Mastering the life Balancing act

Lessons from a Whirling Dervish

Have you ever seen Dervish whirl? Take a look at this brief video from Cairo and see for yourself. Believe it or not, the man in the middle spun on stage for almost thirty minutes. People became dizzy just watching him! The dervishes actually come from the mystical Sufi mystical sect of Islam. When they whirl, they re-enact a turning towards the truth, during which the follower symbolically grows through love, deserts his ego, finds the truth and arrives at the "Perfect". The dervish also provides a wonderful metaphor for balance. We all feel that sometimes we are spinning out of control. Yet the Dervish somehow maintains calm at the center, balanced. He does this by concentrating inwardly, on his own core, rather than the crazy world around him. At the same time, the spinning itself provides a pathway to God. In this sense, we need to realize that spinning is part of life. We cannot stop the spinning. To stop spinning would be to stop life. And it is through life that we learn to embrace God. The next time you feel like life is spinning out of control, picture the whirling Dervish. Spinning is the way the Dervish...

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Trip to Mt. Nebo - Part II

Imagine Moses. He has freed his people from slavery only to wander 40 years in the desert. He has quelled his disgruntled followers with manna from heaven and brought order from chaos with the Ten Commandments. But he dies before he can lead his people down from Mt. Nebo into the promised land. In the end, did he feel like a failure? It's important to note that the ascent of Mt. Nebo is very gradual. We drove from Amman south to Mt. Nebo on a very gradual slope that seemed almost flat. As we travelled, it almost seemed like we weren't making much headway. It was only when we reached the monument to Moses at the top of Mt. Nebo and looked over the edge, did we realize how far we had come. Granted, it helps that we were looking down at the Dead Sea, which is below sea level and one of the lowest places on earth. Nevertheless, the trip and the view at the end reminded me of our own journey through life. As we travel through life, we forget to notice how far we have come, or how high we've climbed. We place almost impossible goals...

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Escaping the Trap of Fear

We are happy to share another fantastic video in the Freedom from Fear series. These are a series of sermons by Rene Schlaepfer, who is the pastor of a large community church in Santa Cruz, CA called Twin Lakes Church. In our first edition, we shared a funny and wise video that begins with a Blair Witch Project insert. In this video, we share Escaping the Trap of Fear Here, we gain a clearer understanding of the many ways that fear can throw us off balance, including ways that will be completely surprising to many people. Since fear can have such an enormous impact on our sense of life balance, we hope that you will visit this link and enjoy this powerful message....

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The Pope is Coming!

On May 8, Pope Benedict XVI is traveling to the Middle East for a tour of the Holy Land. During his trip, he will visit Jordan - where I am now - Israel and the Palestinian territories. The whole region is gearing up for this trip. Why? Because it represents an important opportunity to promote religious balance and tolerance in the region. Everyone knows we could use more of both in this part of the world. There is a direct relationship between tolerance and balance. While it is important to hold to our principles, intolerance pushes us to extremes. We lose sight of the humanity in others, and in ourselves. As the Pope has said, "True tolerance always presupposes respect for the other, who was created by God, whose existence was wanted by God." Clearly, just as we are all children of God, so must we show respect and tolerance for all of God's children. And as we show tolerance of others, so might we begin to show more tolerance of ourselves, and of our own failings. And this, I believe, lies at the heart of life balance. George Washington Carver sums up this connection, between our own life path...

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The College Years - Work Life Balance

Introducing Sir Richard Burton On a trip this year to teach at the University of Edinburgh, I was introduced to Sir Richard Burton. Not the Richard Burton of Hollywood fame, but the perhaps an even more intriguing Richard - Richard Burton who is the CEO of HoodEasy.com, a fast-growing start-up in the online retail space. Of course, meeting an entrepreneur who is ramping to millions of dollars in profit, and creating a global business is nothing new - but meeting an entrepreneur who is a Sophomore in college and ramping up something this significant is something completely different. Richard's story is captured nicely in this video snippet... The dilemma of the college entrepreneur Perhaps you can feel Richard's pain - he is a very intelligent young man who would likely do well in school, just resting on his cognitive abilities, but Richard has another problem. Every waking moment of his day, he is faced with the reality that at a start-up the work is NEVER done. Quite impossible therefore to every feel complete. Add on top of that a healthy does of homework, classes, paper and reading and you have the recipe for IMBALANCE. How to balance college life and...

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