Dog Is Good

(NOTE: This post is from the book LOVE, YOUR MOTHER which may be purchased here)
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Harrigan, the family dog, our graying 'round-the-eyes-stinky-sorta-deaf old golden retriever, moves real slow these days. Letting her out when it's way-below-zero on deep-winter mornings in January and February makes me cringe. It's a gamble every morning as she darts into the dark cold snap. Her odds of making her way back to the warm kitchen shorten every day.

"Don't you go out there and drop over in your tracks, animal," I'm thinking those mornings. "There's no sorrow in my bin for you if that happens. Not this winter."

By the time she's finished her business and is back inside, the hound is dancing on hind legs, jumping and huffing and wiggling with her tongue drooping all around. She's ecstatic. Of course she is. She's about to get her bowl of chow. It's the same bowl of round brown pellets of chow she ate yesterday and that she ate the day before that and that she ate every day of every one of the 13 years she's been in our family.

She's like this every morning. Out of her mind ecstasy. This old dog and her brown chow.

I puzzle over Harrigan in the mornings.

"Imagine this," I wonder. "Imagine being this happy every day at the same time of every morning when the same bowl of brown dog chow gets stuck beneath your nose."

I'm learning something here. "You're seeing pure, absolute gratitude in this animal every day, same time, no matter what's going on in the world outside our door," I'm thinking.

And me? I don't remember what I eat for breakfast. Or even if I eat.

"Why's my tongue not slobbering, lapping all around and why's my hind-end not power wiggling when I pour myself a bowl of Bran Buds?" I wonder.

Harrigan's on a joy ride, a shimmy of pure ecstasy. Even when it’s way-below-zero outside. Even though she's almost, what, a hundred years old in people-years. Even though it’s the same brown chow every morning. The stinky, old family dog. On a joy ride. Seeing something I don't often see.

Seeing all as gift.

You are teaching the man something, Dog; teaching me lessons about receiving, gift and gratitude for ALL things in life stuck beneath my nose.


-tim


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(NOTE: This post is from the book LOVE, YOUR MOTHER which may be purchased here)

Welcome & Well Treated

Capital goes where it is welcome and it stays where it is well treated.

So said Walter Wriston, the legendary captain of high finance.

Makes you wonder with all the chatter about jobs, jobs, jobs today,

Where is capital welcome and well treated?

Seems pretty simple. If it's jobs you want, then welcome the capital that goes into creating jobs and do whatever you can to treat it well.

Funny how hard we make this for ourselves.

Creating jobs is scary stuff. People are hired into new jobs to expand new markets, launch new products, build new companies.  None of this comes with guarantees. The only sure thing is the risk. And the fear of it all.

So as leaders yak about jobs, jobs, jobs, it's weird you never hear them talk about how they'd welcome the job creators, how they'd make sure this capital is well treated.

This is like the world of technology for most humans. Confusing. Formidable. Intimidating. Mysterious.

When welcoming and treating job creation capital well, why not make it inviting, reassuring, helpful, and inspiring?  

You want to get jobs moving, why not invent The New Jobs Store for inventors, entrepreneurs and innovative managers?  

A-first-of-its-kind kind of store.  

A place where you'd experience the magic of jobs.  

A place that could be a lot like The Apple Store.

What We've Received

What do you suppose it takes to notice all that we've received?

Maybe a moment or two a day, one here, one there.

Asking, wondering not what've I done but what've I received.

Fear loses its grip when I notice that all that I have, I have because, know it or not, it is received.

Yes, we all have this to do, there to go and hurry now to get after that.

But the real gift is a moment or two of noticing the Giver is here inviting me to trust, receive and enjoy what I have.


--tim


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What Guys Do

Guys don't do Sad. Instead they do Mad.

Guys love Glad. To that they drink.

Ask guys to Feel. It'll get em to Think.

Fear. No guys do Fear.

Guys do Mad when they're really Sad and they love to do Glad and to Think when they Feel.

But Fear.

No. Guys don't do Fear.

Guys do everything, anything from going it alone to building great armies to running from themselves and those they love, conniving, controlling, cahooting and lying, whatever they can do that can possibly, improbably, impossibly be done, a lot of guys will do to have nothing to do with Fear.


--tim


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Alien Nation

Fear's a big problem across the land these days. But alienation is a bigger one still.

How can I know what I know if I've separated my Source from me?

Would fear have a chance if we knew well that we have what we have because of what we've received?

If you ask, I often don't know what is touching and what I see so apart my soul can be.

Why do we wonder why there's no one to trust or to whom to commit when we've disintegrated ourselves from where there's life in the Life of Someone, Something bigger than us, bigger than me?


--tim


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The Commencement Post

What if our graduates were saluted with words not about getting but preparing to receive?

Words that say living well means not only doing this or making that or going there.

No, among life's most important words are these,

Be aware.

Aware of what's come your way. Thankfully. Gratefully. Minute by minute. Hour by hour. Day by day.

That much is not gotten so much as it is given as gift.

How great if our word to graduates today could be,

Go confidently to trust and commit to what you know. What you touch. What you see.

Ask often 'Where's life?' in your life and don't be surprised when the answer's revolutionary, inviting you to be not 'out for me' but alive with others, arm-in-arm, your sisters and brothers.

And no matter your sorrows and triumphs ahead, know your life, as with all souls in times struggled or muddied or light on their feet, is where there is Life, already good and abundant.

Yes! Be aware. All is gift for you to receive.


--tim


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White Spaces

One time a chief of a large high tech firm said,

I focus on white spaces...

Those openings between boxes and boxes on his org chart.

Boxes filled with people and know-how and activities to do.

The rest of the place, the white spaces, unknown, mysterious and open, were his.

What would I think?

Where ought I go?

How might I do?

If I was like him, tuned to my white spaces, silent.

Without and within.


--tim


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