Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: maturity

  • Favorite Authors: Parker Palmer

    I first came across Parker Palmer during my graduate work at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena. To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey was one of the required texts.

    He turned my assumptions about teaching and learning upside down!

    Some years later while developing my consulting practice, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation became a key point of reference for how I chose to help people think differently about themselves and their career development.

    Palmer offers a refreshing if challenging perspective on human learning, maturity and wholeness that comfortably integrates spirituality, education, vocational aspirations and community engagement.

    Below are links to the Amazon.com pages for each of his books. Head over there now and nourish your own journey toward a more meaningful future.

    Must Read Books

    Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

    A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life

    The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life

    Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit

    To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey

    The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring

    The Promise of Paradox: A Celebration of Contradictions in the Christian Life

    The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal

    You are a gift, and we all need you to show up fully and boldly in your life. While no one else can live your life for you, Parker Palmer will be an invaluable resource along the way.

    Favorite Authors are those unique writers whom I believe are worth reading everything they have written. Explore all my favorites here.

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> The Answer to How is Yes #7: Claiming Full Citizenship

    thought-leadersThis is the chapter my soul has been waiting for.

    While the process of “growing up” didn’t sit well with Block, it describes my internal state incredibly well.

    I can feel the tension between complaining that positional leaders don’t see me on the one hand, and simply, freely, and boldly taking action on my values, convictions and ideas on the other.

    I can also feel the personal grief and internal resistance to Block’s assertion that growing up involves accepting “that living out our values and also winning the approval of those who have power over us, is an unfulfillable longing.”

    I don’t know where that “longing” comes from, but I can recognize it in myself.

    This is what I love about reading together. I get the opportunity to recognize in the vocabulary, experiences, and frames of reference of others what I have up until now not been seeing in myself.

    Block points to a different sort of maturity here. I would call is a form of poise. A centeredness. A peace about who I am and how different I am from most everyone around me.

    The significance of this poise is that suffices for taking bold action regardless of (more…)

  • Listen In -> Paying Attention to Attentiveness #4: Attentive to People

    People change. It’s the first rule of working with others.

    People change from moment to moment depending on mood, attitude, and circumstance. People change over time as a part of growing up, maturing and developing.

    Professionally, when people develop their skills and grow in their interests and capabilities their jobs, roles and responsibilities need to change as well.

    If we assume that the people who work for us do not change and we are not paying attention, we risk losing these valuable assets.

    Do people have a way to grow and mature in their roles where you work? Is anyone paying attention to how people are behaving, engaging and/or changing both in the short term and the longer term?

    If not you could be in for more than a few rude surprises!

    Listen in.

    Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Angry Conversations with God by Susan Isaacs

    I don’t usually write posts on my personal reading, but I have to give a public nod to comedian Susan Isaacs.

    Anyone with a personal spirituality will love Angry Conversations with God.

    Anyone who’s sworn never to have a personal spirituality will love Angry Conversations with God.

    Creativity kudos for taking God to couples therapy! It’s about time too. (I wouldn’t be surprised if an entirely new genre of therapy emerges out of this.)

    I’m not usually attracted to memoirs (i.e. listening in on someone else’s story.) But Isaacs does such a great job telling her story that I was able to both “feel her pain,” so to speak, on the one hand, as well as connect deeply to my own relationship with God on the other.

    This book is both hilarious and touching. Authentic to her private experience as well as profoundly insightful about what we all experience.

    If you want a good laugh while brushing up against some of life’s most intimate, turbulent, and significant issues, then sit down with Susan Isaacs. You might end up taking God to couples therapy too!

  • The Gift of Work -> Chapter 6: Training as a Disciple of Christ

    thought-leadersPrepare and tend the soil.

    The metaphor cuts across my tendency to complicate and over think my views on work and faith.

    gift-of-work1My best bet for contributing to a healthy and bountiful crop is to prepare and tend the soil. My best bet for contributing to a meaningful and productive workplace is to become a certain sort of person. Instead of attempting to control the production process (which by definition in this metaphor is out of my control), I should focus on becoming the sort of character who can participate well whatever the process. Becoming a certain kind of person is in my control.

    What sort of person? A learning person. An engaged person. An attentive person. A healthy person. A grounded person. A God-connected person. A maturing person.

    Instead of asking what sort of decisions does God want me to make, I’d be better off asking (more…)