Archives for September 2018

Sandboxes are considered play-spaces. A space where things are created and destroyed continually in a cycle of exploration. With every iteration, new things are learned, new preferences found, and new ideas unveiled.

One of the most important things I’ve learned about playing in a sandbox is that learning how the sandbox functions is integral to having fun. Through every instance of play, we learn what can be done with sand, how much sand we have, where the sandbox itself begins and ends, and other bits of experiential knowledge about the way the sandbox works. It is through this knowledge that familiarity, and by extension confidence, is built. We become confident in our ability to play. We have more fun, discover more things.

I find myself going through this same process for every new project, skill, or space I enter into. In order to be confident and comfortable I search for answers to the following questions:

1) How does the medium I’m using function?

2) What resources do I have access to?

3) What are the limits of the play space?

These questions lead to the answer of another important question:

4) How do I move around this space?

The quicker I answer these questions, the easier, more fluid, the play time becomes. I become more open, because I’m more confident in my playing. The more open I am, the more things come out, the more enjoyable the time. And isn’t the experience of joy one of the goals of playing in sandbox anyway?

Memories are an important part of how we come to understand our world and our path. Our memories hold our past experiences and what we’ve gleaned from them. They are the touchstones for the running story of our lives that we have in our minds.

With such an important place in our lives it is important that we mind our memories. We should remember to remember. We should take the time to hold memories, process them, reflect on them, discern their effect on our lives.

None of this happens quickly, and we are often distracted from this work. Take the time. It’s important work. So that our memories may be reconciled, too, and nothing may be left undone.

This is very real, and often is used for evil. The school yard game of dare, which would quickly escalate to double-dog-daring, never bore much good. Yet, the assumption under which social pressure functions is actually good. It is simply the idea that conforming to the image of those whose relationship you value is a good thing. Example:

We often value the relationship of those who care for us, take an interest in our wellbeing, or provide for us. The signal is that they have our best interest in mind. If they do, we suspect that they might also be a good model of a person as well. Why not conform to them?

Here’s why. Not everyone who cares for us, takes an interest, or provides for us, is also modeling behavior that they want passed on. Most, while trying to live a perfect life, have their faults (a perfect life is rare, for the rest of us there is Grace). Nevertheless, any conforming that happens should ultimately be checked against values, lest we wake up one day a person we don’t recognize.

Many pursuits have built in checks. The most obvious are pursuits that have certificate or degree programs with tests that you have to pass. These credentials function to identify who has gained a certain amount of knowledge and expertise. The institutions that give the tests set the standards. Can’t meet the standard? You can’t play. End of story.

Other pursuits don’t have these formalities. Cultural/Traditional arts, and more social endeavors, don’t have certificates to earn or tests to pass. Instead, trust is earned inside the community the work is being done through relationship. The people set the standard.

But here’s the thing. Sometimes we don’t have access to the people. Or, more maliciously, we avoid them. Either way the result is that we unwittingly end up undermining the standard set by a particular community. That’s not good for anyone.

The solution? Check yourself. Put yourself to the test. Find examples, dig up historical figures, read interviews, and from these sources and your imagination build an image of the kind of execution you need to be able to achieve. Then put yourself to the test. It’s okay if you don’t pass your test. You can give yourself another chance whenever you want. But you have to check yourself.

Everyone has a journey. You, me, the person sitting next to you. We all are coming from some place, and going to some place. Sometimes our journeys are geographic. Sometimes they are intellectual. Sometimes they are emotional. Sometimes they are spiritual.

Always, our journeys have to do with growth, the gaining of awareness, the having of experiences, and the learning of lessons. But each one of us is unique. So we can be sure that our journeys will be unique as well.

Maybe we would do well to learn about the journeys of those around us. How they have grown, what awareness they have, what they have experienced, what lessons they’ve learned. If we do that, two things may happen. We’ll begin to see the stuff we all share AND we’ll begin to see what we’ve been missing and what we uniquely have to share.

In the meantime we might just build a community of diverse people who at the very least value one another. Wouldn’t that be a thing.

Have you ever found yourself returning to a particular topic, place, or person? It doesn’t seem to matter what idea I entertain, where I travel, or who I speak with, I seem to keep returning to grace.

When perfection fails – Grace.

When achievement elevates your value over others – Grace.

When provision is lacking and there is a worry of survival – Grace.

When provision is abundant and there is a worry of stewardship – Grace.

When you find yourself in the middle of a battle between good and evil – Grace.

When you find yourself on the wrong side of that battle between good and evil – Grace.

Maybe I haven’t move beyond it because I still need to learn about it, or maybe I’m stuck on it because it’s chosen me as a mouthpiece. Either way I can’t seem to escape Grace’s presence, beauty, and care.

The tap dancer Chuck Green had a saying that went something like this:

“Tap dancing is like telling a story. When I teach I’m not just teaching you the story, I’m teaching you how to tell the story. So I teach you slowly, so you can learn everything you need to be a story teller, too.”

Slowly. The pace that is necessary in order to learn how to become a story teller. We live in a fast world. But the speed at which information can travel belies the pace at which real learning happens.

Yes, there are small quick lessons that we learn every day. However there are deep shifts that are happening over a much larger scale at a much slower pace. These deeper learnings are the ones I love. The fruits show up after many years of seeds being planted and plants being tended to. They take patience to pay attention to, a long view to invest energy in, and trust that at the right time the fruits will actually show.

The first step here is to recognize that the pace is different.