I'm comfortable with their discomfort.

A few weeks ago, I was at a workshop about interacting with people with differing values than your own, an interesting five-staged approach that I found quite insightful — lots of good stuff.

One tangential idea that jumped out at me was this: “It's time to start choosing who you want to make uncomfortable.”

Context: our church recently became an “open and welcoming congregation.” That’s code for going overt on the “gays are indeed real-and-alright people and welcome here” thing. It was sort of a big deal, not because we had a lot of people upset with that decision, rather because we had a few of them. And there is an imbedded value at church that says, “We don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.”

Interestingly, in the five-stages system at the workshop, both my church and I fell right where I expected us to be. Without getting into the system, we’re there with most wishy washy liberals — we love everyone in theory, but do very little about it in practice except give money.

The workshop leader pointed out that this don’t-want-to-make-anyone-uncomfortable thing is typical of our stage. The problem is this: the people we don’t want to make uncomfortable are the people in our circle. We’re ignoring the fact that, in making that decision we’ve also decided it’s ok with us that people outside our circle, in this case gay and lesbian people, stay uncomfortable.

To put it another way, every decision we make makes someone uncomfortable. Maybe it’s time to have an overt discussion about that rather than make a covert decision for “my group.”

In the case of the gay-support decision at church then, I’ve decided that I’d rather make those people who are uncomfortable with homosexuals uncomfortable than make homosexuals uncomfortable.

Make sense to me.

Fear isn't an answer

You don't have to be religious to understand the statement: "Perfect love casts out fear."

Now, you can find all sorts of problems with that, like, for instance, what in the world is perfect love? I'm not sure I've ever seen it. What we all have seen is someone who, when they found what they thought was something like love, cast aside not only their fear, but most of their good sense as well. (I think that's why they call it "falling in love." It's like other stuff you can fall into.)

Put all that stuff aside for a minute. I just want to say that, from my perspective, the reverse of the perfect love statement is even more obviously true: pure fear casts out love.

Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) puts survival needs at the bottom of the pyramid and the more esoteric needs, like love and fulfillment, at the top, which means when you're afraid there's not much energy left for thinking charitably.

I mention all this because a major chuck of the political world right now is busy selling fear. That's always present somewhere in politics. It's a strategy embraced most frequently on the extreme left and extreme right. But right now, a major swath of our political leadership is openly affirming that approach. And "be afraid, be very afraid" sells well when you've just lost your job or savings or health coverage. Ironically, it's right now, when our fears our highest that we need the humane values--a lot of faith, love and understanding-- the very most.

There goes the my mob--rats!

Talking about the shifting mood of the nation between inauguration day, a year ago, and today, I find it strangely and sadly reassuring to remember what is meant by "mob rule."

Politics is a mob game; it’s simply about moving the right number of people from the other side to your side to stay in power. And it doesn’t much matter how your do it. The mob is emotional, not rational. What moves them often makes no sense. In fact the mob often votes against its' own best interests — whether they notice that or not is another matter — just because it makes them feel good.

Barrack Obama talked about that yesterday, responding to the Massachusetts’ senatorial outcome. The President pointed out that Scott Brown was elected for the same reason he was elected: people, in general, are not happy and want things to change. (Darn that Obama, he’s way too rational.)

Which leads to another point: When the mob moves to our side, we say, “The momentum of this great nation is finally moving in the right direction” — we invest the mob with insight. When the mob votes against our interests, we say, “The uniformed mob mentality has taken over.”

A digressive corollary: spending my entire life in various churches and nonprofit organizations, I’ve noticed how the voices of negative people have impact only when the organization loses momentum. When things are rolling along or feel like they're rolling, many a leaders' weaknesses will be overlooked. When things aren't rolling, the color of the minister’s socks is as likely to upset some folks as much as the content of the sermons. And they'll be very loud about it.

Of course, the same is true of leadership in any office or factory. In this case, I’m part of the mob.

How is all this reassuring? It lowers my expectations, makes me less upset when life is messy. Which it is right now. Very messy.

Human beings need not apply

http://www.sambasta.com/post/313914021/cleveland-clinics-chief-experience-officer-on-being-a

If you're interested in turning an organization's institutional values into more humane values, check out this 20-minute-plus presentation by Bridget Duffy. She's listed as Chief Experience Officer for the Cleveland Clinic, but checking her background, she's involved in more than that.

The presentation is officially about creating genuinely patient-centered care. She's been thinking very concretely about that and captures a lot of truth about the nature of institutitions in this presentation.

For instance, after sitting in a back corner of her hospital's emergency room observing for some days, she asks, "What's the first thing said to anyone approaching the check-in desk?" At best it's, "What's your name?" More likely it's, "What's your health insurance number?" Is it possible, she asks, that someone approaching the desk could be met with, "Good morning. I see you're in pain. We're going help you with that"?

And she's not just talking scripts. She talking about a entire mindset about "Who is the customer?" The answer she gives: in health care, it's obviously the specialty physicians. They bring in the money. It's for their convenience that everything is organized.

She's not blaming doctors, nurses or administrators. She's talking about a broken system and calling for an entire reconsideration of an institutional viewpoint.

This is not just a question for health care, it's for all organizations. Why do we exist? Who do we really serve? What might real success look like?

Organizations, institutions, companies--they all form around human needs but quickly find their attention turned to organizational needs. This takes constant tending.

Knowing he'd immediately understand, I sent this off to my pastor with the question, "How do we change the way we see our church's mission from institutional to Christian?"

This is good stuff.

In case you haven't noticed, I'm really important.

Watching politicians posturing, in this case about the Christmas bombing attempt, reminds me of a favorite quote (or near quote) from C.S. Lewis.

In the introduction to his Screwtape Letters, an imagined correspondence between a junior devil and his supervising senior devil, Lewis muses on the Christian doctrine of Satan and proposes, wryly, that Lucifer fell from heaven from the force of gravity. The Devil's downfall was the result of his weighty pride -- how very seriously he took himself.

You don't have to be a theological wizard, or even a true believer, to feel the deadly weightiness of that metaphor. It works pretty well.

It¹s always been interesting to me that when you ask people about the number one sin in the Christian pantheon, they tend to go with murder or some sexual stuff -- you know, the snake and the apple. But in classic theology -- and I¹m guessing in most other theological or philosophical systems, it has always been pride that's the biggy.

As a guy who works in advertising, I get accused of liking funny ads just because they¹re funny. Well, I confess to some of that. But there are plenty -- plenty -- of ads trying to be funny that are simply bad.

But I¹m drawn to well done humor, not just for the humor, but for the lightheartedness -- because they¹re not so serious about themselves. A little well deserved humility can be very attractive.

Watching politicians, both what they say and what they mean, whatever the talking points, it's hard miss the "I¹m really important" message from most of them.

Chest pounding may feel good, but it doesn¹t sell much product in my book. And I¹m guessing it will never get you into most heavens.

That was good. Let's do that again.

On the subject of New Year's resolutions:

I've never made them. The whole idea of goal-oriented living is kind of foreign to me. It doesn't help me; it burdens me. Plus, life in general is enough of a challenge.

I'm not saying intentional living is a bad idea in principle. Common knowledge says it can be life changing, even life saving. It's a characteristically American way of going at life -- at least in theory.

It's just that, for me and my own way of being in life, taking the pressure off makes me healthier, not putting it on.

Which leads me to a New Year's idea I like.

Someone suggested that, instead of making a lot of 2010 resolutions, think back to the things you liked doing in 2009 -- that felt good, that were freeing and fun, that were nourishing as opposed to depleting -- and plan to do those things again or do them more often.

Maybe we're just talking semantics here, but I like that. That's something I can do, actually look forward to doing.