Game On!!!!

 

Game On!

FOCUS! FOCUS! FOCUS! The most important part of being on top of the change in the economy is to know your market, focus on who you are and what you do and stay in the Game! When the economy makes a “turn” focus is even more critical. There are many successful people who have made their fortunes in a turn in the economy, up and down. Time is wasting, move on, move out and get your Game On! 

Since my change in the way I see my profession on May 15, 2012, I have had the chance to be part of some exciting opportunities. My focus has narrowed. My main effort has been doing a great job for a large County master plan in California.  It is an enjoyable opportunity of assessing the overall demographics of the County, calculating the staffing needs for the next 10 – 15 years and calculating space needs. The work has led to some great research and discussions.  At the same time I have strategically aligned with several key organizations that are involved in facility planning and designing in California, Oregon and Washington. I can offer a rock-solid knowledge base that is unprecedented in front-end planning, master planning and programming on a variety of facility types, both public and private. Teaming with these firms makes a very strong, competitive alliance.  This alignment is critical to my continued success, and the grouping makes it very hard for our competitors…I believe that with focus, I have my Game On! 

Have you ever been to Forks, Washington? (http://forkswa.com/) It seems it has grown in popularity since the Twilight movies have hit the scene. Although the main street of town has changed since my early days of dating my wife, who is a native of Forks, everything else has remained about the same; including the 8 to 9 feet (yes feet) of rain a year. Just in the last month one of the oldest buildings on main street burnt to the ground, a very large tragedy for those who know Forks as home! Forks, named for all the nearby rives that fork near the town, such as the Quillayute, Bogacheil, Calawah and Sol Duc has stayed in the game primarily because of the timber industry.  However, out of need, the focus has changed and it survives today on tourism and sports fishing.  Recently a new High School was built, located two blocks from Main Street. The school is energized by a Biomass Boiler; a very unique use of the waste product from the woods and all the mills in the area. The project is amazing, especially and for a small district. (http://www.jhkelly.com/projects/forks-biomass.html) Forks has had to move-on, adapting and evolving. However, with the end of the Twilight series in sight, Forks will need a new Focus. A focus that will keep them in the Game!

The wood products industry has always been a boom and bust, I know I had an architectural firm that depended on wood products as well as commercial fishing and tourists. When all three deteriorated in the mid 90’s, another “turn” in the economy, it meant the demise of my company.  I started the business in 1983, another “turn”. At that time, the firm that I was with decided to close the two branch offices they had and consolidate to a single address. I was left with the choice of moving to the main office or starting my own firm. After considerable discussions with my only associate, my wife, we took the plunge and started an office. We had several school projects and I quickly started a niche business of working with every school district in the area as their “facility” architect. I had a focus that included Energy Audits, identifying energy saving measures that had a short pay back benefit for the district.  I developed hundreds of projects, completed applications for funding to the Bonneville Power Administration and completed design, bidding and construction observation for the approved projects. It was a niche that no one else had identified and through it our firm became recognized as a leader in the school planning market of Washington State. However, the 90’s “turn” in the market was too powerful, forcing a change in the Game!

Today, staying in the game is difficult, and moving forward in the current economy is even more difficult. But history tells us that this is the time that great things take place; when we find ourselves needing to adapt, evolve and survive. City’s like Forks, Washington will need to create opportunities, develop strategies and reroute their focus.  

Our personnel business environment changes rapidly. Overnight a new way to communicate and collaborate gets invented. The idea of video communicating on your phone was  a Dick Tracy function, not reality 10 years ago!  Focus! Focus! Focus!

I found this Blog, UR-Upgrade Reality, that simply outlined helpful steps in focusing and achieving any GOAL! (http://www.upgradereality.com/how-to-focus-and-achieve-any-goal/) 

·  Picture Yourself Having Achieved Your Big Goal. Feel It And Smile

·  Decide On And Take One Small Step

·  Be Ruthless With Distractions

·  Keep Your Energy Up

·  Practice Micro Celebration

You cannot be arrogant and inward focused if you hope to survive; you need to know what your competition is doing and learn from them; know what is happening in your environment and stay in the Game!

The Bright Thread of Hope

For those faithful followers, I have been a bit busy and quite frankly the last few weeks before the election I was so distracted watching the pundits sling the bull that I lost track of time and the blog page suffered...

My daughters are amazing, and mostly take after their mom when it comes to overall smarts, but after their father when it comes to relationship building and having fun. All three of them have careers where they serve the community and at the same time advance their lives and their family lives, they are truly making a difference. The youngest is a Fellow (Doctor) at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland in Pediatric Hematology and Oncology; the middle daughter has been teaching pre-school special education for nearly 10 years and the oldest is a Minister at the Unitarian Church in Fort Collins Colorado. This weekend I had a chance to meet the people of Foothills Unitarian Church and hear the sermon that my daughter delivered, twice. What a great experience and the members have a great appreciation  of my daughters talents, it was truly overwhelming. I was so impressed with what she had to say that I have repeated it below. Although she delivered this the Sunday before the elections, the message is extremely pertinent.

The Rev Gretchen Haley

We gather this morning, just two days from the end of the election cycle. 

Two days, my friends, two days.  And over these months of the campaign- or has it been years, or an eternity - how many of us have muttered at the radio, the television, the computer screen - miserable, unrepeatable things....?

How often have we too wondered what meaning hope could have in these days?

How often have we sought to hide our hearts, protect them from the weight of this difficult and broken world with its wars, and its floods, and the way it seems insistent on reducing the story of human life to the results of the latest poll....?

Over these months, these years, this eternity, perhaps you too have gone out to get the newspaper, only to immediately recycle all but the comics and the coupons.

Perhaps you too have sat across from your friends, your partners and children, all of you with your own electronic device - playing games, or flipping through Facebook, finding ways to numb and distract yourselves from the pain you each carry, the stories of your days, the words that were said to you, the words you have said, the absence of the intimacy you deeply long for. 

Perhaps you too have watched more reality TV, played more Words with Friends, eaten more of your children's Halloween candy, made more of a ritual out of beer and potato chips - done all these, or others, more than you would like to admit.

Perhaps you too have done all you could to keep this world, and its heartbreak at bay. 

Let's just say it.  Living in the world with an open heart can be exhausting and sometimes it can be terrible.  Living in this world with the faith that not only can love overcome all hate and pain and suffering, but that it will - feels so often incompatible with remaining informed, feels so often incompatible with paying attention, feels so often so risky and dangerous, and even foolish. 

Living with an open heart in a battleground state, especially foolish.  Such an accurate description, more so than a swing state.  No, we’re a battleground.  A battleground where our common humanity is the casualty.  Our sense of vision is what we lose, our sense of common purpose, our sense of trust in our neighbors, our faith in our common goodness, our willingness to hope. 

Hope - like fear - begins in the imagination.

Hope - like fear - is a possible response to what we experience in the present as it relates to what we can imagine about the future. 

When we experience life's goodness and joy today - we may hope, or fear, about whether this goodness will continue and perhaps even grow in the future....

When we experience life's brokenness and the darkness surrounds us today, we may also meet this brokenness with either hope, or fear...

It’s a choice we have.  Hope or fear; trust or anxiety; faith or cynicism. 

We all have a choice, and it is a choice we make every day with our lives. 

Rational, reasonable people might support either choice.  There is much evidence to support either position.

250 years ago, a man named Thomas Potter faced such a choice.  (For those of you who were at Buckhorn, you might remember I told a version of the story I am about to tell.  It's another on my list of top 10 stories I feel like all Unitarian Universalists should know, and so even if you heard it at Buckhorn, it’s ok.  It’s an important one.)  ^[1]

About 250 years ago, in one of the places hardest hit by the storm last week, the shores of what would become New Jersey - on those same shores, Thomas Potter, a farmer and what today we'd call a religious seeker - was spending a lot of time thinking about some big questions.  The nature of life.  The question of hope.  And most of all, whether or not love would have the final word for us all. Which in his day, was a matter of - whether or not hell existed, and what determined whether you'd end up there. 

In his search for answers, Thomas Potter stumbled upon the ideas of Universalism, and its hopeful claim that a loving God would never send God's people to hell, and that instead all would be reconciled in Love. All. 

Unfortunately for him, however, in 1770 America, there wasn't yet a Universalist church, and there weren't any Universalist ministers.  And so Thomas Potter's deep longing to hear a message of hope, and to be a part of a community that embodied that message, remained unfulfilled. 

And then one day, the story goes, as Thomas Potter worked his fields, he heard a voice in his heart.

The voice said, "If you build a chapel, a Universalist minister will come and bring a story of hope to all who come here."  And so Thomas Potter decided right then to build a chapel near his farm house.  He built it, and then he waited for that minister to come.   

Well lo and behold, at about the same time that Thomas Potter was building his chapel, a young minister named John Murray was making his way across the Atlantic Ocean.  John Murray - a one time Methodist minister who had converted to Universalism

only to be cast out as a heretic.  John Murray, a man who had recently lost his young wife and his child in a great tragedy. A man whose experience of brokenness had led him to decide to give up on preaching, to give up on faith and religion all together, and head to the new world and start over. Specifically, he'd imagined starting over in what is today New York.  But, as John Murray's boat got close to shore, the winds picked up, and instead, he went aground on the coast of New Jersey, coincidentally, right near the fields where Thomas Potter had built his chapel.  

Seeking shelter and help, John Murray went towards the farm house, where he met up with Thomas Potter.  Before long, Potter discovered Murray's background in ministry, and their shared belief in the gospel of hope. 

You can just see the light bulbs going off in Potter's head at this point, right? (OK, maybe not light bulbs, it was 1770...) But just imagine how excited Potter was as he told Murray about his chapel, and about his vision of a minister arriving to preach the message of hope.

"So I heard this voice, and I built this chapel, and you are the minister!"

And Murray was like, "you're crazy!"

No really, John Murray had decided he was done with preaching, remember? Done with this idea of hope.  Life was not a blessing, it was terrible and broken and he wanted to go get lost in the wilderness. 

But Potter didn't give up easily.  And so the two men decided to make a deal.  If Murray’s ship was still stuck on the coming Sunday, that is, if the wind didn't change so that they could head to New York, Murray would preach in Potter's chapel. 

Well, lucky for all of us today, the wind did not change.  And so that Sunday - September 30, 1770, Murray preached a sermon on Universalism in Potter's chapel to Thomas Potter and to all his family and neighbors. It was the first known Universalist sermon on American soil, and today John Murray is considered the founder of Universalism in America. 

Today, we are the grateful inheritors of Thomas Potter's vision. Grateful inheritors of Thomas Potter's choice to keep hope alive, to create a place for it - a literal meeting house for it, to kindle the flame of hope in his time, so that it might be here for us in ours.  And we are the grateful inheritors of the ways that Thomas Potter greeted John Murray and all his pain with love and vision, and reminded him of the power of hope to transform even the deepest heartbreak.

We stand here today keepers of this story, guardians of this tradition, stewards of this message of love - so that 250 years from now, good people like us will receive the gifts of our broad vision, and continue to take up the mantle, making the choice, whatever life may bring, to meet it with love. To greet it with hope.

Give them not hell but hope, as John Murray said - give them not hell, but hope.  That's our choice.  That's our story. 

This is the choice we come here to be reminded of, the choice we come here to help each other make.

So that when we too find ourselves confusing cynicism with pragmatism, and turning all too often to the numbing power of beer and potato chips - or whatever it is that we might turn to in our lives to keep the heartbreak at bay - we know we can count on our friends in this community to say to us - "What kind of self-indulgent whining is this?" In the kindest possible way, of course. ^[2]

We bear witness to each other this alternative story.  An alternative to the story of division and separation and greed and self-interest that so often attempts to claim us. 

We - the people of Foothills Unitarian Church.  In Fort Collins, Colorado, at the end of 2012, in this place called a battleground, in this life that can so often feel like a battle ground.  We come here to this place of hope, and we kindle this flame.   A story of binding the broken, comforting the world. Healing the brokenness - with a promise of blessing. A story of light, that we carry into all the places of darkness.  A story of hope and heart, into all the highways and byways, into our homes and into our lives.

We stoke this story with our lives, making sure it doesn’t ever go out.  And we pass it on.  May it be so, and amen. 

---

^[1] This story can be found in many places. In writing this sermon, I consulted with these versions: http://www.murraygrove.org/pottermurray.html; http://www.uucdc.org/sermons/2012/10/21/how-are-you-saved; and http://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/children/creatinghome/session12/sessionplan/stories/60161.shtml

^[2] This is a reference to our reading, which was by the Rev Victoria Safford from her essay in A People So Bold.

Can Do!

The Can Do Attitude- Do you have it!

It seems to me that one of the strengths of America has always been the can do attitude of nearly every American. Our forefathers had it! Have we lost it? Do you have it? Does our government have it?

I know if it were not for my Fathers can do attitude he would have never survived moving from Montana to Seattle, when he was young and orphaned, to enter into the world of trees and logs. He always found a way to survive, making his way from the forest trenches and outrageously big saws to a manager of a very successful timber business. He knew that hard work, determination, creativity, and a positive can do attitude would get him to his goals. I was always impressed when we sat down at my drafting table to discuss the next addition to the mill. He would describe what he thought would work and I would draw it. Often the mechanics in the mill would say it could never be done, or it won’t work. But always my father would figure out a way to get it done and make it successful. I’m sure my five siblings would agree that this attitude has been passed on and we all look for ways to get it done, no matter what the task may be. 

I just started reading a book called “That Used To Be Us” by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum. I came across this book via the Book Channel, often on in our house as my wife likes to listen to the authors talking about their books. As I listened I downloaded (Google Play, “play books” app) the book to my tablet, and I began to read. I’m not too far along, but already I say, yes they have identified the issues….one of the very first quotes is from the CEO of GE, Jeffery Immelt, “What we lack in the US Today is the confidence that is generated by solving on big, hard problem-together”. It seems we have so many opinions and directions that it is difficult for us to unite and support a common goal, or to focus on a problem and solve it. There is such a large gap in the two party system that we can’t seem to get past the arguments and get to the answers. Finger pointing does not work, but it seems that this is the most popular thing to do. I have voted in nearly every election for the past forty years and I have listened to presidential candidate after presidential candidate tell us what they will do to make our lives better and America stronger. I agree with the Authors, as time slips away, Americas resources are disappearing. We need to understand that we have urgent issues… education, deficits and debt, energy and climate change and I would add what I would consider the most important issue, the disintegration of the family structure. These are not issues that the government can really make happen under the current structure of doing nothing, of pointing fingers and being protective of the next reelection campaign or better yet voting to not support any initiative that the other party brings to the floor.   As the Authors say  “Our goal should not be merely to solve America’s debt and deficit problems….the goal is for America to remain a great country….Immigration, education, and sensible regulation are traditional ingredients of the American formula for greatness”. America has a hard time getting things done! We don’t need to emulate anyone, we have superior thinkers, creative minds, and inventive abilities that are far greater than any other country in the world. The challenge is to get everyone to keep their focus on getting America to the next level of greatness, can we do it? As individuals we can only move the government so far, and we do this by voting and electing those representatives that can make a difference, are collaborative and can make this country great! The government needs to unite, get behind a drive for greatness, grab on to the can do attitude of our forefathers and get it done! The government needs to MOVE ON, get past this phase of disgusting finger pointing and work for us, the can doers of America!

Some of us learn the can do attitude from our parents, and some of us are born with amazing can do attitudes. I came across this marvelous story of a young enterprising kid in Los Angeles, California…he definitely has the can do spirit! We all need to follow his lead, be creative, spark the nation, and help support the whole not just a few….(just click on this link you will be taken to a web site) Caine's Arcade