Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: practice

  • Loving Monday: Attitude Rehearsals

    loving_mondayYou want the week to begin well. You get up and prepare with good intentions. “I choose a positive, constructive attitude as I launch this fresh, new Monday morning.”

    But reality is not kind this week. Joe called in “sick”… again. Sarah won’t help a co-worker meet an important deadline. An important client wants to renegotiate your fee. Management unexpectedly slashed your budget mid-year.

    And what began as a positive, constructive approach to the week is rapidly devolving into an dark and ugly—however understandable—reaction to the disheartening choices of others.

    Here’s the deal, though. Attitude is not the same as emotions. We may feel discouraged, frustrated, or angry. Understandable and appropriate in the given examples.

    Attitude, though, is a choice. Attitude is a stance. Attitude is the stance I choose to take regardless of what I am feeling.

    Like any difficult choice, we need to practice and practice and practice embodying the attitude we choose.

    We don’t merely flip a switch in the midst of experiencing a serious setback (more…)

  • The Gift of Work -> Chapter 5: Not a Trivial Pursuit

    thought-leadersWe have become a culture of “preventative ethics.”

    That’s my term for what Bill Heatley identifies as ethics that confines itself to avoiding either litigation or offending people. There’s a problem with defining or limiting anything to what it is not.

    gift-of-work1I hear the grieving of what has been lost in terms of moral vocabulary, social mores, and behavioral standards. Being the veritable pragmatist that I am, though, I want to move immediately to thinking through creative options for facing this current reality, however tragic, and creating, developing and experimenting with alternatives for maturing into a working community that is, in fact, characterized by love, goodness and justice.

    It might be more effective to have our working communities back into their ethics. If it’s not going to work to begin with the concept and move to the practice, then let’s talk together about our practices. Teams would discuss and agree upon what behaviors they would like their working relationships (more…)

  • N.T. Wright Offers Insight on “Learning the Language of Life” at Fuller Seminary

    nt-wrightFor whom does making complex choices come more naturally, the person who has been practicing ahead in a somewhat unnatural manner, or the person who lives from moment to moment, trusting God to be present and helpful more spontaneously?

    If you want to hear one of the best cases for practicing virtue before you need it, check out this talk N.T. Wright gave at Fuller Seminary on February 27th.

    He is one of my favorite thinkers, and it was a thrill to be present for this presentation.

    It’s an hour long audio presentation, so grab a cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy! (It’s also a big file, so depending on your connection speed it make take a few moments to begin playing.)