee table and the general messiness of the kitchen. I was cooking for a special occasion, and the counters were full of preps in progress. She wasn’t bothered by any of it, and we had a great visit.

Just today after a meal shared with extended family, we were sitting and talked, and I noticed how dusty the floor was in the afternoon sun – the areas that don’t get “swept up” by sock-clad feet. Sigh… Even as we were visiting, I pulled out the dust-mop and tidied up the floor. It didn’t bother our visitors, but it did me, once I saw it. Couldn’t unsee it.

The important thing is to keep inviting folks into your home, into your welcome. The condition of the house is secondary. There are too many folks out there eating alone because we want the comfort of our own homes without the work of making them presentable to others. Since COVID, also, we seem to have gotten out of the sweet habit of gathering, like we once did. Worth re-visiting.

5) Flowering Trees – We’re in Springtime here, and the flowering trees and bushes are giving us quite the show! I remember with great delight the fragrance of flowering Jasmine when we used to live in North Africa. For a brief time, the Viburnum bushes with new blossoms gives that same intoxicating smell. Everywhere you look right now, trees are like watercolor paintings with flowers popping and new leaves unfurling. Spectacular time of the year!

__________________________________________________________________________________________

So much more…but with this being a special week of celebrating the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah…will close here. Thanks for stopping by. It means so much.

All Good Gifts, Attending or Focus, Attitude, Character, Community, Cross-Cultural, Decision-making, Disciplines, Family, Finishing Strong, Habits, Kindness, Kindness of Strangers, Lessons Learned, Life Skills, Love Your Neighbor, Monday Morning, Monday Morning Moment

Monday Morning Moment – Considering Others – the Wawa Experience

March 26, 2024 admindeb Leave a comment

Small acts of kindness aren’t really so small. They add up and can alter your day. Take stopping into Wawa – “the ultimate convenience store for food, drink, fuel, and more”. [If you don’t have Wawa in your town, it’s wherever you stop for gas and coffee.] Now, Wawa seems to be a working person’s stop-on-the-go place. Fueling the car and grabbing a quick beverage (plus food maybe). Customers are on the move. They have places to go.

What happens there, in seconds, is noteworthy. When folks go to and from the store, they almost without exception, hold the door for the next customer. Literally, I sometimes just stand and watch, while filling my gas tank. [It would have been creepy for me to video this activity although I was tempted. It’s a constant where the one opening the door waits for the oncoming person exiting or entering.

So considerate. So courteous. Now, I’m sure there are folks who run in to grab coffee and are lost in their thoughts. They enter and exit without thinking. Not noticing the person in front or behind them. This happens…just doesn’t seem to happen here.

I love that about Wawa. Working people who have jobs to do but take the seconds to hold the door. A small act of kindness. Do we do that intuitively? Or did we learn it from someone – at home, in the classroom? It’s definitely a work culture phenomenon as well. Check out the #1 element of work culture that matters in the SloanReview article:

*10 Things Your Corporate Culture Needs to Get Right* – Donald Sull and Charles Sull

We lived overseas for many years and were amazed at the courtesy extended toward us and others. If I was at tea with local ladies and children entered from school, without prompting, they would go around the circle of women and greet each one of us. No matter how old they were. That was just one example of the almost ceremonial expression of hospitality wherever we found ourselves. Now, every culture has its imperfect treatment of people, but I was struck but the impact of courtesy and consideration expressed even from small children, even from teens.

Photo Credit: *How to Know a Person*, David Brooks, GoodReads

A verse in the Bible comes to mind related to this: “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility consider one another as more important than yourselves.” (Philippians 2:3) In that moment, considering another more important than myself. A great exercise in life.

What does it take to teach, model, and reward/reenforce such qualities as consideration and courtesy such that they continue throughout life? I’d love to hear your take on this, in the Comments.

It was a sweet visit to Wawa for me. Consistent with every other visit. My favorite coffee (Hazelnut with vanilla creamer) even came free today and it’s not even Free Coffee Tuesday.

So…think about slowing down a bit and consider others just ahead of or behind you, and hold the door. If you read this far, you probably already make a habit of showing that level of care. Thank you.

Putting Others Before Yourself – 7 Great Tips – David Peach

The Power of Etiquette: How Practicing Good Manners Enhances Our Well-being

How to Teach Kids Good Manners: The True Meaning of Etiquette and Why It’s Important – Ashika Singh

The Importance of Courtesy: Lessons in Kindness and Respect – Naytik Sheth

Seven Activities for National Courtesy Month (September)

[Postscript: Below you’ll find another quote on being a friend or creating community. It goes beyond the scope of this Monday Morning Moment but is apropos to how we treat people, even in the moment, even strangers.]

All Good Gifts, Anxiety, Attending or Focus, Beauty of God's Creation, Books, Community, Conversations, creativity, Critical Thinking, Cross-Cultural, Emotions, Fear, Film, Food & Drink, Friday Faves, Guitar, Healing, Lifelong Learning, Memories, Music, Redeeming & Restoring, Remembering, Trauma, Vacations

5 Friday Faves – Shame Revisited, Classical Guitar & Squid Game, Cartoons & Classical Music, Left Brain/Right Brain, and Beach Food

October 18, 2021 admindeb 2 Comments

Friday Faves! Go!

1) Shame Revisited – [Posted here previously] Author Andy Crouch has written an essay on how our culture has changed. For most of our history as a country, we have been a guilt-based culture. By that, I mean we measured ourselves and others as being “right or wrong” in our thinking, choosing to do right or wrong.

This is how we raised our children. We determined not to measure our children up against (compared with) other people, but to raise them up with a standard of right living and making right choices (for us, it was based on the Bible…on the teachings and life of Jesus). “Right” was not legalistic or moralistic; “right” was loving, kind, serving, non-judgmental.

Only in recent years has our culture been moving toward more of a shame-based view on life. Here the difference is how our character and behavior reflects on a larger community (“how others see us”). This is somewhat different from the traditional shame-honor culture. In that culture, honoring your family, country, religion was all-important. If your behavior did not comply with those values, you were shamed, even ostracized.Photo Credit: The Rise of Shame in America, Honor Shame

Today’s American culture has definitely moved away from a guilt orientation. We hear it all the time in statements like “Well, that may be OK for you.” “You have the right to believe that way.” “Don’t try to put that guilt on me.” However, our culture is not moving toward the traditional shame society, but more a shame-fame culture. Fame over honor. Social media has driven this in recent years. We want to be “seen” a certain way. In fact, a young colleague of ours once said, “It’s my job to make you look good.” I was shocked at that. One, “looking good” was not even on my radar. Either I was “good” (competent, responsible, dependable, etc) or I wasn’t. It demonstrated the culture shift and generational disconnect.

Shaming continues to happen in our culture. Children can be shamed for not behaving in ways that make their parents “look good”. Public shaming of people who don’t agree with each other can be as brutal as real ostracism. And so it goes.

I miss the guilt culture. Where, whatever your religion or political ideology, you could tell the good guys from the bad guys. Or maybe we were naive, but I hope not. Today, it seems all about how we portray ourselves…how we are received by those that matter to us.

Sigh…any thoughts? Please.

[Don’t forget to return and read Andy’s essay and David Brooks’ review of Crouch’s essay and this whole social phenomenon.]

__________________________________________________________________________

Postscript: I’m just today beginning to dig into Curt Thompson‘s book The Soul of Shame. So excited really to glean from his wisdom on the subject.

The Return of Shame – Andy Crouch

The Shame Culture – David Brooks

The Rise of Shame in America – HonorShame

When Shame Shapes Our Stories: Five Tips for Rewiring Negative Neural Pathways – Tricia McCary Rhodes

2) Classical Guitar & Squid Game – So whether you’re a fan of Korean cinema or creepy TV shows (insert Netflix’s popular Squid Game), you’re going to love the latest arrangement by Nathan Mills at Beyond the Guitar. It’s a medley of Squid Game themes, including the classic melody “Fly Me to the Moon”. So gorgeous.

3) Classical Music in Cartoons – Recently I was reading (again in Curt Thompson book – this time the recently published The Soul of Desire. He encouraged an intentional pursuit of beauty (a right brain renewing). He mentioned Dvorak’s 9th Symphony. I’m not a big fan of classical music, although every single time I attend a symphony performance, it slays me. So…I searched out thia particular piece on YouTube and clicked on this performance of the second movement of the symphony. Profoundly beautiful. Then…oddly familiar.

The first time I ever heard this symphony was on Saturday morning cartoons. In those days (late ’50s, early ’60s), cartoons had classical music as their soundtracks! In fact, this practice goes all the way back to the cartoons of the 1930s. Ingenious.

Cartoons and Classical Music – Bring Bach the Good Stuff – Nuriyah Johar

Classical Music in Cartoons

I’m learning later in life how the beauty of music, tucked in the background, can actually enrich what the eye sees on the many screens of our childhood and now that of our children’s children.

15 Pieces of Classical Music That Showed up in Looney Tunes – Mark Mancini [Some of the links are broken in the article but the information is preserved.]

YouTube Video – 10 Classical Music Pieces in Cartoons

YouTube Video – Most Iconic Classical Music Masterpieces Everyone Knows in One Single Video

4) Rain Brain/Left Brain I’ve written on the brain several times (as a learning layperson).

Again, thanks to Curt Thompson‘s recently published book The Soul of Desire, I’ve been learning about these two very different but inter-connected hemispheres in our brain. Thompson talks about how God made our brain for connection, but with trauma and shame, the two hemispheres become less integrated. Neural pathways are hijacked. [Talking very simply here because that’s about the level of my understanding.]

He delineates the two in many ways, but one that really spoke to me was how the right brain (the seat of our emotions and the space where we create and appreciate beauty) is very much focused on “here and with”. Being in the moment and preferably with others we care about. The left brain (our center for reasoning, analysis, and logic) favors more a “separate from” state. Standing back, evaluating, referring to the past and imagining the future.

Photo Credit: Janice Tarleton

Trauma and shame steal the easy flow of having fear and anxiety that is checked by rational reasoning. We can become stuck. Isolated from the healthy thinking we were made to have…and from each other. Thompson gives some excellent helps in his book on how to strengthen pathways between each side of the brain. Much of this is in community. Also upping our intentional appreciation of what is beautiful around us. Left brain activity is rewarded in our culture, to the detriment of right brain activity. We need both…and the beauty and community that comes with such integration.

Want to Sync the 2 Hemispheres of Your Brain? Neuroscience Says to Do This Daily (It Only Takes 4 Minutes) – Melanie Curtin

I Met Jesus in My Right Brain – Janice Tarleton

Photo Credit: Custom Writing

5) Beach Food– A long weekend in Virginia Beach this past week was lovely. Much-needed. Rain and a gusty wind kept us from as much walking as we would have liked, but it did not deter us from eating from favorite restaurants. Every year, we change that list up a bit. 19th Street Italian Bistro has been our #1 go-to restaurant every year and it is not budging from that position of honor.

Two new favorites for the year are (in the #2 spot for beach favorites) C. P. Shucker’s Cafe & Raw Bar

and (#3) Ray Ray’s at the Mayflower.

[Chef Ray is Filipino and adds all sorts of yummy island touches to the menu.]

And dessert? Always Dairy Queen Butterfinger Blizzard.

You don’t want to miss these if Virginia Beach is your destination.

How about you? What is your favorite beach food restaurant? Tell us in the Comments.

___________________________________________________________________________

That’s it for this week. Hope you’re able to get some time with those you love in the days ahead. Never take time together for granted. Life is such a gift. Thanks for stopping by. It means a lot.

Abortion, Adam Grant, Adoption, Aging, All Good Gifts, America, Attending or Focus, Babies & Children, Beauty of God's Creation, Books, Character, Church, Conversations, creativity, Critical Thinking, Culture & Religion, Disciplines, Forgiveness, Friday Faves, Friendship, Glory of God, Grace, Grief and Loss, Guitar, Habits, Inspired, Kindness, Leadership, Lessons Learned, Love, Love Your Neighbor, Marriage, Memories, Music, Neighbors, Pray, Reconciliation/Forgiveness, Redeeming & Restoring, Relationships, Resilience, Social Media, Time Management, Transformational, Volunteering/Serving, Walk with God, work

5 Friday Faves – Fortnite Revisited on Classical Guitar, Spring Rain, Habits of Love, Andy Crouch on Shame, and Wonder

May 18, 2018 admindeb 4 Comments

Happy Friday! Here are my five favorite finds for this week:

1) Fortnite Revisited on Classical Guitar – About a month ago, classical guitarist Nathan Mills of Beyond the Guitar posted his arrangement of Fortnite Dances. Like the popular game and its celebrity players, this video skyrocketed. 5 million views and Beyond the Guitar YouTube subscriptions doubled over the course of days. Now he has a second video out featuring another set of Fortnite Dances. Gamer or not, if you love music, this is a fun sampler!Photo Credit: Beyond the Guitar, YouTube

The dances are fun to watch and feature a wide range of music. Nathan’s classical guitar renditions are uniquely beautiful. My favorite of the dance/music combinations on this video are Bluegrass, a polka or Russian dance, a pop oldie, and a Rock finale (where Nathan brings out his electric guitar!!). Enjoy!

2) Spring Rain – We’ve had a fairly dry Spring in Richmond, Virginia. What this means for allergy-sufferers is the barrage of tree pollens that make being outside insufferable. The yellow blanket on all surfaces this time of year could use a good washing.Photo Credit: Charlotte Observer

This week, finally, the rain came. As happens with rains in our part of the world in May, all of nature seems to push up, greener and more vivid. We can all breathe deep the freshness of the air and the beauty around us. For me, the sound of rain is as glorious as its visual aftermath. We don’t live where flash flooding is a problem, so I do want to remember that days and days of rain isn’t happy for everyone. Still, it is a welcome respite from the hot dry days of late Spring in Richmond.

3) Habits of Love – Thanks to Andy Crouch (see #4), I have discovered Richmond attorney and thought leader Justin Earley and The Common Rule. So thrilled about this. The funny thing is that I ALMOST heard Justin speak on busyness earlier this month but couldn’t make it work schedule-wise (ironic, huh?). When Andy retweeted this image from Justin’s Twitter page, I was captivated.Photo Credit: The Common Rule, Twitter

From there, I discovered The Common Rule website and Facebook page. Subscribed, subscribed, subscribed. Justin focuses on habit formation towards love. He has really useful helps on his website and through his email subscription. I am on it!

Photo Credit: Common Rule of Life, Facebook

Meaningful Work – a Quest to Do Great Business, Find Your Calling, and Feed Your Soul – Shawn Askinosie

4) Andy Crouch on Shame – Author Andy Crouch has written an essay on how our culture has changed. For most of our history as a country, we have been a guilt-based culture. By that, I mean we measured ourselves and others as being “right or wrong” in our thinking, choosing to do right or wrong. This is how we raised our children. We determined not to measure our children up against (compared with) other people, but to raise them up with a standard of right living and making right choices (for us, it was based on the Bible…on the teachings and life of Jesus). “Right” was not legalistic or moralistic; “right” was loving, kind, serving, non-judgmental.

Today’s American culture has definitely moved away from a guilt orientation. We hear it all the time in statements like “Well, that may be OK for you.” “You have the right to believe that way.” “Don’t try to put that guilt on me.” However, our culture is not moving toward the traditional shame society, but more a shame-fame culture. Fame over honor. Social media has driven this in recent years. We want to be “seen” a certain way. In fact, a young colleague of ours once said, “It’s my job to make you look good.” I was shocked at that. One, “looking good” was not even on my radar. Either I was good (competent, responsible, dependable, etc) or I wasn’t. It demonstrated the culture shift and generational disconnect.

The shaming still happens in our culture. Children can be shamed for not behaving in ways that make their parents look good. Public shaming of people who don’t agree with each other can be as brutal as real ostracism. And so it goes.

Sigh…any thoughts? Please.

[Don’t forget to return and read Andy’s essay and David Brooks’ review of Crouch’s essay and this whole social phenomenon.]

The Return of Shame – Andy Crouch

The Shame Culture – David Brooks

The Rise of Shame in America – HonorShame

5) Wonder – we are surrounded by the wonderful. The older we get, the more the losses and hardships of life push in on our experience of wonder. Children, and especially grandchildren, help us with that. They fill our storm-dampened sails. I am so thankful we live in the same city as our children. When we have time with them, we stand a little taller, walk a little lighter, and wonder comes home to nest. Just last night, while our daughter and I were having a visit with an old friend, Dave elected to play with our little granddaughter. Off they went (not sure who was more excited). After the visit, daughter and grand-daughter headed out into the night, with “Bye…love you” resounding out of the back window. A tiny hand waving…

Dave was full of wonder. He marveled at how they read the whole hour. How a two-year-old could be that captured by stories! Maybe she was also in her own world of wonder, in the company of a granddad who loved her.Photo Credit: Pixabay

Hard to say, especially as a grandparent, who (in image below) is helping who…more.Photo Credit: Pixabay

Wonder is not just bound up in a child. It is all around us, in God’s own nature and his created nature. In all of us, bearing His image. Not just children, but everyone. I’m struck lately with how strong, and resilient, and persevering, and sharp most of the older adults are in my life. They are my heroes. Even when the mind and body weaken, life itself…the gift of life in all its forms and capacities…is a wonder.

Again, happy Friday! Hope yours is a rain-refreshed but not flooded weekend! [Edit: Have I got a story to tell for another day – It’s Friday night and the rain ceased to be refreshing hours ago – praying it stops!]

[Please share your own favorites or thoughts on above in the Comments. Much-appreciated.]

Bonuses:

Indoor Generation

Save the Storks – Pro-Woman, Pro-Baby, Pro-Family, Pro-Life