Category Archives: David’s Blogs

If you are not a David Bowie fan and you don’t get the title, that’s OK!  Well, I am writing this week’s Thursday blog in a room at Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine.  We have been traveling to the UK now for nearly 24 hours and have reached this resting place just about 7 miles from our house!  What happened?  Our British Airways flight to London was cancelled due to a crack in the wing spoiler and here we are,  stranded at the outset.  But it did present an interesting study in ‘Change’ and how people react to their well oiled travel plans being disrupted.  This was a 747 jet with over 250 passengers and in a stroke, they were all seatless and desperate to find a place on any alternative flight.  Now, I don’t know if you have noticed, but airlines do not tend to leave their planes half empty, in fact it has become the norm to hear announcements about how many air bucks you can acquire should you give up your place on a scheduled flight.  Squeezing those 250 people at short notice on to near capacity flights had to be a nightmare for the airport staff.

As it became clear that we were all in a competition for these precious places, the reaction to changed circumstances began to display in all manner of ways.  This had me pondering our whole attitude to change. There were the eager beavers immediately on their cell phones calling the airline and hotels to avoid the fast forming line to customer service.  There were the resigned accepters of their fate who dutifully joined the line to wait for up to 4 hours to find a new way to complete their journey.  There were the angry victims who lashed out at anyone who wore a uniform and waxed lyrical to any in earshot concerning the inadequacies of the airline industry.  And then there was that guy who was high-fiving the operators and spreading cheer to the line in general.

Change travels with us wherever we go, but as I heard someone say recently, just because something is on our road trip it doesn’t mean it has to drive the car.  There is change that we engineer because we know things cannot stay the way they are.  There is the change that is a welcome friend that we have no control over, but heralds a positive turning point we can assimilate and move on.  Then there is the change that we find hard to welcome.  This may be change we initiate ourselves or as in my travel example above, something completely outside our control.  Whichever it is, we struggle with accepting the disturbance to our status quo, the upset of our plans or the removal of our established comfort zone.

I have often used the phrase ‘Constant Change is here to stay’, and in one sense this is clearly true.  However, when nature initiates or adapts to change, it has a suppleness to its response, a seasonal pattern to its adjustments.  Leyna, my wife, pointed out the way a tree bends in the wind.  Because it know how to keep its suppleness, it does not break under the strain.  The seasonal response depicts an adaptation over time that allows the right environment or conditions for change to take place.  The tree, though changed by weather and seasons, remains rooted in the ground.  Here it derives the sustenance to ensure it remains supple and able to change.  The larvae does not suddenly become a butterfly, but metamorphoses carefully in ideal surroundings while protected by the cocoon.

Individuals or organizations that wish to get where they are going in life need to embrace change whether it be planned or simply happen in the process of life.  My problem has always been to welcome and even provoke change without due reverence for my roots and source of life.  For others, fear of change or resistance means their roots will no longer be in a place to derive that sustenance and they slowly die or in the case of organizations, become irrelevant and ineffective.  Jesus once used wineskins as an example of our ability to change.  When the skin becomes dried up and loses its supple flexibility, the new wine will burst the skin and we will lose all the good stuff!  Too much wine, of course, will just make you drunk.  Change is inevitable, whether we initiate it, or it arrives on our doorstep.  How we respond may well determine our ability to enjoy life, move into exciting new places or how we relate to those around us.  I still have a vivid memory of the young man at the airport embracing the loss of his flight whilst giving life to those around him.  I later had the pleasure of sharing dinner with him at our hotel.  Embracing change often has unseen benefits.  Ch Ch Ch Ch Changes!

Well, seeing as it is not every day that one makes the national newspapers, I thought that this Tuesday I would let you share in my 15 minutes of fame.  The following article appeared in the Washington Post this week and as you can see, yours truly is quoted (largely correctly for once)

Texas Open Carry Law Triggers Tough Choice for Businesses

The issue of open carrying of firearms was clarified in a law that came into force at the beginning of the year.  Basically, it is now legal to openly carry in the state of Texas.  What this meant for a small business owner such as myself was very simple.  If I wanted to prevent my customers from frequenting our coffee houses whilst openly sporting their firearms I would have to display a fairly large poster in both English and Spanish to comply.  We were forced to make a choice.

The article does a good job of examining the issues provoked by the new law.  Our choice was not difficult for a number of reasons.  To begin with, I am in favor of stricter gun laws due to overwhelming evidence that links lax gun laws with higher firearm mortality.  We also had far more customers expressing concern over the possibility of guns being openly flaunted than otherwise.  In point of fact, this law does nothing to increase or decrease how many firearms are carried, merely how they are carried.  In my opinion, this is an issue of safety and common sense.

Imagine you are standing in the line for your coffee and an openly carried firearm is available within arms length of any customer in that line.  What is to stop anyone, including a child, reaching for the gun and thus sparking a potentially dangerous sequence of events.  What if that person is a petty criminal with no access to guns but uses the opportunity to carry out an armed robbery.  Imagine the possible tension created when you inadvertently spill your hot coffee on a person who openly carries and is having a bad day.  Surely common sense dictates the new law heightens tension, allows more potential accidents and could even give opportunity for misunderstanding and potential harm to innocent bystanders.  I get it.  Not so long ago in ‘these parts’, your life might depend on how fast you could draw your gun.  But in these days of high school football and atm machines, are we still living in the Wild West?

It is clear that the new law was a political move given the sheer dearth of people who actually wish to flaunt their firearms even in Texas.  We have received many more commendations for our actions and our business has continued to grow since the beginning of the year.  What is more encouraging than anything else are the many businesses here in Texas who have made the same choice.  I applaud those who are taking a stand for safety given that it is easier not to have large signs in two languages in your front window!  And with that, I am off to take a couple of shots – espresso that is!

A little different this Tuesday.  I want to share briefly an overview of a podcast I listened to recently that is both topical and inspirational.  If there is one source of consistent bad news it is that which emanates from Syria, Iraq and everything surrounding the emergence of ISIS.  A young American, Jeremy Courtney was recently interviewed by Rob Bell on his podcast, the Robcast and as the interview progressed I felt at once uplifted and inspired by this simple tale of transformation and Jeremy’s impactful organization Pre-emptive Love Coalition.

In his mid-twenties, Jeremy and his wife Jessica plus one year old child journeyed to Iraq with the intent to make a difference in the long time worn torn region around Kirkuk.  This was ten years ago and so still in the height of major US involvement in factional conflict.  They had set their sites on helping the poor but events soon overtook them after a chance meeting in a hotel lobby.

After many days of serving Jeremy coffee, a gentleman approached him to ask for help for his cousin’s daughter who was dying from a heart defect.  He was approached simply because he was American and the man believed this qualified him as a candidate for helping with this problem.  One of the knock on effects of war in Iraq had been to drive many skilled surgeons and medical staff out of the country and so there just were not any qualified surgeons to perform the necessary operation.  All Jeremy needed to see at their first meeting was the little girl and a piece of paper on which the only words he could understand were ‘Hole in Heart’.  He believed his attempts to help would ultimately fail which he stressed to the desperate father, but promised to try nevertheless.

Somehow, Jeremy was able to influence an appropriate surgical team to help this poor girl to get her life back.  At the same time, he discovered untold thousands of children with similar birth defects, many of which had been caused by Sadam Hussain’s chemical warfare, but also in the much less well known use of depleted uranium in US bombs (Something not often mentioned in the media!).

Despite fatwas, death threats, bombings, imprisonments and intense living conditions, Jeremy and a growing number of friends dived in to help as many of these unfortunate children as possible.  It became clear that funding these children to receive the kind of help they needed by traveling abroad was extremely prohibitive.  Somehow, they were able to arrange for an increasing number of surgeries to take place in Iraq itself as doctors came back in response to these needs being highlighted.

What truly inspired me about this story was the very different viewpoint fashioned in Jeremy’s mind by the privilege of being able to live amongst people of all different backgrounds, beliefs and religious persuasions.  I was struck by his ability to build bridges across real divides in order to do something positive to change the lives of those who did not have the power or resources to do the same for themselves.  One story on the podcast that challenged my own perspectives concerned working with a man who was on the US terrorist wanted list to establish an education for thousands of Iraqi children.

Listening to this man talk truly challenged my own attitudes, pre-conceptions and media bias.  It is clearly impossible to get a true picture of what life is like in the Middle East today, and yet not a day goes by when the media portrays one negative picture after another.  I felt it was worth writing this just to demonstrate that not everything happening in this devastated region of the world is negative.  There are people on the ground making a difference.  It also helps to gain some perspective on the rather negative reaction to refugees flooding into Europe and perhaps here in the US.  This conflict has its roots in ethnic cleansing of Kurds and the invasion of Kuwait, which is now nearly 25 years on.  It is the least we can do to suffer a relatively minor inconvenience and welcome those who have been displaced by this terrible conflict and all its consequences.

If you would like to listen to Jeremy first hand, I highly recommend the Robcast episode here – Jeremy Courtney Lives In Iraq

So, I have been meditating all week on this, taking a little time to write my other blog entries on Tuesday and Thursday, but really dwelling on this.  Thanks to all of you who contributed to the conversation, it really helped to bring some clarity to this week’s offering.  The most significant thing I realized was that we all think of something different when we hear that four letter word, ‘love’.  Where I want to focus right now, is not on the social transaction typified by two people operating in a kind of give and take, but from a more absolute viewpoint, best encapsulated in the description ‘unconditional love’.

I promised to go back to Genesis last week, and that’s what I am going to do, though hopefully making connection with one of the most famous of bible verses in John 3:16.  Why Genesis?  Well, as I read the poetry of that early attempt to describe how we all came to be living in this universe, I see what could be a universal truth when it comes to understanding love.  I believe that, when the author of the universe set all those complex processes in motion, it was intended that human beings would experience love right from the beginning.  I have a growing conviction that the whole allegory of the man and the woman and the serpent was actually symbolic of what was always meant to happen.  What do I mean by that?

I believe it was an act of love when we were offered the ability to experience not only life, but the knowledge of good and evil.  In Genesis 3 v 5, the serpent is quoted as saying, ‘God knows that the moment you eat from the tree, you’ll see what’s really going on, you’ll be just like God, knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil.”  God’s gift of love was to open up all knowledge to us humans, even though it would cause us to experience pain, suffering and loss as well as the heights of joy and happiness offered by life on earth.  Even more significant, he did not foist this upon us, but the serpent in the story is symbolic of the choice we experience, more commonly called freewill.  The account in Genesis clearly shows that the tree was made available, the warning not to eat of the tree was a loving warning of the consequences and yet the choice was still offered through the serpent, who was also part of the grand design.

All this to say, the author of our existence demonstrated love towards us by giving everything, and yet exerting no control, giving up any attempt to possess us, and allowing complete knowledge with only a loving warning of the consequences.  This was done with the understanding that it would allow us to do our own thing, reject the one behind the act of love and all this without the promise of anything in return.

Fast forward to the account of John and we see the brackets wrapped around the end of this expression of love.  ‘This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son.  And this why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.’  John 3:16. The act of love is complete following all human attempts at ‘sacrifice’ and religious observance have failed to satisfy.  Our divine inventor finally becomes one of us, which involved getting down and dirty in the mess of this earth.  Once human, the ultimate act of love was available.  Jesus gave up his life at the hands of those towards whom unconditional love had been expressed.

So, I have revised my initial definition of love, if it could ever be defined – best of luck with that David!  Last week I applied the concept of putting others’ needs above our own.  This week, in the light of my comments above, I would put it something like this.  Unconditional love is lived out at its purest level when one gives everything, and is willing to give up life itself for the sake of the one loved and this is done with no element of control, possession or requirement of reciprocation.  I know, who can live up to that?  I might point out at this point, though, the traditional message of the evangelical church insisting on turning to God in order to avoid ‘hell’ is a far cry from the love letter that seems to have been written when you look at it the way I describe above.  What can we learn for ourselves?  Perhaps, if you truly love someone, stick with whatever allows them to fully be themselves.