Author: Todd Porter

In Matthew 13:44-45 Jesus is trying to explain the nature of his Kingdom to his followers.  He says:

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” 

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”

I’ve always thought that the point of this passage was that we were the ones who found the treasure or the fine pearl and that Jesus was making the point that finding that treasure beyond all others was worth sacrificing everything to have.  I’m sure I’ve heard sermons and Sunday school lessons to that effect.  It’s certainly the perspective taken by most of the commentaries I had handy.

But what if we’ve misaligned these analogies?  What if participation in the kingdom of heaven isn’t so much about giving up everything to get in on it (since when was God’s acceptance of us contingent on our resources anyway?), but instead about everything Jesus gave up to get us in?

You are the treasure.
You are the one pearl of great value.
Jesus is the one who sold everything he had to bring you into his Kingdom.
What changes for you if those things are true?

A few Sundays back, John McKellar was exploring that teaching from Jesus we’ve come to call “the parable of the sower.”  It’s in Matthew 18:1-8, with a followup explanation (because it’s not a good parable if it doesn’t confuse most everyone hearing it) in v 18-23.  In the parable, Jesus identifies four kinds of soil, one of which is hospitable to plants and three of which prevent thriving growth.

Dr. McKellar pointed out that it’s our tendency to try to sort everyone into one category or another, but the reality is that, at any given moment,  we humans have hearts that can be described all four ways at the same time.  At any given moment, we all have parts of our hearts that:

• we’ve hardened against God’s message of love for us and our kind
• we’ve filled with rocks that keep anything from taking root, so we give up as soon as the going gets tough.
• we’ve mixed thorny weeds in with the fruit, so the good stuff gets the life choked out of it, while the prickly thorns remain to hurt us and the people we love.
• we’ve tended well, so the remain soft and receptive to the things God would plant there to bring life and health for ourselves and our neighbors.  

My friend Melanie recently shared this TED talk from Pamela Meyer about lying:

Pamela Meyer: How to spot a liar | Video on TED.com

One of the things that really captured my attention was when she said:

“Lying is a cooperative act.  Think about it:  a lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance.  Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.  So I know it sounds like tough love, but look, if at some point you got lied to, it’s because you agreed to get lied to.”

It gets really interesting when you take that idea and place it next to Jesus’ description of Satan in John 8:44.  Jesus is having one of those recurring arguments with his kinsmen, who are vigorously missing the point (as we humans are wont to do).  He says:

“You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44 NASB)”

I am constantly pressured to believe lies about myself, about the people around me, and about God.  These lies are from hell and are intended to destroy my relationships and ultimately to destroy me.  But they only have power when I cooperate with Satan (!why would I do that?!) by agreeing to believe them.

We planned a trip to Walt Disney World with some friends back in 2007.  In total it was 8 adults and 10 kids (with me and Krista in the “adult” category).  I shared the list below in an e-mail to the group before that trip, but at least once a year since then I have occasion to share it with someone else.  I’m posting it here to save the annual excavation of my e-mail archives to try to find it next time.

1. Illuminations: Reflections of Earth @ EPCOT.  
   This is one of the most amazing works of art that I have ever seen.  It tells the story of the creation of the earth and the history of human civilization using music, fireworks, a flaming gas barge, and a globe with the continents made from some kind of video screens.  Every time I see it I’m taken aback by the beauty of it.  Like all works of art, it works for some people and not others, so you might see it and think, “ho hum.”  As for me, I’m trying to figure out how to sneak off to EPCOT every night we’re there to see it.
2. MGM at night.
   I love the architecture of Disney/MGM Studios and I love the film score music that’s playing everywhere.  I especially love the combination of architecture and night lighting, so one of my favorite things to do is just hang around after dark and look and listen.
3. Walt Disney: One Man’s Dream @ MGM.
    This is a little museum and short film tucked back behind The Great Movie Ride.  I have watched the film once each of my last few trips and always come away inspired.  It is a documentary-style assembly of film, images, and sound clips about Walt Disney’s career, most of which are recordings of Walt himself.  One of the things he talks about is the idea that was “plaguing his brain” that there ought to be some kind of place where parents and kids could have fun together.  That brain-plaguing idea was the genesis of Disneyland and ultimately Walt Disney World.  The thing that inspires me about that is how an idea that this one guy couldn’t stop thinking about turned into something that touches the lives of thousands of people every day with beauty and fun.  I’d like  to have an idea like that and have the dedication to make it happen.  Another thing he says is something like, “it’s important to have a good, hard crash [failure] when you’re young.”  I try to remember that to remind myself about the benefits, and ultimate inevitability, of failing and how it is the seed of growth and improvement.  Walt’s willingness to risk everything to accomplish his goal, even with the likelihood of failure, inspires me as well.  Younger kids might be bored, but I’ll make sure I see this at least once on this trip.
4. Disney’s Wilderness Lodge.
    I doubt any of you (or I) will have time for this, but on many of our trips, I’ve set aside half a day to take a book and go sit in one of the 2nd or 3rd floor atrium reading areas in the Wilderness Lodge hotel lobby.  Something about all the logs and the music (Aaron Copeland and others) makes me feel content, at home, and happy.  I probably won’t make it over there this time (I don’t think I made it last time either), but it’s still one of my favorite things to do.
5. Spaceship Earth @ EPCOT.
    Like Illuminations, this attraction is a tour of human history.  In the case of Spaceship Earth, it is the history of communication.  It’s fascinating the way technology has evolved to meet our intrinsic need to not be alone in the world.  The narrator toward the end poses a great question about whether all the technologically-facilitated communication to which we now have access will be nothing more than a “flood of electronic babel,” or if it might become something more than that.  One of the amazing things this ride reminds me of is how we, as a race, continue to abate our isolation by trying to communicate and persist in that attempt because even the difficulty of trying to do it is better than being alone.  There’s also the added fun of wagering where, in the ride, you might get stopped on any particular experience of it.  Seems like I usually get stopped where the monks are copying the bible by hand.
6. TomorrowLand Transit Authority @ Magic Kingdom.
    This is a great chill-out ride during the day, but like MGM, TomorrowLand is even better at night because of the lighting design.  A tour on the TTA after dark gives you a great view of TomorrowLand and other parts of the Magic Kingdom too.  There are lots of great quotes on the “PA” system as well (“…your party from Saturn has arrived.  Please give them a ring.” makes me laugh every time.).
7. Carousel of Progress @ Magic Kingdom.  You’ll probably see this and, as Krista described, think, “That’s cheesy.”  Then, later when you’re standing in line for one of those ice cream bars, that little song will start rolling around in the back of your mind and you’ll start to wonder if it might be true …   “there’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day…”  and it might be.
8. Soarin’ Over California @ EPCOT.  We’ll have to figure out some kind of FastPASS schedule for riding this, but it is definitely worth the trouble.  It is an EyeMax-type screen with a three-story seating arrangement that simulates riding in a hang-glider over some of the most beautiful parts of California, complete with smells.
9. The Lion King Show @ Animal Kingdom.  Songs and pieces of the Lion King story.  It’s a good show.  Something about “Do You Feel the Love Tonight” affects me differently in this show than in the movie.  I like it.
10. Finding Nemo – The Musical @ Animal Kingdom / the Finding Nemo Ride @ EPCOT.  Basically, I just like the Finding Nemo story.  It inspires me to be more persistent and to persevere.  “…The Musical,” in particular adds some songs about that component of the story.  “Just keep swimming…”  On the EPCOT ride, there’s a bubble section to simulate the EAC (is that what that’s called?) that is really disorienting (in a fun way).  I like the bubbles.

I don’t remember exactly when I learned Psalm 23. Maybe around age 7? It may very well be the most popular and best known of the Psalms, as it’s pastoral peace is often used to comfort mourners, both real and dramatized. What has caught my attention of late, though, is not the “valley of the shadow of death” part, but rather the “I shall not want” part.

Last week I participated in a training program built around Peter Block’s book Flawless Consulting. Early in the book, Block describes two processes that are central to flawless consulting, the first of which is “being as authentic as you can be at all times with the client” (xxiii). Later, he elaborates on this by saying, “Authentic behavior with a client means you put into words what you are experiencing with the client as you work”(37). It is pretty obvious that any consulting project should entail identifying what the client wants out of the process, but part of the authentic behavior that Block describes is for the consultant to express their wants as well.

As participants, we each had to pick a current consulting project example to use throughout the training session and one of the exercises was for us to make a list of our wants from the client, express those wants aloud recorded with a web-cam, and then watch the recording. This was a uniformly uncomfortable experience for everyone in class. All of us found the idea of expressing any kind of requirement to a client difficult in concept and awkward in practice.

Throughout the course, I found myself wondering why expressing my own wants, which, in the consulting example, were necessary for the success of the project, was so difficult. Somewhere in the contemplation, the phrase from the beginning of Psalm 23 popped into my head: “… I shall not want.” (New American Standard Bible). I realized that over the course of my life I had internalized a destructive distortion of this passage. It went in as “I shall not want” and came out as “Thou shalt not want.”

That’s not what the passage says in the New American Standard Bible and, when I looked the Hebrew word used there up in Strong’s concordance, I learned that the word for “want” means “lack, fail, be lessened, be abated, be bereaved, decrease, be made lower (s.v. 2637). The New International Version makes this a little more clear by translating that phrase “…I shall not be in want.” When I was looking directly at that passage in either version, that’s what I thought it meant. But somehow in the day-to-day functioning of my mind, it turned into something else entirely; what the psalmist penned as a statement of hope turned into a command to deny all desire.

I found remnants of this distortion in all kinds of places. The daily question of what to have for dinner is one of the easiest to explain. Krista says, “what do you want for dinner?” My first thought is, “it doesn’t matter what I want. What do we have?” Really? I’m not allowed to have a preference? That’s ridiculous.

There are all kinds of reasons that this lie exists in my subconscious and conscious awareness. Of some, I am aware, while others still lurk in the shadows. The fact of the matter is that desire, want, is a natural consequence of being alive. Admitting to it is a necessary requirement for being authentically present. Refusing to admit it didn’t keep me from wanting steak and potatoes for dinner, though it can certainly keep me from getting them.

The hope expressed in Psalm 23 is that those desires will not forever be unsatisfied. At the very least, I can be much more authentic and present if I at least admit that I want what I want. It sounds almost childish to say that and someone in the Flawless Consulting class commented that they felt childish saying their list of “wants” out loud. Perhaps being honest about our desires, the profound ones and the trivial ones, is one of those habits of childhood that we would be better off not to abandon. And maybe if I would admit to wanting it, the table prepared in the presence of my enemies would have steak and potatoes.

…reminds me of:

April 5, 2006

There was light
You said it, and it was,
In my darkness,
Your echoing brightness.
You pursue and persuade.
You convict and detain.
You destroy and re-make.
You release and enslave,
‘til all that remains is:

BEAUTY (Your beauty enchanting.)
FIRE (Your fire engulfing.)
MERCY (Your mercy restoring.)
LIFE (Your life exploding.)

There was death.
You said “It’s finished” and it was.
The end of “the end,”
the beginning of life:
You embody and invade.
You instruct and demonstrate.
You forsee and lead the way.
You die and live again
and leave in your wake:

BEAUTY (Your beauty enchanting.)
FIRE (Your fire engulfing.)
MERCY (Your mercy restoring.)
LIFE (Your life exploding.)

Your spirit moved
across the deep, it moves today.
Inside our lives
You clean and pry the death away.
You pursue and persuade.
You convict and detain.
You destroy and re-make.
You release and enslave,
‘till all that remains is:

BEAUTY (Your beauty enchanting.)
FIRE (Your fire engulfing.)
MERCY (Your mercy restoring.)
LIFE (Your life exploding.)

“April 5, 2006” v1.1,
Words and Music by Todd Porter
(o) 2006 Mosaic Fort Worth

“forming, storming, norming, performing” … These are the four stages of group development that Bruce Tuckman described in his 1965 Psychological Bulletin article, “Developmental Sequence in Small Groups.” This model, based on a review of published literature on the topic at the time, has since been widely accepted.

Tuckman writes, “The second point in the sequence is characterized by conflict and polarization around interpersonal issues, with concomitant emotional responding in the task sphere. These behaviors serve as resistance to group influence and task requirements and may be labeled as storming.” (p. 396)

Though I agree that each of these four steps are typical, I am not convinced that they are all necessary. Specifically, I’m not convinced that the “storming” phase is a necessary activity at all. I think it happens regularly and naturally in the course of groups, but can’t ascribe to the view that the regularity of its occurrence makes it necessary.

In fact, I am keenly interested in finding/creating a group dynamic model that bypasses it entirely. I’m interested in this because the organization I work in is project-based and as such, relies on continuously forming and reforming teams of technical experts in various combinations to accomplish the goals of each project. I am convinced that finding a way to effectively and rapidly organize teams can dramatically impact productivity, satisfaction (ours as well as our clients’), and quality in a positive way.

I’m also interested in this for an entirely selfish reason. Feedback from multiple sources seems to indicate that it is fairly natural for me to wind up in the middle of “stormy” situations and look for ways to bring diverging opinions and perspectives together. That activity plays out a little differently with every different combination of people, but it is a role I fill consistently and occasionally I manage to do it well.

Often, though, this feels a little bit like each person in the group has a rope with one end tied around my neck and the other end in their hand, all pulling in different directions. Usually it works out well enough in the end, but more often than not, it’s exceedingly unpleasant from my point of view. I find deep pleasure in integrating ideas that seem inherently contradictory, but would like to find a way to do it without being strangled in the process.

I think one of the reasons that “storming” occurs regularly is that people generally feel a need to prove themselves in a new group context. What I’m wondering is whether instead of struggling to prove to one another that we are intelligent, capable, likable, worthy, or whatever it is that each of us feels the need to prove (probably different for everyone), that we could begin instead by simply accepting one another. We could each look the other in they eye and say something like: “You don’t have anything to prove to me. I accept you as you are, more than that, I appreciate you just as you are. I believe you are uniquely intelligent, capable, likable, worthy. I believe you have a gift for me, for everyone who knows you, by being who you are.”

How would our interaction be different if it started with the assumption that you have nothing to prove? that I unconditionally accept and appreciate you just as you are? I think it’s worth finding out.