Milestones and Musings

I have been blogging for 10 years as of this month and this is my 200th posting, which might not be much to some folks but it amounts to enough words to fill a book. And on that note, I am planning on compiling a “best of” edition of posts available as an ebook so stay tuned for details.

I am also in the process of relaunching my website at www.seanfowlds.com and rethinking my blog format so I will post updates about that also. As for frequency of posts, I am thinking of updating my blog weekly and publishing some type of ebook annually.

I have been encouraged lately by several regular readers of my blog to keep up the good work and so am busy ramping up my writing across the board, including my print book, tentatively titled Searching for Mayberry: One Couple’s Quest to Redefine the American Dream.

The Screen Age

I enjoy gadgets as much as the next guy but a series of events this past weekend convinced me the incivility of others misusing them threatens our pursuit of happiness, our liberties, and our very lives; in other words, all the things our society was founded upon, if I may be so dramatic.

Because my wife had Good Friday off we headed out to view a matinee showing of the uplifting movie Heaven Is For Real, a faith-based film focused on high-minded themes like uh, heaven and eternal life, for instance. Such topics surely would bring out the best in one’s fellow men, or at least fellow moviegoers, wouldn’t you think? Well, think again!

Before we even entered the theatre complex itself a “screenager” fixated on his smartphone acted anything but smart by walking right into me, so I suggested he watch what he was doing, which he summarily sloughed off without so much as an apology.

Once inside the theatre, the one where they play repeated reminders to turn OFF all devices, a woman sitting in front of us insisted upon checking her smartphone several times during the movie until I politely asked her to stop, at which point she reluctantly did so. Suffice it to say that smartphones and stupid people do not mix.

I once heard a clever turn of phrase suggesting that an “ipodectomy” be administered to people dependent on iPods and other such devices. Either that or a lobotomy, I think. The thing I’ve come to realize is that technology simply amplifies who we are as people. If one acts rudely without an iPhone, one is likely to act more so with one. And movie going is the least of our issues when so many distracted drivers threaten our safety with their thoughtlessness. Heaven IS for real and we need to act like it here on earth by not being so selfish using our devices.

Point of View

It was famed photographer Mario Tostino who I first heard define photography as “writing with light.” As my business is called Lightpost Communications and my blog here is called Lightpost, my chosen media for communicating have always been both prose and pictures. And so it was with delight that I came upon a thoughtful essay about photography the other day in the New York Times entitled “Through a Lens Sharply.”

Former magazine editor Dominique Browning, author of Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on My Pajamas, and Found Happiness, which I had read earlier, wrote the essay about her newfound love of photography and the renewed perspective of life it has given her. Incredibly, the well traveled writer had never owned a camera until a friend gave her a simple point-and-shoot model a couple of years ago and she hasn’t quit pointing and shooting it since. While I don’t ordinarily share excerpts at such length Browning’s musings are too beautiful not to speak for themselves.

As she writes, “My pictures are evidence that I was there, that I cared enough to pay attention, that I noticed, and honored, those tiny miracles of life we are all given, along whatever path we have chosen to travel. Now, when I travel, I feel a simultaneous quickening of desire, and a thickening of time. When I scroll back over the photo rolls in my computer, I study my idiosyncratic way of seeing, and I find something I think of as my own sense of time, my own rhythm of movement through the world. It is slow, and getting slower, more deliberate, more mindful of small beauties.”

My camera roll is…a way of collecting souvenirs, which, like any trinket, might be meaningful only to me. And so what? I can scroll back through time, because of my camera, and remember where I have been, what I saw, whom I was with—and this isn’t limited to what I captured in an image. Each image triggers associated recollections, and they roll alongside, hovering around each picture.”

No one sees the world the way you do. No one. If you fall in love with a photograph, it is often because of a glimpse of recognition, even a pang of desire, that things were or should be that way—or that someone came close to seeing what you saw. The photographs we take hold a place in our personal narratives, like bookmarks. We know what led up to that moment. And only we know what came next.” What a point of view.

Escaping House Arrest

It has been said that time flies when you are having fun, and so it has for us lately. At about this time only four years ago our neighbor’s huge oak tree fell unbidden on our beloved home, shaking our sense of safety and ultimately leading us to reevaluate our lifestyle. As the result of our analysis, we cast off the anchor of home ownership tying us to one locale and used the extra time and money that selling our house a year later afforded us to explore other modes of living.

In the meantime, Robert Shiller of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index made the dramatic statement that, with Americans’ growing shift to renting and city living, suburban home prices may never rebound in our lifetime. “Except for some exceptional boom periods, housing has never been a good financial investment,” he said. Shiller, the world’s leading student of bubbles, housing and otherwise, found that from “1890 to 1990, the rate of return on residential real estate was just about zero after inflation.”

According to Richard Florida, author of The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity, “Mobility and flexibility are key principles of the modern economy. Home ownership limits both. According to one important study, cities with higher home ownership rates also suffer from higher unemployment rates.” Linda and I can attest that mobility and flexibility were key qualities in our quest for a leaner style of living.

And Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes in his bestselling book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: “Also consider the number of families who tunnel on their future, locking themselves into hard-to-flip real estate thinking they are going to live there permanently, not realizing that the general track record for sedentary living is dire. Don’t they see those well-dressed real-estate agents driving around in fancy two-door German cars? We are very nomadic, far more than we plan to be, and forcibly so. Consider how many people who have abruptly lost their job deemed it likely to occur, even a few days before.”

All of which suggests that Linda and I made a smart move when we escaped house arrest and adopted a more mobile means of living. Just the other day, a prominent regional magazine announced that our new hometown of Franklin, Tennessee, beat out another place we’ve called home, Savannah, Georgia, as the best southern town. And since we’ve mobilized our lives, we’ve had the pleasure of living in other popular destinations like Celebration, Florida and Nantucket, Massachusetts. While it might not be for everyone, we are loving the leasing lifestyle!

Savoring the Silence

My wife and I had the pleasure of visiting with a friend of ours yesterday over brunch after church, during which the pastor had shared about the need to savor silence in our lives in order to draw closer to God. He even went so far as to suggest we unplug our televisions and tune into our loved ones, as I have written about lately.

As we visited with our friend, she reminded us that her husband, who is hospitalized with a stroke, was moved to a private room since his former roommate watched nonstop television, a medium not very helpful to the healing process, what with its daily menu of violence and vitriol. But it is not only television that hinders us from hearing the still, small voice of God in the silence. There are many sources of noise, technological and otherwise, that we need to notice and neutralize in our lives.

One simple way to dial out the distractions in daily life is to spend time enjoying nature. Now that spring has sprung in our area, my wife and I are awakening to the budding blooms of nature’s bounty all around us, whether it’s the forsythia, daffodils or pear trees pictured above, creation is coming alive in our corner of the world and we are slowing down to savor it. God created nature for us to enjoy and doing so blesses us even as it blesses the Creator.

The Great Awakening

I once wrote a research paper about the eighteenth century spiritual revival called the Great Awakening. It started in New England and spread throughout the other colonies of America. And I think the time has come for another awakening today due to the stupefying effect of the screen age in which we live.

I am reading a thought-provoking book titled Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. It is subtitled “Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business” and it is a classic treatise on the hypnotization of humanity through the means of television but also other technological tools at our disposal. The book was written before the advent of the Internet but its wisdom is as timely as it is timeless.

I don’t know about you but it appears to me that people are virtually sleepwalking through life and sometimes literally asleep at the wheel, largely due to the perceived need to stay “connected” with others, usually ones not present with the person. Don’t even get me started about the continued threat of texting while driving despite its being outlawed in most states.

If I have a pet peeve it is when people attend to someone absent at the expense of someone present. I have traveled hundreds of miles to stay overnight with loved ones only to be left waiting at the door while they chit-chatted on the phone with others. Respecting people begins with valuing their presence and if that is lacking then it doesn’t say much for the relationship.

In closing, I recently read an attention-getting quote by Annie Dillard in The Writing Life: “We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show.” I am not so sure about the half dressed part, but I think it would help to turn off all our screens and tune into each other.

Unplugging to Reconnect

Author Alain de Botton said, “Journeys are the midwives of thought.” My wife and I recently returned from a roadtrip to Florida during which we saw our families and thawed out at the beach, and it got me thinking. I turned 50 earlier this year and, while I turned down an AARP membership, I am mindful of my stage in life and that none of us is getting any younger, no matter how hard we try to maintain our youth.

On our journey south, we had the pleasure of visiting not only with family but also with several friends that we hadn’t seen in the year since we last visited Florida. Most are our age or older and some had experienced health issues during that time, even severe ones. My dad turned 90 at the end of last year and has had his challenges, including surgery to remove a cancerous growth. All in all, our loved ones are fine, but this life is temporary.

The other day I saw a poster that captured this very sentiment: “All that we called our own, as it turns out, was borrowed.” Not only are our lives not our own yet gifts from our Maker, but all of our stuff is on loan also. Yes, all of the stuff that we strive so hard to obtain, maintain and retain…it is all temporary, people. The only thing that remains after this life is over is our spiritual being and our relationships with other people. That is it!

As I am writing this on the one-year anniversary of my mother-in-law’s passing, I can’t help reflecting on her godly heritage and the gracious gift she gave me in the guise of her daughter. I am grateful to God for her and glad that she is enjoying her eternal reward. As for me, I enjoyed a special time visiting with my mother the other day, a chat into the late evening as a result of my inadvertently unplugging a cable, wiping out the television.

To place this event in its proper perspective, it is important to understand that for talking to replace television in my parents’ household practically takes an act of God, so it was no minor miracle that my mother and I had the opportunity to catch up with one another and discuss things that would never have arisen if the television had been operating. Perhaps the moral of the story is that we must unplug in order to reconnect with what matters.

Unconventional Wisdom

I once heard billionaire investor Warren Buffett say that the time to invest is when the herd is trying to get out of the market, as that is when the deals are to be had. In other words, he was advocating a contrarian philosophy of investing, which requires one to disregard conventional wisdom in favor of the unconventional type. It is not always easy to do or else everyone would do it, but it pays rich dividends.

And it takes guts to think and act counter to popular culture also. When the American Dream is defined as owning your home and you opt out to try a different mode of living it can cause people to question your sanity. I know because we’ve experienced it. While most of our loved ones have been supportive of the transitional lifestyle we embarked upon about three years ago, some simply didn’t get it, and that’s okay. But the rub comes when you step out to follow your dreams anyhow.

When I was asked in college by a fraternity brother during the initiation process to describe myself in two words, I replied: “conservatively unorthodox,” and I still think that comes pretty close to capturing it. Standing out isn’t that hard to do if you are willing to question assumptions and challenge the status quo. As the saying goes: “it’s hard to fly with eagles when you flock with turkeys” [and are too chicken to try].

Speaking of fowl, I am reading a profoundly insightful book called The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and he writes: “Not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking. You stand above the rat race and the pecking order, not outside of it, if you do so by choice…You have far more control over your life if you decide on your criterion by yourself.” Amen.

Enough Is Enough

There is a story that author Kurt Vonnegut once informed his friend and fellow author Joseph Heller at a party that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 [which sold more than 10 million copies] over its whole history. To which Heller was said to respond, “Yes, but I have something he will never have…enough.”

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary the definition of enough is: “occurring in such quantity, quality, or scope as to fully meet demands, needs, or expectations.” What that looks like for each of us depends on our own specific situations but it is probably safe to say that the answer lies somewhere shy of where we think it does.

The tell tale sign that we Americans don’t think we own enough is our national obsession with shopping. For example, the average American makes 38 trips to a mall every year, spending an average of $83.30 per visit, or $1.01 per minute spent at the mall. And with an Internet connection we don’t even have to leave the comfort of our homes to rack up the debt, which Americans do to the tune of $8,000 on credit cards alone.

Referring to the iconic World War II era Norman Rockwell painting titled “Freedom from Want,” David Kamp writes in Vanity Fair: “It was freedom from want, not freedom to want—a world away from the idea that the patriotic thing to do in tough times is go shopping. Though the germ of that idea would form shortly, not long after the war ended.” Wherever we are on the consumer scale we need to try wanting less and enjoying the bounty that is ours. Enough is enough.

Living a Legacy

I am reading a book about the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and it appears that he qualifies for the billionaire bad boy club by sharing the unenviable trait of being both a genius and a jerk. I hesitate to use such strong language but I am fed up with reading the life stories of so called “successful” businessmen who bullied their way to the top while leaving a path of destroyed relationships in their wake.

Bezos didn’t kick a partner to the curb like Steve Jobs of Apple did with Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates of Microsoft did with Paul Allen but he has apparently alienated scores of others who helped get Amazon off the ground while making billions in the process of laughing [his infamous laugh] all the way to the bank. But what he and his ilk don’t realize is theirs is not the last laugh. The lives we leave behind determine our legacy so how we live is what matters. It is the foolish that think it better to be feared than loved.

In full disclosure, I am a big fan of Apple products and actually cried the day Steve Jobs died, but it grieved me more to read in his official biography how poorly he treated people. And the first software I got for my Apple computer was Microsoft’s Office for Mac but I find it profoundly ironic that Bill Gates is now globetrotting as a philanthropist after helping himself to Apple technology that he later used to monopolize the software industry. I also happen to be a fan of Amazon and hope Jeff Bezos learns to live a legacy worth leaving before it is too late.

The Heart of Art

As part of our celebration of my 50th birthday the other day my wife and I visited the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the Frist Center in Nashville and loved it. According to the exhibit, Rockwell was hailed as a “contemporary Currier and Ives” and “Dickens with a paintbrush” and was heralded for the realism and idealism of his portrayals of simple, small town life in America.

One of my favorite Rockwell paintings, which was not part of the exhibit but hangs at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, is the painting of his adopted hometown at Christmastime, which is pictured above. It speaks to me of the beauty of New England, the Christmas holiday, and small town living in general. Rockwell’s ability to capture the essence of any setting was unparalleled, but home even more so.

Rockwell was a master of his craft and as an artist he inspires me to create with heart the type of art that uplifts people and moves them toward their better selves. To me the artist’s legacy is so much more than the impressive quantity of his artwork; it is also the quality of the art he created with such attention to detail. Some may criticize Rockwell’s work as crass commercialism, but I think he preferred people to products and it showed in his portrayal of them.

Happy Wife, Happy Life

I had an epiphany that I thought I’d share here in the hope that it’ll help others. I was thinking earlier about this year drawing to a close and how I hadn’t yet finished the book I am writing. While I am proud of what I’ve written of the book and the articles I wrote this year, not to mention the editing and speaking I did, I was ruminating about what was left unfinished when I asked myself: What are you most proud of creating? And the answer that sprang to mind was: My lifestyle!

Of course, I owe my very life and any creative ability to The Creator, God, but within that overall context, I am very intentional about designing a lifestyle that I love and that is ultimately a reflection of God’s good gifts to me. Besides that I can think of no better barometer of how I’m living than that old adage: “happy wife, happy life.” It blesses me no end that my wife is happy, which in turn makes me very happy. As another saying goes: “if momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

As I posted yesterday, we recently returned from a dream vacation to our former home of Nantucket and it was wonderful to celebrate my wife’s birthday with friends while we were there. What made it all the more special for me was to see how much my wife was enjoying herself, whether it was seeing all our friends at church, mailing Christmas cards from the island, or seeing snow on the beach, she was having the time of her life.

You can see the smile on my wife’s face in the above photo speaks for itself. We were about to board the ten-seat “puddle jumper” of an airplane just before witnessing a gorgeous sunset over the ocean as we approached the spit of land that is Nantucket Island. It all contributed to a memorable homecoming for us and it’s one that neither my wife nor I will soon forget.

A Stroll Back in Time

I posted my last entry about the holidays before they got any further away in time. However, I also wanted to highlight another holiday activity of ours: the recent trip my wife and I made back to the island of Nantucket, where we used to live before moving here to historic Franklin. It was in multiple ways a stroll back in time for us as we visited the island during its annual nautical-themed Christmas Stroll the first weekend in December.

We stayed the entire week with good friends of ours who succeeded in keeping our visit a secret, just as we had requested. It was so much fun seeing the surprised look on people’s faces when we showed up at church the morning after our arrival, including the pastors of the church whom we had stayed with for a month before leaving Nantucket a year and a half earlier. It was as if time had stood still during our absence and we picked up right where we had left off.

Linda and I agree that it was our favorite vacation in many ways, not the least of which were our friends’ gracious hospitality, our ability to forgo the ferry and fly all the way onto the island, visiting our favorite haunts like the Downyflake and the Brotherhood, and getting invited by a friend [who happens to be the commodore] to attend a meeting of the renowned Wharf Rat Club, whose eclectic membership includes statesmen, sailors and storytellers of all stripes.

A Currier and Ives Christmas

It may be the day after Christmas but the holiday season continues, at least according to the traditional 12 days of Christmas countdown. And while we may be well into the 21st century my wife and I are experiencing a Currier and Ives Christmas here in historic Franklin. The festivities kicked off with a Victorian-themed “Dickens of a Christmas” celebration downtown, complete with costumed characters and carolers.

Next we attended a Christmas service at our new church held in an old chapel with music and ministry by award-winning musician and founding pastor Michael W. (Smitty) Smith. Afterward, we watched our favorite movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” at the Franklin Theatre with a host of our fellow townspeople. On Christmas Eve, we attended our church’s candlelight service with carol singing led by Smitty.

On Christmas Day, we celebrated simply and quietly at home by opening our gifts, listening to Christmas music, relaxing around the house and eating my wife’s specialty pot roast before watching a favorite movie and calling it a day. Our only nods to today’s technology were reading on our new Kindle Paperwhite and contacting loved ones with our iPhones. Finally, we are swinging in another New Year in an old-fashioned way with the Glenn Miller Orchestra at the Franklin Theatre. Here is to simple living!

Celebrating Holy Days Too

My wife and I were blessed with a visit from her father for a couple of days at our new place here in Franklin before the three of us headed to her brother’s farm in rural Tennessee to feast with about twenty other family members. With a turkey and ham and all the fixings, we had a rich time of food and fellowship. What made it even more special is the fact we share a common faith.

Of all the many things I am thankful for this year at the top of the list is the gift of a faith shared with family. I try to never take for granted that when we all get together during the holidays they truly become holy days, special times for us to celebrate our shared heritage. There are few things more satisfying to me than being part of a household of faith that stands together through the tests of time.

The Meaning of Home

With the holidays around the corner it is natural that our thoughts turn to hearth and home. But exactly what is the meaning of home? Many of us think of some idealized version of a house, perhaps situated down a lane or upon a hill, surrounded by a bucolic landscape, maybe in New England or some other picturesque setting.

However, as the saying goes, “a house does not make a home.” What most of us mean when we conjure visions of home is the sense of togetherness we experience with the people we love. It is our relationships with loved ones that constitute a home, not real estate, no matter how beautifully situated.

So to quote another popular saying, “home is where the heart is.” If there is anything that Linda and I have learned over the course of the last couple years is that “home” has become a moving target for us. Home is wherever we are with each other. And as Christians, we’ve adopted the truism that “In Christ” is our permanent address.

In her groundbreaking book The Not So Big Life: Making Room for What Really Matters, Sarah Susanka writes, “Although we normally associate the word “home” with a place that’s built out of bricks and mortar, in fact home is much more than that. It is a feeling and a way of being in one’s life rather than any specific place.”

“We are all looking for home, but we’re looking with the wrong tool,” adds Susanka. “We are trying to find home through more square footage, when in fact the quality of home has almost nothing to do with size. Instead, it’s to be found in the qualities of space rather than the quantities…” This holiday season, here’s to sweet fellowship, regardless of the square footage.

Living and Working Remotely

I came across a thoughtful article today at FastCompany.com titled “A New Workplace Manifesto: In Praise of Freedom, Time, Space, and Working Remotely” by David Heinemeier Hansson, coauthor with Jason Fried of the recently released Remote: Office Not Required. I don’t usually quote others so liberally on my blog but the article really resonated with me so here are some of the more salient points.

As Hansson writes, “While working remotely obviously frees you from the dreaded commute and the interruption factory of the office, it also lets you pick where to live…Liberating yourself from the geography of work opens a whole new world of opportunities. It lessens the necessity of looking forward to retirement to finally live your life.” Linda and I coined the term “pretirement” to describe our lifestyle of living and working in special places.

Hansson further suggests, “It’s time to reject the false dichotomy between work and luxury…So what if we could have both? What if we could retain the stimulation of work and also embrace the true luxury of non-deferred living? That’s the inclusive truth that more and more people are finding in working remotely.” Linda and I have made it a point since day one to celebrate the present, as it’s all we’re guaranteed.

And Hansson concludes, “Working without the commute, without the shackled office, and living in the place of your dreams…sounds like a science fiction utopia. But it’s very real indeed. It’s the future of luxury, and it’s called remote work.” I couldn’t agree more and I love living and working remotely.

Living Large With Less

The other day I had the pleasure of giving my father-in-law a tour of our place during his quick visit to historic Franklin. Of course, he is very familiar with our minimalist journey and thus knows as well as anyone what we have jettisoned en route to arriving at our latest destination.

So it was ironic when he later commented with a smile over a cup of coffee regarding our nicely furnished, newly leased home, “So much for minimalism.” To which I replied with a smile of my own, “We like leasing spacious places furnished with antiques and artwork for less than we paid for our own place.”

Somewhat understandably, when people hear the word “minimalism” they typically think of living a lesser lifestyle in a qualitative sense, which may be one version of it, but not the one we espouse. The type of minimalism my wife and I experience is living with less in a quantitative sense, which in turn allows for a higher overall quality of life for us.

In fact, our minimalist journey has been a progressive one, with us literally moving from one level of accommodation to another, and all for the same relatively modest amount. If only to indicate what minimalism is not, I’ll divulge that the estimated property values of the four places we’ve leased thus far have ranged, in $200,000 increments, from $400,000 to $1 million.

Also, each place we’ve leased without exception has not only been furnished but has to varying degrees also included utilities. And the furnishings, including appliances, linens, towels, dishes, pots, pans and utensils, have been as nice, or even nicer, than anything we used to own. To those so disposed, I heartily recommend considering the minimalist lifestyle. For my wife and I at least, it is “living large with less.”

Sedentary Stuff Syndrome

I read the other day about a phenomenon called “sedentary death syndrome,” the chronic condition caused by sitting too much, which contributes to all sorts of ailments. The antidote, the article suggested, was simply to get moving, and that is good advice. Moving, in all its forms, has a way of helping us shed the excess in our lives, whether it is bodily weight or the weight of stuff.

As I’ve posted here earlier, my wife and I adopted the motto of “minimize to mobilize” during the process of paring our possessions in order to move as frequently as we liked. But whether or not that is your intention, you can benefit from living with less stuff. I share about our journey in an article titled “Is Your Stuff Holding You Hostage?” in the latest issue of Facts & Trends magazine.

As one reader commented, not everyone is interested in mimicking our mobile lifestyle, but the point I mean to make is that we can all benefit from living lighter, whether or not we opt to go mobile. For the dozen years preceding our radical downscaling we lived in the same house in the same town and so our stuff gradually grew to pack our humble abode. As much as we strived to live simply, our lifestyle became a sedentary one by virtue of our not moving every couple of years or so, as we had before building our house. Minimizing stuff helps you maximize life and avoid sedentary stuff syndrome.

To Be or Not To Be

In the immortal words of William Shakespeare, “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” I am a big believer in the power of living in the present and the only way to do that is to focus more on being than doing. Busyness has an insidious way of weaving itself into our lives to the point that we forget there is another, better way to live. Believe it or not, each of us has the power to either accept or reject the encroachment of busyness in our lives.

How? You may ask. By identifying the absolute essentials in our lives and structuring our time around them. If you are like most people, you’d say you value your faith, family and friends, but how you spend your time tells the tale. For example, is church attendance or other faith centric fellowship a given in your life? If not you may need to examine how vital faith is to you. We often give lip service to our beliefs but our lives don’t lie.

I mention faith as a foundation because I have found it indispensible to living a life centered on being versus doing. And it is important to point out that I am not talking about religious striving to become a better person. The type of faith I mean is one that rests in what God has done for us through Christ and ceases from senseless activity. Many people apparently believe that “busier is better” judging by their crammed calendars but racing against the clock is a fool’s errand.

Years ago I spoke at a church about the need for believers to “work smarter, not harder” and I will never forget the look on the pastors’ faces. It was as if I spoke a foreign language, one that they simply could not comprehend. It was a truth they failed to identify with. Time has proven the value of the statement in my life and they have suffered the consequences of not heeding it. As I’ve said before, God made us human beings, not human doings. His name is I AM and we are created in his image. To be, that is the answer.