IF YOU ARE COMING TO NEW YORK YOU HAVE TO KNOW TWO THINGS

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If you are coming to New York, you have to know two things.

One, you will never be bigger than New York. You are not going to be able to come and build some great thing that is bigger than this city. This city will always be bigger than you. You will need gospel humility.

Two, you have to have a sense that you are bringing something unique to the kingdom ecosystem of New York. You have to feel that you have something to offer that doesn’t exist and is needed, otherwise join something already doing well or don’t come. It will be too hard without a clear sense of this. You will need gospel confidence.

Tim Keller
Counsel to Jon Tyson

ADVICE FOR LIVING WELL

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Advice for Living Well
J.R. Briggs | May 2023

After reading Kevin Kelly’s book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier, I decided to create my own list. 

1.      Making it your goal to try and improve  1% every day, even in seemingly small ways. Driving. Writing an email. Making dinner. Folding laundry. Working out. Listening to others. It’ll pay off over time.* 

2.     Show me your habits and I’ll show you your future. Habits are the compound interest of life.*

3.     Engage in various small “life experiments.” Then watch to see what happens.

4.     Avoid debt like the plague. If you do, you’ll be better off than the majority of Americans.

5.     Never resist the urge to be generous.

6.     Change of pace plus change of place equals change of perspective.* That’s why retreats, trips, and getting out of the ZIP code are so important. 

7.     Take the initiative - to introduce yourself to someone, to meet a new neighbor, to connect with a friend, to apologize. Leaders always go first. Live proactively. 

8.     Problems are often solved when you leave your phone on your desk and go for a walk. Solvitur  ambulando.

10.   Faithfulness is massively underrated. It’s not very sexy, but it’s worth it.

11.    Live with your arrows pointing out. Rather than walking into rooms and saying, “Here I am!” walk into rooms and say, “There you are!”

12.   All of life is either stewardship or surrender. The key is to learn the difference between the two.

13.    Grow fruit on other people’s trees.*

14.   Sporks are incredibly valuable and wildly underrated.

15.   If you’re intentional about your mornings, the rest of the day often works out just fine.

16.   To be clear is to be kind.*

17.   Culture is created by what you celebrate and the worst behavior leaders are willing to tolerate.* Create healthy cultures at work, in your community, and with your family. 

18.   It’s only when you’re vulnerable that you grow. Vulnerability always precedes growth.

19.   How matters. As the Puritans said, “God loveth adverbs.”*

20.  The only true way to live is with purpose and intention.

21.   Few things clear your head more than journaling and exercising. You’ll be surprised by what comes spilling out of your mind and heart when writing and sweating.

22.  When creating your to do list, don’t just write what needs to be done. Use a strong action-oriented verb, then the task, and when you’ll work on it, followed by how much time do you think it will realistically take to complete the task. “Do report” becomes “Complete the report and email to the team by Wednesday at noon (75 minutes).” It’ll make your tasks more focused, less overwhelming, and easier to get started.

23.   In a world of immense distraction, focus is the new superpower.

24.  Life is best lived when you live beyond yourself.

25.   Never say someone else’s no for them. Ask yourself, “What’s the worst they can say?” No. Can I handle hearing no?” If you can, ask with confidence. Many times people will end up saying yes.

26.  Calm is contagious - but so is anxiety. Choose wisely.

27.   Leaders are the ones who build trust, bear pain, and bring hope.

28.  Strive to be FAT and hungry. Faithful. Available. Teachable. Hungry. 

29.  Put the phone away. And if you can’t be disciplined enough to do it on your own, hand it to someone you trust and tell them to only give it back when they think you’re ready.

30.  Confidence is quiet. 

31.    Learn to tell engaging stories and ask thoughtful questions.

32.   Commit to being a life-long learner. The most practical way to do this is to be a consistent reader.

33.   Tears are liquid prayers. When you cry ask yourself, Can I put words to the prayer that my face is praying right now? It’ll help you stay in touch with God, others, and yourself.

34.  Travel abroad. It’s one of the greatest ways to grow and mature - and all of your senses are heightened when you do it.

35.   Continually ask yourself, “How can I add value to the person in front of me?” and you’ll never have to worry about money. 

36.  Develop an allergic reaction to mediocrity.

37.   Do hard things.*

38.  Notice and express gratitude to the “invisible” hard-working people in the world, especially hotel maids, Amazon delivery drivers, and airport employees.

39.  Learn to use “we” and “us” more frequently than “I” and “me.” It keeps you humble.

40.  Some of life’s best memories are when you’re cold, wet, or dirty.* 

41.   Don’t offer advice to people unless they are moving toward you.*

42.  Most people’s email inbox is just a to-do list run by others.*

43.  Invest in a good fountain pen, and a quality leather journal.

44.  Whenever you buy a new piece of clothing, donate an old one to Goodwill.

45.  Work on a few goals without telling anyone else. It will be more meaningful for you when you accomplish them.

46.  Dostoevsky wrote, “Beauty will save the world.” Put yourself on the path toward beauty. 

47.  Regularly pray for equal measures of wisdom, courage, and compassion.

48.  Two of life’s most important words: congruence and praxis.

49.  Learn to respond to email in 5 sentences or less. If it takes longer than that, pick up the phone and call them. It’ll save you hours of time.*

50.  No, you won’t remember it later. Write it down. Sticky notes and index cards work wonders. 

51.   Invest in quality products that you will use every day – eyeglasses and a mattress being two of them.

52.   Don’t pack more than what fits into your carry-on luggage. It will reduce a lot of stress when you travel and you’ll be reminded just how little you actually need.

53.   Punctuality is one of the most practical ways to respect others.

54.  Imposter Syndrome is a byproduct of living with courage. When you feel it, celebrate the fact you’re allowing yourself to be stretched in new ways - and then ask what it has to teach you.

55.   Energy management is more important than time management.*

56.  Every three months or so get out of the ZIP Code, visit a coffee shop and spend half a day reflecting on your life and schedule. It’s amazing how much clarity you’ll receive, which will help you focus and clarify what the next quarter of your life can look like.*

57.   Celebrate other people’s accomplishments and important days extravagantly. It’ll mean a lot to them. And to you.

58.  Write one handwritten note to a friend and family member each week, just because.

59.  You’ll never regret making a wise decision. 

60.  Naming the elephant in the room is a good start. After naming it, befriend the elephant, invite it to sit down at the table and teach you. If you ignore it, the elephant may squish you. Worse yet, it may kill you. 

61.   If you have a pocket, carry a pen.

62.  Make a list of the top 50 people who have shaped and impacted you positively in your life. Write each of them a thoughtful handwritten note of appreciation. It will make their year and help you realize that no one is self-made.

63.  Always aim to create structures that are lightweight, low-maintenance, and high accountability.

64.  As a Christian, don’t be weird. But don’t be normal either. Strive to be peculiar instead.

65.  Failure is a terrible thing to waste. It’s a beautiful gift wrapped in ugly wrapping paper.

66.  When you fail, step back and ask yourself, “What is there for me to learn from the situation?” To be able to do that is a sign you are maturing. 

67.  Learn to write clearly, compellingly, and succinctly.

68. We live in a world that catches people doing things wrong. Catch people doing things right.

69.  Read poetry. When you read a poem, read it slowly, read it aloud, and read it twice.

70. The goal of parenting isn’t to raise happy kids, but to raise happy adults. 

71.   Feedback is the breakfast of champions.

72.   Use the word “awesome” sparingly. If everything is awesome, then nothing is.

73.   Read the footnotes and endnotes of the books you read. You’ll find some amazing treasures for what to read next.

74.  As much as possible, avoid buying food at the airport. Instead, bring an empty water bottle and fill it up past the security checkpoint. Pack snacks. And ask for tomato juice when the drink cart comes by on your flight. It’s a liquid meal. The exorbitant prices in airports are a tax on those who arrive unprepared. 

75.   Tragedy plus time equals humor.*

76.  The 30-minute rule of being a sports fan: after your team suffers a tough loss, you have every right to be upset. But after 30 minutes, walk into the bathroom, look yourself in the mirror and say, “I’m a grown man. It’s time to care about more important things in life now.”

77.   Do the hard work of identifying your core values. It will serve you well in making decisions, big, and small, throughout your life.

78.  What you think is important. But how you arrive at what you think is more important.

79.  Be purposeful about beginnings and endings.

80.  Kids can be some of your greatest teachers – if you let them.

81.   When you are being wrongfully accused, never defend yourself; only offer to explain yourself. Respond, but don’t react.*

82.  The rule of half. If you’re leading a meeting, think about how long you expect the meeting will last. Then divide it by two. That’s how much time to spend preparing for it. Your meetings will be much more productive, focused, and worthwhile.

83.  Occasionally, let the waitress choose your entrée. Identify three options on the menu that sound good and then let her decide. She almost always picks a winner.

84.  The volume level coming from a car or motorcycle is in direct proportion to the level of insecurity of its driver.

85.  As you’re being seated at a restaurant, choose a seat that faces away from the television screens. Your friends and family will appreciate your attention during dinner.

86.  Learn to respect people not for what they say, but how they live.

87. Telling is not the same thing as training.

88. Buy fresh cut flowers, even when it feels impractical. Not all things in life need to be useful in order to be meaningful. 

89. Always stop and buy lemonade from a kid’s lemonade stand, even when you’re short on time. It’s not a big deal to you, but it’s a huge deal to them. 

90. You can have control or growth, but you can’t have both.*

91. The goal of Christianity isn’t just to learn to love Jesus; it’s also to learn to love Judas.*

92. Never underestimate the power of following up and following through.

93. If you opened it, close it. If you dropped it, pick it up. If you pulled it out, put it away. If you spilled it, clean it up. Common courtesy. 

94. Not all hours of the day are created equal.*

95. Hope is not a strategy.

96. Approach everything I’ve written here like when you eat seafood: eat the meat and throw out the bones. You get to decide which is which. My only advice: don’t choke on the bones.

 

*indicates that the thought, idea, concept, or quote – in whole or in part - originated from someone 


MORAL LONELINESS

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Our deepest loneliness is not sexual, but moral. More than we yearn for someone to sleep with sexually and emotionally, we yearn for someone to sleep with morally. What we really want is a soul mate. What does this mean?

Ancient philosophers and mystics used to say that, before being born, each soul is kissed by God and then goes through life always, in some dark way, remembering that kiss and measuring everything in relation to its original sweetness.

Inside each of us, there is a dark memory of having once been touched and caressed by hands far gentler than our own. That caress has left a permanent imprint inside us, one so tender and good that its memory becomes a prism through which we see everything else.

Thus we recognize love and truth outside of us precisely because they resonate with something that is already inside us. Things "touch our hearts" because they awaken a memory of that original kiss. Moreover, because we have a memory of once having been perfectly touched, caressed, and loved, every experience we meet in life falls a little short. We have already had something deeper. When we feel frustrated, angry, betrayed, violated, or enraged it is because our outside experience does not honor what we already know and cling to inside.

And that dark memory of first love creates a place inside us where we hold all that is precious and sacred. It is the place we most guard from others, but the place where we would most want others to enter, the place where we are the most deeply alone and the place of intimacy; the place of innocence and the place where we are violated; the place of compassion and the place of rage.

The yearning and pain we feel here can be called moral loneliness because we are feeling lonely in that precise place where we feel most strongly about the right and wrong of things: that is, we feel alone in that place where all that is most precious to us is cherished, guarded, and feels vulnerable when it is not properly honored.

Paradoxically, it is the place where we most want someone to enter and yet where we are most guarded. On the one hand, we yearn to be touched inside this tender space because we already know the joy of being caressed there. On the other hand, we don't often or easily let anyone enter there. Why? Because what is most precious in us is also what is most vulnerable to violation and we are, and rightly so, deeply cautious about whom we admit to that sacred place. Thus, we often feel wrenchingly alone in our deepest center.

A fierce loneliness results; a moral aching. More deeply than we long for a sexual partner, we long for moral affinity, for someone to visit us in that deep part where all that is most precious is cherished and guarded. Our deepest longing is for a partner to sleep with morally-a kindred spirit, a soul mate. Great friendships and great marriages, invariably, have this at their root: deep moral affinity The persons in these relationships are "lovers" in the truest sense because they sleep with each other at the deepest level, irrespective of whether they have sex or not. In terms of feeling, this kind of love is experienced as a “coming home," as finding a home, bone of my bone. Sometimes, though not always, it is accompanied by romantic love and sexual attraction. Always, however, there is a sense that the other is a kindred spirit, one whose affinity with you is founded upon valuing precisely the same things you do.

But such a love, as we know, is not easily found. Most of us spend our lives looking for it: searching, restless, dissatisfied, and morally lonely.

Ronald Rolheiser

LENT CAN SCARCELY BE TOO LONG

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The purpose of Lent is to arouse. To arouse the sense of sin. To arouse a sense of guilt for sin. To arouse the humble contrition for the guilt of sin that makes forgiveness possible. To arouse the sense of gratitude for the forgiveness of sins. To arouse or to motivate the works of love and the work for justice that one does out of gratitude for the forgiveness of one’s sins.

To say it again—this time, backward: There is no motivation for works of love without a sense of gratitude, no sense of gratitude without forgiveness, no forgiveness without contrition, no contrition without a sense of guilt, no sense of guilt without a sense of sin.

In other words, a guilty suffering spirit is more open to grace than an apathetic or smug soul. Therefore, an age without a sense of sin, in which people are not even sorry for not being sorry for their sins, is in rather a serious predicament. Likewise an age with a Christianity so eager to forgive that it denies the need for forgiveness. For such an age, therefore, Lent can scarcely be too long!

Edna Hong
Bread and Wine

INTERIOR FREEDOM

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Nobody can prevent us from believing in God, hoping in Him, and loving Him. Faith, hope, and love make human being fully human.

That others are sinners cannot prevent us from becoming saints. Nobody really deprives us of anything.

The harm people do to me never comes from them, it comes from me. Harm is only self-inflicted.

If the wrongs people commit do penetrate our hearts, that is because they find room there. If suffering makes us bitter and ill humored, it is because our hearts are devoid of faith, hope, and love.

God is the eternal present.

Living in the present termites our hearts to expand.

It’s a mistake to add the burden of the past to the weight of the present, it’s still a worse mistake to burden the present with the future.

Jacques Phillippe
Interior Freedom

PRAYER TAKES PLACE IN THE MIDDLE VOICE

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Prayer and spirituality feature participation, the complex participation of God and the human, his will and our wills. We do not abandon ourselves to the stream of grace and drown in the ocean of love, losing identity. We do not pull the strings that activate God’s operations in our lives, subjecting God to our assertive identity. We neither manipulate God (active voice) nor are manipulated by God (passive voice). We are involved in the action and participate in its results but do not control or define it (middle voice). Prayer takes place in the middle voice.

Eugene Peterson
The Contemplative Pastor