On mornings when I have plenty of time to think, especially when mowing my lawn, I muse upon my life reflections, some amazing opportunities and even dreams still to be fulfilled; I then process online. Will it ever impact others as I feel it could? Possibly, but if not, it's therapeutic enough that I continue.
As I have mentioned to several of my mentees, I am in my "Morrie moment," referencing the quite moving book of years past, Tuesdays With Morrie. You might Goggle the title.
Having now written or provided subject matter for five books, each a little more telling, a sixth continues to call me while I await the cover selection for the last. The title being toyed with is Cabin Talk.
In fact, tomorrow I will be in our backyard cabin with about eight professionals, most around fifty years of age.
The jest of many of these seventeen years of random meetings has been fellowship for me, but I am told often brings insight for those younger, some surprisingly young. Did I request such meetings with those in their mid-seventies when I was in my twenties? Most unlikely!
Therein is my hope.
Now for twenty-five years, "Master Counsel," a name assigned to me in an early morning awakening, then soon incorporated, has long functioned as a forprofit business masking my calling to marketplace ministry.
My activity, though professionally grounded by multiple degrees, licensure and certifications has beden driven by a belief that the next great awakening will come not from the Institutional Church, but from the marketplace. More specifically, the scores of young entrepreneurs now being birthed daily!
Not only have my ventures into consulting, coaching, real estate and multiple startups provided income stream for my family but with few exceptions, successful lifelivehood for others, be they for-profit or non-profit.
However, the "Cabin Talk" of which I now desire to write has been more about those who have circled back for a "piece of my time" regarding a comment or story shared during a group setting that had leagered long afterwards, somewhat gripping of their spirit.
Many times the cabin has served as host and benefited small groups, board retreat settings, etc., yet seldom called by me, though we constructed the facilty as a shared space for ministry.
However, the real treat has been in the one on one, or one on two settings for those with little or no belief system, those who have silently cirled back around.
Awkward at first, on the front end of our cabin time, as a heart slowly opens toward true vulnerability, then shortly into the cabin dialogue the visitor becomes openly passionate about thoughts they have seldom shared. My gift seems the courage to share likewise...being human moreso than religious.
Yes, I have learned, the most beneficial conversations are birthed out of a willingness to share my own challenges, even after fifty years in the faith.
Too often we mask doubt, though without doubt there is no requirement for faith; and without faith, one has no evidence or substance to justify the mystery that has birthed so many religions, and unfortunately, within the struggles between our beliefs cost so many lives!
One of my heroes of the faith was John the Baptist, who shortly before his beheading sent word through a disciple, "Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?"
Lest you judge either this John, or the one of Jesus' day, many others such as Jan Hus, Mother Teresa and Dietrich Bonhoffer have also asked the same!
Doubt is the bookend of our faith. Make yourself vulnerable to others, ask questions and you will grow in your faith.
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