The Early Bird

Three Little Birds

It’s springtime in Minnesota the days are growing longer and longer and you can open up those windows and let that cool evening air refresh your house.  The sun rises earlier and earlier every morning and the birds are singing.  In fact the birds are singing their asses off when you get right down to it.

I don’t sleep well and wake at next to no noise and/or a little bit of light. 

I find it difficult to impossible to fall back asleep after I am awake. 

I also have a clock that flashes the time and temperature on the ceiling above my bed.

Add all these factors together and the bottom line is I have come to view the birds singing as something for the birds.  I have regularly been tracking when I wake up and here the first bird chirping.  I can tell you this much, if someone tells you they get up with the birds or the early bird gets the worm, I would ask them exactly when they think this occurs.

My three week observation would say somewhere between 3:50 and 4:10 AM.  It was 4:10 this morning approximately and I began to ask myself just what the hell are these birds trying to prove.  Are the birds like people where their bird protestant work ethic drives them to get up way too early and make sure everyone else is aware of this fact? 

What about the other birds, do they sleep through the chattering of these birds that get up first or do they burry their head in their wing and try to get hour of sleep?  Do they get mad at the birds that get up first and start yakking away?  What do early bird, early birds do at 4:10 in the dark? 

Why are they blabbing like there’s no tomorrow at such an ungodly hour?  What exactly are they saying anyway – I can’t make sense of it – I like to think I have a little Doctor Doolittle in me and even still it’s gibberish.  In fact, I think these first chirpers are making noise just to be a pain to everyone else.  They are like people talking on their cell phones at a volume that makes the phone unnecessary (assuming the other party is in the State of Minnesota).

I got some advice for these birds and anyone who talks too loud on their cell phone – I’m sick and oh so tired and I ain’t going stand for your crap any more.  Shut up or watch out.

Passed (past) Due Date

Minnesota recently celebrated its 150th birthday.  Didn’t seem to be much fanfare about the event – maybe there’s more on the way, though.  Seems to me Iowa changed their license plates for the occasion and seemed to work it into their marketing identity for quite awhile.   So why does Iowa play up their anniversary and for Minnesota (at least to this point) it seems like a relatively minor event.

I am not sure what the true value of marking milestones in the life or an organization or individual are.  I once calculated the number of days I lived on earth thinking that your 15,000 or 20,000 day is a lot cooler than your 52nd birthday.  I put an important date on my calendar but no longer remember the day or even my job at the time and so I doubt it’s still there.

As the administrator of a very old parish (which is part of a very, very old Church), I wonder what is appropriate and also exactly when do you start counting.  I can verify Holy Name of Jesus was incorporated in the state of Minnesota on 7/11/1878 – twenty years and two months after Minnesota was founded.  However, the written history of the parish identifies priests celebrating mass in the area in 1856.  So when does our history start?  Whatever date you choose, how should a parish celebrate a milestone like 125 or 150 years?

It seems like every organization places a little different importance on milestones.  I suspect that the milestones probably mean more to organizations where there is greater longevity in the membership and a greater sense of history and its importance.  It might also have something to do with the speed of change.  If we are in a constant change of flux, the past would become seemingly less important more quickly (if that makes any sense).

At any rate, we don’t seem to do much here to honor the past and it wouldn’t appear anyone is too concerned with marking milestones.  I am not sure what the consequences of this sort of behavior will be but it seems to convey a transient approach rather than a long-term (or even eternal) which is probably what you would want in a parish.

The world is but a stage

Have you ever wondered what part you are ideally suited to play?  I mean you are watching a TV show or movie and you ask yourself, if I were in this episode which role would I be capable of playing. 

Maybe it’s just me.  Maybe I’m strange, it wouldn’t be the first time.  But I think about it.  It’s not like I have every liked the theater or acting or even people getting all dramatical.  So for me I aspire to playing a very minor part but playing it in the very best possible way.  I guess the real question I confront is, since I can’t act, what character behaves in ways I see myself acting.

One of my girls wasn’t feeling well the other day and so was on the couch watching non-stop reruns of, “American Gladiators.” I think I could do better than Hulk Hogan, who is a co-host to the show,  but it’s largely because he relies entirely on clichés (as do the people interviews).  Anyway, I thought the best role for me in this show was the referee (back in my day I would have been a contestant – let me tell you).  All he says before every segment of the competition is, “Is the contest ready? Is the gladiator ready?” and then blows his whistle.

The reality is though I feel I would be best suited for a person in the crowd.  Maybe a notable person in the crowd that gets one line or yells.  I could also be either a soldier or cowboy that gets shot.  I wonder if all those soldiers or cowboys tell their grandkids about how the got blown up on the beach scene in, “Saving Private Ryan.” 

I question whether I could pull off the role of a henchman.  Not the big bad guy but one of his cronies.  Maybe like the guys Batman and Robin continually beat the crap out of.  I could do that but if I was asked to shoot someone because I was mad would the audience buy a guy looking like me behaving so evilly?

I am not totally sure what the point in all this is but I think there is probably some real life evaluation of character and role that would be far more useful.  What is the ideal role God has created for me?  Am I living it now or is there something better suited for my gifts?  How do you know?  I could be playing the role of McCloud when I really should be playing Jim Rockford or who knows maybe Fred Sanford.  Am I called to be a lead or a spear-chucker?  What role do you see yourself playing?

 

 

Bad News

I went to the doctor today.  It’s been a while. I don’t like doctors or dentists or barbers or mechanics either.  To get right to the cold, hard truth of the matter, I am writing with some very bad news.  I am dying.

The blood tests haven’t come back yet, but I guess I knew.  I knew it when I looked into my doctors eyes.  In fact, while not exactly a hypochondriac, I guess I knew it all along.

The prognosis was a little fuzzy.  It might be today, it might be awhile from now.  He was certain.

I am struck now with what to do.  Do I quit my job and live large for my remaining days?  Do I spend my time in the chapel hoping to improve my odds?  Maybe it’s time to make amends with all those I’ve harmed. 

I will probably plod along as I have for my first forty-three years.  I suppose I’ll take time to smell the roses, enjoy the sunsets, hug my loved ones.  I guess I don’t expect a dramatic change in lifestyle.

I’m told I am improve my condition by eating better, sleeping more, not letting the small things bother me.  I guess that would have been the same advice if I wasn’t dying but now that I know, I guess I’ll re-examine my lifestyle and potentially prolong the quantity and quality of life.

Don’t get all upset.  I am just one person.  People die every day.  Life will go own well with or without me.  I’ll keep my head up and try to appreciate the days I have available and I would implore you to do the same even though I’ve burdened you with my awful situation.

What would you do if you where given a lethal diagnosis?  What would you do if you were at the doctor this morning and he told you that you would probably die in around 35 or so years from now? 

 

Fishing for answers

The past weekend I was one of the desperate fisher people who elected to sacrifice comfort for the opportunity to trick a fish into biting something that looked edible but wasn’t.

It started out raining and cool and got significantly worse by the end of the day.  At times I thought I was snowmobiling as we moved from place to place across the lake.  Is it really worth it, I kept asking myself.  Surely, there would be better days to fish especially considering that many thought the water would not be warm enough to have fish biting in the first place.

I did learn few things during the day.  My rain jacket is far from water proof.  It slowed down the rain but I was soaked through four layers of clothing on three different fishing shifts.  I learned that fish don’t really bit if the temperature of the water is in the high forties – at least not on Lake Ida.  I learned, once again,  that to catch fish, you must think like a fish. 

In the end I caught eight fish.  My two fishing companions caught one collectively.  Of course the debate for the day and the night was whether fishing is based on luck or skill.  My mates naturally were attributing my relative success to circumstantial factors and luck.  I basically said countered with saying something like a four to two score could be explaining by random factors, buy me catching fish at the rate of 16 to 1, indicates skill was very clearly the factor at play.

Per usual, I wondered if there were parallels in other arenas of life.  One thing that has been on my mind lately is attending church services.  From my perspective, it might be akin to reading about fishing and conscientiously fishing versus throwing a line in the water and hoping fortune favors us.  Is the person who makes the decision to attend church regularly better equipped to make decisions that will benefit society in the long run (i.e. morally sound decisions) then someone who doesn’t?

Attendance at services is down and the surveys done indicate that it is getting worse.  So how do you convince someone to attend more often?  They must obviously not place a value on attending and so the question is what value does attending have and how would you communicate this to others?  Further, you would probably have to make the case in mostly non-religious terms in that if the non-attenders had a strong faith relationship, they would likely already be attending.

From a resource allocation point of view, I wonder about the non-attendance issue relative to the amount of our resources we invest.  The parish invests a large amount in the school and we do so, in theory, to best equip our youth to practice and carry on our faith.  At the spring concert last week, I looked at the faces and started wondering who some of these people are and why don’t I ever see them at weekend masses.  The parish is investing heavily into the faith development of their children but if the parents don’t value practicing the faith, are we wasting the investment? The school is important in faith development but I would say the parents are going to have greater impact then the school will likely have. So are we wasting our investment if a good percentage of the families are closer to seeing our school as a cheap private school rather than an additional way to have their children grow up morally equipped because they practice their faith?

I don’t want to pick on school parents because non-attendance is prevalent among other parish groups as well.  Children and adults participate in various activities but do not attend and many neither participate in activities or attend mass.

I don’t want to come across at being judgmental of people who don’t attend mass, but we as a church must come to terms with either expressing the value and importance of attending mass, or we need to be prepared for an increasingly casual attitude by our members with respect to adhering to the faith. 

Do you attend mass regularly why?  If you don’t why don’t you go more often?  What is the value of attending mass in your life?  Does it prepare you to deal with decision-making in your life?  Do you think the people that attend mass are better for having done so?  In what ways?  Do you think our parish would be better if more people attended regularly?  What would you do or say to get more to come?

Are there parallels between an increasingly casual attitude toward practicing one’s faith and a decision-making by individuals and society that emphasizes the immediate and personal well-being over the long-term good for the greatest number? 

 

Time…

How would your describe time and your relationship with it?  Think about it, what is time and maybe the more important question for all of us is what should our understanding of time be?

I woke up at roughly 3:45 this morning and was in some sort of recurring half asleep/half awake cycle with the same thought/dream blending together.  I don’t remember all the particulars but when I was more awake then asleep, the cliché, ‘time doesn’t not stand still,’ was the thought I had. 

I started thinking about references to time as in, time goes by, time races by, time stands still, time is on your side.  From there I wondered into thinking about how we track time with respect to clocks and calendars and birthdays and stages of life.  This lead to thinking about trying to comprehend eternity relative to a day or hour.  At this point, I fell back to sleep for a couple of hours.

When I woke up I was thinking about time in relationship to economics and salvation.  How does our treatment of our available time reflect our values?  Does our treatment of time reflect an appropriate perspective?  You can’t really treat every day as if it’s your last day on earth but you can’t go through life thinking you will live forever.

From a professional point of view, I think some of the art of the ministry of administration is being able to balance the spectrum of time perception.  On the one hand, you need to keep the lights on and the doors open at the parish but on the other hand, you have to comprehend that decisions can have eternal consequences.  You want to provide opportunities for people to improve their lives and assure the eternal wellbeing of their soul but you also must spend time thinking about some short-term, less meaningful aspects of parish business like getting rid of dandelions.

On a personal level, I like to use Bill Murray’s character in, “Ground Hog Day,” as a model for a healthy perspective on time.  The movie is about a guy that gets stuck living the same day over and over.  He evolves in his understanding of time and life as he continues to live the same day over and over.  Eventually he comes to understand that each day is an opportunity to grow and to build and create relationships and to love.  His metamorphosis to this understanding highlights some unhealthy perceptions of our time.

I am not sure exactly what the point in all this is but I guess I would recommend that we all think about the eternal in the context of a day or a week and reconcile our behavior in light of these two perspectives.  Does our lifestyle today reflect an understanding of the eternal life of our soul?  Do we really believe in eternity our is that too abstract to impact our lifestyle?  Even if you have trouble with eternity, is does your lifestyle reflect an understanding of an improved self/world in five, 10, or 15 years?  What do you/we need to change in our behavior to reflect a longer-term approach?

 

Head in the sand

Ostriches don’t put their head in the sand – let’s be clear on that.  The phrase does endure and represents a behavior of ignoring the problems around you.  I am proposing (for the sake of argument), that this is not such a bad thing.
 
Sometimes I think it would be far easier to be more pleasant if I could ignore the news.  Wouldn’t life be easier if we could just confine our concerns to our home, our work, maybe throw in a school or sports team and forget about the how the price of food is causing wide-spread hunger and starvation? 

The problem I run into is trying to figure out causes and solutions to problems and realizing that I am nearly powerless in the grand scheme of things to change them.  I could ride my bike instead of using my car and decrease global warming by a one-googleth and at the same time if there was a longer-term approach to decision-making by our country’s leaders, they could change things quickly by whole percentage points. 

You are no doubt saying to yourself, “Is the reason things like this bother you is that you are not doing much to change them?” You might advise me to work toward change and then news that our governmental debt, deficit, and trade imbalance would not make me worry about my children’s future.

This may be true, when I hear reports of problems and they result of bad decision-making, I could work for change but I guess my perception of undertaking this activity would that it would be ten times more frustrating than doing nothing.  I really don’t think my voice would make a difference relative to 100’s of lobbyists and millions in campaign contributions. 

Life is too short to spend it banging your head against the wall.  The easier solution is to worry about your family and your work and forget about bigger problems.  I need to concern myself with getting enough security/money/wealth/safety/health under my roof and then the national debt won’t affect me as much because I got enough money. It’s better to remain ignorant of problems I can’t control or impact.  Just focus your attention on tomorrow’s weather forecast and then refrain from exposing yourself to whatever else the media may produce.  The more information you have the more it brings you down. Unless you are powerful or prepared to dramatically simplify your life, dwelling on the world’s big problems will just make you unhappy.
 
If problems creep into your existence like high gas prices, you do your best to address it by using less gas.  Don’t try to lobby for the development of alternative fuels or increasing the refining capacity - use less gas.  If higher food prices are getting to you buy less beef and more chicken but don’t get wrapped up into the value of ethanol or economics of agriculture – you’re just asking for trouble.

Set up a metaphorical life support system underground and keep your head in the sand.

Thank you very little or much

A church really depends on the goodwill, trust, and some would argue guilt as the means to stay afloat.  No one is forced to give their money and so to keep the doors open; donors must have faith and then trust that their contribution is being used to do good things.

Many non-profits are in a similar situation although they typically don’t play the guilt card (not that we would ever do this) wherein members are reminded that there is an ample moral foundation to share what you have with those in need.  Non-church, non-profits typically have a more sophisticated approach to cultivating donors and a broader array of ways on how they can recognize donors. 

Church’s might put a plaque or have minor ways of recognizing donors, but most typically don’t issue annual reports categorizing donors by amount given and recognizing their largest donors.  These activities might be effective for non-profits but the perception is that they are inappropriate for churches.  So my question is what is appropriate for churches?

How should or maybe should parishes recognize the people who contribute?  Some would clearly say no that giving to a church is a response to faith and giving is and should be its own reward.  Recognizing donors is potentially tainting the motivation most have when they give and publicizing donors or donations is inappropriate.

On the other side of the coin, many donors are subjected to sophisticated cultivation techniques by other non-profits and presumably respond to these techniques which may decrease their giving to the church.  If their college or high school president asks them to go out to lunch and tells them about the grand vision they have and that their name will appear here or there.  Doesn’t this seem more motivating than a form letter from the pastor and a listing of your contributions for tax purposes?

Should churches do anything to make their case?  Ideally, the people running the church believe in what they are doing and should believe that if they did more of it the world would be a better place.  So shouldn’t church leaders be motivated to get as many contributions as possible to do as much good as possible?  Shouldn’t we be cultivating people who have the potential to further our mission and vision?

Our parish decided to have several events to give supporters a chance to meet our new pastor and hear him talk about what he sees as the potential vision for the church.  If you were going to start having these meetings, who would you start meeting with first?  We decided to sort people by the amount they contribute and this has caused some hard feelings.  I don’t know what the answer is but I guess I think we are doing the right thing.

I also think it’s important to give all parishioners the same opportunity however and so it’s a matter of who goes when.  Above all we want to make sure we are supportable (people will be motivated to support what we do) and that by one means or another we have the resources to continue the extremely valuable work we are doing.

 

Optimal Capital Structure

I have been taking a class in finance this semester and the current topic is optimizing the capital structure of an organization.  The class strategy basically involves how much debt, stock, and preferred stock a company should have so that its cost of capital is as low as possible.  In that there is a tax advantage to having debt, the correct combination typically involves assessing how much debt will cause a company to be viewed as risky because at that point all of their sources of capital can get more costly.

So I was trying to figure out if there was any correlation between this corporate strategy and anything I would apply to my job in the church.  We don’t pay taxes and so from that perspective there is not advantage in debt.  I wondered then what is the advantage of debt since a large number of church’s have debt there must be some advantage, right?  Is having a new something (building) worth being only able to use 85% of the contributions for the next 30 years?  Would you be better off using the existing facilities and saving some to meet the costs up front?

Then I started thinking about the other side of the equation, how much cash should a church amass if any?  Obviously, you want to make sure you are going to meet your payroll obligations and can pay the heating bills.  But how much should be kept in reserve?  People don’t give their money so that it can be piled up in some bank somewhere and yet they don’t want their church to have to beg the bank for money to pay bills if the contributions don’t come in as they were forecasted.  Where is there an appropriate balance between having faith and being prudent? 

I think we are trying to get three months worth of expenses saved before we try to spend 100% of what we collect.  Our parish is near this point and so the question has now become what should we do if money accumulates over this three month’s expense threshold?  You have to be careful when you choose to increase your expenses because the trends show that expenses increase faster than contributions for most years to begin with.  So if you add a recurring expense that expense will grow faster than the contributions that pay for it.

My final thought was wondering how much a parish should give.  Some parishes take their 10 percent tithe and give it to other organizations.  They are ‘setting and example’ for parishioners to use.  I guess this might make sense but I guess it might make more sense to let the parishioners give money to the organizations themselves since you are re-giving their contributions in the first place. I suspect that most parishioners who give to the church give to other causes and to give more of their money to other organizations seems like it’s redundant.

Monkey on my back

I enjoy to activities when the weather allows it – fishing and golf.  This spring has been particularly harsh in that it hasn’t been conducive to ice melting or courses opening.  Maybe this weekend it will be warm enough to finally get started with golf anyway.

I have not let the longer winter deter me from getting started with golf.  I have been hitting golf balls from my driveway across the street into a soccer field.  I do love hitting golf balls and so when the weather would allow, I hit hundreds and hundreds.  As nice as this arrangement is it definitely has had some problems.

One big problem is the damn tree across the street.  It’s somewhat between my driveway and my intended target and so the perfect shot is either really high or it must curve somewhat around the branches.  Unfortunately, I have hit the branches hundreds of times and even without leaves, the tree has sent my shots in all directions.  The worst was last week when my neighbor was unloading something from his truck in his driveway.  The ball hit the tree, ricocheted straight-down to the street and landed a few feet from his truck.  I briefly explained it was very weird shot and he was friendly and all but he seemed to step up the pace of unloading and quickly put his truck in the garage and closed the garage door.

One lesser problem is that my driveway is curved and I am hitting off a mat.  And so I practice the same or a similar shot over and over and over again.  I am concerned that even if I start hitting perfect shots I will not be able to translate my new found skills because you don’t get too slightly uphill shots with perfect lies that often on the course.  When I take a regular shot from longer grass will I completely miss hit it because I have grooved the uphill swing?  Time will tell.

The most profound problem is that seem to suffer from brief successes followed by severe and lengthy failures.  I can hit stretches of 10-15 shots that are acceptable (they would probably be on or near the green if I were playing golf).  Then the proverbial monkey gets on my back and I start scattering shots.  It’s so bad it’s like I am either blind or someone has spun me around a half dozen times and then asked me to hit. 

The most troubling aspect of my wayward stretches is that I have a huge problem righting myself.  Back in the day when I could count on playing a round of golf under 85 strokes, I would still hit a really bad shot now and then but could quickly diagnose the problem and get back on track.  Now, even with concerted mental and physical reviewing of the fundamentals of golf, it can take many shots before my golf ship gets righted and on course.

So now my biggest concern is that I have a brain/body disconnect that is incurable.  There are some pro golfers that have gone down this path – they are the best in the world one year and then the monkey gets on their back and they can’t force themselves to play well no matter how much they practice.  No matter what they try, it just doesn’t work. The problem is in the great chasm between the ears.

I started wondering if there aren’t parallels to other aspects of my and others behavior.  Do we get in situations where we know the right thing to do and want to do it but there is some mysterious disconnect between our will and our behavior.  I really want to be a pleasant person and know it’s the right thing to do but then the next person in my office gets the brush off.  I want to drive safely, eat right, pray earnestly, (fill in the blank) but there is a persistent obstacle between my will and my life.  How can we overcome the obstacles to become the person we know we can and want to be?

I guess that is a question that has been troubling humankind for all of existence.  I don’t have the answer.  I do know that if I don’t get more consistent with my golf though that I will be soon advertising some golf equipment at fire sale prices – keep checking back.