Former Fundies, Evangelicals, and Death of a Salesman

I have mused over the last week about an exchange on Facebook with a friend who, like me, is an Evangelical and Reformed believer. She was sincerely adamant about certain conservative thinkers using terms like "objective legal standard" or "food stamp president" as code words for white racism.

So, I asked some other friends who are conservative, and are black. The scratched their heads figuratively.

I later listened to Congressman Allen West, who himself has been black for some time, and is a conservative by birth - - or is it the other way around?

I also heard J.C. Watts, former QB of the Oklahoma Sooners, former Oklahoma Secretary of State, Former Congressman, and I would say a potential Veep candidate.

He supports Newt, one of the code-speak offenders.

So, why do white liberals, who are former fundamentalist Christians and/or current Evangelical Christians (there is a BIG difference) buy into the code-speak thing?

Well, I worked it in reverse. I WAS a liberal, so much so that I could have made Nancy Pelosi look like Jesse Helms.

I protested outside the South African mission to the UN protesting apartheid. I still think the policy was wrong, by the way.

I was the typical Southern white liberal student who wanted to change things. I was angry.

And I did not want to be looked down upon by people from up North.

Then it hit me!

The unseen actor on the thinking of liberal former Fundamentalists and liberal Evangelicals was and is -

WILLY LOMAN!!!!!

You know. The protagonist in the Tennesee Williams play, Death of a Salesman

He wanted everyone to like him. He was obsessed with the idea. He guided his sons with exhortations that the way to succeed in life was to get everyone to like you.

So, liberals and progressives in general are hypersensitive to anything that remotely looks like it could offend.

As such, discourse is chilled, otherwise acceptable words are relegated to a trash heap of language, and

Grace is sacrificed on the altar of a legalistic moral code.

The bad news, the ex-Fundamentalists are still Fundamentalists, but in a better part of town.

The good news - the right people like them!

By the way, Willy's obsession eventually led to self-destruction.

On the Edge of Catholicism

For those of you who know me personally, and know I hold to a Reformed theological world-view, chill. It's all good.

I remain an Anglican trapped in the body of a Presbyterian.

I am reading a wonderful book entitled More Christianity, by Dwight Longenecker. Dwight is a former Anglican priest who came into the Catholic Church a few years back, along with his wife and children.

His terrific book is a cogent explanation to Protestants of what Catholic Christianity is all about.

While I find more than a few things in Catholicism I am not comfortable with, the sheer grandeur of faith as expressed by Catholic believers is, I think, pretty awesome, and gives me pause to consider whether I, as a Reformed believer, am too familiar with God - appreciating His personal and intimate relation to me, but being indifferent to His vastness.

Our Dog, and Media of Exchange

You may remember that we have a cute Rottweiller-Yorkie mix, Medusa.

We have had a problem with Medusa bringing in large sticks to chew on when coming back in from the open concept restroom.

Chasing her around the house, demanding she give us the stick, has not worked. So, we have resorted to giving her a treat if she drops the stick.

Works every single time. Unfortunately, Medusa seems to be a Conservative Republican Dog.

I know I should be happy about this, since William F. Buckley, Jr. (may his name be praised) is my political godfather.

Medusa has made the connection between collecting the sticks, and exchanging them for treats.

How cool is that????

The story now takes an unfortunate turn.

You see, Medusa, as dogs often do, eats her own poop.

Our dog, one day brought in a "product."

Alarmed, I ran to the kitchen, quickly found the bag of treats, and offered a couple to her. Medusa moved away from her fecal snack, and happily gobbled the treats.

I recovered the "item," having had the presence of mind to get a couple of paper towels, and a hazardous materials suit.

Soon, Medusa decided to switch from sticks to poop, and now the cute business transaction has taken on the context of something akin to extortion.

Sorta like the individual mandate under the President's healthcare program.

Maybe Medusa is an Obama supporter after all.

NOT YOUR AVERAGE SUCKER!!!!

Last night My Reason for Living, our daughter - She Upon Whom Sun and Moon Rise and Set, - and our little neighbor, Pablo, went to drive through the Roper Moutain Lights and walk through "Winter Wonderland" while there.

There is a guy there each year who does balloon figures. He is Michaelangelo with those things.
We got in line, but SUWSAMRAS and Pablo just wanted to act out "Chipwrecked." the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie we had seen a few hours earlier.

MRFL suggested getting them suckers from "The Lollipop Lady" whose stand was just inside the building where the balloon guy was.

I thought this was just an interesting project for her. Turns out the Lollipop Lady is a fourth generation candymaker whose nom de guerre is Heather Norton - wife of a Clemson prof, mom to two boys, and lollipop maven par excellence!

All kinds of shapes, regular flavors, and diabetic-friendly.

I thought about suggesting Guinness Extra Stout as a St. Pat's offering, but decided against it.

Heather ships all over the country, and it is easy to see why. I got a watermellon happy face. (You know, a Guinness Extra Stout happy face would be great.)

The lollipop is fab, and does not lick quickly. I was tempted to chomp it, but thought better of it.

These lollipops are art, and to eat them rather than lick them would be as pedestrian as treating pheasant under glass as finger food.

Check out Heather's facebook page shown below. If you love a great lollipop, and believe in a nation of small shopkeepers, as my fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson and I do, you can't go wrong with Heather's product.

facebook.com/thelollipoplady

The Importance of Staying Inside Your Unique Ability(R)

I start this post with high praise for my good friend - Julia Waller of Strategic Coach in Toronto, Ontario. Julia took a day with me in January to do what she does better than anyone on the planet. She helps entrepreneurs identify their Unique Ability(R). In other words, she works with a business owner to bring into focus that unique thing or group of things he or she does - not just in business - but in all of life. You find out what that is, and then delegate, outsource or eliminate everything else.

Which brings me to - you guessed it - HOME REPAIRS.

To be more specific . . . PLUMBING.

I will try not being prideful in saying that I am - - - well - - - a pretty good plumber - - - no - - - I am an EXCELLENT plumber.

Excellent. Excellent in the way Kim Kardashian is a gifted concert pianist, or Newt Gingrich is a successful Thighmaster owner.

You get the idea.

My Reason for Living asked me to have the kitchen faucet replaced. Being the national poster child for high testosterone levels, I not only got her a new one, but decided to install it myself.

The guy at Home Depot said it was a one-tool job. How hard could it be?

My Reason for Living, and our daughter - She Upon Whom Sun and Moon Rise and Set - went out for the evening.

My wife expressed the opinion that SUWSAMRAS was building her vocabulary fast enough without the addition of - - - ER - - - more advanced words.

Okay. Have a nice time.

I carefully removed the various cleaning products from under the sink - organizing them for a neat replacement upon completion of the project.

Then, I shut off the water to the sink. Next, I took the tool suggested as the only one needed, and disconnected the lines from the sink to the water supply.

So far, no worries!

I got out from under the sink and began working the old faucet to pull it off.

It was not coming off.

I looked again and discovered, to my surprise, that the faucet was secured by a couple of - pay attention here, my storehouse of home repair knowledge is about to gush - a couple of twisty-things that were so far up another tool - NOT THE ONE TOOL THAT WOULD BE NEEDED TO DO THE JOB.

My family would be gone for at least another hour.

I am now left with three choices -

1. Drive like a bat out of hell to Home Depot, in hopes of getting the OTHER one tool that would be needed to do the job.

2. Contort my body and complete the job without the other tool - - - and I could expect success just about the time Kim Kardashian's book on How to Marry for Life is released.

3. Suppress my pride, protect my confidence, and help my daughter maintain a quality vocabulary. This I would do by suggesting to my wife, that the faucet is lovely, and deserves a professional installation.

I chose number three.

My Unique Ability includes among other things, the ability to ask questions that transport others to a point in time that repesents a bigger and better future.

Plumbing is not really inside that definition.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go listen to Kim Kardashian's rendition of Mozart's Opus No. 40.

And where is my Thighmaster?

Lightening strikes, Microchips, and Dan Sullivan

My law firm has finally gone into the 21st Century.

We were hit with lightning recently. The strike turned the voicemail card on our analog phone system from original to extra crispy, if you catch my drift.

Cost to replace the card, plus service to the system? $750 to $1,250.

We had been pitched replacement analog phone systems two years earlier at $10,000.00 plus.

This year, we were pitched a digital system at $7,500.00.

Both analog and digital were feature rich.

My brilliant law partner did some research, as we had to do something.

What did she find?

Digital phone system, retaining one analog line for fax and security system.

Total acquisition cost?

Try 685 bucks.

Yep.

685 bucks.

Is my partner that smart?

Well, yeah, she is, but that isn't what caused the costs to plummet.

It was microchips.

No, not a snack item from Jenny Craig(r).

The brainy stuff in computers.

Dan Sullivan was right. Dan is a mentor to entrepreneurs around the world. He and his wife, Babs Smith, founded Strategic Coach a number of years ago.
If anyone has insight into microchips - he is the man!

Dan pointed out several years ago, that the microchip revolution was a fourth "Great Cross Over" as he puts it.

A great cross over is a breakthrough in communication and transfer of information. Dan says the first was speech, then writing, and the printing press was the the third.

Dan also points to an interesting effect of the microchip - one that a member of the team credited with the development of the chip has opined on: "Speed doubles/price drops by half every five years."

The guys who pitched us systems that would have taken four to five figures viewed what they were doing as selling a commodity.

Well, they lost.

How could they have gotten our business - or in the case of one company - sold to us again after making the original sale ten years ago?

By creating unique value - doing something for us that we could not have gotten anywhere else.

You see, we are entrepreneurial lawyers. If someone could come in - take the technology and show us how to leverage time and create extra value for clients, we would stay with them forever.

The sad thing is that the guy we bought our first system from knows more than most people in his industry have forgotten. He has ways to take that knowledge and create solutions that companies would gladly pay for, and probably pay him more than his profit on the $10,000 system - the one we just bought.

For $685.

His unique ability, however, stayed in his head, when he could have sold it to us.

For more than

$685.

Some Thoughts on Unique Ability, Delegation, and Dog Poop

Thursday morning, Medusa, my daughter's Rottweiler-Yorkie mix, experienced what can only be described as DOG-HELL.

The cat next door, an animal who to Medusa represents the embodiment of evil on earth, ran through the back yard at the very moment the dog began to poop.

The dilemma of how to engage her enemy while dealing with a present urgency was emotionally, and functionally, gut-wrenching for her.

Of course, this scene naturally made me think of - well - the challenges entrepreneurs face.

All of us with entrepreneurial DNA have a passion for something, a unique process that will create value, and we will benefit from a sense of having made things better, and a profit to boot.

Medusa had opportunity run right in front of her. Unfortunately, dealing with the crap of her operations meant that opportunity quite literally passed her by.

Now, to be fair, Medusa did not have a choice.

You and I do.

We can make sure we stay fresh by at least once a week taking a 24 hour period, midnight to midnight, disconnected from our work. And when we take "vacations," we have to be faithful, and not sneak away for clandestine trysts with "Blackberry."

Then we stay rejuvenated, ready to identify opportunity and create value.

But don't forget to concentrate days devoted to working on the business, acquiring and building capabilities, and to deal with the messes of life.

Finally, concentrate time on the Unique Abilities(R) I alluded to above. Everything else delegate, or outsource wherever possible. You and I have an advantage over Medusa. We can delegate the things we find to be poop to people who are ready, willing and enthusiastic about taking it on.

You can find some great insight on how to do the above in two great books - Unique Ability: Creating the Life You Want, by Catherine Nomura and Julia Waller, and The Time Breakthrough, by Dan Sullivan. You can find them at private.strategiccoach.com.

And as to Medusa? Well, outsourcing the byproduct of her success is - er - just not a doable.