10:10 Talk

Are you striving for excellence?

I begin most days in the quiet of my study, a room in our floor plan that's a "living" room that never got lived in.  So we repositioned it you might say.  Because I'm such an early morning creature, and the rest of my family is not, I get the luxury of some uninterrupted quiet time.  Most days I start with reading a devotional, and for about the last year, that's been "The Word for You Today".

Today's piece, Are you striving for excellence? stopped me.  Normally, I'll read the message, reflect on it some (or none), and then move on to whatever book that's in the rotation (come to the study and you'll see the beginnings of a decent library).   It stopped me because it challenged me.

The message differentiates between success and excellence.  Another reason I'm engaged with today's devotional is that my pastor is 2 parts into a 3 part sermon called "How to be rich".  He's challenged us to accept the fact that as Americans we're already richer than 99% of the world's population.  But because we compare ourselves to those around us, we don't feel rich.

From "The Word" there's a quote from a psychology professor named Jon Johnston where he points out the difference between mere success and excellence:  "Success bases our worth on a comparison with others, excellence measures us against our own potential.  Success grants its rewards to the few but is the dream of the multitudes.  Excellence is available to all living beings , but is accepted only by the few".

OK, so let's say we accept this platitude, and we want to pursue excellence.  Excellence in what?  That's the million dollar question.  I bet I spend 10 times as much time as the average person thinking about this kinda stuff, so you'd think I'd have more clarity.  Actually I'll admit I do have some clarity with the issue. 

The fact that I felt lead to record my thoughts on the matter, reveals my desire to write; and in that discipline, I need to pursue excellence.  Writing classes, books on writing, writers clubs, blogging (daily practice) are some of the options for an aspiring writer.  Every field of endeavor has its biology - the requisite components that constitue a living organism.  I need to seek more of those writing components.

I don't know much but here's my two cents on pursuing excellence:

It doesn't involve money.  Admit it Americans - we've already got plenty of it.  Thanks Randy for reminding me.

It does involve God.  He made me for a purpose.  Problem is he didn't send me an email with the subject line "Your pursuit of excellence".  He did send a spirit that will lead me when I listen.

Are you anxious about your health?

From "The Word for You Today":

John writes: “I pray that…you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers” (3Jn 2 NAS).

When You Feel Anxious

Respect Your Temple (2)

From The Word For You Today posted on the Erie Christian Fellowship Church blog:

Part 2

Respect Your Temple (1)

From the Word For You Today, posted on the blog of Erie Christian Fellowship Church:

“GOD BOUGHT YOU WITH A HIGH PRICE. SO,,,HONOR GOD WITH YOUR BODY.” 1 CORINTHIANS 6:20 NLT

At the resurrection, “Our earthly bodies…will be raised to live forever” (1Co 15:42 NLT), but in the meantime you must “honor God with your body” by observing a few basic principles like: (1) Exercising regularly: Half of us who start exercise programs abandon them within six months. The secret is to start slowly. Take the stairs instead of the elevator, park the car and walk, play ball with the kids instead of watching TV. God designed your body to move, and strolling from the car to your desk every morning doesn’t cut it! Exercising thirty minutes 3 – 4 times a week reduces blood pressure and stress, and boosts your sense of well-being. (2) Eating right: Many of us eat for the wrong reasons, like fatigue, anger, and low self-esteem. Eat to live, don’t live to eat. Insufficient fruit, veggies and fiber and too much fast food can wreak havoc with your health. Practice self-control. Remember, “Those who belong to Christ…have given up their old selfish feelings and…things they wanted to do” (Gal 5:24 NCV). (3) Getting enough sleep: Pastor Tony Jenkins consulted his doctor about his wife’s snoring. “Does it really bother you that much?” he asked. “It’s not just me,” Jenkins replied, “It’s bothering the whole congregation!” Seriously, we live in a sleep-deprived society but most of us require 7 – 9 hours shut-eye. You can probably get by on less, but do you just want to “get by?” The Psalmist said, “It is no use…to get up early and stay up late…The Lord gives sleep to those he loves” (Ps 127:2 NCV). So turn off the TV and the computer and turn in at a reasonable hour!

What In Blue Blazes Are You Doing?

Hello my fit friends,

I had the opportunity to play in the Ocala National Forest, our country's southernmost National Forest, this past weekend with my bro-in-law "Bump", his son/my nephew Dalton, and his pal Grant. The park is a jewel in this state to be sure. A mix of pine and hardwood forests, it contains three springs where camping areas welcome you to wooded camp sites and cool clear waters.

Dissecting the forest from north to south is a 65 mile section of The Florida National Scenic Trail (aka The Ocala Trail) which shows the gently rolling country of Florida at its best. Variety is the word as the trail passes about 60 natural ponds or plunges through cypress and gum swamps on winding boardwalks. In other areas the trail traverses the rolling open longleaf pine forests and scattered clumps of dwarf live oaks.

The Florida Trail is marked with orange paint blazes like this photo of where the trail crosses county road 445.

Off the main trail are "spur" trails that connect the FT to other points. In our case this weekend, there was a spur trail from our Alexander Springs camping area back to the FT like this:

The spur trails are marked with blue blazes which gave me the inspiration for this message. "Wow Hughes, this is really exciting trail blaze stuff ya got goin' here" you say. Do I detect a little sarcasm? I'll get to my point - soon.

So I go out for a run Sunday morning. From the camping area I plan to head east on CR 445 for about a mile where the FT intersects the road. However, before I get to that intersection I discover a dirt vehicle path that connects to the road and runs parallel to it. Since I'd much rather run off road in the woods, and since I figured this dirt road would eventually intersect the trail, I took it.

I'm running along this wide road, still paralleling the county road for just a few minutes when it takes a turn to the right. Hmm. This isn't good. 'Cause I wanna run the orange blazes, not some big 'ol dirt road in the woods that goes who knows where. I'm not lost yet since I haven't been running that long - I could always turn around and back track.

I decide to continue a little further into no-man's land in hopes of finding the blazes. Thankfully I didn't encounter any moonshine stills or banjo playing as the dirt road soon crossed the FT putting me back on track.

It occurred to me that those orange blazes were a form of security for me. As long as I followed them, I knew I was on the right path. Do you know where I'm going with this?

We have blazes in our life, or better said, in our life journey. If we follow the blazes we'll stay on the path. And I do believe God has a path for all of us. What are your blazes?

There was a time in my life when all my orange blazes had to do with my career. My family and relationships would be described more like blue blaze spur trails. Funny thing was, as i followed those career blazes, I was never fulfilled - guess you could say I was on the wrong trail.

Thankfully, God had a plan (and some caring people) to get me on the right trail. Goodness knows I still screw up - early and often; but I know what the right blazes look like. They're spiritual disciplines really. So I try to follow them daily. For me that's quite time with our creator, reading the Bible (lots 'o blazes in there), and prayer. All of which helps me to be a better husband, father, friend, worker, you name it.

As a weird little aside, I had another wildlife staring contest like the episode I wrote about at Wekiwa Springs with a deer (Don't waste a tear). This time it was with a snake - one of those harmless black racers. Running along the trail I almost stepped on one. He (or she - it happened so fast I didn't have time to tell) bolted into the brush as soon as I approached.

Not 50 yards later, I come across another one. Except this guy doesn't move. If I had my camera, I could've snapped a shot 'cause this dude was a statue - with his head held up as if he was staring at something - or me.

So I lean forward to make eye contact (that's what you do in a staring contest). I bet my eyes are no more than 4 feet from his. He's still motionless. This guy's good. Just then a horse fly starts biting into my leg. When I go to swat the fly the snake darts off. Technically I lost, since I took my eyes away first to see the fly. Dang. O for 2.

At any rate, it was time to get going so I turned around and followed those orange blazes back to camp. It felt great to be on the right track.

Thanks for reading this far. Hope you find your blazes.

Why My Purpose Isn't Important

Hello my fit friends,

One of my favorite morning rituals is to surf to the web site that contains "My Utmost For His Highest".  Here I can find the daily devotional from Oswald Chambers' book of the same name.  I like it because Chambers challenges me spriritually in a piece that can be read and digested in minutes - good for us "on the go" types.  And it's not for everybody so don't hear me say "you need to read this".

What caught my attention today were some of his comments about purpose.  As someone who truly attempts to live a life on purpose, I'm always open to other's perspectives on how to do do this.  Especially when the other's perspective is to align ourselves with God's purpose for our lives.  I hope you'll click through and find out why your purpose isn't important.  My Utmost For His Highest 11/10/07

The Sad Hammock part 2

"I'd love to relax in my hammock, but I should really be..." I bet you could fill in that blank. What's wrong with this picture?  Did you ponder that question?

The obvious and most common answer is "I'm too busy".  And we are.  Most of us are overworked, over-committed, one-armed paper hangers.  And yet I've never once heard someone say that they prefer this lifestyle - it's just the way it is.  But why?  Why do we feel the need to be so strung out?  Is this the American way?  If you examine our population, you'll find it is.  Is this "rat race" what we all want?  By no means!

Then why do we do it?  I'll throw down two hypothesizes You may have others.  First, is the cliched "keeping up with the Joneses".  This has many subtle expressions, but let's face it - we all want to look good.  Certainly there's nothing wrong with that, but when we sacrifice the truly important (like spending time with family for example) because we have to work to pay for the whatever, we're missing out.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to go on a mission trip to Honduras.  Based out of a Christian outreach camp, our assignment was to help lay concrete floors in some of the nearby villager's homes.  We also dug deep holes and laid bricks for latrines.  Real glamorous work for sure.  We came in there as the rich Americans who could bring progress to their homes and demonstrate the love of Christ.  And we did.  But what I left with was a feeling totally unexpected.  I discovered that these people had more together than the average American.  While most had no electricity and few had accessible running water, they had a peace and contentment that few of us do except when we're on vacation.

I likened their daily experience to one of my camping trips - and I love to camp.  No worries, lots of time to hang out and be with the people you care about.  When I camp, I don't miss my TV or Internet or hair dryer (that's a joke) as those things just don't matter.  What does matter when you camp are the simple things - like what's for dinner, when can we start the fire, where are we exploring or fishing today, and best of all - what deep conversations might we delve into.

My second hypothesis for why we're so busy is the issue of "control".  Or more accurately our perceived control.  By doing and working more we feel we're getting more out of life - living more abundantly.  We feel we have control of our families, our careers, our homes, etc.  But the stressful feeling when we're chained to that treadmill of busy-ness drains any feeling of abundance.  If any one of us believes we're in control needs only to turn on the news to hear about all those things that can happen.  This week it's the fires in California.  Next week or month it'll be something else.  What I'm getting at is that I've accepted that God is in control. 

This doesn't mean I'm copping out or escaping.  It means that God's way bigger (what 's a word for infinitely infinite?), and I accept that.  And one of the things he asks of us (actually commands) is that we take a day off.  He'll take care of our worries on our days off - and our days on for that matter.

That said, I'm planning a little horizontal time in the hammock this Sunday.  The boss gave me the day off.

Are you in?

The Sad Hammock

I was walking around in my backyard recently. An image that I had passed countless times caught my attention today. My hammock. Or more accurately, my crumpled (because I had taken one side down from the tree where it hangs), mildewing, lifeless hammock. I'd always dreamed of having a hammock someday.
To me the hammock represents a certain kind of freedom. Freedom from responsibility if only for a short time. Maybe we could call it aggressive relaxation. Hanging in a hammock says to the world "I'm content".

In all our first homes, which included 3 apartments, and one "starter" home with no trees, there was just no place to hang one. And for some odd reason a hammock stand didn't remotely appeal to me. I guess I aspired to be a hammock purist which to me means the thing resides under a tree. The bigger the tree the better. Our 4th home had a young but strong scrub oak tree planted by the builder in our backyard. The tree was close enough to a porch post so that I finally had a suitable venue for a hammock!

I guess because I had always wanted one, I had been paying attention to the hammocks I'd seen in stores. And for me the only choice was a "Pawley's Island" - the original rope hammock. The inspiration for this rope hammock came in 1889 from Captain Joshua John Ward, a river boat pilot who barged rice and supplies between nearby Georgetown and the great rice plantations of the South Carolina low country. He found the grass filled mattresses on his boat too hot in the summer.

He decided to make a cool and comfortable cotton rope hammock for use on his boat. After several uncomfortable designs, Cap'n Josh made a hammock using wooden spreaders without knots. This original design has proven to be so comfortable, that it is still used in their popular hammocks, over a century later:
Pawley's Island history

I purchased mine at the "Andy Thornal Expedition Outfitter" store in Winter Haven, Fla. This upscale outdoor store is a bona fide big boy (and girl) toy store with some of the greatest equipment for adventuring outdoors. The Andy Thornal Company Plus they sell hammocks. I brought it home, rigged it between the tree and block post, and found it to be a pleasing companion. You could find me most late Sunday afternoons when the weather was cool in Tampa falling asleep with a book on my chest.

As I mentioned earlier, hanging in a hammock represents a level of contentment. For the individual. Not always for those around you, aka your spouse. There's something almost criminal about hanging under a backyard shade tree when the weeds are intruding, the hedges are overgrowing, and the grass is reaching knee height. For this reason, I've found one of the unwritten laws of hammocking includes getting your menial (can you tell I'm not a fan of yard work) chores done before disappearing into your cocoon.

Mainly because of the summer heat in Florida, my trusted rope hammock has been neglected. However, I kind of fear that it's more than just the heat. With a full time job, an aspiring start-up company, occasional attempts at writing, plus all the time and commitments of family and ministry (all a total blessing), the time in the hammock can be construed as a selfish indulgence. "I'd love to relax in my hammock, but I should really be..." I bet you could fill in that blank. What's wrong with this picture?