Beyond the Water Cooler

by Doug Wysockey-Johnson

Rachel Remen was a therapist for two surgeons who were respected faculty at a nearby medical school. Each one came to her independently, reporting loneliness, depression and burnout. Neither knew the other was also seeing Dr. Remen.

Of this situation, Remen writes:

These two men had been professional partners for more than twenty years. They shared a receptionist, a staff of nurses, an office, but they didn’t know each other. They shared a therapist, too but I was ethically bound not to tell either about the other’s visits or even that they were both my patients. I would encourage each of them to talk to his partner about these things, but I’d get the same response every time: “Him? Heaven’s he would just laugh.”

(Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that heal, Published by Riverside Books)

In the meantime, Gallup research shows that 50% of employees with a good friend at work reported that they felt a strong connection with their workplace, compared to just 10% without a good friend at work.

In an article about this finding, Christine Riordan writes in a Harvard Business Review blog:

Camaraderie is more than just having fun….It is also about creating a common sense of purpose and the mentality that we are in it together. Studies have shown that soldiers form strong bonds during missions in part because they believe in the purpose of the mission, rely on each other, and share the good and the bad as a team.

Based on this growing body of research, more and more organizational leaders are connecting the dots. Employees that are connected to each other and their purpose are happier and more engaged.

This is where Lumunos comes in. The last few years, we have been given the opportunity to see this phenomena up close. Lumunos has been hired by organizations to help their employees develop a deeper sense of collegiality. Sometimes the topic is about the challenges of the work; other times it is about work-life balance. Always the goal is to go beyond water cooler discussions.

Lumunos has been about relationship and purpose for over 80 years. It doesn’t really matter to us whether the conversation happens in a retreat center or conference room. We are just glad that people are talking about things that matter.

No Fear of Death

by Paul Hettinga

Recently Laura Truax, Senior Pastor at LaSalle Street Church in Chicago, preached about one of our greatest fears: death. According to her, death is used by God to help us focus on life, on living fully, on becoming all we’re meant to be. Death isn’t used by God to create fear in us or to be the final damning judgment on us - but due to Jesus victory over death, it’s meant to enliven us, to eliminate fear in us and to cause us to choose life and choose it fully each day.

I had two reactions to her sermon:

First, she asked us to write our own epitaph and post it in front of us as a way of reminding us who we want to be at the end. Mine was a simple thought; “I’d like to be known as a person who leaned in more than I leaned out.”

It’s not a big goal in most ways and certainly the words are inadequate in describing what this means for me - so here are a few key points of what this might look like:   

• Lean into faith, hope, love - God
• Lean into peace - not fighting, anger, adversarial attitudes or violence
• Lean into my wife and our relationship - not away from her
• Lean into what I value, or even my ideal values
• Lean into the mystery - instead of leaning back on the certainty
• Lean into the future - instead of resting on the past
• Lean into the light - both in living and when approaching death…
• Lean into community, both close and far, like and unlike myself
• Lean into me - the "me" God imagines me to be. It’s there that I’ll find both him and myself and the community of saints that we are destined for if we will but lean in just a little bit each day.

Try writing your own epitaph and share it with someone you love. Like me, I think you’ll find it will bring focus and joy to your journey.

Second, I have a good friend of nearly 35 years now who has always said he thought life would be better lived backwards; i.e. start off old and die young. Aside from the obvious impossibility of this, it’s an interesting idea in light of Laura’s sermon.

In this view, we start life with all the experience, knowledge, love and prioritized values that a life well lived might produce. Instead of learning this slowly as we live, we have it at the inception of a life lived backwards. For example, we could be better parents if we had grand-parented first; anybody who is or has been a grandparent knows this or better newly married couples, better students and so on.

Since Jesus overcame death and promises the same victory for us, he has taken the mystery away and has given us an opportunity to embrace that which he already knows - that death has no sting - that in death we are made not less but more, we are not simply gone, but are in the presence of God, all the saints and in the hearts, minds and spirits of those we left behind.

If we embraced this fully, made it a central point in our core of most closely held personal values, deep within our psyche, our soul; it would be like living backwards, living old to young, having all the keenly formed ideas of a life well lived at the beginning and through our life, not just at the end of our life. I believe this is what God wants for us - to so fully believe him, to trust him, to have our lives defined by that which he has already taken care of for us that we have no other real choice in life but to lean into our futures, fearlessly.

Selfies

by Tom Pappas

Approximately 20 years ago I was introduced to Flat Stanley when pastor Carl stood him on the edge of the pulpit and explained he was helping his niece with a school project. Flat Stanley was an elderly 30 at the time, but the children’s letter-writing project with Stanley posing for photographs in unusual places was just beginning.

Cut to September 2014 with Laurel and me seeing some spectacular European sites. A 21^st Century observation is that hands down, the greatest danger to tourists is other tourists taking selfies. Lots of random stopping!

In the Louvre, a significant number of the huge throng in line for Mona Lisa, literally turn their back on the masterpiece to snap a selfie proving that they have stood in front of the surprisingly small art piece.

That’s the point, isn’t it – to verify attendance at a moment in history.

Last October, my friend, Rabbi Craig, reported on Facebook that he couldn’t afford a game seven World Series ticket for his beloved Royals, but he couldn’t NOT be in Kansas City, so he would drive 200 miles to the Power and Light district to watch with other fans on a big screen.  20 minutes before the first pitch, a Facebook selfie shows up with Craig AT THE GAME! I haven’t heard that whole story yet.

This week at church, Stanley became three-dimensional. To commemorate of our 110^th year of ministry, during the passing of the peace, we were invited to take selfies and later post them on social media to verify our presence at this moment in the church’s history. It was a buzz. It was significantly more lively than any other passing of the peace – EVER. I liked doing it except for this. In an important way, it took my “eye off the ball”.

I have come to believe that one of the best Sunday morning gifts I can give is to look my pew neighbor in the eye and offer the Peace of Christ. As a pastor once told us, “What we need more than another ‘Good Morning’, is The Peace of Christ.” I have carefully never said “Good Morning” during this part of the service for over 20 years.

So this selfie project disturbed my intentional delivery of Christ’s Peace like I have long made a habit of doing. But the tradeoff is having Stanley and/or ourselves being photographed in an unusual and important place.

What good things to do – 110 years of service, and have the Peace of Christ be with you.