“It is an interesting feature of human psychology that, once we have found someone to blame, the quest for an explanation seems to come to an end.” – Andrew Hopkins This observation from Hopkins’ book “Failure to Learn,” is followed up with the idea that while blame is a common response when things go wrong, it […]
Have we ever been in a more divided and polarized time? Getting the facts when all the news has to be filtered for implicit bias or intentional spin makes understanding the world around us more difficult than ever before. I hear reasonable people, smart people who I have a great deal of respect for, arguing […]
So today, whether your candidate won or lost … participate in God’s plan for our world. Act justly and be the voice for those who have none. Love mercy and care for those who have less and hurt more. And walk humbly today whether your candidate won or lost.
Bravery and courage, are certainly similar, but are they synonymous? No, there is a profound difference.
Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is much higher and truer courage. – Wendell Phillips
There are two kinds of mistakes: mistakes of the head and mistakes of the heart. Mistakes of the head are calculated and willful acts of misconduct (and should really be called “on-purposes”). Mistakes of the heart are truly accidental where there is no malice or forethought.
“No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” – Virgil
The piece is called “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning.” Spencer Finch designed the installation and painted 2,983 watercolor squares by adding a drop of water to the original blue for each panel he created a unique shade to represent each of the unique victims who lost their lives. Like September 2001 in New York, the sky was blue on September 1, 2015 in Fox Lake. Lt. Joe Gliniewiczs’ shade of blue is both unique and shared by his law enforcement brotherhood; past, present and future.
“There’s a huge gap between a good person and a person of character, there’s an equivalently huge gap between ethics and courage.” – Gus Lee, Courage: The Backbone of Leadership
Following rules alone not only fails to inspire trust it leads to a culture of “compliance with the letter of the law” and finding “loopholes” to achieve the lowest level of compliance necessary to stay out of trouble. Rules, standards or laws will never set the bar high enough to draw out the excellence that can only come from character and integrity.
“Is the glass half full or half empty?” The question is typically intended to reveal something about your worldview. Are you an optimist or a pessimist? A familiar and simple idiom, but one that I think offers more than the one dimensional illustration we are accustomed to.
Much is being made of the life of Chris Kyle, some positive and some negative, after the release of American Sniper. Both the book and the movie provide a glimpse of the man’s faith and his philosophy of life. In one of the early scenes in the movie after Chris has defended his younger brother from […]