The King's Speech--And Yours

Sure The King’s Speech won the Oscar for the Best Picture on Sunday night.  But did you know that before that it won a Lumun?  Don’t feel bad if you didn’t—no one associated with the film did either.  

A Lumun is an award I just made up, and it is given to any person or piece of art that says something about the process of following call.  The King’s Speech was a clear winner. 

If you saw the picture, you know the core of the story:  King George VI has a horrible speech impediment.  Lionel Logue is an unconventional speech therapist who helps him “find his voice”, which enables King George to overcome his stammer and deliver a radio address that inspires the people of Britain on the brink of World War II.   

It’s a literal story of something that is true for all of us.  None of us can find our voice or our call completely on our own.  Here at Lumunos we often speak of “Evocative Friends”, people who evoke (from the word e-vocis , literally to draw out our voice) our call. 

In his book Answering your Call, John Schuster speaks of evocateurs:  “A person who expresses this talent we will call an evocateur—one who evokes out of people and their circumstances the skills, gifts, and potential they did not know they had.”  He names these traits of evocateurs, many of which Lionel Logue possessed:

*Evocateurs ask good questions

*Evocateurs tell the truth

*Evocateurs see potential

*Evocateurs appeal to our longing to be more than we are

*Evocateurs both find and create teachable moments

Who have been your evocateurs?  For whom might you be an evocateur?  Who knows, next year it might be you winning the Lumun. 

Doug Wysockey-Johnson

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When Ideas Flow

What do you think about when given a free moment? Are there problems you find yourself solving whether or not you are asked? When do ideas flow, and what are they about? The way you answer these questions can tell you a lot about the direction your life wants to take you.

Recently in a Make a Living, Have a Life Group a 30-something woman named Katie was talking about an invitation she received to be on a web committee for a local nonprofit. Even as she was deciding whether or not to say “yes,” she had all kinds of thoughts about the work of the committee. Almost as an aside, she said to our group, “Yea, the ideas always flow around that stuff for me.”

As group facilitator, I subtly blew my air horn and sent up a signal flare. These Have a Life calls are designed to help people find work that is more connected with their meaning and passion. Katie had just identified an important trail marker on that path.

Ideas usually flow most naturally and abundantly around things to which we feel called. It is as if there is a spring of creativity that is constantly renewing itself. We don’t even have to try—as Katie says, the ideas just come. The opposite is true as well.

Yesterday I was in my back yard doing a simple carpentry project. It didn’t take me long to get in trouble. I just don’t have a lot of imagination when it comes to building projects. I can usually stumble my way through without stapling myself to a fence, but clearly the idea fountain is neither abundant nor renewing when I am doing carpentry. But today when it came time to think about a retreat and writing project, the ideas came rolling out. I didn’t really have to even try—they are just there gurgling up.

Implementing ideas is a whole other topic, and one that usually does involve blood, sweat and sometimes a few tears. But paying attention to the places in our lives where we have ideas flowing without even trying—that is a trail marker worth noticing.